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Aspen Music Festival and School Robert Spano, Music Director The 2020 Mercedes T. Bass Sunday Concert Series Alan Fletcher, President and CEO A Recital by James Ehnes, violin and Andrew Armstrong, piano Sunday, July 12, 2020 3 pm BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major, op. 12, no. 1 (1797–98) 19' (1770–1827) Allegro con brio Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto Rondo: Allegro Adagio from Volin Sonata No. 6 in A major, op. 30, no. 1 (1801) 6' Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, op. 24, "Spring" (1800–01) 24' Allegro Adagio molto espressivo Scherzo: Allegro molto Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo With special thanks to Kay Bucksbaum, Ruth Carver, Soledad and Robert Hurst, Joan Fabry and Michael Klein, Lisa and Will Mesdag, and Betty and Lloyd Schermer The Aspen Music Festival and School uses Steinway and Boston pianos, designed by Steinway & Sons; Steinway & Sons is represented in Colorado exclusively by Schmitt Music. Aspen Music Festival and School Robert Spano, Music Director Alan Fletcher, President and CEO A Recital by James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong Sunday, July 12, 2020 3 pm James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after violinists on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favorite guest of many of the world’s most respected conductors including Ashkenazy, Alsop, Sir Andrew Davis, Denève, Elder, Ivan Fischer, Gardner, Paavo Järvi, Mena, Noseda, Robertson and Runnicles. Ehnes’s long list of orchestras includes, amongst others, the Boston, Chicago, London, NHK and Vienna Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles, New York, Munich and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Cleveland, Philadelphia, Philharmonia and DSO Berlin orchestras. Recent orchestral highlights include the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with Noseda, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Shelley, San Francisco Symphony with Janowski, Frank- Photo credit: Ben Ealovega furt Radio Symphony with Orozco-Estrada, London Sympho- ny with Harding, and Munich Philharmonic with van Zweden, Praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling as well as his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra technique, pianist Andrew Armstrong has delighted audi- at the Lincoln Center in Spring 2019. In 2019/20, Ehnes is Art- ences across Asia, Europe, Latin America, Canada, and the ist in Residence with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which United States. includes performances of the Elgar Concerto with Luisi, a play/direct program leg by Ehnes, and a chamber music The 2019-2020 Season takes Andrew across the globe with program. concerts in London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Bergen, Dresden, Copenhagen, Prague, and across the US, Canada, and Aus- James Ehnes plays the “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715. tralia. Also this season, Andrew and violinist James Ehnes team up to release the complete cycle of 10 Beethoven Violin Sonatas to celebrate the master’s 250th birthday in 2020. The duo performs the cycle in cities around the world this year. In addition to directing Chamber Music on Main at the Co- lumbia Museum of Art (SC) and the Chamber Music Camp at Green Lake Festival of Music (WI), Andrew is devoted to outreach programs and playing for children. In addition to his many concerts, his performances are heard regularly on National Public Radio and WQXR, New York City’s premier classical music station. Mr. Armstrong lives in Massachusetts, with his wife Esty, their three children Jack (14), Elise (9), and Gabriel (2), and their two dogs Comet & Dooker. Photo credit: Ben Ealovega A RECITAL BY JAMES EHNES AND ANDREW ARMSTRONG • PROGRAM NOTES no naturalness, no melody,” said the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitschrift. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN The first movement opens with a flourish (based on Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major, op. 12, no. 1 broken triads), then a broad theme that springs up an octave in the violin and settles downward, while the Soon after Ludwig van Beethoven arrived in Vienna, piano has sweeping runs over dynamic chords. The he sought instruction from the Imperial Kapellmeister players exchange their roles and the piano elegantly Antonio Salieri (who has been so unjustly accused varies the upward-leaping figure. The modulation to of being the “murderer” of Mozart). Beethoven the secondary key is dramatic and complex, with a particularly wanted advice in vocal composition— surprising emphasis on the key of F, which turns out to which meant Italian opera, the main path to fame be a red herring in the path to the expected dominant, and fortune in Vienna. The “lessons” were irregular A. This is reached definitively only at the very end of and unconstrained, usually consisting of Beethoven’s the exposition, which thus takes on a very dynamic setting of some Italian text brought for Salieri’s character. And what had seemed a unexpected criticism. The master-pupil relationship continued in emphasis on F during the modulation explains itself as an offhand way at least until 1802, and the friendship the anticipation of another surprise when Beethoven between the two musicians can be documented as late leads of the development section in that unexpected as 1809. key. The development is very brief, but ends with a long, tension-accumulating dominant pedal over which It is not surprising, then, that Beethoven should anticipations of the opening gestures grow more and dedicate a work to Salieri. What may be a surprise is more urgent until they explode in the recapitulation. that the work in question is not vocal, but rather the three Violin Sonatas published in 1799 as Opus 12. But The second movement is a charming set of variations, in the eighteenth century, the violin sonata was still a quite orthodox in character. There are four of them light form largely intended for amateur music-making, following the statement of the theme, the first two being and the tunefulness of the musical style could be largely decorative (one featuring the piano, the other expected to appeal to a composer of the Italian, rather the violin). The third variation, in the minor mode, than the German, branch of Viennese musical culture. generates a greater intensity that remains, to some degree, in the quiet final go-round. The sonata in D was almost certainly Beethoven’s very first contribution to the genre. Beethoven and his The finale is a lively and inventive rondo making violinist friend Schuppanzigh played a violin sonata excellent use of an offbeat sforzando in the main theme, in a public concert on March 29, 1798. At that time and developing its potential throughout an extended it was very unusual to hear chamber music in large treatment. —©STEVEN LEDBETTER halls, so the work performed may well have been the present sonata, which has a dramatic character that would fit well in such a context. Though the piece offers few difficulties to the listener today, an early reviewer LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN found the entire Opus 12 to consist of “strange sonatas, Adagio from Violin Sonata No. 6 in A major, op. overladen with difficulty,” and he recommended that 30, no. 1 Beethoven attempt to compose more “naturally” and stop trying to be so individual. Still he was no doubt The three Violin Sonatas published as Opus 30 were looking at the sonatas from the point of view of the composed in the summer of 1802, probably before average amateur performer of the day, for whom they Beethoven moved to Heiligenstadt, an outlying suburb would, indeed, have offered insuperable difficulties. of Vienna, where he wrote the famous “Heiligenstadt Moreover the contrapuntal character of Opus 12, No. Testament.” This was an expression of despair and 1—which soon after its opening has three different even suicidal thoughts on account of his ill health musical ideas running simultaneously in the violin, the and the growing deafness that he had still not fully piano right hand, and the piano left hand—would have acknowledged. In spite of his despondency at this seemed terribly “academic” to the average musician time, Beethoven nonetheless composed a remarkable of the day—“Learned, learned, always learned, number of works before the end of the year: the three A RECITAL BY JAMES EHNES AND ANDREW ARMSTRONG • PROGRAM NOTES Violin Sonatas of Opus 30, the three Piano Sonatas referred to as the first period, a time of growth of Opus 31, two sets of keyboard variations, and the and development based on the models of his great Second Symphony. The Violin Sonatas were published forebears. The coming years were marked by his pursuit in 1803 with a dedication to Emperor Alexander I of of the symphonic ideal, by the creation of music filled Russia, one of many dedications Beethoven made over with an energetic dynamism which, in the minds of the years to the Russian aristocracy, of which the best most people, comprises their notion of Beethoven. But known is that of the Opus 59 String Quartets to Count even during that time Beethoven also composed works Rasumovsky. of striking lyricism—the Violin Concerto, for example, or the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Fourth and Prior to Beethoven’s time, violin sonatas were regularly Sixth symphonies. And that strain of relaxed lyricism billed as works for piano “with the accompaniment appears already in the first theme of the F major Violin of a violin”—that is, the keyboard part constituted Sonata, a melody that Beethoven may have adapted the essence of the work and the violin provided from the theme of a Clementi piano sonata (Opus 25, merely an extra dimension of sonority which could, No. 4); its open sunny mood is no doubt responsible in many cases, be omitted altogether. Gradually over for the sonata’s nickname “Spring” (which does not the years, the violin part became more independent come from Beethoven himself).

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