pierre rĂŠach
horowitz piano series Boris Berman, Artistic Director January 20, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
Horowitz Piano Series
pierre réach Wednesday, January 20, 2016 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall Boris Berman, Artistic Director
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827
Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “The Tempest” I. Largo — Allegro II. Adagio III. Allegretto
Robert Schumann 1810–1856
Carnaval, Op. 9 I. Preamble II. Pierrot III. Arlequin IV. Waltz V. Eusebius VI. Florestan VII. Coquette VIII. Reply IX. Butterflies X. A.S.C.H. – S.C.H.A.: Dancing Letters XI. Chiarina XII. Chopin XIII. Estrella XIV. Recognition XV. Pantalon and Colombine XVI. Allemande XVII. Confession XVIII. Promenade XIX. Pause XX. March of the Davidsbündler against the Philistines intermission
Horowitz Piano Series
Hector Berlioz 1803–1869 trans. Franz Lizst
Symphonie Fantastique, H. 48 I. Daydreams, Passions II. A Ball III. Scene in the Countryside IV. March to the Scaffold V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
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
Pierre Réach piano Pierre Réach gives concerts and master classes all over the world and is also the creator and director of several musical events, such as the Festival Piano-Pic in Bagnères de Bigorre, the Castelnaudary Festival (France), and the Vila-seca Music Festival (Spain). He is also winner of several international competitions, having won First Prize in the Olivier Messiaen Competition, First Prize in the International Ettore Pozzoli Piano Competition, and Medal at the International Arthur Rubinstein International Master Piano Competition. He received advice from Rubinstein for several years. Réach has studied with artists such as Yvonne Lefebure, Yvonne Loriod, Maria Curcio, Paul Badura-Skoda, and Alexis Weissenberg. He has performed with leading orchestras such as the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul, the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and the Orchestra of Radio France in Paris. His passion for chamber music associates him with artists such as Gary Hoffman, Gérard Poulet, Pierre Amoyal, Christoph Henkel, Jean Ferrandis, and Bruno Pasquier. His interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is known in several countries, and he has recorded several CDs. Réach is a member of the jury of many major international competitions. He is also Professor at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional of Paris and the Superior Music School of Catalonia in Barcelona, and he received the Professor Honoris Causa distinction of the Superior Conservatory of Shanghai. In January 2015, Pierre Réach was nominated for the title of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.
Notes on the Program
ludwig van beethoven Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “The Tempest” According to an often recounted myth by Anton Schindler, who gave the Shakespearean epithet to Op. 31, No. 2, when the secretary asked Beethoven about the meaning of this sonata, he implored Schindler, “Read The Tempest.” Beethoven started drafts of the “Tempest” Sonata in 1802 while escaping Viennese city life a few months before penning his famous Heiligenstadt Testament. The letter, today viewed as a defiant credo of his middle-period heroic style revealing the pains of his infirmity and deafness, was written to his brothers Carl and Johann. It was on the latter, scholars argue, that Beethoven projected antipathy for an abusive relationship with his father Johann, Sr. Regardless of musicologists’ arguments concerning the validity of Schindler’s anecdote, the conflict of Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero and his usurping brother, the island of freedom and unrealized potential, and the “solemn and strange music” (a stage direction in Act 3, scene 3) resonate with Beethoven’s personal struggles and the idiosyncratic island of recitative in this tempestuous work. On this level of myth, Prospero’s epilogue finds Schindler’s answer: Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint: now, ’tis true, I must be here confined by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands: Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, And my ending is despair, Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free. robert schumann Carnaval, Op. 9 Carnaval, which consists of short vignettes, represents a fictional intersection of friends and colleagues at a masquerade Carnival festival. Schumann obsesses over the encoding of pitches as letters, and throughout the work a musical encryption of the letters A-S-C-H (A, E-flat, C, B) connotes a wide web of meanings and allusions. A-S-C-H also stands for Schumann (Robert Alexander Schumann), and Asch is the Czech town in which Schumann’s then-fiancée Ernestine von Fricken was born. Ash Wednesday is also the first day of Lent, which concludes the bacchanalian revelry of Carnival. The work takes on an autobiographical web of meaning as well. The Preamble takes its theme from Schubert’s Trauerwalzer, D. 365, a work whose tenderness Schumann admired greatly. Schumann also evokes the music of his colleague Chopin, and passionate depictions of his fiancée (Estrella) and his future wife Clara (Chiarina). According to the composer, the juxtaposition of older Italian commedia dell’arte characters (Pierrot, Arlequin, Pantalon, and
Notes on the Program
Colombine) against Schumann’s own fictive personae Eusebius (the calm) and Florestan (the impetuous) do not seek unity, but instead purposefully evoke “different spiritual states and moods.” The potpourri of Carnaval gives us a colorful window into the various episodes of life of an artist as his hand injury forced him to transition his career towards the field of composition. hector berlioz Symphonie Fantastique Berlioz and Liszt met the day before the premiere of Symphonie Fantastique. Three years later, in 1833, Liszt wrote this transcription which unfolds a fictional yet autobiographical hallucination. From Berlioz’s 1845 program: I: Daydreams, passions “…The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted by the sickness of spirit which a famous writer has called the vagueness of passions, sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her. By a strange anomaly, the beloved image never presents itself to the artist’s mind without being associated with a musical idea… This melodic image and its model keep haunting him ceaselessly like a double idée fixe…” II: A ball “…The artist finds himself in the most diverse situations in life, in the tumult of a festive party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beautiful sights of nature, yet everywhere... the beloved image keeps haunting him and throws his spirit into confusion.”
III: Scene in the countryside “…One evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds in the distance dialoguing… He broods on his loneliness… At the end one of the shepherds resumes his ‘ranz des vaches’; the other one no longer answers. Distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence…” IV: March to the scaffold “…Convinced that his love is spurned, the artist poisons himself with opium… He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution… At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.” V: Dream of a witches’ sabbath “…He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral… The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches…” — Samuel S. Suggs
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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES
MASTER CLASSES 2015–2016
Boris Berman Artistic Director
Most master classes take place Thursdays at 10:30 am in Morse Recital Hall
Wednesdays at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
FEB 17 MAR 9
Dénes Várjon Robert Blocker
JAN 21 FEB 4 FEB 11 FEB 18 MAR 4 MAR 10 MAR 31 APR 7 APR 14
Pierre Réach Wei-Yi Yang Boris Berman Dénes Várjon Alexei Lubimov Melvin Chen Andrea Bonatta Peter Frankl Hung-Kuan Chen
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january 21 Yale in New York Preview Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Featuring YSM brass players in music from the Renaissance to Ezra Laderman Free admission
january 30 Faculty Artist Series Morse Recital Hall | Saturday | 7:30 pm Arthur Haas, harpsichord • With Daniel S. Lee, Baroque violin; Sang Joon Park, Baroque flute; and Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba Music by Rameau, Couperin, Bach, and more Free admission
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Wendy Sharp, violin, and Friends
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