carte blanche concert iii: Juho Pohjonen

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) s July 29 Fantasy in c minor, K. 475 (1785) Adagio – Allegro – Andantino – Più allegro – Tempo primo Sunday, July 29, 10:30 a.m., Stent Family Hall, Menlo School Piano Sonata no. 14 in c minor, K. 457 (1784) Program Overview Molto allegro Adagio One of the most sought-after pianists of his generation, Juho Allegro assai Pohjonen returns to Music@Menlo to perform an ambitious solo recital that celebrates the fantastical elements of music. Aleksandr Scriabin (1871–1915) The program begins with Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in c Sonata no. 2 in g-sharp minor, op. 19, Sonata Fantasy (1892–1897) Andante minor, works known to have haunted Beethoven in the com- Presto position of his own mature sonatas. Scriabin’s fiendish Sonata Fantasy is followed by Beethoven’s dream-like Opus 27 Num- Intermission ber 1 Sonata, Quasi una fantasia. The recital concludes with Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) one of the seminal works of the late Romantic piano reper- Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 27, no. 1, Quasi una fantasia (1800–1801) toire, Liszt’s Sonata, inspired by Dante’s epic poem the Andante – Allegro – Tempo I . Allegro molto e vivace Adagio con espressione Allegro vivace – Adagio – Presto

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) SPECIAL THANKS Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata (1839, rev. 1849) Music@Menlo dedicates this performance to Juho Pohjonen, piano Dr. Condoleezza Rice with gratitude for her generous support. rte b l a nche concert c a rte

46 Music@Menlo 2012 carte blanche concerts Program Notes: Juho Pohjonen

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart brought back at the end to round out the work; an unsettled Allegro; (Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, Vienna) a cautious Andantino; a tempestuous Più allegro; and the closing Ada- Fantasy and Sonata in c minor, K. 457 and K. 475 gio. Einstein believed that this tiny anthology of inchoate movements “gives us the truest picture of Mozart’s mighty powers of improvisa- Composed: 1784–1785 tion—his ability to indulge in the greatest freedom and boldness of Other works from this period: Symphony no. 37 in G Major, K. 444 imagination, the most extreme contrast of ideas, the most uninhibited (1784); Piano Concerto no. 14 in E-flat Major, K. 449 (1784); Piano Con- variety of lyric and virtuoso elements, while yet preserving structural cert no. 18 in B-flat Major, K. 456 (1784); String Quartet in B-flat Major, logic.” (Beethoven’s extraordinary Fantasy in g minor, op. 77, similarly K. 458, The Hunt (1784) opens a rare window onto that composer’s manner of improvisation.) Approximate duration: 32 minutes The companion sonata is more formalistic in structure—a sonata-form opening Allegro, a slow-tempo rondo that comes close to being a set Throughout Mozart’s career, there was an undercurrent in his works of of free variations, and a quick closing movement—but shares the fan- a particularly probing sort of expression, one very different from the tasy’s deeply felt emotions. rococo charm and surface prettiness of the vast bulk of late eighteenth- century music. As early as 1771, his overture to the oratorio La Betulia liberata (K. 118) was cast in a solemn minor mode. In 1773, when he Aleksandr Scriabin was seventeen, the unexpected expressive elements that pierced the (Born December 25, 1871, Moscow; died April 14, 1915, Moscow) customary galanterie of his opera Lucio Silla so disturbed and puzzled Sonata no. 2 in g-sharp minor, op. 19, Sonata Fantasy Milanese audiences that his earlier popularity in Italy began to wane and he never returned to that country. Later that same year, he visited Composed: 1892–1897 Vienna and learned of the new passionate, Romantic sensibility—the Other works from this period: Etude in d-sharp minor, op. 8, no. 12 so-called Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”)—which was then infus- (1894); Seven Preludes, op. 17 (1895–1896); Nine Mazurkas, op. 25 s ing the music of some of the best German and Austrian composers, (1898–1899) including Joseph Haydn. When Mozart returned home to Salzburg in Approximate duration: 12 minutes September, he wrote his stormy “little” g minor Symphony (K. 183). As Mozart reached his full maturity in the years after his arrival “The Muscovite seer”; “the Russian musical mystic”; “the clearest case in Vienna in 1781, his most expressive manner of writing, whose chief of artistic egomania in the chronicles of music”: Aleksandr Scriabin evidences are minor modes, chromaticism, rich counterpoint, and was one of the most unusual of all composers. Living in the genera- thorough thematic development, appeared in his compositions with tion between Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, he showed an early talent for increasing frequency. Such musical speech had regularly been found music and trod the accepted path of lessons, conservatory training, and in the slow movements of his piano concertos, but in 1785 he actu- teaching. His visions, however, refused to be channeled into the con- ally dared to compose an entire work (the Concerto no. 20 in d minor, ventional forms of artistic expression, and he developed a style and a K. 466) in a minor key. At that same time, perhaps the most productive philosophy that were unique. period of his life (twelve of his last fourteen piano concertos were writ- Scriabin’s life was shaken by several significant changes around ten between 1784 and 1786), Mozart created a series of three piano 1902, when he resigned from the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory works cast in the tragic key of c minor—the Sonata, K. 457, completed to devote himself to composition and rumination and left his first wife on October 14, 1784; the Fantasy, K. 475, completed on May 20, 1785; to take up with another woman. From that time on, Scriabin bent his and the Concerto no. 24, K. 491, completed in April 1786. The fantasy music ever more forcibly to expressing his dizzying world vision. He and sonata were published together in a single volume by Artaria in believed that humankind was approaching a final cataclysm, from which December 1785 with a dedication to Thérèse von Trattner, the com- a nobler race would emerge, with he himself playing some exalted but poser’s twenty-three-year-old piano student who was the second wife ill-defined Messianic role in the new order. (He welcomed the begin- of the sixty-four-year-old court printer and publisher Johann Thomas ning of World War I as the fulfillment of his prophecy.) For the transition

von Trattner. Mozart was close to the Trattners during that time, and he b l a nche concert c a rte through this apocalypse, Scriabin posited an enormous ritual that would hired the ballroom of their palace in Vienna to present his Lenten con- purge humanity and make it fit for the millennium. He felt that he was certs of 1784. He sent Frau von Trattner a series of letters concerning divinely called to create this ritual, this “Mystery” as he called it, and the proper execution of the Fantasy and Sonata in c minor, but these he spent the last twelve years of his life concocting ideas for its realiza- missives have unfortunately been lost (or destroyed—speculation has tion. Scriabin’s mammoth “Mystery” was to be performed in a specially it that the letters may have referred to some delicate personal matters built temple in India (in which country he never set foot) and was to that associates and family of neither the lady nor the composer wished include music, mime, fragrance, light, sculpture, costume, etc., which to have made public); Alfred Einstein said that if they ever turn up, the were to represent the history of humanity from the dawn of time to the letters would be among “the most important documents of Mozart’s ultimate world convulsion. He even imagined a language of sighs and aesthetic practice.” groans that would express feelings not translatable into mere words. He Mozart’s tandem issuance of the c minor Fantasy and Sonata has whipped all these fantasies together with a seething sexuality to create led to the assumption that he intended them to be performed together. a vision of whirling emotional ferment quite unlike anything else in the In The New Grove Dictionary, Stanley Sadie wrote, “The pairing implies history of music or any other art. In describing the Poem of Ecstasy to that continuous performance was intended, with the formal orderliness his friend Ivan Lipaev, he said, “When you listen to it, look straight into of the sonata resolving the tensions of the impassioned and irregu- the eye of the sun!” lar fantasy, notable for its remote modulations and its unpredictable Scriabin began sketching his Sonata no. 2 in 1892, around the time structure and textures.” The fantasy consists of five large structural he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, but he did not complete paragraphs played continuously—a portentous opening Adagio that is it until five years later, after he returned to Russia from the tour that *Bolded terms are defined in the glossary, which begins on page 107. established his reputation in Europe. He noted the influence of the sea www.musicatmenlo.org 47 on the work: “The first movement represents the quiet of a Southern The E-flat Major Sonata, op. 27, no. 1, opens with an episode night by the seashore; the development section is the dark agitations of of child-like simplicity in moderate tempo that some later musicians the deep, deep sea. The E major section [recapitulation] shows caress- (notably Hans von Bülow) thought unworthy of Beethoven; Sir Donald ing moonlight coming after the first darkness of night. The second Tovey noted that the bass motive here moves “like a kitten in pursuit of movement (Presto) represents the vast expanse of the ocean stormily its tail.” Beethoven knew very well what he was about, however, since agitated.” The opening Andante follows sonata form, with a quietly the deliberate shifting of emotional and formal weight from the begin- ominous main theme in unsteady rhythms, a lyrical second subject, and ning to the end of the sonata requires just such a low level of tension a broad closing theme. A brief development section treats the first and as the platform upon which to build the successive movements. (The second themes before a truncated recall of the opening subject begins slow, dreamy music that begins the Moonlight Sonata accomplishes the the recapitulation. The two remaining themes are given in luminous same formal purpose in that work.) A sudden Allegro outburst erupts in settings to round out the movement. The Presto is in a free sonata form the middle of the movement, but the calm of the opening soon returns. that takes a roiling melody as its main theme and a noble strain as its The second movement, which follows almost without pause, is an complementary subject. Wrote Scriabin’s early biographer A. Eaglefield attenuated c minor scherzo whose haunted mood presages that of the Hull of the Sonata no. 2, “The composer has here thrown off the reflec- scherzo of the Fifth Symphony. An abbreviated slow movement (Adagio tions of the musical giants who preceded him and has manifested the con espressione) of great stillness and introspection leads by means full individuality of his own brilliant personality.” of sweeping, cadenza-like figures to the brilliant finale, whose vibrant impetuosity is interrupted on the sonata’s penultimate page by a recall of the quiet music of the Adagio before the closing dash to the end. Ludwig van Beethoven (Born Bonn, baptized December 17, 1770; died March 26, 1827, Vienna) Sonata no. 13 in E-flat Major, op. 27, no. 1, Quasi una fantasia (Born October 22, 1811, Raiding; died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth) Composed: 1800–1801 Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata Other works from this period: Symphony no. 1 in C Major, op. 22 (1799–1800); Piano Concerto no. 3 in c minor, op. 37 (1800–1803); Sep- Composed: 1839, rev. 1849 tet in E-flat Major, op. 20 (1799–1800) Other works from this period: Ballade no. 1 in D-flat Major (1845– Approximate duration: 15 minutes 1849); Les préludes (1849–1855); Héroïde funèbre (1849–1850) Approximate duration: 16 minutes The period of the two Opus 27 sonatas—1800–1801—was an impor- tant time in Beethoven’s personal and artistic development. He had After a series of dazzling concerts in Paris in the spring of 1837, Liszt achieved a success good enough to write to his old friend Franz and his longtime mistress, Countess Marie d’Agoult, spent the summer Wegeler in Bonn, “My compositions bring me in a good deal, and may with George Sand at her villa in Nohant before visiting their daughter, I say that I am offered more commissions than it is possible for me to Blandine, in Switzerland and then descending upon Milan in Septem- carry out. Moreover, for every composition, I can count on six or seven ber. As the birth of their second child approached, they retreated to publishers and even more, if I want them. People no longer come to an Lake Como, where Cosima (later the wife of Hans von Bülow before arrangement with me. I state my price, and they pay.” At the time of this she was stolen away by Richard Wagner) was born on Christmas Eve. gratifying recognition of his talent, however, the first signs of his fateful They remained in Italy for the next year and a half, making extended deafness appeared, and he began the titanic struggle that became one visits for performances in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Bologna of the gravitational poles of his life. Within two years, driven from the before settling early in 1839 in Rome, where their third child, Daniel, social contact on which he had flourished by fear of the discovery of was born on May 9th. Liszt’s guide to the artistic riches of the Eter- his malady, he penned his “Heiligenstadt Testament,” his cri de cœur nal City was the famed painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, then against this wicked trick of the gods. These sonatas stand on the brink Director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici; Liszt was particu- of that great crisis in Beethoven’s life. larly impressed with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo and the The Opus 27 Number 1 Sonata (the famous Moonlight Sonata music of the Sistine Chapel. He took home as a souvenir of his Roman is Opus 27 Number 2) was completed by the end of 1801 and pub- holiday the now-famous drawing that Ingres did of him and inscribed to lished by the Viennese house of Cappi on March 3, 1802. The work Mme. d’Agoult. Liszt’s Italian travels were the inspiration for the series was dedicated to Princess Josephine Sophie von Liechtenstein, née of seven luminous piano pieces that he composed between 1837 and carte blanche concerts carte von Fürstenberg, wife of General Field Marshal Prince Joseph Johann 1849 and gathered together as Book II of his Années de pèlerinage von Liechtenstein; she was one of Beethoven’s pupils and one of his (Years of Pilgrimage) for publication in 1858. most important patrons at the time. The composer remained on friendly Liszt and Marie were avid readers of , the patriarch terms with her at least until 1805, when he asked her to assist his stu- of Italian literature, and while in Rome in 1839, Liszt was moved by the dent Ferdinand Ries, who had been conscripted into the army and was in the poet’s Divine Comedy to compose his Après une lecture about to leave Vienna penniless. de Dante (After a Reading of Dante). The work was thoroughly revised In noting the experimental nature of the form of the Opus 27 sona- ten years later and included in Book II of the Années de pèlerinage. tas, Beethoven specified that they were written “in the manner of a (The Divine Comedy inspired a full symphony from Liszt in 1855–1856.) fantasy” (“quasi una fantasia”). The Classical model for the instrumental Après une lecture de Dante, largely constructed from continuous trans- sonata comprised three independent movements: a fast movement in formations of the two principal themes—an ominous augmented fourth sonata form; an Adagio or Andante usually arranged as a set of varia- and an anxious chromatic descent—is a virtual tone poem for piano, a tions or a three-part structure; and a closing rondo in galloping meter. keyboard evocation of Dante’s weird and horrible visions. In the Opus 27 sonatas, Beethoven altered the traditional fast-slow-fast —Richard Rodda sequence in favor of an innovative organization that shifts the expres- sive weight from the beginning to the end of the work, and he made the cumulative effect evident by instructing that the movements be played without pause.

48 Music@Menlo 2012