Melvin Chen, piano, January 17, 2018

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Melvin Chen

Boris Berman, Artistic Director Wednesday, January 17, 2018 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

yale school of music

Melvin Chen January 17, 2018 • Morse Recital Hall

Robert Schumann 1810–1856

Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82 I. Eintritt (Entry) II. Jäger auf der Lauer (Hunters on the lookout) III. Einsame Blumen (Lonely Flowers) IV. Verrufene Stelle (Haunted Place) V. Freundliche Landschaft (Friendly Landscape) VI. Herberge (Wayside Inn) VII. Vogel als Prophet (Bird as Prophet) VIII. Jagdlied (Hunting Song) IX. Abschied (Farewell)

Franz Liszt 1811–1886

Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), Book I, S. 160 I. Chapelle de Guillaume Tell

(William Tell’s Chapel) II. Au lac de Wallenstadt (At Lake Wallenstadt) III. Pastorale IV. Au bord d’une source (Beside a Spring) V. Orage (Storm) intermission

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.

horowitz piano series

Leoš Janáček 1854–1928

Po zarostlém chodníčku (On an Overgrown Path), Book I (1900–1911) I. Naše večery (Our Evenings) II. Lístek odvanutý (A Blown-Away Leaf) III. Pojďte s námi! (Come With Us!) IV. Frýdecká panna Maria

(The Madonna of Frydek) V. Štěbetaly jak laštovičky

(They Chattered Like Swallows) VI. Nelze domluvit! (Words Fail!)

VII. Dobrou noc! (Good Night!)

VIII. Tak neskonale úzko

(Unutterable Anguish) IX. V pláči (In Tears) X. Sýček neodletěl!

(The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!)

artist profile • notes on the program

Melvin Chen, piano A native of Tennessee, pianist Melvin Chen is recognized as an important artist, having received acclaim for performances throughout the United States and abroad. As a soloist and chamber musician Mr. Chen has performed at major venues in the United States, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Boston’s Jordan Hall, in addition to other appearances throughout the United States, Canada, and Asia.

Mr. Chen’s performances have been featured on radio and television stations around the globe, including KBS television and radio in Korea, NHK television in Japan, and NPR in the United States. Solo recordings include a performance of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations on the Bridge label, praised as “a classic” by the American Record Guide, and a recording of Joan Tower’s piano music on the Naxos label. Recordings of the Shostakovich piano sonatas and Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice were released in 2007.

attended Yale University, receiving a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and physics, and also studied with Boris Berman, Paul Kantor, and Ida Kavafian.

Mr. Chen was previously on the piano faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he was also associate director. He is a member of the Yale School of Music piano faculty, Deputy Dean of the School, and Director of the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. robert schumann Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82

Nature was, for the Romantic generation, a source of fascination. When alone in nature, an artist could reflect on his own personal state. The forest — Der Wald in German — was particularly intriguing to artists in German-speaking states. The woods, in their depth and density, represent the mysteries of the human mind. One cannot always know what lies within the dark labyrinthine forests, just as one cannot always comprehend the complexities An enthusiastic chamber musician, Mr. of human emotion. By 1849, when the comChen has collaborated with such artists poser finished his Forest Scenes, Schumann as Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, Pamela was very sensitive to these psychological Frank, Peter Wiley, and with the Shanghai, complexities. His first documented serious Tokyo, Miami, Penderecki, and Miró manic depressive episode was in 1833. By string quartets. He has performed at the 1854 he had attempted suicide and placed Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Music himself in an asylum for the remainder from Angel Fire, Yale Summer School of of his life.

Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and Bard Music Festival, among others.

The character pieces that make up this set depict not just the scenes of a forest, but Mr. Chen completed a doctorate in chem- the state of mind of the artist in the forest. istry at Harvard University and also holds We are not merely hearing a soundscape a double master’s degree from The Juilliard of the scene. Rather, we are hearing it School in piano and violin. Previously, he through the experience of someone else,

notes on the program

perhaps Schumann himself. The oddities reminiscences of previous motives, though of the experience emerge from the very hardly direct quotations. Listen, for instance, opening of the first miniature. After two for the subtle hint of the bird motive bars of a simple accompanimental introaround two-thirds of the way through duction, the melody begins in the right the “Jagdlied.” When one looks back in hand, but it seems out of place, as though reflection, the remembered scene is never starting in the middle of a thought, some- an exact recreation of reality, but is rather how lost for the first two measures. When made hazy and subtly shaded by the the repeat takes place, its absence is all the complexities of the densely forested mind. more effective.

– Patrick Campbell Jankowski The composer had originally intended for five of the pieces to be accompanied by a poetic fragment, yet later retracted all but one of those, for the fourth piece, “Verrufene Stelle,” or “Haunted Place.”

Schumann did not want to be overly specific in guiding our understanding of these works, believing that the titles themselves should be sufficient. In a heading at the top of the published score, Schumann shares his thoughts on the titles, stating that “the composer, by adding one, at least prevents a complete misunderstanding of the character of his music. What is important is that such a verbal heading should be significant and apt. It may be considered the test of the general level of the composer’s education.”

Franz Liszt Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), Book I, S. 160 In the preface to Années de pèlerinage, Liszt wrote, “Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.”

Schumann leaves it to our imagination to fill in the blanks: to place ourselves within The Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) this forest scene, and to experience it as are the diary in three volumes that Liszt individuals. One can trace the evocative never wrote. Whether Liszt is contemtopics that Schumann embeds in the music, plating a painting by Raphael, reading a such as in “Vogel als Prophet,” where the sonnet by Petrarch, listening to the flippant and capricious character of a bird fountains of the Villa d’Este, or simply is depicted through the melody’s delicate sitting by a mountain stream in Switzerland, meandering around its accompaniment. he captures the experience in music. The The “Jagdlied” is marked by the distinct “Swiss” volume was written between 1835 texture of hunting horns, and their triplet and 1837, while Liszt lived in Switzerland texture returns in the final fragment, as a with his companion, Countess Marie “Farewell,” which is something of a reflection d’Agoult, who would become the mother on the previous scenes. There are vague of his three children. This first book

Notes on the Program

marries Liszt’s favorite literature and his time and experiences with d’Agoult. In her memoirs, d’Agoult writes: “We lingered for some time on the shores of Lake Wallenstadt. Franz composed a melancholy harmony for me there, imitating the sigh of the waves and the rhythm of the oars, which I was never able to hear without weeping.”

This first volume was inspired in part by Étienne Pivert de Senancour’s novel Obermann — set in Switzerland and passionately read and annotated by the two lovers. Liszt cites Byron and Senancour: “Que veux-je? Que suis-je? Que demander à la nature?” (“What do I want? Who am I? What do I ask of nature?”), questions that capture the essence of the collection.

In contrast to the turbulent intensity of “Vallée d’Obermann,” the tender shepherd’s song “Églogue” transitions to “Le mal du pays,” from a Swiss folk theme in which the alphorn heard at the start of the cycle makes an almost nostalgic return. The cycle ends with “Les cloches de Genève,” a tribute to the birth of his first daughter, Blandine, introduced by two lines of Byron — “I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me” — in which a tender carol gives way to an impassioned climax before a denouement of bells chiming in the distance.

—Julia Clancy Leoš Janáček On an Overgrown Path, Book I (1900–1911) Janáček began his piano cycle On an Overgrown Path in 1900. By its completion in 1911, it comprised fifteen intimate and

affectual pieces. The title references Moravian folk poetry, evoking a sound or tradition from the past that has since been overlooked or neglected. The first five songs of the cycle were intended to be Moravian folksong arrangements for harmonium (an instrument often available in Moravian school houses), but became character pieces for piano that Janáček simply called “moods.”

The composer wrote: “The little pieces contain distant reminiscences. Those reminiscences are so dear to me that I do not think they will ever vanish ... Whenever I have a moment to indulge myself undisturbed in these recollections, then I find another such little piece comes to mind.”

— Katherine Balch

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Upcoming Events 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

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, guest conductor january 26 Yale Philharmonia Guest conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn leads the Yale Philharmonia and violist Josip Kvetek in a program that includes Stravinsky’s spellbinding Firebird Suite (1919), Paganini’s Sonata per la Grand Viola, and Franck’s Symphony in D minor Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Yale Faculty/Staff $8 Students $5

Wendy Sharp & Friends january 21 Faculty Artist Series Violinist Wendy Sharp, the School’s director of chamber music, performs music by Mozart and Brahms with faculty members Melvin Chen, piano, and William Purvis, horn, along with Julie Kim, violin, Marka Gustavsson, viola, and Mimi Hwang, cello Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 3 pm free admission

Marc-André Hamelin, piano february 14 Horowitz Piano Series Guest artist Marc-André Hamelin, of whom The New York Times has asked, rhetorically, “Is it possible for a pianist to be too good?” performs an eclectic program that includes Debussy’s Images, Book I, music by Liszt, and more.

Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $21 • Students $11

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Robert Blocker, Dean