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Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano Tamara Stefanovich, Piano

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Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano Tamara Stefanovich, Piano 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 PLAYBILL PROGRAM 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. CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES 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 PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES 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 CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES 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.
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