8 minute read
Festival Concert Programs
iPalpiti Orchestra / Eduard Schmieder, conductor
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Festival opens with a short musical greeting: each musician of 2020 performing from their own home! Enjoy a minute and a half of a happy start, “wave” to familiar faces, note the names and countries where musicians are playing from. The video will continue with the same Perpetuum Mobile in a LIVE performance from Disney Hall when it was played as an encore after the grand-finale of the 17th annual festival in 2014, so you get to see the orchestra and maestro on our “home” stage in LA.
Searching through iPalpiti archival videos, we found the program from 2004, with Dmitri Shostakovich music, which was always against injustice and aggression. Watch Theodore Bikel introducing iPalpiti. Listen to Maestro Schmieder historical excurse in time of the composing Prelude and Scherzo.
The importance of this concert is also that it was the inaugural concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. After the years of iPalpiti concerts on local best stages of the Ford Theater, Zipper Hall at Colburn and other locations, when Disney Hall opened, iPalpiti was the FIRST ensemble performing on the new stage on August 1, 2014, before LA Philharmonic season began. The concert was dedicated to the memory of a great friend and supporter of the arts Lloyd E. Rigler, as iPalpiti continues to benefit from annual grants of the Rigler-Deutsch Foundation to this day.
The selected participating musicians of that season became illustrious alumni: Karina Canellakis (sitting next to concertmaster Peter Rainer) is now a Chief Conductor, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Principal Guest Conductor, London Philharmonic; Maria Machowska is a concertmaster of National Warsaw Orchestra; Daniel Austrich is a violinist in a famed Michelangelo Quartet; bassist Roman Patkoló is professor at University of Basel and recording with Anne-Sophie Muter; Miguel Juan Hernandez, violist in the Fine Arts Quartet and prof. at the Royal Academy in London; Isabelle Lambelet is a violinist in the Tonnhalle Orchestra of Zurich; cellist Eldar Saparaev leads a solo career and Klassik Konstanz; Catharina Chen is a first concertmaster and soloist of the National Opera of Norway, and the list goes on….
“Young Artists’ Concert is a stunner…it was both moving and heartening to hear young musicians of such caliber and passion. Each hurled themselves into their music with such fervor you could not help but gladly caught up with it and carried along. The audience was responding with cheers, standing ovations and cries “Bravo, bravo!” And justifiably so. As long as the world has more fine musicians like these, the future of classical music performance is in good hands.” –The Taos News (this was the season that iPalpiti also was touring New Mexico).
Carl Böhm
Dmitri Shostakovich
Perpetuum Mobile iPalpiti 2020 ZOOM & iPalpiti 2014 archival LIVE
Prelude and Scherzo, Op.11
YouTube Premiere: ARCHIVAL 2004, inaugural Disney Hall opening concert. “National treasure” Theodore Bikel introduction.
Maestro Schmieder foreword about music & times
iPalpiti Soloists: TRIO ZADIG Live From Paris at Foundation Singer-Polignac Boris Borgolotto/Violinist Ian Barber/Pianist Marc Girard Garcia/Cellist
Trio Zadig was scheduled to return to the iPalpiti Festival as soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto at Walt Disney Concert Hall on July 25. For this In the Time of Corona virtual festival, the Trio has recorded a very special program with LOVE from Paris to our very special audiences. As Artists-in-Residence of the famed Fondation Singer-Polignac, the concert was recorded in the concert space of its mansion.
From Trio Zadig: “As a trio, it has been one of the highlights of our career to come to California from Paris to participate in iPalpiti last summer. The artistic and virtuosic quality of all the individuals who participate is outstanding, and it was an honor to perform alongside them and under the baton of Maestro Schmieder.
We were so looking forward to performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto at Walt Disney Concert hall this year with everyone again, and it’s been difficult to accept that this will not be possible. As so many festivals and concerts are canceled, we realize what a privilege it is to be able to perform the music that we love and share it with a live audience. The concerts we played with iPalpiti last year — in Encinitas and Rolling Hills, at Greystone, at Walt Disney Concert Hall — rest in our memory as part of the most special occasions making music. We will miss the collaborations with excellent musicians, the friendships, and also the warm and engaged public. We take solace in the fact that this will all pass eventually, and can’t wait to see everyone then!” ~ Boris, Ian, Marc
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1993)
Antonin Dvorˇák
(1841-1904) The Seasons (Arr. for piano trio by A. Goedicke (1877-1957)
January, April, June, October, December
Piano Trio No.4 in E Minor, Op.90, “Dumky” 1. Lento maestoso, E minor 2. Poco adagio, C sharp minor 3. Andante, A major 4. Andante moderato, D minor 5. Allegro, E flat major 6. Lento maestoso, C mino
iPalpiti Orchestra / Eduard Schmieder, conductor Celebrating Beethoven’s 250th: String Symphony after ”Kreutzer” sonata
Last summer, this work was premiered by iPalpiti in anticipation of Beethoven anniversary year. Here is an excerpt from the review “iPalpiti Transforms the Kreutzer Sonata at Disney Hall” by music writer Richard Ginell:
“One thing that hasn’t changed in the 22 seasons of this festival’s existence is Schmieder’s willingness to ignore fashion and so-called authenticity by programming out-of-the-way, audience friendly repertoire and transcriptions of chamber pieces. He remains firmly on message, presenting another spirited riposte to the period-performance-practice crowd in his “Letter to the Audience” in the program book. This served as a noapologia preface to what iPalpiti calls the “U.S. premiere” of a Beethoven string symphony, after the Kreutzer Violin Sonata in C Minor…. inflating Beethoven chamber works for string ensembles [Mahler, Bernstein, Toscanini to name a few] adds heft and sensuality to scores that are usually sturdy enough to take on the extra weight and I don’t mind the loss of intimacy…The “Kreutzer” was played with zest and fire by iPalpiti, with unified execution in rapid passages originally written for the solo violin that sound difficult to hold together, and equally cohesive delicacy in the quiet variations of the second movement, with most convincing Finale.” (Full review can be read at ipalpiti.org/news/press)
Since, we received an endless stream of requests to perform it again, and today, this performance is premiered on the YouTube, making this performance public. We also offer Maestro’s research on this composition, which were shared with the audiences in his “Letter to the Audience” in 2019:
“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy” — Ludwig v. Beethoven
The “Kreutzer” sonata is well known among his chamber compositions and is notable for its technical difficulties, unusual length (around 40 minutes), and emotional scope.
Unusual circumstances surround this composition. The final movement for the work was originally written for another, earlier, sonata by Beethoven: opus 30, No. 1, in A-major.
Beethoven gave no key designation to opus 47, usually titled as being in A-major, but in fact, the main key is A-minor (only the opening 18 bars of the first movement and the Presto movement are in A-major).
Originally, the sonata was dedicated to the violinist George Bridgetower, written in a joking manner as “Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer [Bridgetower], gran pazzo e compositore Mulatico” [Mulatto Sonata composed for the mulatto Bridgetower, great fool mulatto composer”]. The dedication is preserved in an autograph in the Archives of Ludwig van Beethoven.
There are many versions of why, in print, it was dedicated not to Bridgetower but to Kreutzer.
The most common story: after the premiere of the sonata, during which Beethoven himself played the piano and Bridgetower (unprepared for the performance) played the violin, in an argument with Beethoven, insulted a young lady whom Beethoven held in high regard. Angrily, Beethoven removed the initial dedication and re-dedicated the sonata to a popular French violinist, Rodolfe Kreutzer. Kreutzer never performed the sonata,
which he considered “outrageously unintelligible,” and Beethoven, frustrated at being unable to hear this music (as it turned out, never in his lifetime in original version), began to rearrange the composition for string quintet.
In 1832, five years after the composer’s death, German music publisher Nikolaus Simrock published the work as an anonymous arrangement for string quintet, which possibly was made by Beethoven himself with the involvement of his friend, pupil, and assistant Ferdinand Ries. Later, the sonata became popular, thanks to the inspiring novella by Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata.
“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” — Leo Tolstoy
You will hear this immortal composition in the iPalpiti rendition, which follows the violin sonata fairly faithfully. When there were doubts about how to resolve difficulties in orchestration, references have been made to the Henle edition of the original score.
In this program you also will hear Felix Mendelssohn String Symphony No. 13 in C minor “Symphoniesatz” — the last and most significant composition of his 13 string symphonies — and Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso for Four Violins.
On the new commissioned compositions Fantasia Hungariana by Sergei Dreznin and Harmony by Franghiz AliZadeh, read composers’ notes on the following pages.
Follow us, Dear Listener. Talent is a mission and must be repaid to the Creator through people. The most beautiful things in the world can only be felt with the heart.
“It is only with the heart one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible for the eye.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
iPalpiti concludes with TRIBUTE TO THE SOULS LOST to the COVID-19: A solemn Bach Arioso (arr. by Stokowski for the Philadelphia orchestra)
“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” — Aldous Huxley
“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence” — Leopold Stokowski
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
TRIBUTE TO THE SOULS LOST
String Symphony after Kreutzer Sonata in c minor, Op.47(1803)*
Adagio sostenuto – Presto
Andante con Variazioni
Presto *USA Premiere
LIVE from Walt Disney Concert Hall at the 2019 festival grand-finale, Part 1
Live Recording generously underwritten by Rigler-Deutsch Foundation and broadcast on Classical Arts Showcase worldwide.
to the COVID-19
Bach Arioso
Live from Mozarteum, Salzburg
