Robert Blocker, Dean
doctor of musical arts degree recital
Lee Dionne, piano Thursday, October 4, 2018 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Arnold Schoenberg 1874–1951
Suite for Piano, Op. 25 I. Präludium. Rasch (fast) II. Gavotte. Etwas langsam, nicht hastig (rather slowly, not hurried) – Musette. Rascher (faster) III. Intermezzo IV. Menuett. Moderato – Trio V. Gigue. Rasch (fast)
Johannes Brahms 1833–1897
Selections from Eight Piano Pieces, Op. 76 I. Capriccio in F-sharp minor. Un poco agitato, Unruhig bewegt (uneasily moving). IV. Intermezzo in B-flat major. Allegretto grazioso. V. Capriccio in C-sharp minor. Agitato, ma non troppo presto. Sehr aufgeregt, doch nicht zu schnell (very excited, but not too quickly). VII. Intermezzo in A minor. Moderato semplice. VIII. Capriccio in C major. Grazioso e un poco vivace. Anmutig lebhaft (gracefully lively). intermission
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750
Italian Concerto, BWV 971 I. (no tempo indication) II. Andante III. Presto
Brahms
Variations on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. 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 Profile Lee Dionne, piano Pianist Lee Dionne enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and his playing has been described as “impressive” (New York Times) and “impeccable” (Fanfare Magazine). Lee has performed concerti with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Bilkent Symphony, Yale Symphony, and the Philharmonia Virtuosi. He was the third prize winner of the James Mottram International Piano Competition in 2012. As a chamber musician Lee is the founding pianist of the award-winning Merz Trio. He is also an alumnus of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and a core artist of Cantata Profana. Lee has given lecture recitals at Cornell and Bucknell Universities, taught theory at Yale College, and worked as a teaching artist throughout New York City. He currently teaches chamber music at Yale College. Lee has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Presser Foundation Award and DAAD postgraduate fellowship for study abroad in Germany. His major teachers have been Boris Berman, Wei-Yi Yang, Matti Raekallio, Patricia Zander, and Wilma Machover.
Program Notes Suite for Piano schoenberg Lee Dionne Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano, Op. 25, written between 1921–23, was the composer’s first work that made use of his new style of twelve-tone composition in every movement. In each of his twelve-tone works, Schoenberg arranges the twelve pitches commonly used in Western music into an ordered sequence called a “row.” Rows used by Schoenberg are generally unique to each piece of music. More important than a row’s ordering, however, is the way in which the composer divides the row into smaller subsets of pitches. In the case of the Suite for Piano, the row divides most commonly into tetrachords, or sets of four notes. Similarities emerge between Schoenberg’s treatment of tetrachords and how composers might treat harmony in a common practice idiom. Schoenberg makes musical reference throughout the Suite to the idea of counterpoint: the notion that “vertical” sonorities (what we think of as chords or harmony) can be generated by the “horizontal” motion and convergence of independent lines or voices. In a common practice idiom, it is the rules by which these voices proceed that comprise the “art” or “craft” of counterpoint. The irony of Schoenberg’s contrapuntal textures is that there are no rules governing the vertical combination of voices. Yet he uses many of the techniques of counterpoint to generate unity, contrast, and variety throughout his compositions. Listen, for
instance, for “imitation” (the passing of material between voices in different registers), “inversion” (the flipping around of high and low within an idea), and augmentation (the same idea presented at different speeds). The most communicative aspects of the Suite for Piano are rhythm and gesture. As in the Baroque dance suites that Schoenberg parodies, the music is not actually meant to be danced, but many of the movement titles reference dances that are associated with strict rhythmic patterns and steps. In Schoenberg’s Suite, the axis of imagined movement is expanded through his use of huge registral leaps that traverse the entire keyboard. Finally, notice the palindromic “arch form” of the composition. Framed by virtuosic outer movements (Prelude and Gigue), the second and fourth movements are paired dances in an ABA form (Gavotte – Musette – Gavotte and Menuet – Trio – Menuet), while the central Intermezzo, the only title out of place in a dance suite, is a clear homage to Brahms.
Eight Piano Pieces brahms Lee Dionne Brahms published his Eight Piano Pieces, Op. 76, in 1879, after a thirteen-year period of producing almost no solo piano music. The set is remarkable for its stylistic similarities to the composer’s last works for piano, the Opp. 116–119, written yet another fourteen years later in 1892–93.
While Brahms’ compositions demonstrate a high level of stylistic consistency over the course of his life, the Op. 76 is groundbreaking for the extent to which his compositional technique — what Schoenberg called “developing variation” — saturates the work and binds the entire set together. “Developing variation” can be thought of as a way of achieving compositional unity through the gradual, persistent development of small thematic fragments. Because Brahms’ musical texture is so often composed almost exclusively from small fragments, the process of variation is both pervasive and essential. In Op. 76, developing variation serves not only as a method of composition, but also as a way of unifying independent movements into a proper “cycle” of music. In my selection of movements, I have chosen to emphasize the cyclic connections at work, organizing the five pieces into a palindromic arch form akin to the Schoenberg. As in the Schoenberg, the first and last pieces frame the set — not only in terms of virtuosity, but in terms of tempo character and pitch material. Yet there is a through-narrative at work as well: by the time we come to Op. 76/8, the (relatively) straightforward motion of Op. 76/1 has been destabilized and transformed by the turbulent cross-rhythms of Op. 76/5, resulting in an entirely new kind of rhythmic feeling in Op. 76/8. Filling out the arch form are the more introverted second and fourth pieces, both Intermezzos. The fourth piece, Op. 76/7,
is inextricably linked to Op. 76/8 through transformations of musical material. The second piece, Op. 76/4, stands as a kind of anachronistic tribute to Schoenberg. Here, Brahms employs his classic device of a “tonal horizon” — the implication of a home key by suggestion. Complementing this harmonically adventurous ploy is the langourous melody that drapes above the “horizon” and that bears an uncanny resemblance to the tone row of Schoenberg’s Op. 25.
Italian Concerto bach Lee Dionne The work we now know as the Italian Concerto, BWV 971, demonstrates Bach’s total engagement with and assimiliation of leading national styles of his day. Paired with the so-called French Overture, BWV 831, the two works were first published in 1735 under the unassuming title, “Keyboard Practice Volume II” (ClavierÜbung II). The original titles of the works, Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto (Concerto in the Italian taste), and Ouvertüre nach Französischer Art (Overture in the French style), emphasize the idea of stylistic emulation. The Italian Concerto is essentially a transposition of a full, Venetian concertogrosso-style work to the medium of a solo instrument. Bach had dabbled previously with this idea in his transcriptions of Italian concertos for organ (five exist, his BWV 592–596). The Italian Concerto was written instead, however, for a double-
Program Notes cont. manual harpsichord, an instrument with far fewer registral capabilities than the organ, yet nonetheless clear distinctions between forte and piano. The fact that Bach had imagined forte and piano dynamics in the original composition makes the work a rewarding project to realize on a modern piano. Bach’s Concerto received an enthusiastic review in 1739 from critic Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708–1776), an advocate of the newly fashionable “art galant.” Scheibe had earlier published a critique of Bach in his journal Der Critische Musicus in 1737, decrying Bach’s compositions as overly “turgid” and sophisticated. The Italian Concerto, which leans more in the galant direction, was perhaps more to Scheibe’s taste. More importantly, Scheibe was the only critic of the time to describe the work as a “sonata concerto,” or, by his definition: a three-movement chamber work with one upper voice that is “worked out more fully than the other” (assuming the role of soloist), and a bass-line that is less concise than those in “regular” sonatas. The outer movements of Bach’s Italian Concerto certainly match and exceed this definition in their virtuosity. The middle movement stands alone as a poignant and elaborately ornamented aria. The movement is perhaps closest in Bach’s output to his 13th Goldberg Variation in its melodic contours and rhythmic character, though set in a dark and introspective key of D minor.
Variations on a Theme by Handel brahms Lee Dionne Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Händel, Op. 24, or simply the Händel Variations, exists in dialogue with a formidable set of predecessors, most notably Bach’s Goldberg and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. The Händel Variations is Brahms’ own contribution to this handful of astonishing, long-form variation works. Brahms chooses his theme from another existing variation set, the Aria and Variations of Händel’s Keyboard Suite in B-flat major, HWV 434. In his compositional technique, however, he could not have come further from the origins of the variations genre as simple exercises in rhythmic “divisions.” While Brahms occasionally uses the technique of dividing rhythm to create a sense of momentum across variations, many of the variations are more defined by their juxtaposition with their neighbors. A number of the variations are very clearly organized into pairs, whether as variations on each other, studies in contrasts, or both. At the same time, Brahms goes on to use the variation pairs as building blocks to create an incredible, large-scale form. Of the twenty-five variations and fugue, we can understand a first section comprised of the first eight variations; this section includes an initial set of four that ends “big,” two middle variations in B-flat minor (variations five and six) and two rhythmically charged variations that cap off the section (variations seven and eight).
Beginning the middle section, variation nine stands on its own, almost suspended in time, before diving into variations ten through eighteen. Variation thirteen Is a stand-out, a style hongrois funeral march that bursts unexpectedly into full sunlight in variation fourteen. Variation fifteen enters triumphantly off its heels, a grand, culminating sort of movement that would end the section but is instead diffused with a humorous transformation into variation sixteen, its light-hearted parallel. Variations seventeen and eighteen, another pair, conclude the middle section lightly. By variations nineteen through twenty-two, we have reached our longest lull so far. The four variations are highly contrasting – (variations nineteen and twenty-two also make clear stylistic reference to Baroque forms) – but all remain in relatively low dynamics with a sense of stillness, allowing variations twenty-three and twentyfour to build as a single, sustained crescendo that culminates in our grandest climax yet (variation twenty-five), one that can only be answered and rejoined by the radiant, concluding fugue.
Upcoming Events oct 8 Rolston String Quartet YSM Ensembles 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall free
oct 17 Lunchtime Chamber Music Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free
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. 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, students $13
oct 18 Henry Kramer, piano Doctor of Musical Arts Recital 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free oct 23 Yale Brass Trio Faculty Artist Series 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall free
Oct 11 Aaron Jay Kernis and David Lang, faculty composers New Music New Haven Works by faculty composers Aaron Jay Kernis and David Lang, and music by YSM student composers. 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free
oct 24 Boris Berman, piano Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist Boris Berman performs Haydn’s “London” Sonatas and late sonatas by Prokofiev. 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7
oct 14 Wendy Sharp, violin Faculty Artist Series 3 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free
oct 25 Larry Weng, piano Doctor of Musical Arts Recital 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall free
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