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2014/15 GREAT PERFORMERS The Program Sponsored by BNY Mellon Wednesday Evening, March 4, 2015, at 7:30 Virtuoso Recitals Joshua Bell, Violin Sam Haywood, Piano BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor (1800) Presto Andante scherzoso, più allegretto Allegro molto GRIEG Violin Sonata No. 1 in F major (1865) Allegro con brio Allegretto quasi andantino—Più vivo—Tempo I Allegro molto vivace Intermission BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major (1878–79) Vivace ma non troppo Adagio Allegro molto moderato BARTÓK Rhapsody No. 1 for violin and piano (1928, rev. 1929) Lassú Friss Please make certain all your electronic devices are switched off. BNY Mellon is a Proud Sponsor of Great Performers. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Steinway Piano Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater Adrienne Arsht Stage Great Performers BNY Mellon is a Proud Sponsor of Great Performers. Support is provided by Rita E. and Gustave M. Hauser, The Florence Gould Foundation, Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Friends of Lincoln Center. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts. Endowment support for Symphonic Masters is provided by the Leon Levy Fund. Endowment support is also provided by UBS. MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center. Movado is an Official Sponsor of Lincoln Center. United Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln Center. WABC-TV is the Official Broadcast Partner of Lincoln Center. William Hill Estate Winery is the Official Wine of Lincoln Center. UPCOMING VIRTUOSO RECITALS IN ALICE TULLY HALL: Monday Evening, March 30, at 7:30 Lisa Batiashvili, Violin Paul Lewis, Piano SCHUBERT: Sonata in A major, D.574 SCHUBERT: Rondo brillant BACH (arr. Busoni): Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland TELEMANN: Fantaisie No. 4 BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonata No. 10 in G major Presented by Lincoln Center’s Great Performers in association with the New York Philharmonic. Lisa Batiashvili is the New York Philharmonic’s 2014/15 Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence. Thursday Evening, May 7, at 7:30 Emanuel Ax, Piano BIZET: Variations chromatiques RAMEAU: Pièces de clavecin DEBUSSY: Estampes; Hommage à Rameau, from Images, Series 1; L’isle joyeuse CHOPIN: Four Scherzos For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit LCGreatPerformers.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or to request a Great Performers brochure. Visit LCGreatPerformers.org for more information relating to this season’s programs. Join the conversation: #LCGreatPerfs We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building. Snapshot Great Performers By Paul Schiavo Timeframe The first sonatas for violin and keyboard, writ- ARTS ten during the third quarter of the 18th cen1800 tury, featured the latter instrument heavily. Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Indeed, most “violin sonatas” were little No. 4 Library of Congress founded in more than keyboard sonatas with slight violin Washington, D.C. accompaniment. But by the turn of the 19th century, the best composers had achieved a 1865 Grieg’s Sonata No. 1 more equitable balance between the two Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s instruments. Adventures in Wonderland. That development allowed subsequent generations of composers to use the violin sonata as a vehicle for intricate musical thought. The first to do so was Beethoven, whose ten sonatas for violin and piano set the bar for later composers. His Sonata in A minor, Op. 23, which opens this evening’s concert, presents a taut drama in its first movement, followed by some characteristic Beethovenian humor in the second. 1879 Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 Henry James’s Daisy Miller. 1929 Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 Elzie Segar creates Popeye the Sailor comic strip. SCIENCE 1800 Alessandro Volta devises the first chemical battery. Beethoven’s legacy of rigorous development 1865 of fertile melodic ideas within classic compoElizabeth Garrett Anderson is sitional forms was carried into the latter half the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the UK. of the 19th century primarily by Johannes Brahms. In the 20th century Béla Bartók left a 1879 pair of fine sonatas for violin and piano, but he Thomas A. Edison invents the electric light. found that the music he wrote, which was heavily indebted to Hungarian folk fiddling, 1929 was better served by a simpler format. We Tilly Edinger publishes Die fossilen Gehirne (Fossil Brains). hear this in the first of the composer’s two Rhapsodies for violin and piano, where the highly folkloric cast of Bartók’s invention is IN NEW YORK well served by a design of linked slow and 1800 fast movements. City’s first exclusively black church is organized. —Copyright © 2015 by Paul Schiavo 1865 Paid firefighters replace volunteers in the city. 1879 Telephone exchange opens on Nassau Street. 1929 The Museum of Modern Art opens. Notes on the Program Great Performers I Notes on the Program By Paul Schiavo Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor, Op. 23 (1800) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827, in Vienna Approximate length: 21 minutes Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano occupy a less exalted place in the composer’s output than his 32 solo piano sonatas, his 16 string quartets, or his nine symphonies. Yet they are prized by violinists, and rightly so. These pieces may not constitute so substantial a body of work as do Beethoven’s contributions to other genres, but they are a cornerstone of the violin’s chamber-music literature. Beethoven wrote most of his violin sonatas (all but the last, in fact) relatively early in his career—specifically before 1804, the year he completed his landmark “Eroica” Symphony. The composer had relocated to Vienna from his native Bonn in 1792 and quickly made his mark as a pianist of exceptional ability. But Beethoven also played the violin. As a boy, he had performed on the instrument and on the viola, in the court orchestra of Bonn. He continued to play the violin, even taking some lessons on the instrument, after his move to Vienna. Though he never attained the virtuosity he commanded at the keyboard, Beethoven nevertheless had a more than passing familiarity with the instrument and its capabilities. That knowledge served him well when he began to compose violin sonatas in the late 1790s. The Sonata in A minor, Op. 23, dates from 1800. The first of its three movements is marked Presto, an unusually fast tempo indication for a sonata first movement, and its themes fairly gallop along. As the movement unfolds, Beethoven characteristically plays with fragments of his melodic ideas, especially the initial subject, the brief figures passing quickly between the two instruments. The second movement is of a light character that justifies Beethoven’s designation of the music as scherzoso. While the finale returns us to A minor after the major-key tonalities of the second movement, something of that movement’s jocular spirit remains. The music begins quietly, but Beethoven builds to an energetic peroration in the closing moments of the piece. Great Performers I Notes on the Program Violin Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 8 (1865) EDVARD GRIEG Born June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway Died September 4, 1907, in Bergen Approximate length: 24 minutes Although many music lovers recognize Edvard Grieg as Norway’s greatest composer, few know his music beyond the very popular Piano Concerto, the orchestral suites derived from his incidental music to Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, and perhaps the attractive neo-classicism of his Holberg suite for strings. Only a handful of the composer’s nearly 200 songs, some of them very beautiful, make their way onto vocal recital programs. Similarly, only a fraction of his piano solos, mostly a few of the Lyric Pieces, have become concert repertory. But it is Grieg’s chamber music that has fallen most deeply into obscurity. This last is especially regrettable with regard to the composer’s three violin sonatas. These are among his most ambitious pieces for small ensembles, and arguably the most successful. Grieg wrote the first of these sonatas during the summer of 1865. He was still a young composer, having just attained his 22nd birthday, and still very much under the influence his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. That school had been founded by Felix Mendelssohn and counted Robert Schumann among its early faculty. Although neither of those illustrious musicians was still alive when Grieg trained there, the ideal of Romantic expression within Classical forms, evident in much of their music, lived on at the school. Grieg’s sonata upholds that ideal, though the piece reveals something more personal as well: a Nordic character in certain passages, something that would soon become a signature trait in the composer’s music. This is most apparent in the central movement, whose principal melody might be that of a Norwegian folk dance, and where droning double-stops from the violin evoke rustic fiddling in the central episode. But we can detect a subtle Scandinavian flavor in the harmonies of the opening movement, and in the minor-key lament over a rustling figure for the piano that forms there a contrasting second subject. The finale begins with a swiftly flowing idea somewhat in the manner of Schumann, but the movement’s second theme, introduced by the piano alone, again hints at Norwegian folk music. (Grieg later develops this idea in fugal counterpoint and finds it pregnant with unexpectedly passionate expression.) In this movement, as throughout the sonata as a whole, one can only admire the young composer’s shaping of his musical ideas, as well as the original harmonic touches he brings to the music. Great Performers I Notes on the Program Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78 (1878–79) JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna Approximate length: 27 minutes Beginning in 1877, Brahms spent several summers at the Austrian lakeside village of Pörtschach. The beautiful surroundings in which this resort was set seem to have inspired some of the composer’s finest works. Brahms’s first season there produced the glowing Second Symphony. Two years later, in the summer of 1879, he wrote his Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 78. Brahms’s circle received the sonata enthusiastically. Clara Schumann, one of the first to see the score, wrote to the composer on July 10, 1879: “I must tell you how deeply moved I am by your sonata. I received it today and of course played it through at once, and had to cry my heart out afterwards with joy over it.” Like the Second Symphony, the G-major Violin Sonata features a brief motif that recurs throughout its pages, unifying its broad design. This is a three-note iambic, or “dotted,” rhythm first heard in the opening moments of the work, at the start of the poetic melody given out by the violin. Brahms subtly weaves the same three-note rhythmic gesture into the two subsidiary themes that follow. Permeating much of the first movement, this motif becomes a “motto” figure for the entire sonata. The music of the ensuing Adagio alternates between two contrasting ideas: a meditative subject begun by the piano, then taken up by the violin, and a somber theme cloaked in minor-key harmonies. Here again, the asymmetrical rhythm of the motto figure is prominent, though it now seems grave, almost funereal, in character. The third movement opens with a melody Brahms had used in one of the songs that make up his Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 59. That piece is “Regenlied,” or “Rain Song,” and the piano’s accompaniment to the violin’s melody presents a steady rain-like patter of notes. Moreover, the first notes of that melody reproduce the rhythmic motto we encounter in the preceding movements. In both this subject and a second one, given out by the two instruments in alternating phrases, minor-key harmonies impart a bittersweet feeling. Only in the final moments of the movement does Brahms steer the music into the soft tonal light of its true home key, G major. Great Performers I Notes on the Program Rhapsody No. 1 for violin and piano, BB 94a (1928, rev. 1929) BÉLA BARTÓK Born March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Sînnicolau Mare, Romania) Died September 26, 1945, in New York Approximate length: 11 minutes For most of his life, Béla Bartók pursued a multifaceted career as composer, pianist, teacher, and ethnomusicologist. Of these endeavors, the last was by no means the least important. Bartók made numerous trips through the rural areas of his native Hungary and several neighboring countries, collecting and transcribing hundreds of folk melodies. This work came to have a profound effect on his own compositions, in which Bartók frequently adopted the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic inflections of Hungarian and Balkan folk music, and sometimes appropriated traditional melodies as their themes. A vivid example of this practice is the composer’s two Rhapsodies for violin and piano, written in 1928. (Bartók later transcribed the piano part for orchestra, but the original scoring with piano remains equally valid. Bartók cast each Rhapsody in two sections, called Lassú and Friss, the Hungarian terms for slow and fast. In Rhapsody No. 1, which we hear now, the opening Lassú is marked by heavy drone harmonies supporting a violin melody of distinctly Hungarian character. Bartók briefly considers a more lyrical second theme but soon returns to a variant of his initial idea. The second, or Friss, section begins with a dance-like tune resembling somewhat the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” which Aaron Copland quoted famously in his ballet Appalachian Spring. The music accelerates as new melodic ideas spin off from this theme, slowing only briefly before a final rush to the close. Paul Schiavo serves as program annotator for the St. Louis and Seattle Symphonies, and writes frequently for concerts at Lincoln Center. —Copyright © 2015 by Paul Schiavo BILL PHELPS Meet the Artists Great Performers I Meet the Artists Joshua Bell Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. Now in his third season as music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Mr. Bell is the first person to hold this post since Neville Marriner formed the orchestra in 1958. Their first recording under Mr. Bell’s leadership, of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh Symphonies (Sony Classical) debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Classical chart. Mr. Bell’s recording of the Bach violin concertos with the orchestra hit the top of the classical charts when it was released in September 2014, coinciding with the airing of the HBO documentary special Joshua Bell: A YoungArts MasterClass. Mr. Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs garnering Mercury, Grammy, Gramophone, and Echo Klassik awards. Recent releases include Musical Gifts from Joshua Bell and Friends, French Impressions with pianist Jeremy Denk, the eclectic At Home with Friends, the Defiance soundtrack, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, The Red Violin Concerto, Voice of the Violin, and Romance of the Violin, which Billboard named the 2004 Classical CD of the Year, and which also earned Mr. Bell recognition as the Classical Artist of the Year. His discography encompasses critically acclaimed performances of the major violin repertoire in addition to John Corigliano’s Oscar-winning soundtrack, The Red Violin. Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Mr. Bell received his first violin at age four and at 12 began studying with Josef Gingold at Indiana University. Two years later Mr. Bell came to national attention in his debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. At 17 he debuted at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Bell’s career has now spanned over 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and conductor, and he is an outspoken advocate for classical music and keeping music education in schools. Mr. Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius. Great Performers I Meet the Artists PANOS DAMASKINIDIS Sam Haywood Sam Haywood has performed to critical acclaim in many of the world’s major concert halls, including his recent U.S. solo recital debut at the Kennedy Center. As a chamber musician he is a regular duo partner of Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis, and he performs with many leading chamber ensembles. For Hyperion he has recorded the piano works of Russian pianistcomposer Julius Isserlis, grandfather of cellist Steven Isserlis. His latest album, Composers in Love, brings together well-loved and lesser-known music inspired by composers’ muses. To celebrate Chopin’s bicentennial year, Mr. Haywood made the world premiere recording on Chopin’s own Pleyel piano, part of the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park. He is also featured on Musical Gifts from Joshua Bell and Friends for Sony Masterworks. Following Mr. Haywood’s early success as the BBC Young Musician of the Year, the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded him its prestigious Julius Isserlis Scholarship. Mr. Haywood studied with Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna, where he began his enduring love affair with opera. At the Royal Academy of Music in London, he was mentored by Maria Curcio, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. He has given private performances for Princess Diana, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Hillary Clinton, and Xi Jinping, president of China. Alongside his busy solo and chamber music career, Mr. Haywood composes and is founder and artistic director of the Solent Music Festival. He is also passionate about his work with young people. He is ambassador to the West Lakes Academy, has written a children’s opera, and is regularly involved in family concerts, workshops, and master classes. His Song of the Penguins for bassoon and piano is published by Emerson Editions. Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Initiated in 1965, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series offers classical and contemporary music performances from the world’s outstanding symphony orchestras, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and recitalists. One of the most significant music presentation series in the world, Great Performers runs from October through June with offerings in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Great Performers Alice Tully Hall, Walter Reade Theater, and other performance spaces around New York City. From symphonic masterworks, lieder recitals, and Sunday morning coffee concerts to films and groundbreaking productions specially commissioned by Lincoln Center, Great Performers offers a rich spectrum of programming throughout the season. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and festivals including American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award–winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and the 11 resident organizations. In addition, LCPA led a $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed in October 2012. Lincoln Center Programming Department Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Hanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music Programming Jon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary Programming Jill Sternheimer, Acting Director, Public Programming Lisa Takemoto, Production Manager Charles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary Programming Kate Monaghan, Associate Director, Programming Claudia Norman, Producer, Public Programming Mauricio Lomelin, Associate Producer, Contemporary Programming Julia Lin, Associate Producer Nicole Cotton, Production Coordinator Regina Grande, Assistant to the Artistic Director Luna Shyr, Programming Publications Editor Olivia Fortunato, House Seat Coordinator Mr. Bell’s representation: IMG Artists www.imgartists.com