Thursday, March 12, 2015, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano Tamara Stefanovich, piano

The Piano Music of Pierre Boulez

PROGRAM

Pierre Boulez (b. 1925) Notations (1945) I. Fantastique — Modéré II. Très vif III. Assez lent IV. Rythmique V. Doux et improvisé VI. Rapide VII. Hiératique VIII. Modéré jusqu'à très vif IX. Lointain — Calme X. Mécanique et très sec XI. Scintillant XII. Lent — Puissant et âpre

Boulez Sonata No. 1 (1946) I. Lent — Beaucoup plus allant II. Assez large — Rapide

Boulez Sonata No. 2 (1947–1948) I. Extrêmement rapide II. Lent III. Modéré, presque vif IV. Vif

INTERMISSION

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Boulez Sonata No. 3 (1955–1957; 1963)

Formant 3 Constellation-Miroir Formant 2 Trope

Boulez Incises (1994; 2001)

Boulez Une page d’éphéméride (2005)

Boulez Structures, Deuxième livre (1961) for two pianos, four hands

Chapitre I Chapitre II (Pièces 1–2, Encarts 1–4, Textes 1–6)

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 Patron Sponsor Françoise Stone. Hamburg Steinway piano provided by Steinway & Sons, San Francisco. Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

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THE PROGRAM AT A GLANCE the radical break with tradition that his music supposedly embodies. If Boulez belongs to an Tonight’s program includes the complete avant-garde, it is to a French avant-garde tra - piano music of Pierre Boulez, as well as a per - dition dating back two centuries to Berlioz formance of the second book of Structures for and Delacroix, and his attitudes are deeply two pianos. The program opens with Douze rooted in the avant-garde of the later 19th notations , twelve miniatures that Boulez com - century. As a young man, he had already dis - posed when he was 20. covered “a Debussy-Cézanne-Mallarmé real - All three of Boulez’s piano sonatas are also ity at the root of all modernity,” and his essays included on the program. The early two- are dotted with references to Baudelaire and movement First Sonata was completed when Rimbaud, Manet and Monet. the composer was 21 years old, but the foun - Like Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), dation of Boulez’s approach is already appar - Boulez’s comrade in arms throughout the ent from the textures and rhythms in 1950s, Boulez rejected certain elements of his this work. Inspired by Beethoven’s heritage, but only while embracing others. “Hammerklavier” Sonata, the four-movement Boulez and Stockhausen were immensely im - Second Sonata is the most famous of the pressed by the works that Schoenberg and Boulez’s piano sonatas and the most fiendishly Stravinsky had written before World War I— dif ficult to play. Only two movements of the works like Erwartung (1909 ) and Le sacre du Third Sonata have been completed to the printemps (1913) that dated from the period composer’s satisfaction and published: when these composers produced their most Constellation -Miroir and Trope . These move - original and freewheeling work—but they ments inhabit a more serene and rarified were disappointed by the comparative con - world from the Second Sonata with its violent servatism of the music these same composers Beethovenian expressivity. The order of the had written during the period between the material in them is not entirely fixed, and the wars. Boulez and Stockhausen hoped to revive pianist can take different routes as desired. the exhilaration characteristic of the original In Structures, Deuxième livre , the freedoms voyage of discovery that these composers had embodied in the Third Sonata are shared by made in the period before World War I while two pianists. In the second chapter in partic - exploiting and transcending their most radi - ular, the pianists play with considerable inde - cal innovations. pendence from one another, and the ordering Stemming from the French tradition, of the material is not precisely fixed. Incises Boulez was profoundly influenced by the tex - (“Interpolations”) is a virtuoso showpiece tures, the sensitivity to sonority, and the reti - written for the contestants in a piano compe - cence so characteristic of Debussy and Ravel. tition. Une page d’éphéméride (“Page from an At the same time, he continued the explo - Almanac”) is an album leaf Boulez con - rations of a chromatic post-tonal harmony tributed to an anthology of piano pieces writ - begun by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg ten for young pianists. while benefiting from the approach to rhythm so characteristic of Stravinsky and Bartók. ABOUT THE COMPOSER THE EARLY WORKS FOR PIANO Pierre Boulez (b. 1925) was a leading figure in the postwar European avant-garde, and there Written when the composer was 20 or 21 , the was a period in the early 1950s when he at - Notations for piano are the earliest works tempted to make tabula rasa of tradition, to Boulez still acknowledges. A collection of liquidate his heritage and start afresh. twelve miniatures, they are filled with echoes Nevertheless, it’s a mistake to overemphasize of the music of earlier composers including

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Stravinsky, Messiaen, Webern, and perhaps movement analogous to a traditional sonata even Honegger. The relationship of No. 2, Très form, a slow second movement, a scherzo vif , to Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps is third movement, and a finale. One of the even more evident from the orchestral version models for the sonata was Beethoven’s Piano that Boulez composed many years later (1978) Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, the than from the original piano piece, while “Hammerklavier,” and the affinities between No. 9, Lointain—Calme , recalls Webern’s Five the two sonatas are especially apparent from Movements for string quartet, Op. 5, and Four the first movement, where much of the coun - Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 7. terpoint is constituted of the same kinds of The first two sonatas (1946 and 1948) are large leaps into aggressive trills as are found early works, too, and the writing in them is less in the fugue from Beethoven’s sonata. supple or assured, more awkward, even, than The Second Sonata was written during a the smoother writing in his more mature period when Boulez was especially interested works. Nevertheless, the foundation of Boulez’s in the ideas of the post-surrealist playwright approach is already laid out in these sonatas, an Antonin Artaud, architect of the “Theater of approach that can be traced back to the devel - Cruelty.” In the theater Artaud envisioned, the opments in the period before World War I that audience was to be confronted with hypnotic so interested him. The approach to rhythm in rituals alternately inducing ecstasy and terror. the sonatas, for example, is ultimately derived Writing under Artaud’s influence, Boulez from Schoenberg and Stravinsky. claimed that “music should be collective spells A natural outgrowth of the rubato or flexi - and hysteria,” concluding that the composer bility in the projection of rhythm already must “seize the delirium and organize it.” characteristic of the music of Wagner and Exhibiting the violent Beethovenian expres - Mahler, the rhythms in Schoenberg’s music sivity so characteristic of the young Boulez, are sometimes referred to as “prose rhythms” the Second Sonata is a classic instance of the because they fail to coalesce into larger regu - “organized delirium” he had in mind. lar patterns comparable to the stanzas in tra - ditional verse. In Boulez’s First Sonata the use THE THIRD SONATA AND of such rhythms is carried to extremes: there SECOND BOOK OF STRUCTURES is often a continuous written out rubato with - out any sense of a regular beat, and the seam - The Third Sonata (1955–1957; 1963) was less unfolding is not subject to any larger originally planned as a five-movement work, grouping. In Stravinsky’s music there is gen - of which two movements, Trope and erally a regular pattern of beats, but, rather Constellation/Miroir , have been published. than being grouped into regular patterns, they With these movements we enter a rarified are grouped irregularly (e.g. 1–2–3 1–2–3–4– 5 world very different from the world of the 1–2–3–4). In parts of the First Sonata Boulez Second Sonata, Constellation/Miroir in partic - uses the same kinds of patterns. ular containing the most poetic and refined A Mount Everest of the repertory, the music Boulez has ever written for the piano. Second Sonata is the most famous of the Like Schumann’s Fantasie , the Third Sonata sonatas and a fiendishly difficult workout for is a kind of anti-sonata, an attempt to produce the pianist. Nevertheless, the Second Sonata a large scale multimovement work as ambi - is a more traditional work than the First, an tious as a Beethoven sonata while escaping attempt “both to conquer and to transcend the any reliance on traditional forms, and the academy,” as Charles Rosen once put it. The sonata is devoid of anything resembling four movements of the sonata more or less Beethovenian dynamism or forward drive. correspond to the movements of a traditional Nevertheless the approach to form in the four-movement work, with an ambitious first sonata is not without precedent. Already in

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Wagner’s operas, we find developments that that each sonority continues to resonate are intermittent and open ended, develop - through subsequent attacks. Silently depress - ments that follow the course of the drama. ing the keys as the “points” are attacked en - Similarly, the sonata form tied to Dr. Schön in ables certain strings to vibrate sympathetically, Berg’s Lulu only unfolds as Schön comes and creating the harmonics. goes, while the developments in Debussy’s La Trope has four sections— Texte , Parenthèse , mer and Jeux depend on sudden mercurial Glose , and Commentaire —at least three of shifts. These examples are all precedents for these titles (parenthesis, gloss, and commen - the Third Sonata, where the order of the de - tary) suggesting not so much linear argument velopments is not definitively fixed. as digression. The performer may begin with The Third Sonata was written under the in - any section before circling through the others, fluence of Un coup de dès n’abolira le hasard each performance representing only a cut [“A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish from the total form. Commentaire may be Chance”] by the symbolist poet Stéphane played before or after Glose . Mallarmé, whose L’après midi d’un faune in - In the second book of Structures for two pi - spired Debussy’s prélude. As Stravinsky re - anos (1956; 1961) the freedoms embodied in marked, Mallarmé’s description of the poem the Third Sonata are shared by two pianists. applies equally well to the Third Sonata, the In the second chapitre (“chapter”) in particu - poem, according to Mallarmé, consisting of lar, the pianists play with considerable inde - “the fragmentary interruptions of a capital pendence from one another, and the ordering phrase…everything takes place by abridge - is not precisely fixed, one of the two pianists ment, hypothetically; one avoids narration.” playing various “inserts” where he or she Stravinsky went on to say that “Mallarmé chooses to introduce them. thought he was borrowing ideas from music and would no doubt be surprised to learn THE LATER WORKS FOR PIANO that 60 years later his poem had cross-polli - nated the two arts.” Like Un coup de dès , In 1994, Luciano Berio and Maurizio Pollini Constellation/Miroir is laid out on the page asked Boulez to write a piece for a piano com - like a constellation, and the pianist can take petition, and the result was Incises (1994; ex - various routes through a given section before panded 2001), a virtuosic example of the more moving on to the next. hedonistic writing characteristic of Boulez’s Constellation/Miroir is the still center of the later years. In Incises , an exhilarating toccata projected five-movement work: listening to it, continually interrupts the development of the we drift from one isolated burst of activity to mysterious material exposed in the opening. the next. There are two kinds of fragments in Une page d’éphéméride (2005 ) is an album the movement, “points”—attacks suspended leaf Boulez contributed to an anthology of over a continuously changing web of har - piano pieces written for young pianists. monics—and “blocks,” “structures based on ever changing resonant aggregates,” as Boulez David Gable described them. While playing these aggre - © @>?B The Carnegie Hall Corporation gates the pianist uses the sustaining pedal so Reprinted with permission.

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undertakes a recital tour with Tamara Stefanovich, playing all of Pierre Boulez’s com - pleted works for piano in celebration of the composer’s 90th birthday. Mr. Aimard has had close collaborations with many leading composers, including György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elliott Carter, Boulez, and George Benjamin and had G D / a long association with György Ligeti, record - e v e r

g ing his complete works for piano. Most re - g r o

B cently, he performed Carter’s last piece—

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a Epigrams for piano, cello, and violin—which M was written for him. Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music Through professorships at the Hochschule of our time and as a uniquely significant in - Köln and Paris Conservatory, as well as con - terpreter of piano repertoire from every age, cert-lectures and workshops worldwide, he Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an interna - sheds an inspiring and very personal light on tionally celebrated career. music of all periods. In 2005, he was the re - Each season he performs worldwide with cipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s major orchestras under conductors such as Instrumentalist Award and was named Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Jurowski, Peter “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical Eötvös, Sir Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka America in 2007. In 2015 , he launches a major Salonen. He has created, directed and per - online resource in collaboration with Klavier- formed in a number of residencies, including Festival Ruhr and Vincent Meyer, centered on projects at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln the performance and teaching of Ligeti’s piano Center, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Cité de la music featuring masterclasses and perform - Musique in Paris, Tanglewood Festival, and ances of the Études and other works. London’s Southbank Centre. Currently, Mr. Aimard now records exclusively for Mr. Aimard is Artistic Director of the Deutsche Grammophon. His first DG release, Aldeburgh Festival, where he has impressed Bach’s The Art of Fugue , received both the audiences and critics alike with his innova- Diapason d’Or and Choc du Monde de la tive programming. Musique awards, débuted at No. 1 on Current and future highlights include solo Billboard ’s classical chart, and topped iTunes’ recitals in London, New York, Chicago, Paris, classical album download chart. In recent Tokyo, Vienna, Beijing, and Amsterdam. years, Mr. Aimard’s recordings have been hon - Concerto appearances include performances ored with many prestigious awards. A new with the Boston Symphony, London recording of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Clavier, Book I , was released in summer 2014. Berlin, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In Born in Lyon in 1957, Mr. Aimard studied autumn 2014, he joined the Symphonieorchester at the Paris Conservatory with Yvonne Loriod des Bayerischen Rundfunks to give the world and in London with Maria Curcio. He was ap - première of a Piano Concerto by Sir Harrison pointed Ensemble Intercontemporain’s first Birtwistle, with further performances in Porto, solo pianist by Pierre Boulez. London, and Boston. In spring 2015, he

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Known for captivating with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, per - interpretations of a wide forming Messiaen’s “Turangalîla” Symphony variety of repertoire, to much critical acclaim. Tamara Stefanovich per - Ms. Stefanovich has collaborated with such forms at the world’s conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir major concert venues, Ashkenazy, Osmo Vänskä, and Vladimir A ? >

including New York’s @ Jurowski as well as leading composers Pierre

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Carnegie Hall, Berlin’s r Boulez, Peter Eötvös, and György Kurtág. She g g r

Philharmonie, Tokyo’s o teaches at the Hochschule für Musik und B

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Suntory Hall, and c Tanz Köln, and regularly leads educational r a

London’s Royal Albert M projects at the Barbican Centre and Kölner Hall, Barbican Centre, and Wigmore Hall. She Philharmonie. Ms. Stefanovich has also re - features regularly in such international festi - cently launched an innovative online project vals as Lucerne, La Roque d’Antheron, with Klavier-Festival Ruh in which she Aldeburgh, Salzburger Festspiele, Klavier- performs an interactive pedagogical analy- Festival Ruhr, and Beethovenfest Bonn. sis of Boulez’s Douze notations . Visit Highlights of the current season include an www.explorethescore.org for more information. extensive U.S. recital tour marking the 90th Her discography includes the Grammy birthday of Pierre Boulez, recitals at the Award-nominated recording of Bartók’s Konzerthaus Berlin, London’s Southbank Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Centre, and Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, as Orchestra with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Pierre well as performances with the Bochumer Boulez, and the London Symphony for Symphonieorchester under the baton of Anu Deutsche Grammophon (which also received Tali. She also performs Ligeti’s Piano a MIDEM nomination and Gold Record Concerto with Stuttgarter Kammerorchester Academy Award) and Mozart’s Concerto for and Matthias Foremny. Two Pianos with Mr. Aimard, Jonathan Nott, Recent engagements have included per - and Camerata Salzburg for the ARTE. formances with the Symphonieorchester des Ms. Stefanovich has also recorded for the AVI Bayerischen Rundfunks and Susanna Mälkki, and Harmonia Mundi labels, including her lat - MDR Symphonieorchester Leipzig and est release featuring works by Thomas Larcher. Kristjan Järvi, WDR Symphonieorchester Taught by Lili Petrović, Ms. Stefanovich Köln, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and gave her first public recital at age seven and Thomas Zehetmair, Asko|Schönberg, and became the youngest student at the University Iceland Symphony. Ms. Stefanovich has also ap - of Belgrade at age 13. In addition to music, peared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago her broad university education encompassed Symphony, London Symphony, London several other disciplines—psychology, educa - Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, tion, sociology—and she received her master’s Bamberg Symphony, Britten Sinfonia, degree in piano at age 19. She also studied at Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Curtis Institute with Claude Frank, and Swedish Chambe r Orchestra, and London subsequently studied with Mr. Aimard at the Sinfonietta. In spring 2012, she toured Germany Hochschule für Musik Köln.

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