Wei-Yi Yang, piano, November 29, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Wei-Yi Yang

Boris Berman, Artistic Director Wednesday, November 29, 2017 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

yale school of music

Wei-Yi Yang November 29, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall Franz Liszt 1811–1886

Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing), S. 179

Robert Schumann 1810–1856

Selections from Four Fugues, Op. 72 I. Nicht schnell II. Sehr lebhaft

Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750

Partita in D major, BWV 828 I. Ouverture II. Allemande III. Courante IV. Aria V. Sarabande VI. Menuett VII. Gigue intermission

Franz Schubert 1797–1828

Piano Sonata No. 17 in D major, D. 850, “Gasteiner” I. Allegro vivace II. Con moto III. Scherzo. Allegro vivace IV. Rondo. Allegro moderato

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 profiles

Wei-Yi Yang, piano Pianist Wei-Yi Yang has received worldwide acclaim for his captivating performances and imaginative programming. Winner of the gold medal 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 a “sensational” performance at Carnegie Hall of Messiaen’s TurangalîlaSymphonie in which he was the soloist.

In demand as a dedicated teacher, Wei-Yi Yang has presented master classes and performances in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Serbia, and Montenegro, among others. Mr. Yang’s performances have been featured on NPR, PBS, ARTE (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne), and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and on recordings on the Genuin, Ovation, Albany Records, Renegade Classics, and Holland-America Music Society labels.

A dynamic chamber musician with a diverse repertoire, Mr. Yang is a frequent guest artist at the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and at festivals in Deia, Spain; Lucca, Italy; Novi Sad, Serbia; Monterrey, Mexico; Konstanz, Germany; Kotor, Montenegro; and La Jolla and Napa, California. Mr. Yang has collaborated with many distinguished musicians and ensembles, including the Alexander, Brentano, Pacifica, and Tokyo string quartets, mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, soprano Dawn Upshaw, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, violists

Roberto Díaz and Roger Tapping, cellist Clive Greensmith, and violinist Axel Strauss, among numerous others.

Mr. Yang has curated inventive interdisciplinary projects including a collaboration 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. He is a founding member of the Soyulla Ensemble, which received the prestigious McKnight Fellowship and recently made its debut at Alice Tully Hall and toured South Korea.

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 Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music. Mr. Yang has also worked with eminent pianists Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Vera Gornostaeva, Byron Janis, Lilian Kallir, and Murray Perahia. Mr. Yang has adjudicated the Isidor Bajic Piano Memorial Competition, the San Antonio International Piano Competition, and the Concert Artists Guild auditions.

In 2004, he received his doctorate from Yale, where he joined the faculty in 2005 and serves as associate professor of piano and chair of the DMA committee.

notes on the program

franz liszt Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing), S. 179 In 1714, Johann Sebastian Bach began a new appointment as Konzertmeister of the Court of Weimar. Soon after, he composed the mournful church cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing), BWV 12, which depicts the suffering endured by Christ that all Christians must bear.

After giving up his grueling concert career in 1848, piano virtuoso Franz Liszt took up a similar appointment as Kapellmeister extraordinaire at the Court of Weimar.

Inspired by Bach’s historical presence there, especially as reverence for the old master was growing rapidly in the nineteenth century, Liszt composed a prelude for piano in 1858 based on the first chorus from Bach’s 1714 cantata.

Bach’s chorus features an archetypal chromatic “lament” bass line that repeats continuously. Liszt retains some of Bach’s structural elements in his own prelude: after the lament’s bass is played alone in the left hand, the woeful “weeping” melody begins on an upbeat in the right hand (as in the soprano entry in Bach’s chorus) and enters in progressively lower registers on the piano. Each time the bass pattern restarts, Liszt varies the texture and figuration, and as the piece develops, the outbursts become more densely chromatic and emotionally extreme.

The prelude reaches a dynamic climax with a pianistic rumbling tremolo in the bass, and thick, agitated chords in the right hand. The intensity then subsides,

returning to the placid (but charged) feeling of the beginning. The chilling, open-ended final chord is neither major nor minor, leaving the emotional outcome of the experience up to the listener. robert schumann Selections from Four Fugues, Op. 72 Robert Schumann composed his Four Fugues in 1845 and published them in Leipzig as his Op. 72 in 1850. Both he and his wife, the eminent pianist and composer Clara Schumann, had become fascinated with studying and writing fugues.

The term “fugue” comes from the Italian fuga, meaning “flight,” and by Schumann’s day, the fugue was largely perceived as an old-fashioned genre. A musical idea (called a “subject”) is introduced in one voice and then imitated in subsequent voices. To master such a complex genre was an indication of erudite musical accomplishment.

By Schumann’s time, J.S. Bach — the late, great composer from Leipzig — had become inextricably associated with the fugue. As an homage to Bach, Schumann even composed Six Fugues (Op. 60) on the theme B-A-C-H (B-flat–A–C–B).

What distinguishes a Romantic fugue like Schumann’s from those of earlier epochs is that the “flight” tends to be instigated by volatile passion rather than procedure.

Schumann’s fugues are not exercises in “correct” writing, though they employ traditional fugal techniques. The first fugue, Nicht schnell (Not fast), has a lilting subject that Schumann develops with a richly chromatic language — the music often leads into diversions based

Notes on the Program

on the personality of the musical ideas.

Schumann’s idiomatic writing takes advantage of the colorful possibilities of the piano; for example, in the second fugue, Sehr lebhaft (Very lively), the dramatic ending features an ascending line in the right hand over descending, booming octaves in the left hand. Thunderous, definitive chords conclude the piece: the fugue has been reawakened. johann sebastian bach Partita in D major, BWV 828 Each of J.S. Bach’s six partitas (dance suites) for harpsichord were published individually from 1726 to 1730 in Leipzig, and in 1731 all six were collected and republished as Bach’s Op. 1. The partitas constitute the first volume of his ClavierÜbung (Keyboard Practice) collection — lovingly subtitled “music to delight the spirit” — and are among the most virtuosic of his keyboard suites.

The fourth partita opens with a jubilant French overture: the brash ornament on the opening chord ushers in the genre’s characteristic sweeping flourishes and jaunty rhythms. A brisk, buoyant fugue takes over after the grandeur of the introduction.

Much of the overture’s vigor is subdued in the next movement, a particularly intimate Allemande. A tender melody gives way to energetic rhythms and ornaments; syncopations add to the air of churning introspection. The Courante restores the triumphant nature of the Ouverture, with galloping lines and brilliant flourishes, and the playful Aria’s right-hand melody plays catch-up with

the left hand’s interjected chords before contrasting with longer, cascading lines.

The Sarabande is perhaps the partita’s emotional high point; the sweet melody in the opening phrase trails off wistfully before the motivic motion begins. The graceful menuet cheerfully recalls the triplet patterns of the Allemande.

The partita concludes with a rollicking Gigue (French for “jig”). Unusually, the second half of the movement begins with a completely new subject (theme). Bach then intertwines the two subjects in a complex double fugue, a fitting close to an innovative and masterful work of diverse styles.

—Jonathan Salomon franz schubert Sonata No. 17 in D major, D. 850, “Gasteiner” After Schubert’s first serious illness in 1823–24 and the repeated failures of his operatic projects, the young composer turned to instrumental music as a path for “striving after the highest art,” as Beethoven had done. Without the concerns of political, logistic, and financial restrictions of an opera production, he could focus on music for himself and perhaps for an imagined audience he would reach through publication. It was around this time that his Lieder output, consistently sublime but less immediately accessible, seemed similarly concerned with music for posterity’s sake.

His trips to the various mountain resorts of Austria often revitalized Schubert and sparked creative outpourings in spite of his failing health. His trip to the spa

Notes on the Program

town Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825 was one of such trips: here he finished his last complete symphony, the “Great” C-major Symphony, as well as his “Gasteiner” Sonata, written for virtuoso pianist Carl Maria von Bocklet. The fresh air and grandeur of the breathtaking Austrian Alps are imbued in both works.

The opening Allegro vivace passes through all twelve keys in an exuberant panorama with few moments of repose. In what would normally be the place for a slow movement, Schubert writes “Con moto,” a direction built into the music’s strong forward motion of its rhythmic propulsion.

The Scherzo borrows from the second movement’s sixteenth-note syncopation and travels, like the first movement, to sublimely breathtaking key areas. The Scherzo ends delicately, in spite of its bold and adventurous spirit, and naturally transitions into the closing Rondo. The seemingly flippant weightlessness of the finale has perplexed many (including Schumann), but is a convincing complement to the weight and energy of the first three movements: the mountain climb, accomplished in the prior movements, is rewarded with a view from the summit.

—Julia Clancy

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Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Clarinet Studio Recital december 2 YSM Ensembles Students from David Shifrin’s studio share the stage with clarinetist Seunghee Lee ’92MM ’94AD and pianists David Fung ’11MM, ’13MMA, ’17AD and Evan Solomon Sudler Recital Hall | Saturday | 7:30 pm free admission John Schneiderman, terz guitar & Hideki Yamaya, terz guitar and mandolino december 3 Collection of Musical Instruments The 2017-2018 season celebrates the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Collection’s concert series, which continues with a program featuring works by Beethoven.

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