Category: 15-16 Season
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PROGRAM NOTES: SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF (TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9)
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata No. 62 in E flat major, Hob. XVI:52 Joseph Haydn wrote his last three piano sonatas on his second visit to England (1794-95), keenly aware that the sound of the English piano was very different from that of its Viennese counterpart. Viennese pianos were quick and responsive but their sound, like…
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PROGRAM NOTES: SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF (SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata in B flat major K. 570 The period of the 1770s and 1780s brought regime change to the world of keyboard music as the harpsichord was gradually edged out by the first generation of fortepianos, capable of playing both loud (forte) and soft (piano) on the same set of keys. The…
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PROGRAM NOTES: ROMAN RABINOVICH
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata in B-flat Major, Hob. XVI:41 In 1784 Haydn wrote three keyboard sonatas for Princess Marie, the new bride of Prince Nicholas Esterházy, grandson of Haydn’s employer Prince Nicholas I. Each is a two- movement work, without a lyrical slow movement, perhaps reflecting the taste of the young Princess for lighter fare.…
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PROGRAM NOTES: APOLLON MUSAGÈTE QUARTET
Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet in D major, Op. 18 No. 3 In the Napoleonic era, when a Viennese aristocrat was thinking of entertaining friends at home, he might pop down to the local shop to pick up a six-pack—a six-pack of string quartets, that is. The most refined form of self-entertainment in the homes…
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PROGRAM NOTES: LEIF OVE ANDSNES
Jean Sibelius Kyllikki, Three Lyric Pieces for Piano Op. 41 Finland’s national composer, Jean Sibelius, has earned an honoured place in the modern canon chiefly on the merits of his orchestral works, notably his seven symphonies, the Violin Concerto, and the tone poem Finlandia. Less celebrated are the composer’s more than 150 miniatures for piano,…
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PROGRAM NOTES: ARCANTO QUARTET
This evening the Arcanto Quartet offers us a chance to explore chamber music from the end of the 17th century to the recent past, sampling music for four players by Henry Purcell (1659–95), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Henry Purcell Long before the primacy of the string quartet, consort music for…
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PROGRAM NOTES: CAROLINE GOULDING & WENWEN DU
Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata in A major, BWV 1015 Before taking up his post as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723, Bach served as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728). The young Prince was of the Calvinist persuasion, and thus had little need for church music, but he was also an avid…
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PROGRAM NOTES: RAPHAËL SÉVÈRE & PAUL MONTAG
Alexander Borodin Sonata for Cello and Piano in B Minor (adapted for clarinet & piano by Raphaël Sévère) The role of the noisy neighbour in music history is an unjustly neglected theme for research but well worth considering in the case of Alexander Borodin’s Sonata for Cello & Piano in B minor (c.1860). Deeply imprinted…
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PROGRAM NOTES: JEREMY DENK
Johann Sebastian Bach English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808 Bach’s keyboard suites are a remarkable amalgam of the florid keyboard idiom of the French, the lyrical gift for vocal melody of the Italians, and the sober contrapuntal rigour of his fellow Germans. The suites which posthumously (and illogically) came to be labelled…
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PROGRAM NOTES: MAXIMILIAN HORNUNG & BENJAMIN ENGELI
Robert Schumann Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102 Long before Martha Stewart made middle-class home furnishings a “thing,” the Biedermeier period (1815-1848) ushered in a bourgeois age of cozy home interiors that celebrated domestic family life and gave music a prominent place within it. Biedermeier Europe enjoyed the blessings of peace after the defeat of…