N INET Y-THI R D SEASON
Sunday, January 21, 2024, at 3:00
Piano Series LUCAS AND ARTHUR JUSSEN MOZART
Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448
SCHUBERT
Fantasy in F Minor, D. 940 for Piano, Four Hands
KULENTY
VAN . . . for Piano, Four Hands
Allegro con spirito Andante Allegro molto
Allegro molto moderato—Largo—Allegro vivace
INTERMISSION
STRAVINSKY
The Rite of Spring for Two Pianos The Adoration of the Earth The Sacrifice
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
COMMENTS by Richard E. Rodda WOLFGANG MOZART Born January 27, 1756; Salzburg, Austria Died December 5, 1791; Vienna, Austria
Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 COMPOSED
1781
When Mozart resigned from his Salzburg post in the musical establishment of Archbishop Colloredo in 1781 to move to Vienna, he anticipated making his living as a freelance pianist, composer, and teacher. He outlined his plan in a letter to his father from January 1782: I have three pupils now, which brings me in some eighteen ducats a month. . . . I really need only one more, because four pupils are quite enough. With the income, a man can manage in Vienna if he lives quietly and in a retired way, but, of course, if I were to fall ill, I should not make a farthing. I can write, it is true, at least one opera a year, give a concert annually, and have some things engraved and published by subscription. There are other concerts too where one can make money, particularly if one has been living in a place for a long time and has a good reputation.
The pupils, commissions, and concerts did materialize soon after his arrival, and the first years of Mozart’s life in Vienna were the most happy and successful he was to know. Among the pupils Mozart acquired soon after settling in Vienna was Josepha Auernhammer, the only daughter of the socially prominent Economic Councilor Johann Michael Auernhammer. Though Josepha proved to be an excellent pianist and a fine student, Mozart painted a most unflattering picture of her in a letter to his father in Salzburg. He labeled her ein Scheusel—“a horror”—and continued, “If an artist wished to paint the Devil in a lifelike way, he would be obliged to resort to her face as a model. She is as fat as a peasant girl. . . . To see her is enough to make one blind; a single look is a whole day’s punishment. . . . She is the biggest bore I know.” The lady herself harbored no false vanity about her looks, though she was proud of her keyboard skills. “I am not pretty; on the contrary, I am plain,” she reportedly told Mozart. “I don’t want to marry some clerk with three or four hundred florins, and I have no choice of anyone better. So I prefer to remain as I am and
a b o v e : Wolfgang Mozart, detail from the Mozart family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736–1819), 1780
2
C OMME NTS
make a livelihood by my talents.” She underestimated herself. In 1796, she wedded a prosperous merchant named Boesenkoenig and was reportedly still giving annual recitals in Vienna as late as 1813. Perhaps Mozart’s protests to his puritanical father about Josepha were more subterfuge than substance, after all. It seems that he was visiting the young lady’s apartment three or four times a week in 1781, which, to his father’s prudish eye, might appear to have been a more rigorous schedule of attention than strictly tutorial duties would demand. For a concert of his music at the Auernhammer home on November 23, 1781, at which he and Josepha were to be featured in a joint performance, Mozart revived his concerto for two pianos from the previous year (K. 365) and wrote a new sonata for two pianos in D major (K. 448, corrected to K. 375a in later editions of the chronological Köchel catalog). It was an important evening in helping the recently arrived composer establish himself in the Imperial City since Auernhammer’s guests included such local luminaries as Countess Maria Wilhelmine Thun and Gottfried van Swieten, the music-loving court librarian for whom Mozart was to write his only other complete work for two pianos—the Fugue in C minor, K. 426 of 1783. (Though there are a number of four-hand compositions in his catalog, only fragments exist of the few other works mooted for two pianos, including a sonata in B-flat major.) The recital was a success, and the Sonata for Two Pianos in D major remained a
regular item in Mozart’s repertoire—he played it in 1784 with another talented pupil, Babette Ployer (for whom the Concerto no. 17, K. 453 was written) and oversaw its publication by the Viennese firm of Traeg in 1789. The Sonata for Two Pianos is one of those inimitable masterworks of Mozart that elevates the stock formulas of his day into a creation of almost reckless beauty. Alfred Einstein wrote that the Sonata is “galant from beginning to end,” with the form and idiom “of an ideal sinfonia for an opera buffa; no cloud obscures its gaiety,” and then went on to point out the true essence of the work: The art with which the two parts are made completely equal, the play of the dialogue, the delicacy and refinement of the figuration, the feeling for sonority in the combination and exploitation of the different registers of the two instruments—all these things exhibit such mastery that this apparently “superficial” and entertaining work is at the same time one of the most profound and mature of all Mozart’s compositions. The Sonata opens with a bold unison statement of the fanfare motif that serves as the main theme. After some attractive intertwining of scales and arpeggios (the two pianos are treated as exact equals, evidence of Mozart’s high opinion of Fräulein Auernhammer’s talents), the second theme, composed of scalar motifs and short phrases, CS O.O RG
3
COMMENTS
is presented and soon proves to be a proper subject for a bit of imitative discussion between the participants. A development section based on a new motif and a full recapitulation of the earlier themes round out the sonata
form of the movement. The Andante is quiet and lyrical and probably as close to unadulterated rapture as it is safe to approach. The finale is a quicksilver rondo of wit, grace, and immaculate musicianship.
FRANZ SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797; Himmelpfortgrund, northwest of Vienna, Austria Died November 19, 1828; Vienna, Austria
Fantasy in F Minor, D. 940 for Piano, Four Hands COMPOSED
1828
On March 26, 1828, in the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, Schubert gave the only public concert entirely of his works held during his lifetime. The event, prompted and sponsored by his circle of devoted friends, was a significant artistic and financial success, and he used the proceeds to celebrate the occasion at a local tavern, pay off some old debts, acquire a new piano, and buy tickets for Nicoló Paganini’s sensational debut in Vienna three days later. The first important composition that Schubert completed after this milestone in his career was the Fantasy in F minor, the most poetic of his creations for piano duet (i.e., four
hands at one keyboard). The work was finished in April but apparently had been sketched soon after the beginning of the year, since Schubert offered it for publication to Schott in February 1828 along with the quartets in G major and D minor (Death and the Maiden), three operas, the Mass in A-flat, the E-flat piano trio, and several dozen songs. His proposal was refused, and the score for the Fantasy was not issued until Diabelli of Vienna brought it out in 1829, a year after the composer’s death. On May 9, 1828, Schubert and Franz Lachner performed the piece for their friend, the writer and Schubertian Eduard von Bauernfeld, who recorded in his diary, “Today Schubert (with Lachner) played this new, wonderful four-hand Fantasy to me.” The score was dedicated to Countess Caroline Esterházy, a young student of his upon whom the bachelor Franz seems to have had a crush—he
t h i s pa g e : Watercolor portrait of Franz Schubert by Wilhelm August Rieder, 1825. Austrian National Library | o p p o s i t e pa g e : Hanna Kulenty, photo by Zosia Zija
4
C OMME NTS
once told her that everything he wrote was secretly dedicated to her, though the Fantasy is the only one of his compositions that bears her name.
S
chubert was skilled as a violinist, violist, and solo pianist, but his favorite form of participatory chamber music was the piano duet. He wrote some sixty works for that convivial medium, though most date from his younger years, before he took up his bohemian existence in central Vienna when he was twenty. The Fantasy in F minor is his last and greatest contribution to the four-hand repertoire, which, according to Maurice Brown in his study of Schubert, “has, in the highest degree, all those characteristic qualities of the composer that have endeared him to generations of music lovers.”
The Fantasy is spread across four continuous formal sections, the first and last spawned from the same thematic material so as to unify the overall structure. The opening portion, with its delicately rocking accompaniment and precisely etched melody, achieves a haunting blend of mystery and nostalgia, which only Mozart could rival. Sterner motifs are introduced for the sake of contrast. The following Largo section uses dramatic dotted-rhythm figurations at its beginning and end to frame the more tender melody that occupies its central region. A brilliant triple-meter Allegro, the pianistic analogue of the scherzo in the contemporaneous C major symphony (The Great), forms the dancing heart of the Fantasy. The themes of the opening section return in heightened, often contrapuntal settings to round out this masterpiece of Schubert’s fullest maturity.
HANNA KULENTY Born March 18, 1961; Białystok, Poland
VAN . . . for Piano, Four Hands COMPOSED
2014
Hanna Kulenty studied at the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw with Włodzimierz Kotoński and at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague with Louis
Andriessen. Her career has been jointly based in Poland and the Netherlands ever since, with many international commissions, residencies, and performances spreading her reputation and music across Europe and America. Kulenty has held composer residencies with the German Academic Exchange Service in Berlin and Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra in CS O.O RG
5
COMMENTS
the Netherlands and has been a guest professor at the Music Academy in Barcelona, Missouri State University, Krakow Academy of Music, and Royal Birmingham Conservatory. She has lectured and given master classes in Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, England, Poland, Austria, Russia, Lithuania, and the United States, including the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and the University of Southern California (in 2000, she donated three of her scores to the Polish Music Center at USC) and served as a juror in many international composition competitions. She has won prizes in the European Young Composers Competition, Tadeusz Baird Competition for Young Composers, International Rostrum of Composers, Composers Competition of the Warsaw Branch of the Polish Composers’ Union, and the Stanisław Wyspiański Award. Kulenty’s works include two operas, two symphonies (the second with chorus), three concertos, a dozen other orchestral scores, five string quartets and many other chamber music works, and solo compositions for violin, piano, cello, flute, and double bass. Kulenty composed VAN . . . for piano, four hands in 2014 for a concert given in honor of the first state visit to Poland
6
by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. The Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen were scheduled to give the premiere on June 24, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the work was not performed at that concert and was introduced on September 20, 2014, by the Polish pianists Piotr Kopczyński and Julia Samojło during the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Jussen brothers first performed VAN . . . the following spring in Utrecht. Kulenty said that she chose the title of VAN . . . because the piece was written for a concert in honor of the state visit of the Dutch royals to Poland (van is the designation for the Dutch nobility, equivalent to von in German) and also, she continued, “because I used some passages that are similar to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.” (Because of his natal van, Beethoven harbored a pretense that he was descended from Dutch nobility until that idea was disproven in a legal proceeding in 1819.) VAN . . . is simple in construction—a short, quiet, impressionistic opening and close framing a ceaselessly fast central section based on the harmonies of the introduction—but breathtaking in its technical virtuosity and coordination of four hands within the tight confines of a single keyboard.
C OMME NTS
IGOR STRAVINSKY Born June 17, 1882; Oranienbaum, Russia Died April 6, 1971; New York City
The Rite of Spring for Two Pianos COMPOSED
1911–13
Stravinsky’s conception for The Rite of Spring, one of the most influential musical works of the twentieth century, came to him as he was finishing The Firebird in 1910. He had a vision of “a solemn pagan rite: wise elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.” Stravinsky knew that Nicholas Roerich, a friend who was an archaeologist and an authority on the ancient Slavs, would be interested in his idea and mentioned it to him. The composer also shared his vision with Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, the company that had commissioned and premiered The Firebird. All three men were excited by the possibilities of the project; Diaghilev promised a production and encouraged Stravinsky to begin work immediately. Having just nearly exhausted himself with the rigors of completing and staging The Firebird, Stravinsky decided to compose a concerto for piano and orchestra as relaxation before undertaking his pagan
ballet. The little concerto, however, grew into the ballet Petrushka, and he could not return to The Rite until the summer of 1911. “What I was trying to convey in The Rite,” said Stravinsky, “was the surge of spring, the magnificent upsurge of nature reborn.” Inspired by childhood memories of the coming of spring to Russia (“which seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking,” he remembered), he worked with Roerich to devise a libretto that would, in Roerich’s words, “present a number of scenes of earthly joy and celestial triumph as understood by the ancient Slavs.” Stravinsky labored feverishly on the score throughout the winter of 1911–12, realizing by then that he was composing an important piece in a startling new style. “I was guided by no system whatever in The Rite of Spring,” he wrote. “Very little immediate tradition lies behind it. [Debussy was the only influence he admitted.] I had only my ear to help me. I heard, and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which The Rite passed.” The music seems to have come into being in three versions simultaneously— the full orchestral score and versions for piano solo and piano duet (although
a b o v e : Igor Stravinsky, portrait, ca. 1910
CS O.O RG
7
COMMENTS
arranged for piano, four hands, it is often played on two pianos, as is the case at this afternoon’s performance). As with all of Stravinsky’s ballets from The Firebird through Agon, the piano reductions were created specifically for the use of the choreographer and the designer and subsequently for the dancers’ rehearsals, which, in the case of The Rite of Spring stretched to more than 120 sessions. It was the keyboard versions that first stirred reports of the revolutionary nature of this phenomenal creation. The composition of the score was accomplished between the summer of 1911 and November 1912, and Stravinsky allowed Diaghilev and Pierre Monteux, conductor of the premiere, their first taste of the music during the intervening April in Monte Carlo, where the Ballets Russes was giving performances of The Firebird and Petrushka. Monteux recalled: With only Diaghilev and myself as audience, Stravinsky sat down to play a piano reduction of the score. Before he got very far, I was convinced he was raving mad. Heard this way, without the color of the orchestra, the crudity of the rhythm was emphasized, its stark primitiveness underlined. The very walls resounded as Stravinsky pounded away, occasionally stamping his feet and jumping up and down to accentuate the force of the music. Not that it needed such emphasis. Another important musician who heard the work at that early stage was
8
Claude Debussy, who played through the sketches with the composer at the home of the critic Louis Laloy later that spring. “Our reading at the piano . . . at Laloy’s home,” Debussy wrote to Stravinsky at the end of 1912, “is always present in my mind. It haunts me like a beautiful nightmare, and I try, in vain, to reinvoke the terrific impression. That is why I wait for the stage performance like a greedy child impatient for promised sweets.” Laloy validated Debussy’s impression: “When they had finished, we were dumbfounded, overwhelmed by this hurricane which had come from the depths of the ages, and which had taken life by its roots.” Maurice Ravel visited Stravinsky at Clarens early in 1913 and was so impressed after reading through the score with his colleague that he prophesied a premiere as historically significant as that of Pelleas and Melisande in 1902. Diaghilev chose Nijinsky to do the choreography (though Stravinsky objected to the choice because of the dancer’s inexperience as a choreographer and his lack of understanding of the technical aspects of the music), and rehearsals for the premiere were begun in Berlin by December 1912. The composer himself supervised a number of these sessions and made an indelible impression on Marie Rambert, one of the ballerinas: Hearing the music played this way [i.e., too slowly and without rhythmic precision], Stravinsky blazed up, pushed aside the fat German pianist, nicknamed “Kolossal” by
C OMME NTS
Diaghilev, and proceeded to play twice as fast as we had been doing and twice as fast as we could possibly dance. He stamped his feet on the floor, banged his fist on the piano, and sang and shouted. Rehearsals proceeded through the winter and early spring, always to piano accompaniment. Stravinsky polished the piano duet version sufficiently for the Russischer Musik Verlag to begin engraving it in January 1913; it was published in this form several weeks before the opening on May 29. (The full orchestral score was not published until 1921.) It was only on May 26, 1913, just three days before the opening, that The Rite of Spring was finally played by a symphony orchestra.
THE RITE OF SPRING (SCENES OF PAGAN RUSSIA IN TWO PARTS) PA R T 1 : T H E A D O R AT I O N O F T H E E A R T H
Introduction— The Augers of Spring— Dances of the Young Girls— Mock Abduction— Spring Round Dances— Games of the Rival Tribes— Procession of the Sage— Adoration of the Earth— Dance of the Earth
PA R T 2 : T H E G R E AT S A C R I F I C E
Introduction— Mystical Circles of the Young Girls— Glorification of the Chosen One— Summoning of the Elders— Ritual of the Elders— Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One
The guests invited to the final dress rehearsal seemed to appreciate the striking modernity of the work but gave no hint of the donnybrook that roared through the Théâtre des ChampsElysées at the public premiere on May 29, driven in equal parts by the iconoclastic angular choreography and the revolutionary music. Shouts, catcalls, whistles, and even fisticuffs grew so menacing that often the orchestra could not be heard. Diaghilev flashed the house lights on and off in a vain attempt to restore order; Nijinsky, when he was not onstage, pounded wildly on the scenery with his fists to keep the dancers together; Stravinsky ran out of the auditorium (“as angry as I have ever been in my life”) and spent most of the evening backstage pacing in the wings. Somehow, Monteux (“cool as a crocodile,” recalled Stravinsky) guided the performance to the end. Puccini thought The Rite “might be the creation of a madman,” and the critic of the New York Sun nominated the composer as “the caveman of music.” No one could deny, however, the ferocious, overwhelming power of the music, and when audiences began to listen to the work on its own revolutionary terms, they could not help but be swept away by its awesome and wonderful maelstrom of exquisitely executed sound. Within a year of its stage premiere, Koussevitzky in Russia and Monteux in Paris had conducted concert performances of The Rite, and the true value of the work began to be recognized. A somewhat edited version of the score in Disney’s animated cartoon movie of 1938, CS O.O RG
9
COMMENTS
Fantasia, brought the music to a wide audience, and its epochal position in the history of the art was soon secure.
R
obert Lawrence, in his classic reference work The Victor Book of Ballet, provided the following summary of the stage action of The Rite of Spring: The plot is of the simplest. Dealing with archaic Russian tribes and their worship of the gods of the harvest and fertility, it falls into two separate yet mutually interdependent parts—the “Adoration of the Earth” and “The Sacrifice.” These primitive peoples assemble for their yearly ceremonies, play their traditional games, and finally select a virgin to be sacrificed to the gods of spring so that the crops and tribes may flourish.
Stravinsky’s score serves at once as accompaniment and excitant for the pagan rites. There is a prelude in which the composer evokes the primitive past when man was in intimate contact with nature. . . . The curtain rises on a savage daylight picture of an ancient land. Insistent, barbaric rhythms are heard, shifting accents with almost every bar. The first rites of spring are being celebrated, and a group of adolescents appears. They dance until other members of the tribe enter. Then, the full round of ceremonies gets underway: a
10
mock abduction—performed with much solemnity—games of the rival tribes, the procession of the Sage, and the thunderous dance of the earth. The curtain falls, and there is a soft interlude representing the pagan night. Soon, the tribal meeting place is seen again. This time, it is dark, and the adolescents circle mysteriously in preparation for the choice of the virgin to be sacrificed to the gods. Suddenly, their dance is interrupted, and one of the girls who has taken part is marked for the tribal offering. The others begin a wild orgy glorifying the Chosen One and—in a barbaric ritual—call on the shades of their ancestors. Finally, the supreme moment of the ceremony arrives: the ordeal of the Chosen One, perhaps the longest and most complicated solo in the annals of ballet. It is the maiden’s duty to dance until she perishes from exhaustion. The rhythms of her sacrificial round move relentlessly forward while a short, stabbing motif is repeated insistently. Throughout the dance, the music keeps gathering power through the element of frenzied repetition until, finally, it spins like a top on its own axis and ends with a crash as the maiden dies.
Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
PROFILES Lucas and Arthur Jussen Pianos
Lucas and Arthur Jussen are among the most sought-after piano duos of our time. In view of their illustrious international career, one could remark that the Jussen brothers (thirty and twentysix) are Holland’s preeminent ambassadors for classical music. With their energetic, almost symbiotic playing, their great refinement of sound, and gripping interpretations, they are praised vigorously by critics and audiences alike. The Jussen brothers have performed with acclaimed orchestras internationally, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Concertgebouworkest, Budapest Festival Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, as well as the Montréal, Sydney, Singapore, and Shanghai symphony orchestras. They collaborate with the likes of renowned conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Christoph Eschenbach, Iván Fischer, Sir Neville Marriner, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and Jaap van Zweden.
P H OTO BY M A R C O B O R G G R E V E
In August 2023, Lucas and Arthur Jussen performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Kazuki Yamada at the Tanglewood Festival. Later appearances included the Rheingau, Gstaad, and Amsterdam festivals and headlining the season-opening gala of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. This season, the Jussen brothers debut with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Wiener Symphoniker, Philharmonia Orchestra London, and Taiwan Philharmonic. Other guest engagements take them back to the Münchner Philharmoniker, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and TonhalleOrchester Zürich. They perform the concerto Anka kuşu (Phoenix), written for them by Fazıl Say, with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and on tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. The Jussens tour around Europe along with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This season, they are artists-in-residence with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. In recital, they can be heard in Hamburg, Berlin, Bratislava, Prague, Antwerp, Brussels, Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Recording exclusively with Deutsche Grammophon since 2010, the brothers made their debut album of works by Beethoven, which received platinum status and was awarded the Edison Klassiek audience award. A recording of works by Schubert and Jeux, an album CS O.O RG
11
P ROF ILES
dedicated to French piano music, were subsequently released. Their recording of Mozart’s piano concertos K. 365 and K. 242 with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner reached gold status. The Jussen brothers also recorded Poulenc’s double piano concerto and Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals with the Concertgebouworkest and Stéphane Denève, as well as concertos and chorales by Bach with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. On The Russian Album (March 2021), they interpret works for two pianos by Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, and Arensky. The latest addition to their discography is Dutch Masters (April 2022), devoted to works by Dutch composers in collaboration with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
Orchestra and Karina Canellakis. The recording was awarded an Edison Klassiek in the Chamber Music category, as well as the audience award in September 2022. Lucas and Arthur received their first piano lessons in their native town of Hilversum. As children, they were invited to perform for Queen Beatrix, after which distinctions and competition awards followed. In 2005 the brothers met the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. During the following years, they took lessons from Pires and renowned Dutch teachers. Lucas completed his studies with Menahem Pressler in the United States and with Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid, and Arthur graduated from the Amsterdam Conservatory, where he studied with Jan Wijn.