The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts STEPHEN A. SCHWARZMAN , Chairman MICHAEL M. KAISER , President TERRACE THEATER Saturday Evening, October 31, 2009, at 7:30 presents Elizabeth Joy Roe, Piano BACH/SILOTI Prelude in B minor CORIGLIANO Etude Fantasy (1976) For the Left Hand Alone Legato Fifths to Thirds Ornaments Melody CHOPIN Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1 WAGNER/LISZT Isoldens Liebestod RAVEL La Valse Intermission MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Promenade The Gnome Promenade The Old Castle Promenade Tuileries The Ox-Cart Promenade Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle Promenade The Market at Limoges (The Great News) The Catacombs With the Dead in a Dead Language Baba-Yaga’s Hut The Great Gate of Kiev Elizabeth Joy Roe is a Steinway Artist Patrons are requested to turn off pagers, cellular phones, and signal watches during performances. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this auditorium. Notes on the Program By Elizabeth Joy Roe Prelude in B minor Liszt and Debussy. Yet Corigliano’s etudes JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH ( 1685 –1750) are distinctive in their effective synthesis of trans. ALEXANDER SILOTI (1863 –1945) stark dissonance and an expressive landscape grounded in Romanticism. Alexander Siloti, the legendary Russian pianist, The interval of a second—and its inversion composer, conductor, teacher, and impresario, and expansion to sevenths and ninths—is the was the bearer of an impressive musical lineage. connective thread between the etudes; its per - He studied with Franz Liszt and was the cousin mutations supply the foundation for the work’s and mentor of Sergei Rachmaninoff. His many harmonic construction and melodic motives. contributions to the music world include more In the preface to the composition, Corigliano than 200 piano arrangements and transcriptions offers an in-depth summary of each etude: of orchestral music by the great masters. Of this prolific output, perhaps his most well-known The first etude is for the left hand alone— transcription is of the Prelude in B minor a bold, often ferocious statement which from J. S. Bach’s Clavier Büchlein für Wilhelm introduces both an opening six-note row Friedemann Bach . Siloti dedicated this miniature (the first six notes of the work) and a to his daughter Kyriena. It has been played by melodic germ which follows the initial many eminent pianists, most famously by the outburst. This etude reaches a climax in great Russian pianist Emil Gilels who recorded which both the row and the thematic it and often performed it as a encore, leaving germ are heard together, and ends as the his audiences spellbound by the music’s right hand enters playing a slow chro - melancholy beauty. matic descent which introduces the next On a more personal note, there is a con - etude—a study of legato playing. nection between Siloti and my alma mater, In the short second etude both hands The Juilliard School. Siloti served on the fac - slowly float downward as a constant ulty of the Juilliard Graduate School from crossing of contrapuntal lines provides 1925 to 1942. A photo of him with his melodic interest. The sustaining of sound teacher Franz Liszt was featured in a Juilliard as well as the clarity of the crossing centennial exhibit at the New York Public voices is important here. Library for the Performing Arts in 2005. At The third etude, a study on a two-note the exhibit’s unveiling, I was bestowed the figure, follows—a fleet development on unique honor to perform this Prelude for a the simple pattern of a fifth contracting to distinguished audience that included a mem - a third. In this section there is much cross - ber of the Siloti family. ing of hands; during the process a melody emerges in the top voices. A buildup leads Etude Fantasy to a highly chromatic middle section JOHN CORIGLIANO (b. 1938) (marked ‘slithery’), with sudden virtuosic outbursts, after which the melody returns John Corigliano is assuredly one of the most to end the etude as it began. dynamic composers of our time. His Etude The fourth etude is a study of orna - Fantasy is full of the verve, incisiveness, and ments. Trills, grace notes, tremolos, brilliance that characterize his prolific creative glissandos, and roulades ornament the output. This striking fantasy is comprised of opening material (Etude I) and then five etudes that directly segue into each develop the first four notes of the third other as follows: etude into a frenetically charged scherzan - do where the four fingers of the left hand 1) For the Left Hand Alone softly play a low cluster of notes (like a 2) Legato distant drum) as the thumb alternates 3) Fifths to Thirds with the right hand in rapid barbaric 4) Ornaments thrusts. This leads to a restatement of 5) Melody the opening six-note row of the fantasy in a highly ornamented fashion. The formidable dimensions, inventive After a sonorous climax comes the final challenges, and brazen virtuosity of the etude, a study of melody. In it, the player piano writing evoke the definitive etudes of is required to isolate the melodic line, Notes on the Program projecting it through the filigree which in a completely organic and persuasive fash - surrounds it; here the atmosphere is deso - ion. The transcriptions are masterworks in late and non-climactic, and the material is their own right; they are pieces of unusual based entirely on the melodic implications force and imagination. on the left hand etude, with slight refer - Liszt’s operatic transcriptions are particularly ences to the second (legato) study. The outstanding. He wrote several transcriptions work ends quietly with the opening of compositions by his contemporary (and motto heard in retrograde accompanying another influential 19th-century figure) a mournful two-note ostinato. Richard Wagner. In a letter to Franz Liszt dat - ing from December 1854, Wagner professed: Compositional details aside, the Etude “Never in my life having enjoyed the true Fantasy generates a staggering impact with its happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to elemental ferocity, juxtapositions of the opaque this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the and translucent, and ingenious exploration of first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter the piano’s sonic capabilities. repletion. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde , the simplest, yet most full-blooded Nocturne in C-sharp minor, musical conception imaginable, and with the Op. 27, No.1 ‘black flag’ that waves at the end I shall cover FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810 –49) myself over—to die.” Wagner would soon experience the passionate desire to which he Chopin is arguably the paragon of piano had alluded; in 1856 he embarked on an illicit composers. His immense oeuvre is dominated affair with Mathilde Wesendonk, the wife of by music for the piano, and he himself was a his patron Otto Wesendonk, and it was during pianist of the highest imagination and refine - this liaison that Wagner composed Tristan ment. Although he composed works within und Isolde (1857 –59) . Although the affair traditional forms (i.e. three piano sonatas, dissolved shortly thereafter, his involvement two piano concertos, etc.), his specialty lay with Mathilde must have inspired the heated in shorter pieces, many of them dances of his eroticism of the music. native Poland. Of these shorter idiomatic What is more verifiable is the impact of works, the nocturnes (or “night pieces”) philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s world - stand out as especially representative of view—specifically the ideas in The World as Chopin’s genius. He was inspired to write these Will and Representation— on Wagner in the pieces upon hearing the nocturnes of the Irish creation of this opera. As Wagner revealed in composer John Field (1782–1837). Field orig - his autobiography, “It was certainly, in part, inated the nocturne, but Chopin brought it the serious mood into which Schopenhauer to its pinnacle, creating exquisite music that had transposed me and which was now press - captures the complex essence of the night. ing for an ecstatic expression of its structuring In this particular nocturne, Chopin explores ideas, that inspired in me the conception of the interplay between desolation and hope, Tristan und Isolde .” Wagner was stirred by turbulence and calm, passion and resigna - Schopenhauer’s concepts of phenomenon (the tion, foreboding and triumph, mystery and representation of the world) and noumenon clarity, darkness and light (both literal and (the will) as well as the philosopher’s recognition psychological). Within a relatively small of the driving stimulus of love: “The ultimate scale, Chopin conjures an existential, epic aim of all love affairs… is more important emotional journey. Simply put, this is music than all other aims in man’s life; and therefore of haunting, soulful beauty. it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it. ” Isoldens Liebestod Love as an overwhelming, all-consuming RICHARD WAGNER (1813 –83) force is portrayed in Tristan und Isolde. Based trans. FRANZ LISZT (1811 –86) on the tragic romance by the medieval German writer Gottfried von Strassburg (which was Franz Liszt—legendary pianist, composer, originally derived from the 12th-century cultural icon—was also a brilliant transcriber for legend Tristan and Iseult ), the three-act, the piano. He possessed the uncanny ability four-hour opera recounts the ill-fated love to transfer the spirit of the original work (be between the Irish princess Isolde and the it an opera, symphony, or Lied ) to the piano Cornish knight Tristan. The desperation of Notes on the Program their longing is embodied in the incessant In our present age the mythic, full-throttle harmonic suspensions, voluptuous orchestra - essence of Tristan and Isolde’s passion may tion, and prolonged sequences of unresolved seem unrealistic and melodramatic.