Robert Blocker, Dean
horowitz piano series
Hung-Kuan Chen
Boris Berman, Artistic Director November 16, 2016• Morse Recital Hall
Yale School of Music
Hung-Kuan Chen piano November 16, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall
Robert Schumann 1810–1856
Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133 I. Im ruhigen Tempo II. Belebt, nicht zu rasch III. Lebhaft IV. Bewegt V. Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo
Schumann
Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 I. Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen II. Mäßig. Durchaus energisch III. Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten intermission
Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915
Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70
Sergei Rachmaninoff 1873–1943
Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36 (1931) I. Allegro agitato II. Non allegro — Lento III. L’istesso tempo — Allegro molto
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Artist Profile
Hung-Kuan Chen, piano Hung-Kuan Chen is one of the great personalities of the music world: enigmatic, brilliant, and versatile. He is a pianist of uncompromising individuality and a remarkably inspiring pedagogue. Born in Taipei and raised in Germany, Mr. Chen’s early studies fostered strong roots in Germanic Classicism which he tempered with the sensibility of Chinese philosophy; the result is a dynamic and imaginative artistry. He is regarded as an extraordinary interpreter of Beethoven’s music. Mr. Chen’s career was launched when he won First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Auditions which presented him in his New York debut on the Young Concert Artists Series and followed it with a second major New York concert at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. One of the most decorated pianists of his generation, Mr. Chen has won top prizes in the Arthur Rubinstein, the Busoni, and the Geza Anda international piano competitions, along with prizes at the Queen Elisabeth, Montreal, Van Cliburn, and Chopin international competitions. He is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Hung-Kuan Chen has appeared in the music capitals of Asia, Europe, and the Americas and collaborated with many major orchestras including those in Houston, Baltimore, Israel, Montréal, Pittsburgh, the Tonhalle, San Francisco, and Shanghai. He has performed with such highly esteemed conductors as Hans Graf, George Cleve, Christoph Eschenbach, Josef Silverstein, Andrew Parrett, and Sui Lan, and with colleagues including Yo-Yo Ma, Cho-Liang
Lin, Roman Totenberg, Denes Zsigmondy, Bion Tsang, Anthony Gigliotti, David Shifrin, and Laurence Lesser, and pianists Tema Blackstone and Pi-hsien Chen. Mr. Chen has served as the chair of the piano department of the Shanghai Conservatory and is the director of the International Piano Academy in Shanghai. In 2009, he was appointed to the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston. He is a visiting professor at the Yale School of Music. In 1992 Hung-Kuan Chen suffered an injury to his hand which caused neurological damage and eventually resulted in focal dystonia. Through meditation and his own research, he was able to heal. His first postaccident solo recital in March of 1998 received rave reviews, and he was described as a transformed artist. Following a concert at Jordan Hall in 2006, Richard Dyer wrote in The Boston Globe, “Hung-Kuan Chen is back in prime technical form after years of struggle following an injury, but those years have made him a different pianist, and a better one. This man plays music with uncommon understanding and the instrument with uncommon imagination.”
Program Notes
Robert Schumann Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133
robert schumann Fantasie, Op. 17
Robert Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of the Early Morning) were completed in a period of intense creative output shortly before his suicide attempt in 1854. Many of his compositions finished in this final burst of productivity are discounted as schizophrenic ramblings. His wife, Clara, wrote in her diary the day he finished the songs, “Robert has just composed five Morning Songs (Frühgesänge), completely original pieces as always, but difficult to grasp.” While some listeners may find evidence of a declining mental state in the Gesänge der Frühe, others might find a unique, introspective, and sincerely personal account. Schumann wrote to his publisher that he wished to depict the emotions and thoughts triggered by the gradual brightening of the horizon at dawn. Instead, though, of evoking a sunrise, Schumann focused on the personal perspective of experiencing and reacting to the dawn. The work is bookended by chorale-like movements in D major, peaceful and glowing, replete with irregular phrases recalling Protestant hymns. Although the textures and phrase structures might recall an older style, the harmonies are decidedly Romantic. The five movements convey numerous emotional extremes; at one moment the onlooker is reverent and tender and at another capricious and gregarious. The third movement, Lebhaft, wakens the imagined observer from the haze of the morning twilight to a shining sunrise. The final movements conclude in Plagal cadences, further steeping the work in religious connotations. —Julia Clancy
Schumann’s Fantasie in C major begins with a luscious texture upon which an impassioned melody grows. If this melody evokes a sense of lamentation or longing, it is perhaps because it was originally written in June of 1836, when the father of Clara Weick (Schumann’s wife-to-be) ordered that Schumann return to Clara the love letters she had written him. Separated from his beloved and in anguish, Schumann composed a work entitled Ruines, which became the first movement of this Fantasie. Schumann later added two movements to this first rhapsodic outburst, and dedicated the final product to Lizst in 1839. The second movement, a rondo, begins with an energetic march theme. Episodic digressions recall the emotional anguish and textural complexity of the first movement. The final movement begins with tranquil arpeggios that rise from the depths of the piano register. A gentle but somewhat contorted melody stretches out from this tiered ascent. It is as if the intensity of the preceding two movements causes the music to collapse in exhaustion. Schumann’s preface to the score perhaps explains this idiosyncratic finale: “Durch alle Töne tönet Im bunten Erdentraum Ein leiser Ton gezogen Für den, der heimlich lauschet.”
“Resounding through all the notes In Earth’s colorful dream There sounds a faint long-drawn note For the one who listens in secret.” —Katherine Balch
Program Notes
alexander scriabin Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70
“trembling, winged” dance of insects. The final bars leave us in the peaceful tranquility of the forest. There are a number of possible explanations —Julia Clancy for Alexander Scriabin’s Messiah complex: he was born on Christmas day, affected with the unusual gift of synesthesia, and sergei rachmaninoff at just over five feet tall with hands that Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 36 couldn’t stretch much more than an octave, he was the very picture of a Napoleon In the tradition of Paganini, Liszt, and complex. Like other public figures of the Chopin, Rachmaninoff made a living as a era, he believed music to be the utmost virtuoso, often performing his own compoform of knowledge, the gateway to true sitions, which highlighted his musical and reality, a transcendental world, and divinity. technical strengths. Despite the dazzling Whatever the egoistic reasons for his fasci- virtuosity required to perform the lush and nation with theosophy, mysticism, and Romantic Second Piano Sonata, the piece divine ecstasy, his music communicates met a cool and underwhelmed reception deeply spiritual experiences. Scriabin’s tenth when Rachmaninoff gave the work its preand final piano sonata was completed not miere in Moscow in December 1915. Music long before his death in 1915. Nicknamed critics and enthusiasts alike found the work the “Insect Sonata,” the work crawls with difficult to enjoy, complaining that it was the buzzing trills of insects, creatures he overly intellectual, reserved, detached, and believed could manifest human emotion. heavy handed. Rachmaninoff heeded the Scriabin himself described it as a “sonata criticism and withdrew the work from his of insects … born from the sun; they are performance docket. Still, Rachmaninoff’s the sun’s kisses … How unified worldinterest in the work endured. Believing that understanding is when you look at things he’d found the source of its problems, the this way!” Whereas some of his other overly dense textures and superfluous tansonatas were tinged with the programgents, he set out in 1931 to revise the work. maticism of the afterlife (the “Black Mass” The result of this revision, the version to and “White Mass” sonatas), the Tenth be performed tonight, reduced the original Sonata’s spirituality is found in its connec- by about twenty-five percent. Other early tion with the natural world. Trills grow 20th century piano luminaries Horowitz into multiple clusters, evoking “blinding and Van Cliburn found the composer’s light, as if the sun had come close,” acrevision too severe and created their own cording to the composer. Though not in editions that combined elements of the the traditional three-movement structure composer’s original and 1931 revision. This we might expect from a sonata, the Tenth 1931 revision maintains the work’s threeSonata, in one movement, roughly follows movement, fast-slow-fast structure. All sonata form. The third and final section of the movements are related thematically of the work compresses all of the piece’s and performed with only one significant primary materials in an infernal, break — between the first and second
Program Notes
movements. The result is a monumental arc from an impetuous and frantic B-flat minor first movement to a triumphant B-flat major third movement. Scriabin’s ecstatic, perhaps eccentric mysticism undoubtedly inspired Rachmaninoff, who converted these ingredients into his own Slavic melancholy and pensiveness. —Julia Clancy
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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES Boris Berman Artistic Director Wednesdays at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
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As of November 8, 2016
NOV 17
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DEC 15
Robert MacDonald (Juilliard School)
Upcoming Events Jordan Kuspa, composition
november 17 Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Composer Jordan Kuspa presents a DMA recital featuring performances of his music by Sandbox Percussion and Quartet Metadata Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission
Yongyan Hu, guest conductor
november 18 Yale Philharmonia Yongyan Hu leads a concert that pays tribute to longtime Yale Philharmonia conductor Otto-Werner Mueller; featuring music by Brahms and Bruckner Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Yale Faculty/Staff $8 Students $5
Brass of Yale Preview Concert
november 29 Yale in New York The Yale School of Music brass faculty, students, and alumni perform music from the German Renaissance and Gunther Schuller’s Magical Trumpets, among other works Preview of a Dec. 4 concert at Carnegie Hall
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Lunchtime Chamber Music
november 30 Student Performances YSM students perform a lunchtime chamber music concert Wendy Sharp, director Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm free admission
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Vista: Chamber Music
november 19 ISM Ensembles The Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of Music present Salomone Rossi: Baroque Music from Jewish Mantova Nicholas McGegan, conductor and harpsichord Morse Recital Hall | Saturday | 7:30 pm free admission
december 1 Student Performances Student ensembles, under the direction of faculty violinist Wendy Sharp, perform and provide insight into the repertoire Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission
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If you do not intend to save your program, please recycle it in the baskets at the exit doors. Robert Blocker, Dean