Hung-Kuan Chen, piano, December 13, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Hung-Kuan Chen

Boris Berman, Artistic Director Wednesday, December 13, 2017 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

yale school of music

Hung-Kuan Chen December 13, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Olivier Messiaen 1908–1992 Franz Schubert 1797–1828

“Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus,” from Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944) Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 I. Molto moderato II. Andante sostenuto III. Scherzo. Allegro vivace con delicatezza — Trio IV. Allegro ma non troppo — Presto Intermission

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827

Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier” I. Allegro II. Scherzo. Assai vivace III. Adagio sostenuto IV. Introduzione. Largo —

Fuga. Allegro risoluto

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

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 is 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 in the Young Concert Artists’ Auditions, which presented him in his New York debut on the Young Concert Artists Series. That performance was followed by a second major New York concert at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. One of the most decorated pianists of his generation, Mr. Chen won top prizes at the Arthur Rubinstein, Busoni, and 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 has 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, Christoph Eschenbach, George Cleve, Josef Silverstein, Andrew Parrett, and Sui Lan, and with colleagues including Yo-Yo Ma, ChoLiang 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 post-accident 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, “HungKuan 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.”

notes on the program

of God,” one of several cyclical themes on which the entire work is based. The piece, tranquil at first, propels forward starting with Messiaen’s characteristic birdcalls In 1944, amid the terror of World War II, trilling in the piano’s upper register.

French composer Olivier Messiaen comMidway through the piece, the Theme of pleted Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus God (a five-note melody) is heard in its (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus), entirety as kinetic energy and dissonance a two-hour-long work for solo piano of increase. The climax ensues at the great harmonic and rhythmic complexity. section where the kiss occurs, with Messiaen wrote the piece for pianist and harp-like arpeggiation in the left hand composer Yvonne Loriod, who would later and luminous chords resounding high become his second wife. Each movement above. The movement ends with the has a descriptive title that represents the gentle call of the cuckoo; the warmth of musical narrative, and “Le baiser de l’Enfant- the final chord is a sweet conclusion to a Jésus” (“The Kiss of the Infant Jesus”) is tender journey. the fifteenth movement from the suite.

—Jonathan Salamon

Olivier Messiaen “Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus,” from Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944)

Messiaen’s music explores the intricate relationships between sound and color.

He experienced synesthesia, the sensation of perceiving musical pitches as colors; in his own words, “When I compose, I see the colors as I hear the sounds.” This phenomenon was so intense that during a ballet performance Messiaen suffered a stomachache because of the dreadful dissonance he perceived between the purple lighting on stage and his colorperception of G major chords.

A devout Catholic, much of Messiaen’s music reflects a profound sense of spirituality: the evocative, resonant sounds of the Vingt regards induce the listener to experience, as Messiaen describes in the tenth movement, “the joy of the blissful God’s love in the soul of Jesus Christ.”

Messiaen’s distinctive musical style evokes many sources of inspiration, from birdcalls to Balinese rhythms.

“Le baiser” is a lullaby that opens very softly with a fragment from the “Theme

Franz Schubert Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major was written in 1828 just months before his death, part of a prolific outpouring of music in the midst of extreme illness. The catalogue of Schubert’s last year includes many works that have come to be considered his most masterful and sublime: the Cello Quintet in C major, three expansive and interconnected piano sonatas (the last of which is the B-flat Sonata), the Mass in E-flat major, the posthumously published Schwanengesang song anthology, and the list goes on.

The affectual spectrum traversed throughout the approximately forty-minute Sonata in B-flat major overflows the constraints of language. For example, what is the character of the simple, tender opening theme of the Sonata? It seems to occupy some intermediary space between the words we use to describe feelings. Not

Notes on the Program

quite happy or sad, tranquil or heavy, it transcends the dualities we often use to categorize emotions. Similarly, in the first movement, Molto moderato, the key of G-flat major appears as an intermediate thematic area between the conventional harmonic journey from tonic (B-flat major) to dominant (F major). But this G-flat, as both a pitch and a harmonic area, is too important to function only as transition, occupying instead a structural area of its own. There is extraordinary value in this ambiguity: as Socrates declared in the Symposium, it is this in-between space in which Eros (beauty) resides. Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major taps into these niches of sentiments with sound.

— Katherine Balch Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”

and would remain Beethoven’s lengthiest.

In his own understated words, he described it as “a sonata that will give pianists something to do.” He dedicated it to one of his patrons, Archduke Rudolph of Austria.

By this time, Beethoven was almost completely deaf.

The opening fortissimo fanfare quickly shifts to a tender, more feminine, lyrical, and sweet theme. The opening material is woven into a dense fugato; the recapitulation ignores its duty of ushering back the original key, putting it off as long as possible. The movement is a whopping 10-15 minutes, followed by a two-to-three minute Scherzo. Though lighter in texture and playing time, the Scherzo (“joke” in Italian) is aggressive in its persistent dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythms.

The Adagio sostenuto, described by musicologist Wilhelm Von Linz as “a mausoleum of collective sorrow,” and by In December 1817, Broadwood and Sons of composer Vincent d’Indy as “a manifesLondon sent Beethoven a new, six-octave tation of sublime beauty,” exemplifies grand piano autographed by important Beethoven’s noble expressiveness, de facto London musicians (prior pianos typically proof that Romanticism was born with had five octaves, and modern pianos have Beethoven. This lugubrious Träumerei is 7⅓). The new piano allowed greater expres- abruptly broken by a fast scale and a set sive capability for altering tone color and of trills that make way for a muscular, volume. While in English it might seem high-powered final movement. as if “hammering” the piano was a new —Julia Clancy expressive feature Beethoven wanted to explore, “Hammerklavier” was merely the German name for piano in his day.

After the end of the Napoleonic era with the 1815 Congress of Vienna, using German, rather than the Napoleonic language of Italian, Beethoven asserted national pride and identity with German titles and expressive markings.

The “Hammerklavier” Sonata was the largest sonata anyone had yet composed,

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As of December 13, 2017

Upcoming Events Daniel Schlosberg, composition december 14 Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Recital Composer Daniel Schlosberg presents a Doctor of Musical Arts degree recital Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission

Bálint Karosi, composition december 21 Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Recital Composer Bálint Karosi presents a Doctor of Musical Arts degree recital Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission

Preview Concert: Impressions on the French Tradition december 15 Yale in New York This year’s Yale in New York series features music from Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. The final concert in the series, Impressions on the French Tradition, features Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Ravel’s String Quartet, with faculty mezzo-soprano Janna Baty, faculty harpist June Han, and the Rolston String Quartet, YSM’s fellowship quartet-in-residence Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 4:30 pm free admission

Melvin Chen, piano january 17 Horowitz Piano Series School of Music faculty pianist and Deputy Dean Melvin Chen, whom The New York Times has described as “a pianist whose playing is powerful and driven,” performs Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path Book I, along with music by Schumann and Liszt Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $13 • Students $7

Bassoonarama december 18 Yale School of Music Ensembles Faculty bassoonist Frank Morelli leads his students in “The ABCs of Bassoon: Amadeus, Berlioz, Brazil, and Christmas,” a program featuring reimagined classical and holiday staples Sudler Recital Hall | Monday | 7:30 pm free admission

Arthur Haas, harpsichord january 19 Faculty Artist Series School of Music faculty harpsichordist Arthur Haas presents Crossing the Rhine: Internationalism in Baroque Music, with faculty members Daniel S. Lee, baroque violin, and James Taylor, tenor, and Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm free admission

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Robert Blocker, Dean