Lucille Chung & Alessio Bax, March 4, 2020

horowitz piano series Boris Berman, artistic director

Lucille Chung and Alessio Bax

Wednesday, March 4, 2020 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Witold Lutosławski 1913–1994

Variations on a Theme by Paganini for two pianos (1941)

Igor Stravinsky 1882–1971

Petrushka, K. 12 I. The Shrovetide Fair II. Petrushka’s Cell III. The Moor’s Room IV. The Shrovetide Fair (Evening)

intermission

Claude Debussy 1862–1918

Petite Suite, L. 65 I. En bateau II. Cortège III. Menuet IV. Ballet

Francis Poulenc 1899–1963

Concerto for two pianos, FP 61 I. Allegro ma non troppo II. Larghetto III. Allegro molto

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 The real-life marriage of Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung – concert pianists who share abundant passion, virtuosity, and artistic chemistry – helps make theirs one of the most appealing and impressive piano duos of our time. In the words of the UK magazine Music and Arts, “Theirs is a marriage of wondrous colours and dextrous aplomb, subtly balanced to make a musical performance sound as one.”

Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and is now a familiar face on four continents, not only as a recitalist and chamber musician, but as a concerto soloist who has appeared with more than 100 orchestras, including the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Dallas and Cincinnati Symphonies, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Yuri Temirkanov, and City of Birmingham Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle. His celebrated discography includes Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, Mozart’s Concertos K. 491 and K. 595, Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and “Moonlight” Sonatas (a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”), Alessio Bax plays Brahms (a Gramophone “Critics’ Choice”), Russian favorites by Scriabin and Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff: Preludes & Melodies (an American Record Guide “Critics’ Choice”), Baroque Reflections (a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”), and Lullabies for Mila, which also features Chung and is dedicated to the couple’s young daughter.

First Prize-winner of the Stravinsky International Piano Competition, Lucille Chung has been praised for her “stylish and refined” performances (Gramophone). Born in Montreal, she made her debut at the age of ten with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, after which Charles Dutoit invited her as soloist on the orchestra’s Asian tour. She has since appeared with conductors including Krzysztof Penderecki, Vladimir Spivakov, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Vasily Petrenko, performing with such international ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Seoul Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, and Israel Chamber Orchestra, as well as with all the leading orchestras of Canada, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver Symphonies. Her solo discography includes Mozart & Me, Mendelssohn concertos, Camille Saint-Saëns: Piano Transcriptions, and albums dedicated to Poulenc, Scriabin, Liszt, and György Ligeti, whose complete piano works she recorded for the Dynamic label.

The second volume of Chung’s Ligeti series, comprising his works for piano four-hands and two pianos, marked the first recorded collaboration between Bax and Chung.

The disc garnered the maximum “R10” rating from French magazine ClassicaRépertoire and five stars from Germany’s Fono Forum.

In 2006, the duo released Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals with Michael York as narrator and the Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Bax & Chung: Piano Duo appeared on Signum Classics

Artist Profiles, cont. in 2013, pairing Stravinsky’s four-hand version of his ballet Pétrouchka with music

by Brahms and Piazzolla.

In the 2019–20 season Bax and Chung will appear together with the North Carolina Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Reading Symphony and will perform duo recitals at such prestigious venues as Spivey Hall and Yale University, among others.

Together, Bax and Chung have performed in major festivals and concert halls around the world; in 2008 alone, they logged 20,000 miles by train as they toured their fourhand Pétrouchka across the far reaches of Stravinsky’s homeland. They have appeared at international festivals including Verbier in Switzerland; Við Djúpið in Iceland; Chungmu Art Hall (the opening concert) in Seoul, Korea; Pau Casals, Castilla y León, Torroella de Montgrí, and Pamplona in Spain; Salon-de-Provence in France; Felicja Blumental in Tel Aviv; Lübecker Kammermusikfest, Moritzburg, and Schloss Elmau in Germany; Duszniki Chopin in Poland; Ottawa in Canada; and Music@Menlo, Mainly Mozart, SPAC, and Bard in the United States; besides giving performances in Aruba, Australia, Barbados, China, Cyprus, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Palestine, Russia, and the UK. In recent seasons they have performed at New York’s Lincoln Center; the Chopin Society in Saint Paul, MN; Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington, DC; at Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, where Bax assumed the role of Artistic Director in 2017; and at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, playing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Orquesta Filarmónica de

Buenos Aires. This season, besides returning to Lincoln Center, they join members of the New York Philharmonic for a zoologicalthemed chamber program in Ridgewood, NJ, and give duo recitals in Dallas, TX; Athens, OH; Southbury, CT; Castlemaine, Australia; and, in two dates, at the Sala São Paulo in Brazil.

After meeting at the 1997 Hamamatsu Competition, Bax and Chung carried on a courtship by telephone and email while on separate tours, before eventually marrying in 2004. Besides their individual solo careers and their newest duo collaboration as parents of four-year-old Mila, they are also co-artistic directors of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation in Dallas, created to cultivate the legacy of the Basque pianist and to support young pianists’ careers. » alessiobax.com » lucillechung.com

Program Notes

by Bel Ben Mamoun Variations on a Theme by Paganini Lutosławski

Petrushka stravinsky

Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski had little luck in his military career: having served in the Kraków Army during the brief resistance to Nazi invasion, he was quickly captured, but managed to flee imprisonment.

Upon his escape, the composer found work as a pianist in the Warsaw cafes; the only available musical venues following the ban on public concerts in Poland. Together with close friend and fellow pianist Andrzej Panufnik, Lutoslawski transcribed and arranged over 200 works, ranging from Bach and Brahms to Polish resistance songs, which they performed in cafes throughout Warsaw. Of these 200 arrangements, only Variations on a Theme by Paganini survived the Warsaw Uprising.

September of 1910 found Stravinsky working on his latest ballet, The Rite of Spring, in Switzerland. When visited by Diaghilev, the composer was surprised to find Stravinsky instead working on a new symphonic work about the mischievous Petrushka, a traditional stock puppet character of pre-Lenten festivities, which the pair later expanded into a full ballet and theatrical production.

Lustrous and virtuosic, Lutoslawski’s variations on Paganini’s famous Caprice No. 24 are as vibrant as they are agitated. Each of the seven brilliant variations dance across a well-grounded A-minor framework, although Paganini’s tonal scaffolding is frequently ornamented by chromatic juxtapositions and bright piano techniques and articulations. Bright dynamic flourishes and capricious tempo transitions between agitated propulsion and calm, dolcissimo legato themes seem to character the work: an ebullient 6/8 second movement followed by a trembling third movement. The fourth, pensive and sweet, the fifth quietly agitated with bright exclamations, the sixth militant and agitated, before Lutoslawski’s final variation, an expansion of the original coda, spurs the dueling pianos through their thrilling conclusion.

Petrushka tells the tragic love story of three puppets in St. Petersburg’s pre-Lenten festivities. The jubilous first tableau opens in the main square, where dancers and musicians put on dazzling performances in hopes of drawing the attention of the bustling crowds. Suddenly, a magician appears with three puppets: a clown (Petrushka), a ballerina, and a Moor, who come to life and begin a sprightly dance.

The graceful ballerina is clearly enamored with the handsome, flamboyant (and overtly exoticised) Moor to the dismay of Petrushka.

In the second tableau, Petrushka grieves his misfortune in his room, miming his self-pity, his infatuation with the ballerina, and his hatred of the Magician and Moor.

The Ballerina appears in Petrushka’s room, and the clown rushes to meet her in a frantic dance, scaring her away.

In the third tableau, the Ballerina dances into the Moor’s room and seduces him with a trumpet song: the pair waltz together, but are disrupted by the jealous Petrushka, who attacks the Moor and is chased from the room. As the puppets run back into the square, the Moor fatally stabs Petrushka

Program Notes, cont. in front of the horrified crowd. The Magician shakes Petrushka’s ‘corpse,’ reassuring the crowd that he is nothing more than a puppet, and the crowd slowly dissipates. As night falls, the Magician is alone in the square, but is suddenly frightened by Petrushka’s ghost leering over the theatre, leaving the audience to question which characters were truly real.

Petite Suite debussy Debussy had just returned to Paris and finished his 15 years of conservatory training when he composed his Petite Suite, a charming quartet of vignettes composed at the request of simple works for the amateur pianist by close friend Jacques Durand. “En bateau” depicts a romantic boat ride across a lake through a lilting barcarolle that seems to rock gently as it drifts across rolled chords.

In contrast, the playful “Cortége” follows an elegant lady as she walks her pet monkey up the stairs, accompanied by a servant who carries the train of her dress (perhaps higher than necessary). Lively and mischievous, the three members of the procession skip over whimsical syncopation through two primary themes and a playful recapitulation.

The Classical Minuet provides gentle elegance in its simple, courtly melodies. Echoing the court dances, transparent melodies ripple across octaves with scalar flourishes.

This simple dance is followed by a modal Ballet, introduced by a glittering primary theme. This is soon taken over by a humorous waltz that lilts between sweeping lines and gentle murmuring, before falling back into a recapitulation of the primary theme.

Flowing in and out of simple metre, Debussy combines the primary theme with its central waltz into an ebullient conclusion.

Concerto for two pianos poulenc Spirited and virtuosic, Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos marks the end of his early career. As stated by the composer himself in a letter to Belgian musicologist Paul Collaer, “You will see for yourself what an enormous step forward it is from my previous work… I am really entering my great period.” Marked by capricious juxtapositions of humorous, at times childlike vitality and elegant, glittering scalar passages, the paired pianists dance between bright articulation and dark sonorities.

The concerto opens with a spirited, albeit capricious, ternary Allegro that veers erratically between exuberant flourishes and long, sweeping melodies. The Classical Larghetto intersperses the clean simplicity of Mozartean piano melodies with harmonic chromaticisations, romantic accompaniment, and humorous interjections. A bright fanfare opens the exhilerating Allegro conclusion, a flurry of chromatic [auuuu] and restless melodic fragments echoed in octaves. At times, these melodies are interrupted by percussive exclamations or propelled forward by rhythmic articulations. A penultimate, dolce melody sweeps between the pianists, allowing a final breath before its joyful, ringing conclusion.

Horowitz Piano Series Thank you for

Spring 2020 MAR Wei-Yi Yang 25 A program that in part follows Chopin’s musical language and influence into the works of Debussy and Scriabin, including one set of pieces regarding ‘Night music’ and another focusing on aspects of ‘Etudes.’

Tickets start at $15, students $7 Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.

Morse Recital Hall

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Upcoming Events Bernie Williams Collective Ellington Jazz Series The former New York Yankees center fielder is a musician “whose talent as a guitarist is evident” (The Washington Post) and whose album Moving Forward was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $22, students $10 mar 6

mar 8

English Musical Splendor: The Bach Choir, London, Yale Schola Cantorum, and Yale Philharmonia In celebration of the Yale School of Music’s 125th anniversary, David Hill, principal conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum and The Bach Choir, will lead the ensembles in a performance of William Walton’s arresting oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast and music by Arnold Bax, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

4:00 pm | Woolsey Hall free

mar 31 Pamela Frank and Emanuel Ax

Oneppo Chamber Music Series Two of the most admired instrumentalists on the international chamber music scene perform Mozart’s Sonatas in G major, K. 379, and B-flat major, K. 454, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10, Op. 96.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 Apr 1

Smithsonian Chamber Players Collection of Musical Instruments Franz Schubert’s early Violin Sonata in G minor, D. 408; the iconic Sonata in A minor, D. 821, originally written for the oncefashionable arpeggione and piano; and the late work String Quartet in A minor, D. 804, “Rosamunde.”

7:30 pm | 15 Hillhouse Ave Tickets $30, Museum Associates & Seniors & Yale Faculty/Staff $25, Students $15

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