boris berman
horowitz piano series Boris Berman, Artistic Director October 7, 2015 • Morse Recital Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
Horowitz Piano Series
boris berman Wednesday, October 7, 2015 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall Boris Berman, Artistic Director
Frédéric Chopin 1810–1849
Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
Johannes Brahms 1833–1897
Klavierstücke, Op. 76 I. Capriccio. Un poco agitato II. Capriccio. Allegretto non troppo III. Intermezzo. Grazioso IV. Intermezzo. Allegretto grazioso V. Capriccio. Agitato, ma non troppo presto VI. Intermezzo. Andante con moto VII. Intermezzo. Moderato semplice VIII. Capriccio. Grazioso ed un poco vivace intermission
Claude Debussy 1862–1918
La boîte à joujoux (The Toy Box), Ballet for piano John Taylor Ward, narrator Projections designed by Shawn Boyle (Yale School of Drama ‘15) based on illustrations by André Hellé from the original edition of the score
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
Artist Profile
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 the piano sonatas of Alexander Scriabin (Music and Arts) and a recital of Shostakovich piano works (Ottavo), which received the Edison Classic Award, Holland’s equivalent of the Grammy. Berman’s 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 the 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.
Artist Profile
John Taylor Ward narrator
frédéric chopin Barcarolle in F-sharp major, Op. 60
John Taylor Ward’s performances have been praised by the New York Times for their “impressive clarity and color” and “velvety suaveness” and by the Washington Post for “finely calibrated precision and heartrending expressivity.” This season, Taylor has appeared as a principal artist on five continents, joining ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants (as a laureate of the Jardin des voix), Collegium Vocale Ghent, and the Boston Camerata. Other recent credits include several roles in the Boston Early Music Festival’s cycle of Monteverdi operas and the premiere staging of a new opera for the Teatro Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia with the ensemble L’arpeggiata. Taylor is also a frequent collaborator with the Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.
Chopin wrote this piece in the autumn of 1845, as his personal health and relationship with his lover were deteriorating. Deriving from the traditional shanties of a “barque-” (boat) “-rolle” (rower), the French Barcarolle also seems to embrace the transitive etymology of “embarquer” — the sense of commencing a journey. Perhaps this Barcarolle is an imaginary first visit to a fabled 19 thcentury Venice in the final years of his life.
Originally from Boone, NC, he is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and holds two advanced degrees from Yale University. Taylor is a recipient of the Margot Fassler Award for excellence in research and performance (2012), the Yale School of Music Alumni Prize (2013), the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship for American artists in Paris (2013), the Carmel Bach Festival’s Virginia Best Adams Fellowship (2014), and the Helpman Award for Best Classical Chamber Music Performance (Australia, 2015). He is the co-founder of the Lakes Area Music Festival (Brainerd, MN) and a founding core member of Cantata Profana and The Academy of Sacred Drama (New York City).
The musical gondolier Chopin, astern and masquerading in stripes and a straw hat, evokes the rattling of mandolins through his trilling, and of soft guitars through his use of bass ostinato. The Italianate parallel thirds of the first theme evoke a folk-song style, and are reminiscent of Norma and Miro’s duet from Bellini’s 1831 opera Norma (at which Chopin and Bellini met in Paris in 1835). Transitioning to the open sea of the development section, the texture lightens and the winds gently shift towards F-sharp minor. The gondola-submersible dives into A major beneath the impending wave, propelling deeper through sequences in G-sharp and F-sharp major before the buoyant ship bobs back to the noisy surface, where whitecaps threaten to capsize the gondola. The waters eventually calm, and the gondolier shakes himself to his senses as the sfogato retransition emerges like a Noachian dove, leading the full-voiced gondolier homewards. The waltzing climax seems inevitable for Chopin to return home. In the final
Notes on the Program
flirting display passages, the ebullient dove, too, returns to its nest as Chopin’s fantasy meets his reality. – Samuel S. Suggs johannes brahms Klavierstücke, Op. 76 Johannes Brahms started and ended his career as a composer of piano music; his Opus 1 is a piano sonata and his Opus 119 (there are 122 total) is a collection of piano pieces. In between lie a plethora of other piano works, including the Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces), Op. 76, which belong to his middle period but also constitute the first of his collections of “characteristic pieces” — works of a more personal, subjective nature. They were written in the summer of 1879, a bright period for Brahms. He had just achieved success with his second symphony and was spending the summer at a lakeside cabin where, as Brahms himself said, “so many melodies fly about one must be careful not to tread on them.” The Op. 76 collection consists of four capricci and four intermezzi, but, despite their titles, few elements of carefree lightness pervade the former, and few aspects of interlude exist in the latter. Clear differences between the two types still abound, however: the capricci are more dramatic, developed, and longer, whereas the intermezzi are shorter (except for No. 6), more serene, and more introspective. No. 1 (Capriccio) is replete with restive, agitated arpeggios, yet it ends in repose. If anything,
the piece sounds more fantasy-like than capricious. No. 2 (Capriccio) has more of the whimsical feeling one would expect from a capriccio, due to its series of Hungarianinfluenced folk-like melodies that provide the piece with a lilting, dance-like quality. The two following Intermezzi (No. 3 and No. 4) were described by Clara Schumann as “two little pearls.” The high register of No. 3 provides a soft, sweet, innocent quality, and its rocking accompaniment in the left hand offers the feeling of a lullaby. No. 4 has more motion and unrest, due to dotted rhythms propelling it forward, but it is still grazioso, as the composer marked. No. 5 (Capriccio) has a determined, unsettled feeling, accentuated by its ambiguous meter, which alternates between two and three throughout the work. Its restlessness explodes in a dramatic climax at the end. No. 6 (Intermezzo) is a treasure of reverie, calm, and contentment. It is in rondo form with its middle section in melancholy F-sharp minor, temporarily breaking the tranquil mood. No. 7 (Intermezzo) opens with pensive chords, the only such section present in the entire collection. Slow arpeggios take over in the middle section, but the piece ends the same poised way it began. The final work, No. 8 (Capriccio), finishes the set with optimistic affirmation. It slowly builds momentum only to relax briefly in an adagio that sets up a large, quick burst to the end. — Laura Usiskin
Notes on the Program
claude debussy La boîte à joujoux (The Toy Box), Ballet for piano
Gradus is not as complicated as the commedia dell’arte drama of the soldier-doll-harlequin love triangle of The Toy Box.
A ballet for marionettes, La boîte à joujoux (The Toy Box) was a collaboration between children's book illustrator André Hellé and Debussy. In a 1914 interview with Maurice Montabré, Debussy described the work as a pantomime “intended to amuse children and nothing more.” Much like a musical background that a photoplay pianist provides to suit the action of a silent film, the composition itself is quite simple and segmented; much of the piano writing is intentionally sparse to leave room for clear narration.
The third tableau gave Debussy philosophical trouble. In a letter to his editor (Durand) in 1913, he wrote, “the soul of the doll is more mysterious than even Maeterlinck [the Belgian poet] himself imagines, and does not easily put up with the humbug which so many human souls tolerate.” Although Debussy committed himself multiple times to completing an orchestration of this work dedicated to his beloved daughter Chouchou, he did not complete the project before his death, and Durand hired André Caplet to complete the orchestration.
Debussy refers to his own music, such as Golliwog’s Cakewalk from Children’s Corner — another work which derives its world from the imaginary lives of toys. However, the world of The Little Shepherd or Doctor
– Samuel S. Suggs
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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES Boris Berman Artistic Director Wednesdays at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
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Upcoming Events
Martin Bresnick & Hannah Lash
Lunchtime Chamber Music
october 8 New Music New Haven Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Featuring music by faculty composers Martin Bresnick and Hannah Lash, along with new works by YSM student composers Free admission
october 14 YSM Student Ensembles Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm Music for a variety of chamber ensembles. Wendy Sharp, director Free admission
Peter Oundjian, guest conductor
Nigel North, lute october 11 Collection of Musical Instruments 15 Hillhouse Ave | Sunday | 3 pm A Decoration of Silence: 16th-century lute music from Italy, France, and England Tickets $25 • Seniors & Yale staff $20 Students $10
october 16 Yale Philharmonia Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Bartók: Divertimento; Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, with soloist Adelya Nartadjieva; Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique Tickets start at $10 • Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door
Residency with Uliana Lopatkina
Wendy Sharp, violin
october 13–15 Special Events Morse Recital Hall | Tue–Thu A lecture-demonstration, performance, and open conversation with Uliana Lopatkina, principal dancer of the Kirov Ballet Free admission
october 18 Faculty Artist Series Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 4 pm With Joel Wizansky, piano • Music by Dvořák, Kernis, Prokofiev, and Brahms Free admission
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