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the muriel mcbrien kauffman master pianist series Alexei Lubimov, piano friday, january 20 • 8 pm • the folly theater Lifetime Achievement Award Malcolm Bilson and Alexei Lubimov DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Selections from Préludes, Book I Danseuses de Delphes Voiles Le vent dans la plaine La Cathédrale engloutie Minstrels Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest L’Isle joyeuse — Intermission — STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Piano Sonata Quarter note = 112 Adagietto Quarter note = 112 DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Selections from Préludes, Book II Feuilles mortes La Puerta del Vino “Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses” “General Lavine” – eccentric Canope Feux d’artifice This concert is sponsored by Charles and Virginia Clark with support from Dennis Ayzin and Mira Mdivani. supporting columns in Greek temples sculpted in the form of a draped female figure. The essential dichotomy of this architectural element would have Every pianist has a favorite work by Debussy, but appealed to him: the fluidity of cloth adorning the few would deny the overarching importance of the Preludes female form, but rendered in stone: a woman rendered in setting forth his singular approach to the keyboard. immobile in her capacity as a supporting pillar. Published in two sets of twelve in 1910 and 1913, the Preludes Danseuses de Delphes unfolds as a stately sarabande in comprise a profusion of ideas for connecting sound, mood, the old French style. This Prélude is a curious cousin to and image. Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. Everything in Debussy’s youth pointed toward a Voiles is an ambiguous word in French. It means career as a piano virtuoso. He matriculated at the Paris both veils, which conceal, or sails, which billow in the Conservatoire at age ten and played Chopin’s Second Piano wind and propel vessels. Debussy’s music is trance-like, Concerto when he was twelve. Although composition anchored by a recurrent opening gesture in parallel eventually supplanted performance as Debussy’s primary thirds, whole-tone scales, and a persistent pedal focus, he remained a superb pianist his entire life. His point that creates a sense of stasis. A brief interlude achievement as a composer for piano is, in large part, an in the middle switches from the whole tones to a extension of the sound color and techniques he learned from more pentatonic harmony, perhaps an allusion to the studying Chopin. Javanese gamelan that so fascinated Debussy. The two books of Préludes crystallized Debussy’s “As lightly as possible” is Debussy’s innovative approach to the piano. Each one explores the interpretive direction for Le Vent dans la plaine [The keyboard in highly individual ways that involve pedaling, Wind on the Plain]. This wind is rustling, but not arpeggios, delicate figuration, and frequent whole tone stinging: just a few little gusts in the middle. Foliage harmonies. He was a literate and cultured man who knew and high grasses ripple in the breeze. Here again, many of the important painters and writers of his day as well pentatonic and whole tone scales are Debussy’s as the other prominent musicians active in Paris. In his piano harmonic vocabulary. The technique is toccata-like, music, Debussy sought to recreate the subtle colors and play but to be executed with the most delicate possible of light of the Impressionist school of painters, and to evoke touch. the rich, layered imagery of Symbolist and Parnassus poets. Few of the Préludes have a specific programme. The Preludes are unusual in many respects. One is La Cathédrale engloutie [The Submerged Cathedral] is that the titles occur at the end in the printed music, not at an exception. Debussy is referring to the legend of the the beginning, each one preceded by an ellipsis and enclosed Cathedral of Ys, which was supposedly submerged in in parentheses. It is as if Debussy wants your imagination the seas off Brittany’s coast to punish the people for to wander free as the music unfolds, before he tips his their lack of piety. Occasionally the cathedral would hand as to the imagery he seeks to evoke in the individual rise to the water’s surface as a reminder of past sins. movements. Bells and their overtones were in Debussy’s mind, to The music of Spain exercised a strong attraction evoke the cathedral’s emergence. The rocking of waves to Debussy. Though he only traveled there once, and then interlocks with their clangor. Eventually the cathedral just across the border to attend a bullfight, he remained vanishes again, engulfed by the ocean expanse closing enchanted with the rhythms and quasi-Arabic harmonies of over its belfry. flamenco and Spanish guitar music. These sonorities found Minstrels would be politically incorrect today. their way into several of the Préludes. Debussy was thinking of music hall performers in Another striking aspect of Debussy’s language at black face and formal attire. He heard an American the piano is his harmony. Although he was schooled in minstrel troupe in Southern England while on holiday traditional 19th-century harmony, counterpoint, and form, in 1905. Its sounds and atmosphere stayed with him: he cared little for rules. Three summers (1880-1882) in the barrel organ, exaggerated clowning, mockery, feigned employ of Tchaikovsky’s patron Nadejda von Meck gave him fright, and bawdy jokes tempered by the occasional early exposure to the works of Russian nationalists such as sentimental song. This movement reveals Debussy’s Musorgsky and Borodin; he was enchanted with Slavic folk sense of humor. music. Each Book of Préludes contains one Later, in 1889, he heard the music of the Javanese blockbuster movement that is a technical tour de force. gamelan orchestra at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Soon Book I’s Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest [What the West Wind Eastern sonorities inspired by gamelan were cropping up Saw] is a virtuosic piece cut from the same bolt of in his piano pieces, including several of the Préludes. While musical fabric as Debussy’s earlier L’isle joyeuse. Liszt’s these disparate influences bewildered some of his audience influence is paramount, with double trills, tremolos, and many of his critics, they distinguished Debussy from his broken octaves, and muscular chordal passages. The contemporaries. His ceaseless efforts to elicit novel sounds subtler imprint of Chopin’s ‘Winter Wind’ Etude is also from the piano yielded landmarks in keyboard literature. In present in this turbulent music, but the pentatonic terms of his influence on the generations of composers that and whole tone elements connect it unmistakably to followed, Debussy was as important as Arnold Schoenberg, in Debussy. Paul Roberts has written, “This is a piece a completely different way. unique in the Debussy repertoire, requiring wrists of Danseuses de Delphes [Delphic Dancers] does open Book iron and fingers of steel.” I. The title comes from the formal rites at Delphi’s Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece. Debussy was thinking of caryatids, Préludes, Books I and II Claude Debussy (1862-1918) ➤ 2016-17 season 63 Oaks Concerto, Symphony in C . . . the list is long. But piano music? Chances are that hardly anyone in this evening’s audience knows a solo keyboard work Early in 1904, Claude Debussy became involved in by Stravinsky apart from his Three Movements from a passionate affair with Emma Bardac, an amateur singer Pétrouchka, which are regularly performed at high-profile who was the wife of the banker Sigismond Bardac. Debussy competitions because of their extraordinary difficulty. Two had met her the previous autumn. He had been married to other pieces for solo piano warrant mention: the Serenade Rosalie [Lilly] Texier since 1899, but the union was shallow, in A from 1925 and the Sonata that Mr. Lubimov performs and he found Bardac intoxicating. In June 1904 Debussy left this evening. Both pieces date from Stravinsky’s neoclassical Lilly permanently to move in with Emma, whose husband period, which began when he returned to France after the traveled extensively. The lovers slipped out of Paris in Great War. Between 1920 and 1939, he was rediscovering mid-July to spend three glorious weeks on the British isle music of the 17th and 18th centuries, often adopting older of Jersey. L’isle joyeuse [“The joyous island”] mirrors the forms such as concerto grosso, fugue, and symphony as delirious passion of Debussy’s first extended holiday with vessels for his music. Emma, who eventually became his second wife. The Sonata of 1924 is a prime example, yet a Debussy had drafted the score to L’isle joyeuse during confounding one, because none of its three movements the summer of 1903 while still in Paris. He initially thought adheres to traditional sonata form. Rather, Stravinsky to include it in the Suite Bergamasque. While on the isle of embraced the original concept of sonata as a ‘sounded’ piece Jersey, he revised the piece extensively, adding final touches (i.e., performed on an instrument), as opposed to a cantata, in Dieppe in August, on his way back to Paris. In that or sung piece. The Italian verbs that gave rise to the musical version it is one of his lengthiest solo piano compositions terms are, respectively, suonare, to play or sound, and (only Masques rivals L’isle joyeuse in duration), and differs cantare, to sing. markedly from the delicate understatement of many of his He opens with a Baroque motor rhythm in Comodo. other piano works. As Marcel Dietschy has noted: Textures are thin: largely in two voices, and occasionally expanding to parallel thirds in the right hand. Only once Voluble, passionate joy runs through L’isle does he expand beyond three voices until the very end, joyeuse, like a flock of birds dazzled by the dawn which resolves to a clear cadence in C Major. and drunk on the freshness of the morning. The second movement, in A-flat Major, is like a Bach The past was buried when Debussy finished this aria. A dignified walking bass in the left hand provides a piece with its strong and flexible muscles. . . . [it steady rhythmic ostinato to supports the florid, melismatic testifies] to Debussy’s uncontrollable feeling for upper line. Stravinsky indulges with trills and elaborate Emma Bardac. embroidery, constantly developing and varying his melody. For the finale in E Minor, he adopts a toccata style. The piece is intensely virtuosic, placing technical The term is another throwback, from the Italian toccare, demands on the pianist analogous to those in the dazzling to touch - implying demanding technique on a keyboard showpieces of Franz Liszt. The composer wrote to his instrument such as organ or harpsichord. Here again publisher Jacques Durand: “But God! How difficult it is the pace is motoric, like the brisk opening and closing to perform. . . . seems to assemble all the ways to attack a movements of an Italian concerto grosso. One hears hints of piano since it unites force and grace.” Debussy uses the French influence in mischievous exchanges between hands piano as if it were a full orchestra, drawing forth a variety of and harmonic games. The Sonata ends quietly in E Major. colors as infinite as the play of light on the sea. (Evidently Stravinsky dedicated the Sonata to Princesse recognizing its symphonic potential, the composer planned Edmond de Polignac (1865-1943), an American heiress to to orchestrate it in 1915, but did not complete the project the Singer sewing machine fortune. When she married the before his death.) French prince in 1893, their strongest shared interest was Harmonically, L’Isle joyeuse dances between folka passion for arts and culture. By the late 1890s, her Paris like tunes and vivid whole-tone passages. There are salon had become one of the city’s most prestigious. After also some sections in which Debussy writes in two keys Prince Edmond died in 1901, she assumed a high profile simultaneously. Rhythmically, the piece alternates between as a patron of the arts, commissioning important works impetuosity and unpredictability to measured delicacy. from Falla, Fauré, Poulenc, and Satie, as well as Stravinsky. Throughout, the composer’s spirit emerges exultant, even She also lent her support to gifted performers, helping ecstatic. to promote the careers of Clara Haskil, Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Ethel Smyth, among others. L’isle joyeuse Claude Debussy Sonata (1924) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Selections from Préludes, Book II Claude Debussy Few listeners would dispute that Stravinsky’s most important compositions are for orchestra. His early ballets, The Firebird (1910), Pétrouchka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913) have become standard repertoire. Many of his subsequent ballet scores, theater pieces, and other orchestral works make regular appearances in the concert hall: L’histoire du soldat, Pulcinella, Jeu de cartes, Orpheus, Apollon musagète, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Dumbarton As with the first book of Préludes, Debussy traverses multiple worlds in Book II, comprising landscape, humor, legend, and faraway places. Feuilles mortes [Dead Leaves], marked ‘slow and melancholy,’ is wistful, a last clinging to the final vestiges of summer as the trees shed their foliage. Some writers believe that Debussy intended another deliberate ambiguity in his title, since in French feuilles can also refer to sheets of paper – or the pages of a printed book. Parallel chords, triads, sevenths, and ninths deliver the reverie. La puerto del Vino [The Wine Gate] takes its title from a gate near the Alhambra in Granada. Manuel de Falla purportedly sent Debussy a picture postcard of the scene. The image was a catalyst for associative memory, like Proust’s madeleine. Taking the Habanera – Spain’s predecessor to the tango– as its rhythmic pulse, Debussy’s prelude alters tempo with the abruptness of a flamenco dancer. Melodic inflections and guitar-like chords reinforce the Spanish mood, but it is the capricious, sudden contrasts that make the greatest impression. Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses [The Fairies are Exquisite Dancers] transports us to an enchanted world with gossamer textures, broken chords, extended trills, tremolos, and a wisp of a waltz. The capricious tempo changes are a constant reminder of the world of magic: whether Tinkerbell, the miracle of a butterfly in flight, or Shakespeare’s Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, Debussy captures their ephemeral and supernatural character. A brief reference at the end to Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon Overture reinforces the Shakespearean connection. General Lavine–Excentric is another tap into early 20th-century popular American culture on Debussy’s part. He instructs the pianist to play in the style and tempo of a Cake-Walk. Edward Lavine was an American clown who performed at the Marigny Theatre on the Champs-Elysées in 1910 and 1912. He styled himself as “The Man Who Has Soldiered All His Life,” delighting audiences with a slapstick act that included juggling as well as quick costume and personality changes. The music emphasizes his awkward, jerky movements, heightening the comic atmosphere. Canope returns us to the ancient world. Canopus was a city on the Nile River. Debussy’s title refers to funerary urns that preserved certain organs in Ancient Egyptian culture. The music is mysterious and veiled, with overtones and commingling chords playing an important role. Harmonies are uncertain, and the dissipation of sounds is as important as the sounds themselves. Feux d’artifice is the dazzler from Book II of the Preludes. Fireworks are predominantly visual and secondarily aural. In Debussy’s hands they become a synaesthetic experience. Paul Roberts has suggested that the composer may have had James MacNeill Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket” in mind when he composed it. If so, we may add painting to the extramusical stimuli, in addition to the anticipatory buzz and hiss of airborne rockets before they explode in a riot of sparkles. Through staccato octaves, compound trills, glissandi, and exuberant, fantastical cadenzas, Debussy recreates the theatrical and celebratory aspects of fireworks. His brief allusion to “La Marseillaise” at the end connects the piece to Bastille Day and the annual fireworks displays on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Program notes by Laurie Shulman © 2016 Alexei Lubimov “The Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov is nothing if not a perfectionist, and he searched long and hard to find historical instruments that would satisfy his requirements in these pieces.” (BBC Music Magazine) Born in the former USSR in 1944, Russian pianist and harpsichordist Alexei Lubimov was one of the last pupils of Henryk Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory. Highly regarded across the world, Mr. Lubimov inspired the first profound interest among Russian musicians in the music of the baroque (especially performed on early instruments) and of the twentieth century, much of which had never been heard before in the Soviet Union. Mr. Lubimov caught the attention of audiences and critics alike with his electrifying performances of works by contemporary composers. In 1968, he gave the Moscow premieres of works by John Cage and Terry Riley, and subsequently brought to the public’s attention works by Schönberg, Webern, Stockhausen, Boulez, Ives, Ligeti and many other contemporary composers such as Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Silvestrov and Pärt. In 1988 he organized in Moscow the avant-garde Alternativa Festival. Mr. Lubimov did not neglect the essential repertoire of the nineteenth century or works composed for early piano. Faced in the seventies with the ideological restrictions concerning twentieth-century music, he founded the Moscow Baroque Quartet, with which he was able to initiate performances of the harpsichord and fortepiano repertoire in the USSR. In the eighties, when political restrictions gradually receded, Alexei Lubimov began giving concerts outside the USSR, in Western Europe, North America and Japan. He made his American debut with Andrew Parrott and his Classical Band in New York in 1991. He has performed with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, as well as the orchestras of Helsinki, Israel, Los Angeles and Munich. In 1998 he undertook a European tour with the Finnish Radio Orchestra under Jukka Pekka Saraste, with which he performed the four piano concertos of Sergey Rachmaninov He has participated in many festivals, such as the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, and the Lockenhaus and Salzburg festivals in Austria. He has performed with conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy, Neeme Järvi, David Oistrakh, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marek Janowski, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Roger Norrington, Frans Brüggen, David Robertson, Andrey Boreyko, Ivan Fischer, Kent Nagano, and Yan Pascal Tortelier. He also performs chamber music, playing with Natalia Gutman, Christian Tetzlaff and Andreas Staier, among others. Alexei Lubimov has recorded for many labels, such as Melodya, Erato, BIS and Sony, which have released his interpretations of the complete sonatas of Mozart, as well as works by Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms and twentieth-century composers, including Arvo Pärt. Alexei Lubimov is represented by California Artists Management. ➤ 2016-17 season 65