Yuja Wang Sergei Rachmaninov
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Invesco Piano Concerts Yuja Wang Sunday, May 13, 2018 at 3:00pm Pre-concert Talk at 2:00pm This is the 835th concert in Koerner Hall PROGRAM Sergei Rachmaninov: Prelude in D Major, op. 23, no. 4 Étude-tableau in B Minor, op. 39, no. 4 Prelude in E Minor, op. 32, no. 4 Prelude in B Minor, op. 32, no. 10 Prelude in G Minor, op. 23, no. 5 Étude-tableau in E flat Minor, op. 39, no. 5 Alexander Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, op. 70 György Ligeti: Étude Book One: No. 3 Touches bloquées (Blocked Keys) Étude Book Two: No. 9 Vertige (Dizziness) Étude Book One: No. 1 Désordre (Disorder) INTERMISSION Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat Major, op. 84 I. Andante dolce; Allegro moderato II. Andante sognando III. Vivace Sergei Rachmaninov Born in Semyonovo, Russia, March 20/April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943 Prelude in D Major, op. 23, no. 4 (1901) Étude-tableau in B Minor, op 39, no. 4 (1916) Prelude in E Minor, op. 32, no. 4 (1910) Prelude in B Minor, op. 32, no. 10 (1910) Prelude in G Minor, op. 23, no. 5 (1901) Étude-tableau in E flat Minor, op. 39, no. 5 (1917) The famous, perhaps infamous C sharp Minor Prelude that brought the young Rachmaninov early success was the first of what turned into a full set of 24 preludes. Like Chopin, Rachmaninov wrote them in all the major and minor keys, although his key structure does not follow the symmetrical pattern of Chopin. The collection grew in stages. The Ten Preludes of op. 23 followed the early C sharp Minor Prelude in 1903 and, seven years later, Rachmaninov completed the set with the 13 Preludes, op. 32. He never played all 24 Preludes as a cycle, preferring to select a small, contrasting group that he changed from season to season. Rachmaninov’s op. 39 is the second of two sets of demanding piano pieces that essentially close the book on the great 19th century tradition of virtuoso études. He called them Études-tableaux (Study- Pictures), inventing the term to describe these short, technically complex pieces that explore a mood or tell a story. He gave little away by way of explanation, however, preferring to follow Chopin’s lead in the four Ballades of leaving it to the listener’s imagination to fill in the specifics of the narrative. “I do not believe in the artist disclosing too much of his images; let them paint for themselves what it most suggests,” he once said. Many of both the Preludes and Études-tableaux are built around a single, distinctive idea that is then developed, like the flowing juxtaposition of twos against threes in alternating hands of the Prelude op. 23, no. 4, in D major. Here, the general mood is calm and somewhat Chopinesque, but the piece is regularly spiced by distinctive harmonic piquancy. There is a determined B minor march at the core of the Étude- tableau, op. 39, no. 4, but its metre is in a state of flux and the mood is restless, as Rachmaninov varies the staccato notes and repeated chords. His manuscript score does not specify a key signature, though he does date the piece September 24, 1916, making it the earliest of the set to have been composed. Op. 32, no. 4 in E minor is also restless and disquieting. One of the longer, more segmented preludes, its cumulative impact is nonetheless powerful, as bell-like, questioning bare octaves brush up against often unyielding triplets. As in much of his keyboard writing, the B Minor Prelude, op. 32, no. 10 evokes the sound of bells – here a tolling, funeral bell, deep within an evocative, gently mournful prelude. A comforting siciliano motif builds to a powerful climax before receding into itself in one of Rachmaninov’s finest preludes, which took inspiration from a painting by Böcklin of an elderly man pensively studying a distant cottage. The celebrated Alla marcia Prelude in G Minor, op. 23, no. 5 is crisp and Russian to the core, with a lyrical middle section that sweeps over the entire keyboard in epic manner. Eight of the nine op. 39 Études-tableaux are in the minor key and the traditional Gregorian melody of the Dies irae appears in all of them. The E flat Minor Étude (no. 5) is the dramatic high point of the collection with its resonantly chordal, technically demanding writing, by turns anguished, tragic, passionate, and despairing. Alexander Scriabin Born in Moscow, Russia, December 25, 1871/January 6, 1872; died in Moscow, Russia, April 14/27, 1915 Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, op. 70 (1913) Scriabin’s piano sonatas are his musical autobiography. 10 in number, plus two early sonatas, they chart a path from the 19th century virtuosity of Liszt and Chopin (though Scriabin himself would acknowledge no outside influence on his music) to the probing harmonies, complex sonorities, merging of melody and harmony, and thoroughly early 20th century avant-garde aesthetic of the late sonatas. Along the way there is no shortage of egoism and enough extra-musical philosophy and certainty of his own divinity to justify cautionary notices in program booklets. The last five were worked on between 1911 and 1913, often simultaneously, and they are each in one movement. The tenth is a highly compressed sonata-form structure, preceded by a slow introduction, which introduces the first of its three main ideas, exploratory and questioning as it slowly emerges. As the sonata progresses, its harmony is restless, constantly surging forward, increasingly overlaid with layers of shimmering, structurally important, trills – to the point where the work was known among the composer’s friends as the Trill Sonata. Forward-looking and offering a glimpse of the direction Scriabin’s music was taking, the sonata climaxes with what Scriabin referred to as “blinding light, as if the sun had come too close” and concludes with the calm of the opening, its initial questioning now resolved in this “bright, joyful, and earthy” masterpiece. “My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects,” Scriabin said. “Insects are born from the sun … they are the kisses of the sun.” György Ligeti Born in Dicsőszentmárton (Diciosânmartin, now Tîrnăveni), Transylvania, May 28, 1923; died in Vienna, Austria, June 12, 2006 Étude Book One: No. 3 Touches bloquées (Blocked Keys) (1985) Étude Book Two: No. 9 Vertige (Dizziness) (1990) Étude Book One: No. 1 Désordre (Disorder) (1985) Ligeti began a sequence of 18 Études at the age of 60 and they form the core of his music for solo piano. In them, Ligeti pushes at the bounds of musical structure and perception and, in doing so, opens a gateway to the later works, including the shimmering textures and intricate rhythms of the Violin and Piano Concertos. The Études are virtuoso works in both the pianistic and compositional sense, evolving, like the Chopin Études, from a simple idea to structures of some complexity. The first, opening Volume One, takes an apparently simple premise – the right hand plays the seven white keys, the left, the five black – and synchronizes them into superimposed patterns of eighth notes, spicing this with irregular accents and phase shifts. The resulting rhythmic exuberance evokes the ‘Disorder’ of the title, though it is worth noting that the piece is dedicated to that least disordered of composers, Pierre Boulez. The blocked effect of No. 3 arises when one hand, silently depressing a chord, gets in the way of the other, playing rapid chromatic scales around it, resulting in a stuttering, seemingly random chase from one end of the keyboard to another. The feeling of vertigo in No. 9 arises through a carefully constructed, endlessly descending texture of overlapping musical spirals, in which the gaps between entrances of new spirals becomes shorter, the texture correspondingly denser. Sergei Prokofiev Born in Sontzovka, Russia, April 11/23, 1891; died in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 1953 Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat Major, op. 84 (1939-44) “It has a complex inner life,” said Sviatoslav Richter of the third of Prokofiev’s so-called “Wartime” Sonatas. He was referring to elements of a cyclic structure within Prokofiev’s Eighth Sonata, which helps give the expansive work compelling forward momentum and coherence. Emil Gilels, who at 28 was to give the premiere of the sonata in Moscow on December 30, 1944, declared it “a profound work demanding a great deal of emotional tension [that] impresses by the symphonic nature of its development, the tension, breadth, and charm of the lyrical passages.” Neither spoke of the sounds of war or of any political overtones within the work. That is not surprising: Prokofiev had, by one report, sketched its entire outline in 1939, fully two years before Hitler’s invasion propelled the Soviet Union into World War Two. It is clear that Prokofiev had in mind a loosely connected and musically connected trilogy of sonatas when he began composition of his Sonatas Nos. 6, 7, and 8 in 1939, his first sonatas in 16 years. Continuing a well-established composing practice, he worked on all 10 movements concurrently from 1939 to 1944. Despite the strain of returning to life in the Soviet Union and a crumbling marriage, the sonatas were to represent the peak of his composition for solo piano – which had been a lifelong focal point, from his op. 1 Sonata to the two never-to-be completed sonatas he was working on the day he died. A substantial sonata at around 30 minutes, the Eighth gradually unfurls a spacious theme in short breaths, unhurried at the outset, broad and lyrical in its phrasing, promising more drama to come.