peter frankl piano
horowitz piano series Boris Berman, Artistic Director January 14, 2015 • Morse Recital Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
Horowitz Piano Series
peter frankl Wednesday, January 14, 2015 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall Boris Berman, Artistic Director Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827
Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26 I. Andante con variazioni II. Scherzo, allegro molto III. Maestoso andante, marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe IV. Allegro
Robert Schumann 1810–1856
Humoreske in B-flat major, Op. 20 intermission
Schumann
Waldszenen, Op. 82 I. Eintritt II. Jäger auf der Lauer III. Einsame Blumen IV. Verrufene Stelle V. Freundliche Landschaft VI. Herberge VII. Vogel als Prophet VIII. Jagdlied IX. Abschied
Beethoven
Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major, Op. 81a, “Les Adieux” I. Das Lebewohl (Les Adieux): Adagio — Allegro II. Abwesenheit (L’Absence): Andante espressivo III. Das Wiedersehen (Le Retour): Vivacissimamente Tonight's program is dedicated to the memory of
claude frank December 24, 1925 – December 27, 2014
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 & Notes
Peter Frankl, piano Pianist Peter Frankl made his London debut in 1962 and his New York debut with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell in 1967. Since that time he has performed with many of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Berlin and Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Concertgebouw Orchestra, all the London orchestras, and the major American orchestras. He has collaborated with such conductors as Abbado, Boulez, Maazel, and Solti. His many chamber music partners have included Kyung Wha Chung, Ralph Kirshbaum, and the Tokyo, Takács, Guarneri, and Fine Arts quartets. Among his recordings are the complete works for piano by Schumann and Debussy, Bartók and Chopin solo albums, a Hungarian anthology, concertos and four-hand works by Mozart, the two Brahms piano concertos, the Brahms violin and clarinet sonatas, Bartók pieces for violin and piano, and the piano quintets of Brahms, Schumann, Dvorák, Martinu, and both Dohnányis. Mr. Frankl was awarded the Officer’s Cross by the Hungarian Republic, and on his seventieth birthday he was given one of the highest civilian awards in Hungary for his lifetime artistic achievement in the world of music. Notes on the Program ludwig van beethoven Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26 The form of Beethoven’s sonata, subtitled “Funeral March,” is unique, and unlike any of its predecessors. None of its movements, not even the first, is in the conventional sonata-allegro form. Beethoven begins with a theme and variations, a regular feature in
his works. These five variations on a graceful andante theme demonstrate great compositional ingenuity, particularly in the area of rhythm. In the final variation, for instance, the composer creates a rhythmic acceleration by increasing the subdivision of the beat from groups of three to groups of four, and first sounds the theme in a middle voice amid the rhythmic activity, later subdividing the theme itself, thereby creating variation within the variation. Such advances will be explored to even greater extent in later works, including in the finale to the third symphony. We traditionally expect a slow movement to follow the first, but Beethoven has moved his scherzo ahead to follow the first movement. Like the music which preceded it, the scherzo is in a lilting triple meter, as stormy as it is playful. Note the relative transparency of the left hand at the beginning of the movement, written fairly high in the piano’s range. The contrast that the composer will generate later (when he plunges the left hand into lower octaves and provides it with driving scale passages) is dramatic, all the more effective for its initial innocence. The more subdued, legato trio section contrasts the playful scherzo theme, with a moment of cheekiness at its end. To get us out of the trio and back into the repeated scherzo section, Beethoven provides us four measures of retransition, dropping us right back at the da capo repeat of the opening. The emotional heart of the sonata is its third movement, subtitled “Funeral march on the death of a hero,” and the source of the work’s epithet. The levity of the two preceding movements does little to prepare us for the gravity of a march in one of the very darkest of keys: A-flat minor (complete with seven
Notes on the Program
flats in the key signature). One cannot help but draw comparisons between this movement and the funeral march of the Eroica symphony, so similar in mood and tone. As heavy and sombre as the march itself may be, the major-mode central section is bold, triumphant, and, needless to say, “heroic.” Here as never before, we find ourselves asking: Why? Who is this hero that Beethoven mourns? Was it Napoleon, towards whom Beethoven’s attitude shifted from adoration to disgust? Was it perhaps a hero of centuries prior, like Coriolan or Egmont? Or is the “hero” Beethoven himself, who had recently discovered the gradual loss of his hearing and would, in 1802 (a year after this sonata’s publication) pen the Heiligenstadt Testament, expressing his determination to overcome this despair? The answers to such questions are best left to the imagination, yet we do know that the composer’s life was, at the time that he wrote this sonata, fraught with both internal and external (political) struggle. The role of the heroic protagonist would become central to later compositions, and to Beethoven’s approach to music. This sonata was a favorite of Chopin’s, who seems to have drawn some inspiration for his own second piano sonata, likewise containing a Marche funèbre as its third movement. Chopin’s movement has become one of the most famous, recognizable and emblematic funeral marches in the repertoire. Just as unexpectedly as Beethoven plunged us into the grave, he floats from it in the sonata’s effervescent finale, a rondo with rhythmic drive, foreshadowing such “perpetual motion” finales as in the composer’s later Sonata No. 23, “Appassionata.”
robert schumann Humoreske, Op. 20 A love of written language never left Robert Schumann, and the composer’s love of literature unquestionably shaped his musical identity. The son of a bookseller and publisher, Schumann grew up reading and writing. A favorite wordsmith of his was Jean Paul — the pseudonym of the inventive German writer Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, chosen in honor of Rousseau — whose unconventional mix of humor and pathos coincided perfectly with the changing artistic trends of German Romanticism, yet, like Schumann, never quite fit in with even these conventions. Schumann’s literary conceptions of Florestan and Eusebeus, the dual personae of his own character, were likely inspired by themes in the writings of Jean Paul, who first coined the term Doppelgänger, an early literary incarnation of the psychological ego and id. Unsurprisingly, the writer and his style found their way into Schumann’s music, and perhaps their clearest intersection is in the Humoreske, a collection of strung-together miniatures of a variety of moods and psychological states. The work occupies an interesting place as the culmination of what may be called Schumann’s early “experimental years.” Though it is called a work in B-flat, much of it occupies the darkened harmonic world of the relative minor. B-flat and G minor are, in some ways, modal manifestations of a split personality, one laughing and the other crying. Meandering between these two tonal areas shades the work with an unexpected instability and, to some degree, an ironic sense of humor. The title itself implies comedic wit, yet it more accurately refers to a sense of “mood.” Even from the
Notes on the Program
very first chord of the work, Schumann places a poignant F-sharp in the right hand melody within a harmonic context in which the note yearns upwards to resolve towards G, only to step down, one pitch at a time, to the tonic B-flat, before immediately leaping upward again. The melody strives and struggles against its own harmonic predestination. The delicate opening piece gives way to a vibrant and humorous presto episode, marked by sudden, fleeting, and drastic shifts into minor mode. The fanfare-like figures provide an ironic contrast to the brief ventures into more sombre and grave melodic material. Almost in the blink of an eye, the lively central section relaxes into a brief restatement of the lyrical theme from the very beginning of the work. As of now, the listener can hardly perceive whether to hear the two opening “character pieces” as part of one larger form, or as two separate entities. The Doppelgänger is surely present. The following piece, marked “Hastig,” is written in three staves for the piano. The two outer staves, for right and left hand, are busy with a rush of rhythmic energy. Yet within this, in the middle stave — which the composer marks “Inner voice” — Schumann buries a delicate melody framing the key of B-flat major, like a transplanted recollection of the opening theme of the entire collection. It is present, if not always the focus. Schumann literally intends for this inner voice to remain “within,” and it is not meant to be played, but rather “kept in mind.” Ever aware of the act of performing, Schumann is engaging the pianist as much as the audience in the psychological processes at work. At this point, Schumann’s form has become quite unhinged, and he wanders through
sudden and drastic character changes so quickly that we can hardly keep up. Moments of fury give way to brief, almost elegiac moments of repose, and the fleeting sight of B-flat major becomes increasingly distant, swallowed up into the G minor mode that comes to predominate the piece. The finale embodies instability and mercuriality. Frequent fermatas break up the melodic line, and the pianist is asked to pause, almost as though deep in thought. This greatly contrasts the character of the melody itself which is meandering, sinuous, and wandering, almost as though it could go on indefinitely. A poignant and introspective ending of this final “resolution” movement at last grants us peace. Yet Florestan, the fiery extrovert to Eusebius’ pensive embodiment, seems to get the last word, as a brief coda almost yells in triumph. However, Schumann carefully balances the two personalities. Though Florestan speaks loudest, and last, he did not speak longest, and the introspective, melancholic nature of the work, and of Schumann’s own personality, echoes long after the “grand finale” to the Humoreske. schumann Waldszenen, Op. 82 Nature was, for the Romantic generation, a source of fascination. When alone in nature, an artist could reflect on his own personal state. The forest - Der Wald in German - was particularly intriguing to artists in Germanspeaking states. The woods, in their depth and density, represent the mysteries of the human mind. One cannot always know what lies within the dark labyrinthine forests, just as one cannot always comprehend the complexities of human emotion. By 1849, when the composer finished his “Forest Scenes,” Schumann was himself very sen-
Notes on the Program
sitive to these psychological complexities. His first documented serious manic depressive episode was in 1833, and by 1854 he had attempted suicide and placed himself in an asylum for the remainder of his life. The character pieces that make up the set depict not just the scene of a forest, but the state of mind of the artist in the forest. We are not merely hearing a soundscape of the scene. Rather, we are hearing it through the experience of someone else, perhaps Schumann himself. The oddities of the experience emerge from the very opening of the first miniature. After two bars of a simple accompanimental introduction, the melody begins in the right hand, but it seems out of place, as though starting in the middle of a thought, in a subdominant harmonic context. It is as though the melody were somehow lost for the first two measures, and when the repeat takes place, its absence is all the more effective. The composer had originally intended for five of the pieces to be accompanied by a poetic fragment, yet later retracted all but one of those, for the fourth piece, Verrufene Stelle, or “Haunted Place.” Schumann did not want to be overly specific in guiding our understanding of these works, believing that the titles themselves should be sufficient. In a heading at the top of the published score, Schumann shares his thoughts on the titles, stating that “the composer, by adding one, at least prevents a complete misunderstanding of the character of his music. What is important is that such a verbal heading should be significant and apt. It may be considered the test of the general level of the composer’s education.” Schumann leaves it to our imagination to fill in the blanks: to place ourselves within
this forest scene, and to experience it as individuals. One can trace the evocative topics that Schumann imbeds in the music, as in the Vogel als Prophet piece, in which the flippant and capricious character of a bird is depicted in the composer’s delicate meandering around its accompaniment. The Jagdlied is marked by the distinct texture of hunting horns, and their triplet texture returns in the final fragment, a “Farewell,” which is something of a reflection on the previous scenes. There are vague reminiscences of previous motives, though hardly direct quotations. Listen, for instance, for the subtle hint of the bird motive around two-thirds of the way through the piece. When one looks back in reflection, the remembered scene is never an exact recreation of reality, but is rather made hazy and subtly shaded by the complexities of the densely forested mind. beethoven Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major, Op. 81a, “Les Adieux” The fact that the titles given on publication to Beethoven’s Op. 81a sonata were in French is ironic. In 1809, Napoleon’s army invaded Vienna, forcing numerous political figures to flee. One of these was Archduke Rudolph, Prince Imperial of Austria, a pupil, patron, and close friend of Beethoven, and the dedicatee of a number of compositions, including this sonata. The three movements of this sonata allude to the departure, absence, and return of Rudolph and his family to the city of Vienna. To call the sonata programmatic is perhaps an overstatement. Beethoven does not seek to tell an explicit story in music, but rather alludes to his patron’s farewell in a more abstract fashion.
Notes on the Program
The sonata begins with Beethoven’s most overt allusion of musical topic to narrative in the work. A motive of three chords introduces the first movement, written in the style of a pair of hunting horns. In the German tradition, the horn call came to symbolize distance, and by opening the sonata with this motive, Beethoven seems to represent the archduke’s coach disappearing over the horizon upon leaving Vienna. Yet the three chords do not resolve as expected. Rather than resolving the dominant directly to the E-flat major tonic, Beethoven instead resolves the second chord to a melancholic C minor triad, implying a sense of sorrow at the departure of his friend. The composer famously wrote the syllables “Le-be-wohl” over each of the three chords (regrettably lost in French translation), as though the motive were somehow directly tied to a representation of the word “Farewell.” The descending three-note figure becomes an important subject throughout the movement. The “improper” resolution of the three notes becomes a theme, as the third pitch is often chromatic or otherwise harmonized in an unexpected fashion. The movement is made all the more unstable by the ever-searching resolution of this farewell, as though to imply the instability felt in the absence of a friend. The second movement, subtitled “Absence,” is suitably lamenting and sparse. The distinctive harmonic character of the second movement is marked by a destabilizing appoggiatura over a discomfortingly irresolute diminished seventh chord. In this motive which returns throughout the movement, the composer presents his melancholic theme, more a sigh-like or seufzer gesture than a melody. The diminished seventh
seldom resolves, and when it does, does so fleetingly. This movement is, by nature, harmonically unresolved, and in this way, Beethoven implies loneliness and despair in the absence of his friend and patron. Just as he awaits his friend’s return, so does the harmonic resolution. The diminished sonority endures through the end of the movement until… At last, in the finale, Beethoven depicts the “return” of the fleeing party! Only upon the return can resolution be met, and, not surprisingly, the composer links the second movement right into the finale, as the last movement eases the tensions of its predecessor. The sonata form’s last movement is marked vivacissamente — an emphatic “very lively” — and it evokes the ebullient joy at the archduke’s return. The lilting 6/8 meter, like a celebratory jig — or perhaps hinting at the trotting of the returning horse-drawn carriages — can barely contain the energy of the running sixteenth notes. The movement is filled with stark contrasts, as when the austere, statuesque forte arpeggios in octaves are followed by playfully ornamented,coquettish decorations in the right hand. The coda contains an unmistakable recollection of the horn fifths that opened the entire sonata — a memory, or perhaps signifying the fear of another departure — yet rather than a melancholic guise, they are absorbed into the festive character of the entire movement, and the sonata ends with a triumphant close. Notes by Patrick Campbell Jankowski
Upcoming Events
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Brentano String Quartet
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