Cesare Pugni — Gazelda:
Mazurka “Souvenir de Gatchina”

Mazurka - a Polish 3/4 dance with the accent often on the second beat. From village to salon, from Warsaw to Paris, where Chopin turned the step into poetry. The heel-click and little dip are a rhythmic idea: a spring in the middle of the bar that gives melody its gait. In ballet the mazurka is both Polish color and a way to make a scene elastic.

From the first bars of Souvenir de Gatchina you hear a real mazurka. The 3/4 does not spin like a waltz; it molds an elastic “one–two–three,” where the first beat is support, the second a spring, the third a release into the next bar. The left hand fixes this immediately—bass on 1, chords on 2–3—while the right draws short approaches to the pillar notes and flexible slurs. Those appoggiaturas are not décor: they are the consonant before the stressed syllable. The key is a bright two-sharp major; in the first eight-bar sentence bar four reads as a question (half cadence on the dominant), bar eight as a clear authentic cadence. No effects for their own sake: the texture is simple, the whole thing built on the gait and on clean diction of cadences.

The theme then returns, but the camera moves closer. The right hand reaches higher (at points 8va is marked), summits gain profile, and the left—without abandoning the “1 | 2–3” law—slightly broadens the bass path. Harmony admits quick secondary dominants: those passing sharps nudge the phrase toward its cadences without weighing it down. A lively tempo suits the page, but it demands discipline: keep the subtle second-beat accent, release the third, and make each appoggiatura audible; otherwise the mazurka character drains away and only “three beats” remain.

After a few periods Pugni’s economy begins to work at a larger amplitude. Repetitions are not copies; they are montage in larger shots. Modest crescendo steps lift the phrase, then an immediate release so the next arc can form. The right hand gains slightly longer flights to the peaks, yet balance is never lost: the left hand keeps the skeletal bar-line, the right supplies speech and facial expression.

The marking Trio changes behavior without breaking the frame. The register rises; the right-hand chordal crowns shorten toward portato; lines often proceed by sequence—a small motive shifts to a neighboring degree and receives an answer. The color turns toward a mild subdominant shade, and the tone warms. Here you should listen for the breath of long slurs rather than the count: at a lively tempo give the right hand a hair more air before the pillar note while the left stays strictly even. The result is an elastic step with preserved cantabile.

The return after the Trio is recognition. The earlier formulas sound broader precisely because the middle taught the ear to listen in longer spans. Treble runs lengthen for a moment, dynamic steps become more sculpted, yet articulation stays compact. You meet a few sf marks—brief flashes of meaning before a cadence: strike and release at once, without spreading the pedal. The final authentic cadence is dry and exact; the silence that follows fixes the form as reliably as the double bar on the page.

Put simply: there is no labyrinth of harmony here. The strength of the number lies in how Pugni turns the walking rhythm, the second-beat accent, register, and texture into persuasive stage speech. At a brisk tempo the mazurka breathes freely yet keeps its poise: the left hand is the stride, the right is the inflection; the Trio is the human turn of that inflection; the close is a gathered point. Because of this clarity the piece does not age: it is easy to hear, easy to imagine, and it invites you to play it again—only more precisely.