and Chamber

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 7:30 PM BEASLEY CURTIS AUDITORIUM, MEMORIAL HALL

PRESENTING SPONSOR The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust CAMPUS PARTNER Carolina Asia Center

mahler chamber orchestra

Piano and Director Mitsuko Uchida Timpani Martin Piechotta (Germany) Viola Béatrice Muthelet* (France), Florent Brémond (France), Yannick Concertmaster and Leader Violin I Matthew Truscott** (Great Matthew Truscott Britain), Annette zu Castell (Germany), Dondelinger (Great Britain), Julia May Kunstovny (), Anna Neher (Germany), Delphine Tissot Flute Chiara Tonelli (Italy) Matz (Germany), Hildegard Niebuhr (France) Oboe Clement Noël (France), (Germany), Geoffroy Schied (France), Violoncello Frank-Michael Julian Scott (Great Britain) Sonja Starke (Germany), Hayley Guthmann* (Germany), Stefan Faludi Bassoon Fredrik Ekdahl (Sweden), Wolfe (USA) (Germany), Christophe Morin (France), Chiara Santi (Italy) Philipp von Steinaecker (Germany) Violin II Irina Simon-Renes* Horn José Miguel Asensi Martí (Germany), Stephanie Baubin Double Bass Christine Felsch* (Spain), Anais Romero Blanquez (Austria), Michiel Commandeur (Germany), Jon Mikel Martínez (Spain) (Netherlands), Christian Heubes Valgañón (Spain), Piotr Zimnik Trumpet Ingrid Eliassen (Norway), (Germany), Paulien Holthuis (Poland) Florian Kirner (Germany) (Netherlands), Nanni Malm (Austria), **Concertmaster *Principal Naomi Peters (Netherlands)

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first with an orchestra, is one of only two stops in the United States of her PROGRAM 2019 tour with the Mahler Chamber MOZART No. 19 in F Major, K.459 Orchestra, pairing two Mozart piano (1756-1791) I. Allegro concertos with excerpts from Alban II. Allegretto Berg’s Lyric Suite. III. Allegro assai Matthew Truscott is a versatile BERG Three Pieces from Lyric Suite violinist who shares his time between (1885-1935) (arranged for string orchestra) period instrument and ‘modern’ I. Andante amoroso performance, appearing with some II. Allegro misterioso of the finest musicians in both fields. III. Adagio appassionato He is the concertmaster of the Mahler INTERMISSION Chamber Orchestra, and also one of the leaders of the Orchestra of MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466 the Age of Enlightenment. His past (1756-1791) I. Allegro II. Romance work includes projects with English III. Allegro assai National Opera, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, The English Concert, Le Concert d’Astrée, and EGENDARY PIANIST music, she collaborates closely others. He is also the leader of Mitsuko Uchida brings a with the world’s finest musicians. Classical Opera, St James’s Baroque, deep insight into the music She recently partnered with Jörg L and the Magdalena Consort. Matthew she plays through her own quest for Widmann for a series of concerts at also teaches baroque violin at the truth and beauty. Renowned for her the Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Royal Academy of Music in London. interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, and Carnegie Hall and has Schumann, and Beethoven, she has collaborated with Magdalena Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) also illuminated the music of Berg, Kožená, Dorothea Röschmann, was founded in 1997 based on the Schoenberg, Webern, and Boulez for and the Ebène Quartet. shared vision of being a free and a new generation of listeners. She international ensemble, dedicated regularly performs with the world’s Uchida records exclusively for Decca, to creating and sharing exceptional most respected —including and her extensive discography experiences in classical music. the , Chicago includes the complete Mozart and With 45 members spanning 20 Symphony, , Schubert piano sonatas. She received different countries at its core, MCO Royal Concertgebouw, Bayerischer a Grammy in 2011 for her recording works as a nomadic collective of Rundfunk, and London Symphony— of Mozart concerti directing the passionate musicians uniting for and conductors , Cleveland Orchestra and in 2017 for specific tours in Europe and across , Sir , Esa- an album of Schumann and Berg the world. It has, to date, performed Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski, lieder with Dorothea Röschmann. Her in over 40 countries across five and Andris Nelsons. recording of the Schoenberg Piano continents. The MCO is governed Concerto with and collectively by its management Since 2016, Uchida has been an the Cleveland Orchestra won four team and orchestra board; decisions artistic partner of the Mahler Chamber awards, including The Gramophone are made democratically with the Orchestra, directing Mozart concerti Award for Best Concerto. participation of all musicians. from the keyboard in tours of major European and Japanese venues. With This concert, her fourth appearance The MCO’s sound is characterized by a strong commitment to chamber with Carolina Performing Arts and the chamber music style of ensemble

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playing among its alert PROGRAM NOTES and independent musical personalities. The orchestra received its most significant artistic impulses Piano Concerto No. 19 in F Major, K.459 from its founding mentor, Claudio The year 1784 was a good one for the 28-year-old Mozart. He had moved Abbado, and from Conductor to in 1781 and quickly discovered that the city, as he wrote to his Laureate . Pianist father, was “certainly the land of the clavier.” The fortepianos he found Mitsuko Uchida, violinist Pekka there, with their lighter touch and more delicate articulation, were well- Kuusisto, and conductor Teodor suited to his playing style. He started a regular series of subscription Currentzis are current artistic concerts throughout the city and, to sustain audience interest, wrote partners who inspire and shape new keyboard music at a fevered pitch. Between 1782 and 1786, he the orchestra. Concertmaster churned out 15 of his 28 keyboard concertos. Matthew Truscott leads and directs the orchestra regularly in its Even within that prodigious period, 1784 was different, marking an performances of chamber orchestra apex of Mozart’s writing for keyboard. Most of his compositions that repertoire. year featured piano, including a quintet for piano and winds, sonatas for violin and piano, and six full piano concertos. This concerto, The MCO’s Education & Outreach his nineteenth, was the last of the year, completed in December projects include Feel the Music, which and premiered in early 1785. It was one of two concertos Mozart opens the world of music to deaf would perform for the coronation of Leopold II in 1790. Strangely, and hard of hearing children through Mozart noted in his catalog of works that the ensemble for this workshops in schools and concerts concerto included two trumpets and timpani (perhaps as part of the halls, and the MCO Academy, through coronation?), but no score with those instruments has ever been found. which the emsemble works with the next generation of musicians The piece sees Mozart in a cheerful mood. It positively bursts with to provide a high quality orchestral material: the opening movement contains no fewer than six distinct experience and platform for themes, and the other two movements present a similar proliferation, international exchange. all of which Mozart manipulates with his usual confidence. The MCO’s major projects in recent Three Pieces from Lyric Suite (arranged for string orchestra) years include the award-winning Upon its premiere at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927, Alban Berg’s Beethoven Journey with pianist Leif Lyric Suite for string quartet was an immediate hit. The audience Ove Andsnes, who led the complete loved it so much that they forced the Kolisch Quartet to perform it Beethoven concerto cycle from the again, and composer Aaron Copland raved that it was “one of the keyboard in international residences. best works written for string quartet in recent years.” The work’s six In 2012, the ensemble premiered movements are a masterclass in the wide expressive capacity of Arnold the opera Written on Skin at the Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique (in which all twelve pitches in an Festival d’Aix-en-Provence under octave are given equal weight harmonically and melodically). Equally the baton of composer George emphasized are the expansive sonic possibilities of the string quartet— Benjamin, with whom the orchestra setting the stage for Béla Bartók’s equally explosive Third and Fourth shares a close musical friendship. Quartets, which he would write shortly after Berg’s work premiered. The MCO’s current partnership Throughout the Suite, Berg juggles those twelve tones to create aching with Mitsuko Uchida, centred on lines and impenetrable dissonances with equal ease. To this day, Mozart’s piano concertos, includes there is even some lively debate about whether the work is actually multi-year residences at Salzburg’s meant to recount the affair between Berg and his longtime mistress, Mozartwoche, London’s Southbank Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, with different pitch combinations and numeric Centre and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

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groupings relating to episodes between them. Whether 11, 1785, at Vienna’s Mehlgrube Casino, Mozart wanted that theory is real or fictitious is up for discussion. to unveil his latest piano concerto in D minor, his first in a minor key. The problem was that the composer cut things Shortly after the premiere, Berg was approached, either a hair too close, only managing to finish the score the night by members of the Kolisch Quartet or by his publisher, to before, so he spent much of the day of the performance arrange some of the Suite for string orchestra. For reasons working with his copyist to make sure the orchestra had that are mostly lost to time, he chose to arrange only parts. And then there was the matter of rehearsing. Not to the second, third, and fourth movements. These three mention, Mozart’s father Leopold arrived that same day movements represent the emotional core of the work. for a ten-week visit. Somehow, everything came together The second, Andante amoroso, sighs and heaves in a for the performance, as Leopold recounted in a letter to continuous outpouring of expression, its sumptuous lines his daughter, Nannerl, a few days later: “Then came a new, as saturated as a Matisse painting. The third movement, superb piano concerto by Wolfgang, which the copyist was Allegro misterioso, turns the standard scherzo-and- still writing out when we arrived, and your brother had not trio form into a palindrome where the music from the even found time to play through the Rondeau because he beginning runs in reverse at the end. Each section feels had to supervise the copying.” full of flickering lights and fleeting fragments of color that vanish just as they come into focus. And the fourth Of Mozart’s 28 piano concertos, this one had the most movement, Adagio appassionato, may or may not be one immediate and lasting musical impact. It is the only one long love scene, whose intensity continually builds like of Mozart’s concertos a young Beethoven ever performed a scene out of a Wagner opera. Taking it almost to the in public (at a memorial concert to Mozart in 1795), and point of breaking, the unstable six-note chord on which he would go on to compose cadenzas for it in 1809. It was the movement ends provides neither a sense of arrival also the sole Mozart concerto to be regularly performed nor release. In its original context, there were two more throughout the nineteenth century. movements for resolution; here, it just dissolves. Even the most cursory listen quickly explains why. As is In transcribing the work for string orchestra, Berg often the case when Mozart wrote in minor keys, the piece sacrifices the transparency and agility of four single is as dark and foreboding as they come, full of wrenching players for the depths and weight of a string section. outbursts and moments of the deep angst more often He largely leaves the quartet parts intact, occasionally associated with music from a generation or two later. The adding extra doublings, and also occasionally pulls back first movement opens with unsettled, syncopated chords to a quartet of soloists, gesturing towards the clarity of the (which commentators never forget to compare to his opera original. In the outer movements, all that extra heft gives ) and rumbling figures in the cellos, with the music a longing, ecstatic quality, whereas the Allegro carefully placed lines in the winds only serving to further misterioso swirls and churns even more indeterminately. ratchet up the tension, which continues on through the As the theorist Theodor Adorno wrote, “If the lyrical nature rest of the movement. That mood persists through even of the Suite is best fostered in the quartet, its dramatic the sunniest moments of the second movement, whose nature is best fostered in the string tutti; only here are its serene, regal main theme is interrupted by a lengthy contours dissolved as completely and enigmatically as cloudburst of darkness. The feeling is so pervasive that the accompanimental concept of the sound demands; when the main theme of the closing rondeau transposes to and only here does the paroxysm attain its full major, the effect is almost comic. Given the complexity and catastrophic force.” subtlety on display, you would never know that Mozart had scrambled to get it done in time. ▪ WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466 It’s strangely satisfying to hear that even the great composers sometimes struggled to meet their deadlines. Dan Ruccia is a Durham-based composer, writer, and graphic designer. For his first subscription concert of the year on February

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