Semi-Final Round GARTNERAUDITORIUM CLEVELANDMUSEUMOFART August 1, 2021 Presented by Piano Cleveland TODAY’SPROGRAM PROGRAMNOTES Byeol Kim Byeol Kim South Korea Clara Schumann (1819–1896) Clara Schumann (1819–1896) Notturno in F Major, Op. 6, No. 2 Notturno in F Major, Op. 6, No. 2 Clara Josephine Wieck born in Leipzig, to highly accomplished musicians: Friedrich Robert Schumann (1810–1856) Wieck, a professional pianist and piano teacher, and his wife Mariane, a professional Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 singer. Friedrich was determined to raise Clara as a virtuosa of the first rank: she began Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) piano lessons at four years of age, and her musical education over the next years would include training in harmony, counterpoint, and composition; she also studied violin and The Union, Op. 48 singing as well as the piano. Prodigiously talented, she made her professional debut at Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1947) the age of nine, and from here began an intense schedule of touring and performing across Europe under the management of her father (not unlike Mozart’s experience Fantasie in F-sharp Minor, Op. 28 half a century earlier). It was the foundation of a career that would span the rest of the Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) nineteenth century, and in time Clara would become one of the most acclaimed pianists “Bohemian Rhapsody” (arr. Kurbatov) of the era. Along with pianists like Franz Liszt, she pioneered the practice of playing her recitals from memory; she was also instrumental in shiing the focus of recitals Pierre Jalbert (born 1967) away from improvisation and the performance of one’s own compositions, and towards Toccata (2001) the interpretation of previous “masterworks” that made up a rapidly forming canon of approved composers. -brief pause- In 1840, aer a long and drawn out legal battle, Clara married Robert Schumann, a former Lovre Marušić pupil of her father’s. The Schumanns were a formidable musical partnership, inspiring one another in their compositional and performing pursuits, and enjoying friendships with Croatia two highly influential figures of German music in the later nineteenth century: the violinist Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) Joseph Joachim and the pianist and composer Johannes Brahms. Clara maintained an active performing career even around the birth of eight children, a major feat that would Sonata in E Major, K. 380 become even more taxing aer Robert’s attempted suicide in 1854. Forbidden to see Robert Schumann (1810–1856) Robert during his two years of confinement in a mental institution, Clara necessarily took Kreisleriana, Op. 16 on full responsibility for maintaining their family, all the more so aer Robert’s untimely death in 1856. Thus the 1860s and 70s were in many ways Clara’s most active period as Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) a performer. She performed hundreds of concerts across Europe; she also became a “Bohemian Rhapsody” (arr. Kurbatov) sought-aer teacher, and became the first piano professor at the Frankfurt conservatoire when it opened in 1878. In addition, she edited Robert’s published works and became an -intermission- indefatigable advocate for his music. Piano Duo Schumann’s early training in composition was matched by significant creative energies, and in her early life she composed oen. Aer her marriage this creative energy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) lessened, partly because of the significant constraints that raising a family imposed on Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 her time, and partly because of the demands of her pianistic career; but also partly on 2 CLEVELANDINTERNATIONALPIANOCOMPETITION/SEMIFINALROUND PRESENTED BY 3 PROGRAMNOTES account of Schumann’s own doubts about her compositional talents. And aer the death which Schumann felt entirely unable to compose. Some of the productive periods have of her husband, she composed no more for the rest of her life. Yet these creative doubts names; 1840, for instance, is known as Schumann’s Liederjahr (Year of Song), as he wrote are nowhere in evidence in her early works. Many of these pieces are in the brilliant, nearly 140 Lieder; 1842, similarly, saw the creation of much of Schumann’s chamber music. virtuosic and openly entertaining style characteristic of composers such as Jan Dussek, The two sides of Schumann’s persona oen le their mark on his music, he frequently Johann Hummel, and John Field, which the musicologist Jim Samson terms “post-classical”; embodied them in the form of two characters: Eusebius, who represented the dreamy, Schumann would perform these kinds of pieces at her own concerts. Others are in the meditative side of Schumann’s personality, and Florestan, his agitated, passionate intimate, melodic style characteristic of the salon—one of the most significant performance opposite. Schumann used these characters as a literary device in his music criticism, to venues in nineteenth-century European musical culture. The Notturno in F major fits debate the merits of various musical works; they also make a cameo in one of his major into the latter mold. Published as part of Schumann’s Opus 6 in 1836, when she was piano works, Carnval. just seventeen, the piece has many features of the nocturne genre, a mainstay of nineteenth-century salon music made especially famous by the works of Frédéric The Arabeske, Op. 18, was composed during one of Schumann’s low periods; his romantic Chopin. In the Notturno, a plaintive, singing melody in the right hand floats over a relationship with Clara Wieck had been building in intensity for five years, but because Clara’s supple, rolling accompaniment in the le hand. A contrasting section in a minor key father was dead set against the match, it was conducted almost entirely though letters and gives us a glimpse of a more tortured emotional landscape, but only briefly; a transition brief, snatched encounters in and around her concert engagements. The piece was explicitly leads back to the style of the opening, for a quiet close. conceived by the composer in what he thought a “feminine” style, and intended for women performers—not so much the fiery virtuosity of a Clara Schumann, but rather the young ladies Robert Schumann (1810–1856) and hostesses who frequented the interior, domestic performance space of the salon. The “arabesque” of the title is ambiguous; the term was originally used to describe the intricate Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 designs of Islamic decorative art, but had long been applied metaphorically to other art forms with complex, intertwining lines—an apt description for much music in the Western A poet of the piano and a significant musical aesthete of his time, Robert Schumann was tradition, which so often relies on counterpoint. Schumann’s piece is in a form inherited a key member of a generation of composers including Chopin and Mendelssohn, whose from the eighteenth century nineteenth, the rondo. In rondo form, a recurring main theme works defined the sound of early Romanticism. Born in Saxony in what is now Germany, is intercut with contrasting episodes which may explore a different key, mood, tempo, or Schumann studied music from an early age, but like many musicians before him he was figuration. Schumann’s main theme, a graceful, flowing theme in C major, appears three times; strongly encouraged by family to go into law. When the lure of music proved stronger than in between appear two more instense episodes in minor keys, which may be said to represent his legal studies, he took lessons with Friedrich Weick; Weick’s daughter Clara—herself the “Florestan” side of Schumann’s personality; by contrast, an additional coda that appears at a child prodigy would become one of the most influential concert pianists of the entire the end of the piece explores the more relaxed, “Eusebius” side of the emotional spectrum. century—would later become Robert’s wife. Schumann’s aspirations to become a concert pianist were thwarted when he permanently injured his hands, possibly through harmful practice techniques; from then on, he focused his energies on composition. Over the course Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) of his career he made significant contributions to the symphonic literature and chamber The Union, Op. 48 music repertoire, as well as to the genres for which he is most famous—the accompanied song or Lied, and a range of unique and highly original works for solo piano. Schumann was He was one of the first home-grown American piano virtuosos of the nineteenth also a significant early music critic, and founded one of the main nineteenth-century music century, but he also spent most of his career outside the United States—and he would journals, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik; and towards the end of his life he befriended and die exiled from it, following scandalous (but baseless) accusations of an affair with a mentored the young pianist and composer Johannes Brahms. female seminary student. Such was the life of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, which embodies many of the tensions that accompanied the development of a concert culture based Throughout his life, Schumann suffered from a mental disorder characterized by dramatic around “star” performers and their touring activity, and the difficulties that Americans swings between depression and mania; his death at the age of 46 followed two years of had in establishing a foothold in what was seen by many as a European art form, confinement in a mental asylum, aer a suicide attempt. Prior to this, periods of boundless forever beyond the reach of the upstart revolutionaries over the Atlantic. Born in New energy and productivity would be interleaved with periods of profound depression during Orleans to an English merchant and his French creole wife, Gottschalk knew from 4 CLEVELANDINTERNATIONALPIANOCOMPETITION/SEMIFINALROUND PRESENTED BY 5 PROGRAMNOTES an early stage that his musical training could only be completed—and accepted—if given musical procedures adopted by early American modernist composers such as Charles Ives, the European seal of approval.