University Musical Society

UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY Horacio Gutierrez, Pianist Saturday Evening, February 6, 1993, at 8:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan PROGRAM Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50 Haydn Allegro Adagio Allegro molto Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 ................. Schumann INTERMISSION Sonata in B minor ...... Liszt Lento assai - Allegro energico Andante sostenuto Allegro energico Horacio Gutierrez is represented by Shaw Concerts, Inc., New York. Mr. Gutierrez plays a Steinway piano available through Hammell Music, Inc., Livonia. Recordings: Telarc, Chandos, Angel/EMI TWENTY-SIXTH CONCERT OF THE 114TH SEASON 114TH CHORAL UNION SERIES PROGRAM NOTES Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50 formal elements as successive themes, and Josefh Haydn ( 173 2-1809) between such large ones as the sections conventionally devoted to the exposition and Haydn was not really a pianist, but in then to the development of ideas. Textures the course of his long life as a musician, he that at first glance look thin on wrote more than fifty works that explore the printed page turn out to be full of the varied forms that can be called piano complex counterpoint and of finger-twist ing sonatas. Some have two movements and technical difficulties. The specified pedalling some have four, and among those with the too makes clear that this is mod ern usual three, there is an enormous choice of piano music and has little to do with structures for each. In general, the sonatas the harpsichord. The movement comes to an are music written for the pleasure of the end with a coda like an abbreviated performer, to be played at home in private opera finale. music rooms rather than in the equivalent, The second movement, Adagio, seems at the time, of public concerts. to have been written or at least sketched Especially in his late years, Haydn rather earlier than the rest. It is an affect wrote many sonatas with specific perform ing, three-part song, also somewhat oper ers in mind, often highly gifted women atic in quality, ornamented with almost whose influence on the art of music is a improvisatory freedom. The closing Allegro part of history not yet written. These late molto is a relatively short movement some works show the composer's years of experi thing like the finales in tempo di minuetto that ence as the most inventive symphonist of had been fashionable when Haydn was the period. They are not decorated pieces younger, but it is here speeded up to of light galanterie but big serious works that "modern" scherzo tempo. Through quirky demand players with great technical skills turns of phrase, Haydn invests the harmony and profound musical insights. and rhythm with great wit. This is one of Haydn's last sonatas, written in 1794 or 1795 in London, at the Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 time of his greatest symphonies, one of a Robert Schumann (1810-1856) group of three composed for Teresa Jansen, for whom he also wrote three trios. Jansen "To understand the Fantasy," Schu must have been a splendid artist and an mann wrote to his beloved Clara, "think accomplished performer, for all six are back to the summer of 1836, when I was highly original, extremely difficult works. separated from you." It is in fact a freely Although she never performed in public, shaped sonata that ends with a slow move Haydn listed her among the best pianists ment; it is also a confidential communica in London, and he knew her well enough tion from Robert to Clara, with a secret to be a witness at her wedding there, to reference to their separation in a musical Gaetano Bartolozzi, whose father was his quotation from Beethoven's An die feme friend, the engraver Francesco Bartolozzi. Geliebte. The first movement of the Fantasy She must have owned a fine instrument of starts almost abruptly, as though a door has advanced design, for Haydn takes the music been opened on a discourse already in he wrote for her up into a high range that progress. It is a work of "fantasy and passion would not be heard in Beethoven's piano throughout," say the instructions to the music until ten years later. player, though the music shifts for a while The music is also extraordinary in the to a style that is "legendary in tone," by way its apparent simplicity masks its high which Schumann presumably meant that it level of complexity and fantasy. In the is like a folk song. The second movement, opening Allegro movement, Haydn blurs which follows without pause, is to be played the lines of distinction between such small at a moderate tempo, but energetically or vigorously. It is a great march in which the Beethoven: "[Its combination] of so powerful chords alternate with complex nata-allegro and four-movement form is counterpoint. When Clara was learning it, one of the rare experiments of the last years she said that it made her "hot and cold all of Beethoven's life to have a genuine re over." The Fantasy ends with a long and percussion in the more original work of the gentle poetic reverie that forges a historic first Romantic generation. The Liszt So link between the spacious calm of late-Bee nata is an attempt to repeat this concep thoven and the intimate passion of tion.... Liszt was the composer of his Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. generation who best understood Beetho ven." Sonata in B Minor For years the Sonata was resisted and Franz Liszt ( 1811-1886) hated. Schumann was embarrassed when Liszt dedicated it to him, in 1853, for he, Franz Liszt's position in music history his wife and their young disciple, Johannes is assured by the influence of his unmatched Brahms, then distrusted Liszt the man and piano virtuosity, by his championing of disapproved of Liszt the musician. The such advanced composers of his time as performances that Hans von Biilow gave as Berlioz and Wagner, and especially by his early as 1857 and as late as 1881 moved "modernization" of music. He created a critics to call the music affected, arbitrary new style of piano-playing, invented the and extravagant. When the Sonata was symphonic poem, established a place for twenty-four years old, Brahms's friend folklore in art music, and reconstructed the Eduard Hanslick could still write that it was symphony, the sonata and the concerto. His "a musical monstrosity of contrived inso new ideas profoundly influenced several lence; in the end, irresistibly comic. Any generations of composers and performers. one who has heard it and finds it beautiful In 1848, Liszt renounced his great is beyond help. [Abridged]." Yet when career as a touring virtuoso and settled Wagner heard it in 1854, he wrote to the down in Weimar as court music director, composer, "It is beautiful beyond all belief; with a firm determination to begin com huge, lovable, profound, exalted, stately - posing in large forms and to use his powerful like you. I have been stirred to the depths post for the support of the most advanced by it." new music. He had already written many Liszt's basic procedure is the constant short pieces for piano, but he was not yet expansion of motives and transformation of at ease with the problems of musical con melodies, a process of synthesis in place of tinuity or with the orchestra. the classicists' developmental analysis. Before long he had developed a new There are several large, distinct sections, integrated structural plan that he used with all based on four or five themes that make great mastery in this Sonata and the First their entrances and departures in various Piano Concerto, and with some differences guises at various times. The music begins in the Faust Symphony. Its essentials are, with a few slow introductory measures Lento first, that the separate movements must ossai, whose descending figure is the blend together into a single, continuous Sonata's first thematic element. In the whole without breaks; and, second, that Allegro energico two themes that have more this new whole must exhibit both the important roles to play in the work are symmetry and the tension that are charac heard: the first, vigorous and in a high teristic of the first movements in the classic register; the second, grumbling in the bass, sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. with repeated notes that are later trans It is sometimes thought that his model formed into a lyric melody and into an was Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, but the other, Grandiose. The middle section, finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Andante sostenuto, is like a slow movement, -could also have served as a prototype. The after which the Allegro energico tempo re brilliant pianist-scholar Charles Rosen, in turns, and at the very end the entire cycle his book, The Classical Style, makes this of themes is recalled in a coda. penetrating observation in a footnote about - Notes by Leonard Bur/cat ABOUT THE ARTIST timore, Indianapolis, Houston and Dallas Symphonies; and the Royal Con certgebouw, Minnesota and Cleveland Or chestras. A favorite of New York concertgoers, Mr. Gutierrez is a frequent soloist at Lin coln Center's "Mostly Mozart" Festival (in cluding a "Live from Lincoln Center" telecast) and has performed many times at A very Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall, in recital and with orchestra. With the Y Chamber Orchestra he played William Schuman's Piano Concerto in honor of the composer's 75th birthday. As a chamber musician he has played with the Guarneri, Tokyo and Cleveland Quartets. In 1982 he received the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize.

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