Pinchas Zukerman, Violin & Viola Yefim Bronfman, Piano

CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS Tuesday, April 8, 2014, 8pm First Congregational Church Pinchas Zukerman, violin & viola Yefim Bronfman, piano PROGRAM Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Sonatina No. 2 for Violin and Piano in A minor, D. 385 (1816) Allegro moderato Andante Menuetto: Allegro Allegro Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Sonata No. 7 for Piano and Violin in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 (1802) Allegro con brio Adagio cantabile Scherzo: Allegro Finale: Allegro INTERMISSION Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) Sonata for Viola and Piano in F minor, Op. 120, No. 1 (1894) Allegro appassionato Andante un poco Adagio Allegretto grazioso Vivace Funded, in part, by the Koret Foundation, this performance is part of Cal Performances’ – Koret Recital Series, which brings world-class artists to our community. This performance is made possible, in part, by Paton Sponsors Diana Cohen and Bill Falik. Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES Franz Schubert (9>@>–9?:?) tions for voice and keyboard that could be used Sonatina No. : for Violin and Piano in to support his application, but his works for vi - A minor, D. ;?= olin had all been within an orchestral or cham - ber ensemble context. He was trained in violin Composed in 1816. (though he preferred playing viola in the Schubert household quartet and in the amateur Between 1814 and 1816, Schubert worked as orchestra that sprouted from it), but he had not a teacher in his father’s school in suburban yet written a piece featuring the instrument, so Vienna. He cared little for the situation, and in March and April 1816 he quickly composed soothed his frustration by composing; in 1815 three Sonatinas for Violin and Piano. It is un - alone, he wrote nearly 150 songs, the Second known, however, whether he intended these and Third Symphonies, a Mass and other works—conventional in form and idiom, and church music, piano pieces, and a half-dozen modest enough in their technique to be acces - operettas and melodramas. The torrent of sible to students—to enhance his chances at music continued unstaunched, and he stole Laibach or to be played at the convivial enough time from his pedagogical duties to Schubertiads at which he and his friends met to compose some 200 pieces between the Third savor the latest products of his flourishing ge - Symphony and the Symphony No. 4 nius. If nothing else, their propinquity to the (“Tragic”), completed in April 1816. Music, Laibach application suggests that Schubert was not teaching, was his passion. Schubert, how - then seeking not only to move beyond the ever, was apparently not yet then quite ready drawing-room confines of his earlier works but to give himself over completely to his art, so also to carry his nascent reputation to music when an advertisement appeared in the lovers outside his native Vienna. (Two other Wiener Zeitung on February 17, 1816, for a works for violin, these with orchestra—the position at the German Normal School at Concertstück in D [D. 345] and the Rondo in A Laibach (now Llubljana), he submitted the fol - [D. 438] —date from that same year.) When lowing application (in the third person) in re - Schubert did not get the position in Laibach, sponse to the notice: he decided that he had had more than his fill 1. Applicant has been educated at the of teaching, so he left his father’s school that Konvikt [i.e., Imperial and Royal spring to devote his full time to composing and Seminary], and was a Court Chorister never again held a regular job. His only em - and composition pupil of Antonio Salieri, ployment during the remaining twelve years of first Court Conductor, on whose kind his life was as a music tutor for two summers recommendation he applies for this post. on the Hungarian estate of Count Esterházy. 2. He has gained such thorough knowl - Lacking virtually any income, he lived on the edge and experience in every type of charity of his friends. The Violin Sonatinas composition for organ, violin, and the were among the last compositions that voice that, as the enclosed references tes - Schubert wrote before retiring from teaching— tify, he is considered in every way the at age 19. most capable among all the competitors The three Sonatinas o f 1816 (published as for the post. Op. 137 by Anton Diabelli in 1836 , eight years 3. He promises the best possible appli - after the composer’s death) show Schubert’s cation of his abilities to the carrying out of devoted study of Mozart’s works, but move his duties should he be graciously consid - beyond those “piano sonatas with the accom - ered a fitting applicant to fill the post. paniment of violin” in the independence of According to the Laibach advertisement, the their instrumental parts. The relationship be - winning applicant “must be a thoroughly tween the two partners is demonstrated by the trained singer and organist, as well as an beginning of the Sonatina No. 2 in A minor , equally good violin player.” Schubert had al - in which the piano alone presents the slow, ready authored literally hundreds of composi - arching main theme, and then retreats to an CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES accompanimental role when the violin takes flood plain. It was three years earlier, in 1799, over the melody. A similar alternation—piano, that Beethoven first noticed a disturbing ring - then violin—is used for the flowing second ing and buzzing in his ears, and he sought theme. The development section consists of medical attention for the problem soon there - just a few phrases spun from the arching after. He tried numerous cures for his malady, melody before the piano again takes up the as well as for his chronic colic, including oil of principal theme to start the recapitulation— almonds, hot and cold baths, soaking in the but in the key of D minor rather than in the Danube, pills and herbs. For a short time, he expected A minor, a technique with which even considered the modish treatment of elec - Schubert experimented in several works of tric shock. On the advice of his latest doctor, those years (Symphonies Nos. 2, 4, and 5, th e Beethoven left the noisy city for the quiet “Trout” Quintet) to broaden the range of har - countryside with the assurance that the lack monic and instrumental colors of his instru - of stimulation would be beneficial to his hear - mental compositions. The songful Andante ing and his general health. shows the manner in which Schubert trans - In Heiligenstadt, Beethoven virtually lived ferred the lyrical gifts that blossomed so abun - the life of a hermit, seeing only his doctor and dantly in his songs into his instrumental a young student named Ferdinand Ries. In creations. The piano, soon joined by the vio - 1802, he was still a full decade from being to - lin, presents the lovely melody upon which the tally deaf. The acuity of his hearing varied first and last of the movement’s three formal from day to day (sometimes governed by his paragraphs (A–B–A) are built; the central sec - interest—or lack thereof—in the surrounding tion, more animated in character, is marked conversation), but he had largely lost his abil - by the delicate chromatic harmonies that give ity to hear soft sounds by that time, and loud Schubert’s music so much of its touching ex - noises caused him pain. Of one of their walks pression. The Menuetto , with its surprising in the country, Ries reported, “I called his at - dynamic shifts and its melancholy minor key, tention to a shepherd who was piping very is pleasingly balanced by the brighter tonality agreeably in the woods on a flute made of a and smooth rhythms of the tiny central trio. twig of elder. For half an hour, Beethoven The finale is a rondo based on the simple, ten - could hear nothing, and though I assured him der main theme of mostly scale steps an - that it was the same with me (which was not nounced by the violin at the outset. The the case), he became extremely quiet and mo - episodes separating the returns of the theme rose. When he occasionally seemed to be provide contrast with two livelier motives: merry, it was generally to the extreme of bois - one, started by the piano, uses wider melodic terousness; but this happens seldom.” In addi - intervals and a few dotted rhythms; the other, tion to the distress over his health, Beethoven assigned alternately to both participants, in - was also wounded i n 1802 by the wreck of an corporates running triplet figurations. affair of the heart. He had proposed marriage to Giulietta Guicciardi (the thought of Ludwig van Beethoven (9>>8–9?:>) Beethoven as a husband threatens the moor - Sonata No. > for Piano and Violin in C minor, ings of one’s presence of mind!), but had been Op. ;8, No. : denied permission by the girl’s father for the then perfectly valid reason that the young Composed in 1802. composer was without rank, position or for - tune. Faced with the extinction of a musician’s In the summ er of 1802, Beethoven’s physician most precious faculty, fighting a constant di - ordered him to leave Vienna and take rooms gestive distress, and unsuccessful in love, it is in Heiligenstadt, today a friendly suburb at the little wonder that Beethoven was sorely vexed. northern terminus of the city’s subway system, On October 6, 1802, following several but two centuries ago a quiet village with a months of wrestling with his misfortunes, view of the Danube across the river’s rich Beethoven penned the most famous letter ever PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES written by a musician—the “Heiligenstadt The Adagio , one of those inimitable slow Testament.” Intended as a will written to his movements in which Beethoven created brothers (it was never sent, though he kept it music seemingly rapt out of quotidian time, is in his papers to be found after his death), it is based on a hymnal melody presented first by a cry of despair over his fate, perhaps a neces - the piano and reiterated by the violin.

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