Friday, November 1, 2024 | 8PM
PROGRAM
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 27, No. 1
Andante; Allegro
Allegro molto vivace
Adagio con espressione
Allegro vivace
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11
Mässige
Mässige
Bewegte
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2 “Moonlight”
Adagio sostenuto Allegretto
Presto agitato
-- INTERMISSION --
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Six Little Piano Pieces, Opus 19
Leicht, zart
Langsam
Sehr langsame Viertel Rasch, aber leicht
Etwas rasch
Sehr langsam
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Fantasy in C Major, Opus 17
Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen Mässig. Durchaus energisch Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten
Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 27, No. 1 (Sonata quasi una Fantasia)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna
In 1801 Beethoven completed two piano sonatas that he would publish jointly as his Opus 27. The second of these, in C-sharp minor, has become one of the most famous pieces of music ever written–we know it as the “Moonlight” Sonata. The first, however, remains almost unknown to audiences today.
By the year 1800 Beethoven had reached a moment of transition. He had spent the previous decade mastering classical form, and that achievement was signaled by the completion that year of the six string quartets of his Opus 18 and of his First Symphony. Three years later Beethoven would compose the Eroica and in the process revolutionize the possibilities of sonata form, but even by 1800–just as the thirty-year-old composer was completing his first symphony and quartets–he was already beginning to experiment with that form. Beethoven realized that works in classical form tended to be dominated by their first movement: the opening movement–in a form that depended on the conflict and resolution of theme and tonality–set the character for the rest of the work. Now Beethoven wondered if it might be possible to shift the weight of a piece of music to later in the work, and to do that he needed to de-emphasize the first movement. Neither opening movement of
the two sonatas of Opus 27 is in sonata form–instead, each has a free, improvisational character. Beethoven understood that what he was doing changed the entire nature of sonata form, and so when he published these two sonatas in 1802 he specified on the title page that each should be understood as a Sonata quasi una fantasia: “in the nature of a fantasy.”
The Sonata in E-flat Major is original in a thousand ways. It is in four brief movements, but these are played without pause. Beethoven blurs the outlines of sonata form, sometimes keeping the general shape of the form, sometimes dismissing it altogether. Part of the originality here is rhythmic, for this sonata alternates quick and slow tempos, and often the rhythmic sense defeats our expectations with extended syncopations and displaced attacks.
The opening movement is defiantly a non-sonata-form movement–it truly is a fantasia. It is in ternary form, based on a murmuring, amiable opening section that is cast aside as the music suddenly leaps into 6/8 and C major and rushes vigorously across the keyboard; Beethoven rounds off matters with a reprise of the opening. The Allegro molto vivace, which lasts barely two minutes, functions as the scherzo. Its flowing opening is interrupted by sharp attacks, the theme of the brief trio section is completely off the beat, and the reprise is truncated and syncopated as it cascades directly into the Adagio con espressione. This movement
brings a world of calm as its poised main melody proceeds chordally along a very slow pulse. A cadenzalike flourish plunges the music into the concluding Allegro vivace. This is a rondo and in that sense might seem the most “normal” movement in the sonata, except that even here Beethoven has surprises. He breaks off the rondo to include a vigorous development section, and just before the ending he brings the music to a pause and recalls the theme of the Adagio. A crisp Presto coda drives this very original sonata to its firm close.
Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Born September 13, 1874, Vienna
Died July 13, 1951, Los Angeles
Schoenberg would often compose in great bursts of creativity, and the year 1909 brought one of these. That year he completed his fifteensong cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens, composed the Three Piano Pieces and Five Pieces for Orchestra, and then–at the end of the summer–wrote his monodrama Erwartung in the space of seventeen days. Fundamental to all these works was a passion to break into new territory: Schoenberg was intent on setting aside the forms and techniques of the past so that he might create in entirely new ways, even if that search seemed to lead toward formlessness.
Such an evolution is dramatically displayed in the Three Piano Pieces. Schoenberg wrote the first two in February 1909 and the third in August 1909, and even within
the span of those six months he seems to have evolved an entirely new musical language. If the first two pieces abandon traditional harmony, they nevertheless show some links with the past. The first, Mässige (“Moderate”) depends on thematic material. It has been described as “Brahmsian,” and Brahms would certainly have recognized the three-part form, though he would just as certainly have been dismayed by the extreme chromaticism of this music. The second piece, again Mässige, is anchored firmly on a rocking ostinato that can be heard (or sensed) throughout most of the movement. The third movement, however, seems to have come from a different world altogether. Marked Beweget (“animated, agitated”), it does without themes, repetition, or development and instead explores a world that seems to be inventing itself anew at every moment.
The first performance of the Three Piano Pieces was given by the pianist Etta Werndorf at an allSchoenberg program in Vienna on January 14, 1910. Critical reaction, even by those who had been supporters of Schoenberg to this point, was hostile.
Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2 “Moonlight”
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna
When Beethoven composed this piano sonata in 1801, he could not possibly have foreseen that it would become one of the most popular
pieces ever written. But Beethoven, then 30 years old, was aware that he was trying to rethink sonata form. The keyboard sonata of the classical period had taken a fairly standard shape: sonata-form first movement, a slow movement, and a rondo-finale. While Haydn and Mozart had written some very good keyboard sonatas, no one would argue that their best work lies in such music, and in fact those two often composed keyboard sonatas for home performance by amateurs or for students.
So radical was Beethoven’s rethinking of the form that he felt it necessary to append a qualifying description to the two sonatas of his Opus 27: “quasi una fantasia”–more like a fantasy than a strict sonata. In the Sonata in C-sharp Minor, he does away with sonata-form altogether in the first movement, writing instead an opening movement that functions as an atmospheric prelude. This haunting music, full of a bittersweet melancholy, feels almost improvisatory, and one senses that Beethoven is trying to avoid beginning with a conflict-centered movement that will overpower all that follows. Here the gently-rippling triplet accompaniment provides a quiet background for some of the most expressive music Beethoven ever wrote.
The middle movement becomes not the traditional slow movement of the classical sonata, but a brief Allegretto that dances on gracefully-falling phrases. Formally, this movement resembles the
classical minuet, though Beethoven eliminates the repeat of the first strain. Phrases are short, and Beethoven makes clear that he wants unusually strong attacks by specifying accent marks rather than a simple staccato indication.
Nothing in the sonata to this point prepares one for the finale, which rips to life with a searing energy far removed from the dreamy atmosphere of the opening movement. Here, finally, is the sonata-form movement: Beethoven has moved the dramatic movement to the end as a way of giving it special significance. His marking Presto agitato is crucial: this is agitated music, and the pounding pulse of sixteenth-notes is never absent for long. Beethoven asks for an exposition repeat, builds the development around the dotted second subject, and at the close offers a series of arabesque-like runs and a moment of repose before the volcanic rush to the close.
The nickname that has become an inescapable part of the way we think of this music did not originate with the composer, and Beethoven would be as surprised to learn that he had written a “Moonlight” Sonata as Mozart would be to learn that he had written a “Jupiter” Symphony. It was the poet-critic Ludwig Rellstab who coined the nickname in 1832, five years after Beethoven’s death, saying that the music reminded him of the flickering of moonlight on the waters of Lake Lucerne. One can only guess what Beethoven would have thought of such a nickname, particularly since it applies only to
the first movement.
Six Little Piano Pieces
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Born September 13, 1874, Vienna
Died July 13, 1951, Los Angeles
The operative word in the title Six Little Piano Pieces is “little,” for these six pieces last a total of five minutes. Schoenberg began them in Vienna in February 1911 and completed the last in June, the month after Mahler died in the same city. These six miniatures have been described as aphorisms: they are very short pieces that do not develop–how could they in so short a span? They remain essentially formless, merely a quick statement and inconclusive close. Such pieces of course call into question the entire nature of musical form, and pianist Glenn Gould has suggested that the Six Little Piano Pieces reflect Schoenberg’s own uncertainty as a composer at this time. He had put behind him the tonal and instrumental opulence of such works as Pelléas and Melisande and Gurrelieder and had not yet found the way that would lead to Pierrot Lunaire and serial music. While the Six Little Piano Pieces still hover around tonal centers, the contours of traditional tonal music, which had been very much a part of Schoenberg’s early music, are beginning to blur here.
At the same time Schoenberg was writing these tiny piano pieces, his student and friend Anton von Webern was composing his own Six Bagatelles for string quartet, a work very similar in
structure. Schoenberg supplied an introduction for the Webern score, and what he says about that music applies directly to his own Six Little Piano Pieces: “Consider what moderation is required to express oneself so briefly. You can stretch every glance out to a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath–such concentration can only be present in proportion to the absence of self-pity.”
Almost by definition, the Six Little Piano Pieces require no detailed description. Their titles translate:
Light, tender
Slow
Very slow quarter-notes
Quick, but light
Somewhat quick
Very slow
Fantasy in C Major, Opus 17 ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau Died July 29, 1856, Endenich
In 1835, the 25-year-old Robert Schumann learned of plans to create a Beethoven monument in Bonn and–fired with enthusiasm for the project–resolved to compose a piano sonata and donate all receipts from it to support the monument. He wrote to his publisher, suggesting an elaborate publication in which the score would be bound in black and trimmed with gold, and he proposed a monumental inscription for that cover:
Ruins. Trophies. Palms. Grand Piano Sonata For Beethoven’s Monument
Yet when Schumann began composing this music the following year, his plans had changed considerably. He had fallen in love with the young piano virtuosa Clara Wieck, and her father had exploded: Friedrich Wieck did everything in his power to keep the lovers apart, forbidding them to see each other and forcing them to return each other’s letters. The dejected Schumann composed a three-movement sonata-like piece that was clearly fired by his thwarted love: he later told Clara that the first movement was “the most passionate thing I have ever composed–a deep lament for you.”
Yet the score, published under the neutral title Fantasy in 1839, contains enough references to Beethoven (quotations from the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte at the end of the first movement and from the Seventh Symphony in the last) to suggest that some of Schumann’s original plans for a Beethoven sonata remained in this music. And finally, to complicate matters even further, Schumann dedicated the score not to Clara but to Franz Liszt, who would become one of its great champions.
If the inspiration for this music is in doubt, its greatness is not: the Fantasy in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest compositions, wholly original in form, extremely difficult to perform, and haunting in its emotional effect. Schumann was right to call this music a Fantasy–it may seem like a piano sonata on first appearance, but it refuses to conform exactly to the rules of sonata form. The first
movement, marked “Fantastic and passionate throughout,” begins with an impassioned falling figure that Schumann associated with Clara. In the quiet middle section, which Schumann marks “In the manner of a legend,” the music moves to C minor; yet the conclusion does not recapitulate the opening material in the correct key–the music returns to C major only after the reference to Beethoven’s song from An die ferne Geliebte
The second movement is a vigorous march full of dotted rhythms; Schumann marks it “Energetic throughout.” Curiously, Clara–the inspiration for the first movement–liked this movement the best; she wrote to Schumann: “The march strikes me as a victory march of warriors returning from battle, and in the Ab section I think of the young girls from the village, all dressed in white, each with a garland in her hand crowning the warriors kneeling before them.” Schumann concludes with a surprise: the last movement is at a slow tempo–it unfolds expressively, and not until the final bars does Schumann allow this music to arrive–gently and magically–in the home key of C major.
The Fantasy in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest works, yet within years of its composition, Schumann himself was hard on this music, calling it “immature and unfinished . . . mostly reflections of my turbulent earlier life.” By this time, he was happily married to Clara and may have identified the Fantasy with a painful period in his life, yet it is
precisely for its turbulence, its pain, and its longing that we value this music today.
Program notes © Eric Bromberger, 2024.
EMANUEL AX
Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. The 2024/25 season begins with a continuation of the Beethoven For Three touring and recording project with partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma which takes them to European festivals including BBC Proms, Dresden, Hamburg, Vienna and Luxembourg. As guest soloist he will appear during the New York Philharmonic’s opening week which will mark his 47th annual visit to the orchestra. During the season he will return to the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, National, San Diego, Nashville and Pittsburgh symphonies and Rochester Philharmonic. A fall recital tour from Toronto and Boston moves west to include San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles culminating in the spring in Chicago and his annual Carnegie Hall appearance. A special project in duo with clarinetist Anthony McGill takes them from
the west coast through the midwest to Georgia and Carnegie Hall and in chamber music with Itzhak Perlman and Friends to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Francisco. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Paris, Oslo, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw and Israel.
Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies
Emanuel Ax
arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMYwinning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® AwardWinning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary
of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).
Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit EmanuelAx.com.
Mr. Ax is represented by Opus 3 Artists.
Nikolai Lugansky
SUNDAY, FEB. 23, 2025 | 3PM
PROGRAM
MENDELSSOHN Songs Without Words (“Lieder ohne Worte”) - Selection TBA
SCHUBERT Fantasie in C Major, Op. 15 (D.760), “Wanderer Fantasy”
INTERMISSION
WAGNER (ARR. LUGANSKY) 4 Scenes from Götterdämmerung, WWV 86D
WAGNER/LISZT “Isoldens Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde,” transcription for piano, S.447
“A pianist of overwhelming sensitivity, who puts forward not himself, but the music...”
TICKETS
Leif Ove Andsnes
SUNDAY, MAR. 30, 2025 | 3PM
PROGRAM
GRIEG
GEIRR TVEITT
Piano Sonata in E Minor, Op. 7
Piano Sonata No. 29, Op. 129, “Sonata Etere” INTERMISSION
CHOPIN
24 Preludes, Op. 28
“Andsnes has entered an elite circle of pianistic stardom ... When he sits in front of the keyboard ... extraordinary things happen”
SOKA PERFORMING ARTS
TICKETS &
Concessions
A wide variety of wine, beer, soft drinks and freshly prepared snacks will be available before the concert and during intermission in the lobby.
Artist Drink Pick
Prosecco
We asked the artist for their favorite drink pick to feature at concessions! Prosecco was selected by Emanuel Ax and will be available for purchase before the performance & during intermission.
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