Sunday, March 1, 2020, 3pm Hertz Hall Louis Lortie, piano

PROGRAM

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Années de pèlerinage

Première année: Suisse, S. 160 La chapelle de Guillaume Tell Au lac de Wallenstadt Pastorale Au bord d’une source Orage Vallée d’Obermann Eglogue Le mal du pays Les cloches de Genève: Nocturne

INTERMISSION

Deuxième année: Italie, S. 161 Sposalizio Il penseroso Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa Sonetto 47 del Petrarca Sonetto 104 del Petrarca Sonetto 123 del Petrarca Après une lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata

INTERMISSION Troisième année, S. 163 Angélus! Prière aux anges gardiens Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este I: Thrénodie Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este II: Thrénodie Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este Sunt lacrymae rerum/En mode hongrois Marche funèbre Sursum corda

This afternoon’s concert will last approximately three hours, including two intermissions. Recordings available on the Chandos and Decca London labels. Louis Lortie appears by arrangement with Seldy Cramer Artists, Inc.

Support for this performance provided by the E. Nakamichi Foundation. Cal Performances’ 2019–20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Années de pèlerinage sun-bright C major before the piece closes with (Years of Pilgrimage) a coda that juxtaposes that theme with the fi nal Franz Liszt echoes of an alphorn motive. A great man’s reputation precedes him, and Th e halcyon mood of “Au lac de Wallenstadt,” Franz Liszt followed where his led. One of Eu- named for a small, idyllic Alpine lake an hour rope’s most famous and sought-aft er personal- southeast of Zurich, is captured in the quota- ities in the 19th century, he traveled the length tion from Byron’s Childe Harold with which and breadth of the Continent, astounding audi- Liszt headed the score: “… thy contrasted lake/ ences with his piano wizardry. His biographer With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing/Which Sacheverell Sitwell wrote, “Th ere was hardly a warns me, with its stillness, to forsake/Earth’s country in Europe to which his journeys did troubled waters for a purer spring.” Liszt’s mis- not extend. We fi nd him in Seville, in Lisbon, tress and traveling companion, Countess Marie in Copenhagen, all over Poland and Russia, in d’Agoult, recalled of their visit, “Th e shores of Hungary, and at Constantinople. Th e scope of Lake Wallenstadt detained us for a long time. his voyages was without precedent in the histo- Franz wrote for me there a melancholy piece, ry of music.” Liszt collected musical images as imitative of the sigh of the waves and the ca- he traveled, much as did Aaron Copland in the dence of oars, which I have never been able to 1930s when he wrote, “Other tourists will pull hear without weeping.” out their snapshots to show you what a country Th e “Pastorale” is a charming country vi- looks like, but a composer wants to show you gnette in alternating stanzas, the fi rst a quick, what a country sounds like.” Liszt’s most fa- circling dance-like motive, the second more ac- mous “tonal snapshots” are the three volumes tive, both built above repeated accompaniment of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). fi gures that suggest the drone of a bagpipe. Th e breathless anticipation that comes with Première Année: Suisse (First Year: Switzerland), the fi rst blooms of springtime is heard in “Au S. 160 (1835–36, revised 1848–53) bord d’une source” (“Beside a Spring”), headed Th e fi rst volume of Années de pèlerinage con- by a line from Schiller’s poem “Der Früchtling” tains musical souvenirs of Liszt’s travels in Swit- (“Th e Flowering”): “In the whispering coolness zerland and Italy in the 1830s. Most of the nine begins the play of young nature.” pieces were originally composed in 1835–36 “Orage” (“Storm”) uses a spectacular show and fi rst published in 1842 as a collection ti- of virtuoso pianism to evoke the gusts and rain tled Album d’un Voyageur. Liszt thoroughly of a mountain tempest that Byron equated with reworked them between 1848 and 1853, and human emotion in the lines from his Childe published them in their fi nal form in 1855. Harold that preface the score: “But where of ye, “La chapelle de Guillaume Tell” evokes the O tempests! is the goal?/Are ye like those within legend of the Swiss hero who led the 14th- the human breast?/Or do ye fi nd at length, like century struggle to create a free, unifi ed nation, eagles, some high nest?” which served as the source of Schiller’s play of Th e most substantial movement in the 1804 that in turn inspired Rossini’s 1829 French “Swiss” collection is the “Vallée d’Obermann” opera (as well as the spectacular open-air drama (“Obermann’s Valley”), inspired by the episto- that has played in Interlaken since 1912). Liszt lary novel Obermann (1804) set in Switzerland headed his score with the traditional motto of by the French writer Étienne Pivert de Senan- Switzerland—“Einer für Alle. Alle für Einen” cour (1770–1846), who lived in Fribourg during (“One for All. All for One”)—and suggested the the years following the French Revolution. Both country’s national spirit with a noble anthem the author and his title character were melan- at the start and a central portion based on an choly, cynical and solitary, qualities that Liszt authentic alphorn melody, which is echoed sought to capture in this tone poem for piano, above a tremulous and increasingly stormy which he prefaced with two quotations from background. Th e anthem returns in triumph in the novel: “What do I wish? What am I? What

Opposite: photo by Elias Photography 17 PROGRAM NOTES

shall I ask of nature? I feel; I exist only to waste “Les cloches de Genève: Nocturne” drapes a myself in unconquerable longings…. Inex- tender melody upon a subtle, arpeggiated ac- pressible sensibility, the charm and the torment companiment suggesting distant tolling bells. of our futile years; vast consciousness of a na- Liszt dedicated the original 1835 version of the ture that is everywhere incomprehensible and piece to his daughter Blandine, who was born overwhelming; universal passion, indiff erence, that year in Geneva. the higher wisdom, abandonment to pleasure— I have felt and experienced them all.” Deuxième Année: Italia (Second Year: Italy), “Vallée d’Obermann” uses as its generative S. 161 (1837–49) process the continuing transformation of a som- Aft er a series of dazzling concerts in Paris in the ber descending theme given at the outset, a spring of 1837, Liszt and his long-time mistress, procedure that was later to become the essential Countess Marie d’Agoult, spent the summer working method for Liszt’s orchestral tone po- with George Sand at her villa in Nohant before ems. In an essay on Liszt’s early piano works, visiting their daughter Blandine in Switzerland, University of Kentucky faculty member and where the one-year-old was being raised by Liszt authority Ben Arnold gave the following Liszt’s mother while he dashed around the Con- description of this piece’s deeply impassioned tinent, and then descending upon Milan in Sep- expressive path: “Th e transformations of the tember. As the birth of their second child ap- fi rst section are of the contemplative type, but proached, they retreated to Lake Como, where at the Recitativo the restless and energized quest Cosima (later the wife of Hans von Bülow be- begins with its turbulent tremolos and impres- fore she was stolen away by Richard Wagner) sive octaves. A contrasting transformation be- was born on Christmas Eve. Th ey remained gins and conveys the peaceful assurance that in Italy for the next year-and-a-half, making something meaningful has been found. Th e extended visits for performances in Venice, original melody is inverted to create a sublime Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Bologna before and glorious moment leading directly into a settling early in 1839 in Rome, where their third blissful state…. Th is joy is cut tragically short by child, Daniel, was born on May 9th. Liszt’s guide a dramatic pause and an abrupt descending re- to the artistic riches of the Eternal City was the statement of the opening theme. Th is epiphany famed painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, proves to be an illusion, since the fi nal descend- then director of the French Academy at the Vil- ing statement creates a heartbreaking close to la Medici; Liszt was particularly impressed with this incredible pursuit. Obermann almost fi nds the works of Raphael and Michelangelo and the life’s answer and the happiness he seeks, only to music of the Sistine Chapel. He took home as a realize that it is a mirage.” souvenir of his Roman holiday the now-famous Th e “Eglogue” (“Eclogue,” i.e., a short pasto- drawing that Ingres did of him and inscribed ral poem) is modeled on the “Ranz de chèvre,” to Mme d’Agoult. Liszt’s Italian travels were a type of traditional Swiss “goat herder’s song,” the inspiration for the series of seven luminous for which another verse from Byron’s Childe piano pieces that he composed between 1837 Harold provides an apposite introduction: “Th e and 1849, and gathered together for publication morn is up again, the dewy morn,/With breath as Book II of his Années de pèlerinage in 1858. all incense, and with cheek all bloom,/Laughing Book 1 of the Années was largely rooted in the clouds away with playful scorn,/And living the land, people, and history of Switzerland, but as if earth contained no tomb!” Book 2 took as its catalysts Italy’s art and liter- “Le mal du pays” (“Homesickness”) embod- ature. “Sposalizio” was inspired by Raphael’s ies both the sentiment of the title and a line from Th e Marriage of the Virgin and Il Penseroso (Th e the quotation from Senancour’s Obermann Th inker) by the marble statue Michelangelo Liszt appended to the score: “Th e Romantic carved for the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici in satisfi es only profound souls of real sensitivity.” Florence. (Liszt demanded that the fi rst edition

18 PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES of the score include drawings of both works by Th e “Th ree Sonnets of Petrarch” that occu- the German illustrator Robert Kretschmer.) py the heart of the second set of the Années de Raphael’s painting was done for the Church pèlerinage began as settings for high tenor voice of San Francesco in Città di Castello, 30 miles of verses by that esteemed 14th-century poet north of Perugia, in 1504; it is now held by that Liszt composed in Italy in 1838–39. He the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Th e painting transcribed those songs for piano solo in 1845, depicts the marriage ceremony of Mary and Jo- and published them the following year. Ten seph surrounded by a dozen other sumptuously years later, he created extended fantasias on the dressed fi gures standing before a large, sym- songs’ materials for inclusion in the Années. His metrically tiled plaza (a virtuoso exercise in per- last version of the songs was a revision for low spective) capped by a domed circular pavilion. voice done in 1864. Liszt’s “Sposalizio” is a lovely, lyrical bridal song Th e “Sonnet No. 47” (“Benedetto sia ’l gior- of almost Impressionistic hue (created more no”) is, in the words of the noted English pia- than two decades before Debussy was born, nist and Liszt authority Louis Kentner, “a song however) with suggestions of wedding bells in of thanksgiving for the pleasures and suff erings its peaceful preamble and benediction. “Il pens- of fi rst love.” It captures well the mood of Pe- eroso,” with its solemnly tolling rhythms, light- trarch’s poem: “Blessed be the day, the month, less sonorities, and frozen, tiny-interval melodic the year, the season, the hour, the place ... where motion, is the most somber of funeral marches. I was found and enslaved by two fair eyes.” Liszt associated this deeply introspective music According to Kentner, the “Sonnet No. 104” with the inscription on Lorenzo’s tomb: “I am (“Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra”— thankful to sleep, and more thankful to be made “I fi nd no peace, and know not how to make of stone. So long as injustice and shame remain war”) speaks of “restlessness, tears, self-hate, on earth, I count it a blessing not to see or feel; vain search for inner peace—all caused by the so do not wake me—speak soft ly!” loved one…. It is understandable that pianists Despite its title, the “Canzonetta del Salvator revel in its eloquence.” Rosa” was not based on a song by the eponymous Th e dreamy mood of the “Sonnet No. 123” mid-17th-century painter, but is actually from (“I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi”) evokes per- one of more than 300 secular cantatas composed fectly Petrarch’s gracious words and images: by Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747), among the “I saw on earth fi gures of angelic grace … no most famous, successful, and peripatetic musicians leaf stirred on the bough, and all was celestial of his time, composer, cellist, teacher, and consul- harmony.” tant in music centers and courts throughout Liszt and Marie were avid readers of Dante Italy, Germany, Austria, England, France, and Alighieri, the patriarch of Italian literature, and Portugal. British pianist Christine Stevenson, while in Rome in 1839, Liszt was moved by the whose recording of Book 2 of the Années re- “Inferno” in the poet’s Divine Comedy to com- ceived critical acclaim, wrote of Liszt’s appar- pose his “Après une Lecture du Dante” (“Aft er a ent mis-attribution, “I think that Liszt was very Reading of Dante”). Th e work was thoroughly aware of outdoor song in Italy, and perhaps the revised 10 years later, and included in Book 2 ‘Canzonetta’ is a sound bite from the Italian of the Années de pèlerinage. (Th e Divine Com- soundscape.” Bononcini’s canzonetta is a care- edy inspired a full symphony from Liszt in free marching tune—“Vado ben spesso cang- 1855–56.) “Après une lecture du Dante” is large- iando loco”: “Oft en I change my state of being/ ly constructed from two contrasting subjects, But I shall never change my feelings./Th e fi re perhaps depicting heaven and hell. Th e fi rst within me will remain the same,/And so will I consists of transformations of two motives: an myself” (the text is inscribed above the melody ominous augmented fourth (a harmonically in the score)—of which Liszt made a straight- unsettling leap known since the Middle Ages forward if somewhat elaborated arrangement. as the “devil’s interval”) and anxious chromat-

19 PROGRAM NOTES

ic octaves evoking the descent into the abyss; early 20th century. Th e third volume of the An- the contrasting second subject is serene, idyl- nées de pèlerinage, published in 1883, was com- lic, and, well, heavenly. Only a few moments posed during those years of loss, contemplation, of calm recalling the second subject slow the and religious awakening. furious pace of this unforgivingly virtuosic evo- Th e selections in Book 3 of theAnnées were cation of Dante’s weird and horrible visions as mostly written when Liszt stayed for extended it drives toward a dramatic and ferocious close. periods at the sumptuous Villa d’Este in Tivoli, 20 miles northeast of Rome. Th e history of that Troisième Année (Th ird Year), S. 163 (1867–77) storied place began in 1550, when Cardinal In the early 1860s, aft er four decades of one of Ippolito d’Este, grandson of Pope Alexander VI the most fl amboyantly sensational careers ever and son of the Pope’s daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, granted to a musician, Liszt sought a more con- lost a power struggle to occupy the throne of templative life. Th ough he was still acclaimed St. Peter’s to Julius III. Julius appointed Ippo- as a peerless pianist, excellent conductor, and lito Governor of Tivoli, eff ectively sending him infl uential fi gure in European musical life, he into internal exile, since such positions required experienced some serious reverses in the years that the magistrate never leave his jurisdiction. surrounding his fi ft ieth birthday, in 1861: he re- Ippolito spent the remaining 22 years of his life signed his post as music director at Weimar be- ameliorating his velvet captivity by renovating cause of opposition to his artistic policies as well the old Benedictine convent at Tivoli into an as the growing local animosity toward his long- opulent palazzo and then surrounding it with time, and still unwed, relationship with Prin- some of the most spectacular gardens in Italy, cess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein; his recent widely famed for their groves of cypress trees orchestral compositions were receiving scant and their fountains and water features. Th e attention; Brahms, Joachim, and other leading Villa d’Este played host and home to church musicians published a manifesto attacking the fi gures, artists, and other important guests over alleged excesses of his music as well as that of the centuries, and by the 1850s, it had come to Wagner and other “New German” composers; have as its chief occupant Archbishop Gustav his son Daniel died in 1859, his daughter Blan- Adolph Hohenlohe, a scion of a noble German dine in 1862. In 1860, Liszt made out his last family who had been ordained as a priest in will and testament, and the next year he went 1849 and was then insinuating himself into the with the Princess to Rome, where they hoped hierarchy of the Vatican. (He was made a car- she would be granted a divorce by Pope Pius IX dinal in 1866.) so that they could marry on the composer’s fi f- In 1859, Franz Liszt and Hohenlohe met. tieth birthday, October 22nd. Th eir petition was During the following years, when Liszt suff ered denied and they never spoke of marriage again, serious personal and professional reverses, he even aft er her husband died in 1864. Liszt spent turned strongly to religion for solace, and he much of 1863 cloistered in the monastery of and Hohenlohe became fast friends. Hohenlohe the Madonna del Rosario at Monte Mario, re- presided at the ceremony in 1865 at which Liszt ceiving the religious instruction that led to him was granted minor orders in the church, and he being granted “minor orders,” which allowed invited the composer to stay at the Villa d’Este him to perform a few small priestly duties but whenever he was in Rome. Liszt frequently and not to offi ciate at Mass or to hear confession. gratefully partook of the beauty and tranquility Th e change in Liszt’s attitude toward his life was of Tivoli over the next two decades, and during paralleled by a reconsideration of his musical a visit in 1877 he composed two pieces inspired style, and several of his late piano works are by the cypresses at the Villa d’Este and another marked by a sobriety, austerity, introspection, one—“Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este”—by its and harmonic daring that leave far behind the fountains, which he included along with four virtuoso pyrotechnics of his touring years and others of somber religiosity in the Th ird Book look ahead to the atonal modernisms of the of the Années.

20 PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES

Th e cypress tree grows tall, slender, and el- from a line in Virgil’s Aeneid: “Th e world is a egant, as though reaching for the heavens, and world of tears and the burdens of mortality it has symbolized directing the thoughts to touch the heart.” “In the Hungarian manner” some higher ideal since ancient times. Th e cy- refers to the movement’s gapped-scale melodic press has been especially associated with death leadings, a trait of the music of Liszt’s native as a vector directing the soul to its unknowable land. Th e piece was dedicated to the brilliant next life, and has been favored in Muslim and pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, Liszt’s European cemeteries for centuries. Th e Villa one-time son-in-law. d’Este was especially noted for its cypress trees, “Marche funèbre” (1867) was a tribute to and Liszt refl ected his impressions of them in Maximilian I, a younger brother of Austrian the two pieces he titled “Aux cyprès de la Vil- Emperor Franz Joseph I, who had accepted an la d’Este” (1877); he indicated that both were off er from Napoleon III in 1864 to promote the thrénodies, songs of mourning, a term derived French interest, supported by Austria, in estab- from the Greek threnos (“wailing”) and oide lishing a friendly monarchy in the New World. (“ode” or “song”). Both are largely austere and Maximilian awarded Liszt the Grand Cross of contemplative, though the fi rst has a vehement the Order of Guadelupe in June 1866. When outburst as its central episode while the second he was overthrown and executed by republi- has a beatifi c episode that is echoed, as though can forces the following year, Liszt wrote this in memory, at the movement’s close. piece in his memory. He headed the score with Th e third piece in the fi nal book of Années a quote from the Roman poet Propertius: “In that is associated with the Villa d’Este is “Les jeux magnis et voluisse sat est” (“In great aff airs it is d’eaux” (1877), a path-breaking experiment in enough even to have been willing”). the musical depiction of water and light that “Sursum corda” (“Lift Up Your Hearts,” proved to be an important source for the key- 1877), a phrase taken from the preface to the board and harmonic techniques of the Impres- Roman Catholic Mass, evokes tolling bells as sionists. Liszt, however, also intended that its the background for repetitions of a short, leap- opalescent strains have a religious symbolism, ing melodic phrase that together build to a ca- which he indicated by appending to the score thartic close for the Années de pèlerinage. a quotation from Chapter 4 of the Gospel of In his preface to the 1883 publication of St. John: “But whosoever drinketh of the water Book 3 of Années de pèlerinage, Liszt wrote, “As that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the instrumental music progresses, it will cease to water that I shall give him shall be in him a well be a mere combination of sounds and will be- of water springing up into everlasting life.” come a poetic language more apt than poetry Preceding the Villa d’Este pieces in Book 3 is itself, perhaps, at expressing that within our “Angelus! Prière aux anges gardiens” (“Angelus! souls which transcends the common horizon, Prayer to Guardian Angels,” 1877), in which all that eludes analysis, all that moves in hidden Liszt recalled his memories of the evening bells depths of imperishable desire and infi nite intu- rung in Roman monasteries during the recita- ition. [Th is volume] is written for the few rather tion of the Annunciation text, “Angelus Domini than for the many—not ambitious of success, nuntiavit Mariae” (“Th e Angel of the Lord de- but of the approval of those who conceive art clared unto Mary”). as having other uses than the beguiling of idle “Sunt lacrymae rerum. En mode hongrois” hours, and asks more from it than the futile dis- (1872) takes its title and expressive character traction of a passing entertainment.” — © 2020 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

21 ABOUT THE ARTIST

His concerts also include returns to the San Francisco Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the NDR Hamburg, the BBC Symphony, and the or- chestras of Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Vancouver. To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday year, he performs complete Beethoven sonata cycles and all of the Beethoven concertos in North America and in Europe. Lortie has made over 45 recordings for the Chandos label, covering repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky, including a set of the complete Beethoven sonatas; the complete Liszt Années de pèlerinage, which was named one of the 10 best recordings of 2012 by the New Yorker magazine; and all of Chopin’s solo works. His recording of the Lutosławski Piano Concerto with Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony received high praise, as did a recent Chopin recording that was named one of the best recordings of the year by the New York Times. Recently released albums are Chopin Waltzes (“Th is is Chopin playing of sublime genius”—Fanfare Magazine); Saint-Saens’ Africa, Wedding Cake, and Carni- or over three decades, French-Canadian val of the Animals with Neeme Jarvi and the pianist Louis Lortie has performed world- Bergen Philharmonic; and with Helene Mer- wide, building a reputation as one of the cier, Rachmaninoff ’s complete works for two Fworld’s great pianists. He extends his interpreta- pianos and the Vaughn-Williams Concerto for tive voice across a broad spectrum of repertoire Two Pianos. For the Onyx label, he has recorded rather than choosing to specialize in one par- two acclaimed albums with violinist Augustin ticular style, and his performances and award- Dumay. winning recordings attest to his remarkable mu- Louis Lortie is Master in Residence at the sical range. Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel of Brussels. His Lortie is in demand internationally. Th is sea- long-awaited LacMus International Festival son he returns to Australia and New Zealand, (www.lacmusfestival.com) on Lake Como, Italy, performing with the NZSO on tour, and with made its debut in 2017. He studied in Montreal the Sydney and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras. with Yvonne Hubert (a pupil of the legendary Al- He also returns to OSESP Sao Paulo, perform- fred Cortot), in Vienna with Beethoven specialist ing with the orchestra and in recital, and will Dieter Weber, and subsequently with Schnabel embark on a recital tour of Russia following a disciple Leon Fleischer. In 1984, Lortie won First recent triumphant Chopin Études performance Prize in the Busoni Competition and was also in Moscow. He returns to the Philadelphia Or- prizewinner at the Leeds Competition. Lortie has chestra and Nézet-Séguin, and tours with the lived mostly in Europe in the last decades with Toronto Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis. homes in Switzerland, Canada, and Italy.

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