BEHZOD ABUDRAIMOV, PIANO - 12.5.2023

PIANO

BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV DECEMBER 5, 2023 SPONSORED BY

LIEDCENTER.ORG

Mary-Ann K. Clinton Anabeth H. Cox Keith Heckman Charlotte Heermann Mrs. Larry H. Lusk Rhonda Seacrest Joan M. Reist

402.472.4747

TUE DEC 5 7:30 PM This performance is supported in part by the Ruth K. Seacrest Fund.

301 NORTH 12TH ST, LINCOLN, NE 68508

“…. we were held spellbound by the sublime pianism of Behzod Abduraimov in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. He coaxed sound of gossamer beauty from the keys and created shimmering halos around the notes. And, oh, his scales, each one a perfectly formed thing. No wonder the conductor Thomas Dausgaard turned to watch in the cadenzas, intent as any Prommer. This was Beethoven with character, elegance and wit.”

- THE TIMES, AUGUST 2022

ABOUT

Behzod Abduraimov’s performances combine an immense depth of musicality with phenomenal technique and breath-taking delicacy. He performs with renowned orchestras worldwide including Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris and Concertgebouworkest, and with prestigious conductors such as Juraj Valčuha, Vasily Petrenko, Lorenzo Viotti, James Gaffigan, Jakub Hrůša, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Gustavo Dudamel.

PROGRAM

BEHZODBEHZOD ABDURAIMOV ABDURAIMOV

Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18 Op. 18 Prélude, Fugue et Variation,

The WallsThe of Ancient Walls ofBukhara Ancient Bukhara Kalon Mosque Kalon Mosque Samanid Kingdom Samanid Kingdom Tomb of Ismail Tomb Samani of Ismail Samani Domes Domes Minaret ofMinaret Death of Death Stars Over Bukhara Stars Over Bukhara AncestralAncestral Shadows Shadows Near the Walls of Ancient Near the Walls ofBukhara Ancient Bukhara

Gaspard de la nuit de la nuit Gaspard

CÉSAR FRANCK CÉSAR FRANCK (1822-1890) (1822-1890) Arr. Harold Bauer (1873-1951) Arr. Harold Bauer (1873-1951)

DILOROM SAIDAMINOVA (b. 1943) (b. 1943) DILOROM SAIDAMINOVA

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

INTERVAL INTERVAL

Fantasie nègre No.nègre 1 in ENo. minor Fantasie 1 in E minor

Romeo andRomeo Juliet:and TenJuliet: PiecesTen for Pieces Piano, for Op.Piano, 75 Op. 75

Folk Dance Folk Dance Scene: The Scene: StreetThe Awakens Street Awakens Minuet: Arrival Minuet:ofArrival the Guests of the Guests Young Juliet Young Juliet Masks Masks Montagues Montagues and Capulets and Capulets Friar Laurence Friar Laurence Mercutio Mercutio Dance of Dance the Girls of with the Girls Lilieswith Lilies Romeo and Romeo Julietand Before Juliet Parting Before Parting

FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953) FORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

PROGRAM NOTES PRELUDE, FUGUE, AND VARIATION, OP. 18 CÉSAR FRANCK (1822-1890)

During the second half of the 1800s the geographical hub of organ music moved decidedly from Germany to France, thanks in large part to the work of French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Cavaillé-Coll’s innovations in the art and science of organ production had a profound influence on the course of organ music, inspiring the next several generations of composers and performers. One such composer was César Franck, who was so taken with Cavaillé-Coll organs that he acted as an artistic consultant and representative for the company for most of his career.

Franck served as organist at several different churches that housed early Cavaillé-Coll organs, but his most significant appointment was that of first organist at the basilica of St. Clotilde in Paris in 1859. There he inaugurated the newly installed three-manual Great Organ, a Cavaillé-Coll masterpiece which remains in the church to this day and of which Franck wrote, “If you only knew how I love this instrument…it is so supple beneath my fingers and so obedient to all my thoughts!” Franck gave regular displays of the organ’s striking range of power and color in the form of improvisatory performances that became huge public attractions. He eventually wrote some of the improvisations down, titling the collection Six piéces pour Grand Orgue (Six Pieces for Grand Organ). Arguably the best-known work of the set is the Prelude, Fugue, and Variation, Op. 18.

Dedicated to prominent French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (who was himself a gifted organist), Franck’s Prelude, Fugue, and Variation combines a Romantic aesthetic with a classical form and feel. The work’s balance and clarity are reminiscent of a true classical idiom, while its textural and harmonic complexity and emotional depth place it firmly within the second half of the nineteenth century. On tonight’s program you will hear the work transcribed for piano in an arrangement by pianist Harold Bauer.

The prelude is cast in B minor and presents two main themes: the first gently flowing and filled with haunting yet tender Romanticism, and the second more resolute and purposeful. We then shift to the fugue, which begins with its own small prelude and is texturally very clean with a solemn character and singing style. The concluding variation looks back to the themes of the opening prelude with the addition of a more active, rippling accompaniment beneath. All coalesces at last into the key of B major as the works draws to a quiet close.

THE WALLS OF ANCIENT BUKHARA DILOROM SAIDAMINOVA (B. 1943) Dilorom Saidominova is an Uzbek composer of primarily chamber, orchestral, and piano works. She studied at the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan in Tashkent where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in composition in 1971, and later at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow. Additionally, she served as a professor of composition, music history, and piano at the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan from 196795. Saidaminova’s compositions have won numerous national and international music awards, and she was the first Uzbek composer to have works performed at Carnegie Hall. Today, she is an active member in composers’ unions in Uzbekistan, Russia, and the United States and her works are performed throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.

Composed in 1973, The Walls of Ancient Bukhara is a set of eight short pieces for solo piano inspired by various monuments and tableaus found within the city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Bukhara’s historic center has existed for over two millennia and remains one of the best-preserved Islamic cities from the time of the Persian Empire; UNESCO has named it a World Heritage Site for its abundance of important architectural monuments.

Located along the Silk Road, the city contains long and significant histories in the realms of culture, trade, scholarship, and religion. Saidaminova’s entrancing work draws on these ancient monuments and traditions to present eight scenes from the city: The Kalon Mosque, The Samanid Kingdom, The Tomb of Ismail Samani, The Domes, The Minaret of Death, The Stars over Bukhara, Ancestral Shadows, and Near the Walls of Ancient Bukhara. The pieces are impressionistic, even esoteric, and exhibit a wide range of moods and musicality. Taken separately, each movement stands on its own, a brief musical world unto itself – as a set, they build upon one another to create a mythic musical landscape shrouded in ancient mystery.

GASPARD DE LA NUIT MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) “Gaspard has been a devil in coming, but that is only logical since it was he who is the author of the poems.” Thus Maurice Ravel wrote of his 1908 piano suite Gaspard de la nuit (“Gaspard of the Night”). The work consists of three movements, each based on a poem drawn from a collection of the same name by French poet Aloysius Bertrand (18071841). Bertrand was to French literature what Edgar Allen Poe was to its English counterpart, defining the dark, grotesque, and macabre within his genre; in the introduction to the Gaspard collection, he asserts it was the devil himself who authored the poems.

From Bertrand’s collection Ravel selected the three titles “Ondine,” “Le gibet,” and “Scarbo” for his inspiration. He crafted each movement into near-literal musical representations of the prose, saying of the work, “My ambition is to say with notes what the poet expresses with words.” As you read the included text translations, listen for the alluring voice of the water nymph and the splash and shimmer of her lake home in “Ondine”, the ceaselessly tolling bell heard across the hauntingly desolate landscape of “Le gibet,” and the wild and mischievous nighttime revels of the small goblin creature, “Scarbo.”

Listen too for the extreme technical challenges inherent to the work: the suite is considered among the most difficult in all the standard solo piano repertoire and has aptly been dubbed “a triathlon for pianists.”

I. ONDINE “Listen! – Listen! – It is I, it is Ondine who brushes drops of water on the resonant panes of your windows lit by the gloomy rays of the moon; and here in gown of watered silk, the mistress of the chateau gazes from her balcony on the beautiful starry night and the beautiful sleeping lake.

“Each wave is a water sprite who swims in the stream, each stream is a footpath that winds towards my palace, and my palace is a fluid structure, at the bottom of the lake, in a triangle of fire, of earth and of air.

“Listen! – Listen! – My father whips the croaking water with a branch of a green alder tree, and my sisters caress with their arms of foam the cool islands of herbs, of water lilies, and of corn flowers, or laugh at the decrepit and bearded willow who fishes at the line.”

Her song murmured, she beseeched me to accept her ring on my finger, to be the husband of an Ondine, and to visit her in her palace and be king of the lakes.

And as I was replying to her that I loved a mortal, sullen and spiteful, she wept some tears, uttered a burst of laughter, and vanished in a shower that streamed white down the length of my blue stained glass windows.

II. LE GIBET Ah! that which I hear, was it the north wind that screeches in the night, or the hanged one who utters a sigh on the forked gallows?

Was it some cricket who sings lurking in the moss and the sterile ivy, which out of pity covers the floor of the forest?

Was it some fly in chase sounding the horn around those ears deaf to the fanfare of the halloos?

Was it some scarab beetle who gathers in his uneven flight a bloody hair from his bald skull?

Or then, was it some spider who embroiders a half-measure of muslin for a tie on this strangled neck?

III. Scarbo He looked under the bed, in the chimney, in the cupboard; – nobody.

He could not understand how he got in, or how he escaped.

Oh! how often have I heard and seen him, Scarbo, when at midnight the moon glitters in the sky like a silver shield on an azure banner strewn with golden bees.

How often have I heard his laughter buzz in the shadow of my alcove, and his fingernail grate on the silk of the curtains of my bed!

How often have I seen him alight on the floor, pirouette on one foot and roll through the room like the spindle fallen from the wand of a sorceress!

Did I think him vanished then? the dwarf appeared to stretch between the moon and myself like the steeple of a gothic cathedral, a golden bell wobbling on his pointed cap!

But soon his body developed a bluish tint, translucent like the wax of a candle, his face blanched like melting wax – and suddenly his light went out.

FANTASIE NÈGRE NO. 1 IN E MINOR FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953) The music of composer, pianist, and teacher Florence Beatrice Price is currently experiencing something of a revival – but this was very nearly not the case. While Price was well-known during her own lifetime, her work has been sadly neglected since her death in 1953.

Then, in 2009, a couple renovating an abandoned home on the outskirts of a small Illinois town happened upon something surprising within the dilapidated structure: stacks of musical manuscripts, books, and personal papers all bearing the name Florence Price. They soon discovered Price was a composer who had once used the house as a summer home and handed over the collection to archivists at

the University of Arkansas who realized it included many of the composer’s works that had been thought lost. Thanks in large part to this discovery, recent years have seen a renewed interest in Price and her works and made them the subjects of steadily increasing numbers of performances, recordings, and academic studies.

With such attention on Price today, one might wonder why her music fell out of favor to begin with. Price herself outlined the major reasons in a letter she wrote in 1943: “To begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race.” As an African-American woman, Price faced significant obstacles in a time and career in which the major players were almost exclusively white and male (and, often, deceased). Nevertheless, she worked tirelessly to promote Black music and musicians. Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price moved to Chicago in 1927 where she became a prominent figure of the creative movement known as the Chicago Black Renaissance during the 1930s and 40s. There she connected with trailblazing pianist Margaret Bonds – another key player in the movement – and together they helped pioneer the incorporation of Black folk songs and spirituals into the western classical tradition with the goal of creating a modern Black musical voice.

Dedicated to and premiered by Margaret Bonds, Fantasie négre No. 1 in E minor is the first of four such fantasies (free-form, improvisatory-style compositions) Price wrote within the span of just a few months in 1929.

Its main musical material is drawn from the spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass,” the only one of her four fantasies to directly quote another work. The song’s bold melodic line undergoes a variety of transformations in mood and character as it weaves through the piece’s rich harmonic framework. The work remains a brilliant example of Price’s seamless blending of classical and African-American musical idioms: it contains the expressive melodies and rhythmic intricacies rooted in Black music traditions alongside the dense harmonies and chromaticism reminiscent of the late Romantic era.

ROMEO AND JULIET: TEN PIECES FOR PIANO, OP. 75 SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) Sergei Prokofiev’s score from his ballet Romeo and Juliet (based, of course, on William Shakespeare’s most famous of plays) is perhaps the composer’s best-loved work. Prokofiev excelled at composing music for the stage; indeed, many of his most brilliant compositions contain some sort of dramatic narrative. His compositional style was particularly well-matched to translate Shakespeare’s work, containing as it did a wondrous blend of humor and tragedy in the form of sharp musical contrasts, motoric rhythmic energy, and sweeping melodic themes.

Prokofiev initially composed the score in 1935, but the ballet did not have an easy journey to the stage. Over the next several years the production went through contracts with multiple theaters and ballet companies (as well as a controversy surrounding the choice to give the ballet an alternative happy ending in which the young lovers survive), all of which

ultimately fell through. The ballet finally received its Soviet premiere in January 1940, and only then after extensive revisions (and the original tragic ending) had reshaped the score. All told, the ballet was a resounding success and received both international acclaim as well as the Stalin prize. Additionally, Prokofiev arranged selections from the score into three separate orchestral suites as well as a set of ten reductions for solo piano, all of which remain choice concert-hall fare just as the full ballet endures as a staple of the repertoire.

The ten piano transcriptions that make up Prokofiev’s Op. 75 span most of its source material’s tragic tale, the emotional center of each theme brilliantly condensed from full orchestral score to pianistic essence. We begin with Folk Dance, a lively and spirited number which introduces listeners to the festive setting of Verona, where the story unfolds. Scene: The Street Awakens depicts the city coming to life with all the anticipatory energy of a new day dawning. The stately Minuet: Arrival of the Guests is an elegant evocation of the beginning of the Capulets’ ball, while Juliet as a Young Girl paints a picture of the playfulness and innocence of Juliet’s carefree youth. Masks depicts the masked ball which at last brings the star-crossed lovers together.

Perhaps the most recognizable theme of the set, Montagues and Capulets is a dark and foreboding number featuring loud dynamics and heavy dissonances that dramatically captures the violence between the two feuding families. The well-meaning Friar Laurence is portrayed as soothing and contemplative, whereas Romeo’s kinsman Mercutio is lively, whimsical, and mercurial. The Dance of the Girls with Lilies is a darkly elegant tune in which young girls bring flowers to Juliet’s window to wake her on the morning of her proposed wedding to Paris. The set concludes with the deeply emotional Romeo and Juliet before Parting in which the lovers share a heart-wrenching farewell.

Program notes by Laney Boyd

ANABETH H. COX As the only member of the Piano Circle without a history on the piano, I must admit that my love of piano performance comes as a result of my sister, MarySue Harris. Her love of the piano, her 40+ years of teaching piano, and her joy in the performance on the piano, have sealed my commitment to perpetuating that love for the children, and the children at heart, in the beauty of the music written for the piano. I’m grateful to be a part of bringing that beauty to the Lincoln community. I can’t play the piano, but I can love it!

MARY-ANN K. CLINTON My late husband (John) and I have loved music all our lives. However, our passion for classical piano started in 1967 when we learned that our four-year-old son Mark had extraordinary musical talent. From that time, we dedicated our efforts to help him develop his God-given talents. We recently discovered that Mark’s paternal grandmother was such an accomplished pianist that she had been awarded a music scholarship to attend Boston University in the 1930’s. Due to family reasons, she never fulfilled that dream. This made us realize that although God works in wonderful and mysterious ways, family genes may also have been involved. Following our move to Lincoln, John and I soon found a home for all things musical and cultural at the Lied Center. The growth of the Lied Piano Circle allowed us to contribute to having some of the best piano music in the world on the Lied stage. Our musical journey has been wonderful one, and my continued participation in the Piano Circle is an honor and privilege. I look forward to this year’s Piano Circle artists as they provide another season of exciting performances for our Nebraska audiences.

KEITH HECKMAN Having been a dealer in fine pianos for more than forty years, it gives me great pleasure to continue to provide Lincoln and the surrounding area the opportunity to hear some of the great artists of the world. It is also fulfilling to assist young piano students with interacting with excellent teachers and clinicians. What a treasure the Piano Circle is for the Lied.

CHARLOTTE HEERMANN The Piano Series initially featured in the 2013–14 season of the Lied Center has enhanced the season program and promises to continue to do so in the 2023–24 season. Our community has had the special opportunity to experience piano performances of the highest quality presented by internationally acclaimed pianists.

The response has been enthusiastic and has raised awareness and expectations of even more outstanding performances.

As a performing pianist and teacher for many years, I am particularly excited by the opportunity for students to hear some of the best pianists and performances in the world. What an inspiration! I look forward to another outstanding season with exceptional pianists and performances offered by the Piano Series.

MRS. LARRY H. LUSK The piano and music have played an important part in my life. From my early childhood piano lessons, through high school, college and beyond, there has always been music and especially the piano. Once again, the Lied Piano Series brings beautiful music and outstanding artists to the Lied stage, showcasing the endless variety, creativity and beauty of this grand and glorious instrument.

We welcome these artists to the Lied stage for all to enjoy!

JOAN M. REIST It’s wonderful that the Piano Series has received such a positive and enthusiastic response, and I’m delighted that is has become a permanent fixture in Lied Center programming. It’s especially gratifying that this program continues to reach out to young people, giving them a unique opportunity to hear great music and observe great artists interact with the instrument. In the end, all who enjoy these concerts will walk away with something new and exciting that can enhance their personal—and positive—relationship with the piano.

I really appreciate continuing efforts to engage interested and enthusiastic piano students beyond the concert hall. The initial Piano Academy was a success in 2018 the 2019 and 2020 events followed suit. What a great opportunity for piano students to engage with talented and experienced mentors and with peers who have similar passion for making music at the piano!

RHONDA SEACREST Since the early 1980’s, a priority of mine has been to provide visual and performing arts to underserved populations in Nebraska. The Piano Series is a wonderful extension of that objective.