program notes - Rockport Music

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
The program continues on the next page
35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 49
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.
50 :: NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
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)
Composed 1931; 18 minutes
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).
35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 51
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)
Composed 1849-50; 4 minutes
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
Composed 1851; 10 minutes
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
52 :: NOTES ON THE PROGRAM