Christina & Michelle Naughton Digital Program Book

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CLIBURN AT THE KIMBELL: VIRTUOSOS

CHRISTINA & MICHELLE NAUGHTON DUO PIANO

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 I 7:30 PM KIMBELL ART MUSEUM RENZO PIANO PAVILION PERFORMANCE SPONSORED BY

The Board of Directors of the Cliburn salutes with gratitude the generosity of

FORT WORTH TOURISM PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT GUIDO AND RUTH SHUMAKE CHARITABLE TRUST

for supporting this performance of

CHRISTINA & MICHELLE NAUGHTON

PA G E

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CLIBURN AT THE KIMBELL: VIRTUOSOS Kimbell Art Museum Renzo Piano Pavilion Thursday, March 7, 2019 I 7:30 pm

CHRISTINA & MICHELLE NAUGHTON duo

piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sonata for Piano, Four Hands in D Major, K. 381/123a Allegro Andante Allegro molto

Francis Poulenc

Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, FP 8 Prélude Rustique Final

Franz Schubert

Rondo in A Major, D. 951

Conlon Nancarrow Arr. Yvar Mikhashoff

Sonatina for Piano, Four Hands Presto Moderato Allegro molto

Intermission

Aaron Copland Arr. Bennett Lerner

Variations on a Shaker Melody from “Appalachian Spring”

Maurice Ravel

Ma mère l’Oye Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant Petit Poucet Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête Le jardin féerique

Paul Schoenfield

Five Days in the Life of a Manic Depressive Metamorphoses on “I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby” Labyrinth Elegy From a Bintel Brief Boogie

Join us in the lobby following the performance for an artist meet & greet.

The Naughtons appear by arrangement with Judson Management Group, Inc. Steinway & Sons is the official piano of the Cliburn. This concert is being recorded.

Please silence all electronic devices.

CHRISTINA & MICHELLE NAUGHTON

DUO PIANO

Christina and Michelle Naughton have been hailed by The San Francisco Examiner for their “stellar musicianship, technical mastery, and awe-inspiring artistry.” They have captivated audiences throughout the globe with the unity engendered by their mystical musical communication. As quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Christina Naughton has said, “There are times I forget we are two people playing together.”

Recent years have featured the Naughtons as soloists with American orchestras such as the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras; Atlanta, Houston, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, San Diego, Nashville, Virginia, Milwaukee, and New Jersey Symphonies; and the Buffalo Philharmonic. They have also appeared with orchestras around the world including the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, St. Petersberg Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic (at the Concertgebouw), Royal Scottish National Orchestra, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, New Zealand Symphony, and the Orquesta Sinfônica do Estado São Paulo. Past and future seasons feature collaborations under the batons of conductors Stéphane Denève, Edo deWaart, Charles Dutoit, JoAnn Falletta, Giancarlo Guerrero, Emanuel Krivine, Cristian Macelaru, Andres Orozco-Estrada, and Leonard Slatkin, among others.

Christina and Michelle have performed in recital across the United States, in venues such as the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Schubert Club in St. Paul, and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Recent and upcoming highlights include New York City’s Lincoln Center Great Performers Concert series, Gilmore Festival, Fortas Chamber Music Festival, Detroit Chamber Music Series, Harriman Jewell Series, Chamber Music San Francisco, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and Fort Worth’s Cliburn Concerts, among other engagements. They have also been invited to Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, and Wyoming’s Grand Tetons Festival.

The Naughtons made their European debut at Herkulesaal in Munich, where the Süddeutsche Zeitung proclaimed them “an outstanding piano duo.” They have since appeared in France’s La Roque d’Antheron Festival, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Rheingau Musik Festival, Dresden’s Musikfestpiele, Kissinger Sommer, Berlin’s Kammermusiksaal, Munich’s Herkulesaal, Dusseldorf ’s Tonhalle, Nohant Festival Chopin, and Casa da Musica Porto. Recital engagements in Asia and South America have included appearances at the Beijing Forbidden City Concert Hall, Shenzhen Concert Hall, and Wuhan Qintai Concert Hall in China; Pallacio de las Bellas Artes, Biblioteca de Luis Angelm, and Sala São Paulo in Brazil; and Mexico City’s Pallacio de las Bellas Artes.

In February 2016, the Naughtons released their debut record on the Warner Classics label, titled Visions, featuring the music of Messiaen, Bach, and Adams. The album received critical acclaim, with The Washington Post hailing them as one of the “greatest piano duos of our time.” The record was chosen as “Editor’s Choice” by Gramophone magazine.

Their first album, Piano Duets, was released in fall 2012 by the label ORFEO, and their performances have been broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, New York’s WQXR, Chicago’s WFMT, Hong Kong’s RTHK, Netherland’s Radio 4 Concerthuis, and Germany’s Bayersichen Rudfunks, WDR, and NDR Radio.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to parents of European and Chinese descent, Christina and Michelle are graduates of The Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, where they were each awarded the Festorazzi Prize. They are Steinway Artists and currently reside in New York City.

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PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, FP 8 Francis Poulenc b. January 7, 1899, Paris, France d. December 30, 1963, Paris, France Nineteen-year-old Francis Poulenc had clearly already found his characteristic voice when, in the closing months of the First World War, he produced this miniature Sonata, overflowing with youthful energy and unmistakably Gallic joiede-vivre. Always a gregarious and sociable person, Poulenc would go on to create an extensive body of work for two pianists at one or two pianos: presumably, he simply liked the idea of more than one person playing the piano at the same time.

That extensive canon of duo piano and piano duet music includes a Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, a version of that same concerto without orchestra, a large-scale Sonata for Two Pianos, and a number of one-movement works.

The first movement of this noticeably short Sonata is a noisy Prélude, in simple ABA song form rather than the traditional Sonata-Allegro structure. A relentless percussive ostinato for the lower pianist continues unabated (with one slight shift) for 23 measures, suggesting the rhythm of a locomotive, while the upper part comments excitedly; a little song for the upper piano part provides a brief break before returning to the noisy opening idea.

The second movement, titled “Rustique”and marked “Naif et Lent,” likewise suggests a journey—albeit calmer—through the countryside; tremolos and frantic passage-work in the finale bring this testament of unbounded optimism to a close.

By 1918, Igor Stravinsky, by then settled in Paris, had already taken an interest in the talented young Poulenc, and the Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, with a number of other early works by Poulenc, was published by the major British Chester publishing house in 1919. Poulenc made minor revisions in 1939, when the threat of yet another World War loomed over the Continent; the dark eras that mark both the initial creation of the Sonata and its revision are interestingly absent in this unfailingly happy work.

Composed in 1918. Approximately 6 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY

Sonata for Piano, Four Hands in D Major, K. 381/123a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart b. January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria d. December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria After a childhood and adolescence spent traveling around Europe, Mozart returned home to Salzburg for the years 1773–1777. Unable to obtain a steady income elsewhere, he accepted the position of concertmaster for the court orchestra of Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo, the ruler of Salzburg and the surrounding province.

The salary was low—at least for a genius with an international reputation—and Salzburg offered little opportunity for the production of opera, which had become Mozart’s passion and chief ambition. Furthermore, the Archbishop was unhappy with Mozart’s frequent travels and obvious desire for a position elsewhere, and eventually—and infamously—dismissed Mozart, thus earning himself eternal infamy as the man who fired Mozart.

Nonetheless, it was a fruitful period for Mozart as a composer, during which he produced a number of works representative of his fully mature style, including several symphonies, the innovative Piano Concerto No. 9 (“Jenamy”), and all five violin concertos.

Although the exact date is unknown, it appears that the Sonata in D Major for Four Hands was also written during this period; the occasion and the intended performers are unknown, though, at this point, Mozart and his sister Maria Anna are likely candidates. Mozart did not “invent” the piano duet or the piano duet sonata (as was once claimed), but his works in that idiom represent an early landmark of the duet repertoire.

The upper piano part tends to dominate throughout the first movement, though not entirely; a lively, generally cheerful exposition leads to a brief development section (as is typical of Mozart’s sonata forms), with a quick storm before returning to the optimism of the recapitulation. Serenity and operatic lyricism dominate the Andante movement, in G major; although the upper voice here “sings” the aria, the lower part occasionally steals the spotlight, and the two pianists alternately sit silent for a pair of phrases in the center of the movement.

A vigorously repeated chord announces the return to D major for the Allegro finale, with more alternating conversation between the two pianists and an energy and momentum anticipating the high spirits of Mozart’s great operatic ensembles.

Mozart would leave Salzburg and never again call the city home sometime not long after the composition of this Sonata, but the strategies he learned to integrate into the music of this period would echo in the towering masterpieces of his final years.

Composed 1773–1774. Approximately 16 minutes.

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PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY

(CONTINUED)

Rondo in A Major, D. 951 Franz Schubert b. January 31, 1797, Vienna, Austria d. November 19, 1828, Vienna, Austria Following Mozart’s example, Franz Schubert found the piano duet an amiable medium. He produced a substantial body of works in the genre, including two full-length sonatas, a substantial fantasia, three sets of variations, and a number of dances and marches. That Schubert would have devoted considerable energy to the piano duet is no surprise, considering his sociable nature (inseparable, in his case, from his love of music) shared with his circle of music-loving friends in Vienna.

Indeed, during his final year, Schubert devoted a large portion of his energy to music for piano duet, including the composition of the monumental, four-movement Fantasia in F Minor, which he began in January and completed in May. Having turned 31 in January of 1828, he was by that time achieving an increasingly wide and favorable reputation, as well as the prospect of at last escaping the nearpoverty that had bedeviled his short life. In March, he presented a well-received concert of his own works to favorable acclaim in front of a full house; the success of the event inspired him to plan to do a concert of that sort every year. Meanwhile, he had also completed his final Symphony, the “Great” C Major.

With greater success appearing on the horizon, he continued, as he had throughout his life, to compose prolifically, including, in June of that year, two more works for piano duet: the Rondo in A Major and the Allegro in A Minor. The Rondo would be his final work for piano duet; his ill health intensified in the fall, and he died on November 18, 1828.

Schubert’s mastery of the idioms of the piano duet and understanding of the sonorities that can be produced by two sets of hands at the keyboard is, in the Rondo, complete. Although he left numerous indications of premonitions of his preeminent death, and was apparently aware of his failing health, the work opens with a confidently serene melody, keeping with his enduring reputation as one of the greatest melodists of all time. He takes some striking journeys into distant tonalities in the course of the work, but always returns, comfortingly, to the serenity of the opening theme, finally floating into a celestial closing cadence.

Composed in 1828. Approximately 13 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY

(CONTINUED)

Sonatina for Piano, Four Hands Conlon Nancarrow b. October 27, 1912, Texarkana, Arkansas d. August 10, 1997, Mexico City, Mexico Born just a few blocks north of the house in which Scott Joplin was born some five decades earlier, Conlon Nancarrow led an eventful but largely unnoticed life for his first 65 years. The son of a prominent local businessman who eventually served as mayor of Texarkana, Conlon defied parental and societal norms from an early age while developing an interest in music in general—including jazz, in those days a marginalized genre—and the trumpet in particular.

He gradually and somewhat haphazardly drifted northeastward, marrying along the way, and encountering the experimental currents of the third decade of the 20th century, including contact with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, and Nicolas Slonimsky on one hand, and conducting studies with Arthur Fiedler on the other.

He briefly joined the Communist Party before working his way to Europe as a trumpeter in a jazz band, and eventually joined the “Lincoln Brigade” with several thousand Americans fighting unsuccessfully against Franco’s Fascist takeover of Spain in 1937–1939.

Facing legal discrimination as a suspected Communist on his return to the United States, he immigrated to Mexico, where he spent the next 35 years living frugally and quietly, and determinedly creating a body of music which biographer Kyle Gann proclaimed as placing the name of Nancarrow “next to those of Ockeghem, Josquin, Bach, Haydn, Webern and Babbitt as composers who redefined . . . what the act of composing can be.”

While the underlying impetus for the music of Nancarrow is a strict reliance on mathematical formulae, the most obvious and oft-remembered of the many features of his mature output is that, in the absence of opportunity for live performance and the inability of humans to perform the incredibly difficult music he wrote, Conlon began creating music for player piano, including a famous set of 51 “Studies” for Player Piano. Recordings in the 1970s brought this unique section of his wide output to the attention of the musical establishment, resulting in further recordings and performances in major international centers, as well as a MacArthur “Genius Grant” (at that time $300,000) in 1982. Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti proclaimed Nancarrow’s music as “the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives... something great and important for all music history. His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional . . .”

Continued on next page

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

Continued on from previous page In 1941, early during his Mexico City period, Conlon produced a three-movement Sonatina for piano solo, a work originally conceived for human performance before Nancarrow discovered the possibilities of the player piano. The composer eventually came to prefer performance of the work on player piano; pianist Yvar Mikhashoff transcribed the work for piano duet with the composer’s approval.

The first movement, Presto, begins with an almost gentle energy and two-part counterpoint reminiscent of the Bach Inventions, before gradually evolving into thicker textures; the second, Moderato, introduces a more sonorous tone and a reflective mood, with bluesy lyricism. Even with the original part for one pianist divided for two players, the Allegro molto finale (once again evoking Bach’s counterpoint), provides an opportunity for breathtaking virtuosity.

Composed in 1941. Arranged for piano duo in 1986. Approximately 5 minutes.

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PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

Variations on a Shaker Melody from “Appalachian Spring” Aaron Copland b. November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York d. December 2, 1990, Sleepy Hollow, New York The ballet Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland, premiered at the Library of Congress in 1944 with Martha Graham in the principal role, accompanied by a chamber ensemble of 13 instruments. It depicts the building of a new house by a young pioneer couple, including both the joys and trials of life in a new land.

For the climactic moment in the ballet, Copland turned to the song “Simple Gifts,” which he discovered in Edward Deming Andrews’ 1940 collection of songs and rituals from the Shaker sect. The Shakers were a charismatic Christian community known for their craftsmanship and rural life skills, as well as for the practice of celibacy—which explains why membership in the denomination, which peaked at about 6,000 in the 19th century, has dwindled to two members at a community in Maine, according to current reports.

In the ballet, Copland treats the jaunty, dance-like melody as the basis for a set of lively variations, employing broad, resonant harmonies as well as an almost neo-baroque contrapuntal technique. Shortly after the premiere of the ballet in Washington, Copland abridged the ballet score (for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music) and arranged it into a symphonic concert suite; in this form, it has become one of the most well-known and beloved of American orchestral works. Bennett Lerner, a Chicago-born pianist who currently lives and teaches in Thailand, transcribed, for piano duet, the “Simple Gifts” movement from the Symphonic Suite in 1985, including the brief evocative movements that precede and follow the variations.

The text of the original song reflects the humility as well as the charismatic rituals of bending and turning from which the Shaker sect earned its name; beyond its specifically Shaker references, it also communicates the sturdy faith and optimism of America’s formative years:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d, To bow and to bend we will not be asham’d, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Composed in 1944. Arranged for duo piano in 1985. Approximately 6 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) Maurice Ravel b. March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France d. December 28, 1937, Paris, France In 1908, after the death of his father, Maurice Ravel turned for solace to the Polish expatriates Ida and Cipa Godeski, who had been friends of his father. Having become close to the couple and fond of their children, Mimi and Jean, Ravel revised an earlier, unpublished “Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant,” as a duet for the children. This in turn became the opening movement of a suite for duet, Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose ), depicting traditional stories as retold in the 17th and 18th centuries by Charles Perrault, Jeanne-Marie de Beaumont, and MarieCatherine, Baroness d’Aulnoy.

After the opening “Sleeping Beauty,” with its dreamily intertwined lines, Ravel pictures, in the second movement, Petit Poucet (“Little Tom Thumb”), a child wandering in the woods, dropping breadcrumbs to mark his way and longing for home; we hear, unmistakably, the chirping of the birds who eat the bread crumbs.

The third movement, Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes (“Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas”) presents the most complex music in the suite, depicting one episode in the complicated story of Princess Laideronnette, who was cursed with ugliness by a jealous witch. In this scene, she is entertained, while bathing, by a troupe of nodding Chinese dolls (pagodas) who have come to life for her. The ripples of water are clearly evident in the opening section, after which pentatonic harmonies reliably signal (for early 20th-century listeners) an eastern Asian element.

The longest movement, Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (“Conversation of Beauty and the Beast”) presents a gentle waltz in which both the beautiful young woman and the beast are clearly delineated, with the beast gradually revealing his human tenderness, and, in the end, transforming into a handsome prince. The final movement, Le jardin féerique (“The Fairy Garden”) returns to the opening tale to represent Sleeping Beauty awakened by her prince in a brief movement which surely ranks as one of the most perfectly crafted and ravishingly beautiful short works in the entire canon of art music.

Soon after presenting Ma Mère l’Oye to the fortunate Mimi and Jean, Ravel produced a version for orchestra as well as a ballet score; although Ma Mère l’Oye is more famous in its orchestral transformation, the original version clearly represents an apex of the literature for piano duet, combining simplicity of expression with extraordinary compositional technique and command of piano sonority.

Composed in 1910. Approximately 15 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

Five Days in the Life of a Manic Depressive Paul Schoenfield b. January 24, 1947, Detroit, Michigan Currently a professor of composition at the University of Michigan, Paul Schoenfield describes himself as “a wanderer and reclusive by nature” and “a student of mathematics and the Talmud;” his faculty profile at UM, presumably with his approval and probable insistence, opens with unfavorable reviews, and insists that his music has “rarely been popular with the press” (an assertion somewhat contradicted by his status as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music). He has been, at various times in his 72 years, an active concert pianist, a house pianist in a jazz club, and resident of a kibbutz in Israel; his body of work includes concertos, chamber music, and opera.

His music has been characterized by an eclectic combination of American popular music, World folk music, the classical tradition, jazz, and Judaism; his undeniably dark works have included the cycles Ghetto Songs and Camp Songs, both in commemoration of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

On the other hand, his work just as often deliberately invites puzzlement, as indicated by Five Days in the Life of a Manic Depressive, a title that tempts one to wonder whether he is being humorous, tragic, or both. The opening movement, “Metamorphoses on ‘I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby’” does little to settle the question, but fascinates with its volcanic rush of notes and barely recognizable snips from the original Fats Waller tune.

The second movement, “Labyrinth,” lurks mysteriously, mostly pianissimo and staccato, while gradually, and increasingly, bursting into panicked passages of forte, fortissimo, and even fortississimo. A lonely melody in the upper piano part floats over a rolling bass to open the third movement, “Elegy,” which slowly unwinds to a briefly raging climax before fading.

The fourth movement, “From a Bintel Brief,” takes its title from the advice column pamphlets that, in the early decades of the 20th century, guided immigrant European Jews in New York through the complexities of life in urban America. This largely tonal movement draws most obviously on ragtime and blues. The fifth and final movement, “Boogie,” provides a rapid-fire, relentlessly virtuosic tour-de-force for a piano duet team, epitomizing Schoenfield’s summation of his own music as “not the kind of music for relaxation, but the kind that makes people sweat; not only the performer, but the audience.”

Composed in 2006. Approximately 21 minutes.

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