Aspen Music Festival and School Robert Spano, Music Director The 2020 Mercedes T. Bass Sunday Concert Series Alan Fletcher, President and CEO A Recital by Behzod Abduraimov, piano

Sunday, August 2, 2020 3 pm

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, op. 27, no. 2, "Moonlight" (1801) 16' (1770–1827) Adagio sostenuto Allegretto Presto agitato

DEBUSSY Children's Corner (1906–08) 16' (1862–1918) Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum Jimbo's Lullaby Serenade for the Doll The Snow is Dancing The Little Shepherd Golliwog's Cakewalk

MUSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) 35' (1839–1881) Promenade Gnomus The Old Castle Tuileries Bydło Promenade Ballet of Chicks in their Shells Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle Promenade Limoges Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum Promenade The Hut on Fowl's Legs: Baba-Yaga The Great Gate of Kiev

With special thanks to Deborah and Richard Felder, Shirley and Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr., Janet and Tom O'Connor, Dana and Gene Powell, and Kelli and Allen Questrom

The Aspen Music Festival and School uses Steinway and Boston pianos, designed by Steinway & Sons; Steinway & Sons is represented in Colorado exclusively by Schmitt Music. Aspen Music Festival and School Robert Spano, Music Director Alan Fletcher, President and CEO A Recital by Behzod Abduraimov Sunday, August 2, 2020 3 pm

2020 saw the release of two recordings: Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Lucerne Symphony under James Gaffigan (recorded on Rachmaninov’s own piano from Villa Senar for Sony Classical), and Rach- Behzod Abduraimov performs with renowned maninov’s Piano No.3 with the Concertgebouwork- worldwide including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Los An- est under , for the RCO live label. geles Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, , , and Orches- Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1990, Behzod began the tre de , and with prestigious conductors such as Valery piano aged five as a pupil of Tamara Popovich at Uspensky Gergiev, Lorenzo Viotti, Jakub Hr˚uša, Santtu-Matias Rouvali State Central Lyceum. In 2009, he won First Prize at the Lon- and Gustavo Dudamel. don International Piano Competition with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.3. He studied with Stanislav Ioudenitch at the Behzod has given multiple recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Stern International Center for Music at Park University, Missouri, Auditorium, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and Amster- where he is Artist-in-Residence. dam’s Concertgebouw, and has recently been presented by Chicago Symphony presents, 92nd Street Y, Barbican Centre, Spivey Hall, Vancouver Recital Series, Kölner Philharmonie and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. Festival appearances include Aspen, Verbier, Rheingau, La Roque Antheron and Lucerne Festivals.

Photo credit: Evgeny Eutykhov A RECITAL BY BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV • PROGRAM NOTES moving way. Though the analyst can discern elements of sonata form in the movement, it would never strike the casual listener as a normal opening for a sonata. Piano Sonata No. 14, in C-sharp minor, op. 27, no. The second movement, in D-flat major (which is simply 2, “Moonlight” another way of writing C-sharp), has the form of a scherzo with contrasting trio, though it is rather more Beethoven’s most famous piano sonata is also his lyrical than such movements tended to be in Beethoven. least typical. Everyone knows the opening strains of The tempo is only allegretto, a softening of the allegro the “Moonlight” Sonata—even listeners who have that is more likely in such a place. After so much use of never been to a recital. Like the Fifth Symphony, its relatively slow tempi and the carefully concealed formal opening phrase conjures up an entire world of classical seams in the first movement, Beethoven feels the need music and becomes a metaphor for something far for a straightforward fast finale with a straightforward more than the piece itself. Part of the work’s symbolic formal shape. Here at last, in the Presto agitato, is the effect comes from its nickname—which has nothing fast tempo normally associated with the beginning, and whatsoever to do with the composer. Beethoven himself here too the energy level rises to its peak with a volcanic never heard the name. Nor does it have anything to do eruption of agitato sixteenth notes that set the character with the circumstances of composition or the source of the entire movement, even of the second theme of inspiration. One oft-repeated anecdote has it that group, when the broader melody in the right hand is Beethoven was inspired “by the moonlight shining on supported by the grumbling and muttering sixteenths in the waters of Lake Lucerne.” Aside from the fact that the bass. ­—© STEVEN LEDBETTER Beethoven never set eyes on Lake Lucerne, the Sonata makes its effect quite fully without such apocryphal CLAUDE DEBUSSY tales. In Beethoven’s own day, long before the nickname Children’s Corner was invented, this Sonata became popular at once. Within eight years of writing it, Beethoven expressed to Carl Czerny his irritation that this one work had Claude Debussy was a masterful pianist of great achieved so much more popularity than his other technique and remarkable imagination, but he is sonatas: “They are incessantly talking about the C-sharp reported to have hated the instrument as a young man— minor sonata; on my word I have written better ones!” though perhaps that view came from his wearing the composer’s hat and being aware of what he considered At the time of its composition, though, the Sonata the instrument’s limitations on the music he wanted was different enough from the norm that Beethoven to write. In any case, he conquered the piano as a hesitated to label is simply “sonata.” He added the composer by changing quite dramatically what was important qualification “quasi una fantasia” (“almost a expected of piano music. He is one of that small group of fantasy”), suggesting that though the work had sonata- composers who not only wrote superb compositions for like elements, they would be difficult to discern in the his instrument but actually enlarged its possibilities. fine rapturous play of the composer’s imagination. The main feature that impelled Beethoven to use this title His early works were all conceived as abstract formal seems to be the unusual sequence of tempos, beginning compositions which in no way committed the composer with the full-scale Adagio rather than a vigorous (or the listener) to seeking visual images in the music, sonata form allegro. (The other work published with though they also show him coming to grips with new the “Moonlight” Sonata in opus 27, which Beethoven possibilities of sonority and texture. also labeled “quasi una fantasia,” also has an unusual sequence of tempi.) And to almost everyone, it is that But in 1903, with his first book of Estampes, Debussy evocative opening movement, Adagio sostenuto, that is suddenly arrived at his mature style, in which the titles the “Moonlight Sonata.” The movement is undoubtedly explicitly evoked sensory images, whether visual, aural, striking. It has virtually no melody as such, only a or even olfactory. His later, freer piano style provided continuous triplet rhythm in the accompaniment and subtle miracles of suggestion, extending still further the a characteristic dottednote figure introducing the main harmonic flexibility, textural freedom, and coloristic phrases. The harmony moves slowly but steadily over imagination of his early works. extreme distances and tinges the phrases in a richly A RECITAL BY BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV • PROGRAM NOTES The suite, Children’s Corner, composed in 1908, is a he makes one deliciously satirical quotation, a mark reflection of Debussy’s delight in watching his own of his anti-Wagnerian sentiment: the opening phrase five-year-old daughter, nicknamed Chouchou, but the of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde appears with the specific idea of composing a “children’s piece” may have performance indication “avec une grande émotion”— occurred to him in the process of writing an admiring only to be mocked by gleeful chuckles from “Golliwog.” critique of Musorgsky’s song cycle The Nursery. Debussy ­—© S. L. titled the work—and the individual movements—in his sometimes quirky English, possibly as a gesture toward Chouchou’s English governess. The music was MODEST MUSORGSKY composed over a period of years (Serenade of the Doll Pictures at an Exhibition had been published separately two years earlier); it was assembled into a suite of pieces that go far beyond music to be played by children; rather, they reflect The music of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky is the an adult’s sophisticated view of childhood, including triumph of genius over faulty technique. Though he had certain private musical jokes that would surely not be the least formal training of any of the Russian “Five” and understood by the child in question. was certainly regarded as little more than a dilettante by composers of far greater polish, Musorgsky had also a burning originality that sometimes overcame both his Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum is a satirical reference to the huge collection of piano works by Carl Czerny (a lack of technique and the tragic addiction to the bottle friend and confidante of Beethoven’s, who is unfairly that led to an unstable life and an early demise. His best remembered for his technical exercises, not genius expressed itself most directly in , for he had for many compositions that are far more musically the ability to translate verbal and physical gestures into rewarding). Debussy emphasizes the pedagogical extraordinarily imaginative, lifelike music. side of Czerny, producing what he called (in a letter to his publisher) “a sort of hygienic and progressive The signal exception to this rule is the suitePictures at gymnastics; it should therefore be played every an Exhibition (Kartinki s vïstavki) for piano solo, one morning, before breakfast. . . .” The piece evokes the of the great achievements of romantic keyboard music picture of a child beginning her piano exercises with and of Russian nationalism. Even here Musorgsky was some enthusiasm, losing interest along the way, inspired by a kind of dramatic event. The exhibition in question was a real one, a memorial showing of works but ending with a flash of virtuosic display.Jimbo’s by a talented architect named Viktor Hartmann, who Lullaby is a song to the child’s toy velvet elephant (Debussy insisted on the spelling “Jimbo” rather than had died at the age of forty in July 1873. Musorgsky, an “Jumbo”) that quotes from a lullaby, “Do, do, l’enfant admirer and a close friend of the artist’s, himself wrote an obituary describing Hartmann’s first important do.” Serenade of the Doll is “sung” to the imagined accompaniment of a high pitched instrument like a work, the reconstruction of several buildings for toy guitar; its main section suggests the effect of the an All-Russian Manufacturing Exhibition: “In his gamelan music that interested Debussy, while the hands a clumsy prison-like building where wine had middle section offers a strong contrast with a pensive previously been stored took on an artistic, even graceful and nostalgic melody. appearance, both inside and outside, in the Russian s t y l e .” The Snow is Dancing is a toccata for alternating hands with subtle rhythms, particularly in the middle section, Vladimir Stasov, critic and spokesman for a whole generation of Russian artists and friend to both and scarcely rises above the dynamic level of piano. The Musorgsky and Hartmann, wrote: “He was the most Little Shepherd grows out of unaccompanied melodic phrases such as might be sounded on a reed pipe, both talented, the most original, the most enterprising, and pensive and joyous, while the harmony grows more and the most daring of all our architects...For me, so much more complex throughout. hope and anticipation perished with him!” At Stasov’s initiative, a special exhibition of Hartmann’s work was put together in St. Petersburg, where it opened in mid- Golliwog’s Cakewalk is a playful, clever finale to this melange of vignettes. Debussy’s music employs the February 1874. The show included both architectural syncopation of the cakewalk (which is the basis for work and various drawings and paintings with scenes much ragtime, and later found its way into jazz), but of everyday life and different human types. Sometime A RECITAL BY BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV • PROGRAM NOTES in the first month after it opened, Musorgsky visited the himself owned Hartmann’s drawings (two separate exhibition. It was to have a powerful effect on him. On images, not one) of a rich Jew and a poor Jew; he June 12 or 19 (the date is not certain) he wrote to Stasov translated these into a single movement contrasting the with good news: “Hartmann is boiling as Boris boiled.” arrogance of wealth to the cringing obsequiousness of This was his way to say that he was deeply involved in poverty, and which he called Samuel Goldenburg and composition and that it was going well. Clearly he had Schmuyle. Hartmann’s lively drawing of The Market at already discussed a Hartmann project with Stasov, since Limoges becomes a brilliant scherzo, followed at once he offered no other explanation. But he continued: by the powerful contrasting scene of the Catacombs: “Sounds and ideas have been hanging in the air; I am Sepulcrum romanum in Paris. The mood is continued devouring them and stuffing myself—I barely have time in the passage headed Cum mortuis in lingua morta to scribble them on paper...My profile can be seen in the (“With the dead in a dead language”), in which interludes....How well it is working out.” Musorgsky himself becomes our guide through the city of the dead with a ghostly version of his Promenade. In that view, he was certainly right. Composing at a terrific pace, Musorgsky finished the work by June The Hut on Fowl’s Legs: Baba Yaga evokes the 22—fast work indeed for so elaborate a score. The suite fearsome witch of Russian fairy tales, whose wild ride was immediately hailed by the composer’s friends, brings us to the powerful finale of the suite, The Great particularly Stasov, to whom the composer dedicated Gate of Kiev (also known as The Bogatyr Gate—bogatyrs the work as the one whose work on the Hartmannn are heroes that appear in Russian epic poems called exhibition motivated the composition. Yet though his bylinas). In Stasov’s description, “Hartmannn’s sketch friends admired it enormously, few people played the was his design for city gates at Kiev in the ancient suite; it is fiendishly difficult. It was not even published Russian massive style with a cupola shaped like a until five years after the composer’s death. It only slavonic helmet.” Musorgsky filled his musical image became famous and popular in the brilliant orchestral with the perpetual ringing of bells large and small, guise created by Maurice Ravel at the suggestion of recreating the sounds heard around a Russian public conductor Serge Koussevitzky. monument.

The various “pictures” are linked here and there by — © S. L. references to the opening Promenade, which, as Musorgsky reported, was his own self-portrait as he moved from picture to picture. The music is so vivid that no explanation is required, but the listener might care to know something about the original pictures.

ThePromenade has a fanfare-like quality, celebratory, even though the reason for the exposition was the early death of the artist. Still, it provides a rich opening heard later in many different guises.

TheGnome was a grotesque drawing for a nutcracker, while The Old Castledepicted a landscape of markedly Italianate cast with a troubador singing his lay. Tuileries, a Parisian scene, showed children quarreling at play, an image perfectly captured in the taunting figure that begins the scene and returns again and again throughout. Bydło is the Polish word for “cattle”; Hartmann’s picture showed a heavy oxcart lumbering along.

The unlikely soundingBallet of Chicks in their Shells consisted of designs for a dance performance in which the dancers wore eggshaped costumes. Musorgsky