Ian Munro Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff & Munro
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Melbourne Recital Centre Presents Great Performers 2021 Ian Munro Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff & Munro WED 16 JUNE 2021, 7.30PM ELISABETH MURDOCH HALL ‘ MUNRO VIVIDLY DEPICTED THE DRAMA OF HUMAN STRIVING. ‘ THE AGE Photo: Keith Saunders Melbourne Recital Centre Presents Great Performers 2021 Ian Munro PIANO, AUSTRALIA WED 16 JUNE 2021, 7.30PM ELISABETH MURDOCH HALL DURATION 75-minutes (no interval) This performance is being recorded by Melbourne Recital Centre for a deferred broadcast. Visit melbournerecital.com.au for more information. Melbourne Recital Centre acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work, live and learn. We pay our respects to people of the Kulin nation, their Elders past, present and emerging and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Program Partner 3 Program FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) Sechs Lieder ohne Worte (Six Songs Without Words), Op.19b 1. Andante con moto 2. Andante espressivo 3. Molto allegro e vivace 4. Moderato 5. Poco agitato 6. Venezianisches Gondellied: Allegretto tranquillo SERGE RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943) Six Moments Musicaux, Op.16 1. Andantino 2. Allegretto 3. Andante cantabile 4. Presto 5. Adagio sostenuto 6. Maestoso IAN MUNRO (b. 1963) Piano Sonata No.2, Moscow 1986 – World Premiere 1. Allegro nervosa 2. Largo 3. Moderato: fugue a 4 4 About the Music For many composers, storytelling is deeply embedded in almost everything they write. For some, the tale remains secret, personal and enigmatic – Chopin’s ballades have had listeners guessing for almost 200 years and Debussy’s preludes offer enchanting glimpses of characters, scenes and stories almost as an afterthought, at the bottom of the final page of each piece, bracketed and after an ellipsis. Liszt, on the other hand, explicitly described narratives in detail, and one can follow the awful progress of Faust’s and Mephistopheles’ every step as they pursue their amoral intentions in the first ‘Mephisto Waltz’. None of the works you will hear tonight follow explicit narratives but, in a sense, they all embody in their various ways a strong sense of musical storytelling, ultimately what music does best: creating paths we can follow in sound that take us on imaginative journeys that enchant and move us in ways only music can. 5 About the Music It was another of those miraculous four – the great composers who were born within two years and a couple of hundred kilometres of each other (Chopin and Schumann in 1810, Mendelssohn in 1809 and Liszt in 1811) – who developed the idea of the ‘wordless song’ for piano. Felix Mendelssohn began his series of piano vignettes at the age of Felix Mendelssohn 20 and continued with them throughout his life. The last of the piano ‘songs’ was written two years before his early death in 1847, with almost sixty examples in all, including the beautiful last one in D major for cello and piano. Mendelssohn, with his easy, winning personality and natural melodic gift, tended to treat the piano as a singing instrument, much as did Chopin, although Chopin’s journey took him deep into psychological territory, whereas Mendelssohn’s musical narratives are classically contained, internally balanced, with a tendency towards comfort and urbanity. The very first of Mendelssohn’s eight sets of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words) is among his most perfect: fresh, abundant with distinctive and beautiful musical ideas and containing at least three examples of characteristic Mendelssohnian expressions. The first, a limpid song above an undulating accompaniment, is a deceptively simple melody that has the quality of a boat gliding gently on rippled water. The third, a vibrant hunting song in A major, looks forward to the ‘Italian’ Symphony, written eleven years later, whose opening movement in the same key has the same exuberant joy. 6 The final piece, a lugubrious Venetian gondola song in G minor, may well have been inspired by Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.25, which has a slow movement (also in G minor) that sounds almost Mendelssohnian. It is, of course, an anachronistic thought: Beethoven wrote it in 1809, the year of the younger composer’s birth. In any case, the genre was so appealing to Mendelssohn that he wrote a further two Sergei Rachmaninoff gondola songs, each possessing a haunting beauty and harmonic features of such daring that they are among his finest miniatures. Russian music famously took a remarkably original turn after Glinka and Dargomyshky tapped the genius of Slavic folk art, and an explosion of Russian music of powerful emotions and colours followed in their wake. Never was the inheritance of Western Europe forgotten, however, and surprising connections may be found between the music of Chopin and Mussorgsky; Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff; Liszt, Chopin and Scriabin; Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Russians, like Germans, have descended with a wealth of folk culture, revelling in dark story-telling and mythical folk-heroes and devilry. Rachmaninoff, once described by Stravinsky as ‘six foot two of Russian gloom’, modelled his Preludes on Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words and his Etudes-tableaux on Chopin’s Etudes. 7 About the Music Rachmaninoff’s Six Moments Musicaux of 1896, written when he was 23, gloriously follow the six-piece format of Mendelssohn, paying homage to the eponymous works by Schubert but deploying the virtuoso techniques discovered by Liszt and Chopin, with added Russian power and grandeur. They are, quite simply, a grand statement of the young Russian genius, an exhibition of all he knew and could do up to that point. Heartfelt and dramatic, they are at their core soulful songs, marking the last utterance of a young man who was, only months later, to suffer a complete nervous breakdown due to the disaster that was the premiere of his First Symphony at the hands of the probably drunken Glazunov. My Piano Sonata No.2, Moscow 1986, deliberately follows in the footsteps of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, as an homage to them and to the Russian musical tradition that has so shaped my own musical development. Both were pianist-composers of great pianistic ability; both began their piano sonata series with one-movement works (as did I) but, whereas Prokofiev went on to write the most distinguished and captivating series of sonatas of the 20th century, Shostakovich wrote only one more, the unduly criticised Op.61. It is our – pianists’ – tremendous loss that he went no further. In 1986, in the not-yet-dying days of the Cold War, I boarded a plane to Moscow on my 23rd birthday in order to compete in the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Less than two months after the Chernobyl disaster, the comrades of Moscow were still unaware of the true extent of the accident, and tensions were high. Amidst the political uncertainty of those days, music was appreciated in Russia in a way that was striking to witness. It was clear that ordinary people had a respect and love for music that ran deeper there than in places I had lived, and that 8 the sort of ‘crucial’ quality inherent in the symphonies and quartets of Shostakovich was reflected in everyday Russian music- lovers’ behaviour. My experience in Moscow in 1986 has stayed with me ever since. The story of my first- round appearance, which brought me onto the front page of Soviet national newspapers, I have told elsewhere. This sonata, which I have subtitled Moscow 1986 is an homage to the spirit of Russian music, telling the story of my experience and growing admiration for it, to say nothing of the great debt all pianists owe to the Russian genius for piano-playing itself, which has bequeathed us so much knowledge and inspiration. My second piano sonata was generously commissioned by Andrew Johnston in honour of his mother, Stephanie Lillian Johnston, as a gift for her 88th birthday. Ian Munro © 2021 DISCOVER MORE Hear more from Ian Munro on the Great Talks with Graham Abbott Podcast on Spotify. SCAN CODE TO LISTEN 9 About the Artist Ian Munro is one of Australia’s U.S.A., China, New Zealand, Belgium, most distinguished and awarded Switzerland and Uzbekistan, musicians, with a career that has and with all the state orchestras taken him to thirty countries in in Australia in over 60 piano Europe, Asia, North America and concertos. Ian has recorded for Australasia. As a composer, Ian is ABC Classics, Hyperion, Cala, the only Australian to have been Naxos, Marco Polo, Tall Poppies and awarded the Premier Grand Prix at the U.K. label Warehouse as both the Queen Elisabeth Competition for a soloist and chamber musician. Composers in 2003, and in 2011 he Recent discs include the collected was Featured Composer for Musica music by Tasmanian composer Viva Australia. After completing Katherine Parker and Elena his early training in Melbourne Kats-Chernin’s Piano Concerto with Roy Shepherd, Ian furthered commissioned for Ian Munro by his studies in Vienna, London and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Italy with Noretta Conci, Guido A widely experienced chamber Agosti and Michele Campanella, musician, Ian joined the acclaimed launching his international career Australia Ensemble in Sydney in the U.K. He has performed with in 2000, for which he has also leading orchestras throughout the composed and arranged several U.K., Poland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, works. Great Performers is made possible thanks to the generous support of donors to the 2021 Local Artist Appeal. To learn more about how you can provide direct support to our community of local artists, please scan the QR code or call us on 03 9207 2653. 10 11 Inspired Giving MUSIC CIRCLE - ($10,000+) John & Chris ($500+) ($5000+) A VIBRANT AND Anonymous (1) Collingwood Anonymous (3) Maria McCarthy DIVERSE MUSICAL Warwick & Kevin Cosgrave Rhonda & Ted Allen Canny Quine Foundation PROGRAM Paulette Bisley Laurie Cox AO & Bruce Anderson D & X Williamson Foundation Donors who support the (Great Performers Julie Ann Cox AM Jenny Anderson depth and vibrancy of Leadership Supporters) Brian Crisp Ian Baker & ($2500+) the Centre’s musical Jane Kunstler Mary Draper AM Cheryl Saunders program play a crucial M.S.