Boris Berman, piano

boris berman piano

horowitz piano series Boris Berman, Artistic Director November 12, 2014 • Morse Recital Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Horowitz Piano Series

boris berman Wednesday, November 12, 2014 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall Boris Berman, Artistic Director

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827

Six Variations in F major, Op. 34 Fifteen Variations and a Fugue in E-flat major, Op. 35, “Eroica” intermission

Igor Stravinsky 1882–1971

Sérénade en La (1925) I. Hymne II. Romanza III. Rondoletto IV. Cadenza finala

Sergei Prokofiev 1891–1953

Sonata No. 5 in C major (second version), Op. 135 I. Allegro tranquillo II. Andantino III. Un poco allegretto Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83 I. Allegro inquieto II. Andante caloroso III. Precipitato

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, please silence all electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Artist Profile

Boris Berman · piano Boris Berman is well known to the audiences of close to fifty countries on six continents. He regularly appears with leading orchestras, on major recital series, and in important festivals. He studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with the distinguished pianist Lev Oborin.

An active recording artist and a Grammy nominee, Mr. Berman was the first pianist to record the complete solo works by Prokofiev (Chandos). Other acclaimed releases include all piano sonatas by Alexander Scriabin (Music and Arts) and a recital of Shostakovich piano works (Ottavo), which received the Edison Classic Award in Holland, the Dutch equivalent of the Grammy.

The recording of three Prokofiev concertos with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Neeme Järvi conducting (Chandos), was named the Compact Disc of the Month

by CD Review. Other recordings include works by Mozart, Beethoven, Franck,

Weber, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Joplin, and Cage.

In 1984, Mr. Berman joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music, where he is professor of piano, coordinator of the Piano department, and Music Director of the Horowitz Piano Series. He also conducts master classes throughout the world. In 2005, he was named an Honorary Professor of Shanghai Conservatory; and in 2013, an Honorary Professor of Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen.

In 2000, Yale University Press published Mr. Berman’s Notes from the Pianist’s Bench; since then, the book has been translated into several languages. In 2008, the same publisher released Mr. Berman’s new book Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer. In 2011, Shanghai Publishing House published a new bilingual edition of the scores of Prokofiev’s piano sonatas, revised and edited by Mr. Berman.

Based on manuscripts and first editions, this is the most authoritative edition of this repertoire available.

Notes on the Program

ludwig van beethoven Six Variations in F major, Op. 34 The Six Variations in F major diverge somewhat from the tradition of pieces like Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the variations from Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet. The aesthetic of Haydn’s variations, as an example, might be comparable to a Neapolitan-trained visual artist fleshing out a sketch of the human face — beginning with an oval and cross, and systematically rendering more and more details. Unlike traditional sectional variations, each of Beethoven’s variations is in a distinct key with variety of meters.

The artist of Opus 34 depicts something human not through an incision of detail, but through a three-dimensional panorama of characters and moods which examines the face from distinct angles. In the minormode variation before the finale, Beethoven, perhaps not so subtly, replies to the stormy C-minor character with a gentle avian, cadenza-like extension before a heroic recapitulation signature of his middle period style.

massive piano tremolandos and innovating proto-Romantic orchestrations. “On this composition hangs a story,” said Herbert Westerby in a 1931 discussion of the “Eroica” Variations.

Ferdinand Ries, a student of Beethoven, wrote in his biography that upon hearing Beethoven’s Op. 11 (which was not particularly demanding of the pianist) at a performance in 1800, Steibelt was not impressed.

After the performance, Steibelt performed his own music as well as brilliant improvisations which over-shadowed Beethoven.

A week later, Steibelt again performed a prepared improvisation on themes from Beethoven’s Op. 11 trio. Clearly, this challenge did not sit well with the latter’s ego.

When it was his turn for a pianistic comeback, Beethoven placed the score to Steibelt’s quartet upside-down on the piano. Using the bass-line of the opening theme, Beethoven spun an improvisation which thoroughly vanquished Steibelt. Westerby claims that this invention became the basis of Opus 35.

Fifteen Variations and a Fugue in E-flat major, Op. 35, “Eroica”

igor stravinsky Sérénade en La

Variation is the machine of choice for the virtuoso performer-composer. At the heart of a set of variations is improvisation. Insightful and gymnastic improvisation in Beethoven’s time might be compared to rap battles today, in which competitors take turns in displays of poetic speed, lyric creativity, and sometimes personal attacks.

According to William Meredith in a 2012 issue of Beethoven Journal, the genesis of Opus 35 might have stemmed from a rivalry between Beethoven and Daniel Steibelt, a composer renowned for experimenting with

Stravinsky, like Beethoven, had a fluid style throughout his career, which academics have divided into three periods. The rhythmic invention and primal character of his first “Russian” period (until 1919) is epitomized by Firebird, The Rite of Spring, and the dramatic Soldier’s Tale. Stravinsky dipped into Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic twelve-tone candy jar during his third “Serial” period (1954–1968) while writing Agon and The Flood.

Notes on the Program

Between his primal Russian roots and modern American intellectualism, Stravinsky looked for inspiration in Greek mythology, Classical visual art, and 18 th-century Neapolitan composition. In what has been termed Stravinsky’s neoclassical period, works like Orpheus, Pulcinella, and Serenade emphasize formal conception and over-thetop commedia dell’arte characters. Compared to the musicological and period performance practice climate of today, Serenade was composed during a time when the details of early and ancient music were more mysterious.

According to his autobiography, Sérénade en La is “in imitation of the Nachtmusik (night music) of the eighteenth century… and included, as did the suites, an indeterminate number of pieces.” The latter comment might refer to serenades such as Mozart’s Grand Partita and Dvorak’s Wind Serenade.

The vigorous arpeggios of the Rondoletto are reminiscent of keyboard toccata works of Domenic Scarlatti and J.S. Bach. As Nachtmusik was traditionally commissioned for festive occasions, this work is a celebration of classical forms and style.

—Samuel Suggs sergei prokofiev Sonata No. 5 in C major, Op. 135 The Sonata No. 5 in C major, composed in 1923 in Paris, is the only sonata that Prokofiev wrote during his sojourn in the West. He counted it among “the most chromatic of all my compositions. This was the effect of the Parisian atmosphere where complex patterns and dissonances

were the accepted thing, and which fostered my predilection for complex thinking.”

The sonata’s dissonant harmonies and zigzagging melodies blend curiously with the neoclassic simplicity of stylized cadences and Mozartian piano texture. In 1953, Prokofiev revised the Sonata and assigned the new version a new opus number, 135. It is this later version that is performed tonight.

In 1927 Prokofiev undertook a concert tour of Soviet Russia, where he received a celebrity’s welcome. This reception encouraged Prokofiev, and he became keen on restoring and strengthening ties with the music establishment of his native country. He made several subsequent trips to Russia.

By New Year’s Eve of 1936, he moved back to Moscow for good.

Soon after his return, Prokofiev became aware of the heavy-handed “guidance” imposed by the authorities on the Soviet composers who were admonished to write music accessible to the people. Prokofiev tried to both modify his style and resist the pressure, declaring: “I consider it a mistake for a composer to strive for simplification….

In my own work… I have striven for clarity and melodiousness. At the same time I have scrupulously avoided palming off familiar harmonies and tunes. That is where the difficulty of composing clear, straightforward music lies: the clarity must be new, not old.”

Prokofiev’s music became less dissonant and less angular. He turned toward a much more melody-oriented style, departing from the complexity of some of his compositions of the 1920s and early 1930s.

World War II came to Russia in 1941. Along with the whole nation, Prokofiev was deeply

Notes on the Program

affected by both the suddenness of the events and the quick deterioration of the situation.

Together with many artists, he experienced a surge of creativity. Some of his most significant compositions, including the Piano Sonatas Nos. 7 and 8, were written during the war years. In the West, these three sonatas are often referred to as the “War Sonatas”; Russian musicology does not use this term. Considering them as a group, however, is justified both by their musical properties and by the circumstances of their composition. According to Prokofiev’s wife, Mira Mendelson-Prokofieva, “in 1939 [Prokofiev] began to write three piano sonatas, [the] Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth, working on all the ten movements at once, and only later did he lay aside the Seventh and Eighth and concentrate on the Sixth.”

The three “War Sonatas,” written by Prokofiev at the peak of his creative powers, are much more emotionally engaged works than their predecessors. In fact, one could argue that here Prokofiev came closest to the Romantic concept of the sonata, with its traditional exploration of the conflict between the individual and fate, or other impersonal forces beyond one’s control.

The mechanistic imagery in Prokofiev’s music, familiar to us from his earlier works, plays a crucial role in this drama; it collides with the warmly human thematic material, suppressing and brutalizing it. The carnivallike atmosphere of the Second Sonata and the objective neoclassicism of the Fifth are abandoned, never to return in Prokofiev’s subsequent works in this genre.

Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83 The Sonata No. 7 was completed in 1942.

While the Sixth Sonata reflects the nervous anticipation of the war, the Seventh Sonata projects the anguish and the struggle of the war years as they were experienced in real time. The thematic material of the first movement is rich and diverse: short melodic and rhythmic statements composing the first group of themes evolve into one another, while the second theme consists of a single long, unfolding melody.

The second movement projects the grandeur of a national tragedy, extending beyond any one person’s drama. It is conceived as a monumental symphonic movement, with many allusions to orchestral sonorities.

The finale is a toccata, harking back to the famous Toccata, Op. 11. Like the earlier piece, the movement is based on perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion) and a constantly repeated short motive. The overall defiant energy of the movement is without parallel in Prokofiev’s sonatas.

—Prokofiev notes by Boris Berman, adapted from his book Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)

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