Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119 [1893] pieces, a vast panorama of moods that opens heroically with a JOHANNES BRAHMS muscular march, emphatic and forthright in rhythm but irregularly Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany structured in ‘Hungarian-style’ 5-bar phrases. Its middle section Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria alternates between pulsing triplet gures in a worrisome C Minor and the cane-twirling, walk-in-the-park breeziness of a debonaire rahms’s last works for the piano were a set of Four Keyboard A flat major section in the classic style of late-19th-century salon Pieces, Op.119. Like the previous short piano pieces of Opp. music. A flamboyant gypsy-style coda ends the piece, surprisingly, 116, 117, and 118, they are complex, dense, and deeply with a triumphant cadence in E flat minor. Thursday • November 12 • 7:00 pm B Benjamin Franklin Hall introspective works, full of rhythmic and harmonic ambiguities © 2020 by Bernard Jacobson but by no means obscure. They are works to be savoured for American Philosophical Society Brahms’s mastery of compositional technique and for the bountiful This recital is part of the Elaine Kligerman Piano Series wellspring of Viennese sentiment and charm that animates them from within. JEREMY DENK Written with complete disregard for the kinds of piano textures eremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a JEREMY DENK, piano considered normal in the late 19th century, the piano pieces of Op. MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 119 explore new possibilities in harmonic and rhythmic practice, J ROBERT SCHUMANN Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and in recent seasons has as well. Harmonic changes frequently occur on weak beats, and Papillons, Op. 2 metrical regularity is often attenuated by harmony notes held over appeared with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra, from the previous bar. as well as on tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and at the CLARA SCHUMANN The Intermezzo in B Minor that opens the set is a prime example. Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. Last season Denk played Three Romances, Op. 21 Its glacially descending arpeggios in chains of falling thirds create Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier Book 1, culminating in performances at Andante a panoply of possible harmonic interpretations, spinning multiple Lincoln Center in New York and the Barbican in London. He returned to Allegretto expectations for how the dissonances created will be resolved. But Carnegie Hall to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with Orchestra of Agitato this conundrum was the whole point, according to Brahms, who St. Luke’s, and made his solo debut at the Royal Festival Hall with the wrote to his friend Clara Schumann that he had written a piece London Philharmonic performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. “teeming with dissonances” and that “every measure and every Denk also presented his solo recital debut at the Boulez Saal in Berlin MISSY MAZOLLI note must sound like a ritardando, as if one wanted to suck the performing works by Bach, Ligeti, Berg, and Schumann, and returned to Bolts of Loving Thunder the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in France, as well as London’s Wigmore melancholy out of each single one.” The middle section is equally Hall, ahead of his residency there this season. Highlights of the previous ambiguous, with its rippling dislocations of pulse between left and season included a three-week recital tour, culminating in Denk’s return to JOHANNES BRAHMS right hand. Carnegie Hall; play-directing Mozart Concerti on an extensive tour with Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119 A nervous stutter of echoing repeated notes marks the opening Academy of St Martin in the Fields; and nationwide trio tour with Joshua Intermezzo in B Minor section of the Intermezzo in E Minor, its bar lines obscured by Bell and Steven Isserlis. He also performed and curated a series of Mozart Intermezzo in E Minor rhythmic activity artfully out of synch with the meter and the Violin Sonatas (Denk & Friends) at Carnegie Hall. Denk is also known for Intermezzo in C Major harmony. The gentle waltz that inhabits the middle section his original and insightful writing on music, which the New Yorker’s Alex Rhapsodie in E-flat Major provides more rhythmic clarity, but this section’s melodic contrast Ross praises for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” He wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, and the is deceptive, as its voluptuously lilting tune is actually just a Tonight’s performance is co-sponsored by the Aspen Festival, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New variation of the opening. Republic, The Guardian, and on the front page of the New York Times American Philosphical Society. Please remain seated at the The Intermezzo in C Major is so good-natured, it almost borders Book Review. One of his New Yorker contributions, “Every Good Boy Does conclusion of the concert for a brief 15-minute Q&A with Jeremy. on humour, with its dancelike melody set in the mid-range (played Fine,” forms the basis of a book for future publication by Random House by the right-hand thumb throughout) and occasional thrilling ice- in the US, and Macmillan in the UK. Denk graduated from Oberlin College, cube-down-the-back cascades of arpeggios. Indiana University, and the Juilliard School. His website and blog are at Please note: For everyone’s safety, we require that you wear your mask The Rhapsody in E-flat Major is the longest of Brahms’s late jeremydenk.net. at all times and that it fully covers your mouth and nose. If you should test positive for the coronavirus after attending this event, please notify us at 215-669-8080 immediately. We thank you for your attendance and cooperation! Papillons, Op. 2 [1829-31] fragmented Grossvaterlied illustrates the scene of dancers Bolts of Loving Thunder [2013] ROBERT SCHUMANN dispersing in the morning and the music vanishing into thin air. The MISSY MAZZOLI Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony effect is enhanced by the quietly arpeggiated dominant seventh Born in 1980 in a “small town” in Pennsylvania Died July 29, 1856, in Endenich (near Bonn) chord whose notes gradually disappear one after another © 2016 by Blair Johnston hen Manny (Ax) asked me to write a piece that would obert Schumann’s first set of character pieces for piano, appear on a program of works by Brahms, I immediately (1829-1831), may be regarded as a sort of study for thought back to my experiences as a young pianist. the better-known Carnaval (1833-1835). Both are musical R WI have clear memories of crashing sloppily but enthusiastically representations of festival scenes and involve multiple characters Three Romances, Op. 21 [1853-55] through the Rhapsodies and Intermezzi, and knew I wanted to and dance sequences; Schumann, in fact, reworked elements PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM CLARA SCHUMANN create a work based on this romantic, stormy idea of Brahms, of Papillons for use in the later work. The concept for Papillons Born September 13, 1819, in Leipzig, Germany complete with hand crossing and dense layers of chords. I also was apparently suggested to the composer by Jean Paul Richter’s Died May 20, 1896, in Frankfurt, Germany felt that there needed to be a touch of the exuberant, floating novel Flegeljahre (“Age of Indiscretion”); originally, each of the 12 melodies typical of young, “pre-beard” Brahms. Brahms’s F-A-F pieces had a title that made reference to that well-known literary lara Schumann wrote her Three Romances, Op. 21, between motive (shorthand for —”free but happy”) gradually work. The extent of the novelist’s influence on Schumann is, of 1853 and 1855. In late June 1853, she wrote three romances breaks through the surface of this work, frenetically bubbling out course, difficult to determine. Schumann removed the titles before in A Minor, F Major, and G Minor. In 1855, on a day when C in the final section. The title comes from a line in John Ashbery’s publication, wanting, as was typical throughout his creative life, Brahms was visiting Robert Schumann at the sanatorium and Clara was, as she writes in her diary, “feeling so sad,” she wrote another poem Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape. to conceal the sources of inspiration. Precisely why the work was © 2013 by Missy Mazzoli ultimately titled Papillons (Butterflies) has never been explained; A Minor Romance, with which she replaced the first of the 1853 yet the title was obviously Schumann’s invention, and the romances. Clara dedicated this set of three romances to Brahms suggestion of airiness and flight is clearly borne out by the music. and later published the 1853 Romance in A Minor separately. Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, Papillons, in keeping with its origin as music for a fictitious festival Romance No. 1 is a small character piece for the piano. The use of surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times) or ballroom scene, is a set of dance pieces, many of them waltzes. Classical formal units, especially in the piece’s outer sections, aligns and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), MISSY Even at this early stage in his compositional career—Papillons is with Schumann’s preference for musical restraint and increases MAZZOLI has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, only the composer’s second published work—Schumann’s craft the likelihood that the piece would be taken seriously by critics.