Boris Berman, piano, September 27, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Boris Berman

Boris Berman, Artistic Director September 27, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

yale school of music

Boris Berman September 27, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118 (1893) I. Intermezzo. Allegro non assai,

ma molto appassionato II. Intermezzo. Andante teneramente III. Ballade. Allegro energico IV. Intermezzo. Allegretto un poco agitato V. Romance. Andante—Allegretto grazioso VI. Intermezzo. Andante, largo e mesto Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119 (1893) I. Intermezzo. Adagio II. Intermezzo. Andantino un poco agitato III. Intermezzo. Grazioso e giocoso IV. Rhapsody. Allegro risoluto intermission Three Intermezzos, Op. 117 (1892) I. Andante moderato II. Andante non troppo

e con molto espressione III. Andante con moto Seven Fantasies, Op. 116 (1892) I. Capriccio. Presto energico II. Intermezzo. Andante III. Capriccio. Allegro passionato IV. Intermezzo. Adagio V. Intermezzo. Andante con grazia

ed intimissimo sentimento VI. Intermezzo. Andantino teneramente VII. Capriccio. Allegro agitato

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.

artist profile · Notes on the program

Boris Berman, piano Well known to audiences in more than fifty 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 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 named 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).

Recent performing and teaching engagements have taken Professor Berman to Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Holland, Israel, Italy, Portugal, and Russia, in addition to the United States. johannes brahms Introduction In the last decade of his life, just before the turn of the twentieth century, Johannes Brahms twice proclaimed that he was retiring from composition. Neither proclamation held for long. The recent deaths of friends had worn on him, and though he was relatively healthy and physically robust, he had begun to feel his own age. Despite these expressions of desire for complete retirement, it seems that deprivation from composition for Brahms was tantamount to deprivation from oxygen. Whenever he would become lethargic, something inevitably inspired him to take up writing again, and the few compositions that were published in his last decade—all of them intimate in scale, either for solo instrument, small chamber ensemble, or voice—display no decline in intellectual or creative faculties.

Rather, they are among his very greatest works, poignantly recalling his earlier composition style while showcasing bold experimentation with form and harmony.

In these pieces, Brahms looks simultaneously to the past and to the future, bringing closure to his life as a composer while sealing his fate as a true “progressive,” for which he would come to be recognized

Notes on the Program

decades after his death­—most famously

by Arnold Schoenberg, in a 1947 article.

Among the most important compositions from Brahms’ final years are his sets of character pieces for solo piano, published as Opp. 116, 117, 118, and 119. The piano was the composer’s primary instrument and his most natural musical voice. Generally, these pieces are more introspective in mood than many of his earlier compositions and favor the development of motivic content above any “flash” or showy virtuosity. It is difficult to say whether the complete sets of pieces as they stand were intended to be performed as such. Although there are certain similarities between the respective pieces in each collection, Brahms most likely never expected for them to be performed as total works, as in the case of a sonata or a suite, wherein a large-scale uniformity is expected across multiple movements. In the case of these sets, each piece is unique and individual. The solo character piece for piano is a genre all its own, and at the same time follows no guidelines apart from length, and so encompasses many other genres. These miniatures are in a wide variety of forms, moods, and styles, and defy any homogeneous characterization. That being said, to hear them assembled in their respective groups, and especially to hear all of the sets together, one cannot help but trace musical elements across them. Regardless of intention, these sets of miniatures somehow simply “work” as whole, large-scale pieces. Brahms wrote only three piano sonatas, and all of them were from his very earliest days of composition. That genre was declining in popularity over the course of the nineteenth century, giving way to more novel forms. In lieu of the sonata, then, Brahms gives us these remarkable late collections.

Seven Fantasies, Op. 116 In 1890, after writing his Second String Quintet, the 57-year-old Brahms decided to give up composing. He soon resumed, however, writing four works for clarinet, four sets of short piano pieces (Opp. 116 –119), and some vocal music in the last six years of his life. Op. 116 harks back to E.T.A. Hoffman and Robert Schumann, whose works Brahms was editing at the time, and one can trace qualities of the bizarre and humorous to Hoffman’s character Johannes Kreisler and Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Furthermore, these later sets (especially Op. 116) represent a retrospective glance at the integrated cycles of short piano pieces that were among Schumann’s most characteristic works.

Though Brahms gave Op. 116 the general designation “Fantasias,” none of the individual works bear this title; they are either Capriccios or Intermezzos. While the titles “Capriccio” and “Intermezzo” are not especially revealing in themselves of any unique properties, the intermezzos tend to exude a reflective, autumnal quality, while the capriccios possess a passionate and energetic ebullience.

According to Lionel Salter, the brevity of Op. 116 “only serves to heighten the intensity of their feeling. It is as if the composer at the end of his life had compressed the essence of his musical and emotional thoughts into these miniatures.”

— Michael Noble

Notes on the Program

Three Intermezzos, Op. 117 Op. 117 is the smallest of the late sets, a triptych of pieces that are quietly introspective and gentle in mood. Each of the three pieces shares the character of a lullaby, and in fact the first piece, in E-flat major, expressly invokes a Scottish lullaby, an excerpt of which Brahms provides at the heading of the piece. The excerpt from the poem “Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament” is translated as “Sleep softly, my child, sleep softly and well! – It breaks my heart to see you weep.” In German, the text almost perfectly synchronizes with the simple opening lullaby theme. The central section, darker in tone and more stirring in rhythmic activity, may point to the “weeping” of the child in question. The subsequent two intermezzos are equally evocative, although they share no poetic references. Though all three pieces are in ternary form—the same ABA form seen in the Op. 116 pieces­ —the second intermezzo, in B-flat minor, comes tantalizingly close to sonata form in its construction. It is important to remember that there are no rules or guidelines for the genres of these pieces, and Brahms’ experimentation with form, and with the mixing of forms, is partly what makes these pieces so fascinating.

Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118 The six piano pieces of Op. 118 display a remarkable multi-movement structure, particularly with regard to key. It is interesting to hear the six pieces in two groups of three, with each group following a similar relationship both in terms of character as well as tonality. The first three pieces progress from A minor to its parallel major key, A major, and then step down to G minor. The whole tonal landscape then shifts down one step, and the next three pieces begin in F minor, move to the parallel major, and step down to E-flat minor. The symmetry

in the construction of this collection goes unnoticed if the works are played independently. Once again, Brahms is experimenting with form, and seems deliberately ambiguous with his composition. Precisely how to interpret the organization of these pieces is like a puzzle to be solved; unlike with a conventional puzzle, we can never know if our solution is correct. The first and fourth intermezzos are brief and introductory in nature and energetic in mood; the second and fifth pieces, an intermezzo and romance, respectively, are more lyrical and reflective; the third and sixth miniatures, a ballade and an intermezzo, are the most grave and passionate of the sets.

Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119 This final set of piano miniatures is made up of three intermezzos and a final, powerful rhapsody in E-flat major, the only piece among Brahms’ late piano works to be given this title. The first three pieces are lively and graceful, almost acting as preludes to the concluding rhapsody. That piece, given the tempo indication Allegro risoluto, embodies a resolute determination. The insistent, powerful opening chords infiltrate even the grazioso middle section. The work ends with a surprising modulation to E-flat minor, as though a dark cloud has begun to blanket the bright sun, casting a shadow over the music. Though Brahms’ late piano pieces are often energetic and imbued with life, a melancholic hue seems to shade them all. The composer once referred to the Op. 117 pieces as “lullabies to my sorrow,” a sentiment he could have reasonably applied to all of these late piano works. One can only hope that in writing them, Brahms found some cathartic relief.

— Program notes by Patrick Campbell Jankowski, except where noted

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