Tag: piano
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PROGRAM NOTES: DANIEL MÜLLER-SCHOTT & SIMON TRPČESKI
Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata for cello & piano in C major, Op. 102, No. 1 Those who think of sonata form as a well-organized dinner plate – with the red meat in one corner, the mashed potatoes stationed opposite, and peas or broccoli distributed neatly over the remaining space – might be forgiven for thinking…
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PROGRAM NOTES: PINCHAS ZUKERMAN & YEFIM BRONFMAN
Franz Schubert Sonatina for violin & piano in A minor D. 385 It humbles me to think, paraphrasing Tom Lehrer, that when Schubert was my age, he had already been dead for several decades. Lest I forget, there are his first three sonatas for violin and piano, which he composed in a sprint of creative…
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PROGRAM NOTES: BRAHMS FESTIVAL
CONCERT #1 Johannes Brahms String Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1 If there was one great figure in European music that Brahms revered more than any other, that figure was Ludwig van Beethoven. With the Great Master’s bust looking impassively down on him from the wall of his Vienna apartment, feeling behind him…
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PROGRAM NOTES: YO-YO MA & KATHRYN STOTT
Igor Stravinsky Suite Italienne At the end of the Great War Igor Stravinsky underwent a radical shift in his compositional techniques and aesthetic aims. Gone were the gargantuan orchestras that had performed the lush, colorful scores of his pre-War ballets Firebird and Petrushka. Gone, as well, the dense chord structures and revolutionary rhythmic tumult that…
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PROGRAM NOTES: MURRAY PERAHIA
Johann Sebastian Bach: French Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 815 Bach composed suites for keyboard, for various solo chamber instruments, and for full orchestra, each comprising a varied and aesthetically balanced collection of dance movements written in the fashionable style of his day. The harmonic task given to each two-section dance is…
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PROGRAM NOTES: GERALD FINLEY & JULIUS DRAKE
Franz Schubert: Die Winterreise The art songs of Franz Schubert lie at the foundation of the lied genre itself, and at the pinnacle of Schubert’s lieder output stands Die Winterreise, a song cycle remarkable for its vivid musical portraits of the human heart smarting from the pains of love lost, and stoically resigned to the…
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PROGRAM NOTES: AVI AVITAL
Avi Avital: Kedma “To open the concert, I have chosen to perform a composition- improvisation of my own. Unlike a composer’s relationship to an instrument and to a musical form, the performer’s relationship to his instrument, as in this case, is expressed in a frequent dialogue to “get to know” each other better. This improvisation,…
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PROGRAM NOTES: KUOK-WAI LIO
Leoš Janáček: In the Mists Janáček’s four-movement piano cycle from 1912 presents us with intimate, personal and emotionally immediate music that stands stylistically on the border between eastern and western Europe. Its sound world is that of the fiddles and cimbalom (hammered dulcimer) of Moravian folk music. Equally folk-like is its use of small melodic…
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PROGRAM NOTES: BENEDETTO LUPO
Johannes Brahms: Three Intermezzi, Op. 117 The three Intermezzi Op.117 are, together with the piano pieces of Op. 116, 118 and 119, collectively the last Brahms wrote for solo piano, and are among his very last compositions. Only three more opus numbers followed, and they involved the keyboard as well. In a way, it was…
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PROGRAM NOTES: VILDE FRANG
Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Sonata in F major Mendelssohn’s E minor Violin Concerto is such an established pillar of the standard repertory that it comes as a surprise to learn that this composer also wrote three sonatas for the instrument, although these are as obscure as the concerto is popular. The first, in F major,…