PIANIST GABRIELA MONTERO Live from Barcelona
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Sunday, September 13, 2020, 3 PM EDT PIANIST GABRIELA MONTERO Live from Barcelona Moss Arts Center HomeStage Series PIANIST GABRIELA MONTERO Live from Barcelona Moderated by Margaret Lawrence, director of programming, Moss Arts Center Free improvisation Kinderszcenen (Scenes from Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Childhood) Piano Sonata, op. 31, no. 2, Ludwig van Beethoven Tempest (1770-1827) Improvisation with the audience Program Notes KINDERSZCENEN (SCENES FROM CHILDHOOD) Robert Schumann Robert Schumann grew up, like Bach, in northern Germany and was fully aware of its important keyboard traditions; indeed, Bach’s works were a significant source of study and inspiration for him. As a youth he was equally passionate about music and literature, and studied piano with well-known pedagogue Friedrich Wieck, even while tackling various literary projects. Schumann, however, was intensely aware of his pianistic shortcomings, only exacerbated in his early twenties by a mysterious injury to one of his hands. His compositions for piano, which show an intense preoccupation with virtuosity as well as poetry, are frequently programmatic, thus became increasingly important to him. His teacher’s daughter, the great pianist Clara Wieck, was the primary inspiration for Schumann’s piano music, and after their marriage in 1840 she became his pianistic voice and the chief promoter of his work. In her later years she would edit his piano works for the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. Schumann wrote an abundant amount of piano music, including large- scale forms but also many miniature pieces arranged in series or cycles and laced with all kinds of personal and literary allusions. Schumann’s delightful collection Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), op. 15, dates from February 1838, shortly after his betrothal to Clara Wieck. Schumann wrote of them to Clara, “it was like an echo of your words when you once wrote to me that I seemed to you as a child; in short, I felt just as if in child’s clothes, and then wrote the thirty funny little things out of which I selected some twelve and called them Childhood Scenes. You will be pleased with them, but must of course forget that you are a virtuoso.” A few of these pieces, such as the insouciant and wistful opening, Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands and People), contain Schumann’s most memorable melodies; the seventh piece, Träumerei (Reverie), came to epitomize the sentimental strain in 19th-century salon music. Some of the pieces, such as the scampering Hasche-Mann (Blind Man’s Bluff) and the awkwardly rhythmic Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the Hobbyhorse), directly evoke childhood games. Others sketch a vivid emotional moment or memory, as in the mock pomposity of Wichtige Begebenheit (Important Event) or the gently pensive Am Kamin (By the Fireside). In the final piece of the set,Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks), Schumann reveals with nostalgic eloquence that these are not after all childish pieces, but the poignant reflections of an adult, looking back with amusement and tenderness on an earlier self. Program Notes (continued) PIANO SONATA, OP. 31, NO. 2, TEMPEST Ludwig van Beethoven Beethoven’s op. 31 sonatas were composed in 1802, and unlike most of his piano sonatas, which were dedicated to noble friends and patrons, these bear no dedication. At the time of their composition Beethoven was despondent over his growing deafness and spent the summer in quiet retreat in the Viennese suburb of Heiligenstadt; his despairing mood is revealed in the so-called “Heiligenstadt Testament” that he wrote in October, bidding farewell to his brothers and declaring his readiness to die. In this sad document he confesses to feeling isolated by his deafness, saying “I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished.” But he nonetheless produced a substantial body of work that year, including not only op. 31, but the Symphony no. 2 and the op. 30 violin sonatas. Beethoven’s student at the time, Carl Czerny, wrote that his teacher felt he was on “a new path,” and believed that Beethoven was referring to these piano sonatas. Each of the three sonatas in op. 31 possesses its own very distinctive character and personality. The first movement of the D-minor Sonata, op. 31, no. 2, amazes the listener with its seemingly erratic fluctuations; on the one hand, brief Largo and Adagio passages featuring luxuriant, harp-like arpeggiations and recitative-like declamation, and on the other stormy virtuosity in tumultuous Allegro episodes. Beethoven’s biographer Anton Schindler, who knew the composer fairly well, avowed that this sonata might be linked to Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. But though Beethoven certainly read much Shakespeare, and reportedly embedded a depiction of the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet in one of his op. 18 string quartets, there is no way to verify this intriguing idea. Yet it is hard to escape the notion that some kind of narrative is unfolding in the slow, overtly rhetorical interpolations that punctuate the turbulent first movement. The central adagio movement is also rich in rhetorical expression, exploiting extremes of register and texture. The finale is both restless and plaintive, with relentless 16th-note motion that propels it rhythmically. Its terse, haunting melodic gestures at the opening gather momentum and soar into one of Beethoven’s characteristically heroic themes. Kathryn L. Libin © 2020 Biography GABRIELA MONTERO Gabriela Montero’s visionary interpretations and unique compositional gifts have garnered her critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage. Anthony Tommasini remarked in The New York Times that “Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power...soulful lyricism...unsentimental expressivity.” Recipient of the prestigious 2018 Heidelberger Frühling Music Prize, Montero’s recent and forthcoming highlights include debuts with the San Francisco Symphony (Edward Gardner), New World Symphony (Michael Tilson Thomas), Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo (Aziz Shokhakimov), Orquesta de Valencia (Pablo Heras-Casado), and the Bournemouth Symphony (Carlos Miguel Prieto), the latter of which featured her as artist-in-residence for the 2019-2020 season. Montero also recently performed her own Latin Concerto with the Orchestra of the Americas at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Edinburgh Festival, as well as at Carnegie Hall and the New World Center with the NYO2. Additional highlights include a European tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla; a second tour with the cutting edge Scottish Ensemble, this time with Montero’s latest composition, Babel, as the centerpiece of the program; her long-awaited return to Warsaw for the Chopin in Europe Festival, marking 23 years since her prize win at the International Chopin Piano Competition; and return invitations to work with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony, Jaime Martin and the Orquestra de Cadaqués for concerts in Madrid and Barcelona, and Alexander Shelley and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada. Celebrated for her exceptional musicality and ability to improvise, Montero has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras to date, including the Royal Liverpool, Rotterdam, Dresden, Oslo, Vienna Radio, and Netherlands Radio philharmonic orchestras; the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Zürcher Kammerorchester, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and Australian Chamber Orchestra; the Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, Baltimore, Vienna, City of Birmingham, Barcelona, Lucerne, and Sydney symphony orchestras; the Belgian National Orchestra, Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn, and the Cleveland Orchestra, orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, and Residentie Orkest. A graduate and fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, Montero is also a frequent recitalist and chamber musician, having given concerts at such distinguished venues as the Wigmore Hall, Kennedy Center, Biography (continued) GABRIELA MONTERO, continued Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Cologne Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Herkulessaal, Sydney Opera House, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Lisbon Gulbenkian Museum, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, Seoul’s LG Arts Centre, Hong Kong City Hall, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, and at the Barbican’s Sound Unbound, Edinburgh, Salzburg, SettembreMusica in Milan and Turin, Lucerne, Ravinia, Gstaad, Saint-Denis, Violon sur le Sable, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Rheingau, Ruhr, Trondheim, Bergen, and Lugano festivals. Montero is also an award-winning and bestselling recording artist. Her most recent album, released in autumn 2019 on the Orchid Classics label, features her own Latin Concerto and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, recorded with the Orchestra of the Americas in Frutillar, Chile. Her previous recording on Orchid Classics features Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto, no. 2 and her first orchestral composition,Ex Patria, winning Montero her first Latin Grammy for Best Classical Album (Mejor Álbum de Música Clásica). Others include Bach and Beyond, which held the top spot on the Billboard Classical Charts for several months and garnered her two Echo Klassik Awards: the 2006 Keyboard Instrumentalist of the Year and 2007 Award for Classical Music without Borders. In 2008 she also received a Grammy nomination for her album, Baroque, and in 2010 she released Solatino, a recording