Royal Liverpool Philharmonie Society

Patron Her Majesty the Queen

Artur Rubinstein

Wednesday 2 June 1971 at 7.30 p.m. Recital

Beethoven Sonata in F minor (Appassionata)

Schumann Carnaval

Interval

Debussy Ondine Poissons d’Or Prelude in A minor

Chopin Ballade in A flat Berceuse in D flat Polonaise in A flat

This recital is supported by the Special Activities Fund - see page 13

Programme 5p Programme Notes © by Joan Chissell

Sonata in F minor, op. 57 (Appassionata) Beethoven (1770-1827)

Allegro assai Andante con moto Allegro ma non troppo Like most of the labels attached to Beethoven’s piano sonatas by people other than the composer, the ‘Appassionata’ given to this work by Cranz is extraordinarily apt. The sonata dates from 1804, and in its unrelenting vehemence and ardour could almost be considered a character study of the composer himself at the age of thirty-four, tossed on the stormy seas of life. The opening Allegro assai sets out with a restless, mysterious, quest­ ing first subject in F minor, which remains extraordinarily close-knit in spite of being broken up into several different, short-breathed clauses - stealthy arpeggios, trills, an ominous ‘fate-knocking-at-the-door’ phrase of repeated notes, and violent fortissimo explosions. All storm clouds are dispelled when the key changes to a sunny A flat major for the lyrical second subject, though the respite it brings is brief - after only a few bars Beethoven is storming away again in A flat minor for the second half of the second subject. Though the lyrical theme returns in major keys in the development, recapitulation and important coda, it can never quell the fury of Beethoven’s passion for long, a fury which rises to a well-nigh uncontrollable degree of intensity towards the end of the development section with its cascading semiquavers on the dramatic chord of the diminished seventh and its fortissimo ‘knocking of fate on the door’. The slow movement is a set of variations on a tranquil sixteen-bar Photograph by Eva Rubinstein, New York theme in D flat major, so tranquil, in fact, that it shows no inclination to Artur Rubinstein modulate - not even at the half-way cadence. The three variations which follow retain both the melodic contour and the harmonic flavouring of the theme within increasingly complex figuration; crochets turn to quavers, then to semiquavers, then to demi-semiquavers, as was the procedure in many of the earliest sixteenth century variations, until the coda restores the opening stillness. But instead of ending the slow movement with the expected chord of D flat major, Beethoven suddenly sends cold shivers down the spine with a whispered chord of the diminished seventh (in those days always a 3 2 great source of dramatic effect). When he repeats it fortissimo, there is on further doubt that another storm is about to break ini the finale. It comes first with a steady, ominous trickle of restless semiquavers; it gathers intensity in the course of the closely related second subject; it breaks for the first time towards the end of the development, and finally explodes with breath-taking vehemence in the presto coda.

Carnaval, op. 9 Schumann (1810-1856) (Scenes mignonnes sur quatre notes)

Préambule Pierrot Arlequin Valse noble Eusebius Florestan Coquette Répliqué [Sphinxes] Papillons A.S.C.H.-S.C.H.A. (Lettres Dansantes) Chiarina Chopin Estrella Reconnaissance Pantalon et Colombine Valse Allemande Paganini Aveu Promenade Pause Marche des Davidsbünder contre les Philistins

In 1834, at the age of twenty-four, Schumann fell madly in love with a young music student called Ernestine von Fricken; it therefore seemed to him a coincidence of momentous significance when he suddenly discovered that the letters forming the name of her birthplace, Asch, were the very same ones which in his own surname could be translated into musical notes, i.e. S (German for E flat), C, H (German for B natural) and A. His immediate reaction was to compose a set of variations (completed in 1835) on these four important notes, though with his characteristic love of mystification, he chose not to spell out the three alternative arrangements of the notes on which the variations are based until a ghostly insertion, half way through the score, entitled Sphinxes, which even then is there to be seen but not to be played. Nor was Schumann, as one of the most fancifully imaginative of all the nine­ teenth century romantics, content to write just abstract variations. Instead, he seized on the chance to make many of the pieces character studies of members of the Davidsbund, an imaginary society he invented to uphold all that was poetic, expressive and progressive in art in the face of the old, academic die-hards, the Philistines; he also introduced characters from the ancient commedia dell’ arte (Pierrot, Harlequin Pantaloon and Columbine) to the glittering company, which he assembled at some imaginary ball, or Carnaval, to impart unity to the whole con­ ception. The revelry ends with a grand march of the Davidsbund against the Philistines, in which Schumann mocks the Philistines partly by flouting convention by writing a march in three-four time, and partly by 5 caricaturing them through the quotation of an old German folk-tune, ‘The Grandfather’s Dance’. Of the members of the Davidsbund, Chopin and Paganini need no introduction, for their variations (the one in the style of a dreamy nocturne and the other like a firework display) betray their respective identities no less clearly than do their names. Of the rest, Eusebius and Florestan are the two pseudonyms which Schumann himself often used, the one representing his dreamy self and the other the eager, impulsive man of action. Chiarina conceals the identity of Clara Wieck, then a child pianist but ultimately Schumann’s wife. Estrella is none other than Ernestine von Fricken, only a passing fancy, so it proved, but one to whom we can be eternally grateful for the initial inspiration of this enchanting music.

INTERVAL A warning bell will start to sound five minutes before the end of the interval

Ondine Debussy (1862-1918)

Debussy’s reply to the question ‘where would you like to live?’ included in a questionnaire put to him on 15 February 1889, was ‘anywhere out of the world’. This is certainly borne out by his music, for his imagination always took flight more readily in the realms of natural phenomena and the supernatural than amidst human Sturm und Drang, and it was not in the least surprising that he should find inspiration (as Ravel had done a few years earlier) in the Ondine legend, the water-sprite who with her beauty attempts to lure a mortal lover to her palace beneath the lake. Headed Scherzando, Debussy’s music sketches an exquisitely delicate portrait of the nymph in all her capriciously teasing, seductive allure, often against a fluidly murmuring, watery background. The piece is the eighth of the second set of Douze Preludes, completed in 1913 when Debussy was fifty-one.

Poissons d’Or Debussy

Poissons d’Or is the last of three pieces in the second set of Images (1907). It is sometimes said to have been inspired by a piece of oriental lacquer owned by Debussy. On the other hand there are enough little darting movements in the melody, followed by sudden immobility, to suggest 7 close observation of real fish movement, complete with a miniature and the second (a rocking figure) in C major at the fifty-second bar. drama in the fish-bowl before Debussy’s indication ‘en s’apaisent’ brings Everything in this close-knit piece is evolved from just these two pregnant the relief of danger past. ideas.

Berceuse in D flat Chopin Prelude in A minor Debussy Whereas most of Chopin’s keyboard works belong to family groups, the Debussy’s three-movement suite, Pour le Piano, was completed in 1901, Berceuse stands alone. He wrote it in 1844, again in the George Sand when he was only in the process of evolving that delicately elusive, period, and produced such a little masterpiece that he knew better than to atmospheric style of keyboard writing that placed him in a world apart attempt to follow it up with other pieces of the same genre. The simplicity from all his predecessors. Traces of traditional figuration, predictable inherent in a cradle song is found here in the rocking bass, which never harmonic sequences and symmetrical patterning remain in all three changes until the brief coda - and even then not in rhythm. Above it, at pieces, and in the Prelude to be played tonight Debussy unashamedly the start, comes an equally simple four-bar melody, such as any mother exploits the instrument’s capacity for bravura: it demands finger might croon to her child. This is Chopin’s theme; he then repeats it virtuosity of the first order. throughout the piece with increasingly ornate and chromatic filigree decoration of a characteristically subtle, delicate and wholly magical kind.

Ballade in A flat, op. 47 Chopin (1810-1849) Polonaise in A flat, op. 53 Chopin Chopin used the title ‘ballade’ for just four of his compositions; all are At the age of twenty Chopin left Poland, and settled in France for his extended, expansive works in compound duple time (6/4 or 6/8) and in remaining nineteen years; he preferred the freedom of western Europe all of them the music is unfolded in the free, narrative style of a story. to a Russian-dominated homeland. Yet he never lost hope that a day of Some musicologists think that Chopin used this title merely to guarantee independence would ultimately dawn, and his passionate love for Poland himself the formal freedom he required. Others of more romantic mind remained the overriding emotion of his life. From his earliest years as a have suggested that there was some extra-musical programme at the back music student in Warsaw he had been strongly drawn to the two most of Chopin’s mind as he wrote each piece. In support of the latter view characteristic national dances of Poland, the aristocratic polonaise and there is Chopin’s own admission to Schumann that the second ballade in the humbler mazurka, and he had quickly realized that by borrowing F major was inspired by some poems of the Polish patriot, Adam their distinctive rhythmic and melodic features he could create national Mickiewicz. But as the composer never provided a single clue, either in music of his own. As time went on, his polonaises, in particular, far out­ speech or writing, as to the origins of the remaining three, we should grew their simple dance origins, becoming instead powerful independent perhaps be better advised to accept them as pieces ‘in ballad Style’ rather tone-poems embodying all the turbulence of his own nationalist sym­ than seeking to interpret them as programme-music. The Ballade in A pathies. In none of them does patriotism burn more brightly, majestically flat dates from Chopin’s thirty-first year, by which time his long summer and exuberantly than in this evening’s work in A flat major, written in ‘holidays’ at George Sand’s country home in Nohant were beginning to 1842 when Chopin was thirty-two. After an abrupt call to attention, the bear rich fruit, and it won immediate popularity with its, for the most exhilarating main theme is hurled at the listener first forte and then part, untroubled radiance and ardour. True in the central quasi-develop- fortissimo, and this same theme returns to end the polonaise in a blaze of ment section a modulation to C sharp minor brings with it an under­ splendour. In the middle section Chopin plunges from A flat major into current of tension and conflict, but for the most part the music takes its E major for a dramatic interlude, built up with tense, cumulative excite­ character from the warm-hearted graciousness of the two main themes ment over a figure of four descending, staccato semiquaver octaves as they are first introduced, the one in A flat major in the opening bars, ominously and persistently reiterated by the left hand. 8 9 Artur, a cheerful, outgoing boy who had come from a happy home environ­ Artur Rubinstein ment, seems to have relished the excitements of a prodigy’s success for a time. by Howard Taubman formerly Music Editor of the New York Times. He had played all over Germany and Poland, once in Warsaw under the direction of Emil Mlynarski, distinguished conductor, whose daughter, Aniela, Artur Rubinstein is a complete artist because he is a whole man. It does not not yet born was destined to become Mrs. Rubinstein. During this period matter whether those who go to his concerts are ear-minded or eye-minded - or Joachim sent Artur to visit Paderewski, the giant of his time at the keyboard, both. His performances are a comfort to, and an enlargement of, all the faculties and Paderewski, delighted with the young fellow’s ability and personality, in the audience. And he has the choice gift of being able to convey musical prevailed on him to prolong his visit to three months. satisfaction - even exaltation - to all conditions of listeners from the most At the age of sixteen, Artur made his first foray into America. In January, highly trained experts to the most innocent of laymen. 1906, he played in Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra and a few The reason for this is that you cannot separate Artur Rubinstein the man days later with the same orchestra in New York. He played a lot of concerts from Artur Rubinstein the musician. Man and musician are indivisible, as they in the United States, but the response was far from ecstatic. Later on he could must be in all truly great and integrated interpreters. You know this at once sum up the reaction philosophically by explaining ‘I was not a prodigy any when you meet Rubinstein off the concert platform,, and you know it beyond more, and I was not a mature artist. The critics were severe, much too severe. any shadow of doubt when you hear him play. I thought I had lost America forever’. The breadth of Rubinstein’s sympathies are inescapable in the concert hall. He returned to Europe and for the next few years seemed to drop out of He plays music of all periods and lands and to each he gives its due. Because sight. When he appeared in Berlin in 1910 he explained to friends who inquired Rubinstein was born in Poland, he has a special fellow-feeling for the music where he had been, ‘Oh, I have been dead for a few years’. Actually, the of Chopin and he recreates it with glowing conviction. But he is not simply experience of those years amounted to a new birth. He spent most of his time a Chopin specialist, which would be accomplishment enough. He plays Bach in Paris, in those ‘missing years . He studied and met a great many men and Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, Brahms and Debussy and a host of and women of all stations and backgrounds. He saw and did things that other composers of past and present with equal felicity. an adolescent ripening into manhood could see and do with profit, provided he has the energy and intelligence to profit from them. Rubinstein did profit. Rubinstein has a commanding technique. He can make the piano do whatever Later he was able to say that he was occupied in ‘hurdling the greatest obstacle he wishes, but his aim is never to show off his virtuosity. His technical command in the path of a prodigy, that of shedding my immaturity.’ is the servant of his art. He has the rarest of gifts of being able to play all kinds of music with eloquence. He can project his imagination into each creative Back in the concert swirl, success again greeted him in Europe. By 1914 he world, as if he were a citizen of that world. And that is the test of the complete had toured all over the continent and his temperament had made his piano artist and the whole man. playing the sesame to acceptance everywhere. When the war broke out he was in London, where his knowledge of languages enabled him to find work as Rubinstein is secure in his knowledge, and on the concert platform he an interpreter for the Allies. Then he gave concerts for the Allies in joint conveys the impression of a man who has achieved serenity. This has misled appearances with Eugene Ysaye. some observers into thinking that he has no nerves, and some have gone so far as to say that he lacks the necessary ingredient of tension. You have only In 1916 he went to Spain for a handful of concerts and remained to give 120. to hear the excitement of his playing to know that he projects tremendous If Rubinstein is a musician with confidence in himself, the Spanish chapter tension, but it is the tension of an enormously powerful steel spring under full could not but have reinforced this feeling. He became friendly with the royal control. You have only to talk to him to realize that he is as subject to nervous family; he was invited to the royal palace for frequent dinners. Suddenly he presssure as the rest of us. was surrounded by money and success even he had not dreamed of. He admitted later that his technique was a bit erratic, but there was no need to bother about I heard him recall once that a young musician had boasted to him ‘Playing cleaning it up in the face of such adulation. It is the measure of Rubinstein’s in public doesn’t worry me at all, I have no nervousness’. Rubinstein’s response capacity for continuous growth that later on he took himself in hand and drove was, ‘How lucky you are! I wish you could teach me your secret’. himself to iron out the deficiencies. But the impact of Spanish success remained It is commonplace to say that an artist conveys in his art the sum of what on the Rubinstein career; in later years South America took him to its heart he has absorbed from life. But this truth needs to be emphasized in the instance with a similar brand of Latin expansiveness and affection. of music because people with little knowledge or experience of this art may fail In February, 1919, Rubinstein confronted New York again. He was well to see the connection. In the case of Rubinstein it is not only important to be received, especially by the elements of the press. He returned from time to time aware of the connection; it must be grasped thoroughly, for Rubinstein, as until 1927, but for reasons difficult to grasp he did not capture the hearts and much as any interpreter around today, reflects in his musical performances imagination of the American people as he was to do later on. It was not, in fact, the kind of life he has lived and the kind of man he is. until his return in 1937 - he had not played here (America) for ten years by Born in L6dz [the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra gave a success­ this time - that he made an all-conquering return. This time he came back ful concert there on its tour of Poland in September 1970], he was the youngest under the managership of S. Hurok. At once he was hailed as one of the great of seven children in a family that was well-to-do; his father owned a handloom living musicians. His fees and his engagements multiplied. His field of activity factory. At three Artur showed an aptitude for music. Offered a fiddle several widened to include an occasional film and radio appearance where he won his times, he smashed it. By the age of eight, he was ready to impress the way not only as a pianist but as a charming figure as a guest with the redoubtable. distinguished violinist, Joseph Joachim, with his progress at the piano. Young ‘Information, Please’ panel of experts. Artur’s sister happened to be travlling to Berlin to prepare for her marriage Was it America or Rubinstein that had changed? It may be that the United at this time and took the lad along. Joachim heard him and put him under States, which has a way of remaining faithful to its pianistic heroes, was more the care of Heinrich Barth, who had studied with Bulow, Taussig and Liszt. devoted to people like Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, Hofmann. It may also be When he was’ll, Artur made his formal debut in Berlin in a Mozart concerto, that changes had occurred in Rubinstein. An important event had taken place with Joachim conducting the orchestra. in his life in 1932. He had married Aniela Mlynarski. Soon he began to have a 10 11 family. There are four children: Eva, born in Buenos Aires in 1933; Paul born in Warsaw in 1935; Aline, born in Hollywood in 1945, and John Arthur arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Rubinstein is a firm advocate of love and marriage. Both helped him as an artist. ‘Suddenly’, he once recalled T became conscious of every wrong note’. He and his new bride went in 1932 to a small chalet in the Alps, and in a garage he worked away at an upright paino, practising more intensely than he had ever done before. With the self-knowledge of maturity, he knew how to make every moment count. He found that work in itself was rewarding. He gained even greater technical assurance and, perhaps more important, he reached for and began to achieve new interpretive peaks. Here we have one of the great secrets of Rubinstein’s growing dominion over public taste. He has never ceased to grow. Driven by his own tremendous gusto and relish for life, he translated it into an ever-increasing breadth of musical vision. He dared to strive for the large simplicity, shucking off mannerisms that are the attributes of lesser artists. It may be said of him what was said of the venerable Benjamin Franklin, ‘The older the bolder’. And the better musically. Rubinstein embraces life as ardently as he does music. ‘I happen to be born with a terrific vitality , he has said. ‘I am happy unconditionally. Life holds so much - so much to be happy about always. Most can only be felt if you don’t ask any conditions’. And Rubinstein can find hapiness in all situations. He likes the company of all kinds of people, and he is at home with workers and creators in all the arts, with business men, politicians, taxi-drivers, waiters, diplomats, heads of state. He has gaiety in social encounters. He has a fund of stories and he knows how to tell them in any one of his arsenal of languages. He an also act them out with gestures and facial expressiveness that add to the jest. In his travels all over the world he has been not merely a tourist passing through a strange land, but an absorbed student. Rubinstein is business-like about his artistic commitments and artistic in the affairs of living. When he first appeared in a film studio, there was trepidation that a temperamental virtuoso would make trouble. He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and said ‘Let’s make some music’. In the recording studio - he is one of the best sellers in the glittering stable of Victor recording artists - he knows how to work with dispatch, and he knows equally well how to take a spacious breather. In his personal life he lives in the grand manner, not from affectation but because it is native to him. He smokes Havana cigars specially blended for him and drinks the finest wines and cognacs. His home in Hollywood - he calls it his thirty-second ‘permanent home’ - is a blend of elegance and simplicity. It is a proper setting for a man of his parts. But much as he adores being in it with his family, he could not remain long away from his concert rounds. Making music is in his blood, and the joy of reaching countless thousands of people through this music is ample reward for the difficulties of trouping. No one place could confine a richly varied personality like Rubinstein. It is well that this should be so. For the man and his music enrich the lives of people everywhere.

12 Royal Liverpool Philharmonie Society

Four performances this month of Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B minor (The ‘Unfinished’, completed with final movements from Schubert’s own material by Gerald Abraham)

Sunday 6 June at 7.30 Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall

Tuesday 22 June at 7.30 Grantham, Parish Church in association with the Eastern Authorities Orchestral Association

Wednesday 23 June at 8.00 London, Royal Festival Hall

Friday 25 June at 7.30 Reading, Town Hall as part of the Reading Festival

Conductor Charles Groves

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra 16 Royal Liverpool Philharmonie Society

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Wednesday 7 July at 7.30 Thursday 8 July at 7.30

Verdi Requiem

Charles Groves Rita Hunter, Josephine Veasey Stuart Burrows, Gwynne Howell Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Liverpool Philharmonic Choir

Tickets: £1-20, £rio, £roo, 9op, 8op, 7op, 6op, 5op available from Philharmonic Hall Box Office (051-709 3789) and Metropolitan Cathedral Bookshop now. Royal Liverpool Philharmonie Society

Philharmonie Hall

Box Office Telephone 051-709 3789

Sunday 6 June at 7.30 Delius Paris, Song of a Great City Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B minor (The ‘Unfinished’, completed with final movements from Schubert’s own material by Gerald Abraham) Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2

Conductor Charles Groves Soloist Vladimir Ashkenazy

Friday 18 June at 7.30 Gilbert and Sullivan Excerpts from: H.M.S. Pinafore, Patience, The Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, The Mikado, Iolanthe

Soloists Peter Pratt, Doreen Price, Jean Allister, Philip Langridge, Noel Noble

Liverpool Philharmonic Choir

Conductor Edmund Walters

Full details of ticket prices, booking arrangement and party concessions for each of the summer concerts in the Summer Concerts Leaflet available in the entrance hall.

Box Office open for advance booking before concerts and at the interval. Catering Facilities Buffet suppers, light refreshments, tea and coffee available in the Main Foyer before each concert from 5.30 p.m. Tea and coffee available during the interval in both the Main Foyer and Upper Balcony Bar. Bar Facilities Licensed Bar in Entrance Hall open before each concert, during the interval and after the concert. Upper Balcony Bar open before each concert and at the interval.

Printed by the See/ House Press. Seel Street, Liverpool LI 4AY