Plan B Junior Piano Recital by Katiann Nelson

carthage music department presents

Plan B Junior Piano Recital by Katiann Nelson

Monday, May 17, 2021 | 7:30 p.m. | A. F. Siebert Chapel

program There is no intermission Sonata no. 23 in F minor, “Appassionata”, op. 57

I. Allegro Assai

II. Adagio Con Moto

III. Allegro Ma non troppo

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Trois Morceaux pour piano

I. D’un Vieux Jardin

II. D’un Jardin Clair III. Cortège Piano Concerto in C# minor, Op. 45 I. Allegro Moderato Deborah Masloski, Orchestral Reduction

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

thank you I would like to wholeheartedly thank Dr. Masloski for her guidance, mentorship, and support through this recital, and for teaching myself and many others the ways to advocate as a strong voice for women composers. I would also like to sincerely thank Dr. Ripley for all of his extra time spent with sound checks and artistic advice. Finally, I would like to thank my friends, my family, and my Roomie for all of their support and love.

program notes Ludwig van Beethoven A strong-hold of the piano literature, Beethoven’s Sonata no. 23 in F minor stands as one of his most famous works. Known for its stormy first-movement, placidly collected second movement, and relentlessly tempestuous final movement, “Appassionata” features a dramatically shocking emotional range which would become characteristic of Beethoven’s repertoire. While Beethoven did not bequeath this sonata “Appassionata”, the name, given later by publishers, is certainly fitting.

When named “Appassionata”, this sonata seems to tread the line between absolute music, music written for its own sake, which is not accompanied by a specific story or concept, and programmatic music, music which is intended to create an extra-musical narrative. After all, one might find it difficult to listen to “Appassionata” without conjuring up images of stormy seas, revolutions, great loves lost, and any other idea in which “passion” is centralized. However, in his 1970 performance of this sonata, Daniel Barenboim encourages his audience to take advantage of the opportunity “to make your own poetic idea, if you wish to”, knowing that absolute music such as this cannot be characterized by any one worded title. Beethoven absolutely provides ample opportunity for the audience to do so, and I hope my performance can do the same.

Lili Boulanger Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) lived a tragically short and remarkably productive life.

Central and highly regarded in the early 20th century French music scene, Lili Boulanger and her older sister, Nadia Boulanger, were quick to rise as prominent musicians and teachers. The first woman to win the prestigious composition competition Prix de Rome, Lili Boulanger is an incredible example of women composers, who faced every disadvantage, slowly breaking glass ceilings. Just a few years prior to Lili’s victory, the Prix de Rome judges, reluctant to award women, begrudgingly allowed Nadia Boulanger to take second prize. Following her success at the Prix de Rome, Boulanger’s Trois Morceaux is a three movement work written in 1914, four years before her death. The first two movements are given scenic titles, “From an old garden” (I. D’un vieux Jardin), and “From a clear/bright garden” (II. D’un Jardin clair). The final movement, transcribed from a piano/violin duet, “Cortege”, references a celebratory procession. Throughout these works, Boulanger showcases her extremely unique harmonic style, one unlike any other composer, one

program notes which proves to ripen and flower rather than become stale over time. Every listening of this incredible work renders a fresher understanding, thanks to Boulanger’s incredible handling of her harmonic language.

Amy Beach Compositions by Amy Beach, heart-breakingly beautiful and remarkable in both their compositional integrity and quantity, prove to be some of the most frustratingly overlooked pieces in the piano repertoire. Mrs. H.H.A. Beach serves as one of thousands of examples of music created out of gender-based oppression. Once married, Amy Cheney, turned Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, lost the performance career she so deeply desired, as her husband felt that a solo career wasn’t becoming of a woman married to a doctor. Music composition became Amy’s new normal. While happy in her marriage, Amy Beach’s sense of repression, frustration, and sorrow for opportunity lost in her career shines clearly through her massive Piano Concerto in C# minor. Completed in 1899, just months before her husband’s death, Mrs. H.H.A. Beach’s composition shown as one of many examples of women wielding creative power, despite prominent musicologists such as George Upton, whose shockingly offensive book “Woman in Music” (1880) describes the creative efforts of women: “She will always be the recipient and interpreter, but there is little hope she will be the creator”. Today, the collective unconscious of womankind gets to reclaim “Amy” as herself, and Amy Beach fights these notions with a passion unparalleled. The first movement of Beach’s Piano Concerto seems to dually serve as personal testimony to the frustration of her circumstance and as a call to comrades to take up the fight against patriarchal domination in music literature. Amy Beach, along with hundreds of other, once-silent, composers paved the way for women composers and performers today.

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