Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series
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Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series Roger Tapping, Viola with Laurie Smukler, Violin Qing Jiang, Piano Behind every Juilliard artist is all of Juilliard —including you. With hundreds of dance, drama, and music performances, Juilliard is a wonderful place. When you join one of our membership programs, you become a part of this singular and celebrated community. by Claudio Papapietro Photo of cellist Khari Joyner Become a member for as little as $250 Join with a gift starting at $1,250 and and receive exclusive benefits, including enjoy VIP privileges, including • Advance access to tickets through • All Association benefits Member Presales • Concierge ticket service by telephone • 50% discount on ticket purchases and email • Invitations to special • Invitations to behind-the-scenes events members-only gatherings • Access to master classes, performance previews, and rehearsal observations (212) 799-5000, ext. 303 [email protected] juilliard.edu The Juilliard School presents Faculty Recital Roger Tapping, Viola with Laurie Smukler, Violin Qing Jiang, Piano Friday, March 16, 2018, 7:30pm Paul Hall Part of the Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series JOHANNES BRAHMS Scherzo in C Minor, Op. 4 (1833–97) from F-A-E Sonata for Viola and Piano (1853) ALBAN BERG Four Pieces for Viola and Piano, Op. 5 (1913) (1885–1935) (trans. Roger Tapping) Mässig–Langsam Sehr langsam Sehr rasch Langsam BRAHMS Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 (1865) (transcription for violin, viola, and piano approved by Brahms) Andante Scherzo: Allegro: Molto meno allegro Adagio mesto Finale: Allegro con brio Intermission DMITRI Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 (1975) SHOSTAKOVICH Moderato (1906–75) Allegretto Adagio Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes, including one intermission Major funding for establishing Paul Recital Hall and for continuing access to its series of public programs has been granted by The Bay Foundation and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation in memory of Josephine Bay Paul. 1 Notes on the Program By Gavin Plumley A personal, confessional quality runs through the music on tonight’s program. Both of the works by Johannes Brahms were inspired by connections with his friends and family. With Alban Berg, of course, everything was emotionally intense, as can be heard in his four aphoristic pieces for clarinet and piano. And it was Berg who became one of the most important figures in Dmitri Shostakovich’s apprenticeship, before the Soviet authorities suppressed what they deemed Western, “bourgeois” music. In Shostakovich's Sonata for viola and piano, however, we find him at the very end of his life, no longer pondering the state of the nation but his own mortality. Tonight’s recital may end with old age, but it begins with youth: Brahms was just 20 when he penned his 1853 Scherzo. It is the product of a remarkable meeting of musical minds that year, including Joseph Joachim, whom Brahms had met in Göttingen, Germany, during the summer, and the violinist’s esteemed friends Robert and Clara Johannes Schumann. With Joachim’s encouragement, Brahms presented himself Brahms at the Schumanns’ home in Düsseldorf on September 30 and made a marked impression. Robert encapsulated his thoughts about the fledgling Born: composer in an article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, lauding Brahms May 7, 1883, as a “young eagle” who had “sprung like Minerva fully armed from the in Hamburg, head of the son of Cronus.” Clara, on the other hand, may well have Germany harbored more amorous thoughts; she and Brahms continued to have a complex relationship for the rest of their lives. Died: April 3, 1897, in By the time he met the Schumanns, Brahms had amassed a significant Vienna, Austria portfolio of works, including the Scherzo for Piano, Op. 4, which Liszt had already played, and his Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5. The Scherzo we hear this evening echoes the stormy and impetuous nature of those works, albeit here paying tribute to Joachim. After a surprise visit from the violinist in mid-October, Schumann had the idea that he and Brahms, as well as Schumann’s pupil Albert Dietrich should write a sonata for violin and piano, each taking responsibility for an individual movement (or movements). Dietrich wrote the opening Allegro, Schumann composed the second and fourth movements, and Brahms took on the challenge of the Scherzo. Each was to be branded in the form of a musical cryptogram with Joachim’s personal motto, “Frei aber einsam” (free but lonely), hence the Sonata’s eventual title. Brahms’s Scherzo, heard here in a transcription for viola and piano, is haunted by the spirit of the equivalent movement in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (also in C minor). Its characteristic, driving rhythms make their presence felt as the music swings violently between 6/8 and 3/4 time. The second section bursts forth in A-flat major, so often the complement to Beethoven’s and, in turn, Brahms’s C minor daemon, before climbing towards the tonic major. The Trio is more demure, in effect representing 2 the eye of the storm, but the Scherzo’s rhythmic tattoo makes its presence felt here too, pushing ahead to a repeat of the initial charge. If the Scherzo reveals Brahms’ impulsive nature, then his Horn Trio, Op. 40 of 1865 is characteristic of an equally prominent vein of melancholy. There was good reason for its muted tone, given that it was composed in the immediate aftermath of Brahms’ mother’s death. The Trio is cast in four movements and was conceived with a natural horn in mind. While the part is taken here by a viola, it is important to note the features of that original instrument. Brahms’ father, for instance, played a natural horn, the limited range of which—hence the tonic of E flat throughout—was compensated by its innate (if muted) nobility. The rich timbre of the viola provides a fitting equivalent. The work opens with an extended ternary (ABABA), rather than the expected sonata, form. Yet, as later commentators noted, a spirit of development is apparent throughout. Rarely, however, is the mood of pensive prayerfulness disturbed and even the most rhapsodic piano Alban Berg writing cannot upset the serenity of its melodies. The contrasting ebullience of the Scherzo, not unlike that for Joachim’s F-A-E Sonata, Born: constitutes a backward glance to Brahms’ youth (when his mother was February 9, 1885, still alive). in Vienna, Austria A richer harmonic palette is revealed in the Adagio mesto, which is veiled Died: in E flat minor. The shift to the darker side of the tonic required the horn December 24, to “stop“ various notes, i.e. bending the pitch by placing a hand deep into 1935, in Vienna the bell. A viola may adapt more easily to such expressive chromaticism, but the sombre tone remains. Finally, Brahms returns to traditional hunting tropes, so often employed by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Indeed, this last Allegro strikes a manifestly Classical pose, shrugging off mourning and delivering a celebration of life. By the time Brahms completed his Horn Trio, he was firmly resident in Vienna, the city that was to be his home until his death in 1897. Alban Berg was just a teenager at the time, but his later teacher and mentor Arnold Schoenberg was profoundly moved by Brahms’ death. He and his future brother-in-law, Alexander Zemlinsky, were self-professing “Brahmins,” who saw great ingenuity within the music of this supposedly conservative composer. Indeed in later life Schoenberg would call him “the progressive.” Of course there was perhaps nobody more forward-looking than Schoenberg himself. When Berg became his pupil, in October 1904, Schoenberg had rejected the Brahmsian idiom of his earlier chamber music and instead pursued a more expressive, dissonant language. And Schoenberg was as radical a teacher as he was a composer. Instructing 3 Notes on the Program (Continued) Berg, he found that his pupil “was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme.” Berg’s world was that of song and Schoenberg was determined to broaden his pupil’s horizons. While vocal music was always to remain Berg’s primary outlet, not least in his two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu, he duly followed Schoenberg’s advice and published his Piano Sonata as his first official opus in 1910. Four particularly expressive songs followed as Berg’s Op. 2, with a String Quartet as his Op. 3, before five more songs, setting postcard texts by the Café Central habitué Peter Altenberg, were released as the fourth official work in his catalogue. Following this instrumental-vocal-instrumental scheme, Berg’s Op. 5 featured Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano. They may mirror the four movements of the late Romantic sonata, much like the works Brahms wrote for the clarinettist Richard Mühfeld, but the Pieces are brief, even aphoristic—more akin to the Altenberg songs—and compressed into the Dmitri timespan customarily occupied by just one sonata movement. It was Shostakovich Schoenberg who had called for scores to be “concise.” Music, he felt, should not be built, but expressed. Accordingly, Berg wrote in the free, Born: atonal language his teacher described as emancipated dissonance. The September 25, opening movement is often playful, with various scurries and trills, though 1906, in St. it soon turns brooding, as in the elegy that follows. Indeed, a feeling of Petersburg, Russia melancholy persists throughout, with the third movement preparing for a particularly somber Finale. The throbbing chords here are reminiscent of Died: the last of the four nocturnal songs featuring poems by Friedrich Hebbel August 9, 1975, in and occultist Alfred Mombert that Berg had issued as his Op.