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Jonathan Biss Beethoven JOnaTHan BiSS BeeTHOven THe cOMpleTe pianO SOnaTaS SepTeMBeR 21–22, 2019 OcTOBeR 12–13, 2019 DeceMBeR 15, 2019 MaRcH 7–8, 2020 HeRTz Hall BENJAMIN EALOVEGA BENJAMIN ABOUT THE ARTIST Jonathan Biss (piano) is a world-renowned Shaw. is season, Biss premieres Brett Dean’s pianist who channels his deep musical curiosity Gneixendorfer Musik with the Swedish Radio into performances and projects in the concert Symphony Orchestra, performed alongside Bee - hall and beyond. in addition to performing with thoven’s Emperor concerto. He then brings the today’s leading orchestras, he continues to ex- new commission to the Dresden philhar monic, pand his reputation as a teacher, musical thinker, Melbourne Symphony Orches tra, and poland’s and one of the great Beethoven interpreters of Wrocław philharmonic. additionally, he per- our time. Biss was recently named co-artistic forms the Emperor with orchestras worldwide, director alongside Mitsuko Uchida at the Marl - including with the curtis Symphony Orchestra boro Music Festival, where he has spent 13 sum- led by Osmo vänskä at carnegie Hall and phila - mers. He also leads a massive open online course delphia’s Kimmel center as part of a seven-city (MOOc) via coursera, which has reached more east coast tour. than 150,000 people from nearly every country Biss’ projects represent his complete approach in the world. Biss has written extensively about to music-making and connecting his audience the music he plays, and has authored three to his own passion for the music. previous proj- e-books, including Bee thoven’s Shadow, the first ects have included an exploration of composers’ Kindle Single written by a classical musician, “late Style” in various concert pro grams at car - published by Rosetta Books in 2011. ne gie Hall, the Barbican centre, philadelphia For more than a decade, he has fully im- chamber Music Society, and San Francisco per - mersed himself in the music of Beethoven, formances. He also published the Kindle Single exploring the composer’s works and musical Coda on the topic. Schumann: Under the Influ - thought through a wide variety of projects, sev- ence was a 30-concert exploration of the com- eral of which culminate in 2019–20. Biss’ recital poser’s role in music history, for which Biss also repertoire this season is almost exclusively recorded Schumann and Dvořák piano quintets focused on the Beethoven piano sonatas, with with the elias String Quartet and wrote A Pianist com plete cycles here at Uc Berkeley, as well as Under the Influence. at london’s Wigmore Hall and the McKnight Biss represents the third generation in a fam- center for the performing arts at Oklahoma ily of professional musicians that includes his State University. He also performs select sonatas grandmother Raya Garbousova, one of the first in recital and mini-cycles around the United well-known female cellists (for whom Samuel States, including in philadelphia, new York, Barber composed his cello concerto), and Washington (Dc), and Seattle, as well as abroad his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/ in Rome, Budapest, Sydney, and Melbourne. violinist paul Biss. Growing up surrounded by in 2011, Biss began a journey to record the music, Biss began his piano studies at age six, composer’s 32 piano sonatas; the project con- and his first musical collaborations were with cludes this fall with the ninth and final volume, his mother and father. He studied with evelyne to be released on Orchid classics. e final two Brancart at indiana University and with leon sets of lessons in his coursera lecture series, Fleisher at the curtis institute of Music, where Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, will be re- he is now on the faculty and holds the neubauer leased in September and January, at which time Family chair in piano Studies. Biss has been all the sonatas will have been examined. recognized with numerous honors, including Biss also surveys Beethoven’s five piano lin coln center’s Martin e. Segal award, an concertos in his Beethoven/5 commissioning avery Fisher career Grant, the 2003 Borletti- project, which pairs each concerto with a new Buitoni Trust award, and the 2002 Gilmore concerto composed in response. launched in Young artist award. 2015 in partnership with lead commissioner the St. paul chamber Orchestra, the project has Exclusive Management for Jonathan Biss led to world premieres by Timo andres, Sally Opus 3 artists, 470 park avenue South, Beamish, Salvatore Sciarrino, and caroline 9th Floor north, new York, nY 10016 2 in Search of Something Unreachable by Jonathan Biss he word “wonderment” goes a long culty: once you come to the conclusion that way towards conveying my own feel- something is unreachable, how—and when— ings about Beethoven’s music. it was do you decide to reach for it? if one is, by Tthe dominant sensation when i first definition, never really ready to play all the heard Serkin’s Appassionata on a cassette tape Bee thoven sonatas, when is the moment to say, in the car, at age 9. it was again at the forefront “ready or not, here i come?” when i discovered the Grosse Fuge, a year or two in trying to answer this troublesome ques- later, in a recording by the Budapest Quartet. (i tion, i again resort to a negative definition: can remember, vividly, that my immediate re- it may be impossible to know that you are ready action was that the piece was totally incompre- to take on such a project, but it is emphatically hensible, and that i had to hear it again, right possible to know that you aren’t ready. For most away; years later, aer countless hearings, and of my life—probably since [a] peabody cycle— even a number of performances of Beethoven’s i’ve known that i’ve wanted to play the 32 Bee - own arrangement of the piece for piano four- thoven sonatas. What i’ve known, to be more hands, it seems only slightly more comprehen- precise, is that this body of music is more im- sible, and remains as irresistible as ever.) and it portant to me than just about any other, and was an actual sensation, felt in my whole body, that i want—feel compelled—to spend my when i had that first encounter with the com- life interrogating it. and while the open-ended plete cycle of piano sonatas at age 13. study of music can be a wonderful, wonderful ose were all listening experiences. When thing, one’s relationship with a piece invariably i am the one playing—that is to say, when my takes on new dimensions aer public per- relationship to the music becomes tactile and formance. ere are probably many reasons for is complicated by questions of self-expression— this—again, there is the tactile aspect of music- the sensation becomes exponentially more making, so vital to an instrumentalist, which powerful. is sort of awe, while a very intense will always receive more emphasis when a per- thing to live with, is not in any way negative; in formance looms—but above all it is because fact, it is probably essential, given my convic- these works exist to be communicated, and thus tion that the search for something unreachable there are things to be known about them that is part of this music’s expressive Dna. But at one simply cannot know without experiencing the same time, it creates a very practical diffi- that communication. and so, when a concert 3 presenter in a major american city asked me, conclusion that i simply should not perform a aged 23, to play the 32 sonatas, i should have work immediately aer learning it; much better been thrilled. and in fairness, i was sort of to let it percolate first, away from the pressur- thrilled. at the same time, though, i was ab- ized atmosphere of the concert hall, which solutely plagued with doubt. So plagued that tends to force the performer to fall back on nothing—not putting off the start of the proj- what works—even if it doesn’t work too well. ect for three years, or spreading the concerts and if i had accepted that offer when i was 23, over a longer period—could make me feel that there would have been no way around the real- the enormous fear i felt was unjustified. ity that i would need to play many of the Some of the sources of the fear were proba- sonatas immediately aer learning them. bly intangible, but others were plenty tangible. en there was a third reason, which goes First of all, at that point i’d played no more than beyond the Beethoven sonatas themselves: 10 of the sonatas, including just one of the last performing the cycle when i still had so many five. (While it would be wrong to say that the sonatas to learn would have meant a degree of earlier works are easier—on a purely physical immersion in that music so extreme, it would level, for one, some of them are enormously have all but excluded the possibility of my uncomfortable to play—the late sonatas are learning anything else at a time in my life when composed in a language, or languages, so i should have been musically omnivorous. is unprece dented, unique, and seemingly inscru - is partially, of course, a question of my musical table, that coming to terms with them seems to development at large: it would have been a me a greater bridge to be crossed.) While i’d al- very bad decision to have taken on the complete ways assumed—to whatever extent i’d thought Beethoven sonatas and in the process moved it through—that when i got around to per- away from other music—the Mozart concerti, forming the whole cycle there would be certain or Schumann’s solo works, for example—which sonatas i’d still need to learn, making the leap was arguably as important to me, and which when i still had 22 sonatas to go seemed to in- would become vastly more difficult to learn if volve a degree of hubris.
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