Yeol Eum Son Plays Mozart – Season 22/23 – Programme note

YEOL EUM SON PLAYS MOZART

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WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR

Bacewicz (1909-1969)

Concerto for String Orchestra (1948) Allegro Andante Vivo Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Concerto No 27 in B flat, K595 (1791)

Allegro Larghetto Allegro Dvořák (1841-1904) Symphony No 7 in D minor (1885)

Allegro maestoso Poco adagio Scherzo. Vivace Finale. Allegro

A rousing concerto for strings from a composer who deserves far more attention; an apparently valedictory piano concerto; and a symphony that set out to put its country’s music on the map. There’s no shortage of contrasts between the works in tonight’s diverse programme, but the three pieces nonetheless share a sense of bounding confidence and enthusiasm, even if those qualities are conveyed through very different music.

Grażyna Bacewicz, composer of tonight’s opening piece, was one of Poland’s most respected composers in the early part of the 20th century, as well as a celebrated violinist – somewhat overlooked, as so many women composers have shamefully been, although today there’s ever increasing interest in her distinctive, sometimes idiosyncratic music. It blends a wit and clarity that she no doubt picked up during her studies in Paris – where she learnt composition with Nadia Boulanger and violin with Carl Flesch – with an earthier, more folk-like idiom that lends her works a rougher, sometimes more uncompromising edge. Bacewicz proved adept at navigating the restlessly shifting restrictions of Poland’s political landscape, too, adapting her style as Polish music was steered away from supposedly bourgeois modernism and towards a folksier style that would appeal to the broader masses, and managing to satisfy political demands without compromising her own, gently acerbic language.

Indeed, her Concerto for String Orchestra – written in 1948, just as Bacewicz was adapting to the demands of the recently established socialist system in Poland – sits at just that intersection in her music. Though

rather than embracing her country’s folk music, it looks back directly to the music of Bach, Corelli, Vivaldi and others, celebrating a bracing Baroque musical style while injecting it with distinctly 20th-century flavours.

Bacewicz’s compatriot and fellow composer Witold Lutosławski called the piece ‘probably the highlight of that “no-nonsense” period in Grażyna’s oeuvre, which encyclopaedias simplistically refer to as “neoclassical”.’ ‘Nononsense’ seems like an apt way of summing up the Concerto’s clarity, brevity and unerring sense of direction. No wonder it was such a success at its 1950 premiere – given by the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Grzegorz Fitelberg, at the General Meeting of the Polish Composers’ Union – and went on to become the composer’s most popular piece in her native country. Following its US premiere two years later, critic Milton

Berliner wrote in the Washington Daily News: ‘There was nothing feminine about Miss Bacewicz’s piece. It was vigorous, even virile, with a pulsing, throbbing rhythm and bold thematic material.’ We might wince at his gendered characterisation 70 years later, but in terms of the music, you can see what he was getting at.

The Concerto’s bold, purposeful first movement opens with a striding theme that seems determined to escape the note to which it’s anchored, and after a short, hushed transition that introduces the violinist and cellist as soloists, its second main theme is even more rhythmic, punctuated by aggressive pizzicatos. Bacewicz combines and recombines her various elements in ever more complex and witty ways across the rest of the movement, always with a strong sense of purpose. Her atmospheric second movement sets a meandering melodic

It blends a wit and clarity that she no doubt picked up during her studies in Paris – where she learnt composition with Nadia Boulanger and violin with Carl Flesch

Grażyna Bacewicz

idea – first heard on a solo cello – against shimmering, heavily perfumed harmonies from the rest of the strings, which she subdivides into a rich, thick texture of up to 13 separate lines at one point. Bacewicz’s final movement is exuberant and strongly rhythmic, with switchback cross-rhythms and sudden harmonic twists. Its folk-like recurring theme, first heard high in the violins, ultimately drives the Concerto to its resolute conclusion.

From a 20th-century composer looking backwards to an 18th-century composer looking – well, very possibly at least –forwards. It’s tempting to view No 27 as Mozart’s final piano concerto, which, of course, it is. But it was nothing of the sort while Mozart was composing it. As with his final trio of symphonies – Nos 39, 40 and 41, composed in quick succession and often romantically described as his farewell to the

form – any sense of valediction or summation in the Concerto comes from our own perspective, more than two centuries later, rather than from Mozart’s own writing desk.

Indeed, though scholars are divided, it’s entirely possible that he began the Concerto as far back as 1788. He didn’t complete it until January 1791, however, and gave the premiere himself on 4 March that year at a private benefit concert in Vienna for the clarinettist Joseph Beer. It would prove his final public appearance as a pianist: nine months later, Mozart was dead. But despite complaining of a few headaches and toothache in the spring of that year, Mozart hardly foresaw that the year 1791 would be his last.

It’s well known that Mozart’s final years were a time of financial and personal insecurity. He was no longer quite the darling of

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

But despite complaining of a few headaches and toothache in the spring of that year, Mozart hardly foresaw that the year 1791 would be his last.

Viennese audiences that he’d been in the early 1780s, and the disposable cash of wellto-do Viennese supporters was thinner on the ground after the Habsburgs had declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1788. He was understandably concerned, too, about his wife Constanze’s stubbornly poor health. But 1791 proved a year of breathtaking creativity, in which Mozart produced two operatic masterpieces – La clemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute – as well as a string quintet, the Clarinet Concerto, the choral Ave verum corpus and the unfinished Requiem.

It’s understandable, however, that some discern a certain wistful sadness, even a quietly nagging pain, in the Piano Concerto No 27’s somewhat subdued intimacy. Even the first movement’s opening theme – the first of no fewer than four that Mozart crams into the orchestra’s introduction – has a certain plaintive introspection in its floating lyricism, though the pianist gently jollifies it with ornaments when they take it up later. Even the solo cadenza (Mozart’s own) towards the end of the movement seems pensive rather than particularly flashy.

The piano is left alone to open Mozart’s song-like second movement, and the music’s limpid simplicity isn’t without its passing storm clouds, even in the movement’s brighter central section. The bouncing rondo finale shares its main theme with the song ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling’ (or ‘Yearning for Spring’) that he wrote around the same time, itself implying a certain melancholy amid the movement’s bounding energy, though its contrasting episodes more overtly show off the soloist’s agility.

It may seem justified, then, to sense a certain autumnal poignancy to the Concerto. But it’s more poignant, perhaps, to notice the piece’s

renewed sense of quietly spoken clarity, balance and confidence, qualities shared by the other works Mozart composed in his final year. They may indicate the beginning of an entirely new phase of creativity from the composer – which, of course, we’ll never experience.

We jump ahead just less than a century for tonight’s final piece. Despite its relatively humble origins, by the end of the 19th century, the symphony had become something of a cultural battleground for central European composers. On one side were those Germans and Austrians who saw the form’s abstract, rigorously structured arguments as evidence of musical superiority. On the other were composers working away from the centres of musical power – like Antonín Dvořák – who argued that they were equally capable of such profundity, though perhaps using different means.

Johannes Brahms – himself a composer of three mighty symphonies by the time Dvořák’s Seventh was premiered – had already stirred things up in recommending the young Bohemian composer to his German publisher Simrock in 1875. Dvořák was determined to prove himself as a sophisticated symphonic composer rather than simply a peddler of the popular Slavonic Dances that had made his reputation (and, furthermore, respectfully requested that Simrock use his Bohemian name Antonín rather than the Germanicised Anton on his published scores).

Dvořák had aimed to make his mark as a serious symphonist with his Sixth, following his friend Brahms’s advice to design it around conventional Germanic models. Nonetheless, it was quietly dropped from its intended premiere by the Vienna

Philharmonic in 1880, though it was so successful at its London premiere from the Royal Philharmonic Society four years later that the Society immediately commissioned another one. Dvořák launched into work in December 1884. ‘Just now,’ he wrote to a friend that month, ‘a new symphony (for London) occupies me, and wherever I go I think of nothing but my work, which must be capable of stirring the world, and God grant me that it will!’ He completed his Seventh Symphony in March 1885, with a determination that his new work would put Czech music on the map in front of an influential international audience. Premiered in London in April 1885, it was an immediate success, and remains for many Dvořák’s greatest symphony, eclipsing even the better-known ‘New World’. At its Vienna premiere two years later, where it mattered most to Dvořák, it received a predictably cooler reception.

No 7 is indeed the most tautly argued of Dvořák’s symphonies, though it blends a distinctly Bohemian lyricism with its strongly focused drama. The first movement’s gruff, dramatic opening sets the tone for what’s to come, though the main theme’s eruption across the full orchestra is followed by a far more flowing, lyrical contrasting melody for flutes and clarinets. The slow second movement’s hymn-like opening music hardly prepares the listener for its later turbulent outbursts, while the dancing third movement contrasts a stomping Czech furiant dance in the violins with a graceful Viennese waltz as accompaniment in the cellos and bassoons. Dvořák opens his finale with an ominous melody full of pungent Slavic inflections, before a march-like theme propels the Symphony to its roof-raising, unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.

© David Kettle

Antonín Leopold Dvořák

Premiered in London in April 1885, it was an immediate success, and remains for many Dvořák’s greatest symphony, eclipsing even the better-known ‘New World’.

Conductor ANDREW MANZE

Andrew Manze is widely celebrated as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation. His extensive and scholarly knowledge of the repertoire, together with his boundless energy and warmth, mark him out. He has been Chief Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Hannover, since September 2014 and his contract has been extended until summer 2023. Since 2018, he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Following highly successful tours to China in 2016 and 2019, the 22/23 season sees the NDR Radiophilharmonie return to Japan for a busy touring schedule. Manze and the orchestra have embarked on a major series of award-winning recordings for Pentatone, focused on the works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. The first recording in the Mendelssohn series won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik. Manze has also recorded a cycle of the complete Vaughan Williams symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for Onyx Classics to critical acclaim.

In great demand as a guest conductor across the globe, Manze has long-standing relationships with leading orchestras that include the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg, Royal Concertgebouworkest, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He is also a regular guest at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City. In the 22/23 season Manze makes his operatic debut with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, conducting performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas alongside Schoenberg’s Erwartung, in collaboration with artistic director Serge Dorny. Other highlights of the 22/23 season include engagements with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra, and conducting performances with the WDR Symphony as part of the Klavierfest Ruhr.

Manze is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, Visiting Professor at the Oslo Academy, and has contributed to new editions of sonatas and concerti by Bach and Mozart, published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf and Härtel. He also teaches, writes about, and edits music, as well as broadcasting regularly on radio and television. In November 2011 Andrew Manze received the prestigious ‘Rolf Schock Prize’ in Stockholm.

Piano YEOL EUM SON

Poetic elegance, an innate feeling for expressive nuance and the power to project bold dramatic contrasts are among the arresting attributes of Yeol Eum Son’s pianism. Her refined artistry rises from breathtaking technical control and a profound empathy for the emotional temper of the works within her strikingly wide repertoire. She is driven above all by her natural curiosity to explore a multitude of musical genres and styles and the desire to reveal what she describes as the “pure essence” of everything she performs.

In high demand as recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, Yeol Eum has won critical plaudits for the profound insights and intelligence of her interpretations. Her development as an all-round artist has gained from collaborations with conductors as diverse as Lorin Maazel, Dmitri Kitajenko, Valery Gergiev, Andrew Manze, Jaime Martín, Jun Märkl, Roberto González-Monjas, Jonathon Heyward, Ryan Bancroft, Pablo Gonzalez, Pietari Inkinen, Joana Carneiro, Gergely Madaras and Omer Meir Welber.

She has likewise discovered fresh creative perspectives since her appointment in 2018 as Artistic Director of Music in PyeongChang and as a regular chamber music partner with, among others, the violinist Svetlin Roussev and the Modigliani Quartet.

Yeol Eum Son’s 2022-23 schedule includes a succession of debut performances with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2), the NDR Radiophilharmonie (Beethoven and Rachmaninov concertos), the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1), the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias (Szymanowski’s Symphony No 4), Musikkollegium Winterthur (Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major), the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Major K.595), and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 2). She will close her season with the world premiere of a new work by the Swedish composer Albert Schnelzer in recital at the Helsingborg Piano Festival.

For full biography please visit sco.org.uk

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