Wei-Yi Yang, piano, December 13, 2023

horow itz pi a no ser i es Boris Berman, artistic director

Wei-Yi Yang

Wednesday, December 13, 2023 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

José García-León, Dean

Program Franz Joseph Haydn 1732–1809

Sonata in G minor, Hob. XVI:44 I. Moderato II. Allegretto

Tōru Takemitsu 1930–1996

Les yeux clos I (1979)

Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915

3 Poèmes, Op. 52 I. Poème II. Enigme III. Poème languide Selections from 8 Études, Op. 42 II. Legatissimo III. Prestissimo IV. Andante Selections from 3 Études, Op. 65 II. Allegretto III. Molto vivace – Impérieux

intermission

Franz Schubert 1797–1828

Sonata-Fantasie in G major, D. 894 I. Molto moderato e cantabile II. Andante III. Menuetto. Allegro moderato — Trio IV. Allegretto

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 Pianist Wei-Yi Yang has received worldwide acclaim for his captivating performances and imaginative programming. Winner of the gold medal at the San Antonio International Piano Competition, he has performed at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and across America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Most recently, his debut at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium as the soloist in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie was hailed by the New York Times as “sensational.”

In demand as a dedicated teacher, Yang has presented master classes and performances in Scotland, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Serbia, and Montenegro, among other countries. His performances have been lauded and featured on NPR, PBS, RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), ARTE (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne), the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and on recordings for such labels as Genuin (Leipzig), Hyperion (London), Naxos (Hong Kong), Albany Records, Renegade Classics, and the Holland-America Music Society.

A dynamic chamber musician with a diverse repertoire, Yang is a frequent guest artist at festivals in Lucca, Italy; Mallorca, Spain; Novi Sad, Serbia; Monterrey, Mexico; Konstanz, Germany; Kotor, Montenegro; Bergen, Netherland; and La Jolla and Napa, California; as well as the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut. He has collaborated with such distinguished musicians as Frederica

von Stade, Dawn Upshaw, Richard Stoltzman, David Shifrin, Frank Morelli, Roberto Díaz, Roger Tapping, Clive Greensmith, Ole Akahoshi, Syoko Aki, and Ani Kavafian, and esteemed ensembles such as the Imani Winds, the Brentano, Miro, Dover, Pacifica, and Tokyo string quartets, among numerous others.

Yang has curated inventive interdisciplinary projects, including a collaboration with the illustrious English actress Miriam Margolyes as part of the Dickens’ Women world tour; lecture/recitals on the confluence of Czech music and literature; and multimedia performances of Granados’ monumental piano suite Goyescas with projections of Goya’s etchings. A keen advocate for the performance and education of newer music, Yang has worked with several notable composers including Martin Bresnick, George Crumb, and Ezra Laderman to prepare their works for premiere and recording.

Born in Taiwan of Chinese and Japanese heritage, Yang studied first in the United Kingdom and then in America with renowned Russian pianists Arkady Aronov at the Manhattan School of Music and Boris Berman at Yale. Yang has also worked with eminent pianists Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Vera Gornostaeva, Byron Janis, Lilian Kallir, and Murray Perahia. In 2004, he received his doctorate from Yale University, where he joined the School of Music’s faculty in 2005, and serves as Professor of Piano and Chair of the DMA Committee.

Program Notes Introduction Wei-Yi Yang To provide an immediate listening guide to tonight’s program, I thought that a “compare and contrast” approach may highlight elements in these compositions that are mutual as well as divergent: pairing the mystical Scriabin with the enigmatic Takemitsu, as well as the two Viennese masters Haydn and Schubert, a fascinating dialogue among the pieces immediately takes shape. Both Scriabin and Takemitsu manipulated the idea of suspended time. The desire and sensuality suggested in Scriabin’s music often vacillate between languorous decadence and compressed intensity. His shapeshifting harmonies float and waft in kaleidoscope, yet they are also capable of intensifying into blinding luminosity, while Takemitsu’s suspended sonority and elusive gestures often curve, hover, and vaporize into thin air. The selections by both composers are iridescent and vague, volatile yet intentional. Elsewhere, sonatas of Haydn and Schubert bookend the rest of this program; they defied 18–19th century tradition and expectation of the sonata format: both have inspired experimentation in form and proportion and reveal much of both composers’ idiosyncratic artistic styles. Haydn enriched his compact Galant sonata in G minor with an array of hybridity by combining quartet-style texture, contrapuntal rhetoric, and ornamental variations in witty cylindrical unfolding. Schubert, with his groundbreaking maneuver of ordering/re-ordering the structural

design of this monumental G major sonata, veritably built the piece from a state of dream and achieved a powerful, sprawling narrative. Listening to these compositions in succession, one hears a striking range of imaginative takes on temporal manipulation and innovation by four distinct musical voices.

Sonata in G minor, Hob. XVI:44 haydn Patrick Campbell Jankowski G minor is a key that seems to hold some emotional weight. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was born after and died before Haydn, gravitated to the key in particular when he wanted to convey some sort of tragic pathos, and some of his most enduring works are in this key.

Out of Haydn’s 62 known sonatas for keyboard, this is the only one in G minor.

It is a compact and elegant two-movement work that, while emotive, seems just as reserved. In it, Haydn showcases his contrapuntal writing while keeping the texture relatively spare. He often meanders into prolonged periods of major mode, with melodies decorated with filigree, but always finds his way back to the quiet elegance and austerity from which he began.

Les yeux clos I takemitsu Patrick Campbell Jankowski At the beginning of the score to Les yeux clos, Takemitsu writes that the “most important thing… is to produce subtle

changes of color in the context of floating time.” This guidance seems apropos of a work which appears to defy any sense of meter or tonal gravity, consisting instead of a series of musical moments emphasizing texture, subtle contrasts, and gesture above all. The evocative title, meaning “closed eyes,” is taken from a painting by the French Symbolist painter Odilon Redon. An image of a female figure’s bust (likely that of his wife) against a pale blue background with her eyes closed, it is haunting and dreamlike. The pale hues, soft lines, and hazy texture of the painting evoke the kind of “floating” timelessness and obscurity that Takemitsu derives from the piano.

Selections from Poèmes and Etudes, Opp. 42, 52, and 65 scriabin Patrick Campbell Jankowski Alexander Scriabin may be best remembered for his extensive and deep fascination with keys and color associations. While it remains unknown whether the composer was truly synesthetic – with which a kind of crossing of senses takes place – he nevertheless associated musical keys with visual colors. C major, for instance, was bright red, while its closely related key of G major was orange, and D major yellow. Whether writing for a large symphonic orchestra or a solo piano, his sense of keys and key relationships made for tonally complex and rich music. The advantage of hearing some of his many piano miniatures in close proximity is

that the variety of keys and their associated characteristics are prominently displayed. Scriabin’s compositional style for the piano is not unlike that of Chopin, but he ventures even further into the realm of the cryptic and poetic: the middle of the Op. 52 3 Pieces, a playful and capricious little work, is titled “Enigma.”

It’s almost as though he is challenging us to catch up with his imagination.

Sonata-Fantasie in G major, D. 894 schubert Katherine Balch Schubert’s Sonata in G major was written in 1826 and published the next year in Vienna by Tobias Heslinger as “Fantaisie, Andante, Minuetto, and Allegretto.” This cumbrous title was then abbreviated to “Fantasy in G major,” despite Schubert’s clear indication that the work was a sonata. While this distinction may seem trivial, a mislabeling for commercial reasons over musical ones, it actually reflects Schubert’s unique approach to sonata form in this piece. Rather than the typical sonata foundation of contrast, Schubert inserts critical and often fleeting moments of drama within a generally unified thematic and affective palette.

The result is an understated and intimate musical experience with delicate and heartfelt quirks.

The Sonata in G major begins with a gentle, grounded homophonic swaying reminiscent of the exposed opening of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto.

But Schubert’s material seems bound

Program Notes, cont.

About the Horowitz Piano Series

to unified motion, not flourishing into more typical pianistic figuration until the second theme. This music is relaxed and dance-like, but with a relentless softness as though overheard from another room.

Schubert’s consistent use of pianissimo and triple piano dynamic markings in the exposition suggests an affect of loneliness or distance. An abrupt rise in dynamics is matched by a sudden shift to the minor mode in the development, replacing the distant swaying of the exposition with more immediate anguish.

The Horowitz Recital Series was established in 2000 to honor the artistry of the great Ukrainian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1903–1989), who chose to leave his papers to Yale upon his death in 1989. Today, Yale honors his legacy through the Horowitz Piano Series, which brings many of the world’s great keyboard artists to Yale and presents the distinguished pianists of the Yale faculty.

The dance-like quality of the first movement pervades the other movements. Interestingly, the most forceful and least light-hearted of these dances is in the Minuet. The movement’s trio section, however, compensates for its partner’s gruffness. A tender buoyancy characterizes the Rondo-Allegro, offering an understated conclusion in place of the bombastic energy typically associated with a sonata finale.

Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, and Radu Lupu are among the guest pianists who have performed at Yale. The series also presents pianists who are less known in the United States, such as Paul Lewis, Pierre Réach, and Mikhaïl Rudy.

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