Peter Serkin: Program Notes

92nd Street Y, Theresa L. Kaufmann Concert Hall Saturday, December 1, XX p.m.

MASTERS OF THE KEYBOARD PETER SERKIN, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) ADAGIO IN B MINOR, K. 540 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART SONATA IN B-FLAT MAJOR, K. 570 Allegro Adagio Allegretto : : INTERMISSION : : JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) ARIA WITH DIVERSE VARIATIONS FOR HARPSICHORD WITH TWO MANUALS: THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, BWV 988 (ca. 1740) Aria

Variation 10: Fughetta

Variation 1

Variation 11

Variation 2

Variation 12: Canon on the fourth

Variation 3: Canon on the unison

Variation 13

Variation 4

Variation 14

Variation 5

Variation 15: Canon on the fifth

Variation 6: Canon on the second

Variation 16: Overture

Variation 7

Variation 17

Variation 8

Variation 18: Canon on the sixth

Variation 9: Canon on the third

Variation 19

Variation 20

Variation 26

Variation 21: Canon on the seventh

Variation 27: Canon on the ninth

Variation 22: Alla breve

Variation 28

Variation 23

Variation 29

Variation 24: Canon on the octave

Variation 30: Quodlibet

Variation 25: Adagio

Aria da capo

Notes ON THE PROGRAM

By Sandra Hyslop

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (b. Salzburg, January 27, 1756; d. Vienna, December 5, 1791) Adagio in B Minor, K. 540 Composed March 1788; 15 minutes Still energized by the success of his opera Don Giovanni in Prague, and attending to its coming production in Vienna, Mozart completed relatively few new works in the spring of 1788. Composing the exquisitely beautiful Adagio in B minor for piano in March, he then turned his attentions to several new arias for the singers in the Don Giovanni to be presented at the Viennese Imperial Court.

The Adagio achieves the musical stature, if not the length, of an opera. As is frequently the case with his instrumental works, Mozart infused this 56-measure keyboard composition with the tenderness and strength, the stability and the flexibility of a vocal aria. His melodic gift obviated the need for a verbal text.

A stand-alone movement constructed in abbreviated sonata form, the contemplative B-minor Adagio maintains a quiet drama throughout. The forward motion of its searching thoughts is tempered by the slowly changing flow of the musical elements. Mozart balances the widely spaced, recurring principal theme with frequent intervals of melodic interjections in half-steps; he knits the key changes into a series of diminished-seventh chords that lead quietly forward. The Adagio finds its conclusion with an unanticipated, delayed cadence in B major.

Patiently weaving a gentle three-measure ending to his thoughts, Mozart finally completes the work on a weak beat, conveying to the listener a reluctance to let go of this poignant and profound meditation.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 570 Composed February 1789; 20 minutes Mozart finished this graceful work for solo keyboard in February 1789, shortly before leaving Vienna for an extended European trip during which he hoped to find commissions, work, or positions that would pull him from his sinkhole of debts.

Once again, he composed music that in no way betrayed the desperation of his personal worries.

The B-flat Piano Sonata was first published by the Viennese firm Artaria posthumously, seven years after its composition. An unapproved arrangement for violin and piano that appeared around 1800 further delayed the public’s recognition of this excellent piano solo sonata. (The spurious violin arrangement merely duplicated the piano’s voice, producing a muddy imitation of the clarity and charm of the original piano solo.)

In time, the original Piano Sonata in B-flat gained recognition and has become a favored and respected work in the Mozart catalog. The critic Alfred Einstein called it, with justification, “the most completely rounded of them all, the ideal of his piano sonatas.”

The entire work is cast in classic three-movement sonata form. The Allegro draws a main theme from a broad, unison B-flat arpeggio, which contrasts with the stepwise second subject. Agitation disturbs the development section, and the movement ends the way it began, in good spirits.

The Adagio, too, sketches a main theme with an arpeggiated curve, this time in Eflat major. The movement proceeds with an elegant simplicity.

The contrasting Allegretto is a lively country dance in 2/4 measure. It leaps around with ebullience, the dancers propelled by the syncopations and jaunty tempo.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, BWV 988 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (b. Eisenach, Germany, March 31, 1685; d. Leipzig, July 28, 1750) Composed ca. 1740; 77 minutes During his years as the Thomas-Kirche Kapellmeister in Leipzig (1724-1750), Johann Sebastian Bach undertook the publication of a Clavier-Übung [Harpsichord-Practice] in several volumes. The final installment of the ClavierÜbung appeared in 1741 under the title Aria with Diverse Variations for Harpsichord with Two Manuals. This grand work, a theme with thirty variations, would remain somewhat neglected until well into the twentieth century.

Bach’s great Aria-with-Variations acquired the subtitle “Goldberg” in later years, when a quaint, but spurious, story about Kapellmeister Bach and the musician

Johann Gottlieb Goldberg gained currency. According to the tale, a Polish ambassador, Count Keyserling, commissioned Bach to compose music that his servant Goldberg could play during the long nights of the Count’s insomnia. No one has yet produced evidence to support the story. Yet, “Goldberg” Variations became, and remains, its popular title.

Designating this grand work the ne plus ultra for keyboard musicians is no casual assessment of its magnitude. Bach’s music is suffused with grace, humor, dignity, playfulness, tenderness, delight, force, cleverness, beauty, explosiveness, and profundity. (One could go on.)

Although mere words cannot transmit the power of the “Goldberg” Variations, a verbal description might help to orient the listener. Like a good X-ray, a brief sketch can describe the skeleton that supports the vital, living body of this work, which Bach organized along orderly, logical lines:  For the principal theme, the Aria, Bach chose the lovely melody of a keyboard sarabande in G major that he had written for his wife. It is found in the Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.  The composition stands securely on a 32-measure ground bass, which is first heard as the bass line of the Aria. It appears, passacaglia-like, as the foundation of every variation. Each of its two halves is repeated.

 The variations, too, are in two halves of sixteen bars, and both halves are repeated.  The entire work is in the key of G major, with only three variations, Nos. 15, 21, and 25, in G minor.  Every third variation (3, 6, 9, 12, etc.) is a canon. (A “round” is a kind of perpetual canon, with the voices entering at intervals, and repeating the melody that the leader has sung, as in “Row, row, row your boat.” Bach’s canons are sophisticated versions of that principle.)  Every successive canon in the Goldberg Variations begins an interval further away from the leader’s beginning pitch. Thus, the canon of Variation 3 begins on the same pitch as the leader (“Row, row, row your boat…”); the

canon of Variation 6 begins on the pitch that is the interval of a second away from the leader; the canon of Variation 9 begins on the pitch an interval of a third away from the leader, and so on.  At Variation 30, instead of writing a Canon on the Tenth, Bach playfully interjected a “quodlibet,” which is the music term for a humorous mixing of tunes. Think of it as the great-grandparent of a 21st-century mashup. For this medley Bach chose two folk songs: “Ich bin so lange nicht bei dir g’west” and “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben” [“It’s been such a long time I haven’t been with you” and “Cabbage and turnips drove me away”].  The Aria—that initial tune, which Bach had re-cycled from the sarabande that he had written for his wife Anna Magdalena—constitutes the work’s bookends. It introduces the entire composition, and after the final variation, the instruction “da capo” tells the performer to return to the top, to the Aria, for one last playing of it in its original form. In the Aria’s final iteration, Bach followed good Baroque performance custom, according to which the player or singer adds suitable embellishment—trills, mordents, turns—to the original melody.

The “Aria with Diverse Variations for Harpsichord with Two Manuals” is one of the rare compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach published in his lifetime. His Nuremberg friend Balthasar Schmid printed the work in 1741, engraving it—with a variety of copying errors—on copper plates. Nineteen of these first-edition copies survive. Although Bach’s autograph score has not survived, his annotations on at least one of the printed scores provides corrections and insights that illuminate his intentions.

In addition to the title’s indication—“…for Harpsichord with Two Manuals”— Bach stipulated in the score which of the variations were to be played by the hands on two separate manuals. Fully eleven of the variations are so composed, with left hand and right hand, one above the other, responsible for intertwining voices.

Three further variations, according to Bach’s instructions, are playable on either one or two manuals. As a result, those fourteen variations so interlock the hands that the performer who chooses an instrument with only one keyboard—a piano, or a one-manual harpsichord—adds considerably to the already monumental

challenge of playing this work. Still, Goldberg Variations is addictive—to a performer as well as to a listener.

The great and idiosyncratic Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) first brought widespread public attention to the “Goldberg” Variations through her 1933 and 1945 recordings for RCA Victor. She had already performed the work in Europe, and after her emigration to the United States she played it in New York at a 1942 Town Hall recital, the first performance in the U.S. on a two-manual harpsichord.

With his 1955 recording, the Canadian Glenn Gould has been credited with opening the door for modern pianists who would essay this challenging work. Peter Serkin first recorded the “Goldberg” in 1965 for RCA, re-recorded it in 1994, and has performed it on the concert stage numerous times, uncovering its beauties for the innumerable listeners who have added it to their lists of desert-island compositions.