Sarofim Music Series: Yael Weiss, Piano 32 Bright Clouds: Beethoven Conversations Around the World September 17, 2019 | 7:30 P.M

Sarofim Music Series: Yael Weiss, piano 32 Bright Clouds: Beethoven Conversations Around the World September 17, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. | Alma Thomas Theater

Program

Sonata No.7 in D major, Op. 10, no. 3 Ludwig van Beethoven Presto (1770-1827)

Unheard Voices (2018) Sidney Marquez Boquiren (Philippines, b. 1970)

Dedicated to the victims of extra-judicial killings, whose voices have been unheard

The Hunt for Peace (2018) Malek Jandali (Syria, b. 1972) Dedicated to the Syrian children and their noble quest for peace

Arietta for the 150 (2018) Adina Izarra (Venezuela, b. 1959) Dedicated to the 150 young people whose lives were taken during the 2017 peace demonstrations in Venezuela

INTERMISSION

Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101 Beethoven Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindung Lebhaft, Marschmäßig

Ninni (2019, world premiere) Aslihan Keçebaşoğlu (Turkey, b. 1994) Dedicated to the victims of the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey

Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, no. 2 “Moonlight” Beethoven Adagio sostenuto

No More Moonlight Over Jakarta (2017) Ananda Sukarlan (Indonesia, b. 1968) Dedicated to the bravery of Ahok, the imprisoned ex-governor of Jakarta About the Artist

A captivating presence on the concert scene, award-winning Israeli-American pianist Yael Weiss has been hailed by many of today’s greatest musicians and critics for visionary interpretations of surpassing depth, immediacy and communicative power. Following a recent recital, the Washington Post portrayed her as “a pianist who delves deeply and tellingly into that cloudy area where fantasy morphs into improvisation, inventiveness being common to both.”

Ms. Weiss has performed across the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and South America at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Moscow’s Bolshoi Hall and London’s Wigmore Hall. Her New York recital debut, presented by the Metropolitan Museum, was acclaimed by the New York Times as “remarkably powerful and intense . . . fine technique and musicianship in the service of an arresting array of music.” Ms. Weiss has appeared as soloist with many international orchestras, including the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak National Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony, Israel Chamber Orchestra, and the Brazil National Symphony, to name a few. She is also in demand at international music festivals such as Marlboro, Ravinia, City of London, Banff, Parry Sound, Caramoor, Changwon International Festival, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival.

Ms. Weiss’s discography encompasses piano works by over a dozen composers on the Koch International and Bridge record labels. She is also devoted to chamber music, and tours worldwide with violinist Mark Kaplan and cellist Peter Stumpf as the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio. The Trio’s recordings of the complete Beethoven Piano Trios will be released in 2020 on the Bridge Records label.

Ms. Weiss has been honored with distinguished prizes from the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition. She has presented master classes for top institutions worldwide and served on the faculties of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, UC/Santa Barbara and the Heifetz Institute. As a student she worked with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory, and with Richard Goode at the Mannes College of Music. She currently resides in New York City.

About the Project

32 Bright Clouds: Beethoven Conversations Around the World is a global music-commissioning, performing and recording project curated by Yael Weiss. The project commissions a diverse group of composers from countries of conflict and unrest around the world, with all new works unified by a single “peace motif” from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, where he added the inscription “A Call for Inward and Outward Peace” above the notes. Each new composition is connected to one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. 32 Bright Clouds aims to harness music’s great power for unity and peace.

To learn more about Yael Weiss and the 32 Bright Clouds project visit: www.yaelweiss.com www.32brightclouds.com PROGRAM NOTE

NOTES FROM THE COMPOSERS

Sidney Marquez Boquiren (Philippines, b. 1970): Unheard Voices (2018)

When Yael Weiss commissioned me to write a work in response to one of the Beethoven sonatas as part of her commissioning project 32 Bright Clouds, I knew immediately which specific sonata I would choose: Op. 10, No. 3. As an undergraduate, this was one of the works that I analyzed closely, and studied and practiced to perform. In particular, I was drawn to the second movement’s overwhelming pathos that opens to the unbridled joy of the third movement. Unheard Voices (Hindi Naririnig na mga Tinig) dwells on the emotional content of this second movement while looking forward to the hope suggested by the third. In this piece, I ask Yael to perform the new work while at the same time listening privately to a recording of Beethoven’s work with headphones. As a result, two separate yet joint listening experiences occur simultaneously: the audience listens to my piece being performed by the pianist who in turn is listening to something that the audience can’t hear. This is a compositional technique that I borrowed from New Zealander Celeste Oram. Unheard Voices also uses another technique, which I heard about from the Italian composer Filippo Perocco, who devised a creative process that involves “carving away” notes from a pre-existing work. For Unheard Voices, I used the second movement of Op. 10, No. 3 as the canvas upon which I created my piece, “carving away” many of the notes, while keeping a certain few and echoing others (like ghostly whispers) in the piano gestures. And embedded within Unheard Voices is a quote from the Agnus Dei of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on the text dona nobis pacem: a cry for peace that is the underpinning of Yael’s commissioning project.

Adina Izarra (Venezuela, b. 1959): Arietta for the 150 (2018)

During 2017, Venezuela witnessed numerous peace demonstrations. People were speaking out about pressing issues such as hunger, insecurity and political prisoners, all of these being direct results of the dictatorship of the Chávez/Maduro regime. Continued on next page Adina Izarra: Arietta for the 150 – Cont’d In the course of these demonstrations about 150 young men and women were assassinated in cold blood by the security forces. They were not guilty of anything, beyond being at the front line of the peace demonstrations. Many of the victims fell into their mothers’ arms, or among friends who carried them on bikes to hospitals. These demonstrations produced an incredible number of casualties, especially for a country that was not at war.

Although many of these killings were captured on video, none of the killers has been brought to justice. The security forces were ordered to open fire, without mercy, and knowing full well that the demonstrators carried only Venezuelan flags and anti-gas masks.

This work is for these young men and women who only wanted peace — a peace still not reached in Venezuela.

Op. 111 is Beethoven’s final sonata. It ends after a tour de force and fades out with a sense of calm, of duty accomplished. It would seem that Beethoven achieved the peace he yearned for in his Missa Solemnis, as expressed in the “Dona Nobis Pacem” motif that is included in this new work. It is my hope that all these young people realized peace at the end of their short lives, through the act of struggling for it.

This piece is dedicated to Yael Weiss, in gratitude for her inviting me to transform all this sorrow into music.

Aslihan Keçebasoglu (Turkey, b. 1994): Ninni (2019, World Premiere)

The word “Ninni” means “Lullaby” in Turkish. This new work, written for the 32 Bright Clouds project, is dedicated to the thousands of young people and children who were abused and injured in the 2013 Gezi Park Protests in Turkey. These demonstrations lasted for twenty days and spread throughout the country, creating an event that remains significant to me and many others in our country.

The protests began as a reaction to the illegal attempt by the government to destroy protected public land in Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul. An initial small group of protestors grew over time and spread throughout the country, as the meaning of the protests also expanded. Thousands of people, tired of the state’s brutality and forced sanctions, gathered in inclusive communities irrespective of language, religion or race, calling for justice, unity, respect for nature and the humanity of all people. These protests were completely peaceful. However, the government used disproportionate and aggressive force and weapons, denying the right of peaceful assembly.

With his “Dona Nobis Pacem” motif, Beethoven called for inner and outer peace. However, I cannot approach this concept in a utopian way. Finding peace requires effort and persistence. Therefore, I use this motif in the piece incompletely and repeatedly, just as the spirit of the Gezi Park resistance is still alive and unending. The sense of incompleteness in the music is deliberate. Although the motif is heard clearly in some passages, it is immediately disrupted by other forces.

I chose to connect this motif with the first movement of Beethoven’s Op. 101 piano sonata because of the expressive title of the movement, “to be played with innermost emotion,” which also sheds light on the inner world. I believe that if people return to the pure emotions of their inner world, they will find their childhood there. This lullaby is not only for the children who died untimely in the Gezi Park Protests, but also for the wounded children both in Beethoven and all of us. The lullaby expresses the dream of making peace with the pure and vulnerable child that is in everyone. I believe that peace and freedom will be possible if we can make peace with our own childhood and sing lullabies to it. Ananda Sukarlan (Indonesia, b. 1968): No More Moonlight Over Jakarta (2017)

When Yael Weiss commissioned me as part of her 32 Bright Clouds project to write music based on one of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, I immediately thought of his Moonlight Sonata. The word for “moonlight” in Indonesian is also the name of the ex-governor of Jakarta, Tjahja Purnama, popularly known as “Ahok.” This beloved governor was imprisoned as a result of the growing influence of hard-line Islamism inside the country. His imprisonment devastated the city, and the title of the piece No More Moonlight Over Jakarta refers to his ongoing detention.

The piece is a transformation of materials from Beethoven’s sonata to different styles from Chinese modes (Ahok the governor is of Chinese background), gamelan modes and also some pop and rock rhythms, while culminating with the unity of the “Dona Nobis Pacem” peace theme from the Missa Solemnis. This mixture of styles conveys that Jakarta is a melting pot of so many diverse ethnic groups. With this piece, I ask the world to focus on Indonesia and the injustice being done here. Ahok’s struggle is shared by all of us as we try to build a world free of corruption and intolerance.

No More Moonlight over Jakarta is dedicated to the musical artistry of Yael Weiss and the bravery and struggle of Ahok. It received its world premiere by Ms. Weiss at the Changwon International Chamber Music Festival in Korea. The premiere was instrumental in supporting Amnesty International’s efforts on behalf of the Governor’s release.