Portland Piano International

Marc-André HamelinSunday, May 11, 2008 • 4:00 pm

Monday, May 12, 2008 • 7:30 pm

Newmark Theatre • Portland, Oregon

Program

Haydn Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23 Moderato Adagio Presto

Sonata in B-flat Major, Hob. XVI:41 Allegro Allegro di molto

Weissenberg Sonate en état de jazz (Sonata in a state of jazz) Evocation d’un tango Réminiscence d’un charleston Reflets d’un blues Provocation de samba

intermission

CHoPin Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47

Hamelin Etude No. 8, “Erlkönig” (after Goethe) Etude No. 7 (after Tschaikovsky) godoWsky Symphonic Metamorphoses on Johann Strauss’s “Wine, Woman and Song”

Program subject to change

Marc-André Hamelin appears by arrangement with Colbert Artists Management Inc.Charlotte Schroeder, President 111 West 57th Street, New York 10019

www.colbertartists.com

Generously sponsored by: John Montague & Linda Hutchins (May 11)

Winthrop Hall (May 12)

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marC-andré Hamelin

Montréal native Marc-André Hamelin is internationally re-nowned for his musical virtuosity and refined pianism. He has “built a devoted audience by performing difficult piano music, both recent and arcane, demonstrating a solid, often dazzling technique, as well as a thoughtful musicality that re-veals the poetry within the virtuo-sic glare” (New York Times). In 2007, Mr. Hamelin made his debut with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood with Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto No. 5, led by Jens Georg Bachmann; and at the Mostly Mozart Festival performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453, conducted by Louis Langrée (also performing a late-night re-cital of Mozart and Schumann at the Kaplan Penthouse). Mr. Hamelin opened the Grant Park Music Festival with Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, led by Carlos Kalmar; played Mozart’s K. 453 for the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; and appeared at The International Keyboard Festival in New York City. Highlights of the 2007–08 season include recital debuts with Great Performers at Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Presents, the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, and the Celebrity Series of Boston. Mr. Hamelin makes two appearances with San Francisco Performances and appears in recital in Denver, Los Alamos, Mexico City, Santa Rosa, Saratoga Springs, and Lexington, VA. He also makes

special appearances in chamber music of Ravel, Schnittke, and Shostakovich with Midori and friends at Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center. Orchestral performances include the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand and Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453 with Carl St. Clair for the Pacific Symphony; Saint Saens Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Quebec Symphony and Yoav Talmi; Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Edmonton Symphony and Jacques Lacombe, the Toledo Symphony and Stefan Sanderling, and the Orquesta Filarmonica de la UNAM in Mexico City; Messiaen’s Turangalila with the Toronto Symphony and Peter Oundjian; and the Gershwin Piano Concerto with the National Arts Center Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Recent appearances include the world premiere of Kevin Volans’ Piano Concerto for his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, led by Michael Tilson Thomas; Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 for a return to the Detroit Symphony with Kwame Ryan; Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 with Sir Neville Marriner and the Montreal Symphony; Messiaen’s Turangalila with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis; Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Vancouver Symphony led by Tania Miller; and Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 to close the Kansas City Symphony’s season with Michael Stern.

Recital appearances include the 92nd Street Y, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Harvard Musical Association, Pro Arte Musical in San Juan, the University of Utah, Wake Forest University, the Union College Concert Series, and the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild. Under exclusive contract with Hyperion Records, Mr. Hamelin’s latest recording, a two-disc set of Haydn Piano Sonatas, was released in April 2007 to sweeping critical ac-claim. In December 2006, Mr. Hamelin was awarded the Preis der Deutsche Schallplattenkritik, in special acknowledgement of his complete body of recorded works. Mr. Hamelin’s double album of the complete Chopin-Godowsky Etudes won the 2000 Gramophone Instrumental Award. In 2001, with a double nomina-tion for the epic Busoni Concerto (with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Mark Elder) and the Chopin-Godowsky, Mr. Hamelin was the only clas-sical artist to play live at the Grammy Awards. He received another Grammy nomination in

Meet the Artist!Join Marc-André Hamelin in the

lobby immediately following the

concert where he will be happy to

autograph copies of his recordings,

available for purchase courtesy of

Classical Millennium.

2002 for his recording featuring the works of Charles Valentin Alkan. In 2005 Mr. Hamelin was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Chevalier de l’Ordre na-tional du Québec.

Program notes

Franz JosePH Haydn (Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna)Piano sonata in F maJor, Hob. XVi:23 In 1773 Haydn dedicated six new piano sonatas to his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy (Hob. XVI:21–26). Six was the traditional number to publish in a set. Haydn chose (for the first time) not to

compose for his students or other private purposes; consequently, these six sonatas became his first Viennese publications. This group of sonatas has received their share of criticism — labeled as conventional, especially because they were all written in a major tonality. Haydn did, however, include three sonatas with minor-mode slow movements, and one of the most appealing of those three is the F Major Sonata, Hob. XVI:23.

The first movement, Moderato, begins with a charming and melodic first theme that is both galant and elegant. The second theme could be said to be almost virtuosic with its brilliant figuration. After a passage redolent with trills and a question and answer exchange following it,

Haydn reprises the first theme. The F minor second movement, Adagio, has an introspective character, and a memorable, ornamented lyrical theme, set against a rocking triplet accompanying figure that makes artful use of pauses. The Finale last movement sports a confident, joyous theme that dominates the movement. It is translated into many keys before returning triumphantly in its original formulation, with a short cadenza.

sonata in b-Flat maJor, Hob. XVi:41

Haydn composed more than sixty solo keyboard sonatas, mostly intended for students, friends, and amateurs, although some were intended for virtuosos in

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performance. The Sonata in B-flat Major, Hob. XVI:41, is one of a set of three such works that Haydn wrote in 1784 when he was composing, producing concerts and operas, as well as in charge of the musical establishment at Esterházy. Haydn dedicated this set of sonatas to Princess Marie Hermenegild Esterházy, wife of Prince Nikolaus II, the grandson of Prince Nikolaus I, perhaps as a belated wedding present. As Prince Nikolaus had a taste for delicate music with a finely calibrated equilibrium, Haydn did not allow the music to have the extremes of strong passions as in his earlier sonatas. Haydn composed the

three sonatas of this series (Hob. XVI:40–42) when his fame was at its peak, and had spread across Europe.

This sophisticated and gentle-natured sonata, as well as the other two in the series, has only two movements, and both are at a rather quick tempo. The dynamic markings, new to the composer at the time, indicate that Haydn wrote this work for piano and not for harpsichord. The influence of the divertimento form is quite strong. The first of the sonata’s two movements is playful, and good humor and delicacy abound. The connection

at the end of the exposition with the beginning of the development in the first movement shows a particular similarity to the work of Mozart. Haydn’s biographer, Karl Geiringer, says that the finale shows that the Princess was not particularly fond of bold innovation and preferred a display of strict counterpoint. This second movement is short and bright — not a slow movement, but a graceful finale. Overall, the music shows a special sense of delicacy and grace that reflect the dedicatee. Haydn is composing for connoisseur, pupil, and professional in one person, and that fact accounts for the peculiar charm and cultivation of this sophisticated and gentle music.

— Program notes by Susan Halpern, 2008

aleXis Weissenberg

(Born July 26, 1929, in Sofia, Bulgaria)Sonate en état de jazz (Sonata in a State of jazz) A sonata in a state of jazz, like someone in a state of inebriation, hysteria, infatuation, or inspiration, is not in a normal state. The resulting shock, the consequences, palpitations, excessive enthusiasm, and drunkenness of the soul, force it to operate within a Cubist logic, which only appears to be lucid when placed in the context of a certain kind of madness.

I have subjected a classically constructed composition to what I would call “contamination by jazz.” Four personalities,

indigenous to four specific locales — Buenos Aires, New York, New Orleans, and Rio de Janeiro — are united by a common language which harks back to 1925 or thereabouts, but whose writing is inspired by the jazz of the 1950s; the Tango, the Charleston, the Blues, and the Samba all unquestionably have their own individual personalities, but more significantly they all have specific characteristics which both differentiate and identify them organically, beyond concerns of rhythm or style.

The Tango, usually played by a small group including piano, accordion, drums, and violin, is written in four beats to the bar. The intentionally mechanistic repetitiveness and implacability of its pulsating chords give the Tango a somewhat fatalistic character. As if seeking to avoid some kind of eventual imprisonment, the melody charts its own way, as if its existence hinged on the freedom of its own style. The juxtaposition of these two contradictory elements create a poignant feeling. The steps of the Tango force two bodies that are entwined and absorbed in one another to bend, bow, break, twist, and flip to the sound of a single particular note, word, or harmony. The result is never very far from melodrama, but it still remains dramatic.

From this formula, I have retained two elements as basic material: pathos, and a certain declamatory style. The fact that this movement is intentionally written in three-quarter time erases the dominating rhythm. However, if we were to

split the measures into groups of four, we would naturally recognize the inexorable pulse of a heart beating in common time; thus this slowing-down effect creates an unreal kind of distant memory — sentimental, but temporally frozen.

The Charleston, on the other hand, is a dance which is essentially dependent upon the geometry of its rhythm. Here, melodies and harmonies are made to function more as background, becoming inconsequential. The Charleston is danced individually, both participants being apart from one another. Its syncopations are characteristically mechanistic and seem to evoke, both visually and aurally, the accelerated appearance

and the characteristic abruptness of silent films from the same era. There is still room for elegance, but what predominates is thirst for fun and appetite for laughter.

The Blues is above all a cry of solitude, and sometimes a confession of loneliness. A voice (a saxophone, a trumpet, or a solo clarinet) attempts to express this while trying to be heard beyond an enclosed space. An aura of melancholy is created by the vague quality of the rhythmic contour, and also by underlying harmonies which, though blurred and troubled, are sophisticated by their very nature. And the melody is like the snake that follows a path as it goes to die in the desert. The

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blues is danced by two people, without strict rhythmic precision, but still with a sense of continuity. The dancers glide, hesitate, teeter, falter, freeze, and begin again, as if they were nearing a final separation. The mood is one of infinite melancholy, and the tonal color is that of the night.

With the Samba the tropical sun bursts forth. A mixture of paroxystic rhythms and luxurious harmonies give the music a constant lightheaded sensuality. The tunes, in tandem with the

harmonic climate, evoke, recount, claim, or condemn the memory of a recent and distant past — a lost loved one or an exotic beach, real or imagined. This feeling has a specific name in Brazil: saudade. More physical than nostalgia, and more ambiguous than Sehnsucht (the search for something once seen), the word has no direct English equivalent; the saudade is a tribal state of mind, whose verbal, tangible, and aural concept remains enigmatic, even when expressed through ritual. Thus, it retains its

mysterious and attractive qualities because it can only be felt while in a hypnotic state.

Finally, having placed so much stress on the moods of intoxication, contamination, drunkenness, paroxysm, hysteria, palpitation, and madness which fuel this work, I find myself in a state of urgent obligation to swear solemnly that I have written this sonata in a state of indisputablesobriety!

— Copyright Alexis Weissenberg, translated

by Marc-André Hamelin.The original text is taken

from the preface to the score, published by

Mario Bois, Paris.

FrédériC CHoPin

(Born ca. March 1, 1810 in Zelazowa Wola, Poland; died October 17, 1849, in Paris)barCarolle in F-sHarP maJor, oP. 60

In the summer of 1845, the writer George Sand indulged Chopin’s needs at her country estate (as in previous summers), allowing him to compose without a care. Sand described to friends how the two passed the time: “We are busy from noon until six o’clock — long summer days during which we are shut up with our work like hermits. We arrange things so as not to bother our dear Chopin. …Delacroix was with us and will be leaving in a few days. Chopin is still composing masterpieces, although he claims that nothing he is doing is worth anything.” Delacroix, the famous painter, who enjoyed the company there, said, “Chopin played Beethoven for me, divinely. It is much better than a lot of talk about aesthetics.”

Chopin, too, took pleasure in the company of other musicians at Sand’s house, and he wrote a gossipy letter to his family about the presence of Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Liszt. In it he mentioned that he was trying to hurry the Barcarolle and two other works to completion because, he said, “I cannot compose in winter.” When December came, he reported that the music was far from finished, and not until some time in July or August, 1846, did he finally complete it.

The form Chopin chose, the Barcarolle, from the Italian

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barca (boat), originated as a song of the Venetian gondoliers, popular in the eighteenth century. Moderate in tempo, it has gently rocking, repetitive rhythmic accompaniments that suggest the motion of a small boat in protected waters. Mendelssohn wrote several Barcarolles for piano in his Songs Without Words, but Offenbach composed the best known work in this form to set the scene in Venice for Act II of his opera, The Tales of Hoffman.

Chopin composed the Barcarolle, Op. 60, one of his most accomplished works, just as he was approaching the mature mastery that his early death cut short. When Chopin played this work in Paris at his last concert, in 1848, he no longer had the physical strength that the loud passages required, and had to use artful pedalling to simulate a forte sound.

A huge composition, full of glittering color, the work nevertheless feels subtle and refined, an evocative Venetian nocturne. Chopin chose to write it in a meter that makes each measure twice the conventional length, which, in turn, makes the phrases, and ultimately the whole work, extend over great time-spaces with marvellous fluency.

ballade no. 3 in a-Flat maJor, oP. 47

Frédéric Chopin focused his composing skills almost exclusively on the piano. He favored not the sonata but instead the less expansive forms of the first

half of the nineteenth century such as the etude, nocturne, mazurka, and polonaise. He was the first composer to use the title ballade for a strictly instrumental piece. The Romantics could readily identify with the ballad, one of the oldest literary forms, a narrative of legendary or historical events, usually with a tragic outcome. During a period of about ten years, Chopin composed four large piano works to which he gave the name Ballade, but the four have little uniformity to be used to define the ballade as a distinct musical structure. All of Chopin’s ballades,

however, can be described as innovative, sizable, and difficult character works. Each employs one theme throughout in a varied form, and each includes commanding virtuosic elements.

Chopin probably envisioned this musical genre as a musical analogue to the literary ballad. He created the new genre of ballade by combining loose sonata forms with the 6/8 meter often used in early vocal ballads. For Chopin the term meant a melancholy poetic masterpiece, a kind of epic narrative of great

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rhythmic freedom, without clearly defined, predetermined, or formal interrelationships — its main sections set between an introduction and a closing coda. Critics have long hypothesized that Chopin’s inspiration to write ballades came from his reading of a group of poems written by Adam Mickiewicz, a Pole who spent most of his life in political exile. Chopin met Mickiewicz in Paris, but they never became close friends. A Mickiewicz poem, “Switezianka” (from the fable known as Undine), has been associated with this ballade, and it gives critics possibilities for

musical interpretation based on its literary associations. In the tale, Undine, a water-nymph, can only acquire a soul if she marries a human being. Thus, she lures a knight to her lake, and after they fall in love, she marries him. He eventually deserts her for someone he loved before he encountered her, and as a result, Undine has to retreat to the water. In the end, her human lover returns to her, and she takes revenge on him by giving him the kiss of death.

Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47, is written in a free, continuously developing form, somewhat like a long poetic

narrative, and almost all of it expands the two tiny musical ideas in the first two measures. The style of Chopin’s improvisation as it appears in Ballade No. 3, consisting of spontaneous, simultaneous invention and performance, results from work that the composer carefully considered over a long period of time. He began it in 1840, and in the summer of 1841, he wrote from George Sand’s country estate to a friend in Paris who was helping prepare it for publication, “I cannot polish it enough. For God’s sake take care of my manuscript. I should go mad if I had to write these pages out again.” In this ballade, Chopin gives the main theme differing characteristics: it first takes a lyrical cast, and then it becomes heroic later on. It has one contrasting episode and a long transition that leads climactically to a restatement of the main theme.

— Program notes by Susan Halpern, 2008

marC-andré Hamelin

(Born September 5, 1961, in Montréal, Canada)etude no. 8, “erlkönig” (aFter goetHe)

My Etude No. 8 is a setting for solo piano of Goethe’s poem “Erlkönig” (The Erl-King) which conforms so closely to the poem that, in theory at least, it could be sung. Aside from the fact that I repeated the first four lines for musical reasons, I have closely followed Goethe’s original text.

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The composition of this etude was a fascinating creative act, unlike anything I’d ever done before, and it was interesting to see that one can do something of this kind without being in the least influenced by an overpowering precedent; in this case Schubert’s celebrated setting. I do hope I have succeeded!

etude no. 7 (aFter tsCHaikoVsky)

Etude No. 7 is a relatively straightforward arrangement for the left hand alone of one of Tschaikovsky’s early songs, his Lullaby, Op.16, No. 1. It presents difficulties mainly in the area of textural control and intricate pedalling.

Both of these pieces belong to a set of twelve etudes in all the minor keys, which are still unfinished.

— Program notes by Marc-André Hamelin, 2007

leoPold godoWsky (Born February 13, 1870, in Suzly, Lithuania; died November 21, 1938, in New York)symPHoniC metamorPHoses on JoHann strauss’s “Wine, Woman and song”

At the age of nine, Godowsky was exhibited as a child prodigy in Russia, Poland, and Germany, and at fourteen, he was sent to Berlin for study at the Hochschule für Musik. Soon thereafter he left for America, where he made his debut on December 7, 1884, in

Boston, and began the long and restless career that was brought to an end fifty-four years later by a stroke and paralysis. After his first large tour, Leon Saxe, a wealthy patron of the arts, took him to study with Franz Liszt, but Liszt died within a few days of their arrival. Saxe and Godowsky then went to Paris where Godowsky became a protégé of Saint-Saëns; in Paris he also played for Tschaikovsky and met Gounod, Massenet, Thomas, Fauré, Widor, and Delibes. Soon afterwards, he began teaching at the Chicago Conservatory, where he was the first concert pianist to teach the principle of weight release, rather than muscular impetus, as the most efficient method of playing. In London he gave a command performance at court; in Vienna he was appointed Imperial and Royal Professor. He continued to

perform, and after his December 1900 debut at the Beethoven-Saal in Berlin, was acclaimed one of the greatest living pianists. By all accounts, his performances in the studio and concert hall had an extraordinary brilliance that is only dimly reflected in his recordings.

Godowsky desired to create works that could be used effectively as closing pieces for his own and others’ recitals. Originally he envisioned a series in which each piece would be dedicated to “some exotic country and race…depicting the genius and life of the race, the contemplative side and poetry of the country, and the characteristic dance forms of the people.” In 1912, he published three compositions based on waltzes by the younger Johann Strauss, describing them as Symphonische Metamorphosen

Johann Strauss’scher Themen (Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Johann Strauss), and which are considered to be among the most intricate, elaborate, and difficult compositions ever written for the piano. The third of these is a waltz-paraphrase of Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine, Woman and Song), a virtuoso transformation of familiar original material. He uses the themes from the Strauss waltz set, into which he infuses extravagant counterpoint, sometimes treating two or more themes at once.

— Program notes by Susan Halpern, 2008

2008-2009 Season

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