horowitz piano series Boris Berman, artistic director
Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee
Thursday, September 13, 2018 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
Program Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756–1791
Sonata for piano four-hands in B-flat major, K. 358/186c I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Molto presto Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank, piano
Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915
Prelude in F-sharp minor, Op. 11, No. 8 Soyeon Kate Lee, piano
Leoš Janáček 1854–1928
Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 “From the Street” I. Predtucha (Foreboding) – Con moto II. Smrt (Death) – Adagio Soyeon Kate Lee, piano
Franz Liszt 1811–1886
Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), Book II, S. 161, “Italie” I. Sposalizio Ran Dank, piano
Liszt
Polonaise No. 2 in E major, S. 223/2 Ran Dank, piano
intermission
Igor Stravinsky 1882–1971
The Rite of Spring for piano four-hands (1913) Part I: L’Adoration de la Terre (The Adoration of the Earth) I. Introduction II. Le Augres Printainers. Danses des Adolescentes (The Augurs of Spring. Dances of the Young Girls) III. Jeu du Rapt (Ritual of Abduction) IV. Jeux des Cités Rivales (Ritual of the Rival Tribes) V. Cortège du Sage (Procession of the Sage) VI. Adoration de la Terre [Le Sage] (Adoration of the Earth [The Sage]) VII. Danse de la Terre (Dance of the Earth) Part II: Le Sacrifice (The Sacrifice) I. Introduction II. Cercles Mysteriéux des Adolescentes (Mystic Circles of the Young Girls) III. Glorification de L’Elue (Glorification of the Chosen One) IV. Evocation des Ancêtres (Evocation of the Ancestors) V. Action Rituelle des Ancêtres (Ritual Action of the Ancestors) VI. Danse Sacrale [L’Elue] (Sacrificial Dance [The Chosen One]) Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank, piano
As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.
Artist Profiles Ran Dank, piano Technically dazzling and intellectually probing artistry exemplify Ran Dank’s pianism and musicality. In the 2017-2018 season, Ran Dank performed Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and Eckart Preu, Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra led by Ken Lam, Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto with the Portland Symphony and Ken-David Masur, Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Spokane Symphony and Morihiko Nakahara, and finished with Bernstein’s Second Symphony, The Age of Anxiety, with the Kansas City Symphony and Michael Stern for their season finale. He performed chamber music with the Amernet Quartet at Maverick Concerts, recitals in a return to Pro Musica San Miguel de Allende, and had duo appearances with pianist Soyeon Kate Lee for the Hilton Head Symphony and the Cleveland Piano Competition. During the 2016-2017 season he appeared in recital at the Ravinia Festival, performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the Vermont Symphony led by Jaime Laredo, and Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with the Toledo Symphony led by Marcelo Lehninger. He performed duo recitals with Soyeon Kate Lee at the Smithsonian Institute, Cincinnati’s Linton Music, and (le) Poisson Rouge in New York City.
With Soyeon Kate Lee he performed the world premiere of Alexander Goehr’s Seven Impromptus for two pianos at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and, among the many duo recitals they have given, include Portland Ovations, the JCC of Rockville, Bargemusic, Ames Town and Gown Association in Iowa, the Hawaii Concert Association, and the world premiere of Fredric Rzewski’s Four Hands at (le) Poisson Rouge. The recipient of numerous honors, Ran Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists’ roster in 2009. He was a laureate of the Cleveland International Competition, the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Sydney International Piano Competition, and First Prize winner of the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.
Soyeon Kate Lee, piano First prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artists’ Guild International Competition, and a laureate of the Cleveland and Santander International Piano Competitions, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by the New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” Lee has collaborated as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra, as well as recent engagements with the Hawaii, San Diego, Louisiana, Santa Fe, Princeton, Columbus, Eugene, Erie, Asheville, and Peninsula symphony orchestras, among others. A frequent performer in New York City programs, Ms. Lee has given recitals to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall, Zankel and Weill Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Symphony Space, and (le) Poisson Rouge, Washington’s Kennedy Center, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, Auditorio de Musica de Nacional in Madrid, Herbst Theatre, and Finland’s Maanta Music Festival.
Program Notes Sonata for piano four-hands in B-flat major Mozart Graeme Steele Johnson
Prelude in F-sharp minor, Op. 11, No. 8 Scriabin Patrick Campbell Jankowski
As a child, Mozart idolized his older sister Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl, and was reportedly inspired to study music himself after observing her lessons with their father. The siblings were very close as children: Mozart sent Nannerl copies of many of his piano concertos and composed several pieces specifically for her to perform. Among these works are sonatas for four-hand piano, a genre that the Mozart siblings popularized through their performing tours across Europe. Wolfgang and Nannerl may also have initiated the tradition of the woman playing the melodic primo part while the man fielded the lower, supporting bass voices, and the two siblings always performed this way themselves. A seventeen- or eighteen-year-old Mozart wrote the B-flat major four-hand sonata around 1773 in Salzburg to perform with Nannerl. The abundance of digits allows for a rich — at times, orchestral — voicing, which Mozart balances with a particularly transparent melody-accompaniment texture. The first movement is a light, conversational Allegro that occasionally slips into the “learned style” of yesteryear with its fugal elements of brief imitative counterpoint. The understated elegance of the second movement Adagio evokes an untroubled aria, and is distinguished by slow harmonic motion propelled by a motoric current of sixteenth notes. The bright and brilliant Molto presto finale brings the sonata to a rollicking close fit for a playful pair of pianistically-agile siblings.
Scriabin’s collection of 24 préludes, companion to those of Chopin and Shostakovich, is a set of distinctive miniatures, each its own star gathered up in a greater galaxy. Like a musical diary, the composer added dates and places to each, written over several years and locales. Somehow, these highly individual pieces work as one. The set begins in C, winding through all major and minor keys, orbiting through the circle of fifths. The F- sharp minor prelude follows a rhapsodic A major, and is restless in its rhythmic energy: several voices, each at different rates of subdivision, together weave a complex multi- layered stream, carried along by the ceaseless propulsion of arpeggios in the bass.
Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 “From the Street” Janáček Patrick Campbell Jankowski On October 5, 1905, a young carpenter was killed in Brno, a predominantly Czech city in what was then the AustroHungarian empire. What began as a peaceful demonstration in favor of a Czech university was countered by government forces. The man was speared by a bayonet. Study in Czech was seen by the Germanic state as rebellion. The protest exemplifies the best intentions of nationalism around the turn of the century, and artists like Janáček carry that into their work. The composer was
so moved by the protest, and by the death of the young man, that he dedicated this sonata to his memory. In the first movement, titled “Presentiment,” a dramatic interplay between high and low voices, in uncomfortably close proximity, gives the opening theme a nervous edge. That anxious music is then juxtaposed against a tranquil, hymn-like melody in chordal setting. You might envision this dynamic tug of war as a musical rendering of internal strife: the struggle between conscientious reflection and blind determination. The subsequent movement, titled “Death” recalls scenes of mourning, with an endless, near obsessive repetition of a melodic idea, through several transformations. The melody itself resembles a simple song that might get stuck in one’s mind. Trying to. erase it, as Janáček does in the middle, leads to intense conflict, the resolution of which leaves the obsessive melody behind, hushed and wounded, but ever-present. This sonata was a source of great personal anguish for the composer at this critical time in his nation’s history. A third movement, in the form of a funeral march, originally completed the sonata, but Janacek destroyed this before its premiere, later throwing the remaining movements into the river after that first performance. The sonata was lost. Luckily, the pianist who gave the premiere had copied the score in secret, but only revealed this to Janáček nearly twenty years later. Presumably, his own wounds had healed enough to allow for its publication, and it survives today as a raw and broken expression of grief.
Années de pèlerinage Liszt Patrick Campbell Jankowski Liszt’s “years of pilgrimage” yielded an immense travel diary in music. In these volumes, the composer reveals his impressions and sensations while traveling abroad, looking outward to his surroundings, yet also deeply inward to his emotions. Beyond the scores themselves, Liszt included his own writings, etchings of art, and quotations, which complement the scores. The composer saw these volumes as literature, transcending the parameters of sound to osmose into other artistic disciplines. At the beginning of the Italian volume is Liszt’s impression of Raphael’s Florentine painting of the wedding of the Virgin Mary. The visual impact was so critical that Liszt insisted a reproduction be included in the printed score. Liszt’s work translates the architecture of Raphael’s painting: an upward trajectory to the heavens from humble bare feet on earth, and the tension between organic human imperfections juxtaposed against flawless, perfectly balanced symmetry (After all, the role of Mary in the liturgy is that of a bridge between humanity and divinity). The composition likewise transfigures a simple, delicate two-measure theme in the piano’s middle range (Beauty and the Beast...) into an immense and noble march. This modest gesture grows at first into a rigid bell-toll, before subsiding into a hushed echo, while the composition seems to grow around it.
Program Notes Polonaise No. 2 in E major Liszt Patrick Campbell Jankowski
The Rite of Spring stravinsky Patrick Campbell Jankowski
The polonaise, that robust yet noble dance, so exotic to western ears, was championed in Western Europe by Poland’s native son Frederic Chopin. His impact was immense, especially on the world of piano music. Liszt’s own take on the polonaise is like nothing Chopin would have ever written, though he captures the spirit of the dance, and especially its rhythmic lilt, brilliantly. Using this dance as merely a template, he colors the piece with his characteristically brilliant sense of drama. The showman in Liszt is everpresent, from wildly flung scales and free meandering between tempos and motives. Amid the drama and theatricality are some truly beautiful moments, especially when bright music box sonorities float atop the murmuring polonaise rhythm below, lingering over the scene with the strength of a spider’s web.
Even if you know this ballet like the back of your hand, it is so rich with texture, rhythmic vitality, and counterpoint that every new iteration (and there are many) feels fresh. Stravinsky’s use of an immense orchestra, supplemented with percussion and an expanded spectrum of wind sonorities, is among the many justifications for its fame and longevity. However, when you hear it in this context for four-hand piano, melody and counterpoint come to the fore. Often (misguidedly) called the quintessential modernist work, The Rite of Spring in fact owes its otherworldly beauty to Stravinsky’s look backward, to centuries-old folk music of Eastern Europe. The melodic lines in the ballet, with brief cells of repeating patterns and simple chant-like figures, are some of the most singable music you can imagine. The composer often layers several of these cells into a kaleidoscopic array, which becomes all the more palpable when stripped of timbral complexity. This version is not entirely tame, by any means. Before the fully orchestrated ballet premiered in a now infamous scandal, some got to hear this four-hand version played by the composer and Claude Debussy. Accounts of the evening reveal that those present could sense something important.
Horowitz Piano Series Fall 2018 sep 13
Ran Dank & Soyeon Kate Lee Mozart: Sonata for piano fourhands in B-flat major Scriabin: Prelude in F-sharp minor Janáček: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 “From the Street” Liszt: Années de pèlerinage “Italie” and Polonaise No. 2 in E major Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring for piano four-hands (1913)
oct 3
Hung-Kuan Chen Mozart: Adagio and Allegro in F minor, K. 594 Schubert: Fantasie in F minor with guest artist Tema Blackstone Beethoven: Diabelli Variations
oct 24
Boris Berman Haydn: Three “London” Sonatas Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas No. 9 in C major, and No. 7 in B-flat major
nov 7
Wei-Yi Yang A Schumann triptych including Op. 15 Kinderszenen, Op 16. Kreisleriana, and Op 17. Fantasie
nov 28
Melvin Chen Sibelius: Finlandia and Valse Triste (arr. Sibelius for solo piano) Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major (arranged for solo piano)
Horowitz Piano Series Spring 2019 jan 16
Peter Serkin Mozart: Adagio in B minor, K. 540 and Sonata No. 13 in B-flat major, K. 333 Bach: “Goldberg” Variations,
feb 13
Roberto Prosseda
mar 6
Robert Blocker
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Upcoming Events sep 21 Arturo Sandoval Ellington Jazz Series Virtuoso trumpeter Arturo Sandoval has earned multiple Grammy Awards for his genredefying performances. 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $27, students $14 sep 27 The Soldier’s Tale Oneppo Chamber Music Series A collaboration with the Yale School of Drama that The New York Times has described as “fresh, funny and aptly ominous.” 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, students $13 Sep 28 Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Yale Philharmonia Selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and music by Rossini and Vaughan Williams. 7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5
sep 30 The Soldier’s Tale Yale in New York A collaboration with the Yale School of Drama that The New York Times has described as “fresh, funny and aptly ominous.” 7:30 pm | Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall Tickets $40 oct 3 Hung-Kuan Chen, piano Horowitz Piano Series A recital by faculty pianist Hung-Kuan Chen, whom The Boston Globe has called “a deeply probing, imaginative player.” 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7 oct 9 Brentano String Quartet Oneppo Chamber Music Series YSM’s exceptional quartet-inresidence, the Brentano String Quartet, performs music by Dvorák, Janácek, and Smetana, with pianist Jonathan Biss. 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, students $13
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