Robert Blocker, Dean
horowitz piano series
Prokofiev at 125 featuring piano transcriptions of the composer’s ballets
Boris Berman, Artistic Director December 14, 2016 • Wednesday at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
Yale School of Music
Prokofiev at 125 Featuring piano transcriptions of the composer’s ballets December 14, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall • Boris Berman, host
The Prodigal Son, Op. 46 (excerpts from the ballet) New York City Ballet, choreography by George Balanchine, décor by Georges Rouault, 1978 production video clip © WNET
Mikhail Baryshnikov The Prodigal Son Shaun O’Brien The Father Karin von Aroldingen The Siren
Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 52 I. Intermezzo II. Rondo III. Etude Tom Hicks, piano On the Dnieper (Sur le Borysthene), Op. 51 (excerpts from the ballet) American Ballet Theater, choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, 2009 production video clip courtesy of the American Ballet Theatre
Veronika Part Natalia Marcelo Gomes Sergei Paloma Herrera Olga David Hallberg Olga’s Fiancé
Suite from On the Dnieper arr. Vyacheslav Gryaznov I. Prelude II. Mime Scene III. Betrothal IV. Bridegroom’s Dance V. Bride’s Dance VI. Variation of Principal Male Dancer and Finale Vyacheslav Gryaznov, piano intermission As a courtesy to the performers and audience, please silence all electronic devices.
Horowitz Piano Series
Cinderella, Op. 87 (excerpts from the ballet) The Bolshoi Theater, choreography by Rostislav Zakharov, Yuri Feier, conductor, 1961 production video clip © Kultur International Films
Raisa Struchkova Cinderella Gennadi Lediakh Prince Ekaterina Maksimova Spring Fairy
Ten Pieces from Cinderella, Op. 97 I. Spring Fairy II. Summer Fairy V. Grasshoppers and Dragonflies III. Autumn Fairy IV. Winter Fairy Benjamin Krasner, piano Six Pieces from Cinderella, Op. 102 I. Waltz: Cinderella and the Prince III. Quarrel IV. Waltz: Cinderella Goes to the Ball Sophiko Simsive, piano Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (excerpts from the ballet) The Bolshoi Theater, a historical performance with choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky, and décor by Leo Arnstam and Leonid Lavrovsky; Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor, 1954 production video clip © Video Artists International
Galina Ulanova Juliet Yuri Zhdanov Romeo
Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75 II. Scene (Street Awakens) III. Minuet VII. Friar Laurence IX. Dance of the Girls with Lilies VIII. Mercutio Nansong Huang, piano IV. X. VI.
Young Juliet Romeo and Juliet Before Parting Montagues and Capulets
Sun-A Park, piano Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
Artist Profiles
Boris Berman Well known to the audiences of more than 50 countries on six continents, Professor Berman regularly appears with leading orchestras, on major recital series, and at 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 has 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 was made an honorary professor at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen.
In 2000, the 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 United States. Tom Hicks Tom Hicks is a 23-year-old pianist from Guernsey. He has been awarded first prize at several competitions including the Wales International Piano Festival and has played in the finals of the New York International and Ferruccio Busoni International competitions. After lessons in Guernsey with Mervyn Grand, he gained a place at Chetham’s School of Music to study with Murray McLachlan, with whom he continued on a joint course at the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University. Tom is now a master’s degree candidate at Yale School of Music where he studies with Boris Berman. He also plays regularly for other musicians including Christopher Elton, Peter Frankl, Stephen Hough, and John Lill. Tom is undertaking a cycle of the Rachmaninoff concertos, for the second time, with Stockport Symphony Orchestra. A versatile artist, he is also active as a chamber musician, conductor, and the
Artist Profiles
founder of the Guernsey-based modern music ensemble Terra Nova. Vyacheslav Gryaznov Vyacheslav Gryaznov, born in YuzhnoSakhalinsk, Russia, graduated from the Central Music School in Moscow where he studied with Manana Kandelaki. He continued his undergraduate and graduate studies at the Moscow Conservatory as a student of Yuri Slesarev, graduating with honors, and is now a faculty member of the conservatory’s piano department. In 2016-2017 Gryaznov will perform at the Berliner Philharmonie and Carnegie Hall as winner of the 2016 New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut Audition. Other upcoming concerts include performances with the Bay Area Steinway Society of San Jose, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, and engagements in Russia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Austria, and France. Later this year, Gryaznov will record a CD for the Steinway & Sons label. Gryaznov is an author of more than 30 concert arrangements and transcriptions. His works have been performed by Boris Berezovsky, Alexander Ghindin, Nikita Mndoyants, Tomoharu Ushida, the Moscow State Chamber Choir, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and many other musicians and collectives. He is the Artist Diploma student at Yale School of Music studying with Professor Boris Berman.
Benjamin Krasner Benjamin Krasner, a 16-year-old concert pianist, was born into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in Malibu, California. After starting his college education at 12, Benjamin graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a double major in piano performance and economics. He studied with Lubov Sorochkina for eight years until he started his university education with Dmitry Rachmanov. Currently, Benjamin is pursuing a master’s degree in piano performance at the Yale School of Music. He studies with professors Boris Berman and Wei-Yi Yang. At just 16 years old, Benjamin has established himself as an emergent performing artist. He has won numerous interstate and international competitions and awards and has participated in multiple international festivals all over the globe. At 14, he gave his debut performance with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. Sophiko Simsive Hailed as “an exeptional musician of rare talent who promises to become one of the leading pianists of her generation” by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Georgian-born Sophiko Simsive began her piano studies at the age of 3. In 2007, Sophiko was admitted to the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam where she studied with Mila Baslavskaya as the school’s youngest student. Sophiko has won numerous awards and accolades including the first prize at the Princess Christina Concours in the
Artist Profiles
Netherlands, the Yamaha Piano Competition in Amsterdam, the audience first prize and obligatory work prize at the Young Pianist Foundation Competition, first prize at the Geertruidenberg Klassiek, and most recently the GrachtenfestivalPrijs of the Netherlands where she will perform as artist-in-residence during the 2017 Grachtenfestival. In 2013, Sophiko was invited to the Verbier International Music Festival and in 2015 made her debut at Carnegie Hall with cellist Kian Soltani. At the Yale School of Music she is pursuing a Master of Music degree with Professor Boris Berman. Nansong Huang Born in China in 1993, Nansong started to play the piano when he was 4 years old. He recently graduated from the renowned Columbia-Juilliard exchange program with degrees in political science and music, and he started pursuing a master of music degree at the Yale School of Music in fall 2016. Nansong has won top prizes in many piano competitions, including first prize at the Minnesota International E-Competition Juniors, first prize and best performance of a Tchaikovsky piece at the sixth International Tchaikovsky Competition for young musicians (South Korea), and a Special Jury Prize and Special Audience Prize for a performance at the fourth Sendai International Music Competition, (Japan). He has collaborated with more than 20 orchestras around the world including the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, and
Russian Symphony Orchestra. He is also an avid chamber musician and has performed chamber music at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Peter Jay Sharp Hall, and many other celebrated venues. He studies with Professor Boris Berman and Professor Wei-Yi Yang. Sun-A Park Hailed as “incredibleâ€? by the great pianist Martha Argerich, Sun-A Park has received international recognition from several competitions, having won first prize at the 61st Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition (New York) and top prizes at the fifth International Sendai Music Competition (Sendai, 2013), the 58th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition (Bolzano, 2011), and the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition (Salt Lake City). In recent seasons, Ms. Park has made appearances at the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation (New York), Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), Het Concertgebouw, (the Netherlands), and Slovak Philharmonic Hall (Slovakia) and was a featured soloist with the Yale Philharmonia and Sendai City Orchestra (Japan). Additional concerto engagements have included performances with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, San Marino Republic Orchestra, Orchester Haydn (Italy), Hannover Hochschulorchester (Germany), and Symphonic Orchestra of Castilla y LeĂłn (Spain). Ms. Park completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the Juilliard School with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Matti Raekallio.
Artist Profiles · Notes on the Program
In 2014, Ms. Park completed the prestigious Soloklasse Programm in Hannover, Germany, with Bernd Goetzke. She currently studies with Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music. Her recording of Clementi sonatas will be released on the Naxos label. sergei prokofiev (1891—1953) The Prodigal Son, Op. 46 Unlike Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella, The Prodigal Son, Op. 46, dates from Prokofiev’s period of exile from the Soviet Union. The genesis of the work was a commission from the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, offered in the latter part of 1928. Diaghilev and Prokofiev had at that time already enjoyed a long partnership of many fruitful collaborations (save for their first: Ala i Lolli was abandoned and reworked into the Scythian Suite of 1914-15). Both men were Russians with extensive experience working abroad, and Diaghilev urged Prokofiev to explore Soviet subjects and collaborators in each of their projects, and The Prodigal Son makes use of a setting of the Biblical parable by Boris Kochno. The ballet traces the titular character’s defiance and recalcitrance as he leaves his father’s home for a debauched life abroad, eventually experiencing remorse and returning in search of forgiveness. The piece was premiered in Paris in May 1929, and Prokofiev drew on some of its material for his Fourth Symphony in the following year. The Prodigal Son would also be Prokofiev’s last project with Diaghilev, as the latter died in August 1929. Nonetheless, Diaghilev’s inspiration and the fruits that these collaborations bore continued to encourage Prokofiev in the years to follow, not only
in his later ballet works but in his sense of affinity for his Russian homeland, as well.
On the Dnieper (Sur le Borysthene) Op. 51 Following The Prodigal Son, Prokofiev’s next ballet project was On the Dnieper, Op. 51, of 1930. Though Diaghilev had died several months before, the work is nonetheless deeply connected and indebted to the impresario. On the Dnieper was a commission by Serge Lifar, head of ballet at the Paris Opéra, with the intention that it would be dedicated in Diaghilev’s memory. Prokofiev’s first ballet project separate from the Ballets Russes, On the Dnieper seemed poised for success thanks to the composer’s growing reputation and a lavish production. Unfortunately, the reality was markedly different. Unlike Prokofiev’s first successful ballet, The Tale of the Buffoon of 1915-21, On the Dnieper was largely devoid of plot, though its title evokes the Russian Dnieper River and connotes further ties to Prokofiev’s homeland. At the 1932 premiere, the ballet was met with a poor response. Ultimately, Lifar derided the work, refusing to program it again and reneging on a portion of the fee that he owed Prokofiev for the composition. Eventually, the battles over the compensation were elevated to a lawsuit, and though Prokofiev won, On the Dnieper would not become one of the highlights of his career. Still, the composer’s early experiences with Diaghilev and Lifar seem to have benefited his later ballets, including Romeo and Juliet, which remains his most famous work in the genre.
Notes on the Program
Cinderella, Op. 87
Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75
Prokofiev’s Cinderella, Op. 87, was completed in 1944, though the composer had worked on the piece since 1940. In the time since his 1936 return home to the Soviet Union after nearly 20 years spent abroad, Prokofiev had seen some of the highest and lowest moments of his career. He had arrived in Russia with hopes of a privileged life as a composer and concert pianist with unique freedom to tour outside of the Soviet Union as he pleased, and while this initially appeared to be the case, it was not long before Prokofiev’s travel privileges were revoked and the grim realities of life under the regime became more perceptible. At the same time, Prokofiev experienced significant compositional successes (Peter and the Wolf of 1936, for instance), as well as harsh censorship (Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, 1936-37, which was flatly rejected by the authorities). During the period in which he was writing Cinderella, Prokofiev’s attention was focused not only on his own fate as a composer but on broader concerns surrounding the war. Forced to move several times in the early 1940s, the composer wrote numerous patriotic and propagandistic works through these years, while simultaneously creating piano suites based on music from the as-yetunheard ballet. Cinderella did not receive its premiere until after the end of the war, in November of 1945. In comparison with the devastation of the war and Prokofiev’s political works of the time, it stands out for its light character and comedic touches. —Nathan Reiff
Although Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy of two star-crossed lovers, Prokofiev originally conceived an alternate ending to his ballet in which the lovers survive. “Living people can dance, the dying cannot,” Prokofiev was quoted — by Simon Morrison in The People’s Artist — as saying. To rewrite Shakespeare, of course, was considered profane, and Prokofiev’s fouract Op. 64 was premiered with the original story, choreographed by Vania Psota at the National Theater Brno, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 1938. Op. 75 is far more than a piano reduction of the ballet. This work is a separate opus, unlike the orchestral suites which are subsets of the full ballet (Op. 64a, Op. 64b, and Op. 64c) and offers a new look at Prokofiev’s relationship to the drama. Knowing that the work was conceived with an alternate ending, the listener might take note of the ways in Prokofiev plays with ambiguity. For example, the final act of the ballet concludes with a C major triad — beautifully orchestrated with English horn, tuba, double basses, and violins in unisons at the extremities and a cloud of alto trombones filling out the harmony. This content verticality contrasts with the diminished triad horizontally in the bass line, perhaps a musical setting of the ecstatic duality contained in Elizabethan notions of death. The scenes that Prokofiev chose to include in Op. 75 may illustrate his feelings about the storyline. Most scenes are dedicated to fleshing out the characters, such as the fleet-footed young Juliet and strict dotted rhythms of the feuding Montagues and Capulets. The final tableau, “Romeo and Juliet Before Parting,” picks up from the third act of the ballet. Prokofiev cuts out
Notes on the Program
the seventh scene completely: Juliet does not visit Friar Laurence to receive the poison. After Romeo bids adieu, Prokofiev cuts to the foreboding music of the eighth scene in which Juliet is alone. The character seems to swim through warm honey as the plodding music treks from E minor to B-flat minor at a distance of a tritone — the widest possible tonal gap. As Prokofiev spells out the final triad ambiguously from the top down, each painful note held under a fermata, he presents a lonely Juliet not with a death wish, but with a life decision. Fresh ears can attend this musical and dramatic work with an innocent hope that love conquers all. —Samuel Suggs
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