David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
THE ART OF THE RECITAL NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT AND JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC NEUBURGER Thursday Evening, October 30, 2014 at 7:30 Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio 3,355th Concert
45th Anniversary Season
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 10th Floor New York, NY 10023 212-875-5788 www.ChamberMusicSociety.org
Many donors support the artists of the Chamber Music Society Two program. This evening, we gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the Khalil Rizk Fund. This concert is made possible, in part, by the Grand Marnier Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation. The Chamber Music Society is deeply grateful to Board member Paul Gridley for his very generous gift of the Hamburg Steinway & Sons model “D� concert grand piano we are privileged to hear this evening.
THE ART OF THE RECITAL Thursday Evening, October 30, 2014 at 7:30
NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT, violin JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC NEUBURGER, piano
FRANZ SCHUBERT Rondeau brillant in B minor for Violin (1797-1828) and Piano, D. 895, Op. 70 (1826) EUGÈNE YSAŸE Poème élégiaque for Violin and Piano, (1858-1931) Op. 12 (c. 1895) IGOR STRAVINSKY Divertimento after Le baiser de la fée for (1882-1971) Violin and Piano (1928, arr. 1934) Sinfonia Danses suisses Scherzo Pas de deux: Adagio, Variation, and Coda
—INTERMISSION— JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC Poème for Violin and Piano NEUBURGER (World Premiere) (2014) (b. 1986)
Appel (Summons) Première Strophe (First Stanza) Seconde Strophe (Second Stanza) Chant Final (Final Song)
BÉLA BARTÓK Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (1921) (1881-1945)
Allegro appassionato Adagio Allegro
Please turn off cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices. Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited. This evening’s performance is being streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive
notes on the
PROGRAM
I am extremely happy to welcome all of you to our recital tonight! It is not by chance that I mention “all of you” in the first sentence. Indeed, my only goal when I prepare such an event, from the opening notes, when the concentration is at a maximum, and throughout the entire performance, is to find the way, whatever the musical material may be, and no matter if you do or don’t know music, no matter if you do or don’t (why not after all…) like it, and no matter what your degree of indulgence with the upper register of the violin may be, is to speak to each one of you. For that Jean-Frédéric and I have chosen a colorful and varied selection of works, with pieces we love above all, not totally unknown but not too famous either, and last but not least, you will have the great opportunity to hear the Poème he has been so kind to write for us, only the fourth Poème ever written for violin (Chausson, Canteloube, Ysaÿe. All French by the way…well... Ysaÿe was Belgian but let’s say he was French) in the whole history of music!! So I hope you will enjoy the concert—I would even say particularly this program— and anyway if for some reason you don’t, be sure that we do! Excellente soirée à tous. Nicolas Dautricourt
Rondeau brillant in B minor for Violin and Piano, D. 895, Op. 70 Franz SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797 in Vienna. Died November 19, 1828 in Vienna. Composed in 1826. First CMS performance on December 2, 1977. Duration: 14 minutes The Rondeau brillant in B minor, D. 895, one of the handful of compositions that Schubert wrote for violin, was composed in October 1826 for the 20-year-old Czech virtuoso Josef Slavík, whom Chopin described as “the second Paganini.” Slavík
arrived in Vienna early in 1826 after having established an excellent reputation in Prague, and he inspired from Schubert both this Rondeau and the Fantasy in C major the following year. A performance of the Rondeau by Slavík and pianist Carl Maria von Bocklet (to whom Schubert had dedicated the D major Piano Sonata, D. 850 of 1825) was arranged early in 1827 in the Viennese office of the publisher Domenico Artaria, who thought highly enough of the new work to publish it in April as Schubert’s Op. 70. “The whole piece is brilliant,” stated a review in the Wiener Zeitschrift. “The spirit of invention has here often beaten its wings mightily indeed and has borne us aloft with it.
Both the pianoforte and violin require accomplished performers who must be equal to passages...which reveal a new and inspired succession of ideas.” The Rondeau brillant opens with a dignified introduction before launching into the principal theme, a melody of Hungarian flavor probably modeled on the
songs and dances Schubert heard when he served as music master to the Johann Esterházy family at their villa in Zelesz during the summer of 1824. The main theme returns twice to frame one episode given to some showy violin figurations and another one of more lyrical character. A dashing coda in the bright key of B major closes this handsome work.
Poème élégiaque for Violin and Piano, Op. 12 Eugène YSAŸE Born July 16, 1858 in Liège. Died May 12, 1931 in Brussels. Composed around 1895. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 14 minutes Eugène Ysaÿe was one of the most beloved musicians in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, a violinist revered by his peers and lionized by audiences, a teacher of immense influence, a conductor of international repute, and a composer of excellent skill. Ysaÿe began studying violin when he was four and three years later was admitted to the Liège Conservatory, where he won a prize for his playing and a scholarship for study with Henryk Wieniawski at the Brussels Conservatory from 1874 to 1876. Ysaÿe learned in 1876 that Henri Vieuxtemps had recovered sufficiently from a recent stroke to accept a few students, so he moved to Paris to receive that virtuoso’s instruction for the next three years. After serving as concertmaster of Benjamin Bilse’s orchestra (the predecessor of
the Berlin Philharmonic) and touring Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, Ysaÿe settled from 1883 to 1886 in Paris, where he formed close ties with many of the city’s leading musicians: Franck, Chausson, Debussy, and others composed works for him. From 1886 to 1898, Ysaÿe was professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatory, where he also established the Ysaÿe String Quartet (for which ensemble Saint-Saëns wrote his Quartet No. 1) and founded the orchestral Concerts Ysaÿe, both of which were principally dedicated to promoting new French and Belgian music. Increasing commitments for tours as violinist and conductor required him to leave the Conservatory in 1898, though he continued to live in Brussels until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Following his debut in the United States in 1894, Ysaÿe’s American prestige equaled that which he enjoyed in Europe, and he was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1918. He returned to Europe in 1922 to revive the Concerts Ysaÿe and resume his tours. Declining health caused by diabetes and an affliction of his bowing arm began to limit his activities in his later years, however, and in 1929 he was forced to have a foot amputated. He died in Brussels in May 1931. In 1937, Queen
Elisabeth of Belgium, a long-time violin student of his, inaugurated an annual violin competition in Brussels—the Prix International Eugène Ysaÿe (rechristened the Queen Elisabeth Competition after World War II)—in his honor. “The form of the ‘Poem’ has always attracted me,” Ysaÿe wrote. “It is admirably suited for the expression of feeling and is free from the restrictions of the concerto. It can be dramatic or lyrical, for by its very nature it is romantic and impressionistic.” Ysaÿe wrote eight works throughout his career in this single-movement, rhapsodic, vaguely referential manner for solo instrument accompanied by piano or orchestra. The Poème élégiaque, composed around 1895, is in three
formal chapters. The first and last share thematic materials, poignant lyricism, and a measured increase in intensity to an impassioned climax. The central passage, titled in the score Scène Funèbre, requires tuning the violin’s lowest string down one tone to emphasize the somber sonority of this funeral march. (The work is sometimes referred to, especially in France, as “Roméo et Juliette”; this portion of the Poème élégiaque was played by Ysaÿe’s students at his funeral, in Brussels on May 17, 1931.) The music is drawn into the upper reaches of the violin’s compass as its pathos rises before quieting again for a meditative transition to the return of the opening theme. The Poème élégiaque closes with a benedictory reminiscence of the funeral march.
Divertimento after Le baiser de la fée for Violin and Piano Igor STRAVINSKY Born June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg. Died April 6, 1971 in New York City.
Ballet composed in 1928; Divertimento arranged in 1934. First CMS performance on March 26, 1993. Duration: 22 minutes Le baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss) originated in a commission in 1927 from the wealthy actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, who wanted to establish a ballet company in Paris but was having difficulty assembling a suitable repertory because of the exclusive rights
Sergei Diaghilev held to so many recent works for his Ballet Russe. Taking the bull by the horns, she sent the artist Alexandre Benois to Stravinsky (in essence, Diaghilev’s resident composer) with his idea for a ballet based on the music of Peter Tchaikovsky for the new company. Stravinsky, who admired Tchaikovsky as the greatest of all Russian composers, was responsive to the Rubinstein-Benois proposal and he accepted the commission. He set to work as soon as possible so that the production could be ready to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death, in November 1928. For the music of The Fairy’s Kiss, Stravinsky adapted several of Tchaikovsky’s songs and piano pieces,
and, for the story, he turned to a tale of Hans Christian Andersen, The Ice Maiden. The story tells of a fairy’s magic kiss bestowed upon an infant on the day of his birth. Twenty years later, on his wedding day, the day of the young man’s greatest happiness, the fairy returns with a second kiss and bears the young man off to eternity to preserve his joy forever. Stravinsky identified the young man with Tchaikovsky and the fairy with the Muse of music. Thus The Fairy’s Kiss became an allegory of “a mystic influence that bespeaks the whole world of this great artist,” wrote Stravinsky. Stravinsky derived the musical accompaniment for this story from little-known songs and keyboard works of Tchaikovsky, requiring only
that they be things which had never been orchestrated. Stravinsky chose about half of the complete ballet for inclusion in the Divertimento, which exists in versions for orchestra and for violin and piano. Its four movements correspond to the following incidents in the plot: Sinfonia: The fairy kisses the child and disappears; Swiss Dances: A village fair; betrothal of the young man; Scherzo: The fairy leads the young man to a well where his betrothed is playing round games with her friends; Pas de deux: The young man and his betrothed; Variation: The betrothed alone; Coda: The young man left alone as his betrothed leaves to try on her wedding veil.
Poème for Violin and Piano Jean-Frédéric NEUBURGER Born December 29, 1986 in Paris.
Composed in 2014. Tonight is the world premiere of this piece. Duration: 15 minutes Recipient in 2010 of the “Nadia and Lili Boulanger” Prize by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger is regularly commissioned by festivals and musical institutions. In 2010 his Sinfonia for two pianos and percussion was premiered at La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival, in 2012 his Cantate Profane was premiered by the Chorus and Orchestre Philharmonique of Radio France under Pascal Rophé. In
2013 his quartet Plein ciel for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano was created in France and subsequently performed in Japan. His most recent works include a piece for piano and orchestra premiered in February 2014 for the final of the Piano Campus International Competition and a second cantata for Radio France. He is published by Durand, France. Neuburger writes: “In this work, I wanted to create a magical and airy sound universe which would be in total opposition to my previous duet for piano and string instrument, Souffle sur les cendres for cello and piano. “The writing of the piano part, richly decorated, is reminiscent of the writing of Chopin, Debussy, and Boulez. The violin, meanwhile, is not fully revealed until towards the end of the work, in the
Chant Final, which is the real theme of the composition.
The score itself comprises two of each of these elements.
“There are four main sections in this Poème:
“The performers then decide the order in which they will interpret these elements, which can move quickly from one stanza to another. The choices are made with the help of the “musical signals” provided in the score (nuances for the piano, manner of playing for the violin).
Appel (Summons) Première Strophe (First Stanza) Seconde Strophe (Second Stanza) Chant Final (Final Song) “The work is written in an open form: each stanza includes a Feuillet (rather short) and a Pièce for piano, superimposed over a Chant for violin, and finally a Passage (rather long).
“Some important musical ideas are the regular ‘flash-back’ chords in the piano and the glissandi, which have the same role as rhythms in a poem.”
Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano Béla BARTÓK Born March 25, 1881 in Nagyszentmiklos, Hungary. Died September 26, 1945 in New York City.
Composed in 1921. Premiered on March 28, 1922 in London by the composer and violinist Jelly d’Arányi. First CMS performance on October 9, 1974. Duration: 33 minutes After the fiendish winds of the First World War had finally blown themselves out in 1918, there came into music a new invigoration and an eagerness by composers to stretch the forms and language of the ancient art. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Copland, and other of the most important 20th-century masters
challenged listeners and colleagues throughout the 1920s with their daring visions and their brilliant iconoclasms. It was one of the most exciting decades in all of music’s long history. Béla Bartók, whose folksong research was severely limited geographically by the loss of Hungarian territories through the treaties following the war, was not immune to this spirit of experimentation, and he shifted his professional concentration at that time from ethnomusicology to composition and his career as a pianist. He was particularly interested in the music of Stravinsky, notably the mosaic structures and advanced harmonies of the Diaghilev ballets, and in the recent Viennese developments in atonality and motivic generation posited by Arnold Schoenberg and his friend/disciple Alban Berg. A decided modernism entered Bartók’s music with his searing 1919 ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin,
and his works of the years immediately following—the two Violin Sonatas, the piano suite Out of Doors, First Piano Concerto, and String Quartet No. 3—are the most daring that he ever wrote. He was reluctant to program them for any but the most sophisticated audiences. In 1921, Bartók gave a recital in Budapest with the famed Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, who gained international notoriety several years later when she claimed that the ghost of Robert Schumann contacted her during a séance to reveal the location of his unpublished Violin Concerto. (The score was located in the Berlin State Library in 1937, but her clairvoyance was regarded with skepticism when it was discovered that Schumann’s spirit spoke to her in ungrammatical German.) D’Arányi was, however, an excellent and impassioned player (she was a grand-niece of the great violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, an intimate of Brahms), and Bartók was inspired to compose a pair of violin and piano sonatas for her during the following two years. (Ravel wrote his Tzigane for d’Arányi in 1924; Vaughan Williams composed the Concerto Accademico for her a year later.) Bartók’s sonatas exhibit a modern approach to the old
duo idiom, one in which the instruments are thematically and even harmonically largely independent of each other— welded rather than melded together, as it were. Their interaction, however, is not confrontational but complementary, since their music exists on parallel rather than converging planes. The fabric and sonority of the sonatas are rich and multi-hued, emphasizing such progressive harmonic techniques as the use of tritones and minor ninths, tone clusters, polytonality, and fourth chords. This modernity is tempered by Bartók’s many ethereal, almost Impressionistic harmonic structures, and by the integration of folk-derived idioms into the melodic material. In his classic study of Bartók, Halsey Stevens summarized the musical nature of the First Sonata: “This work has a vast scope, with passionate, sweeping lines in both instruments alternating between relaxed and tranquil passages, and concludes with an energetic dance movement of pronounced Magyar character.” Despite the influences that played upon the violin sonatas, these are works that could only have been created by Béla Bartók— finely hewn, masterfully developed, and emblazoned with the singular personality of Hungary’s greatest composer. © 2014 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
meet tonight’s
ARTISTS
Voted ADAMI Classical Discovery of the Year at the Midem in Cannes and awarded the Sacem Georges Enesco Prize, Nicolas Dautricourt is one of the most brilliant and engaging French violinists of his generation. He appears at major international venues, including the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Tchaikovsky Hall, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and appears at many festivals such as Lockenhaus, Music@Menlo, Radio-France/Montpellier, Ravinia, Sintra, and Davos. In January he makes his US concerto debut with the Detroit Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. He also has performed as a soloist with the Orchestre National de France, Quebec Symphony, Sinfonia Varsovia, Mexico Philharmonic, NHK Tokyo Chamber Orchestra, the Kanazawa Orchestral Ensemble, Belgrade Radio Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Nice Philharmonic, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Novosibirsk Chamber Orchestra, and European Camerata, under conductors Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Michael Francis, Dennis Russell Davies, Michiyoshi Inoue, Kazuki Yamada, Yuri Bashmet, Fabien Gabel, Fayçal Karoui, and Mark Foster. He appears in such jazz festivals as Jazz à Vienne, Jazz in Marciac, Sud-Tyroler Jazz Festival, Jazz San Javier, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and the European Jazz Festival in Athens. Finalist and prize-winner in numerous international violin contests, such as the Wieniawski, Lipizer, Belgrade, and Viotti competitions, he has studied with Philip Hirschhorn, Miriam Fried, and Jean-Jacques Kantorow, and became artistic director of Les Moments Musicaux de Gerberoy in 2007. He is a member of Chamber Music Society Two and his threeyear residency is the first to be supported by the Khalil Rizk Fund. He currently plays a magnificent instrument by Antonio Stradivarius (Cremona 1713). Following his success at the 2004 Long-Thibaud Competition, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger quickly became in demand as an interpreter known for the extreme variety of his repertoire from Bach to composers of the twenty-first century. He performs with the world’s most prestigious orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris (with which he toured Asia in 2013), and NHK Symphony Orchestra and works with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jonathan Nott, Osmo Vänskä, Ingo Metzmacher, and Pierre Boulez. He performs at leading international festivals (Verbier, Lucerne, La Roque d’Anthéron, Saratoga, La Jolla Music Society) and as a chamber musician, performs with the leading musicians of his generation. In 2014 the Auditorium du Louvre held a series of seven concerts entitled ‘Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Friends’ featuring him as a performer and composer. His recordings have received great acclaim: the 2008 “Live at Suntory Hall” CD received a “Choc” in Le Monde de la Musique and his recording of the piano concertos by Ferdinand Hérold received the “Choc” in Classica magazine. His most recent CD—of Ravel solo pieces—was released in October 2013. Born in Paris, Mr. Neuburger received an intense and varied musical education in piano, composition, and organ before joining the Paris Conservatoire, from which he graduated with five ‘premiers prix’ in 2005. Since 2009, he has taught the renowned Classe d’Accompagnement at the Paris Conservatoire. He started his career in the US with Young Concert Artists.
upcoming
EVENTS
THE PACIFICA QUARTET
Friday, November 7, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall The Pacifica Quartet returns to Alice Tully Hall for a program of passion and depth, with works by Haydn, Shulamit Ran, Puccini, and Mendelssohn. Pre-concert conversation with Shulamit Ran at 6:30 PM in the Rose Studio, free for ticket holders
MEET THE MUSIC! THE MAGICAL WORLD OF MAURICE RAVEL Sunday, November 9, 2:00 PM • Alice Tully Hall A concert for kids ages 6 & up and their families. Featuring music of Ravel.
MASTER CLASS WITH LAWRENCE POWER, VIOLA
Thursday, November 13, 11:00 AM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio The art of interpretation and details of technique are explained by master artists. This event will be streamed live at ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive
Fall 2014 — Winter 2015
WATCH LIVE Enjoy a front row seat from anywhere in the world. View chamber music events streamed live to your computer or mobile device, and available for streaming on demand for the following 24 hours. Relax, browse the program, and experience the Chamber Music Society like never before.
11/13/14 11:00 AM Master Class with Lawrence Power 11/13/14 9:00 PM Late Night Rose 11/19/14 11:00 AM Master Class with Peter Kolkay 12/11/14 7:30 PM New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse 1/15/15 9:00 PM Late Night Rose 1/22/15 7:30 PM Art of the Recital: Gary Hoffman and David Selig 1/29/15 7:30 PM New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse
All events are free to watch. View full program details online. www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive