Sunday, April 2, 2017 • 4:00 p.m. ​

Arthur Masyuk Graduate Recital

DePaul Recital Hall 804 West Belden Avenue •

Sunday, April 2, 2017 • 4:00 p.m. ​ DePaul Recital Hall

Arthur Masyuk, Graduate Recital Lisa Zilberman, piano

PROGRAM (1685–1750) Partita for Violin No. 1, BWV 1002 (1720) III. Sarabande – Double IV. Tempo di Borea – Double

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 24 (1801) Allegro Adagio molto espressivo Scherzo: Allegro molto – Trio Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Lisa Zilberman, piano

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47 (1905) Allegro moderato Adagio di molto Allegro, ma non troppo

Lisa Zilberman, piano

Arthur Masyuk is from the studio of Ilya Kaler. This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the degree Master of Music.

As a courtesy to those around you, please silence all cell phones and other electronic devices. Flash photography is not permitted. Thank you. Arthur Masyuk • April 2, 2017

PROGRAM NOTES

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) Partita for Violin No. 1, BWV 1002 Duration: 10 minutes Johann Sebastian Bach was not your average composer: for one, he claims that his musical roots began with a great grandfather, Viet Bach, a 17th-century Hungarian Lutheran baker who had learned rhythm at the mill, probably at the grinding wheel itself, where he brought his cittern to play. Despite this quaint family myth, the Bach family eventually lived up to its musical promises and produced the J. S. Bach you shall hear today: a firm, relentless man of great technical command and devotion.

More importantly, his musical influence scored the minds of such composers as Mozart and Beethoven, who both quickly admit to Bach’s indelible, multifaceted contributions to their art: contributions at once experimental and practical, sacred and secular, technical and personal. His Partita No. 1 (1720), featured here, is one of six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo ​ ​ Violin and represents a part of his inaugural experiment in secular music for ​ a traditionally melodic solo instrument. Other such experiments include a set of suites for solo cello and a partita for solo flute. Now remember: Bach’s fundamental knowledge of the organ and its procedures influenced nearly all of his output. This includes the Partita No. 1, which aims to ​ ​ produce polyphony (a texture involving greater than one voice) on the violin, a traditionally monophonic (single-voiced) instrument.

Listen for the double, triple, or even quadruple stops, which reproduce the simultaneous rendition of multiple voices as executed on an organ or by the singers in a choir. At most, there appear four voices, the standard number for the practice of Bach’s day: the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices (A pupil of Bach even attested to his teacher playing his Partitas and Sonatas for Violin on clavier in order to fill out the harmonies with more voices). Above all, enjoy Bach’s writing, for it displays clever handling of the violin’s Arthur Masyuk • April 2, 2017 Program Notes technical restraints (its four strings and one bow) as well as his grasp of harmony and common European dance forms: here, the Spanish Sarabande, ​ ​ the French Bourrée, and their doubles, or ornamental variations. ​ ​ ​ ​

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Violin Sonata No. 5, Op. 24 (1801) Duration: 25 minutes Ludwig Van wrote his ten violin sonatas between 1796 and 1812, a period which flanks the onset of his deafness. (Wait, what did you say?) Historians ​ ​ often mark this onset by the 1802 “Heiligenstadt Testament,” a letter to his brother from the town of the same name, which was written one year after the publication of the present Sonata No. 5. Because Beethoven’s violin ​ ​ sonatas straddle such a wide period, their stylistic evolution manifests itself just as strongly as in his principal genres, string quartet and symphony. This evolution is characterized as a transition from his early, classical style to a productively experimental, extroverted, and expansive period to his final, introspective years in complete deafness. Published in 1801, the “Spring Sonata,” as Sonata No. 5 was posthumously dubbed, strongly exemplifies his ​ ​ early, classical style.

Its adherence to classical sonata form and size seconds the clarity and definition of Mozart or Haydn. Beethoven’s principal difference in violin sonata writing concerns texture. For Mozart and Haydn, violin sonatas featured a violin solo with piano accompaniment. Beethoven, principally a pianist and organist—and then violinist—formally qualified his ten sonatas “for piano and violin,” highlighting the elevated role of the piano versus the violin. Historian Harold C. Schonberg even claims Beethoven wanted piano to sound like orchestra, not like harp! Such a desire for a fuller sound requires both instruments to share in musical intrigue and heft and to subordinate to a common vocabulary of dynamics, articulations, and gestures. Arthur Masyuk • April 2, 2017 Program Notes

Sonata No. 5 and its predecessor Sonata No. 4 were both dedicated to Count ​ ​ ​ Von Fries, an old-money banker, Beethoven’s patron, and an Austrian pre-release pirate par excellence who had accidentally slipped the latter to ​ ​ publishers before permitted. Apparently, Beethoven had given him the manuscript for a one-year-long fling before allowing its dissemination. There were evidently no harsh feelings, however, since Beethoven later dedicated a piano quintet and his seventh symphony to him.

No matter their history, Ludwig van Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas stand alongside J. S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (featured above) and ​ ​ Sibelius’s Violin Concerto (featured below) as staples of the violin ​ ​ performance canon. Each violin sonata is thematically rich and dramatically wholesome, and all ten produce a coherent decalogy for serious study or appreciation.

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (1905) Duration: 30 minutes Jean Sibelius lived in a resurgently nationalist Finland: had lost hold of Finland in the early 20th century, and Finland was restoring much of its political and cultural identity. All the while, Sibelius still eagerly read Turgenev in his youth and had caviar and blintzes with his boyhood friend Kostia, the son of a Russian colonel. Although historically placed among such other nationalist composers as Dvořák in Bohemia, Tchaikovsky in Russia, or Grieg in Norway, Sibelius today is more “Finnish” than in his own day: according to historian Harold C. Schonberg, people raved about the “bardic” qualities of his music in the 1930s yet mostly forgot about him after his death in 1957, partially because his pen had laid idle his last 28 years! Today, however, he holds his ground in the classical canon as a significant late-Romantic composer.

Arthur Masyuk • April 2, 2017 Program Notes

While Sibelius may have flaunted Finnish political sentiments more openly in his symphonic works, his Violin Concerto evokes his affinity for his land, ​ ​ its folklore, and its nature. Sibelius biographer Erik Tawaststjerna captures the composer’s interaction with nature: “Even by Nordic standards, Sibelius responded with exceptional intensity to the moods of nature and the changes in the seasons: he scanned the skies with his binoculars for the geese flying over the lake ice, listened to the screech of the cranes, and heard the cries of the curlew echo over the marshy grounds just below Ainola. He savoured the spring blossoms every bit as much as he did autumnal scents and colours.” Sibelius equally revered Finland’s national ​ ​ epic, the folkloric and poetic Kalevala, which burgeoned as a literary icon ​ ​ during Finland’s fight for independence. He even spent his honeymoon in Karelia, the epic’s native region.

With this in mind, the Violin Concerto paints an expressionist sonic ​ ​ panorama of his Finland. A mysteriously and timelessly bleak oscillation opens the concerto, but as soon as the violin enters, a sequence of tableaus follows. Some are heavily sorrowful, some hasty, but all are defined by rhythmic motives which undergo a straightforward development almost classical in procedure: the orchestral introductions in the second and third movements as well as interludes in all movements introduce these motives; then, as the soloist takes over, he processes or “develops” the motives in new keys and combinations. A blatant allusion to his more classical forebearers is the cadenza (violin a cappella passage) in the first movement. ​ ​ ​ ​ Its placement nearer the middle section mimics that of the already pioneering Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. In a truly classical concerto, that is, the cadenza would appear at the movement’s very close.

Notes by Arthur Masyuk.

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