MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE PRESENTS 1 TASMIN LITTLE & PIERS LANE TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2018 GREAT PERFORMERS CONCERT SERIES 2018 ‘ Her playing communicated her certainty in what she was doing, which then allowed her intoxicating blend of power, passion, poetry and drop-dead beautiful playing to conjure a magic that just let the music flow.’ HERALD SCOTLAND PHOTO:BENJAMIN EALOVEGA VIOLIN & PIANO TASMIN LITTLE U.K. & PIERS LANE AUSTRALIA TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2018, 7.30PM Elisabeth Murdoch Hall 6.45PM Free pre-concert talk with Monica Curro DURATION One hour and 50-minutes including a 20-minute interval This concert is being recorded by ABC Classic FM for a deferred broadcast. Melbourne Recital Centre acknowledges the people of the Kulin Nation on whose land this concert is being presented. SERIES PARTNER LEGAL FRIENDS OF MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE PROGRAM TASMIN LITTLE & PIERS LANE JOHANNES BRAHMS INTERVAL 20-minutes (b. 1833, Hamburg, Germany – d. 1897, Vienna, Austria) ELENA KATS-CHERNIN (b. 1957, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) Scherzo from F-A-E Sonata Russian Rag Revisited – world premiere FRANZ SCHUBERT (b. 1797, Vienna, Austria – d. 1828, Vienna, MAURICE RAVEL (b. 1875, Ciboure, France – d. 1937, Paris, France) Austria) Pièce en forme de Habanera Sonatina in D, D.384 Allegro molto 4 CÉSAR FRANCK Andante (b. 1822, Liège, Belgium – d. 1890, Paris, France) Allegro vivace Sonata for violin & piano in A Allegretto ben moderato KAROL SZYMANOWSKI Allegro (b. 1882, Tymoshivka, Ukraine – d. 1937, Recitativo-Fantasia: Ben moderato Lausanne, Switzerland) Allegretto poco mosso Violin Sonata in D minor Allegro moderato Andantino tranquillo e dolce – Scherzando (più moto) - Tempo 1 Finale. Allegro molto, quasi presto GREAT PERFORMERS 2018 ABOUT THE MUSIC Greatness has many parents, they say, but failure is an orphan. In the history of classical composition, the reverse seems to be true, for how many collaborative works can you recall involving any of the ‘household names’? There are the 83 variations on a theme of Diabelli by his contemporaries including Liszt (then aged 12) and Schubert and; these include the 33 variations by Beethoven; there is the Hexameron, variations on a theme from Bellini’s I Puritani by Chopin, Liszt and Thalberg (among others); Eugene Goossens 5 composed a theme in 1944 and commissioned 10 American composers, including Paul Creston, JOHANNES BRAHMS Aaron Copland and Howard Hanson, to write a set of ‘Jubilee Variations’ on it; and then there’s the most widely-streamed collaborative work of them motto ‘Frei aber einsam’ (‘free but alone’). all, from China: the ‘Yellow River’ Concerto. When he played the work for the first time, he was challenged to identify the composer of each The Scherzo which opens tonight’s recital is movement; he did so with ease. from one such work. Brahms, then only 20, met Schumann in 1853, not long after which Schumann The work has had a complex afterlife. It was not praised him as a ‘mighty warrior’ of music; published during the composers’ lifetimes; indeed, in tribute to their mutual friend, the violinist Schumann incorporated his two movements into Joseph Joachim, Schumann proposed creating a his Violin Sonata No.3. Joachim kept the original collaborative sonata, in which the four movements manuscript, from which he allowed only Brahms’ would be split between Schumann, Schumann’s Scherzo to be published, but not until 1906, nine pupil Albert Dietrich, and Brahms. Dietrich, a years after Brahms’s death. The complete sonata name which would otherwise be lost to musical finally appeared in print in 1935. history, contributed the opening movement, Schumann the intermezzo and finale and Brahms this muscular scherzo (which shares some musical DNA with the scherzo from the Horn Trio Brahms would write 12 years later). It was Joachim who suggested the title, a contraction of his personal TASMIN LITTLE & PIERS LANE date from this period also. Although Schubert was widening his circle of friends, and although many of these friends would help promote his music, very little of his work was published. This Sonata, along with the other two that, as a set, constitute his first three sonatas for violin and keyboard, did not see the light of day until 1836, when they were called ‘three easy sonatinas,’ probably for commercial reasons. They may not contain many virtuosic flights of fancy but, as far as Schubert was concerned, they were sonatas. The spirit of Mozart is very near in this music, touched by Schubert’s gift for singing lyricism. FRANZ SCHUBERT 6 There are nearly 1500 surviving compositions by Brahms’ reverence for the music of the past Schubert; he composed more than half before the influenced his art profoundly. He worshipped age of 21. If all of Szymanowski’s music we knew Beethoven, and helped prepare performing was work he’d composed by that age there would editions of works by Couperin, W.F. Bach and be only a little to know; as a composer he was, C.P.E. Bach. Then there was Schubert. Brahms at this point, at the beginning of a tempestuous told a friend in 1863: ‘My love for Schubert is a musical journey that saw him absorb and very serious one, probably just because it is not a transmute the influences at play on his work to fleeting fancy. Where is genius like his, which soars create a uniquely personal musical language. aloft so boldly and surely, where we then see the The masterworks of his later years – the opera King first few enthroned? To me he is like a child of the Roger, the Symphonie Concertante and the ballet gods, who plays with Jupiter’s thunder, albeit also Harnasie among them – show how fascinated occasionally handling it oddly. But he plays in such he was by the music of Debussy, Stravinsky and a region, at such a height, to which the others are Scriabin, but his aesthetic was also informed by far short of raising themselves …’ influences as diverse as Persian mysticism and the writings of Nietzsche. There is little thunder and a lot of sunshine in the D major Sonata featured in tonight’s program, When the pianist Arthur Rubinstein first met composed in 1816. Schubert met the poet Franz Szymanowski, in 1904 – the year of this D minor von Schober around this time, with whom he lived Sonata – all that lay in the future. ‘There he was: for a while. This was a productive year for him. a tall, slender young man. He looked older than ‘I compose every morning, and when one piece his 21 years … wearing a bowler hat and gloves – is done, I begin another,’ he wrote, and his appearing more like a diplomat than a musician. Symphonies No.4 and No.5, and a number of lieder But his beautiful, large, grey-blue eyes had a sad, GREAT PERFORMERS 2018 The opening work in the second half of tonight’s program tells you how blessed tonight’s performers are to have a favourite piece of Australian music re-composed especially for them. As Elena Kats-Chernin writes: ‘Russian Rag was originally composed in 1996 as a commission from ABC Classics for their album ‘Rags to Riches’. This version of Russian Rag was written in 2018 as a gift to the two dazzling musicians Tasmin Little and Piers Lane. In the process of creating this transcription many a page has flown between Australia and the U.K. at some ELENA KATS-CHERNIN very unusual hours and things like ‘I’ve added a few more sultry chords as well as a glissando at 7 intelligent and most sensitive expression.’ So one spot or how about some double stops and Rubinstein says of his Polish compatriot in the left hand pizzicato?’ were written, by Tasmin and first volume of his autobiography, My Young Years. sometimes me! A completely new violin solo He was pianist in the Sonata’s first performance, introduction to the theme was created, cascading and in his memoir he recalls his astonishment chords for Piers were added, along with virtuoso at Szymanowski’s work at this time: ‘His style writing for both players and old-fashioned owed much to Chopin, his form had something portamento to suggest nostalgia for a bygone era.’ of Scriabin, but there was already the stamp of a powerful, original personality to be felt in the Ravel was a master of Spanish travel in music. line of his melody and in his daring and original From the Rapsodie espagnole of 1907– one of modulations.’ his first big successes – to Bolero more than two decades later, his ability to capture a kind The work is conventional in design but not in of idealised Spain in sound impressed even the temperament: it leaps off the page from the Spanish. Ravel’s Spanish contemporary Manuel first bar, with passionate exchanges between the de Falla believed it all started with Ravel’s mother; two instruments. The opening movement ends one of Ravel’s powerful early memories was of his pensively, paving the way for the lyrical Andantino; mother Marie – who was Basque born, but grew up the only disturbances to the second movement’s in Madrid – singing Spanish folksongs to him. The singing atmosphere are gently contrasting pizzicato Pièce en forme de Habanera dates from the same passages. The finale’s tarantella often gets waylaid year as the Rapsodie espagnole (so that was quite a for rhapsodic musings by both instruments, before Spanish year). Ravel originally conceived this sultry a grand, declamatory peroration that sets you up study as a vocalise for bass voice and piano; it has beautifully for intermission. since been transcribed for an exceptional variety TASMIN LITTLE & PIERS LANE The Violin Sonata is one of a handful of works from the last years of Franck’s life on which his reputation rests, the others being his Symphony, the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano, the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, the Piano Quintet and the String Quartet.