Cal Performances Presents

Sunday, October , , pm Zellerbach Hall , ,

PROGRAM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (–) Adagio in E major, K.  () arr. Rostal

Ludwig van Beethoven (–) Sonata No.  for Piano and Violin in C minor, Op. , No.  () Allegro con brio Adagio cantabile Scherzo: Allegro Finale: Allegro

INTERMISSION

Serge Prokofi ev (–) Sonata No.  for Violin and Piano in F minor, Op.  (, ) Andante assai Allegro brusco Andante Allegrissimo—Andante assai, come prima

Dmitri Shostakovich (–) Ten Selections from the  Preludes, Op.  arr. Tziganov (–) . Allegretto . Allegretto . Allegro non troppo . Moderato . Largo . Allegretto . Andantino . Allegretto poco moderato . Adagio . Allegretto furioso

Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

CAL PERFORMANCES 31 Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (–) the quiet countryside with the assurance that Adagio in E major, K.  () the lack of stimulation would be benefi cial to Arranged by Max Rostal. his hearing and his general health. In Heiligenstadt, Beethoven virtually lived It was for Antonio Brunetti, principal violinist the life of a hermit, seeing only his doctor and of the archiepiscopal orchestra in Salzburg from a young student named Ferdinand Ries. In March , , that Mozart wrote the E major , he was still a full decade from being to- Adagio, K. . It was composed late in  tally deaf. Th e acuity of his hearing varied from as a substitute slow movement for the Concerto day to day (sometimes governed by his inter- No.  in A major, K. , since, according to est—or lack thereof—in the surrounding con- a remark by the composer’s father the follow- versation), but he had largely lost his ability to ing year, Brunetti found the original second hear soft sounds by that time, and loud noises movement “zu studiert”—“too studied”—and caused him pain. Of one of their walks in the asked Mozart to create something more simple country, Ries reported, “I called his attention and attuned to the popular style. (Actually, the to a shepherd who was piping very agreeably Concerto’s beautiful original Adagio is crystal in the woods on a fl ute made from a twig of clear and immediately appealing. Abraham elder. For half an hour, Beethoven could hear Veinus thought that “Brunetti certainly had nothing, and though I assured him that it was peculiar taste.”) Th e replacement movement is the same with me (which was not the case), he also a lovely creation, with the music’s sustained became extremely quiet and morose. When he melody for the soloist make it almost an aria occasionally seemed to be merry, it was gener- without words. Th e arrangement for violin and ally to the extreme of boisterousness; but this piano is by the Austrian-born English violinist happens seldom.” In addition to the distress and teacher Max Rostal (–). over his health, Beethoven was also wounded in  by the wreck of an aff air of the heart. He had proposed marriage to Giulietta Guicciardi (–) (the thought of Beethoven as a husband threat- Sonata No.  for Violin and Piano in ens the moorings of one’s presence of mind!), C minor, Op. , No.  () but had been denied permission by the girl’s fa- ther for the then perfectly valid reason that the In the summer of , Beethoven’s physician young composer was without rank, position or ordered him to leave Vienna and take rooms fortune. Faced with the extinction of a musi- in Heiligenstadt, today a friendly suburb at the cian’s most precious faculty, fi ghting a constant northern terminus of the city’s subway system, digestive distress, and unsuccessful in love, it is but two centuries ago a quiet village with a view little wonder that Beethoven was sorely vexed. of the Danube across the river’s rich fl ood plain. On October , , following several It was three years earlier, in , that Beethoven months of wrestling with his misfortunes, fi rst noticed a disturbing ringing and buzzing Beethoven penned the most famous letter ever in his ears, and he sought medical attention for written by a musician—the “Heiligenstadt the problem soon thereafter. He tried numerous Testament.” Intended as a will written to his cures for his malady, as well as for his chronic brothers (it was never sent, though he kept it in colic, including oil of almonds, hot and cold his papers to be found after his death), it is a baths, soaking in the Danube, pills and herbs. cry of despair over his fate, perhaps a necessary For a short time he even considered the modish and self-induced soul-cleansing in those pre- treatment of electric shock. On the advice of his Freudian days. “O Providence—grant me at last latest doctor, Beethoven left the noisy city for but one day of pure joy—it is so long since real

32 CAL PERFORMANCES Program Notes joy echoed in my heart,” he lamented. But— above harmonically unsettled arpeggios in the and this is the miracle—he not only poured his keyboard constitutes the movement’s central energy into self-pity, he also channeled it into section before the opening theme is recalled in music. “I shall grapple with fate; it shall never an elaborated setting. Th e coda is dressed with pull me down,” he resolved. Th e next fi ve years ribbons of scales by the piano. Th e Scherzo, with were the most productive he ever knew. “I live its rhythmic surprises and nimble fi gurations, only in my music,” Beethoven wrote, “and I have presents a playful contrast to the surrounding scarcely begun one thing when I start another.” movements. Th e Finale, which mixes elements Th e Symphonies Nos. –, a dozen piano sona- of rondo (the frequent returns of the halting tas, the Fourth and the Triple motive heard at the beginning) and sonata (the Concerto, Fidelio, three violin and piano sona- extensive development of the themes), renews tas (Op. ), and many songs, chamber works the troubled mood of the opening movement and keyboard compositions were all composed to close the expressive and formal cycle of this between  and . excellent Sonata. Th e Op.  Sonatas for Piano and Violin that Beethoven completed by the time he re- turned from Heiligenstadt to Vienna in the Serge Prokofi ev (–) middle of October  stand at the threshold Sonata No.  for Violin and Piano in of a new creative language, the dynamic and F minor, Op.  (, ) dramatic musical speech that characterizes the Premiered on October ,  in by creations of his so-called “second period.” Th e violinist and pianist Lev Oborin. C minor Sonata, the second of the Op.  set, shares its impassioned key with several other Israel Nestyev headed the chapter of his biog- epochal creations of those years, notably the raphy of Prokofi ev dealing with the composer’s Fifth Symphony, the Th ird Piano Concerto, life from  to , “Th e Diffi cult Years.” the “Pathétique” Sonata, the Coriolan Overture In January , Prokofi ev conducted the pre- and the Op. , No.  String Quartet. Th e work miere of his Fifth Symphony with great suc- opens with a pregnant main theme, announced cess, and it seemed that, at age , he had many by the piano and echoed by the violin, which, years of untroubled service to Soviet music in according to British musicologist Samuel his future. Such was not to be the case. Only Midgley, “is like a taut spring about to snap.” two weeks after the Fifth Symphony was intro- Th is motive returns throughout the movement duced, Prokofi ev was leaving a friend’s Moscow both as the pillar of its structural support and fl at when he was suddenly stricken with a minor as the engine of its tempestuous expression. Th e heart attack. He lost consciousness, fell down second theme is a tiny military march in dotted a fl ight of stairs, and was taken to the hospi- rhythms. Th e development section, which com- tal, where his heart condition and a concussion mences with bold slashing chords separated by were diagnosed. From that moment, his vigor- silences (the exposition is not repeated), encom- ous life style and busy social and musical sched- passes powerful mutations of the two principal ules had to be abandoned. “Almost everything themes. A full recapitulation and a large coda that made his life worth living was taken away,” round out the movement. wrote Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson in their Th e Adagio, one of those inimitable slow study of the composer. “He was forbidden to movements by Beethoven that seem rapt out of smoke, drink wine, play chess, drive a car, walk quotidian time, is based on a hymnal melody fast or far, play the piano in public, conduct, presented fi rst by the piano and reiterated by stay up late, excite himself by much conversa- the violin. A passage in long notes for the violin tion, travel more than a few miles.” He spent

CAL PERFORMANCES 33 Program Notes the rest of his life—he died in , on the same the new Sonata with pianist Lev Oborin, and day as Joseph Stalin—in and out of hospitals, reported that they “visited the composer many constantly taking precautions against a relapse. times and he gave us a great deal of invaluable Late in the spring of , Prokofi ev went to advice. One could see that this composition was the country retreat at Ivanova provided by the very dear to him, and he took obvious pleasure government for ’s professional compos- in working at it with us.... Never have I been so ers, and he spent the summer there working on completely absorbed in a piece of music. Until his Sixth Symphony. He returned to Moscow the fi rst public performance, I could play noth- in the fall, but was too ill to participate in the ing else, think of nothing else.” Oistrakh and bustling artistic and social life of the capital or Oborin gave the Sonata’s premiere in Moscow to attend the premiere of his opera Betrothal in on October ,  to much acclaim, and the a Monastery at the Kirov Th eater or a produc- work was immediately recognized as one of tion of Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi. Th e Prokofi ev’s most masterful chamber creations. commotion of Moscow proved too much for “Th e No. ,” Prokofi ev wrote, his fragile health, and early in , he acquired “is more serious in mood than the Second Sonata a country house in Nikolina Gora, a village [Op. -bis, a reworking of the ]. some forty miles west of Moscow. Th e dacha Th e fi rst movement, Andante assai, is severe in was hidden away in trees and thick underbrush character and is a kind of extended introduction a short distance from the Moscow River, with to the second movement, a sonata-allegro, which Prokofi ev’s studio facing a dense patch of forest. is vigorous and turbulent, but has a broad sec- He loved the place, and left it only for the most ond theme. Th e third movement is slow, gentle pressing appearances and appointments, pre- and tender. Th e fi nale is fast, and is written in ferring to meet his colleagues on his glassed-in complicated rhythms.” Th ough Prokofi ev gave back porch so that he could show off the fl ower no hint of any extra-musical associations in his garden and the large yard and perhaps engage brief description, his biographer Israel Nestyev them in a proscribed game of chess. During believed that “the Sonata has something of the the summer of , Prokofi ev completed a quality of a narrative poem and seems to con- sonata for violin and piano that he had begun tain a hidden program.... Th e four movements eight years before and then laid aside to work present four sharply contrasting scenes, which on Alexander Nevsky, the opera Semyon Kotko might have been inspired by Russian epic po- and other projects. Th e violinist David Oistrakh etry. Th e fi rst movement is a compact bylina- continued the story: “I remember the day in the like melody, suggesting the meditation of an summer of  when I drove out to Prokofi ev’s ancient bard on the fate of the motherland; the country house at Nikolina Gora to hear a new second presents a scene of brutal encounter be- violin sonata he had written.... Before long, tween warring forces; the third creates a poetic [the composer Nikolai] Miaskovsky, who lived image of a young girl’s lament; and the fi nale is nearby, joined us, and we sat down to listen to a hymn to the might of Russia in arms, a paean Prokofi ev’s Sonata. Before beginning to play, to the people’s freedom and strength. At the Prokofi ev enumerated all the movements, af- very end of the fi nale, material from the open- ter which he played the whole Sonata through ing Andante returns, underscoring the basic without pausing. It made a powerful impression. epic-narrative quality of the work.... Prokofi ev One felt that this was truly great music, and here succeeded in fi lling the modest framework indeed for sheer beauty and depth nothing to of a violin sonata with epic content of truly sym- equal it had been written for the violin for many phonic proportions.” a decade. Miaskovsky had only one word for it: ‘A masterpiece.’” Oistrakh agreed to premiere

34 CAL PERFORMANCES Program Notes

Dmitri Shostakovich (–) home in a thin coat and summer cap, with no Ten Selections from the  Preludes, warm gloves or galoshes, and arrived exhausted Op.  (–) around one o’clock in the morning.” Th e taxing Premiered on May ,  in Moscow by the job not only sapped his strength and health, but composer. Arranged by Dmitri Tziganov. also made composing and concertizing virtually impossible, so his family decided in the spring Shostakovich’s mother, Sofi a Vasilievna, was a of  that he would leave this musical purga- skilled pianist who studied at the St. Petersburg tory to devote himself to higher pursuits. His Conservatory and taught the instrument pro- First Symphony, completed at the beginning of fessionally. She passed her talent onto her the following year, elevated him overnight to a off spring—her oldest child, Maria, followed leading position in Soviet music. in her footsteps, and Sofi a began Dmitri’s les- Shostakovich always retained his love of sons when he was nine. (Her third and last the piano, and he played throughout his life child, a daughter, Zoya, became a veterinar- whenever he could, but the lack of practice ian.) Dmitri displayed a quick affi nity for the time—in addition to his creative work, in the piano, and he was placed in Glyaser’s Music s he also became the elected deputy to School after only a year of study at home. Th ree the Oktyabrsky District in Leningrad and was years later, in  (and just two years after the one of the organizers of the Leningrad Union Revolution, which his family supported whole- of Soviet Composers—prevented him from heartedly), Shostakovich entered the Petrograd performing much music other than his own. Conservatory as a piano student of Leonid Th e composer’s student Samari Savshinsky de- Nikolayev; he graduated in  as a highly ac- scribed him as “an outstanding artist and per- complished performer. Despite his visions of a former. Th e crystalline clarity and precision of career in the concert hall, his fi rst job after grad- thought, the almost ascetic absence of embel- uation was as pianist in a movie house, which lishment, the precise rhythm, technical perfec- Victor Seroff described in his biography of the tion, and very personal timbre he produced at composer: “Th e little theater was old, drafty, and the piano made all Shostakovich’s piano play- smelly. It had not seen fresh paint or a scrubbing ing individual in the highest degree…. Th ose for years, the walls were peeling, and the dirt who remember his performance of Beethoven’s lay thick in every corner. Th ree times a day a mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, followed by a new crowd packed the small house; they carried number of Chopin pieces, can only regret that the snow in with them on their shoes and over- his talent as a pianist was never fully developed coats. Th ey munched food that they brought or applied.” with them, apples and sunfl ower seeds that they Among Shostakovich’s early important con- spat on the fl oor. Th e heat of the packed bodies tributions to the piano literature is his collec- in their damp clothes, added to the warmth of tion of  Preludes, Op. , composed imme- two small stoves, made the bad air stifl ing hot diately after he had completed the powerfully by the end of the performance. Th en the doors lurid opera Lady Macbeth of Mzensk at the end were fl ung open to let the crowd out and to air of . While he was negotiating during the the hall before the next show, and cold damp following winter for the opera’s premiere (which drafts swept through the house. Down in front was given with enormous success early in  below the screen sat Dmitri, his back soaked in Leningrad), he turned to the more intimate with perspiration, his near-sighted eyes in their form of the piano prelude, creating the two-doz- horn-rimmed glasses peering upwards to fol- en numbers of the set between December , low the story, his fi ngers pounding away on the  and March , . (He meticulously raucous upright piano. Late at night he trudged footnoted each piece with its date and place of

CAL PERFORMANCES 35 Program Notes composition—all in Leningrad, except for one occasionally hint at a deep emotional content, movement [No. ] jotted down on a quick trip the Preludes are a digest of the enormous range to Moscow.) He played the work’s fi rst perfor- of musical styles encompassed by the music of mance on May th in Moscow. Shostakovich’s Shostakovich during the s, “from majestic Preludes are modeled on the eponymous cycles concentration, through intimate lyricism and by Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff , and, the pathos of sorrow, down to juggling with the like Scriabin’s, follow Chopin in their arrange- vulgar,” according to David Rabinovich in his ment around the “circle of fi fths” (C major, offi cial  Soviet study of the composer. A minor, G major, E minor, etc.). Also like During the s, violinist Dmitri Tziganov, Chopin, Shostakovich’s Preludes circumscribe a close friend of Shostakovich and the leader of a wide variety of musical idioms, though they the Beethoven Quartet, the ensemble that in- are frequently touched with a nose-thumbing troduced all of his quartets except the fi rst and insouciance unknown to the th-century mas- the last of the , arranged  of the  Preludes ter. (According to his Soviet biographer Ivan for violin and piano. “When I heard Tziganov’s Mortynov, Shostakovich said that these minia- arrangements of the Preludes,” Shostakovich tures were a series of psychological sketches, to said, “I forgot they were originally written for which the later British scholar Ian Macdonald solo piano, so naturally did they sound.” responded, “He must have been in a caustic frame of mind that winter.”) Th ough they only ©  Dr. Richard E. Rodda

36 CAL PERFORMANCES Prokofi ev concertos. Mr. Vengerov received the Edison Award in  in the Best Concerto Recording category for his recording of the sec- ond Shostakovich and Prokofi ev concertos and, in , for his solo CD, Vengerov Plays Bach, Ysaÿe, Schedrin, on EMI Classics, with which he signed an exclusive contract in May . In September , Mr. Vengerov was named the Gramophone Artist of the Year and, in , the Edison Award and Grammy Award win- ner for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) for his recording of the Britten and Walton violin concertos. In , at the age of , Mr. Vengerov was appointed Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the fi rst classical musician to be appointed in this role. By playing for abducted child soldiers in , disadvantaged children in Harlem, children suff ering from drug addiction in Th ailand and children on both sides of the Kosovan ethnic di- vide, it has aff orded him an opportunity to both A t ju s t  ye a r s of a g e , Maxim Vengerov is recog- inspire children worldwide, and inspire others nised as one of the world’s most exciting violin- to raise funds for UNICEF-assisted programs. ists. Since he started playing at the age of four- He says: “I understood what miracles you can and-a-half, he has evolved from a precociously bring back to children with music; this is a uni- talented child into an assured virtuoso. After versal language that everyone understands, it his fi rst recital in his hometown of Novosibirsk, goes from heart to heart.” Another passion of Siberia, at the age of fi ve, then studying with Mr. Vengerov’s is his involvement with young Galina Tourchaninova and Professor Zakhar people through giving master classes to aspir- Bron, he went on to win the First Prize in the ing musicians. One such event was recorded by Junior Wieniawski Competition in when Channel Four Television in the UK as part of he was just  years old. In , aged , he a documentary about Mr. Vengerov, Playing took top honors at the Carl Flesch International by Heart, which was shown at the Cannes Violin Competition, which confi rmed his repu- Television Festival in . tation as a musician of the very highest order. Since October , Mr. Vengerov has been Mr. Vengerov recorded exclusively for a Professor of Violin at the Musikhochschule Teldec Classics for  years, during which time des Saarlandes. His pupils have appeared regu- awards and accolades were plentiful, including larly not only as soloists, but also in ensemble both Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, with Mr. Vengerov, at many festivals, including and Ritmo (Spain) Artist of the Year in . Young Euro Classic in in . In , he was awarded the Gramophone Maxim Vengerov performs regularly with Record of the Year and received Grammy all the major orchestras and the most eminent nominations for Classical Album of the Year conductors. In the past three years, he has taken and Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra up diff erent projects in addition to the usual for his recording of the fi rst Shostakovich and concerto and recital repertoire. On a tour with

CAL PERFORMANCES 37 About the Artists the English Chamber Orchestra he performed Since winning as both soloist and conductor for the fi rst time, First Prize in after studying conducting for two years in the the  Busoni class of Vag Papian, who in turn studied with International Piano the legendary Ilya Musin. He performed recit- Competition, als on the Baroque violin with , Lilya Zilberstein went on a solo recital tour performing Bach, has established Shchedrin and Ysaÿe sonatas using both his herself as one of Strad and the Baroque violin in a single concert, the fi nest pianists and took up the for another tour with the in the world. In English Chamber Orchestra and to record the North America, Walton Viola Concerto for EMI. she has appeared Th e – season started with an ex- with the Chicago tensive tour in Europe and the United States Symphony at Ravinia, the Colorado Symphony, with Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole and Saint- the Dallas Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, Saëns’s Violin Concerto No. , another major the Indianapolis Symphony, the Jacksonville release on EMI Classics and a Carte Blanche Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the at the Concertgebouw. Mr. Vengerov opened Montreal Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the – season with the New York the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Philharmonic and the Symohony Oregon Symphony, the Pacifi c Symphony Orchestra. He toured the Far East and Europe and the Saint Louis Symphony, to name a until the end of  with a new program of few. In Europe and Asia, she has performed virtuoso pieces, which were recorded and re- with the , the Czech leased by EMI that autumn. Th e year  was Philharmonic, the Dresden Staatskapelle, a sabbatical year in which Mr. Vengerov studied the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Leipzig improvisation with Didier Lockwood and tango Gewandhaus, the London Symphony, dance and prepared for an explosive new viola the Moscow Philharmonic, the NHK Symphony concerto that Benjamin Yusupov has written for Mr. Vengerov, who gave the work its world (Tokyo), the RAI Symphony (Torino), the Royal premiere with the NDR Orchestra in Hannover Philharmonic, the La Scala Orchestra, the in May . Plans to tour this concerto Taipei Symphony and the Vienna Symphony. worldwide have been made for . In , She recently concluded a Rachmaninoff concer- Mr. Vengerov resumed his usual concert work to cycle with the Stuttgart Philharmonic, dur- with tours worldwide of the Mozart concertos ing which she played all four concertos and the with the UBS Verbier Chamber Orchestra and Paganini Variations in three evenings. Her fes- a recital tour of works by Mozart, Beethoven, tival engagements include Lugano, Peninsula, Prokofi ev and Shostakovich. Chautauqua and Mostly Mozart, both in New Mr. Vengerov wishes to express his gratitude York and Japan. to Mrs. Yoko Nagae Ceschina for all her contin- A captivating recitalist, Ms. Zilberstein ap- ued support, advice and great help, which made pears regularly in music centers throughout possible the purchase of his unique “Kreutzer” the United States, Europe and Japan. Recent Stradivarius violin. engagements have taken her to Madrid, Berlin, Budapest, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Innsbruck, Luxembourg, Stuttgart and Liverpool. Also a sought-after collaborator, Ms. Zilberstein has been performing duos with

38 CAL PERFORMANCES About the Artists for many years. In addition to show-stop- these include the Rachmaninoff Concertos ping performances in Norway, France, Italy Nos.  and  with and the and , a CD of the Brahms Sonata Berlin Philharmonic, the Grieg Concerto with for Two played by Ms. Zilberstein and Neeme Järvi and the Göteborg Symphony, and Ms. Argerich was released in . Current col- solo works of Rachmaninoff , Shostakovich, laborations include extensive tours in the United Mussorgsky, Liszt, Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, States, Canada and Europe with Russian vio- Ravel and Chopin. linist Maxim Vengerov. Featured on the EMI A native of Moscow, Ms. Zilberstein is a recording Martha Argerich and Friends: Live graduate of the Gnessin Pedagogical Institute. from the Lugano Festival, Mr. Vengerov’s and In addition to the Busoni Competition Gold Ms. Zilberstein’s performance of the Brahms Medal, she was the  Prizewinner of the Sonata No.  for Violin and Piano won a Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy Grammy nomination for best classical album as (other recipients include , Anne- well as best chamber music performance. Sophie Mutter and Esa-Pekka Salonen). She Lilya Zilberstein has also made numer- moved to Hamburg in , where she lives ous recordings for ; with her husband and their two sons.

CAL PERFORMANCES 39