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the muriel mcbrien kauffman master pianists series
Jonathan Biss, Piano
Friday, March 8
8 pm
The Folly Theater
SCHUMANN
Fantasietücke, Op. 12
Des Abends
Aufschwung
Warum?
Grillen
In der Nacht
Fabel
Traumes-Wirren
Ende vom Lied
JANÁČEK
Selections from On an Overgrown Path, JW VIII/17
MOZART
Minuet in D Major, K. 355
MOZART
Adagio in B minor K. 540
INTERMISSION
SCHUMANN
Davidsbündlertänzem, Op.6
1.Lebhaft
2.Innig
3.Mit Humor
4.Ungeduldig
5.Einfach
6.Sehr rasch
7.Nicht schnell
8.Frisch
9.Lebhaft
10.Balladenmäßig, Sehr rasch
11.Einfach
12.Mit Humor
13.Wild und lustig
14.Zart und singend
15.Frisch
16.Mit gutem Humor
17.Wie aus der Ferne
18.Nict schnell
This concert is underwritten, in part, by Charles & Virginia Clark
The Master Pianists Series is underwritten, in part, by the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation
This concert is supported,
in part, by the ArtsKC Fund.
This concert is supported, in part,
by an award from the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Financial assistance for this project
has been provided, in part, by The
Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
the friends of chamber music | the intimate voice of classical music
program notes
Jonathan Biss puts a good deal of thought into his
recital repertoire, seeking provocative parallels as well
as stylistic and psychological contrast. He frames this
evening’s program with two great piano cycles by Robert
Schumann, both from 1837. On the first half, however,
he intersperses the movements of Fantasiestücke, Op. 12
(“Fantasy Pieces”) with movements by Moravia’s Leoš
Janáček, whose quasi-autobiographical On the Overgrown
Path (1900-11) constitutes a similarly diverse and
introspective collection.
quicksilver mood changes make these eight pieces vintage
Schumann. Nearly all of them are in relatively simple
ternary form. Pacing, texture, and tempo vary widely
within the set, yet they complement one another because
of Schumann’s instinctive gift for narrative and the flow
of key centers from one piece to the next. Although
he claimed to have added the names of the individual
movements after he had written the music, each title
furnishes a valuable clue to that movement’s character.
Janáček’s intimate approach to the piano has clear
ancestry in Schumann’s keyboard works. Mr. Biss’ pairing
of German romantic music and early 20th-century Czech
pieces is striking. On one level, the dimensions and
moods are complementary. On another, each composer’s
musical language is distinctive and individual. More than
a few hundred kilometers and 70 years separate these two
groups of pieces.
Mr. Biss rounds out his recital with two short,
introspective pieces by Mozart and Davidsbündlertänze,
(“Dances of the League of David”) a series of dances at
the heart of Schumann’s expressive art at the piano. The
eminent American pianist and scholar Charles Rosen
calls Davidsbündlertänze “the subtlest, most mysterious
and most complex of all Schumann’s large works.” This
evening, we have a rare opportunity to hear it performed
in its entirety.
Fantasiestücke, Op.12
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
The solo piano works of the 1830s display
Robert Schumann’s genius at its most immediate and
spontaneous. He was surely the greatest master of the
romantic miniature, endowing smaller pieces in simple
forms with layers of substance and expressivity. In the
hands of a lesser composer, such pieces would have been
merely salon music. Schumann elevated miniatures to
the realm of the sublime. At his best, he compiled
groups of them into cycles linked by musical
motives, tonal relationships, and programmatic or
autobiographical subtexts.
The collective title for his Op. 12 probably came from
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s early tales, Fantasiestücke in Callots
Manier (“Fantasy Pieces in the Manner of Callot”).
Schumann returned to the term Fantasiestücke – or some
variant of it – several times, first in the celebrated Fantasy
in C Major, Op.17, then much later in other works, also
called Fantasiestücke: for clarinet and piano, piano trio,
and another late group of works for piano solo.
The Fantasiestücke (“Fantasy Pieces”) of 1837 is
one of the most successful such cycles. Idiomatic piano
writing, the subtle weaving of inner voices, and the
The opening Des Abends (“Evening”) sets the tone for
the entire set. Dreamy and pleasant, its flowing melody
evokes the floral smells and light breezes of a balmy
Portrait of Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann
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program notes
summer evening. Cross-rhythms, yearning moods, and
shifting melodies in the inner voices, are all characteristic
of Schumann’s style at its most effective. As Charles
Rosen has observed:
Melody is integrated into the general texture,
accompaniment becomes intensely expressive. The inner
voices (the thumbs above all) give life to the piece.
Aufschwung (“Soaring”) opens with what seems
like a catapult, or a high diver setting up the dive. The
actual soaring begins with the rippling arpeggios in
which Schumann has embedded in his second theme
group. The music is almost as exhilarating to hear as
it is to play. Warum? (“Why?”) asks its question in the
opening gesture, exploring possible answers through a
series of unexpected modulations. Grillen (“Whims” or
“Caprices”) is jovial and forthright, tossing in occasional
syncopations to disrupt the deceptive regularity of its
pace.
The cycle closes with Ende vom Lied (“End of the
Song”), an unmistakably Schumannesque epilogue.
Robert told Clara that he was thinking about marriage
when he wrote it. The subdued, chordal coda suggests
that he recognized he faced a long battle ahead in
winning her hand.
Schumann believed that In der Nacht (No. 5)
and Traumes-Wirren (No. 7) were the only two of
the Fantasiestücke suitable for public performance.
Clara programmed those movements regularly on her
concert tours. Perhaps reacting to the virtuoso-centered
atmosphere of the day, Robert evidently thought
the other Fantasiestücke too intimate and personal
for concerts. Subsequent generations of pianists and
audiences have proved him wrong.
In der Nacht (“In the Night”) was Schumann’s
favorite of the Fantasiestücke. In a letter to his future
bride, Clara Wieck, on April 21, 1838, he outlined its
program.
After I had finished it I found, to my delight, that it
contained the story of Hero and Leander . . . how Leander
swam every night through the sea to his love, who awaited
him at the beacon with a torch to light the way. When I
am playing In der Nacht I cannot get the idea out of my
head. First he throws himself into the sea; she calls him,
he replies; he fights his way through the waves, reaching
land safely. Then the cantilena [the slow middle section],
when they are clasped in each other’s embrace, until they
must part again. He cannot tear himself away, then night
envelops everything in darkness again.
The agitation of the outer sections does emulate waves.
Others have heard terrifying nocturnal monsters in
this virtuoso movement, suggesting bad dreams. Open
pedal markings invite blurring, freeing the listener’s
imagination further. In either scenario, most pianists find
In der Nacht the most perilous of the set.
Fabel alternates storybook manner with the mischief
of elves as the fable unfolds: another example of the
Eusebius/Florestan duality in Schumann’s musical
personality (see sidebar). Traumes-Wirren (“Wild
Dreams” and “Dream Jumble” are two options for
translating this evocative title) is like a Chopin étude:
lightning fast, technically demanding, and deliciously
rich in its musical material.
The Last Watch of Hero by Frederic Leighton
the friends of chamber music | the intimate voice of classical music
program notes
Selections from On an Overgrown Path (1900-11)
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
from On an Overgrown Path come from the harmonium
pieces.
Janáček is certainly not among the first names that
come to mind when one thinks about the virtuoso
keyboard repertoire. The foremost Czech composer
of the generation after Dvořák, Janáček personally
valued his operas most highly. Nevertheless, it was
his instrumental compositions that earned him his
reputation. He was approaching 50 when he began
On an Overgrown Path. Ironically, it is considered
relatively early, because Janáček’s gifts flowered so richly
in his later years.
He begins with Naše večery (“Our Evenings”)
following Schumann’s Des Abends (“In the Evening”),
which opens in a similar mood. Janáček captures the
atmosphere at dusk in Hukvaldy. The movement’s
main theme has irregular phrases; brief twittering
passages interrupt to imitate woodland birds, or possibly
ground animals disturbed in the brush. Persistent
accompaniment figures approach ostinato character:
perhaps the narrator’s walking tempo.
These piano pieces coincide with an artistic turning
point for Janáček: the creation of the opera Jenůfa
(1904). It was the first major work in which he delved
into the rhythms and inflections of the Czech language.
He once said, “When anyone speaks to me, I listen more
to the tonal modulations in his voice than to what he
is actually saying.” After Jenůfa, he constructed all his
music from simple melodic motives. In the short piano
pieces of On an Overgrown Path, he developed entire
movements out of a single gesture. Asymmetry began to
dominate his rhythms. Janáček’s intimate style reveals
a spiritual affinity with Schumann’s miniatures, but the
rhapsodic aura is entirely his own.
In a 1908 letter to one of his publishers, Janáček
described Lístek odvanutý (“A Blown-Away Leaf ”) as a
love song and Dobrou noc! (“Good Night”) as a lovers’
parting. “A Blown-Away Leaf ” emulates the sound of the
Hungarian cimbalom, a hammer-dulcimer used in Gypsy
and popular music. Its free rhythms – 2/4 becomes
5/8, but ever so gracefully – and flexible tempo do seem
conversational, surely reflecting the idiosyncrasies of the
Czech language. “Good Night” derives its mystery from
Lydian scales, sustained pedal tones, and gentle, inner
voices.
Frýdecká panna Maria (“The Madonna of Frydek”)
refers to a church in the town of Frydek, in Silesian
Moravia on the Polish border (today it is Frýdek-Místek,
The cycle is an early example of the autobiographical twin cities bisected by the Ostravice River). Janáček
works that became increasingly important in Janáček’s
sought to evoke religious processions and the meditations
music. The title refers to the countryside around his
of pilgrims in church. Chorale-like chords suggest the
home town of Hukvaldy, on the border between Moravia organ and the reverent occasion. The chordal passages
and Silesia. The composer later commented that he was
alternate with a melody above an oscillating tremolo
“walking along an overgrown path of old memories.”
accompaniment, again reminiscent of cimbalom. He
These pieces are glimpses of childhood, in the 19thused the same melody in an Ave Maria shortly after
century tradition of character pieces. The complete
composing this movement.
collection consists of fifteen short pieces. The first group Pojdte s námi! (“Come with us!”) starts as a polka.
of ten was published in 1911 as Small Compositions for
We can imagine children skipping along, perhaps en
Piano. Poetic titles were added afterward. Publication
route home from school. In one of his more enigmatic
of the last five pieces was posthumous, in 1942, and
clues, Janáček later described it as “a letter filed away
without programmatic titles. once and for all.” (Did one of those skipping schoolgirls
Some of Janáček’s pieces initially appeared as early
as 1901 and 1902 as part of a periodical collection for
harmonium called Slavic Melodies. The harmonium
is a keyboard instrument related to the organ, powered
by pedal-operated bellows. Harmonium music was
fashionable in Moravia at the turn of the 20th century.
That accounts in part for Janáček’s unusual approach
to the piano. All but the last of Mr. Biss’s selections
grow up to be his first heartbreak?) As in the other
pieces, the structure here evolves out of brief motives,
but it is Janáček’s harmony that startles most in ‘Come
with us!’ – slipping effortlessly from D major to D-flat
major, then back home to D for the adagio coda.
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program notes
he wished to maximize the expressive aspect of this
highly personal composition. At the same time, he cast
the movement in a sonata form and softened the ending
with a brief coda in B major. However emotional his
Mozart’s solo keyboard works consist primarily of
musical message, Mozart’s sense of structural balance and
sonatas and variations sets. A few fantasias and rondos
almost complete the list, but this Minuet and this Adagio good taste never fail him.
are both one-of-a-kind.
Minuet in D Major, K. 355
Adagio in B Minor K. 540
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (1756-1791)
Mozart composed the Minuet in Vienna, probably
in 1786 or 1787, which makes it roughly contemporary
with The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and the late
piano concertos No. 23 in A Major, K. 488; No. 24 in
C Minor, K. 491, and No. 25 in C Major, K. 503. The
Köchel listing, K. 355, suggesting a much earlier work, is
misleading; some recent scholars think the Minuet may
be as late as 1789 or even 1790 because of its jarring,
enigmatic dissonance and daring contrasts, placing it
within a year or two of his death. (Two later editions of
the Köchel catalogue assign it the numbers K.594a and
K.576b, better indicators of the work’s maturity.) The
Minuet’s intense chromaticism belies the simplicity of
this single page of music.
Albert Einstein, one of Mozart’s early 20th-century
biographers, hypothesized that the Minuet may have
been intended as the third movement to Mozart’s
D Major Piano Sonata, K. 576. The autograph has
not survived. The Viennese house of T. Mollo & Co.
published it in 1801 with a trio by Abbé Maximilian
Stadler.
The B Minor Adagio, K. 540 is another unique
work. Mozart rarely employed minor keys, and he
composed no other keyboard work in B minor. The
Adagio thus stands alone, occupying a similar position
in the Mozart canon as the poignant Adagio of the Piano
Concerto No. 23, K. 488, which is the only movement
in F-sharp minor Mozart ever composed.
The Adagio dates from March 1788, when his
financial pressures and overwork had made for a difficult
spring. That probably accounts for the dark character
of the piece. Few Mozart works speak to us in such
anguished tones. The Adagio is too lengthy to serve
as the slow movement of a piano sonata (and perhaps
too troubled). It is, again, heavily chromatic, highly
emotional music, charged with the dramatic dissonance
of suspensions and diminished seventh chords. Mozart
indicated unusually detailed instructions for sudden
dynamic changes and subtle phrasing nuances. Clearly
Portrait of Mozart on the front of a postcard from 1906
Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6
Robert Schumann
Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann had a
tumultuous courtship. Schumann had come to Leipzig
in 1830 to study piano with Clara’s father, the pedagogue
Friedrich Wieck, and lived in the Wieck household.
Robert was nine years older than Clara, who was only
eleven when they met. Their relationship thus started as
the friends of chamber music | the intimate voice of classical music
program notes
David playing the Harp by Jan de Bray, 1670
a playful and companionable friendship, though Robert
recognized that Clara was an extraordinary musical
talent.
By the mid-1830s, as Clara developed from an
adolescent into a young woman, friendship ripened into
romance. Friedrich Wieck was fiercely opposed to this
relationship. Although he acknowledged Schumann’s
talent, he found the young man unstable and unreliable,
and thought his financial prospects dubious. The idea
of Schumann as a son-in-law collided with his plans to
shepherd Clara’s promising career as a virtuoso pianist
and composer. Wieck forbade the would-be lovers to
see each other. Between 1835 and 1840, he went to
extraordinary lengths to keep them apart, including legal
action.
In one of many secret letters exchanged with his
beloved, Schumann proposed to Clara in the summer
of 1837. Although their marriage would not take place
for another three years, he was elated when she accepted,
and began work immediately on the work that became
the Davidsbündlertänze. It is closely linked to Clara.
Its opening gesture quotes a Mazurka from her own
composition Soirées musicales, Op. 6, which had been
published in 1836. Clara was a gifted composer as well
as one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century. By
publishing the Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, Robert surely
thought to secure another secret link with her.
How do we make sense of a work that comprises
almost forty minutes of music? At the most basic level,
Davidsbündlertänze consists of eighteen movements in
dance forms. Most of the movements are two minutes
or less; only two of them exceed four minutes. They
share an improvisatory, spontaneous character, with
dance rhythms pushed and pulled in surprising ways.
Schumann’s pedaling instructions are adventurous.
Echo effects and intentional blurring sometimes yield a
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program notes
SCHUMANN AND THE DAVIDSBÜND
The son of a bookseller, Robert Schumann was
versed in law, literature, and the visual arts, as
well as music. For much of his career, he was better
known as a music critic than he was as a composer.
He used his writings about music to champion the
cause of progressive trends in Germany, and to
combat the conservatism of what he regarded as
musical Philistines.
His metaphorical society embracing musical
progressivism was the Davidsbünd, or The League of
David. The name was a conscious reference to King
David in the Bible, who was associated with the harp
and music-making as well as his war against Goliath
and the Philistines.
Two of the most prominent characters in Schumann’s
Davidsbünd were Florestan and Eusebius
(pronounced Oy-ZAY-bee-us). They were frequently
credited as ‘authors’ of articles in Schumann’s music
journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Florestan was
rash and impulsive, the extrovert of the two. His
personality had elements of the manic, often with a
wicked sense of humor. Eusebius, by contrast, was an
introspective dreamer, exploring the more intimate
and melancholy musings of the human soul.
Of course both characters are Schumann himself,
and in today’s world, armed with a greater
understanding of mental illness, we may perceive
Florestan and Eusebius as the bipolar facets of
Schumann’s personality: his alter egos. They are
present in several of Schumann’s compositions; for
example, Carnaval has a movement named for each,
but their role is omnipresent in Davidsbündlertänze.
In a letter to Clara dated March 17, 1838, he
specified, “I think [the Davidsbündlertänze] are
quite different from Carnaval, compared to which
they are what a face is to a mask.” These eighteen
dances are an expression of his romantic soul.
– L.S. ©2012
proto-impressionist wash of sound. Listeners familiar
with Carnaval (1834-35) may recognize a recurrent fivenote descending motive from Carnaval’s “Promenade”
and “March of the Davidsbündler” against the
Philistines’ movements. The motive recurs regularly in
Davidsbündlertänze.
The names Florestan and Eusebius appeared
as the composers on the original title page of
Davidsbündlertänze. They were imaginary Davidsbünd
characters representing the extroverted/ impulsive
Portrait of Clara Wieck
and introspective/melancholy facets of Schumann’s
personality (see sidebar). Schumann appended an “F”
or “E” to each of its eighteen movements, identifying
the “author” as Florestan or Eusebius; four of the
movements share joint authorship, identified as “F.
and E.” Those movements juxtapose short sections of
contrasting character.
The other movements – those ascribed to either
Florestan or Eusebius – take their primary impetus from
the traits associated with each author. Schumann tends
to alternate the capricious, humorous, and energetic
movements with the more thoughtful ones. His careful
arrangement provides Eusebian moments of repose
and reflection amid the roiling waters of the Florestan
movements. He shows prodigious imagination in his
approach to the piano, using syncopations and irregular
phrase groups to create an unsettled, restless feeling, or
the friends of chamber music | the intimate voice of classical music
program notes
weaving subtle interplay between superimposed duple
and triple meter. Some of the big-chord dances in the
second half look forward to the Intermezzi of Brahms.
Structurally, the dances fall into two groups of nine
that follow a subtle pattern of key changes. Schumann
has an internal logic with a general center in B minor.
That stated, both halves of nine conclude with a
movement in C major – C for Clara. These bookend
dances address Clara with their hopes, apprehension,
and anticipation. In the first edition, Schumann added
an inscription before No. 9: “Here Florestan kept silent,
but his lips were quivering with emotion.” Similarly,
before the graceful, wistful waltz of No.18: “Quite
redundantly Eusebius added the following; but great
happiness shone in his eyes all the while.” In the second
edition, he deleted these epigraphs, but with Schumann
the first inspiration was most often the purest and best
expression of his genius. One of Robert’s letters to Clara provides a key to
unlocking the marvels of this great romantic masterpiece:
There are many bridal thoughts in the dances, which were
suggested by the most delicious excitement that I ever
remember . . . The whole story is a Polterabend.
Robert and Clara Schumann
Polterabend is a folk term for a wedding eve when
hobgoblins and magical sprites play practical jokes
on the bride. In this case, the groom’s sense of humor
mingles with the tenderness he feels for his bride-to-be.
As the movement and the cycle close, the clock chimes
midnight on the piano’s low C. Surely Schumann was
wishing his Clara sweet dreams. Davidsbündlertänze
closes pianissimo, a private and serene epilogue to their
romantic journey.
Laurie Shulman © 2012
Jonathan Biss’ biography can be found on page 49.
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