Boris Berman, September 21, 2016

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Boris Berman

Boris Berman, Artistic Director September 21, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Yale School of Music

Boris Berman September 21, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Claude Debussy 1862—1918

24 Préludes Premier Livre, L. 117 Danseuses de Delphes (Dancers of Delphi) Voiles (Veils, or Sails) Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain) Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir (The Sounds and Fragrances Swirl Through the Evening Air) Les collines d’Anacapri (The Hills of Anacapri) Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the Snow) Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Has Seen) La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) La sérénade interrompue (Interrupted Serenade) La Cathédrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral) La danse de Puck (Puck’s Dance) Minstrels

intermission

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.

Horowitz Piano Series

Deuxième Livre, L. 123

Brouillards (Mists) Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves) La Puerta del Vino (The Wine Gate) “Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses” (“Fairies are Exquisite Dancers”) Bruyères (Heather) Général Lavine—eccentric La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (The Terrace of Moonlit Audiences) Ondine Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C. Canope (Canopic Jar) Les tierces alternées (Alternating Thirds) Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)

Artist Profile

Boris Berman, piano Well known to the audiences of over fifty countries on six continents, Professor Berman 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 Award nominee, he was the first pianist to record the complete solo works of Prokofiev.

Other acclaimed releases include all of Alexander Scriabin’s piano sonatas and a recital of Shostakovich’s piano works, for which he received the Edison Classic Award (the Dutch equivalent of the Grammy). He also recorded three Prokofiev concertos with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Neeme Järvi conducting, as well as works

by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schumann, Brahms, Franck, Debussy, Stravinsky, Janáček, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Joplin, and Cage.

In 1984, Professor Berman joined the Yale School of Music faculty, where he is Professor in the Practice of Piano, coordinator of the piano department, and artistic director of the Horowitz Piano Series. He was the founding director of the Yale Summer Piano Institute and the International Summer Piano Institute in Hong Kong. He also gives master classes throughout the world and frequently serves as a juror at international competitions. In 2005, he was given the title of Honorary Professor of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and in 2013, a Honorary Professor of Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen.

In 2000, Yale University Press published Professor Berman’s Notes from the Pianist’s Bench, which has been translated into several languages. In 2008, the same publisher released his book Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer.

He is the editor of the new critical edition of Piano Sonatas by Prokofiev (Shanghai Music Publishing House). In 2016–17, Boris Berman is performing and teaching in Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Holland, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Russia, and the USA.

Program Notes

Claude debussy 24 Préludes Premier Livre (First Book), L. 117 Danseuses de Delphes (Dancers of Delphi) lent et grave

This Prelude was inspired by the top of a Greek pillar, found in the Louvre, on which three dancing Bacchantes are sculpted.

Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the Snow) triste et lent

The source of this title has not been traced.

Performance indications in the score direct the pianist to create a sound picture of a “sad and icy landscape” and to play the expressive melody close to the end of the Prelude “as a tender and sad regret.”

Voiles (Veils, or Sails)

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Has Seen)

modéré

animé et tumultueux

It is possible that Voiles was inspired by the shimmering long silk veils of Loie Fuller, the American dancer who was famous in Paris at the turn of the century and who was well known to Debussy.

Inspiration for this Prelude came from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Garden of Paradise. Zephyr, the West Wind, “watched the mighty river fall from the rocks in clouds of spray and fly towards the clouds to meet the rainbow... [He] raised a storm that splintered the lofty trees to shavings.”

Le vent dans la plaine (The Wind on the Plain) animé

The title is a line by the 18th century French poet Charles-Simon Favart. It was quoted as an epigraph to Paul Verlaine’s poem C’est l’extase langoureuse, which Debussy set to music in 1887.

Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir (The Sounds and Fragrances Swirl Through the Evening Air)

La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) très calme et doucement expressif

The title is taken from the poem by Leconte de Lisle (set to music by Debussy around 1882) and was inspired by Robert Burns’ Lassie with the Lint-white Locks.

La sérénade interrompue (Interrupted Serenade)

modéré

modérément animé

The title quotes the third line of Charles Baudelaire’s poem Harmonie du soir, which Debussy set to music in 1887.

The Spanish flavor of this Prelude is enhanced by allusions to “El Albaicín” from Isaac Albeniz’s Iberia.

Les collines d’Anacapri (The Hills of Anacapri) très modéré

La Cathédrale engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral)

This title references the village on the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples. According to some accounts, a wine-bottle label served as inspiration.

This Prelude was inspired by the Celtic legend of the submerged city of Ys, off the coast of Brittany. On occasion, when

profondément calme

Program Notes

the sea is transparent, out of the waves rises the cathedral of Ys, its bells tolling, its priests intoning, before the cathedral slowly returns to the depths of the sea.

La danse de Puck (Puck’s Dance)

La Puerta del Vino (The Wine Gate) mouvement de habanera

La Puerta del Vino was inspired by a postcard sent, supposedly, by Manuel de Falla, which depicted the old gate of the great Moorish palace of Alhambra, in Granada.

capricieux et léger

Puck is a character in Shakespeare’s A “Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses” Midsummer Night’s Dream. Debussy might (“Fairies are Exquisite Dancers”) have been familiar with the 1908 edition rapide et léger illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

The title is a quotation from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, which was Minstrels published with illustrations by Arthur modéré Rackham.

This title refers to American clowns in blackface whom Debussy heard in the prom- Bruyères (Heather) enade of Eastbourne in the south of England calme in the summer of 1905.

The source of this title is unknown. It seems to serve as a “Scottish” counterpart to the First Book’s La fille aux cheveux de lin.

Deuxième Livre (Second Book), L. 123 Général Lavine—eccentric Brouillards (Mists) dans le style et le mouvement d’un modéré

The source of this title has not been traced.

Some writers have suggested connections between this Prelude and paintings by James Whistler or Joseph Turner, whom Debussy called “the finest creator of mystery in the whole art.”

Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves) lent et mélancolique

cakewalk

Edward Lavine was a famous American clown who performed at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. He was part juggler, part clown, and both tramp and soldier, dressed in a bizarre costume.

La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (The Terrace of Moonlit Audiences) lent

This phrase has been used by many poets, The title is taken from an article from the newspaper Le Temps by its correspondent including in the titles of books of poems

by Georges Turpin and by one of Debussy’s in India, René Puaux. Describing the 1911 coronation of George V, he wrote about lifelong friends, Gabriel Mourey. “the hall of victory, the hall of pleasure, the garden of the sultanas, the terrace for moonlit audiences.”

Program Notes

Ondine scherzando

This portrait of a water nymph was probably inspired by Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s book of the same title, which was illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C. grave

Samuel Pickwick Esquire is a character in Charles Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The abbreviation stands for “Perpetual President—Member Pickwick Club.”

Canope (Canopic Jar) très calme et doucement triste

The title was inspired by an Egyptian funerary urn, the lid of which Debussy kept on his work table.

Les tierces alternées (Alternating Thirds) modérément animé

This is the lone, non-descriptive title among the Preludes. It anticipates Debussy’s next major work for the piano, his Twelve Etudes.

Feux d’artifice (Fireworks) modérément animé

The quotation of La Marseillaise at the end of the piece suggests it to be a depiction of Bastille Day celebrations (July 14).

— Boris Berman Sources: Debussy, Claude. Preludes, Editions de Roy Howat et Claude Helffer, 2004, Editions Durand, Paris.

Roberts, Paul, Images: The Piano Music of Claude

Debussy, 2004, Amadeus Press.

Thompson, Oscar, Debussy: Man and Artist, 2007, Dover, New York, New York.

In 1909, the year that Debussy began composing his first book of Preludes, his biographer Louis Laloy wrote: “Debussy received his most profitable lessons from poets and painters, not from musicians.” At that time, the development of free verse in poetry and the disappearance of subjects and models from painting practices informed Debussy’s concept of musical form and sonority. Living in Paris, the epicenter of the avant-garde at the turn of the century, Debussy could seize on trends as quickly as they were established.

The titles of some of his previous works for piano­—Estampes, Arabesques, Images— reflect his close kinship with the visual arts. By the time he embarked on his first book of Preludes, he had written very little in the way of “traditional forms.” A string quartet and a violin sonata were some of the only such pieces published; neither a symphony nor a piano sonata existed. Debussy despised unoriginality, saying, “I would rather devote myself to cultivating pineapples,” than to repeat what had already been mastered. Experimentation with forms, titles, and extramusical associations was one way in which Debussy endeavored to be novel.

The prelude is by no means a rigid form, but prelude collections—collections of 24 preludes, specifically—come with expectations. Before Debussy, many composers wrote collections of 24 keyboard preludes, including Bach, Chopin, Couperin, and Rameau. Rachmaninoff was writing his 24 preludes around the same time that Debussy was composing his. Kabalevsky and Shostakovich would follow suit decades

Program Notes

later. What would Debussy do in his two books of Preludes that hadn’t already been mastered? To start, Debussy’s 24 Preludes were not organized by key. Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues (in two books of 24) famously cycled through all major and minor keys organized by semitone. Chopin’s cycled through all keys and were organized by the circle of fifths. Debussy not only ignored the practice of cycling through the different keys, his tonal language itself broke with musical tradition. The degree to which he used modes, folk music, octatonicism, and whole-tone schemes was not only groundbreaking within the lineage of prelude collections, it was innovative, musically.

Extra-musical titles were nothing new when Debussy started writing his Preludes— Liszt and Schumann both used them generously in their piano miniatures—but his placement of these programmatic titles was quite unusual. Each prelude’s title is given at the end of the piece, rather than at the beginning, where one would expect a title to sit. The performance indications, written beneath the tempo markings, almost seem more important. Indeed, the pieces’ titles, being all but hidden, are presented as reflections rather than declarations. In doing this, Debussy calls on performer and listener to experience each piece before understanding its inspiration.

With his 24 Preludes, Debussy certainly advanced piano techniques, experimenting with harmonic possibilities and pedaling effects. Despite the copious virtuosic piano writing of his predecessors, he was able to identify nuances of expression that had

theretofore been unexplored. Whereas the charm of Liszt is often muscularity, the charm of Debussy is finesse. The Preludes allude rather than declare; they seduce but do not coerce. With them, he didn’t invent a new color, per se, but instead illuminated new shades that fall between existing hues.

— Julia Clancy

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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES

Boris Berman Artistic Director

MASTER CLASSES

SEP 29

Boris Berman

OCT 6

Wei-Yi Yang

OCT 20

Hung-Kuan Chen

OCT 27

Melvin Chen

NOV 17

Peter Frankl

DEC 15

Robert MacDonald (Juilliard School)

Most master classes take place Thursdays at 10:30 am in Morse Recital Hall

Wednesdays at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES

SEP 21

BORIS BERMAN Debussy: 24 Preludes

OCT 05

WEI-YI YANG

NOV 16

HUNG-KUAN CHEN

DEC 07

2016–2017

Ravel’s Miroirs and more OLGA KERN

Schumann, Scriabin, and more

YEFIM BRONFMAN

Stravinsky’s Petrushka and more

DEC *PROKOFIEV AT 125 students perform the composer’s 14 YSM ballet music; Boris Berman, host JAN 18 FEB 08 MAR 08 APR 05

OLGA KERN

“Sheer talent does not come more transparently.” –Gramophone

PETER FRANKL

With Janna Baty, mezzo-soprano; Randall Scarlata, baritone

ROBERT BLOCKER Beethoven, Mozart, and more

MELVIN CHEN

All-French program including Chausson Concerto, Op. 21

YEFIM BRONFMAN

BORIS BERMAN Artistic Director WEDNESDAYS AT 7 : 30 PM Morse Recital Hall

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Robert Blocker, Dean

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