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Friday 5 June 2009 at 7.30pm Evgeny Kissin piano Prokofiev Ten Pieces from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ – excerpts Piano Sonata No. 8 INTERVAL 20 minutes Chopin Polonaise-Fantaisie Three Mazurkas Études – excerpts Barbican Hall The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation. 100% Programme text printed on 100% recycled materials. Find out first Why not download your Great Performers programme before the concert? Programmes are now available online five days in advance of each concert. To download your programme, find out full details of concerts, watch videos or listen to soundclips, visit www.barbican.org.uk/greatperformers0809 Due to possible last-minute changes, the online content may differ slightly from that of the printed version. Notes Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ten Pieces from ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Op. 75 (1937) – excerpts No. 4, ‘Juliet as a young girl’ • No. 8, ‘Mercutio’ • No. 6, ‘Montagues and Capulets’ Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, Op. 84 (1939–44) 1 Andante dolce – Allegro moderato (inquieto) – Andante dolce, come prima – Allegro 2 Andante sognando 3 Vivace – Allegro ben marcato – Andantino – Vivace, come prima Tonight’s concert juxtaposes the music of two of the greatest composer-pianists in history, composers whose music is intimately bound up with great Russian pianists, past and present. For both Chopin and Prokofiev, their own performances were an important way of disseminating their music, even if Chopin was hardly physically suited to the glittering large-scale recitals with which Liszt conquered the musical world. Prokofiev is the starting-point this evening. He was certainly no slouch when it came to keyboard wizardry and he seems to have delighted in getting a rise out of the more conservative of audience-members (even though, as we know from his own recordings, his playing was more about finesse than heft and pure velocity). This review of the Second Sonata by Richard Aldrich, which appeared in the New York Times on 21 November 1918, was typical of its time, and probably had the composer rubbing his hands in glee: 2 The Sonata, a second one, contains no sustained musical development. The finale of the work evoked visions of a charge of mammoths on some vast immemorial Asiatic plateau … Prokofiev uses, like Arnold Schoenberg, the entire modern harmonies. The House of Bondage of normal key relations is discarded. He is a psychologist of the uglier emotions. Hatred, contempt, rage – above all, rage – disgust, despair, mockery and defiance legitimately serve as models for moods. What Mr Aldrich would have made of the works that we hear tonight, we can only speculate. Though Prokofiev’s ballet-score Romeo and Juliet is now duly acknowledged as one of the masterpieces in the medium, it was initially rejected and pronounced undanceable by the Kirov Ballet, who had commissioned it. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, given that Russian ballet companies were notoriously conservative at this time. In lieu of a performance of the Notes complete work in Russia, Prokofiev set about making the music known through his orchestral suites and a set of ten pieces for piano, Op. 75. For the latter he rearranged the original order to create a satisfying freestanding drama. It’s striking how at home this music sounds on the keyboard: Prokofiev – like Ravel – seems to have been able to switch readily between the two media, and frequently transcribed orchestral works (or suites from works) for solo piano, often relatively literally. And the spirit of the dance also transfers effortlessly from one medium to another, brilliantly demonstrated in the three pieces Evgeny Kissin has selected. First, ‘Juliet as a young girl’, her skittishness contrasting with warmly delicate sections which suggests a romantic soul (and how difficult it is to separate this from the image of the young Margot Fonteyn, for so long peerless in this role), the beseeching quality to the fore, but also the changeability of her moods. She is, after all, a teenager. Next, we have ‘Mercutio’, a vivid character-sketch by Prokofiev of Shakespeare’s complex figure, combining playfulness, sarcasm and anxiety in equal measure. Such is the skill of his reimagining that you don’t feel the loss of the sustained string chords near the beginning of the piece. The selection ends with ‘Montagues and Capulets’ – one of the catchiest depictions of conflict in all music, its brutal left-hand writing crushing all before it. This gives way to a central section that reminds us of Juliet’s music but this is once again subsumed by the menacing march of the opening – a potently symbolic moment even when divorced from the original mise en scène. There’s menace aplenty in Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata too, the final part in his trilogy dubbed the ‘war sonatas’. All three were begun in 1939, although at that time the Soviet Union had yet to become embroiled in the war, and was still labouring under the illusion that it 3 Notes wouldn’t become so (an illusion rudely shattered in 1941). The Eighth Sonata was completed in 1944 and received its first public outing in December that year, in the hands of the great Emil Gilels. Even his advocacy wasn’t enough to convince the audience, however, who were perplexed by the seemingly incongruous combination of large-scale lyricism with violent interjections. It’s the most symphonic of Prokofiev’s nine piano sonatas, and less readily assimilable than its companion ‘war’ pieces, Nos 6 and 7. Though its demands are immense, it’s also the least blatantly virtuoso of the three. Vladimir Ashkenazy, himself a great interpreter of the work, has this to say: yet from the start the mood is unsettled and, as the movement progresses (and picks up speed, as the note values become smaller and smaller, a device also beloved of Beethoven), the landscape becomes starker still, the harmonies darken and any semblance of peace is shattered.The violence spills over as the main ideas are developed, with the dreamscape returning in an extensive reprise. Prokofiev has one more shock up his sleeve: the sudden appearance of a fiercely energetic coda, which is just as abruptly quelled into silence. Ashkenazy goes on to speculate why such a great work is relatively unappreciated in the West, not at all the case in Russia where it has enjoyed the advocacy of a distinguished lineage of pianists – not only Ashkenazy and Gilels, but also Sviatoslav Richter, Andrei Gavrilov, Tatyana Nikolaieva, Grigory Sokolov, Mikhail Pletnev … the list goes on, with Evgeny Kissin this evening taking his place in that pantheon. The finale – another large-scale movement – spews out handfuls of notes in the composer’s familiar motoric style. On the surface it’s the most straightforward of the three movements, but there’s more to it than simply energy and brutalism: a central idea returns us to the unsettled mood of the first movement, while Prokofiev’s quasi-triumphant ricocheting coda is surely as mocking and emotionally ambiguous as anything to be found in Shostakovich. The spacious first movement Andante dolce opens as a symphony of euphony, with bell-like left-hand sonorities, INTERVAL 20 minutes The compact minuet-like second movement, marked Andante sognando (dreamily), is often dismissed as a If in the Seventh Sonata we are confronted with an objective brief intermission of light relief. But its role is every bit as important as Beethoven’s comparably sized movements picture of war, in the Eighth Sonata the composer looks at it as a not-too-distant (but not an immediate) experience – and, in his late sonatas and quartets. Its air of introspective regret also reveals a gnawing disquiet in the way what is important, an intimate experience. The presence of war became part of his life and everything was influenced by Prokofiev obsessively works his opening idea until it it and connected with it. becomes all-pervasive. 4 Notes Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49) Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat major, Op. 61 (1846) Mazurkas – C sharp minor, Op. 30 No. 4 (1837); A flat major, Op. 41 No. 4 (1839); A minor, Op. 59 No. 1 (1845) Études, Op. 10 (1829–32) – No. 1 in C major; No. 2 in A minor; No. 3 in E major; No. 4 in C sharp minor; No. 12 in C minor. Études, Op. 25 (1832–6) – No. 5 in E minor; No. 6 in G sharp minor; No. 11 in A minor. It was with the music of Chopin that Evgeny Kissin first came to international attention. The date was 27 March 1984; the place, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. Kissin was just 12. His performance of Chopin’s two concertos, plus a couple of mazurkas and a waltz as encores, was recorded and history was made. He has been immutably associated with the composer ever since. Tonight’s selection of pieces offers a portrait of Chopin the man of high passions and the musical innovator – a far cry from the dandy of the drawingroom of popular mythology. Chopin alluded to his Polonaise-Fantaisie in a letter to his parents on 12 December 1845: I should like now to finish my cello sonata, Barcarolle and something else I don’t know how to name. That ‘something else’ was to turn into one of his last and finest masterpieces. A combination of polonaise and fantasy might seem an unlikely marriage, the latter having the potential to water down the polonaise’s defining rhythmic contour. But Chopin was used to creating new structures to house his unique musical ideas and this novel hybrid is as successful as any, though it certainly confused early listeners, among them Liszt. In the Polonaise-Fantaisie we find a combination of strong narrative (the very opening, like that of the Prokofiev sonata we’ve just heard, has a ‘once upon a time’ feel about it), reverie and majesty, elements that Chopin draws together with the mastery of one at the very top of his game. About three-quarters of the way through, listen out for the way the music seems to hover, motionless, with an extended trill that starts out as a single voice, building up to four; or the reprise of the main polonaise idea at the final climax, as it triumphantly rings out from the most involved of textures. Asked to choose one genre which encapsulates the very heart of Chopin, many would propose the mazurka. Perhaps even more than the nocturne, waltz and polonaise, he took this form to an entirely new artistic level without sacrificing its essential features. He wrote mazurkas throughout his life, and within their modest span he conducted experiments more radical than in any other medium, not only harmonically and melodically, but in the possibilities of the form’s essential asymmetry too. Nor, in bringing it into the salon, did he lose any of the genre’s essential wildness or primitivism. The term 5 Notes ‘mazurka’ refers to three dances from the Mazovia region of Poland – the mazur, the oberek and the kujawiak. All three are in triple-time, with strong accentuation on the second or third beat, but beyond that they encompass a vast range of moods, just as Chopin’s own mazurkas do. And that is both the challenge and the allure for performers, especially if accounts of the composer’s own playing are to be believed. There’s a famous story of Meyerbeer hearing Chopin play a mazurka (Op. 63 No. 3) with such free rubato that he assumed Chopin’s timing was off. He pointed out that it sounded as if it was in 4/4, so prolonged was the first beat. Chopin insisted that he was playing in triple time. When Meyerbeer (perhaps unwisely) laboured the point by beating time to his playing, the latter is said to have screamed in rage. And Robert Schumann, reviewing the set of Four Mazurkas, Op. 30, with typical perspicacity noted, ‘Chopin has elevated the mazurka to a small art form; he has written many, yet few among them resemble each other. Almost every one contains some poetic trait, something new in form and expression.’ altogether more forceful, venturing through a range of obscure keys before finally coming to a standstill. Op. 41 No. 4 was almost certainly composed during Chopin’s miserable stay on Majorca (where he wrote several of the preludes) and he played the complete set of four in one of his rare public recitals, on 26 April 1841, for which the audience of 300 each paid the extravagant sum of 20 francs per ticket. This mazurka’s hesitant modality, wavering emotions and music-box persistence seem designed to disorientate and bewitch the listener – as much now as when it was newly written. Finally, Op. 59 No. 1, the first of a set of three, written in July 1845, a time of utmost turmoil in Chopin’s life as his relationship with Georges Sand finally went into meltdown. The strong accentuation in the outer sections contrasts with the inner one, where the right-hand melody seems to float free of the barlines. It’s difficult now to imagine the impact of the publication of Chopin’s Op. 10 set of Études, in Leipzig in 1833. The composer was barely 23, and it was quite some callingcard, rightfully placing him far above the dozens of piano virtuosos who were crowding the salons at that time. And needfully too, for Chopin’s fragile health meant The three we hear tonight share the traits of strongly that he was fundamentally unsuited to large-scale dotted rhythmic profiles, wide-ranging harmonic journeys performance. Appropriately enough, he dedicated the and the tendency to worry away obsessively at the tiniest set to Franz Liszt. Together with the Op. 25 set, published scraps of melody, but there the similarities end. four years later, these studies are unique in not losing their didactic purpose even though they are absolutely In Op. 30 No. 4, set above a bagpipe-like drone, the made for the concert hall. As the great musicologist mood veers between melancholy and something 6 Notes Donald Tovey wrote in 1900, ‘they are the only extant great works of art that really owe their character to their being études’. Chopin throws down the gauntlet in Op. 10 No. 1, combining a palpable muscularity with a chorale melody, the brilliance (and difficulty) of the arpeggio figuration increased by the fact that it is spread over a tenth rather than an octave. And Chopin exploits the entire range of the piano, as if declaring himself master of all he surveys. The quicksilver second Étude might be less blatantly extrovert but, as anyone who has tried to play it will know, it places a cruel emphasis on the weakest fingers of the right hand, simultaneously demanding complete evenness of touch. The third, bathing the listener in a mellow E major, has proved irresistible to arrangers over the decades, from solo crooners to full-blown choral treatment, but such indignities cannot detract from its rapturous tenderness, the brief, angst-laden inner section, with its unsettling harmonies, finally subsumed by the simple beauty of that opening melody. after Chopin heard of Warsaw’s capture by Russia. Who knows whether there’s any truth in the story – but it does encapsulate the Étude’s ferocious drama, with nobility combined with a seething anger, an effect emphasised by its brusque finish. Like Op. 10 No. 4, the virtuosity of Op. 25 No. 5 doesn’t become fully apparent until you try and play it: simultaneously maintaining the outline of the melody and the sharpness of the dotted rhythm accompaniment in the right hand and the wide-spread arpeggiated chords in the left – all at Vivace – is no mean feat. But as Chopin demonstrates in every single étude, the difficulties are always to a greater musical end, never merely a technical one. The central section, which revels (as in Op. 10 No. 3) in the warmth of E major, brings forth yet another heaven-sent melody. Chopin offers his pianist no respite, following this Étude with a fearsome study in double thirds, and another example of his genius in raising a technical device to pure poetry. The final Étude in Evgeny Kissin’s selection, No. 11, picks up the chromatic figuration of No. 6 but casts it in a quite different role. It has been nicknamed ‘Winter Wind’ and No. 4 offers yet another contrast – with the two hands it’s easy to understand why, with its unabating ferocity engaged in a manic game of chase, constantly swapping and its desolate A minor key. It’s remarkable to think that over ideas, the diminished harmonies and semitonal the four-bar introduction, the only moment of stillness in movement adding to its frenetic energy. the entire piece, was in fact an afterthought. Evgeny Kissin finishes his selection from Op. 10 with the Programme notes © Harriet Smith last of the set. It earned the nickname ‘Revolutionary’ through the legend that it was written in a fury in 1831, Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited; advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450) Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises. No eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall. Barbican Centre Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS Administration 020 7638 4141 Box Office 020 7638 8891 Great Performers Last-Minute Concert Information Hotline 0845 120 7505 www.barbican.org.uk 7 About the performer Sasha Gusov/EMI Classics Evgeny Kissin piano Evgeny Kissin was born in Moscow in 1971 and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of 2. At 6 he entered the Moscow Gnessin School of Music where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has remained his only teacher. He came to international attention when he performed Chopin’s piano concertos at the age of 12 under Dmitri Kitaienko. Since his first appearances outside Russia in 1985, he has played with all of the leading orchestras and conductors and in recital in all of the world’s greatest halls. Last season he recorded all five Beethoven concertos with Sir Colin Davis, Prokofiev’s Second and Third Concertos with Vladimir Ashkenazy, both Brahms’s piano concertos with James Levine and Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 20 and 27 with the Kremerata Baltica. Barbican Centre Board Chairman Jeremy Mayhew Deputy Chairman Catherine McGuiness Board Members John Barker OBE Christine Cohen OBE Tom Hoffman Roly Keating Lesley King-Lewis Sir Brian McMaster Wendy Mead Joyce Nash OBE Barbara Newman CBE John Owen-Ward MBE Andrew Parmley Christoper Purvis CBE Sue Robertson Keith Salway John Tomlinson Clerk to the Board Sureka Perera Barbican Directorate Managing Director Sir Nicholas Kenyon Artistic Director Graham Sheffield 8 Finance and Strategic Planning Director Sandeep Dwesar Commercial and Buildings Director Mark Taylor Development Director Barbara Davidson Personal Assistant to Sir Nicholas Kenyon Ali Ribchester Head of Communications Leonora Thomson Barbican Music Department Head of Music and Arts Projects Robert van Leer Executive Producer Vicky Cheetham Music Programmers Gijs Elsen Bryn Ormrod In 1992 he performed at the Grammy Awards, broadcast live to an audience estimated at over one billion, and in 1995 he became Musical America’s youngest Instrumentalist of the Year. In 1997 he received the prestigious Triumph Award for his outstanding contribution to Russia’s culture. The same year he was the first musician to give a solo recital at the BBC Proms. In 2001 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the Manhattan School of Music. In 2003 he received the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia’s highest musical honours, and in 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Evgeny Kissin’s recordings have received numerous awards, including a Grammy, the Edison Klassik, the Diapason d’Or and the Grand Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque. This season, Evgeny Kissin will give recitals with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Frankfurt, Munich, Paris and London and give solo recitals throughout Europe, the USA, Japan and south-east Asia. Associate Music Programmer Chris Sharp Programming Associate Marie McPartlin Programming Consultant Angela Dixon Programming Assistants Katy Morrison Merwynne Jones Concerts Planning Manager Frances Bryant Music Administrator Thomas Hardy Head of Marketing and New Media Chris Denton Marketing Campaign Managers Bethan Sheppard Greg Fearon Marketing Assistant Jessica Tomkins Media Relations Managers Alex Webb Annikaisa Vainio Media Relations Officers Rupert Cross Anna Omakinwa Events Producer Kat Johnson Production Managers Eddie Shelter Jessica Buchanan-Barrow Alison Cooper Claire Corns Kate Packham Fiona Todd Company Production Manager Rachel Smith Technical Managers Jasja van Andel Ingo Reinhardt Technical Supervisors Mark Bloxsidge Steve Mace Technicians Maurice Adamson Jason Kew Sean McDill Martin Shaw Tom Shipman Associate Producer Elizabeth Burgess Stage Managers Christopher Alderton Julie-Anne Bolton Platform Supervisor Paul Harcourt Senior Stage Assistants Andy Clarke Hannah Wye Stage Assistants Ademola Akisanya Michael Casey Robert Rea Danny Harcourt Producing Administrator Colette Chilton