Inon Barnatan, piano. Wed April 25, pm. Spaulding Auditorium Dartmouth College. presents. Post-performance discussion with the artist

Transcription

1 presents Inon Barnatan, piano Post-performance discussion with the artist Funded in part by the Frank L. Harrington 1924 Fund No. 3, the Sidney Stoneman 1933 Fund, the David H. Hilton 1951 Fund No. 2, a gift from Selma Bornstein, and a gift from Gail Kellogg. Spaulding Auditorium s Hamburg Steinway concert grand piano was purchased with generous gifts from Members of the Hopkins Center and Members of the Hood Museum of Art; the class of 1942, in memory of Allan Dingwall 42; and anonymous donors. Spaulding Auditorium s New York Steinway concert grand piano was restored with a generous gift by Huntley Allison 42 P 74. Wed April 25, pm Spaulding Auditorium Dartmouth College

2 Program Chaconne in G major, HWV 442 Allemande from Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828 Courante from Nouvelles Suites L Atalanta from Pièces de Clavecin (Ordre 12, No. 8) Rigaudon from Le Tombeau de Couperin Blanca Variations Two Selections from Musica Ricercata Andante misurato e tranquillo (Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi) Vivace, capriccioso Fugue (Allegro con spirito) from the Sonata for Piano in E-flat minor, Op. 26 George Frideric Handel Johann Sebastian Bach Jean-Philippe Rameau François Couperin Maurice Ravel Thomas Adès György Ligeti Samuel Barber INTERMISSION Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24 Johannes Brahms Artist s Notes Variations on a Suite For the first half of this program I took my cue from the kind of instrumental dance suite popular in the Baroque era, with movements including an Allemande, Courante, Fuga, and others. What distinguishes the suite that I assembled is that each movement is by a different composer, and the composers themselves span periods from the Baroque to the 21st century. Thus, the opening Chaconne is by Handel, the closing fugue by Barber, and the movements in between move freely between centuries. The relationship of keys and moods as well as the way the different composers were influenced by one another keeps the suite a unified whole, meant to be performed without break. It also includes Variations For Blanca by Thomas Adès, a piece featured in his recent and highly acclaimed opera Exterminating Angel. The sole work on the second half is a set of variations that Brahms wrote on a theme from Handel s keyboard suite in B flat, which Brahms develops into an ingeniously beautiful set of variations culminating, like the first half of this program, in an intricate and virtuosic fugue. Inon Barnatan

3 Program Notes Chaconne in G major, HWV 442 (1733) George Frideric Handel ( ) In 1719, Jeanne Roger of Amsterdam published an edition of eight harpsichord suites by Handel from a manuscript obtained without the composer s permission. The following year Handel countered by issuing his own collection of this music, corrected and expanded, with the following preface: The Author has been obliged to publish these Pieces to prevent the Publick from being imposed upon by some surreptitious and incorrect Copies of some of them that have got abroad. (Such bettered editions, as he called them, were Handel s main publishing defense in those days before international copyright laws were instituted, when anyone could print and sell just about whatever they wished with no compensation to the author or the original publisher.) The suites proved to be immensely popular, and they quickly appeared in pirated editions in Holland, Switzerland, France and Germany. To capitalize on the success of those pieces, in 1733 Handel authorized his regular London publisher, Walsh, to issue a sequel, and provided him with nine additional harpsichord works. Seven of those numbers are occupied by the sequence of dance movements typical of the Baroque instrumental suite, but two No. 2 in G major (HWV 435) and No. 9 in G major (HWV 442) contain chaconnes, No. 2 as its only movement, No. 9 introduced by a Prelude. (The chaconne is an ancient variations form in which a short, repeated chord pattern is decorated with changing figurations and elaborations.) For his Chaconne in G major, HWV 442, Handel used a traditional, eight-measure, triple-meter, chord progression (which also served as the foundation for works by countless other Baroque composers), and erected upon it an enormous set of continuous variations whose unvarying structure and harmony provide a telling test of a composer s invention, a quality Handel had in abundance. Allemande from Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828 (c.1729) Johann Sebastian Bach ( ) The term partita was originally applied to pieces in variations form in Italy during the 16th century and the word survived in that context into Bach s time. Bach s keyboard Partitas, however, are not variations but suites of dances, a form that in France occasionally bore the title of Partie, meaning either a movement in a larger work or a musical piece for entertainment. The French term was taken over into German practice in the late 17th century as Parthie to indicate an instrumental suite, and Bach s Partita seems to have been a corruption of this usage. The Allemande from the Partita No. 4 is a spacious dance with a florid melody set over carefully intertwined accompanimental voices. Courante from Nouvelles Suites (1728) Jean-Philippe Rameau ( ) Though Jean-Philippe Rameau, France s leading musical figure of the mid-18th century, was chiefly famed for his contributions to the operatic theater and to musical theory, he also published collections of harpsichord works in 1706 (Premiere Livre de Pièces de Clavecin), 1724 (Pièces de Clavecin), 1728 (Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin ou Second Livre) and 1741 (Cinq Pièces Extraites de Pièces de Clavecin, extracted from the five suites for violin, cello and harpsichord he titled Pièces de Clavecin en Concert, the last two words denoting not concertos but rather works for a chamber ensemble led by the keyboard). These anthologies included the two principal harpsichord types of the day: dances and so-called genre pieces, which bore titles connoting some extra-musical association. The graceful Courante that opens Rameau s Nouvelles Suites is a dance type originally accompanied by jumping motions. L Atalanta from Pièces de Clavecin, Ordre 12, No. 8 (1717) François Couperin ( ) François Couperin, nicknamed even during his lifetime le grand ( The Great ) both as a mark of respect and to distinguish him from his eponymous uncle, was the most important member of a family of musicians prominent around Paris from the late-16th century to the mid-19th century. In 1716, his pedagogical treatise L art de toucher le clavecin appeared; it was one of the era s most important manuals concerning the ornamentation and performance of French keyboard music. Couperin

4 Program Notes also published the four large volumes of Pièces de Clavecin (1713, 1717, 1722, 1730), which contain over 200 separate items arranged in 27 Ordres or suites of eight to twelve movements, including dances, rondeaux and numbers with fanciful or descriptive titles inspired by friends, feelings or fashions. Couperin also composed several books of chamber music, a considerable amount of Latin sacred vocal music, and a few vernacular songs. Much of his music was apparently lost in the years after his death through family neglect, however, and not a single manuscript of his is known to exist. According to the late-19th-century Italian critic and composer Ferruccio Bonavia, Couperin was the courtly composer par excellence. His works were famed for being unfailingly elegant and melodious, rich but not excessively chromatic in harmony, clear in design, expressive without being maudlin, and current with the best musical fashions of the day. The running figurations of L Atalanta (Ordre 12, No. 8) evoke the eponymous huntress of Greek myth, known for her beauty, speed afoot, vow of virginity and perpetual happiness. Rigaudon from Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917) Maurice Ravel ( ) The inspiration for Le Tombeau de Couperin came from two obsessions that filled Ravel s mind in 1917 the sorrow caused by World War I and the need to retain the sanity represented by the traditions of French culture. Each of the movements was dedicated to one of six friends of the composer who had fallen on the battlefield, a musical memorial to his countrymen and, perhaps, to his late mother as well. In a similar way, composers of the French Baroque age, François Couperin among them, paid tribute in music to recently deceased colleagues. Such a piece was called a tombeau, literally a tomb, and Ravel intended such an association here. Beside just a way of eulogizing his comrades, however, the association with Couperin also represented for Ravel the continuity of the logic and refinement of French civilization. It was in this great Gallic tradition that Ravel sought intellectual and emotional shelter from crushing contemporary events. The title of Le Tombeau de Couperin, therefore, has a triple meaning: it is a memorial to family and close friends; it is a revival of some aspects of the musical style of the French Baroque; and, probably most significant for Ravel, it is a continuation of the venerable tradition of French culture and thought in a time of despair and nihilism. The Rigaudon is a vigorous duple-meter dance that originated in Provence. Blanca Variations (2015) Thomas Adès (b. 1971) Thomas Adès, born in London in 1971, studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and composition with Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music before first coming to notice when he won the Second Piano Prize in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition in That same year he entered King s College, Cambridge, where his principal teachers included Hugh Wood, Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway, and he began establishing his reputation as a composer when the BBC Philharmonic under Mathias Bamert played his Chamber Symphony at the Cambridge Festival in He graduated from Cambridge in 1992 with highest honors and was appointed Composer-in-Association to the Hallé Orchestra the following year. In 1997, Adès was appointed Britten Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music; he has also served as Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival and Music Director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He was Resident Composer with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 2005 to 2007, held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall in , and serves as the Boston Symphony Orchestra s first Artistic Partner from 2016 to He is also active as a pianist and conductor, with many concert and broadcast performances in Europe, America and Japan. Adès s quickly accumulating list of distinctions includes the Paris Rostrum, Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Grawemeyer Prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex; in 2010, he was named Musical America s Composer of the Year. Blanca Variations, commissioned by the 2015 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey, Switzerland, is

5 Program Notes continued based on the Ladino [i.e., of Judeo-Spanish origin] folk tune Lavaba la blanca niña: The pale girl is washing and spreading the clothes./she is washing with tears, she is spreading with sighs./a knight came by and asked for a cup of water./with the tears from her eyes she filled seven jugs./ Why are you crying, my lady? What s wrong? / Everybody has come back from the war except the one I am waiting for./i have waited for him for seven years, more patiently than other wives./if he does not come back I shall live like a widow. / I am your husband, I have come back from the war. /They kissed; they embraced; and they went to lie down. Adès publisher, Faber Music, provided the following information about the work: The Blanca Variations appear in Act I of The Exterminating Angel, Adès opera based on the film by Luis Buñuel, where they are performed by the character of Blanca Delgado, a famous pianist who is one of a number of guests invited to an exclusive dinner after a night at the opera, but who later are unable to leave. In an interview for the Salzburg Festival, where the opera premiered, Adès described the folk tune as displaying an unassuageable harmonic structure very typical of longing and bereavement. Musica Ricercata Nos. 11 and 10 ( ) György Ligeti ( ) György Ligeti, one of music s greatest modern masters, was born in 1923 to a Jewish family in the then-hungarian province of Transylvania. He studied composition at the conservatory in his boyhood home of Kolozsvár during the early years of World War II, when he also managed to take some private lessons in Budapest with the noted Hungarian pianist and composer Pál Kadosa. In 1944, however, Ligeti, with many other Jews, was pressed by the Nazis into forced labor in dangerous situations, including working in a munitions dump just in front of the Russian advance. After the war, Ligeti continued his studies at the Budapest Academy of Music. He pursued field research in Romanian folk music for a short time following his graduation in 1949, but returned to the Budapest Academy a year later, when he was appointed professor of harmony, counterpoint and analysis. He fled Hungary in the wake of the Russian occupation of 1956, and settled in Vienna. Ligeti continued to compose prolifically while teaching in Europe and America, and received the Bach Prize of the City of Hamburg, German decoration Pour le mérit and many other honors. He died in Vienna on June 12, Ligeti wrote, Musica Ricercata is a youthful work [ ] from Budapest, still deeply influenced by Bartók and Stravinsky. The first piece contains only two pitches (along with their octave transpositions); the second, three tones; and so on, so that the eleventh piece (a monotonous fugue) uses all twelve pitches. Musica Ricercata the word comes from the Italian ricercar, meaning to research, investigate (the early Baroque genre of the ricercar, an elaborately imitative investigation of a theme, was the immediate predecessor of the fugue) encompasses a wide variety of musical styles and techniques in its eleven miniatures, from jazz to fugue, dance to meditation. Ligeti noted that No. 11 (Andante misurato e tranquillo), a fugue on a relentlessly chromatic subject written in homage to the early-17th-century Italian organist and composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, is a severe, almost noble piece, hovering between academic orthodoxy and deep reflection, between gravity and caricature. No. 10 (Vivace, capriccioso) is made caustic and a little sinister by its crushed dissonances and febrile intensity. Fugue from the Sonata for Piano in E-flat minor, Op. 26 ( ) Samuel Barber ( ) By the time Samuel Barber was mustered out of the armed forces in 1945, his reputation as one of America s most gifted composers had been established with such works as the Overture to The School for Scandal, Adagio for Strings, Violin Concerto, Essays Nos. 1 and 2 for Orchestra and Capricorn Concerto. It was therefore appropriate that in 1947 he received a commission, funded by Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin, to write a piano sonata in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the League of Composers. Vladimir Horowitz, then at the height of his career, was engaged for the premiere and Barber began composing the piece in the fall of The first movement was completed

6 quickly, by early December, but further progress was slowed by Barber s whirlwind schedule of attendance at performances of his increasingly popular works and by the composition of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for the American soprano Eleanor Steber. Barber planned to work on the gestating Sonata during his residency at the American Academy in Rome between February and July 1948, but he found that the sunny climate and easy life style of Italy unfocused his creative ambitions. Perhaps it is well at times only to drift, he wrote to his uncle, Sidney Homer, and silence one s New England conscience which sees empty manuscript paper as a sign of eternal damnation! He returned home from Italy ahead of schedule to carry on with the Sonata, and finished the second and third movements by August It was not until June 1949, however, that the titanic closing fugue was finally completed. Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24 (1861) Johannes Brahms ( ) It was upon his skill as a pianist and composer for piano that Brahms s early reputation was founded. As a teenager in Hamburg, he studied the classics of the keyboard literature with Eduard Marxsen (the city s most illustrious piano teacher and a musician whose excellent taste and thorough discipline helped form his student s elevated view of the art), but was at the same time forced to earn money for the always-pinched household budget by playing in what were euphemistically called dance halls in the rough dock district, work he began when he was just thirteen. He gave his first public recital in September 1848, when he was fifteen (significantly, the program included a fugue by Bach), and a year later presented a second concert that featured another selection by Bach and Beethoven s Waldstein Sonata. In 1850, he met the violinist Eduard Reményi, who had been driven to Hamburg by the civil uprisings in Hungary in 1848, and three years later they undertook a concert tour through Germany, a venture that not only allowed Brahms to extricate himself from the waterfront taverns, but also to meet Joseph Joachim, who, at 22, only two years his senior, was already regarded as one of the leading violinists of Europe. Joachim introduced him to Robert and Clara Schumann, who were overwhelmed by Brahms talent when he played them some of his own compositions, including his first published works the C major (Op. 1) and F-sharp minor (Op. 2) Piano Sonatas. It was because of the Schumanns encouragement that he began his First Piano Concerto in 1854; Brahms was soloist in the work s premiere on January 22, 1859 in Hanover. One of the pieces Brahms wrote for his tours through northern Europe during the next decade was the splendid Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel of Though published without a dedication, the work was composed as a birthday tribute to his dear friend Clara Schumann, who wrote in her diary after visiting Brahms at his home just outside Hamburg in November 1861, Interesting talk with Johannes on form. How is it the older masters are perfect in their use of form while modern composers are confined within the most rigid small forms? He, himself, emulates the older masters, and especially admires Clementi s large, free employment of form. The Handel Variations exemplifies Brahms interest in the grand formal gesture, which he here informed with his strict control of motivic development, his supple but rigorous exercise of formal structure, and his rich harmonic palette. Though composed when he was only 28, the work testifies to Brahms mastery of the traditional modes and forms of musical expression, and even excited the admiration of Richard Wagner when the two met at the redoubtable Richard s villa in the Viennese suburb of Penzing on February 6, After Brahms played the Handel Variations for him, Wagner stated: It shows what still can be done with the old forms by somebody who knows how to handle them. Brahms borrowed the theme for this work from Handel s Suite in B-flat major, which in its original version, published in 1733, served as the basis of a set of five variations. The theme and first variation pay homage to the 18th-century style of their model, but then veer into Brahms world of Romanticism while preserving the sixteen-measure, two-part structure of the original melody. The 25 variations encompass a wide range of keyboard styles, expressive moods and pianistic hues before they are capped by a stupendous fugue in four voices whose subject is freely based on the opening notes of the theme. The Handel Variations has often been compared to Bach s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven s Diabelli Variations in its scope and achievement, and drew the following praise from

7 Brahms biographer Richard Specht: The Handel Variations, in its purely pianistic problems, in the powerful and healthy concision of variants resembling a series of portraits by old masters, in its sonority and manifold architecture, surpasses even the boldest of Beethoven s works in the form. About the Artist One of the most admired pianists of his generation (New York Times), Inon Barnatan is celebrated for his poetic sensibility, musical intelligence and consummate artistry. He is the recipient of both a prestigious 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award, which recognizes young artists of exceptional accomplishment. He was recently named the new Music Director of the La Jolla Music Society Summerfest, beginning in Summer 2017 saw Barnatan make his BBC Proms debut, playing Ravel s Piano Concerto in G with Kazushi Ono and the BBC Symphony at London s Royal Albert Hall. At Aspen, he gave the world premiere of a new concerto by Alan Fletcher, which was also the vehicle for his season-opening Hollywood Bowl appearance with the commissioning Los Angeles Philharmonic. Besides a reprise of Fletcher s concerto with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, Barnatan s highlights include a New Year s Eve performance of Tchaikovsky s First Piano Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, followed by a Midwest tour culminating in Chicago; debuts with the London and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestras; a return to the Cincinnati Orchestra for Barber s notoriously difficult Piano Concerto; and solo recitals at London s Wigmore Hall and South Bank Centre, New York s 92nd Street Y, and with the Vancouver Recital Society. He gives recitals at Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia s Kimmel Center with soprano Renée Fleming, curates and plays in a multi-concert Schubert festival for the La Jolla Music Society, and tours the US and Europe, with concerts at Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall, with his frequent recital partner, cellist Alisa Weilerstein. A regular performer with many of the world s foremost orchestras and conductors, the pianist recently completed his third and final season as the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic. Other highlights included debuts with the Chicago, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Nashville, San Diego and Seattle Symphony Orchestras; and returns to many other US ensembles. He made debuts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic, returned to the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, and performed a complete Beethoven concerto cycle in Marseilles. He toured the US twice, once with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with which he played and conducted Mozart and Shostakovich from the keyboard and premiered a newly commissioned concerto by Alasdair Nicolson, and then with Alisa Weilerstein and New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, performing a trio program that featured the world premiere of a new commission from young American composer Joseph Hallman. Highlights of recent seasons include Barnatan s Walt Disney Concert Hall debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel; performances of Copland s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and at Carnegie Hall; a debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic; appearances with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon; and solo recital debuts in the Celebrity Series of Boston and at Chicago s Harris Theater. He also collaborated with choreographer Mark Morris, pianist Garrick Ohlsson and the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. A sought-after chamber musician, Barnatan was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center s CMS Two program from 2006 to 2009, and continues to make regular CMS appearances in New York and on tour. His passion for contemporary music sees him commission and perform many works by living composers, including premieres of pieces by Thomas

8 R About the Artist continued Adès, Sebastian Currier, Avner Dorman, Joseph Hallman, Alasdair Nicolson, Andrew Norman, Matthias Pintscher and others. Barnatan s most recent album release is a live recording of Messiaen s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles ( From the Canyons to the Stars ), in which he played the exceptionally challenging solo piano part at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In 2015 he released Rachmaninov & Chopin: Cello Sonatas on Decca Classics with Alisa Weilerstein, earning rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. His most recent solo recording, of Schubert s late piano sonatas, was released by Avie in September 2013, winning praise from such publications as Gramophone and BBC Music, while his account of the great A-major Sonata (D. 959) was chosen by BBC Radio 3 as one of the all-time best recordings of the piece. His 2012 album, Darknesse Visible, debuted in the Top 25 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart and received universal critical acclaim, being named BBC Music s Instrumentalist CD of the Month and winning a coveted place on the New York Times Best of 2012 list. He made his solo recording debut with a Schubert album, released by Bridge Records in 2006, that prompted Gramophone to hail him as a born Schubertian and London s Evening Standard to call him a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative. Next Barnatan looks forward to the release of Beethoven s five piano concertos, which he recorded with Alan Gilbert and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, marking the orchestra s first complete recording of the cycle. Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three, when his parents discovered his perfect pitch, and made his orchestral debut at eleven. His musical education connects him to some of the 20th century s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied first with Professor Victor Derevianko, a student of the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, before moving to London in 1997 to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Maria Curcio, a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel. Leon Fleisher has also been an influential teacher and mentor. Barnatan currently resides in New York City. For more information, visit This is Barnatan s first Hopkins Center engagement. Hopkins Center Directorate Mary Lou Aleskie, Howard L. Gilman 44 Director Michael Bodel, Director of External Affairs Joshua Price Kol 93, Managing Director/Executive Producer Margaret Lawrence, Director of Programming Jan Sillery, Director of Financial and Administrative Operations Sydney Stowe, Director of Hopkins Center Film Austin M. Beutner 82, P 19 Anne Fleischli Blackburn 91 Kenneth L. Burns H 93 Barbara J. Couch Allan H. Glick 60, T 61, P 88, GP 19 Barry Grove 73 Caroline Diamond Harrison 86, P 16, P 18, Chair Hopkins Center Board of Advisors Kelly Fowler Hunter 83, T 88, P 13, P 15, P 19 Robert H. Manegold 75, P 02, P 06 Michael A. Marriott 84, P 18 Nini Meyer Hilary Edson Polk P 19 Laurel J. Richie 81, Trustee Representative Jennifer A. Williams 85 Please turn off your cell phone inside the theater. Assistive Listening Devices available in the lobby. DARTM OUTH RECYCLES If you do not wish to keep your playbill, please discard it in the recycling bin provided in the lobby. Thank you.