KALICHSTEIN-LAREDO- ROBINSON TRIO

Transcription

Thursday
16
june
kalichstein-laredorobinson trio
Joseph Kalichstein, piano
Jaime Laredo, violin
Sharon Robinson, cello
8 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY SUSAN GRAY AND ALEC DINGEE
TRIO IN B-FLAT MAJOR FOR PIANO, VIOLIN, AND CELLO, OP. 11
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Allegro con brio
Adagio
Theme and Nine Variations on “Pria ch’io l'impegno”: Allegretto
TRIO NO. 2 IN E MINOR, OP. 67
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Andante
Allegro con brio
Largo
Allegretto
:: intermission ::
PIANO TRIO NO. 2 IN C MAJOR, OP. 87
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Allegro
Andante con moto
Scherzo: Presto
Finale: Allegro giocoso
35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 31
WEEK 3
the program
TRIO IN B-FLAT MAJOR FOR PIANO, VIOLIN, AND CELLO, OP. 11
Ludwig van Beethoven (b. Bonn, December 16, 1770; d. Vienna, March 26, 1827)
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
Probably composed 1796-97; 21 minutes
Historical evidence suggests that Beethoven wrote the Piano Trio in B-flat major for the
clarinet virtuoso Joseph Beer (1744-1812). The key of the piece supports the supposition,
since it would have been appropriate and comfortable for the B-flat clarinet, which had not
as yet undergone the technical improvements of the Boehm system of clarinet key-work.
Upon publication in 1798, either Beethoven or his Viennese publisher, Mollo & Co., prepared
an alternate violin part—nearly identical to the clarinet version—should a standard piano
trio ensemble want to perform it. Beethoven dedicated the work to a prominent patron of the
musical arts (she had supported Gluck, Haydn, and Mozart), Countess Maria Wilhelmine von
Thun und Hohenstein (1744-1800), whom he met through his aristocratic Viennese friends—
the Lichnowsky family.
For the last movement’s variations, Beethoven took the theme from a two-act comic opera
by Joseph Weigl, L’amor marinaro [The Corsair, or Love among Seafarers]. The tune was an
aria, “Pria ch’io l’impegno” [Before what I intended] that had found great popularity around
Vienna at the time. Composers had used it as an air for dance music—even Paganini used it
as the basis for a violin “Sonata con Variazioni” in later years.
Following the Trio’s publication, a critic in the widely read music journal the Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung [AMZ] complimented Beethoven on his newly found common touch:
The clarinet virtuoso Joseph
Beer (1744-1812) was
known throughout Europe
and Russia, not only as a
touring concert artist, but
also as a resident musician
at the courts of the Duke of
Orléans and of Catherine
the Great in St. Petersburg.
The last years of his life,
from 1792 on, he spent
as a member of the Royal
Prussian Orchestra in
Potsdam. Beethoven
probably wrote the B-flat
Major Trio for him.
(22 May 1799) This Trio which is in places not easy, but which flows more smoothly
than some other works of its composer, makes a good ensemble effect with the
accompaniment played on a fortepiano. This composer, with his uncommon
understanding of harmony and his love of profound expression, would give us a great
deal of value, leaving the insipid efforts of many a celebrated composer far behind,
if he would only write always in a more natural rather than far-fetched manner.
Despite the AMZ’s critical approval of his “natural” manner, Beethoven himself is said to
have regretted basing his variations upon this theme. It smacked too much of popular taste.
This aspect of the work gave rise to a common nickname for the Op. 11 piece, which is
sometimes labeled the “Gassenhauer Trio.” The word “Gasse” is German for “street,”
or “alley,” and the term “Gassenhauer” can be roughly translated as “pop tune.”
In 1800, one of those curious “piano contests,” which seemed to amuse people to no end in
that era, took place at an evening musicale at the home of Beethoven’s patron, Count Fries.
Beethoven was challenged by Daniel Steibelt (1765-1823), a composer
“…This composer, with his uncommon and pianist who was itching to take on the great young Viennese
virtuoso. Beethoven’s reputation as an improvisatory pianist could be
understanding of harmony and
likened to such jazz artists as Art Tatum or Keith Jarrett two centuries
his love of profound expression,
later. In the event, Beethoven’s performance in this Piano Trio, Opus 11,
would give us a great deal of value,
so daunted Steibelt that he conceded defeat.
leaving the insipid efforts of many a
celebrated composer far behind, if
he would only write always in a
more natural rather than
far-fetched manner.”
32 :: NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Poor Herr Steibelt, to have been routed by such a charming work. As
the music journal critic suggested, Opus 11 is an unpretentious Trio,
engaging and entertaining for performers and listeners. The nine
variations on Weigl’s theme are playful, not intimidating. It is likely that
on that occasion, Beethoven gave the improvisations some extra “oomph.”
TRIO NO. 2 IN E MINOR, OP. 67
Dmitri Shostakovich (b. Saint Petersburg, September 25, 1906; d. Moscow, August 9, 1975)
Composed 1944; 29 minutes
Shostakovich had already begun writing the Trio No. 2 when he learned of the sudden death,
on February 11, 1944, of his close friend, the critic Ivan Sollertinsky. A music professor at the
Leningrad Conservatory and the artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Sollertinsky
had died of a sudden heart attack. “I have no words with which to express the pain that racks
my entire being,” Shostakovich wrote to his friend Isaak Glikman. “May his memorial be our
abiding love for him, and our faith in the inspired talent and phenomenal love for the art of
music to which he devoted his matchless life…” The grief-stricken Shostakovich dedicated
the work to his friend’s memory.
The cello begins with a lonely statement from the upper reaches of the instrument’s harmonics.
Inconsolable, it continues its eerie keening as the violin and piano begin to speak. Slowly
they make contact. In a quickened tempo, the piano introduces the main theme, with musical
topics that they can all engage in. The conversation is moody, ranging from a folk-like
merriness to simmering anger.
Dmitri Shostakovich was
the pianist in the first
performance of his Piano
Trio No. 2 on November
14, 1944, in Leningrad.
The violinist Dmitri
Tsiganov (of the esteemed
Beethoven Quartet) and
the cellist Sergei Shirinsky
completed the ensemble.
Shifting to F-sharp major, the second movement is one of those hurtling, relentlessly driving
Allegros that Shostakovich mastered so cannily. It is a rude Scherzo, with a milder Trio
section in G major. The Scherzo stops abruptly, throwing the listener directly into the path
of eight dark piano chords, the beginning of the Largo, a funereal movement in B-flat minor.
Shostakovich sets the murky, anguished growl of these painful chords as a passacaglia base
upon which the other instruments perform. The strings speak calmly, then urgently, while
the piano continues the incessant tolling of its bleak thoughts. The movement exhausts itself
as the strings drift away over the final dark chord.
The final movement, created from real and invented Jewish melodies, cries and mocks,
dances and flails about, sometimes anxious, sometimes violent, always harrowing. The
jaunty rhythms provide the thinnest of disguises for this rattling dance of death.* It finally
bursts forth blatantly in all its terror. The piano spews forth cascading, rippling arpeggios,
and gradually the trio of instruments whimpers to a pause. Fragments of the mocking dance
appear briefly. The piano remembers its eight chords, and tries them out once again before
all the voices die.
In August 1975 the slow movement of this Piano Trio was played as part of the memorial
services accorded Shostakovich when his body was laid out in the Grand Hall of the Moscow
Conservatory.
*By the winter of 1944, word of the Nazi death-camp horrors had begun to circulate. Shostakovich regularly
transferred into his compositions deeply held feelings about social and political issues. One can safely
imagine this terrible dance of death not only as a private expression of grief over his dear friend’s premature
passing, but more universally, as a despairing reaction against the unspeakable mass human tortures being
exposed on the Western front.
PIANO TRIO NO. 2 IN C MAJOR, OP. 87
Johannes Brahms (b. Hamburg, 1833; d. Vienna, April 1897)
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
Composed 1880, 1882; 30 minutes
Over the decades of his residency in Vienna, from 1862 until his death in 1897, Brahms made
a habit of spending his summers in a resort area where he might compose music in rural
tranquility. He would rent rooms and enjoy the pleasures of uninterrupted concentration
in the morning, followed by relaxation in the evening. He preferred that the village be near
friends and acquaintances, either permanent residents or summer vacationers, and he also
enjoyed having a beer and a cigar with local residents. Disciplined in his habits, Brahms
excelled at shutting out the world when composing, and he moved easily into sociability
when he had completed his day’s work.
In the case of the Piano Trio in C major, the second of his three works in that genre, Brahms
began composition in the Vienna winter season of 1880-81, and completed it in June 1882 in
the Austrian village of Bad Ischl, in the Salzkammergut. The first performance of the work
occurred two months later, in an intimate social setting. Brahms’s good friend Ignaz Brüll
(1846-1907), a fine pianist and composer, was on the piano bench, giving the composer an
opportunity to enjoy his new composition as a member of the private audience. Brahms seems
to have been pleased at what he heard, for when he submitted the work to his publisher, his
accompanying letter declared, “You have not yet had such a beautiful trio from me and very
likely have not published its equal in the last ten years.” This was a remarkable encomium
from a man who regularly destroyed his manuscripts as unworthy.
The first public performance of the C-major Trio took place in Frankfurt that winter (1882),
with Brahms himself at the piano. The violinist Hugo Heermann and the cellist Valentin
Müller completed the trio.
This monument stands in
Bad Ischl, Austria, as a
tribute to Johannes Brahms,
who spent twelve summers in
that resort town, composing
by day and enjoying the
relaxed social life of a
vacationer when his day’s
work was done.
The sweeping opening theme of the Trio is announced by the strings, who fairly sweep the
piano into their drama. Even as the opening bars relax into a sweet, lyrical second theme,
the piano begins to assert itself. Despite moments of introspection, the energy of the
movement never abates, and it concludes with a coda in which the dramatic material of the
opening returns to reinforce the strength of the ending.
The Andante con moto comprises a beautiful theme and five variations, a form in which
Brahms frequently demonstrated his ingenious creative imagination, whether in scores for
piano alone or full orchestra. Here in this chamber ensemble, the main theme is powerful
and the variations suitably substantial. The rhythmic figure of a sixteenth note followed by a
dotted eighth note (a so-called “Scotch snap”), and its slower variant, the combination of a
fast note followed by a slow note, play a prominent role.
The Scherzo sends all three instruments scampering nervously about, with the piano
particularly haunted by pursuing demons. The glorious Trio emerges briefly, triumphantly,
only to be subsumed again by the mysterious fluttering that completes the movement the
way it began.
The piano continues with nervous flights in the opening of the final movement, setting up a
cheerful, sunny Finale to the Trio. While pouring out a profusion of themes, Brahms lightens
the drama that had infused the opening of the work. He teases with moments of tension, but
as a whole, the music lives up to Brahms’s heading, Allegro giocoso, and concludes the
whole business with C-major elan.
Friday
17
june
Yevgeny Kutik, violin
Edwin Barker, bass
Eileen Huang, piano
8 PM
Pre-concert talk with Dr. William Matthews, 7 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY AN ANONYMOUS DONOR
FROM RUSSIA (AND ESTONIA) TO ROCKPORT!
CONCERTO FOR DOUBLE BASS
Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
Allegro con moto—
Andante sostenuto—
Allegro non troppo poco marciale
(Played without pause)
CHANSON TRISTE, OP. 2
Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951)
VALSE MINIATURE, OP. 1, NO. 2
Serge Koussevitzky
Edwin Barker and Eileen Huang
:: intermission ::
DIVERTIMENTO FROM THE FAIRY’S KISS
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Sinfonia—Danses Suisses—Scherzo—Pas de deux: Adagio, Variation, Coda
WALTZ FROM CINDERELLA
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
RHAPSODY FROM HUNGARIAN TUNES FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA
Andrei Eshpai (1925-2015)
Yevgeny Kutik and Eileen Huang
The program continues on the next page
WEEK 3
the program
PASSACAGLIA FOR VIOLIN AND DOUBLE BASS
(Arr. of Passacaille from Harpsichord Suite No. 7 by G.F. Handel)
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)/Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935)
Yevgeny Kutik and Edwin Barker
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
CONCERTO FOR DOUBLE BASS
Eduard Tubin (b. Torila, Estonia, June 18, 1905; d. Stockholm, Sweden, November 17, 1982)
Composed 1947-48; 19 minutes
In 1947 the paths of three émigré musicians from Estonia crossed in Stockholm at a concert
of the Estonian Radio Symphony Orchestra led by its chief conductor, Olav Roots. In the autumn
of 1944, Roots and the composer Eduard Tubin had been passengers on a boat filled with
Estonians who managed to escape to Sweden upon the Soviet’s re-occupation of their
homeland. Tubin made Sweden his new home base (he became a naturalized citizen in 1961)
and continued composing prolifically for orchestra, ballet, opera, and chamber ensembles. Roots
soon moved on to Bogotá, Colombia, where he became a respected member of the nation’s
cultural community; he was made an honorary citizen of Colombia in 1967.
Roots and Tubin knew the bassist Ludvig Juht by his reputation as one of the
finest contrabass performers on the European concert stage. Born in Tartumaa,
Estonia, in 1894, Juht received his music education in Berlin, began his career
in Helsinki and London, and then immigrated at age forty with his wife, Amanda,
to Boston. Now as a naturalized U. S. citizen and bass player who was on a
concert tour of Sweden, Juht met the others for the first time, in Stockholm.
On this occasion, Juht approached Tubin with a commission to compose a new
concert work for his instrument.
Post-concert meeting in
1947 of the conductor
Olav Roots, the composer
Eduard Tubin, and the
bassist Ludvig Juht,
Stockholm, Sweden
Eduard Tubin hesitated. Although a confident and experienced composer, he had his doubts.
In later years, he recalled saying to the bassist, “‘...But I do not know your instrument and
your techniques.’ Juht said, ‘Come, I’ll show you some technical principles and then we can
communicate when you [have] already compose[d]. Send it [to] me, I'll look through and will
tell you what suits and what not.’”
“That’s how we did,” Tubin said. “I got one introductory lesson from him in Stockholm and
later we had an intense correspondence between Boston and Stockholm, on the basis of
which my Double Bass Concerto was created section by section. When I now, later, look over
those letters I truly understand how many of Juht’s instructions are there in that work...”
As a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for twenty years (until his death in 1957),
Juht was at the heart of fine orchestral performances. He had joined the orchestra under
the music leadership of the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, a bassist himself, and a renowned
advocate for new music. Still, Juht pursued a life-long goal to bring his bass forward on the
concert stage—as a solo instrument.
Upon the Concerto’s completion in 1948, Tubin sent Juht the piano score of the work.
“… even a double bass player would not have written it better,” Juht replied. “...Overall you
have written this work so furiously well that I am absolutely enchanted...I have a strong
feeling that with this concerto the double bass will without doubts be raised to the family of
solo instruments.”
On July 19, 1948, in Rockport (at the First Baptist Church), Ludwig Juht
and the pianist Sofia Stumberg (1916-1999), a Latvian émigré to the
Boston area, gave Tubin’s Concerto for Double Bass its first performance.
Its premiere with orchestra took place in Bogotá on March 8, 195-7. The
bassist Manual Verdeguer was soloist, and Olav Roots conducted the
Colombia Symphony Orchestra. The Concerto for Double Bass proved to
be the most popular of all Eduard Tubin’s works printed by his publisher,
Körlings Förlag in Stockholm.
Tubin cast the Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra in one
uninterrupted eighteen-minute movement. After an introduction, the
first of three main sections begins darkly, Allegro con moto. A three-note
motif and a longer lyrical phrase sung by the bass are the foundation for
the unfolding of the first section. The second section, marked Andante
sostenuto, gives the soloist opportunity for further lyrical expression
and concludes with a substantial solo cadenza. The Concerto ends with
an Allegro non troppo, poco marziale, in which the soloist and orchestra
(piano) together increase the tempo and internal tension to conclude in
an invigorated dance.
CHANSON TRISTE, OP. 2
Serge Koussevitzky (b. Vyshny Volochyok, Russia, July 26, 1874;
d. Boston, June 4, 1951)
Hearing Eduard Tubin’s Concerto for
Double Bass with Eileen Huang playing
a piano reduction of the orchestra parts
has a certain authenticity, as that is the
form in which Ludvig Juht first heard
“his” new work, and first performed
it, here in Rockport. Tubin completed
the scoring of the orchestra parts some
months after Juht had received the
piano score. In the end, Juht never
had the opportunity to perform the
work with orchestra. He died just two
months before Olav Roots conducted
the orchestra premiere with the soloist
Manuel Verdeguer, in Bogotá,
Colombia.
The work may be heard with orchestra
on the BIS CD Tubin: Concerto for Double
Bass and Orchestra with the bass soloist
Håkan Ehrén, the conductor Neeme
Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony
Orchestra. (The CD also includes
Tubin’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Valse
triste, Violin Ballade, and Estonian
Dance Suite)
Serge Koussevitzky’s musical accomplishments and his lasting impact on the institution and
the environment of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are certainly well-known to Rockport
audiences. A reminder of his activities as a composer and contrabass performer may be in
order, however, as those endeavors preceded his arrival in this area in 1924.
Born into a family of professional musicians, Koussevitzky learned to play violin, cello, and
piano, and at the age of fourteen he entered the Moscow Philharmonic Music School as a
scholarship student of the double bass. After some years in the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra,
he toured as a double bass soloist, receiving excellent critical notices for his Berlin debut
in 1903.
At that time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Koussevitzky composed two short
works for double bass: 2 Morceaux, Opus 1, and Chanson triste, Opus 2. With the help of the
composer Reinhold Glière (1875-1956), Koussevitzky also composed a Concerto for Double
Bass, which he premiered in 1905. It gained a lasting place in the repertoire and can be
heard on present-day recordings. In later years, after his arrival in the U.S., he composed
a few arrangements, all to be found in a works list “without Opus number.”
The score of Chanson triste bears the notation “À la memoire de Leonid Maximoff.” As an
adolescent, Maximoff was in the Moscow Conservatory piano class of the composer, conductor,
and pianist Alexander Siloti, who taught there from 1887 to 1891. Researchers assume that
Maximoff died young, before 1906, when the Chanson triste was composed in his memory.
Serge Koussevitzky, music
director and conductor
of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra from 1924 to
1949, began his music
career in Russia as a
member, and later principal,
of the Bolshoi Theatre
Orchestra’s bass section.
VALSE MINIATURE, OP. 1, NO. 2
Serge Koussevitzky
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
Composed ca. 1900; 3 minutes
Around 1900 Koussevitzky composed the 2 Morceaux [“two little pieces”]—with the original
headings “Andante” and “Petite valse.” He thought enough of them not only to assign them
an opus number, but also to record one of them, the Valse miniature, along with the Chanson
triste, in 1928.
• • •
MUSIC FROM THE SUITCASE
Opening the second half of this evening’s concert, the violinist Yevgeny Kutik offers three works
by Russian composers—Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Andrei Eshpai—that he and the
pianist Timothy Bozart recorded in 2014 on a CD Music from the Suitcase: A Collection of
Russian Miniatures.
Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, the Waltz from Cinderella, and the Rhapsody from Hungarian
Tunes are but three arrangements for violin and piano from a suitcase full of music that
accompanied Mr. Kutik’s family upon their emigration from Russia when he was five years of age.
As a child he took for granted the stack of sheet music that his violinist mother had insisted on
packing amongst the limited family belongings that they were allowed as emigrants. Growing up
in the Boston area, the fledgling violinist eventually delved into his mother’s unique collection of
sheet music to discover the musical treasures contained within their pages.
DIVERTIMENTO FROM THE FAIRY’S KISS
Igor Stravinsky (b. Lomonosov, Russia, June 17, 1882; d. New York City, April 6, 1971)
Composed 1928,arranged for violin and piano 1934; 20 minutes
Samuel Dushkin, violinist,
and Igor Stravinsky, composer,
in a bromide print by Paul
Tanqueray, 1934, the year
of their collaboration on The
Fairy’s Kiss Divertimento
for Violin and Piano
Igor Stravinsky composed the one-act ballet The Fairy’s Kiss—Le baiser de la fée—as a tribute
to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on the 35th anniversary of his death. The ballet’s story line is
based upon “The Ice Maiden,” the short story by Hans Christian Andersen. The music of
the Divertimento has been arranged and adapted for various combinations of instruments,
including violin and piano, a version that Stravinsky and his friend—the composer and
violinist Samuel Dushkin—created in 1934 (and revised in 1949).
WALTZ FROM CINDERELLA
Sergei Prokofiev (b. Krasne, Ukraine, April 23, 1891; d. Moscow, March 5, 1953 )
Sergei Prokofiev at the time
of the composition of
Cinderella
Mr. Kutik has said that Prokofiev’s music for the ballet Cinderella “captures the darker
undertones that might be absent in a more Disney-fied version of the story, while maintaining
a palpable sense of magic. The music still reflects the fantastical narrative, but in the middle
of it all, grittiness creeps into the texture, foreboding a grimmer reality.” Prokofiev himself
arranged the Waltz from Cinderella for solo piano, and the Russian violinist Mikhail Fikhtengolts
arranged Prokofiev’s solo piece as a duet for violin and piano.
RHAPSODY FROM HUNGARIAN TUNES FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA
Andrei Eshpai (b. Kozmodemyansk, Mari El Republic, Russia, May 15, 1925;
d. Moscow, November 8, 2015)
Andrei Eshpai was born and grew up in the Mari El Republic, a federal subject of Russia
located along the Volga River in the eastern part of the Eastern European plains. Eshpai was
an ethnic Mari, a group that has its traditional roots in Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian
cultures. He first moved to Moscow as a piano and composition student at the Moscow
Conservatory, following that with graduate studies with the composer Aram Khachaturian.
Although Eshpai was a prolific composer, his music is not yet widely known in the West.
About the Hungarian Tunes, Mr. Kutik has written, “The piece evokes the free and natural
sort of playing...in which the violin feels like an extension of the human voice in its
expressiveness and grain.”
CD cover photo of the
composer and pianist Andrei
Eshpai—a recording of the
composer performing his
own Piano Concerto
No. 2, with other works
PASSACAGLIA FOR VIOLIN AND DOUBLE BASS
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)/Johan Halvorsen
(b. Drammen, Norway, March 15, 1864; d. Oslo, December 4, 1935)
The Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen based his Passacaglia for Violin and Double Bass
on George Frideric Handel’s Passacaille from the Harpsichord Suite No. 7. The exact date of
Handel’s Passacaille (French for the Italian term “passacaglia”) is unknown, but the keyboard
suite of which the Passacaille is one movement was published in 1720. Halvorsen published
his virtuosic adaptation, for violin and viola, in 1894. Subsequently, the Halvorsen piece has
been adapted and transcribed for various string instrument duos, including this combination
of violin and double bass, edited and scored by the American composer and bassist Frank Proto.
Renowned throughout Europe as a virtuoso keyboardist (both organ and harpsichord),
George Frideric Handel composed innumerable works for harpsichord—suites of dances
being his particular specialty. All the dance forms of his day are found in his keyboard suites,
many of which contain a passacaglia movement—or, as he more commonly titled it, a
“chaconne.” Handel, like many of his contemporaries, tended to use the terms interchangeably,
even though technically speaking there are differences between them.
The Norwegian violinist
and composer Johan
Halvorsen (1864-1935)
As used by such composers as Bach, Couperin, Handel, and many others of the Baroque
era, both the passacaglia and the chaconne feature a repeating theme in continual variations,
all proceeding at a moderately slow pace, with a correspondingly static motion of harmonic
material. In the case of Handel’s Suite No. 7 in G minor, the passacaglia comprises eight
chords that he repeats and varies with ingenious resourcefulness. The complexity of the
variations contrasts sharply with the simplicity of the melodic kernel.
Johan Halvorsen was the concertmaster of the Bergen (Norway) Symphony Orchestra.
Married to a niece of Edvard Grieg, and influenced by his illustrious in-law, Halvorsen
composed three symphonies, orchestral suites on Norwegian themes, and a violin concerto.
In composing and publishing his virtuoso violin-viola arrangement of Handel’s Passacaglia,
he added new material and variations of his own for extra fireworks.
Saturday
18
june
Lise de la Salle, piano
8 PM
Pre-concert talk with Dr. William Matthews, 7 PM
PIANO SONATA IN C MAJOR, OP. 2, NO. 3
Allegro con brio
Adagio
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro assai
GASPARD DE LA NUIT
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Ondine: Lent
Le Gibet: Très lent
Scarbo: Modéré
:: intermission ::
SIX PRELUDES
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Modéré: Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir
[Sounds and fragrances mingle in the evening air]
Rapide et légère: Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses
[Fairies are exquisite dancers]
Très calme et doucement expressif: La fille aux cheveux de lin
[The girl with the flaxen hair]
Capricieux et léger: La danse de Puck [Puck’s dance]
Lent et grave: Danseuses de Delphes [Dancers of Delphi]
Animé et tumultueux: Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest
[What the west wind saw]
WEEK 3
the program
VARIATIONS AND FUGUE IN B-FLAT MAJOR ON A THEME BY HANDEL, OP. 24
Aria
Variation I: Più vivo
II-IX: No titles
X: Allegro
XI: Moderato
XII: L’istesso tempo
XIII: Largamente, ma non troppo
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
XIV-XIX No titles
XX: Andante
XXI: Vivace
XXII: Alla Musette
XXIII: Vivace
XXIV-XXV: No titles
Fuga: Moderato
PIANO SONATA IN C MAJOR, OP. 2, NO. 3
Upon Ludwig van Beethoven’s permanent move from Bonn to Vienna in 1793, he quickly
established himself as a virtuoso pianist. His self-assured, brilliant keyboard improvisations
made him a popular guest in the homes of prominent Viennese patrons of music. That
confident public persona veiled Beethoven’s private ambitions to become an equally assured
and capable composer.
To that end, he had a few private lessons each with Josef Haydn, Johann Albrechtsberger,
and Antonio Salieri. Beethoven dedicated his first published piano sonatas, the three works
issued as Opus 2, to the 63-year-old Haydn, who was at the height of his fame.
Given Beethoven’s exceeding piano skills, no one need be surprised that the Piano
Sonata No. 3 in C major, not only exudes self-confidence, but also is an exemplar of
the beautiful construction and dynamism that runs through the entire body of his
32 piano sonatas. Only the third to be composed, this sonata asks as much in
terms of technique and musical acumen as any of his so-called mature sonatas.
A dual portrait by an
anonymous artist of the
composer Josef Haydn and
his student (of a few months)
Ludwig van Beethoven.
Note the evidence of
differences in their generations
and their temperaments
through the stylings of
their hair—Classic wig
vs. Romantic abandon.
Beethoven dedicated the
three piano sonatas of
Opus 2 to Haydn.
Beethoven cast the Allegro con brio in classic sonata form, with two clearly defined
and memorable main subjects—in C major and in G minor—that provide the
substance for the entire structure of the first movement. It concludes with a coda
that brings the movement to an emphatic end in C major.
The change to the distant key of E major for the Adagio alters the listener’s attention
abruptly. The wistful main theme comprises a series of questions and replies—a kind of
inner dialogue. The mood darkens with the introduction of the next subject, in E minor.
The entire movement is a slow rondo that combines lyrical elements with dark drama.
The mood is lightened in the Scherzo, a bubbling spring propelled by sforzandi that accent the
quirky rhythmic flow. The dynamic energy of the third movement is intensified and completed
by the Finale, a rondo in rapid 6/8 measure. Beginning with the principal thematic element—
the rising scale in sixths—the forward propulsion of the Allegro assai never loses energy.
Even with no orchestra present, it caps the sonata with all the bravura of a piano concerto.
GASPARD DE LA NUIT: TROIS POÈMES POUR PIANO D’APRÈS ALOYSIUS BERTRAND
Maurice Ravel (b. Ciboure, Basses Pyrénées, March 7, 1875; d. Paris, December 28, 1937)
Composed in 1908; ca. 21 minutes
Ravel composed Gaspard de la nuit as a musical manifestation of the night mysteries that the
French writer Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841) had explored in a book of the same title. Bertrand’s
Gaspard de la nuit, published in 1830, was a treasury of fantasy prose-poems, drawings, and
sketches. In the book’s introduction, Bertrand claimed that the Devil himself, using “Gaspard”
as his pseudonym, had dictated the work. Gaspard’s night was at once threatening, seductive,
enchanted, and beautiful. Ravel instructed his publisher, Durand, to print the full texts of
Bertrand’s evocative prose poems in the piano’s score.
Gaspard de la nuit represents the pinnacle of technical and musical challenges for a pianist.
Ravel himself described its “transcendental virtuosity,” and the eminent French pianist Gaby
Casadesus spoke even more plainly. “Hellishly difficult,” Mme. Casadesus said, authoritatively.
The work was first performed by Ravel’s childhood friend Ricardo Viñes in Paris, January 9, 1909.
1923 photo of Maurice
Ravel and two close friends
and colleagues, the violinist
Hélène Jourdan-Morhange
and the pianist Ricardo
Viñes, who had played the
premiere of Gaspard de
la nuit in 1909
Ondine Dedicated to the British pianist Harold Bauer (1873-1951)
Ondine, the water fairy, attempts—unsuccessfully—to seduce a human male to
dwell with her.
Le Gibet Dedicated to the music critic Jean Marnold (1859-1935)
Le Gibet: The gallows! An insistent, B-flat tolling, 153 iterations of gloom, directs
attention toward the “carcass of a hanged man glowing in the dying sunlight.”
Scarbo Dedicated to the pianist Rudolph Ganz (1877-1972)
The Egyptian “scarab,” a diabolic, beetle-like imp who chills the night with his
mad scratching and flitting. Ravel’s Scarbo is a true and beautiful nightmare.
SIX PRELUDES
SELECTED PRELUDES FOR PIANO
Claude Debussy (b. Saint-Germain-en-Raye, France, August 22, 1862;
d. Paris, March 25, 1918)
Composed 1910-13, 22 minutes
Debussy composed two sets of Préludes during the years 1909-1913, 24 piano pieces that
assured his reputation as a masterful composer for the instrument. Twelve Préludes, Book
One, were finished between December 1909 and February 1910; Twelve Préludes, Book Two,
between winter 1912 and early April 1913.
A formal portrait of the
young Claude Debussy,
and a candid photo of the
rumpled Debussy on vacation
at the seaside
In 1910 Ricardo Viñes (1875-1943) was the first pianist to perform any of the Book One Préludes
in public. Both he and Debussy frequently programmed them on concerts in miscellaneous
groups of three or four. Soon, other pianists were performing the entire sets of Préludes on
one recital. However, although the Préludes were published in a thoughtful order, they do not
conform to the strict cohesiveness of a real cycle. They lack, for instance, the structural order
that both Bach and Chopin had designated for their keyboard preludes. Debussy composed
his to be played in any desirable grouping according to the taste of the performer.
Debussy’s 24 Préludes portray people, legends, architecture, the elements of nature, and
other familiar scenes. He meant for each of these piano pieces to evoke specific images.
Debussy assigned each piece a number, rather than a title. Then, at the end of each work,
below the final brace of notes in the score, he appended the descriptive title that he had in
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
mind. By removing the “title” from the head of the piece and placing it at its foot, Debussy
was directing extra attention to the music that is its heart.
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir: This “waltz”—patterns of alternating
3/4 + 2/4 measures—reflects a line from Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Harmonie du soir”
[evening harmony], in which he refers to the vibrations of sound and aroma exuded by flowers
at night as “Valse mélancolique and langoureux vertige” [melancholy waltz and languid vertigo].
Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses: Thanks to his gossamer harmonic structure and
sensitive use of piano pedals, Debussy coaxes delicate clarity from the percussive instrument
to evoke the fairies’ exquisite dance.
La fille aux cheveux de lin: Debussy drew inspiration from a collection (Poèmes antiques)
by the prominent French poet Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894). In one of
four “Scottish poems,” the poet’s question “Who is singing in the meadow on this fresh
morning?” prompted this poetic reply, “c’est la fille aux cheveux de lin.”
La danse de Puck: The Robin Goodfellow character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the
self-described “merry wanderer of the night”—appears in this delicately sparkling, swirling
dance.
Danseuses de Delphes: This slow, ritual dance in five-measure phrases, with its steady and
mesmerizing rhythm, expresses the appropriate attitude for approaching the great oracle
at Delphi.
Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest: This whirlwind of a piece is animated by brilliant, complex, and
demanding piano effects.
VARIATIONS AND FUGUE IN B-FLAT MAJOR ON A THEME BY HANDEL, OP. 24
Johannes Brahms (b. Hamburg, May 7, 1833; d. Vienna, April 3, 1897)
1853 photo of Johannes
Brahms, age twenty, when
he met Clara and Robert
Schumann for the first time
Immediately after meeting the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms for the first time, the
composer and critic Robert Schumann published an essay, "Neue Bahnen" [New Paths],
that has become famous for its lavish praise, as well as for the weight of expectation that
it imposed upon the young composer. Already hyper-critical of his own work, Brahms
struggled to live up to Schumann's encomiums.
By the late 1850s, Johannes Brahms had begun to emerge from a long, dry spell. He had
also found a person whose opinion mattered to him nearly as much as his own: Clara
Schumann, pianiste extraordinaire and widow of the composer Robert Schumann, who had
died in 1856. Both Clara and Robert had befriended and encouraged Brahms; Clara truly
inspired him. He composed with her, and her pianism, foremost in his mind.
Brahms culled the main theme for the difficult Handel Variations and Fugue from the first
Suite, in B-flat, from the Suites de pieces de clavecin that Handel published in 1733. In addition
to devising 25 clever variations on that theme, Brahms cast the variations in special clothing:
Number 6, for example is a Baroque canon; Number 13 has the Hungarian flavor that
appeared frequently in Brahms’s music; Number 19 has the lilt of an Italian Siciliano. The
subject of the concluding Fugue derives from the main theme, as well, and brings the work
to a brilliant close. Clara Schumann played the premiere public performance of the Handel
Variations on December 7, 1861, in Hamburg.
19
june
chameleon arts ensemble
Sunday
Deborah Boldin, Artistic Director & flute
Sooyun Kim, flute
Nancy Dimock, oboe
Robyn Bollinger, Eunae Koh,
Sean Lee, violin
Scott Woolweaver, viola
Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello
Erik Higgins, double bass
Sergey Schepkin, harpsichord
5 PM
BACH AND SONS
SINFONIA IN D MINOR, F. 65, FOR TWO FLUTES, STRINGS, AND CONTINUO
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784)
Adagio—Fuge: Allegro e forte
Kim, Boldin, Koh, Lee, Woolweaver, Popper-Keizer, Higgins, Schepkin
QUINTET IN F MAJOR FOR OBOE, VIOLIN, VIOLA, CELLO, AND
KEYBOARD, OP. 22 NO. 2
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)
Allegro con moto
Tempo di Menuetto
Dimock, Bollinger, Woolweaver, Popper-Keizer, Schepkin
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 5 IN D MAJOR, BWV 1050
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Allegro
Affetuoso
Allegro
Schepkin, Boldin, Bollinger
Koh, Woolweaver, Popper-Keizer, Higgins
:: intermission ::
TRIO SONATA IN C MINOR FOR TWO VIOLINS AND CONTINUO,
H.579/WQ 161, “SAUGUINEUS AND MELANCHOLICUS”
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788)
Lee, Bollinger, Popper-Keizer, Schepkin
WEEK 3
the program
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 4 IN G MAJOR, BWV 1049
Johann Sebastian Bach
Allegro
Andante
Presto
Lee, Boldin, Kim
Koh, Bollinger, Woolweaver, Popper-Keizer, Higgins, Schepkin
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
SINFONIA IN D MINOR, F. 65, “ADAGIO AND FUGUE” FOR FLUTES, STRINGS
AND CONTINUO
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (b. Weimar, Germany, November 22, 1710; d. Berlin, July 1, 1784)
Composed 1740-45 (ca.); 9 minutes
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was the second child, and eldest son, of Johann Sebastian Bach
and his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach (1684-1720), who bore seven children before her
early death. His fields of study—music performance, composition, philosophy, law, and
mathematics—indicate the wide range of his curiosity and intellect. His education in music
began with his father, and by the age of ten, Wilhelm Friedemann had begun assembling
his own “Little Keyboard Book.”
Wilhelm Friedemann’s professional posts included terms as organist and music director
at the Sophienkirche in Dresden and the Church of Our Lady, in Halle (modern references
sometimes name him “the Halle Bach”), where he also taught and served as director of the
city chorus. During his Dresden years (1733-1746), his official duties were sufficiently
proscribed (not to mention poorly compensated) that he had time to devote to composition.
The music practices in the Dresden church called for instrumental ensembles to perform
the Gradual of the Mass, music that Wilhelm Friedemann composed for the occasions.
The Sinfonia in D minor was among those works.
The Sinfonia in D minor, composed according to well-defined rules appropriate for
performance in a formal church setting, comprises two sections. The first part, Adagio,
serves as a prelude. The serious and stately voices of strings and keyboard support and
The over-lifesized monument complement the embellishing voices of the two flutes. The second part, Allegro e forte,
to J.S. Bach stands in the
emerges as a lively fugue, whose subject was predicted in the Adagio section.
place of honor before the
Thomaskirche in Leipzig,
where he served as cantor
from 1723 until his death
in 1750.
QUINTET IN F MAJOR FOR OBOE, VIOLIN, VIOLA, CELLO AND KEYBOARD, OP.
22, NO. 2
Johann Christian Bach (b. Leipzig, Germany, September 5, 1735; d. London, January 1, 1782)
Composed ca. 1780; 12 minutes
Seventeen months after the sudden and unexpected death of his first wife, Maria Barbara,
J. S. Bach married Anna Magdalena, with whom he had thirteen children. Born twenty-five
years after his older half-brother, Wilhelm Friedemann, Johann Christian Bach was his
father’s youngest and, some scholars believe, his favorite son. Like Wilhelm Friedemann,
Johann Christian received his earliest training in music from his father, Johann Sebastian.
However, J. C. Bach was born into a musical environment that had changed significantly
since Wilhelm Friedemann’s youth.
Johann Christian developed as a true exponent of musical styles and interests that looked
forward to the sensibilities of the Classical era. His music made a real impact on Mozart,
who openly expressed his admiration. Johann Christian lived for many years in Berlin and in
Italy, and moved in 1762 to London (he is sometimes called “the London Bach”), where he
married, and enjoyed the public’s acclaim for his music. Fame is fleeting, as he discovered
late in his life. Twenty years later, he died in poverty in his beloved city.
The Quintet in F major was composed in 1780 and was published in 1785, the second in a set
of “Deux quintetts.” Because J. C. Bach was a prominent entrepreneur of public concerts,
scholars assume that these light-hearted instrumental works were composed for such
occasions. The fact that they were published posthumously, despite Johann Christian’s
fading reputation, indicates that the market for such entertainment was still strong.
Portrait of Johann Christian
Bach (sometimes called “the
London Bach”), by Thomas
Gainsborough
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 5 IN D MAJOR, BWV 1050
Johann Sebastian Bach (b. Eisenach, Germany, March 21, 1685; d. Leipzig, July 28, 1750)
Composed before 1721; 23 minutes
On March 24, 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote, in French, an ingratiating cover lettercum-dedication to accompany a precious stack of manuscripts that he was submitting to
the Margrave Christian Ludwig, of Brandenburg, near Berlin. Writing from Cöthen, Bach
addressed Christian Ludwig:
As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness…and
as I noted then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which
Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking leave of Your Royal Highness, Your
Highness designed to honor me with the command to send Your Highness some
pieces of my Composition, I have in accordance with Your Highness’s most gracious
orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness
with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments…
Bach had played before the Margrave sometime in the winter of 1718-19, and upon that thin
thread of introduction he was now submitting one of the most treasured calling cards in
music history. Unfortunately, whatever hopes Bach might have had for His Highness’s
attentions fell upon barren ground. Offering Bach acknowledgement of neither his letter
nor of the manuscripts, His Highness packed away the bundle of manuscripts, where they
lay for more than a century before being discovered, played, and published. The so-called
Brandenburg Concertos have brought the otherwise forgotten Margrave great fame-byassociation with Bach, as the brilliance of the concertos for “several instruments” has come
to epitomize the apex of early eighteenth-century instrumental writing.
Detail of the ingratiating
dedication that Johann
Sebastian Bach wrote when
he sent the six instrumental
concertos to Margrave
Christian Ludwig of
Brandenburg in 1721
Bach inscribed the title on No. 5 of the concertos: “Concerto the Fifth, for a transverse flute,
solo violin, violin and viola ‘in ripieno’ [meaning, as accompanying instruments], cello, violone
[a lower-voiced string instrument, such as a viola or cello], and cembalo [harpsichord].” In
this case, the harpsichord serves a dual function, sometimes as the continuo support for
the others, and more prominently as a solo instrument. No. 5 is particularly known for the
brilliance of the harpsichord writing, which no doubt reflected Bach’s own virtuosic talents
at the keyboard.
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
TRIO SONATA IN C MINOR FOR 2 VIOLINS AND CONTINUO, H.579, WQ.161
“SANGUINEUS AND MELANCHOLICUS”
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (b. Weimar, Germany, March 8, 1714;
d. Hamburg, December 14, 1788)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the fifth child of Johann Sebastian and his first wife, Maria
Barbara, was the younger brother (by four years) of Wilhelm Friedemann, and the older
half-brother (by twenty-one years) of Johann Christian Bach. He studied law, and then,
concentrating on music, he became renowned as a brilliant harpsichordist. Like his younger
half-brother Johann Christian, Carl Philipp Emanuel enjoyed the attention of Mozart, who
admired not only his compositions, but also his published treatise on keyboard technique.
Carl Philipp Emanuel’s works list comprises nearly one thousand compositions, of which a
significant number were trio sonatas. The term “Trio Sonata” refers to the number of obbligato
instruments, not to the number of participants in the ensemble. Typically, the “obbligato”
ensemble would comprise two treble instruments (violin or flute, for example) and a bass
(viola da gamba or cello), accompanied by the “continuo,” instruments that would fill in the
harmonic materials and provide rhythmic impulse. The continuo part could be played by a
harpsichord alone, or it might comprise an ensemble of a keyboard instrument, plus a cello,
viola da gamba, and bassoon or double bass. Frequently, the parts for the “obbligato” ensemble
were written out, while the music for the “continuo” instrument(s) would be quasi-improvised.
From 1738 to 1767 Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach was
the cembalist (the principal
keyboard player) at the
court of Frederick the
Great. Frederick, an
accomplished flutist, and
his harpsichord virtuoso
courtier C. P. E. Bach often
played together at the
Sanssouci summer palace
in Potsdam, near Berlin.
The well-known portrait
by Adolph von Menzel has
become an iconic image of
C.P.E. Bach’s era, even
though it was painted in the
romanticized style of 1852,
one hundred years after
the fact.
COMING NEXT
TUESDAY,
JUNE 21, 7 PM
FILM:
Talent Has
Hunger
Free, no tickets
required.
C. P. E. Bach based this C-minor Trio Sonata on an imitative, programmatic idea, an unusual
musical concept for his time. In the eighteenth century, four personality types were commonly
recognized: the sanguine (sociable and optimistic), the melancholic (quiet and introverted),
the phlegmatic (calm and patient), and the choleric (extroverted and impatient). Choosing two
of them, sanguinity and melancholy, C.P.E. composed a Trio Sonata that, upon its publication
in 1751, found enormous public favor for his vivid musical portraits.
BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 4 IN G MAJOR, BWV 1049
Johann Sebastian Bach
The diversity of instruments for which Johann Sebastian Bach wrote in the six concertos
provides a clue to the instrumental resources he had available in the court of Cöthen, where
he was Kapellmeister and where, it is widely believed, he composed most of the music of the
“Brandenburg” concertos. Judging from the musical and technical requirements of the six
pieces, Bach’s orchestra players in Cöthen possessed excellent professional skills.
Bach’s inscription at the head of the Concerto No. 4 designates a solo violin, two “Flauti
d’Echo” [usually interpreted as “recorders,” but also appropriate for modern flutes], two
violins, a viola and a violone [a lower-voiced stringed instrument, such as a cello or bass],
a cello and continuo [harpsichord]. Where the Fifth Brandenburg is a showpiece for the
harpsichord, the Fourth features the solo violin in a virtuosic display, especially in the outer
movements. Bach himself was reportedly a fine violinist. It is not clear whether the six
instrumental concertos were performed in Cöthen before Bach sent the manuscripts to
Margrave Christian Ludwig (see the note above, for the Concerto No. 5). However, the
leader of Bach’s orchestra there, the violinist Joseph Spiess, had the skills to perform
the virtuosic No. 4 with the requisite skill and flair.
Thursday
23
june
George Li, piano
8 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY MOLLIE AND JOHN BYRNES
SONATA IN B MINOR, HOB. XVI: 32
Josef Haydn (1732-1809)
Allegro moderato
Menuetto
Finale: Presto
PIANO SONATA NO. 2 IN B-FLAT MINOR, OP. 35
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Grave—Doppio movimento
Scherzo
Marche funèbre: Lento
Finale: Presto—Sotto voce e legato
:: intermission ::
VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY CORELLI
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Theme: Andante
Poco più mosso
L’istesso tempo
Tempo di Minuetto
Andante
Allegro ma non tanto
L’istesso tempo
Vivace
Adagio misterioso
Un poco più mosso
Allegro scherzando
Allegro vivace
L'istesso tempo
Agitato
Intermezzo
Andante (come prima)
L’istesso tempo
Allegro vivace
Meno mosso
Allegro con brio
Piu mosso—Agitato
Piu mosso
Coda: Andante
WEEK 4
the program
CONSOLATION NO. 3 IN D-FLAT MAJOR
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Lento, quasi recitativo
HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO. 2 IN C-SHARP MINOR
Franz Liszt
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
SONATA IN B MINOR, HOB. XVI: 32
Josef Haydn (b. Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; d. Vienna, May 31, 1809)
Composed 1776 (?); 14 minutes
Haydn’s long professional life spanned two keyboard eras. As a young composer for the
keyboard in the 1750s, he played and wrote for harpsichord and clavichord; by the 1780s the
fortepiano had become ubiquitous in European society, and Haydn was composing for it. In
1794 he wrote his final keyboard sonatas, for a lifetime total of ca. sixty such compositions
(because of doubts about the authenticity of some works attributed to Haydn, scholars debate
the exact number).
Using the more recent keyboard, the fortepiano, led Haydn to explore different stylistic territory
and to rethink the titles that he gave his later compositions. Divertimenti for harpsichord
gave way to sonatas for piano. The B-minor Sonata stems from the transition period.
Haydn composed it around 1776, probably for his own use in Esterháza concerts, and
published it in a manuscript edition along with five other sonatas for harpsichord.
When it was eventually made available to the public, his publisher included it in a
collection of sonatas for piano. It is effective on both instruments.
The harpsichord purchased
by Josef Haydn from the
builders, Burkat Shudi &
John Broadwood, London,
1775, is now in the museum
collection of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Vienna.
Beginning in the 1760s, Haydn had begun to move away from the dance suite as his
model for solo keyboard compositions and to emulate instead such larger forms as
string quartets and concertos. The B-minor Sonata retains features typical of
harpsichord writing (the melodic ornamentation, for instance), even as its form and
weight look forward to Haydn’s true piano sonatas.
The crisp texture of the harpsichord sound informs the character of the work. Sparkling
trills and turns, and fleet scale passages, support the impression of a harpsichord timbre.
Haydn added no dynamic indications to the score, leaving all questions of loud and soft to
the educated taste of the performer, as was typical of pre-fortepiano notation. The harpsichord’s
two manuals, particularly in the Presto final movement, made possible a rapid change in
dynamics.
Despite the sparkling trills and turns, and the fleet scale passages, this is a weighty, austere
sonata. The opening Allegro makes instantly clear that this is a piece in B minor, a mode that
drives its serious intent from beginning to end. Even the B-major Minuet, a sweet interlude,
hardly dispels this mood, as the Trio section is set in a pounding B minor. The sonata ends in
a B-minor fury, with a coda in octaves that hammer Haydn’s intentions home.
PIANO SONATA NO. 2 IN B-FLAT MINOR, OP. 35
Frédéric Chopin (b. Z̊elazowa Wola, Poland, March 1, 1810; d. Paris, October 17, 1849)
Composed 1837 (third movement), 1839 (first, second, and fourth movements); 25 minutes
Frédéric Chopin, a phenomenally gifted pianist from his early childhood, was raised in a
family that, by today’s standards, might be called “middle class,” despite his parents’
somewhat humble beginnings. His father, a teacher who understood the importance of
social connections, and his mother, a former lady’s companion and governess, raised their
four children with discipline and a commitment to learning. Their second child, Frédéric,
received a good general education, along with some training in music theory and composition
from Josef Elsner, at the Warsaw Conservatory. As a pianist he was largely self-taught, and
Elsner supported his idiosyncratic approaches to composition.
The country home of George
Sand, near the village of
Nohant in central France,
where Chopin composed
many important piano works
The second of Chopin’s three piano sonatas was composed during his first year at the rural
estate of his long-time companion George Sand (nom de plume of the woman novelist
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin). During the years that he spent at Nohant, in the French
countryside, Chopin composed some of his most significant works—mature polonaises,
ballades, the Berceuse, and the Op. 54 Scherzo, as well as the second and third piano sonatas.
Chopin had already composed the B-flat Minor Sonata’s most famous section, the Funeral
March, probably in 1837. When he turned to the sonata’s completion, at Nohant, he had a
core around which to wrap the other three movements.
The arrangement of the four movements emulates Classic sonata form—a brief, slow
introduction leading to a fast first movement, a Scherzo, a slow movement, and a presto
finale. Within its structure Chopin used dramatic harmonic and melodic elements recognizable
from his ballades, nocturnes, etudes, and preludes. Robert Schumann wrote that in this
Sonata Chopin “bound together four of his maddest children.”
Certainly, the work is driven and torrential. Chopin provides lyrical relief and harmonic repose
only occasionally, notably the second theme of the first movement, and the center of the
Funeral March. Even the Scherzo is a joke that dances on the abyss. The final movement,
Presto, has been likened to a wind sweeping over a graveyard—a dramatic thought, surely,
that is supported by the chromaticism of the movement that loses its connection to the tonic
key until the final, fortissimo B-flat minor chord.
For the entire period of
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s exile
from his homeland, 1917
until his death in 1943, his
concert schedule as a pianist
was nearly all-consuming,
leaving him little room for
composing.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY CORELLI, OP. 42
Sergei Rachmaninoff (b. Veliky Novgorod, Russia, April 1, 1873;
d. Beverly Hills, California, March 18, 1943)
After Sergei Rachmaninoff’s departure from Russia—a permanent exile occasioned by the
1917 Revolution and the seizure of his property—he turned his attention to earning a living
as a concert pianist. He and his wife and their two daughters immigrated at first to Oslo, and
from there they departed in November 1918 for New York. His phenomenal success on the
concert stages of the West and the demanding touring schedules left him little time and energy
for further creative work. The few compositions that he managed during his exile years,
however, included some of his most important works: the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,
the Symphony No. 3, and the Symphonic Dances for orchestra, which he also published in a
two-piano version (he performed it, happily, with Vladimir Horowitz).
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
Despite his interrupted composing schedule in the 1930s, Rachmaninoff was able to create the
stunning Corelli Variations, which shows the growth in his confidence and clarity as a composer.
Dedicating the work to the esteemed violinist Fritz Kreisler, Rachmaninoff mistakenly
attributed its main theme, “La Folia,” to the Italian composer Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713).
It is, in fact, an ancient Portuguese melody that dozens of composers have used in their
music. No matter. Rachmaninoff’s setting of the theme, and his twenty variations, elevate it
to memorable heights. From the simple introduction of “La Folia,” Rachmaninoff takes the
pianist and the audience on a rewarding exploration of the piano’s full breadth and depth. Like
most of Rachmaninoff’s writing, it demands the utmost in pianistic bravura and sensitivity.
CONSOLATION NO. 3 IN D-FLAT MAJOR
Franz Liszt (b. Raiding, Kingdom of Hungary, October 22, 1811;
d. Bayreuth, Germany, July 31, 1886)
For a pianist approaching Franz Liszt’s compositions, the purely technical requirements
have tended to overshadow the musical challenges that must be met. Such matters as
phrasing, balance, dynamic control, and lyrical expression demand the utmost from a
performer on an instrument, the piano, that is essentially percussive. Liszt composed many
excellent songs—on German, Italian, and French texts—and he carried that lyrical gift over
into much of his piano writing.
Certainly, the six “Consolations” that Liszt composed in the 1840s illustrate his extreme
sensitivity to the piano’s capacity for the legato melodic line. As was his habit with many of
his compositions, Liszt composed a first version of the Consolations (1844-48) and within a
few years he had amended it for a second and final version, published in 1850. It is from that
version that the Consolation No. 3 is usually performed. Marked “Lento placido,” this lovely
cantilena is justifiably numbered among Liszt’s most beautiful lyric pieces for piano.
HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY NO. 2 IN C-SHARP MINOR
Franz Liszt
Rhapsody Rabbit was a
1946 cartoon featuring
Bugs Bunny at the piano
in a performance of Franz
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody
No. 2, in C-sharp minor.
The actual pianist who
recorded the sound track
was Jakob Gimpel (190789), an outstanding concert
pianist with a major career
in Europe, who in 1938
immigrated to Los Angeles,
where he appeared
occasionally on Hollywood
sound tracks. He received
$250 for “being” Bugs
Bunny. He retired as the
Distinguished Professor
of Piano in Residence at
Cal State Northridge.
Over a period of several years, Liszt turned his attention to adapting what he believed were
Hungarian Roma (Gypsy) tunes as the basis of showpieces for the piano. Some of the tunes
were actually composed by his contemporaries, but he turned them to good use for his
adaptations, setting the tunes into the typical Hungarian dance structure of the verbunkos.
Alternating fast and slow sections gave the Roma violinists opportunities for improvisation,
which Liszt translated into bravura piano flourishes. Completely notated, the Rhapsodies
create the illusion of improvised mayhem, of wild abandon all across the keyboard.
Liszt composed the first fifteen of his Hungarian Rhapsodies in 1846-53. Subsequently he
revised them, sometimes even arranging them for different instrumental complements.
In 1882 and 1886 he added four more Hungarian Rhapsodies, for a total of nineteen. The
Rhapsody No. 2 was composed and published in 1851 and has remained a favorite of
performers and listeners.
COMING NEXT
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2 PM
MASTERCLASS: Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Friday
24
june
Andrés Cárdenes, violin
Anne Martindale Williams, cello
David Deveau, piano
8 PM
Pre-concert talk with Dr. Andrew Shryock, 7 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY DIANNE ANDERSON
TRIO IN C MAJOR, HOB XV: 27
Josef Haydn (1732-1809)
Allegro
Andante
Finale: Presto
PIANO TRIO (1987)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939)
Allegro con brio
Lento
Presto
:: intermission ::
TRIO NO. 1 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, D. 898
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Allegro moderato
Andante, un poco mosso
Scherzo: Allegro
Rondo: Allegro vivace
WEEK 4
the program
TRIO IN C MAJOR, HOB XV: 27
Josef Haydn (b. Rohrau, March 31, 1732; d. Vienna, May 31, 1809)
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
In 1794, during his first two-year stay in London, the Austrian composer Josef Haydn met
a talented young pianist, Teresa Jansen (ca. 1770-1843). Born in Germany, Ms. Jansen had
come to England as a young child with her parents, who established a successful dance
studio in London. She and Haydn became friends, and in 1795 he was a witness of Teresa’s
marriage to the engraver Gaetano Bartolozzi.
A student of the famous pianist and composer Muzio Clementi, Ms. Jansen attracted the
admiring attentions of several composers who dedicated works to her. Haydn, for instance,
wrote his last three piano sonatas at the behest of, and in honor of Teresa Jansen. In addition,
he composed three technically challenging Piano Trios, Hob XV: 27, 28, and 29, as a tribute
to his young friend’s superior keyboard talents.
The Trio in C major is, accordingly, a virtuoso piece, written with full measures of Haydn’s
imagination, wit, and skill. Although harpsichords were still widely played privately, and used
in concert performances, Haydn composed these trios as works for piano, violin, and cello.
An engraved portrait
of Haydn from the
Bibliothèque Royale
de Belgique
The brilliant Allegro in C major is in sonata form, with a prominent piano part throughout.
Haydn plays with our ears by setting the following Andante in the surprising key of A major.
Within that movement he effects a transition back to C major through modulations from A
major to A minor, and thence to C major (which is the relative major of A minor), for the lively
Finale of the Trio.
Returning to a sturdy C major for the Presto Finale, Haydn is not done
with his playfulness. The lively third movement abounds in surprises:
a startling first theme, off-beat rhythms, and angular melodic material.
The critic and pianist Charles Rosen called it “possibly the most humorous
piece that Haydn wrote.”
Registry entry for the May
16, 1795 marriage of the
pianist Teresa (Therese)
Jansen to the engraver
Gaetano Bartolozzi, with
Josef Haydn’s signature
(“In the presence of…”)
under those of the groom
and bride
Laughter and delight are appropriate responses.
PIANO TRIO (1987)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. Miami, Florida, April 30, 1939)
The Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano was commissioned for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson
(KLR) Trio by the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund of the Kennedy Center, the Tisch Center for the
Performing Arts (of the 92nd St. Y in New York), and San Francisco Performances. The KLR
Trio performed its premiere on April 15, 1988, at the Herbst Theatre of the War Memorial
Civic Center in San Francisco.
The composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who currently holds the Francis Eppes Distinguished
Professorship at Florida State University, began her career as a violinist. After earning a
master’s degree in composition at Florida State University, she pursued advanced violin
studies with Richard Burgin and Ivan Galamian in New York, where she was a member of the
American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski for seven years. For a doctorate at
The Juilliard School, she studied under the composers Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter.
With this early training, it’s no wonder that Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
worked her way into professional successes as a composer of
highly regarded works for instrumental soloists (especially violin),
chamber ensembles, orchestras (five symphonies and many
concertos), and much more. An impressive roster of musicians
have commissioned and performed her compositions. Furthermore,
these prominent musicians have performed her works not just once,
but have taken her music into their active repertoire for multiple performances.
This Peanuts© cartoon offers
another example of the
“immediate appeal” to
which Nicolas Slonimsky
referred in his Ellen Taaffe
Zwilich entry in the
Baker’s Biographical
Dictionary, below.
Ms. Zwilich composed this work with the KLR Trio in mind, which accounts for the tightness
of the ensemble writing and the virtuosic demands on each of the instruments. The three
voices sound a bold chord to raise the curtain. An energetic figure in
sixteenth notes, played by the strings and echoed by the piano, plunges
“There are not many composers in the
the ensemble into the Allegro con brio with the power of a jet in takemodern world who possess the lucky
off. A second theme, swirling groups of half-steps, provides intensely
combination of writing music of
focused energy that contrasts with the sweeping sixteenth notes.
Percussive piano comments punctuate the strings’ voices throughout,
substance and at the same time
and as the violin and cello exhaust their energies, the piano concludes
exercising an immediate appeal to
the movement with low, quiet chords.
mixed audiences. Zwilich offers this
Opening the Lento movement, the strings resume their duet with a
sorrowful melody, while the piano picks up the final chord of the first
movement to provide sympathetic support. To the piano’s lyrical voice in
this movement the strings add prickly pizzicato effects. The movement
ends quietly, as the string duet poses an unanswered moment of
suspended thought.
The piano sounds two treble chimes before rushing headlong into a
falling torrent of sixteenth notes, a mirror of the first movement’s bold
figure. The Presto finale commands the full attention of the musicians
and the listener, with catapulting forward motion. A brief lull in the
activity only increases the suspense before the drama concludes with
a resounding closing chord.
happy combination of purely technical
excellence and a distinct power of
communication, while poetic element
pervades the melody, harmony, and
counterpoint of her creations. This
combination of qualities explains the
frequency and variety of prizes
awarded her from various sources.”
BAKER’S BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF MUSICIANS
PIANO TRIO NO. 1 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, D. 898
Franz Schubert (b. Alsergrund, Vienna, January 31, 1797;
d. Vienna, November 19,1828)
During Schubert’s lifetime, concert life in Vienna began to open up to a wide spectrum of
society. By 1800 the manufacture and distribution of musical instruments had created a
market to which members of the well-off classes responded enthusiastically.
At the same time, the relatively new media of music journals and newspapers flourished,
providing a forum for lively discussion and leaving a valuable historical record of music
criticism and contemporary taste. Thanks to these publications, as well as to the private
memoirs, journals, diaries, and extant letters from that time, we can imagine Schubert’s
Vienna and its music environment with some accuracy.
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
The variety of performances that the journals covered ranged from the
phenomenally popular demonstrations of instrumental virtuosity
(Paganini, Hummel, et al.) to multiple concert series initiated by the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society for the Friends of Music) after its
founding in 1812. Private house concerts and music salons abounded,
drawing the gifted and the not-so-gifted to perform before enthusiastic
gatherings in parlors and music rooms.
Beethoven’s devoted violinist friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830)
was one of the gifted musicians. He was the leader of numerous string
ensembles (including his own Schuppanzigh Quartet) and he presented
concerts over several decades in Vienna. He and Schubert met in 1823,
and Schubert dedicated the A-minor String Quartet (D. 804) to him.
The composer and pianist
Carl Maria von Bocklet
(1801-1881), with Ignaz
Schuppanzigh and Joseph
Linke, played the first
public performances of
the two new piano trios
by his friend and colleague
Franz Schubert.
Schubert’s acquaintance with Schuppanzigh—who had received quartet
coaching from Josef Haydn himself—meant that the composer could
count on excellent performances of his chamber music in the last five years of his life.
In the case of the Piano Trios—the present one, in B-flat, as well as its sibling, the E-flat
Piano Trio, composed a month later—Schubert had at his service not only Schuppanzigh,
but also the cellist from the Schuppanzigh Quartet, Josef Linke (1783-1837), and one of
Vienna’s most able young pianists, Karl Maria von Bocklet (1801-1881).
Ignaz Schuppanzigh
(1776-1830) was
the prominent Viennese
violinist who gave the
first performance of the
“Archduke” Trio with
Beethoven and who introduced
both of Schubert’s Piano
Trios to the Viennese public.
During his final winter, Schubert composed many significant works and engaged himself
busily in Vienna’s music life. Although the manuscript of this Piano Trio in B-flat has
been lost—therefore contributing to some confusion about its actual date of composition—
scholars have by now agreed that Schubert composed it in September and October, 1827,
at the same time he was finishing the composition of his great song cycle Winterreise.
The Trio was published in 1836, after Schubert’s death.
Even though Schubert hardly needed a specific complement of performers to inspire his
writing, his acquaintance with this particular trio of musicians—Schuppanzigh, Linke, and
Bocklet—must have been gratifying. He provided them with superbly balanced works that
fed their talent for remarkable ensemble playing. The Piano Trio in B-flat, although not
virtuosic in a flashy sense, requires first-class technical preparation from all three
performers, along with a refined sense of balance and sensitivity in the ensemble.
The cellist Josef Linke
(1783-1837), along
with Schuppanzigh and
Beethoven himself,
introduced Beethoven’s
“Archduke” to Vienna in
1814. Twelve years later,
Linke, Schuppanzigh, and
the pianist Carl Maria von
Bocklet played the premier
performances of Schubert’s
two Piano Trios.
The B-flat Trio is an ebullient work. In the first movement—at about fifteen minutes the
longest—Schubert introduces lively themes that he transposes deftly to various keys,
delighting and surprising us with his dexterous transitions to wide-ranging tonalities before
returning finally to the sunny B-flat of the opening. In the second movement, the piano
introduces a gentle, rocking motion in E-flat, and the cello and violin, in turn, sing a lullaby
of great sweetness. The evening air is disturbed by passionate explorations into minor keys
before calm settles in the E-flat coda. The Scherzo, a lively dance, swirls by joyously; its
leisurely Trio provides contrast. The Piano Trio closes with an amiable Rondo movement.
The B-flat Rondo episodes alternate with thematic adventures into other keys, and a Presto
coda completes the work with a flourish.
Saturday
25
june
Frank Huang, violin
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
8 PM
Pre-concert talk with Dr. Andrew Shryock, 7 PM
VIOLIN SONATA NO. 5 IN F MAJOR, OP. 24, “SPRING”
Allegro
Adagio molto espressivo
Scherzo: Allegro molto—Trio
Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo
VIOLIN SONATA NO.1 IN F MINOR, OP. 80
Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Andante assai
Allegro brusco
Andante
Allegrissimo—Andante assai, come primo
:: intermission ::
VIOLIN SONATA NO. 9 IN A MAJOR, OP. 47, “KREUTZER”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Adagio sostenuto—Presto
Andante con variazioni
Finale: Presto
This concert is made possible in part through the generosity of Mary and Harry Hintlian.
WEEK 4
the program
VIOLIN SONATA NO. 5 IN F MAJOR, OP. 24, “SPRING”
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
During one four-year period (1798-1802), Beethoven composed eight of his lifetime total of
ten violin sonatas. It was a time of intense exploration in the composer’s life, when he created
his first string trios and string quartets and was beginning to find a voice that set him apart
from his predecessors Mozart and Haydn. As he turned to violin sonatas, Beethoven quickly
found his own way in the creation of forward-thinking duos for violin and piano.
As a group the Beethoven sonatas represent a real departure from the Mozart and Haydn
sonatas for violin and keyboard that had been the gold standard for the genre. Now pushing
the limits of those models, Beethoven (a renowned pianist himself) gave weight to the keyboard
part, and with his advanced knowledge of the violin he was able to integrate its specific
strengths into the whole, not as an obbligato instrument, but as a full-fledged partner.
With only two exceptions (the four-movement sonatas Op. 24 and Op. 30, No. 2), Beethoven
cast his violin-piano sonatas in the traditional fast-slow-fast movement patterns of his
predecessors. Within that observance of tradition, Beethoven extended the expressive
range, the sonorities, and the dynamic flow of the duo of violin and piano as sonata partners.
A miniature portrait on
ivory of Beethoven by
Christian Hornemann,
1802
In the Allegro opening of the Sonata No. 5 in F major, the violin introduces the principal
theme, which is then echoed by the piano. Its genial air earned the Sonata its sobriquet,
“Spring Sonata,” applied by a German publisher after Beethoven’s death.
The Adagio molto espressivo reveals Beethoven’s heartfelt ways with melodic material. In
his operas and other vocal repertoire, Beethoven often struggled to release his lyrical voice,
which would emerge more freely in his instrumental compositions. Here, in this song in
B-flat major, Beethoven gives first the violin, and then the piano, ample room for expressive
cantilena.
The humorous Scherzo is a bouncing romp that evokes amusement from the performers as
they rise to Beethoven’s challenging and witty maneuvers. Starting in F major, and switching
abruptly to A major, and thence to C minor for the Trio, Beethoven delighted in creating the
surprises of unprepared key changes.
Beethoven's first violin
teacher in Vienna was Ignaz
Schuppanzigh, the city's
most prominent violinist.
Schuppanzigh and
Beethoven became friends
for life. This pastel of
Schuppanzigh as a young
man is in the collection of
the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn.
The Finale is Beethoven’s original shaping of a traditional Rondo form. Within the four
repetitions of the main refrain, and in the interstices, he introduces idiosyncratic materials
of real delight and concludes the sonata with a quick, cheerful coda.
Beethoven dedicated the four-movement Violin Sonata No. 5, composed in 1800-01, to Count
Moritz von Fries (dedicatee, as well, of the A-minor Violin Sonata, Op. 23, and the Symphony
No. 7). The Sonata was issued by the Viennese publisher Tranquillo Mollo in 1801.
VIOLIN SONATA NO.1 IN F MINOR, OP. 80
Sergei Prokofiev (b. Krasne, Ukraine, April 23, 1891;
d. Moscow, USSR, March 5, 1953)
Begun 1938, completed 1946; 28 minutes
Sergei Prokofiev wrote relatively few works for the solo violin. In addition to the two concertos
for violin and orchestra (1916-17 and 1935), he composed a sonata for two violins (1932), two
sonatas for violin and piano (1938-46 and 1944), and a 1947 sonata for
unaccompanied solo violin.
The second sonata for violin and piano was essentially a transcription.
It grew out of the violinist David Oistrakh’s admiration for the Sonata in
D Major for flute and piano, Op. 94, which Prokofiev wrote in 1943 during
his World War II exile from Moscow. In his relatively peaceful country
retreat in the Urals, Prokofiev had composed a sonata that radiated
sunshine and optimism. The following year, urged and assisted by
Oistrakh, Prokofiev adapted the D-Major flute sonata as a violin-piano
work, which he dedicated to Oistrakh and published as Sonata for Violin
and Piano, Op. 94b.
Prokofiev had begun composition of his first violin-piano sonata in 1938,
in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin’s “Great Terror,” which had taken many
of the composer’s friends and colleagues. Arrested and never seen
again, these “dissidents,” among whom were leading artists, writers,
and musicians of the USSR, were shot to death in the massive pogrom.
Prokofiev set aside the unfinished F-minor Violin Sonata during World
War II, when he worked on other compositions.
BEETHOVEN’S VIOLIN TEACHERS
As a young man in his birth city,
Beethoven had played viola in the
Bonn court orchestra, in which his
violin/viola teacher, Franz Anton Ries,
was a violinist. After moving to Vienna
in 1792 he had lessons with the city’s
leading violinist, Ignaz Schuppanzigh,
who would become a life-long friend
and significant colleague. In Vienna
Beethoven also studied violin with
Wenzel Krumpholz (1750-1817), not
only a fine violinist and a virtuoso
mandolinist, but also an astute musician
with whom Beethoven frequently
discussed the finer points of composition.
Beethoven had a warm relationship
with Krumpholz, who took with good
humor Beethoven’s referring to him
as “mein Narr” [my fool]. This “fool”
provided Beethoven with sound advice
about composing for the violin.
With his return from the countryside in late 1943, Prokofiev experienced
the remainder of the war with his fellow Muscovites, sharing their
war-time depravations, their anxieties, and their profound fear of Stalin’s assaults on his own
citizens. By the end of the war, when Prokofiev took up his unfinished violin sonata—the one in
F minor—he was fully aware of the brutality and human loss that the years at war had inflicted.
He completed the sonata in 1946. David Oistrakh, to whom Prokofiev dedicated the work,
gave the premiere performance with the pianist Lev Oborin in Moscow on October 23, 1946.
The F-minor sonata exudes fearful anguish, frustration, and despondency. The opening theme,
played slowly and steadily by the piano in low-octave unisons, is a deliberate statement that
prominently features the interval of a descending fifth. As the piano continues its plodding
theme, the violin adds its own punctuation, out of which it attempts a lyrical break from the
piano’s insistence. The mood is dominated by the piano’s dark octaves until, magically, a
chorale theme emerges high in the treble of the keyboard, while the violin plays rapid scales
that range up and down over the strings. Prokofiev advised Oistrakh and Oborin that this
passage should sound like “wind in a graveyard.”* The movement ends with low Fs in the
piano, and the violin’s gently plucked F/C.
Sergei Prokofiev and David
Oistrakh were avid chess
players. Looking on is
Elizaveta Gilels, the talented
violinist sister and concert
partner of the great Russian
pianist Emil Gilels.
In the second movement, Allegro brusco, the piano takes up new means of insistence:
pounding unisons, brash chords, and scorching dissonance, which inspire the violin to join
in the angry protest. But for two sections of respite from the shouting, both instruments
utilize to the fullest their capacity to express outrage.
The sweet, airy Andante is particularly poignant in contrast to the preceding storm. Cast in
a straightforward ABA form, with a coda, the movement expresses unremitting longing. The
piano’s lacy filigrees and the violin’s nostalgic aria unite in a melancholy reverie.
Jolted back to the present, the instruments join in a wild, angry chase in alternating bars of
5/8, 7/8, and 8/8 measure. A brief lyrical respite is followed by even more agitation in both
instruments, which seem almost to lose control. Suddenly they cool off, the wind in the
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
graveyard returns, the piano plays its subdued chorale, and the work closes with a kind of
benediction. Not “And they lived happily ever after,” but, perhaps, “And they lived.”
The irony that Prokofiev and Stalin died on the same day, March 5, 1953, gripped the
community of artists and musicians in the USSR. The pompous and prolonged public funeral
services for Stalin eclipsed the meager attentions paid to the composer’s passing. All but
unremarked was the fact that Oistrakh, with the pianist Samuil Feinberg, performed the
first and third movements of the F-minor Violin Sonata at Prokofiev’s funeral.
* Whether or not Prokofiev did so knowingly, he was echoing the pianist Anton Rubinstein’s well-known description of the
Presto finale of Chopin’s B-flat minor Piano Sonata, that it sounded like “a wind sweeping over graves in a cemetery.”
VIOLIN SONATA NO. 9 IN A MAJOR, OP. 47, “KREUTZER”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Published Simrock, 1805
Beethoven expressed his disdain for composing works for the violin that served merely to
show off the violinist’s technique. He lived in an age when violinists preferred to compose
their own concert materials, and, capturing the audiences’ hunger for spectacular feats of
virtuosity, such performers garnered enormous success for their compositions.
The great Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti (1892-1973) once explained:
Every one of the thirty-three movements [of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas] shows his
preoccupation with the potentialities of the violin. We find in them challenges even
now…These challenges are technical ones only in the sense that musical and
expressive demands like Beethoven’s are more difficult to realize than the mere
stunts of Paganini, Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, et al. A Beethoven expression mark may
look deceptively simple until one tries to bring it to life. Violin chords that are played
softly and short and are a reply to the identical soft and short chords of the piano can
be a bigger technical problem than anything in Ravel’s Tzigane!...Beethoven gives the
violinist the hardest nut to crack when he is at his simplest.
Rodolphe Kreutzer
Szigeti’s remarks explain why the subtleties of Beethoven’s compositional art were frequently
lost on his contemporaries.
To Beethoven’s pleasure, the
violinist George Bridgetower
introduced the “Kreutzer”
Sonata to the public when
its dedicatee, Rodolphe
Kreutzer, rejected it as
“outrageously
unintelligible.”
The dedicatee of the Violin Sonata No. 9, Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831), refused to play this
sonata, calling it “outrageously unintelligible!” Instead, and to Beethoven’s great pleasure,
the “Kreutzer” Sonata was introduced by the violinist George Bridgetower (1778-1860),
who has gone into history as one of the earliest concert artists of African heritage. Born in
Galicia as the son of an African father and a German mother, he earned a prominent career
throughout Europe as a virtuoso violinist. Bridgetower certainly understood Beethoven’s
notation in one of his sketchbooks that he had composed this Sonata No. 9 in “a very
concertante style, in the manner of a concerto.”
The familiarity of the “Kreutzer” Sonata has not diminished its pleasures. Always exciting
is the shift from the A-major Adagio sostenuto opening to the dramatic character of the
Presto, in minor. The intense beauties of the Andante theme, and its four variations, with
coda, cause the modern listener to wonder at Kreutzer’s hearing, or the depth of his musical
understanding. Beethoven caps this energy-charged duo with a Presto Finale of brilliance,
as it charges to a thrilling conclusion.
Sunday
26
june
Andrés Cárdenes, violin
Yinzi Kong, viola
Anne Martindale Williams, cello
David Deveau, piano
5 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY PHIL AND EVE CUTTER
SERENADE IN C MAJOR FOR STRING TRIO, OP. 10
Ernő [Ernst] Dohnányi (1877-1960)
Marcia: Allegro
Romanza: Adagio non troppo, quasi andante
Scherzo: Vivace
Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
Finale: Rondo: Allegro vivace
:: intermission ::
PIANO QUARTET NO. 2 IN A MAJOR, OP. 26
Allegro non troppo
Poco adagio
Scherzo: Poco allegro and Trio
Finale: Allegro
WEEK 4
the program
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
SERENADE IN C MAJOR FOR STRING TRIO, OP. 10
Ernő [Ernst] von Dohnányi (b. Bratislava, Slovakia, July 27, 1877;
d. New York City, February 9, 1960)
The temptation to mention the harrowing later life and exile of the composer Ernő von
Dohnányi is possible to resist, in this case, only because when he composed his well-known
Serenade for String Trio, he was still a young man in the first flush of an extraordinary career
in his native Hungary.
Dohnányi had completed his education at the Budapest Academy in only three years, with
distinction, and an early composition, the Piano Quintet (1895), had caught the attention of
Johannes Brahms, who offered valuable support to the young Hungarian composer and
pianist. Several of his earliest compositions had been issued to excellent reviews, and in
1899 his Piano Concerto No. 5 won the Bösendorfer Prize.
After his sensational London debut in 1898 as the soloist in the Beethoven Piano Concerto
No. 4, Dohnányi became known as one of Europe’s most brilliant pianists, often cited as a
worthy successor to Liszt’s position at the top of the concert world. In addition to his renown
as a concert soloist, he became a committed and avid performer of chamber music.
Ernő [Ernst] von Dohnányi
was one of Europe’s most
outstanding concert pianists.
At the same time, Ernő von Dohnányi was beginning to transform Hungarian musical culture
as a conductor, teacher, and administrator. He supported and assisted not only young
contemporary composers, like his childhood friend Béla Bartók, but he also re-introduced
the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann into Hungarian music life after
years of neglect.
The five-movement Serenade, an agile and mirthful work, is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century
version of the multi-movement entertainments that Haydn and Mozart offered for so many
evening amusements. Dohnányi’s Serenade follows those models with his own, idiosyncratic
bent. The first movement begins and ends with an assertive and joyful March. Nothing military
here, just lively entrance music to set the tone, which is jaunty.
In classical terms, no Serenade would be complete without a singer and a guitar. Dohnányí
chose the violin as his singer, with the lower strings plunking guitar-like pizzicati to the
sweet melodies of the Romanza. After a brief outburst of passion by the lower strings, the
violin finishes its serenade, and the three instruments drift into the night on an unresolved
dominant chord.
As a young man, the eminent
conductor Christoph von
Dohnányi studied with his
famous grandfather in the
United States. In 1949,
permanently exiled from
his native Hungary, Ernő
[Ernst] von Dohnányi joined
the faculty of Florida State
University at Tallahassee as
composer- and pianist-inresidence. There he taught
and lived, as a naturalized
American citizen, until his
passing in 1960.
To begin the third movement—Scherzo—Dohnányi resolves the question left hanging at the
end of the serenade with an assertive, brisk D minor. The fugal material has the instruments
scampering in a (frequently humorous) chase that becomes more intense with the
complications of a double fugue. A lyrical center section briefly calms the flight. The Scherzo
ends with a resounding D-major cadence.
The fourth movement’s main theme emerges in G minor, voiced in a tender mood by the
violin. The beautiful theme and its imaginative variations constitute the most serious, lyrical
portion of the entire composition. The élan of Allegro vivace infuses the final movement,
which concludes with a reprise of the saucy Marcia from the work’s opening. Just as their
feet have carried the marchers into the quiet distance, Dohnányi allows them one last shout
of farewell.
PIANO QUARTET NO. 2 IN A MAJOR, OP. 26
Johannes Brahms (b. Hamburg, May 7, 1833; d. Vienna, April 3, 1897)
The Schumanns (the composer Robert and the pianist Clara) and
Johannes Brahms had been friends for only a few months when Robert Schumann endured
a precipitous decline in mental health. After two years in an institution, he died in 1857.
During the trauma surrounding Schumann’s final illness, Brahms provided Clara and her
seven children with profound emotional support. Fourteen years Brahms’s senior, she
returned his attentions with care and appreciation.
At that time their devotion to each other was at once mutual and lopsided. Brahms confessed
to Joseph Joachim in a letter, 1857: “ …I believe that I do not respect and admire her so
much as I love her and am under her spell.” Clara Schumann to her diary in 1858: “…for
indeed, I love him like a son.”
A German Federal Republic
postage stamp honoring
Johannes Brahms (1983,
the 150th anniversary of his
birth), and the photograph
from which it was drawn
Early on in their friendship, Brahms began to submit to Clara the drafts of his manuscripts,
soliciting her reactions. Although he was not a flashy virtuoso of the Franz Liszt variety,
Johannes Brahms was an impressive pianist. His turning to the brilliant concert pianist
Clara Schumann for advice and approval was in the nature of colleague-to-colleague, as
well as Creator-to-Muse.
During the summers of 1860 and 1861, Brahms rented rooms in a Hamburg suburb, in the
home of Frau Dr. Elisabeth Rösing. Although his beloved mother and father lived nearby,
Brahms needed more space and quiet than their modest home provided. In the village of
Hamm, among other compositions, he completed a remarkable pair of piano quartets that
he had begun in 1857. Brahms found the final forms of No. 1 in G minor, and No. 2 in A
major—the one serious and dramatic, the second a sunny, lyrical work—in Frau Dr. Rösing’s
home, and in gratitude he dedicated the A-major Quartet to her.
Both Op. 25 and Op. 26 are large-scale works. The piano parts demand superior technical
and musical equipment—just imagine Johannes or Clara at the keyboard with their fine string
colleagues—in order to fulfill the requirements of the wide-ranging compositions. In spite
of his increasing stage fright, which finally kept him off the concert stage altogether, Brahms
himself was at the keyboard, with three string players of the renowned Hellmesberger
Quartet, at the work’s premiere in Vienna on November 29, 1862.
Clara Wieck Schumann
(1819-1896) was one
of the outstanding concert
pianists of the nineteenth
century. She enjoyed a 61year career. The friendship
between Johannes Brahms,
Robert Schumann, and Clara
Schumann began with their
first meeting, in spring 1853.
Brahms sought out Clara’s
opinion of all his works-inprogress, particularly if they
involved the piano.
Brahms awarded the opening phrase of the Allegro non troppo to the piano. It is a bold and
memorable theme, which the strings echo. Its triplet rhythmic figure is one of the unifying
devices of the quartet. The movement abounds in dramatic lyricism. The slow movement,
Poco adagio, is cast in rondo form. Again, the triplet rhythmic figure appears immediately,
in the main theme, as Brahms sets up a web of passionate, lyrical melodies. The waves of
expressive diminished-seventh arpeggios from the piano contribute significantly to the
atmosphere.
After the unison opening melody, the Scherzo is propelled largely by polyphonic material.
The Trio itself features a canon between piano and strings. The Finale opens with a fully
charged peasant dance, enlivened by syncopated rhythm and folk-like tunes. Moments of
repose contribute a sense of peace and satisfaction. Finally, Brahms unleashes the dancers
to bring the quartet to a romping conclusion.
Thursday
30
june
Jeremy Denk, piano
8 PM
GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY
DIANE CHEN KOCH-WESER AND JAN KOCH-WESER
Program To Be Announced
WEEK 5
the program

KALICHSTEIN-LAREDO- ROBINSON TRIO

Transcription

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