Wei-Yi Yang, piano, October 5, 2016

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Wei-Yi Yang

Boris Berman, Artistic Director October 5, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Yale School of Music

Wei-Yi Yang October 5, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Maurice Ravel 1875–1937

Jeux d’eau, M. 30 Miroirs, M. 43 I. Noctuelles (Night Moths) II. Oiseaux tristes (Sad Birds) III. Une barque sur l’océan (A Boat on the Ocean) IV. Alborada del gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester) V. La vallée des cloches (The Valley of Bells) intermission

Frédéric Chopin 1810–1849

Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48, No. 2 Nocturne in F-sharp major, Op. 15, No. 2 Trois nouvelles études, B. 130 I. Andantino in F minor II. Allegretto in A-flat major III. Allegretto in D-flat major

Sergei Rachmaninoff 1873–1943

“Lilacs” from 12 Romances, Op. 21 “Daisies” from 6 Romances, Op. 38 Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 33, No. 5 Prélude in E-flat major, Op. 23, No. 6.

Enrique Granados 1867–1916

Goyescas, Op. 11 Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Complaints, or the Maiden and the Nightingale) Los Requiebros (The Compliments)

Artist Profile

Wei-Yi Yang, piano Pianist Wei-Yi Yang has received worldwide acclaim for his captivating performances and imaginative programming. A gold medal winner at the San Antonio International Piano Competition, he has performed at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and across America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Most recently, he was praised by The New York Times for his “sensational” performance as the piano soloist in a presentation of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie at Carnegie Hall.

with English actress Miriam Margolyes as part of the “Dickens’ Women” world tour; lecture/recitals on the confluence of Czech music and literature; and multimedia performances of Granados’ monumental piano suite Goyescas with projections of Goya’s etchings. Mr. Yang has worked with several composers, including Jonathan Cole, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, and George Crumb, to prepare their works for premieres and recordings.

Born in Taiwan of Chinese and Japanese heritage, Mr. Yang studied first in the United Kingdom, and then in America with renowned Russian pianists Arkady Aronov at the Manhattan School of Music and Wei-Yi Yang’s performances have been featured on NPR, PBS, ARTE (Association Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music.

Mr. Yang has also worked with eminent Relative à la Télévision Européenne), the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), pianists Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Vera Gornostaeva, Hans Graf, Byron Janis, and on recordings by Genuin, Ovation, Lilian Kallir, and Murray Perahia. He is a Albany Records, Renegade Classics, and founding member of the Soyulla Ensemble, the Holland-America Music Society. Mr. Yang is a frequent guest artist at the festi- which received the prestigious McKnight vals of Novi Sad, Serbia; Monterrey, Mexico; Fellowship and recently made its debut at Konstanz, Germany; Kotor, Montenegro; Alice Tully Hall and toured Korea.

La Jolla and Napa, California; and Norfolk, In demand as a dedicated teacher, Mr. Yang Connecticut. has presented master classes and perA dynamic chamber musician with a diverse formances in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, repertoire, Mr. Yang has collaborated with Germany, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Hong many distinguished musicians, including Kong, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Serbia, and the Alexander, Brentano, Cassatt, Pacifica, Montenegro, among other countries. He and Tokyo string quartets; mezzo-soprano has adjudicated the Isidor Bajic Piano Frederica von Stade; soprano Dawn Upshaw; Memorial Competition, the San Antonio clarinetists Richard Stoltzman and David International Piano Competition, and the Shifrin; violists Ettore Causa, Roberto Díaz, Concert Artists Guild auditions. In 2004, and Roger Tapping; cellist Clive Greensmith, he received his doctorate from Yale School and violinist Axel Strauss, among numer- of Music, where he joined the faculty in 2005 and serves as associate professor of ous others. piano, chair of the DMA committee, and a Jonathan Edwards Fellow.

Mr. Yang has curated inventive interdisciplinary projects, including a collaboration 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.

Program Notes

Maurice Ravel Jeux d’eau, M. 30 Miroirs, M. 43

worldview and social circle while his influence and reputation grew.

In 1902, 27-year-old Maurice Ravel was working diligently and determinedly to make a name for himself. Having been dismissed from his piano studies at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1895 following prolonged tensions with the conservative faculty, Ravel returned to the school in 1897 as a composition student, working under the tutelage of Gabriel Fauré. It was over the next few years that Ravel’s mature musical style and personality would emerge, thanks in large part to Fauré’s guidance and understanding. However, while his Pavane pour une infante défunte met with early success upon its completion in 1899, Ravel made numerous attempts, unsuccessfully, to win the Prix de Rome and in 1900 was once again expelled from the Conservatoire.

frédéric chopin Nocturne in F-sharp minor, Op. 48, No. 2 Nocturne in F-sharp major, Op. 15, No. 2 Trois nouvelles études, B. 130

The three selections by Frédéric Chopin in this performance frame the decade of the 1830s, a period that began with the Polish pianist-composer’s first ventures onto the European concert stage at age 19 and ended with the composer’s health in such a deteriorated state that his musical activities were largely curtailed. The Nocturnes, Op. 15 (1830-1833), written while Chopin was abroad in the midst of and just after Poland’s November Uprising, were completed as the pianist was piquing the interest of major musical figures in Vienna and Paris. The composer’s Trois nouvelle études, B. 130 (1839-40), completed for Jeux d’eau (1901) and Miroirs (1904-1905) inclusion in a book on piano technique, on were composed during this turbulent time, the other hand, came at a low point in which marked an important transition for terms of Chopin’s creative and physical Ravel, from youth and obscurity to matu- well-being, after he had settled into an rity and recognition. The two pieces also unstable living situation with author George reveal the composer’s allegiances and ins- Sand. And the Nocturnes, Op. 48, completed pirations. Jeux d’eau (Water Games) is a in 1841, represent a period in which the character piece dedicated to Fauré and likely composer had gained a stellar reputation modeled after a similar work by Liszt, while but was plagued by self-doubt and the Miroirs is a five-movement suite with each burden of perfectionism, while at the same section dedicated to a fellow member of time his health and relationship with Sand Les Apaches, the group of “ruffians” with continued to deteriorate. Across these three whom Ravel began to associate around selections, and in spite of the very different 1902. Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, a mem- biographical periods they mark, Chopin’s ber of Les Apaches who was a close friend brilliantly idiomatic pianistic writing is of Ravel’s and the first performer of both wholly evident. of these works, furthered the composer’s cultural education, expanding Ravel’s

Program Notes

sergei rachmaninoff “Lilacs” from 12 Romances, Op. 21 “Daisies” from 6 Romances, Op. 38 Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 33, No. 5 Prélude in E-flat major, Op. 23, No. 6.

in texture, harmonic focus, and in other ways throughout the piece.

Rachmaninoff ’s Études-tableaux, Op. 33 were composed during a summer of relaxation and composition at the Ivanovka The works of Sergei Rachmaninoff in to- estate in the Russian countryside. The night’s program frame a similar period of estate, located nearly 400 miles south and a bit more than a decade in the composer’s east of Moscow, held a significance for life. The outermost of these selections, tran- Rachmaninoff that is difficult to overstate. scriptions of “Lilacs” from his 12 Romances, From his first visit in 1890, when the estate Op. 21 (1900-1902) and “Daisies” from 6 belonged to the family of a fellow student Romances, Op. 38 (1916), reveal the develop- at the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff ment and breadth of emotional expression in was drawn to the area as a place in which Rachmaninoff ’s piano writing even though he could clarify and refine his musical he had originally designed the music to thoughts. In 1902, on the occasion of his accompany a vocalist. Compositions around marriage, Rachmaninoff and his bride, the turn of the 20th century hold a sigNatalia, received one of the homes on the nificant place in Rachmaninoff ’s story; in estate as a wedding gift. In 1911, at the time the last few years of the 1800s, the composer, he composed his Op. 33, Rachmaninoff still in his mid-20s, had abruptly given was still able to freely enjoy holidays in up composing in favor of focusing on his the country. However, Ivanovka would be burgeoning career as a conductor. His 12 pillaged and eventually destroyed in 1917 Romances, Op. 21 and other works of the during the Russian Revolution. same period were among the first pieces that Rachmaninoff completed when he returned to composing, and these works enrique granados may have helped to solidify the future Goyescas, Op. 11 trajectory of his career.

1911 was also a critical year in the life and Following Op. 21, Rachmaninoff ’s 10 work of Enrique Granados. While he was Preludes, Op. 23, composed between 1901 a few years older than Rachmaninoff, the and 1903, see the composer rebuilding his Catalan pianist-composer did not see such confidence and further developing his style. immediate international success, and in While hints of the bombastic Piano Concerto the early 1900s his career was still generally No. 1, Op. 1 (1890-91) remain, Rachman- limited to his native Spain. When he began inoff was at the time more likely to trim work on Goyescas, Op. 11 in 1909, however, down his orchestrations and temper his Granados began a process that would works with lyricism and subtlety. The sixth cement his reputation around the world. of the Op. 23 preludes, in E-flat major, Goyescas, which Granados eventually provides a study in the art of variation, completed in 1911, drew inspiration from centering on a primary theme that is altered a set of cartoons by painter Francisco Goya.

Program Notes

The work is a suite of six vignettes, separated by Granados into two books which received separate premieres. The pieces, which are characterized throughout as intensely colorful and virtuosic, garnered immediate acclaim. They were so successful, in fact, that Granados decided to adapt them into a longer operatic work.

Following the historic American premiere of the opera, also titled Goyescas, Granados suffered tragic misfortune when his boat back to Spain was hit by a torpedo and the composer drowned in the Atlantic, cutting short an artistic life and career that was just beginning to earn recognition. —Nathan Reiff

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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES

Boris Berman Artistic Director

MASTER CLASSES

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

Upcoming Events Ravel, Nielsen, Sibelius & Rimsky-Korsakov october 14 Yale Philharmonia Ravel: Alborada del gracioso; Nielsen: Concerto for Flute with Joanna Wu; Sibelius: Symphony No. 7; Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol; Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door

Ezra Ladermans’ Voices october 15 Faculty Artist Series

Ezra Laderman’s last completed work, Voices, which is based on Dante’s Inferno, is given its world premiere featuring the Argus Quartet, former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, soprano Nola Richardson, tenor Gene Stenger, and baritone Isaac Bray Morse Recital Hall | Saturday | 7:30 pm free admission

Wendy Sharp, violin october 16 Faculty Artist Series

Faculty violinist Wendy Sharp performs works by Bach, Arthur Foote, YSM alumnus Kevin Puts, and YSM faculty composer Hannah Lash, with pianist Joel Wizansky Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 3 pm free admission

Works by Martin Bresnick october 18 Faculty Artist Series

In honor of School of Music faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s 70th birthday, the Yale Percussion Group, YSM faculty guitarist Benjamin Verdery, YSM alumnus Elly Toyoda, and pianist Lisa Moore perform Bresnick’s Joachin is Dreaming, Bird as Prophet, Ishi’s Song, Caprichos Enfaticos, and Images of Goya Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm free admission

Prism Saxophone Quartet october 25 Oneppo Chamber Music Series

The Prism Saxophone Quartet performs works by Bach, Gershwin, Schumann, and Martin Bresnick Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $26 • Students $13

Peter Frankl, Ole Akahoshi & Ransom Wilson, october 26 Faculty Artist Series

Pianist Peter Frankl, cellist Ole Akahoshi, and flutist Ransom Wilson—all members of the School’s faculty—perform a program of works

by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, and Schubert Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm free admission

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Robert Blocker, Dean