robert blocker
horowitz piano series Boris Berman, Artistic Director May 11, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
Horowitz Piano Series
robert blocker Wednesday, May 11, 2016 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall Boris Berman, Artistic Director
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756–1791
Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310 I. Allegro maestoso II. Andante cantabile con espressione III. Presto
Maurice Ravel 1875–1937
Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61 I. Modéré, très franc II. Assez lent, avec une expression intense III. Modéré IV. Assez animé V. Presque lent, dans un sentiment intime VI. Vif VII. Moins vif VIII. Épilogue: Lent intermission
Horowitz Piano Series
David Lang b. 1957
Winter Piano (2014)
Hannah Lash b. 1981
Prelude (2015)
Fay Wang b. 1986
Illusory Rail (2014)
Warren Lee b. 1976
Three Novelettes (2015) I. Reflection II. Levity III. Blossom
Christopher Theofanidis b. 1967
Wake up, called the Voice (2016)
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750
Chaconne, from Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 transcribed by Ferruccio Busoni
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
A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Blocker is highly regarded internationally for his artistry as a pianist, his leadership in arts advocacy, and his contributions to music education. In 1995 he was appointed the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music and Professor of Piano at Yale University. Robert Blocker’s piano studies began at age five, and continued in adulthood with Richard Cass and Jorge Bolet. Recently he has performed with the Beijing, Shanghai, Korean, and Daejon Symphony Orchestras, the Prague and Moscow Chamber Orchestras, the Monterrey Philharmonic, and the Houston Symphony. He tours internationally in recital and chamber music, and his most recent recording is a disc of three Mozart concerti with the Biava Quartet for NAXOS. A member of the American Music Center Board of Directors, Robert Blocker has served on advisory boards for the Avery Fisher Artist Program and the Stoeger Prize at Lincoln Center. He appears regularly on national radio and television as an artist and commentator and is a consultant to educational institutions and government agencies. He edited The Robert Shaw Reader, published by the Yale University Press in 2004, now in its third printing.
Notes on the Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310 Mozart was appointed the assistant concertmaster of the Salzburg court (previously his father’s position) when he was just eighteen years old, in 1773. While the court gave Mozart a small salary, access to musicians, and some time to compose, it was clear by 1777 that the gig was too stifling, and the budding composer was proving to be too much of a pest to his employer, Archbishop von Colleredo. So, with his mother Anna Maria, Mozart set forth to Mannheim, Munich, and Paris to seek more fitting employment for his talents. Unfortunately, the trip was a calamity: Mozart exhausted his funds and his mother fell very ill. In July, 1778, while in Paris, Anna Maria died. The lowest point of this period of darkness, the passing of his mother, likely sets the tone for his Sonata No. 8, which was written that summer. Sonata No. 8 is the first of only two piano sonatas Mozart wrote in a minor key. Indeed, both outer movements are characterized by a tempestuousness and brooding seldom associated with his keyboard music. The first movement, a sonata allegro, is a tumultuous depiction of sudden loss: the pervasive dotted-rhythm theme seems to knock incessantly on the gates of heaven demanding explanation. Similarly, the final movement, a brief but overwhelming Presto, spirals into the tumult of the first movement. The sweetness of the second movement in F major seems to reflect on happier times, or perhaps depicts the mother’s voice from above comforting young Mozart in his distress. Yet this cantabile song is not a complete oasis
from the turmoil of the outer movements: a moment of angst at the movement’s center reveals a core of suffering weighing down the music’s lightness. maurice ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61 For Maurice Ravel, the waltz was not merely a ballroom dance in triple meter, but rather, the symbol of a musical era. The waltz had grown fashionable in the Viennese courts of Mozart’s time, a popularity that remained throughout the 19th century. Ravel’s title in fact references two collections of waltzes by Schubert, the 34 Valses sentimentales (1823) and 12 Valses nobles (1826). During the 19th century, the waltz evolved into a song for private or salon amusement rather than one necessarily to be danced to, though it no doubt retained its association with the apotheosis of elegance in 18th century court and aristocratic life. Ravel’s waltz, first with his magnificent and troubling orchestral La Valse in 1906, followed by the Valses nobles et sentimentales in 1911, seems to comment on the decay of this epoch. Ravel uses a medium saturated with convention to usher in a new type of music, one that resonates with the complexities, anxieties, and beauty of his own time. Throughout this approximately fifteen-minute collection of seven waltzes, angular and dissonant textures collide with dream-like dances. But Ravel’s ever-prevalent use of chromaticism colors even the most elegant dance with a sense of insecurity and unease. — Katherine Balch
Notes on the Program
Over the past few years, Yale School of Music faculty and alumni have composed contemporary character pieces — like the five works on this program — for Robert Blocker. He previously has performed similar miniatures by Martin Bresnick, Joseph Schwantner, and Ezra Laderman. In May, he will premiere Aaron Jay Kernis’ Toward the Setting Sun (Vers le soleil couchant) for the New York Philharmonic’s Biennial of New Music. david lang Winter Piano (2014) I wrote Winter Piano for Robert Blocker, to play on a concert of music by the faculty composers at the Yale School of Music. My first sketches made me feel that it was going to be a small, introspective, subdued piano work, and it reminded me of how I feel in winter – small, introspective, subdued. Eventually there will be a complete catalog of all my yearly feelings, but for now there is only winter. — David Lang hannah lash Prelude (2015) Prelude is a miniature written for Robert Blocker. I wrote this piece wanting to explore harmonic directionality, and experiment with creating a sense of both motion and repose at the same time. So the piece has a kind of metric lilt in waltz meter, but also features a repeated note motive that emerges partway through the piece, and feels very static. The harmonic life of the piece is largely based upon the tipping point between chromaticism-as-color vs. directional tonal
function. The harmonies are often directional but rarely unidirectional. — Hannah Lash fay wang Illusory Rail (2014) The sounds of trains and railways have intrigued me since I was young. I used to take twenty-hour train trips to other cities with my family, appreciating the beautiful views that slowly passed me, and falling asleep with the regular, repetitive sound of the rails. However, as I grew older and the trains became faster, we traveled more often but the views outside of the window passed faster and faster, the trips became shorter and shorter, and the rail sound became quieter and quieter. In this piece I use music to portray an illusory train as if in an impressionist or surrealist painting — irregularities within regularities, dissonance embedded in harmony, gradually changing dynamics like the trains approaching and receding, and trips of different durations and the stops in between… — Fay Wang warren lee Three Novelettes (2015) Dedicated to Robert L. Blocker, Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music at Yale University since 1995, Three Novelettes for solo piano were written in July 2015. The multi-layered voices in “Reflection” pay tribute to the multitude of ways Robert inspires those around him in his roles as artist, administrator, educator and human being; “Levity” captures the fun-loving and humorous side of him;
Notes on the Program
and “Blossom” depicts the infectious warmth he radiates and passes on. — Warren Lee christopher theofanidis Wake up, called the Voice (2016) Wake up, called the Voice is a short, fiveminute work that is a kind of fantasyprelude on the chorale tune by J.S. Bach, Wachtet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, which itself is based on a hymn by Philipp Nicolai. My earliest memory of that melody was hearing it as a young boy when my father played the Busoni choral prelude version of it, and even then, it made a wonderful and lasting impression on me for its jubilant, noble, and soaring nature — qualities found both in its more grand moments but also in its more intimate ones. My piece tries to balance those two affects in the rhapsodic elaboration of the melody. This piece is dedicated to Robert Blocker, in friendship and admiration. — Christopher Theofanidis johann sebastian bach Chaconne, from Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 Transcription, the often overlooked companion to composition, is an art all its own. When done well, it can transform, strengthen, and even reinvigorate a piece, allowing us to hear it fresh. Ferruccio Busoni’s sensitive adaptation of the legendary chaconne from Bach’s D minor solo violin Partita does just that. Busoni, a pianist-philosopher of sorts, wrote: “Every notation is, itself, the tran-
scription of an abstract idea. The instant the pen seizes it, the idea loses its original form.” Bach’s composition was the first transcription. Busoni follows suit by transforming that “idea” in acclimatizing it to the piano. For Busoni, transcriptions come in two forms: Bearbeitung — by simple definition, an “arrangement” — and Übertragung, or “adaptation.” The former reconfigures music for similar voices. The piano, a naturally decaying instrument, has more in common with plucked or struck instruments, facilitating translation between them. Adapting music originally for sustaining voices, violin included, calls for Übertragung, requiring careful alteration to achieve the same effect. Busoni scores the opening of the funereal chaconne — a series of continuous variations on a repeated chord progression — in the left hand alone, several octaves lower in actual pitch than on the violin. Taken relatively, this range on the piano is similar to the equivalent point on the violin: in its resonant middle-low tessitura. Keeping the opening progression under one hand preserves the intimate configuration of the violin’s four strings: the pianist’s single hand is the violinist’s single bow. However, Busoni does not exclusively imitate the violin. Rather, he takes full advantage of the modern piano’s polyphonic capabilities, and enhances them as only a pianist can. He doubles internal voices in octaves to draw them out of the texture, shedding light on Bach’s complex counterpoint while broadening the sonic texture. What would occupy two-and-a-half octaves on the violin is broadened to four octaves on the piano: violinist and pianist alike are stretched to full
Notes on the Program
capacity. A pianist of Busoni’s skill understood the instrument’s capabilities, and when he marks “almost trombone-like” over a solemn voice in the middle to low register, he invokes an entirely new sound, an unimaginable kind of indication in Bach’s time. Alongside practical alterations, Busoni’s Übertragung is as much modernization as transcription. The pages of his adaptation encapsulate performance practices of the post-Lisztian generation. At present, this chaconne has absorbed the aesthetic tastes and traditions of three centuries, while sounding vigorous and very much alive. – Patrick Jankowski
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OLGA KERN
HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES 2016–2017 YEFIM BRONFMAN
BORIS BERMAN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR WEDNESDAYS AT 7 : 30 PM MORSE RECITAL HALL SEP 21
BORIS BERMAN
OCT 5
WEI-YI YANG
NOV 16
HUNG-KUAN CHEN
DEC 7
YEFIM BRONFMAN
JAN 18
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FEB 8
PETER FRANKL
MAR 8
ROBERT BLOCKER
APR 5
MELVIN CHEN
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Robert Blocker, Dean
Upcoming Events
Guitar Chamber Music may 12 YSM Student Ensembles Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Chamber music featuring the guitar in a variety of ensembles Benjamin Verdery, director Free admission
Conservatory Without Walls may 13 Ellington Jazz Series Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Antoine Roney Trio, with drum prodigy Kojo Roney; plus a screening of the documentary Conservatory Without Walls Tickets $10 • Students $5
Commencement Concert may 22 YSM Special Events Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 4 pm Featuring selected performers from the Yale School of Music’s graduating class Free admission
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