Jeffrey Kahane, Piano
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Sunday, March 12, 2017, 3pm Hertz Hall Jeffrey Kahane, piano PROGRAM Franz SCHUBERT (1797 –1828) Sonata in G Major, D. 894 Molto moderato e cantabile Andante Menuetto: Allegro moderato – Trio Allegretto INTERMISSION Timo ANDRES (b. 1985) Heavy Sleep (2013) Gabriel KAHANE (b. 1981) Works on Paper (2016, West Coast Premiere) Death to Advertising Veda (Paraphrase) The New Sincerity Auld Reel Frédéric CHOPIN (1810 –1849) Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58 Allegro maestoso Scherzo: Molto vivace Largo Finale: Presto non tanto Jeffrey Kahane appears by arrangement with CM Artists. Funded, in part, by the Koret Foundation, this performance is part of Cal Performances’ 2016/17 Koret Recital Series, which brings world-class artists to our community. PROGRAM NOTES Sonata in G Major, D. 894 trios, the Impromp tus—that he created during Franz Schubert the last months of his brief life. On January 31, 1827, Franz Schubert turned 30 Robert Schumann called the Piano Sonata in years old. He had been following a bohemian G Major (D. 894), completed in October 1826, existence in Vienna for over a decade, making “Schubert’s most perfect work, in both form barely more than a pittance from the sale and and conception.” The score was published in performance of his works and living largely by April 1827 as Schubert’s Op. 78 by the Viennese the generosity of his friends, a devoted band of firm of Tobias Haslinger with a dedication to music-lovers who rallied around his convivial Joseph von Spaun, a fellow student of Schubert personality and exceptional talent. The pattern at the School of the Court Chapel in Vienna of Schubert’s daily life was firmly established by who became a life-long friend, supporter, and that time: composition in the morning; long frequent host of the convivial “Schubertiads” at walks or visits in the afternoon; companionship which the composer’s friends assembled to for wine and song in the evening. The routine partake of the latest blossoms of his creativity. was broken by occasional trips into the coun - Kathleen Dale noted several essential stylistic tryside to stay with friends or families of friends. elements of Schubert’s piano sonatas: “For him, A curious dichotomy marked Schu bert’s per - sheer beauty of sound was an end in itself, and sonality during those final years of his life, one whatever his sonatas may lack in constructional that suited well the Romantic image of the in - strength, they gain in sublimity of tonal range, spired artist, rapt out of quotidian experience in graciousness of melody, in the unusual vari - to carry back to benighted humanity some ety of rhythmical schemes, and in the exquisite transcendent vision. “Anyone who had seen beauty of the pianoforte writing. In his own him only in the morning, in the throes of treatment of form, Schubert showed great composition, his eyes shining, speaking, even, ingenuity and originality, as the analyst of his another language, will never forget it—though sonatas soon discovers—possibly to his sur - in the afternoon, to be sure, he became another prise; certainly to his delight.” person,” recorded one friend. The duality in Unlike Beethoven, Schubert made no at - Schubert’s character was reflected in the sharp tempt to redefine the Classical four-movement swings of mood marking both his psychologi - sonata structure in his music, but sought rather cal makeup and his creative work. “If there to expand the genre’s emotional scope through were times, both in his social relationships and greater lyricism and more far-flung harmonic his art, when the Austrian character appeared peregrinations, qualities much in evidence in all too violently in the vigorous and pleasure- the G-Major Sonata. The work’s opening state - loving Schubert,” wrote his friend the dramatist ment is floating, ethereal, and luminous, a Eduard von Bauernfeld, “there were also times Schubertian counterpart to the rapt timeless - when a black-winged demon of sorrow and ness of some of Beethoven’s finest slow move - melancholy forced its way into his vicinity; not ments. The music takes on a greater urgency as altogether an evil spirit, it is true, since, in the its sonata form unfolds, mounting to moments dark concentrated hours, it often brought out of high drama in the development section, but songs of the most agonizing beauty.” The ability reasserting its abiding halcyon state with the re - to mirror his own fluctuating feelings in his capitulation. The Andante, evidence that Schu - compositions—the darkening cloud momen - bert had perfected a sublime melding of his tarily obscuring the bright sunlight—is one of vocal and instrumental gifts by his 29th year, is Schubert’s most remarkable and characteristic an extended song without words in alternating achievements, and touches indelibly upon the stanzas: A–B–A–B–A. The Menuetto, actually incomparable series of works— Winterreise , the a vigorous Austrian Ländler rather than a de - Great Sym phony in C Major, the last three scendent of the courtly 18th-century dance, is a piano sonatas, the String Quintet, the two piano reminder that Schubert wrote more practical PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES dance pieces for the piano—over 400—than founded by pianist Bruce Levingston in 2001 any other species of composition, save only solo that “seeks to explore and develop the work of songs. The finale is a spacious rondo of sun- emerging as well as established composers and dappled geniality. artists from different mediums.” Levingston premiered the work at Zankel Hall in New York Heavy Sleep on April 7, 2014. The title is derived from Timo Andres “Nocturne” by the Swedish poet Tomas Tran - Timo Andres was born in 1985 in Palo Alto, strömer (1931-2015): I drive through a village at California, grew up in rural Connecticut, night, the houses rise up/in the glare of my studied composition at Juilliard’s Pre-College headlights—they’re awake, want to drink./ Divi sion during high school, and earned bach - Houses, barns, signs, abandoned vehicles— elor’s and master’s degrees at Yale as a student now/they clothe themselves in Life. The people of Martin Bresnick, Ingram D. Marshall, Chris are sleeping:/some can sleep peacefully, others Theofanidis, and Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron have drawn features/as if training hard for eter - Jay Kernis; he also studied piano with Eleanor nity./They don’t dare let go though their sleep Marshall and Frederic Chiu. Andres’ composi - is heavy./They rest like lowered crossing barri - tions, almost entirely for instrumental chamber ers when the mystery draws past. ensembles and for piano, have been commis - Andres wrote, “For a supposed nocturne, sioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Heavy Sleep is dense, dramatic, and packed with Angeles Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall (Lon - activity. The material of the piece is set on a re - don), Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amster - peating ground of chromatic scales, an idea dam, San Francisco Performances, Gilmore taken from the coda of Chopin’s Nocturne in Foun dation, Third Coast Percussion, the Library F-sharp minor, Op. 48, No. 2. The piece’s char - of Congress, and other leading performers acter, though, is based more on the Nocturne and organizations. As a solo pianist, he has ap - in C minor, Op. 48, No. 1, its measured pacing peared at such notable venues as Carnegie Hall, belying the terrors of its middle section. Heavy Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Lincoln Sleep begins with isolated chords—seemingly Center, the Barbican Centre (London), and disconnected events that gradually reveal an New York’s Le Poisson Rouge in works by Philip overall direction as they increase in complexity Glass, Nico Muhly, and other prominent and volume. Eventually the music gets ‘stuck’ contemporary composers as well as those on a repeated whole-step interval—not much of Ives and Mozart. As with many of his creative in terms of a theme, but revealed in greater colleagues, a wide range of music informs relief by the variety of things happening around Andres’ works, from such traditional com - it. After a loud confrontation between the posers as Brahms, Mozart, and Schuman to whole-step and the opening chords, the music Brian Eno, Radiohead, and the Icelandic “post- evaporates in a harmonic haze, turning the rock” band Sigur Rós—he has written a com - same idea over and over.” panion piano suite to Schumann’s Kreisleriana and “re-composed” the left-hand part and ca - Works on Paper denzas for Mozart’s Coronation Concerto. Timo Gabriel Kahane Andres’ distinctions include awards and grants “Gabriel Kahane,” according to the biography from the American Academy of Arts and on his web site (gabrielkahane.com), “is a song - Letters, BMI, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, writer, singer, pianist, composer, devoted ama - American Music Center, and Copland Fund; teur cook, guitarist, and occasional banjo player his The Blind Banister was a finalist for the 2016 … [who] writes string quartets and musicals Pulitzer Prize in Music. and pop songs, with his heart fully in all of those Heavy Sleep was commissioned by Première endeavors.” Kahane, the son of acclaimed pi - Commission, Inc., a nonprofit organization anist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane, was born PROGRAM NOTES in 1981 in the Los Angeles suburb of Venice Issue ), premiered his full-length musical Febru - Beach, moved between the coasts several times ary House at New York’s Public Theater in May during his youth, and spent a year studying jazz 2012 and recorded its score on the StorySound at the New England Conservatory of Music in label, and recently completed Gabriel’s Guide Boston before completing his undergraduate to the 48 States , a song cycle based on the degree at Brown.