Arnaldo Cohen Program Notes Oct. 20, 2021

Tonight’s Performance of Arnaldo Cohen is dedicated to the memory of Janet Danielson.

As a member of the Lied Center’s Piano Circle, Janet Danielson was a major supporter of the arts at the Lied Center and across Nebraska for many years.

A lifelong musician, Janet was a bachelor’s and master’s degree graduate from the Eastman School majoring in music. She taught across the nation and was a concert pianist for operas, churches, orchestras, and performers.

In addition to her philanthropy, Janet touched the lives of thousands of patrons as one of our most frequent pre-talk speakers before Lied Center season events.

ARNALDO COHEN, PIANO OCTOBER 20, 2021 7:30 PM Program Notes & Concert Information

Sponsored by:

MARY-ANN K. CLINTON

CHARLOTTE HEERMANN

ANABETH H. COX

MRS. LARRY H. LUSK

MARYSUE HARRIS

JOAN M. REIST

KEITH HECKMAN & JANET DANIELSON

DIANA H. WARNER

This performance is supported by the Anabeth Hormel Cox Lied Center Performance Fund and the Joe W. & Ruth K. Seacrest Fund.

PROGRAM Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23

1.

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

Allegro moderato

2. Adagio

3.

Finale - Presto

Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 (“Waldstein”)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 –1827)

1.

Allegro con brio

2.

Introduzione: Adagio molto (in F major)

3.

Rondo. Allegretto moderato — Prestissimo

— INTERMISSION —

Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52

Frédéric Chopin (1810 –1849)

Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 55, No. 2

Frédéric Chopin (1810 –1849)

Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20

Frédéric Chopin (1810 –1849)

Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31

Frédéric Chopin (1810 –1849)

PROGRAM NOTES Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23 Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn penned over 60 sonatas for solo keyboard throughout his long and prolific career. The sonatas exhibit huge diversity in musical material, difficulty level, and stylistic traits, but are all recognized as among the most inventive and original of the era. The Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23 was composed in 1773 as part of a set of six sonatas that made up Haydn’s first collection of keyboard works published under his own supervision (as Haydn lived before the age of copyright and intellectual property laws, many of his earlier works had been published and circulated without his permission).

Haydn composed the collection while employed as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family. The works are dedicated to his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, but they were intended for public use and as such were tailored specifically to the tastes and ability levels of Viennese amateur pianists of the time: they are all in major keys, predictable and well-structured in form, exhibit no extreme technical demands, and have pleasant, charming atmospheres. The F major sonata conforms to these parameters, though it is considered the most technically challenging of the six.

The opening movement of Haydn’s Sonata in F major is crisp and light, with themes mainly consisting of sparkling running figurations enhanced by brief forays into minor modes and low registers. The melancholic second movement is darkened to the key of F minor and hints at the emotional heights to come in the fast-approaching Romantic era. The song-like melody has an elegant, dreamy quality and makes full use of the keyboard’s range, diving and soaring in turn over rich harmonies in the left hand. Levity and humor return in the final movement with a quick tempo and spirited character. The texture is somewhat sparse, but as such requires a high degree of control to precisely execute Haydn’s exacting articulation and dynamics. The finale remains largely within the keyboard’s upper register, with unexpected contrasts that heighten the piece’s brash wit.

Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 (“Waldstein”) Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 draws its Waldstein moniker from Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein of Vienna. Waldstein was himself an amateur composer as well as a committed patron of the arts. He was a key figure in the promotion of Beethoven’s career, introducing the composer to prominent members of the aristocracy and opening many lucrative doors for him. Indeed, it was Waldstein’s financing that made possible Beethoven’s removal from his native Bonn to settle permanently in the artistic capital of Vienna where he rose to fame in the musical world. Beethoven showed his gratitude to this invaluable friend and benefactor by immortalizing Waldstein’s name on the dedication page of his C major Piano Sonata, which he completed in the summer of 1804.

With Waldstein Beethoven surpassed his previous piano sonatas in both scope and grandeur. He structured the work’s three movements in almost symphonic proportions, setting a new precedent for the scale of piano composition as a whole. It is clear when listening to the work that Beethoven was not only a genius composer, but also an expert pianist; the music itself lives and breathes within the instrument, keenly idiomatic and entirely captivating. It is considered among his greatest works for piano as well as one of his most technically demanding.

Musicologist Hugo Leichtentritt wrote of Waldstein’s opening movement, “If mountains, cliffs, and forests could sing, they would praise their Creator in such tones as these.” The Allegro is indeed brimming with a spirit of grandiose heroism.

The opening chords are very quiet yet nonetheless agitated, instantly setting off the propulsive forward motion that imbues the movement’s whole. The intensely emotive themes and surging rhythms that follow make for a work of great intensity and boldness.

The Adagio, brief and mercurial, is not so much a full movement as it is a short respite between the immensity of the outer movements. It functions as an introduction to the coming finale and, as such, launches without pause into the closing rondo. This third movement is an utterly thrilling work of musical genius, vast in scale and triumphant in character. Beethoven had an incredible aptitude for the endless development and working out of thematic ideas, and that talent is on full display in this finale. The glorious opening theme is reprised and developed again and again, fragmenting and modulating until it is set aglow, surrounded by a pianistic shimmer that permeates the very fabric of the work. Even as it seems about to die away, the inescapable theme bursts back into being in a whirlwind coda that careens in a breathless rush to the triumphant final tones.

Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52 Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Frédéric Chopin holds the enviable position of being the Romantic composer who is perhaps most closely associated with piano composition. Chopin produced works full of delicate nuance and subtle virtuosity. He gave fewer than ten public performances throughout his career, preferring the intimate atmosphere of the salon over the grand Parisian concert halls. It was perhaps his somewhat fragile constitution that led to this preference; the composer was in poor health for most of his life and died at age 39. Though he did write two concertos and three sonatas, Chopin’s true legacy lies in the smaller piano forms at which he excelled and which gained him the most notoriety. Three such genres you will hear tonight: the ballade, the nocturne, and the scherzo.

Chopin composed a total of four ballades — single-movement pieces written with dramatic and/or dance-like elements in a lyrical style — between 1831– 42.

They are considered some of the most significant and exacting additions to the standard piano repertoire, and the fourth ballade in particular is counted among the greatest piano works of the nineteenth century. In this work we experience full-blown, sublimely expressive Romanticism. It is rife with drama in its constant play between simplicity and complexity.

A deceptively tentative opening featuring bell-like tones lulls the listener into an expectation of tranquility, but the drama soon builds with the entrances of the waltz-like, melancholic first theme and sylvan second theme. Each theme is thoroughly developed, the momentum climbing as they become progressively more embellished and contrapuntal. A soaring cadenza briefly interrupts the flow, but the relentless pace cannot be halted long. Five pianissimo chords anticipate the arrival of the coda, which is as far removed from the blissful opening as can be; it is all fire and fury and driving energy, ceaseless runs crashing toward an almost savage finale in a scorching display of virtuosity.

Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 55, No. 2 Though Chopin is not the nocturne’s inventor— that title is held by Irish composer John Field — he did expand and popularize the form immensely. Nocturnes are short mood pieces inspired by or suggestive of the night and marked by highly ornamented melodies, sonorous and often arpeggiated accompaniments, and contemplative or reflective atmospheres. Chopin’s nocturnes specifically drew on the stylistic traits of the bel canto aria tradition, including lyrical melodic lines, smooth legato phrasing, and elaborately florid passages.

He wrote 21 total nocturnes, generally structured in ternary (A-B-A) form, which allowed for built-in contrasts in mood and musical material. The second of the Op. 55 nocturnes, however, deviates from this rule: it proceeds in a single continuous section, the only one of his nocturnes to do so. A single ringing note and sustained trill open this dream-like musical narrative, followed by long, fluid lines of unmarred melody supported by rich harmonies. These melodic and accompanimental patterns remain consistent throughout the work. The musical contrasts instead happen dynamically, shifting between louder and softer sections, and emotively, the intensity swelling to lofty peaks before ebbing gently into quietude once more.

Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20 Chopin composed his four scherzos between 1833–43, roughly the same time period as he penned his four ballades. Historically, scherzos were single movements within larger works such as symphonies that featured quick tempos and humorous, light-hearted atmospheres (scherzo is the Italian word for ‘joke’ or ‘jest’). For his part, Chopin took the genre in a different direction: his scherzos were darker stand-alone movements imbued with anguish, tension, and infernal energy.

He expanded the scherzo’s scale and range to allow for all this wild drama — they are much grander in scope than his ballades and nocturnes.

Robert Schumann wrote in reference to Chopin’s B Minor Scherzo, “How is ‘gravity’ to clothe itself if ‘jest’ goes about in dark veils?” Indeed, the piece carries none of the levity so inherent to the form before Chopin left his mark on it, injecting it instead with seething turbulence and suspense. Two jarringly dissonant chords open the work before launching directly into several chaotically ascending passages of blistering speed. Near the scherzo’s middle the music relaxes into a song-like section with a continuous swaying motion, but this respite abruptly ends with a sudden reappearance of the same two dissonant opening chords. The agitation of the main thematic material returns with a vengeance before violent hammering chords bring the work to a definitive close.

Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 Composed in 1837, Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 retains the same spirit of urgency found in the first scherzo, but wrapped in bolder, more profound packaging. Large in scale, daring in character, and filled to the brim with a distinctive pianistic flair, it remains the most popular of the composer’s four scherzos. The work’s structure roughly follows the same ternary (A-B-A-coda) form as Chopin’s other scherzos.

Its outer sections are by turns somber and stormy and filled with sudden musical spasms and deeply dramatic tension. The middle section is gracefully lyrical with a delicate filigree of embellishments decorating its winding melody, though always retaining the work’s overall anticipatory feel with ceaseless forward motion.

Uncurbed intensity permeates the scherzo’s coda, proceeding in a dizzying rush of brilliant runs executed at top speed.