Ilya Yakushev
Christensen Performance Hall on The Madeline Janis Courter Stage
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Graciously Sponsored by BIG ARTS Classical Series Circle: Nancy Dehmlow, David Huggin & Ken Nees
ILYA YAKUSHEV
Russian pianist Ilya Yakushev, with many awards and honors to his credit, continues to astound and mesmerize audiences at major venues on three continents.
In the 2023-24 season, Ilya Yakushev performed as piano soloist with San Luis Obispo Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Glacier Symphony, and Panama City Symphony in addition to over 40 recitals in North America and Europe.
Highlights of Yakushev’s 2024-25 season include return appearances with Cheyenne Symphony, Panama City Symphony, and Glacier Symphony, as well as a performance with the Youngstown Symphony.
In February 2014, British label Nimbus Records published “Prokofiev Sonatas Vol. 1” CD. American Record Guide wrote “Yakushev is one of the very best young pianists before the public today, and it doesn’t seem to matter what repertoire he plays – it is all of the highest caliber”. Volume 2 was published in January 2017, as well as an all-Russian repertoire CD in September 2017.
In past seasons, he has performed in various prestigious venues worldwide, including Glinka Philharmonic Hall (St. Petersburg), Victoria Hall (Singapore), Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York), Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco), and Sejong Performing Arts Center (Seoul, Korea). His performances with orchestra include those with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, Boston Pops, Rochester Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, and many others.
Ilya Yakushev is a Yamaha artist.
PROGRAM
Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 (K. 385g) (1782)...Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Duration: 6 minutes
Prelude in G-sharp minor, Op. 32, No. 12 (1910)......Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5 (1903)
Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2 (1892)
Duration: 10 minutes
Rhapsody in Blue (1924)..........................................................George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Duration: 18 minutes
-INTERMISSION-
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874).......................................Modeste Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
I. Promenade — The Gnome
II. Promenade — The Old Castle
III. Promenade — Tuileries
IV. Bydlo
V. Promenade — Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells
VI. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
VII. Promenade — The Marketplace at Limoges — VIII. Catacombs, Roman Tombs — Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
IX. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs —
X. The Great Gate of Kiev
Duration: 32 minutes
Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 (K. 385g)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg. Died December 5, 1791 in Vienna.
Composed in 1782.
In 1782, one year after he had bolted from Salzburg to take up life as a free- lance composer and pianist in Vienna, Mozart developed a new, gleaming admiration for the music of Bach, Handel and other masters of the early 18th century. He had been exposed to the works of such Italian Baroque composers as Leo, Caldara, Durante and Alessandro Scarlatti in Salzburg, where their scores were used for performance and for study, but his interest in Bach grew from his association in Vienna with Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the Court Librarian and musical amateur who had developed a taste for the contrapuntal glories of German music while serving as ambassador to the Prussian court at Berlin. Van Swieten, who is also remembered as the librettist for Haydn’s oratorios The Creation and The Seasons , produced a weekly series of concerts in Vienna devoted to “ancient music,” and hired the best available musicians, including Mozart, to perform and arrange the compositions for these events. (Among other projects for van Swieten, Mozart scored Handel’s Messiah for classical orchestra.) Mozart, one history’s greatest adept s at absorbing musical styles, learned much about the fine workings of Baroque music from his close involvement with the compositions of Bach and Handel.
In addition to the enriched contrapuntal textures that increasingly figured in his compositions, Mozart also discovered from Bach’s preludes, fantasies and toccatas how to fix the evanescence of improvisation into a finished work. He tried out just such a passage of musing, seemingly spontaneous broken chords, a technique found often in the preludes of Bach’s Well - Tempered Clavier , to begin the Fantasia in D minor that he wrote in Vienna in 1782. For all of its simplicity, this is one of the most deeply moving moments in Mozart’s music. These opening gestures are followed by a plaintive, chromatically inflected melody that is indebted less to Johann Sebastian that to that master’s Son No. 2, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714 - 1788), whose strikingly emotional works were an important catalyst of musical Romanticism. Repetitions of this sad song are twice interrupted by sweeping cadenza - like eruptions before the Fantasia pauses on an inconclusive harmony, takes a small breath, and trots off with a cheerful D major melody of opera buffa jocularity. Mozart, perhaps unsure of how to bring these two vastly different kinds of music into balance, did not finish notating the piece. When the score was published by Breitkopf und Härtel in the 1870s as part of the complete Mozart edition, the editors tacked on a few measures of the opera buffa tune to round out the work. A very different effect, chosen by some performers, is achieved by recalling the Bachian strains of the beginning to bring the Fantasia to a solemn close.
Three Preludes Sergei
Rachmaninoff
Born April 1, 1873 in Oneg (near Novgorod), Russia. Died March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California.
Composed in 1892, 1903 and 1910.
After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in the spring of 1892, Rachmaninoff spent the summer at the home of a wealthy patron, Ivan Konovalov, 200 miles northeast of Moscow, and upon his return to the city rented a flat in a second- rate establishment that called itself the Hotel America. The first
compositions he undertook in “America” were the five Fantasy Pieces Morceaux de Fantasie that he wrote that autumn. The first to be completed was the Prelude in C- sharp minor , which he played at a concert on October 8th. The other four Morceaux were finished before the end of the year, and premiered in Kharkov on January 9, 1893. Soon after Op. 3 was published that spring, the first of Rachmaninoff’s piano works to reach print, the influential journalist and critic A.A. Amfiteatrov praised the young composer and his music in an article headlined, “A Man of Great Promise.” Amfiteatrov wrote glowingly of the Pr e lude in C- sharp minor , which was to become the most popular piece Rachmaninoff ever wrote. It was played constantly during his lifetime in its piano original, as well as in versions for full orchestra, jazz band and chamber ensembles. The number was requested so methodically on his recitals that he claimed to loath the piece, though he never refused to play it. In 1942, the Walt Disney Studio in Hollywood featured it in Mickey’s Opry House, in which the immortal mouse was seen as a concert pianist giving his rendition of the famous Pr e lude . “I have heard my inescapable piece done marvelously by some of the best pianists, and murdered cruelly by amateurs,” the composer confided to the animator, “but never was I more stirred than by the performance of the great Maestro Mouse.”
Rachmaninoff had confirmed his breathtaking talents as pianist and composer even before he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, but he suffered the greatest failure of his life soon thereafter with the absolute failure of his First Symphony at its premiere in 1897, falling into a depression serious enough that he suffered a nervous collapse and loss of ambition to compose. With the understanding help of a psychiatrist, he made a full recovery and returned to creative confidence with the successful premieres of the Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Sonata and Second Suite for Two Pianos, all in 1901. That same year he wrote a four - minute piece in G minor for solo piano titled Alla marcia (“ In the Manner of a March ”) and a few months later, he began a set of variations on Chopin’s Prelude in C minor, Op. 28, No. 20. With Chopin’s Preludes as the inspiration and the Alla marcia of 1901 as the seed, Rachmaninoff composed his own set of ten Preludes during the following months. The infectious Alla marcia (No. 5, G minor) became one of Rachmaninoff’s best - known works.
In 1910, when Rachmaninoff undertook his second set of Preludes, he was one of the most important musical figures in the world, with many successful compositions, an appointment as the opera conductor of the Moscow Imperial Grand Theater, and a triumphant career as a concert pianist. The Op. 32 Preludes of 1910 were composed at the height of that early success (he was 37) in the wake of his triumphant American tour of the preceding autumn, when he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 3 with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra and conducted in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Hartford, Toronto, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Buffalo to such acclaim that Boston and Cincinnati both wanted him as permanent conductor, offers he firmly refused so that he could return to his beloved homeland. He premiered the Op. 32 Preludes at the December 11, 1911 concert of the series organized by his cousin, conductor - pianist Alexander Siloti in St. Petersburg. The Prelude No. 12 (Gsharp minor, Allegro ) drapes its melancholy main theme with fluttering, harp- like figurations.
Rhapsody in Blue George Gershwin
Born September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. Died July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California.
Composed in 1924.
Premiered on February 12, 1924 in New York, conducted by Paul Whiteman, with the composer as piano soloist.
For George White’s Scandals of 1922 , the 24 -year -old George Gershwin provided something a little bit different an opera, a brief, somber one- acter called Blue Monday (later retitled 135th Street ) incorporating some jazz elements that White cut after only one performance on the grounds that it was too gloomy. Blue Monday , however, impressed the show’s conductor, Paul Whiteman, then gaining a national reputation as the self - styled “King of Jazz” for his adventurous explorations of the new popular music styles with his Palais Royal Orchestra. A year later, Whiteman told Gershwin about his plans for a
special program the following February in which he hoped to show some of the ways traditional concert music could be enriched by jazz, and suggested that the young composer provide a piece for piano and jazz orchestra. Gershwin, who was then busy with the final preparations for the upcoming Boston tryout of the musical Sweet Little Devil and somewhat unsure about barging into the world of classical music, did not pay much attention to the request until he read in The New York Times on New Year’s Day that he was writing a new “symphony” for Whiteman’s program. After a few frantic phone calls, Whiteman finally convinced Gershwin to undertake the project, a work for piano solo (to be played by the composer) and Whiteman’s 22 - piece orchestra and then told him that it had to be finished in less than a month. Themes and ideas for the new piece immediately began to tumble through Gershwin’s head, and late in January, only three weeks after it was begun, the Rhapsody in Blue was completed.
The premiere of the Rhapsody in Blue New York, Aeolian Hall, February 12, 1924 was one of the great nights in American music. Many of the era’s most illustrious musicians attended, critics from far and near assembled to pass judgment, and the glitterati of society and culture graced the event. Gershwin fought down his apprehension over his joint debuts as serious composer and concert pianist, and he and his music had a brilliant success. “A new talent finding its voice,” wrote Olin Downes, music critic for The New York Times . Conductor Walter Damrosch told Gershwin that he had “made a lady out of jazz,” and then commissioned him to write the Concerto in F. There was critical carping about laxity in the structure of the Rhapsody in Blue , but there was none about its vibrant, quintessentially American character or its melodic inspiration, and it became an immediate hit, attaining (and maintaining) a position of popularity almost unmatched by any other work of a native composer.
The Rhapsody in Blue has been arranged for almost every conceivable instrumental ensemble, from concert band to mandolin quartet, but it is best known in the version for symphony orchestra and piano that Ferde Grofé made soon after Gershwin’s death. The composer himself made two keyboard arrangements of the work one for two pianos (one piano plays the solo part, the other duplicates the orchestra), which he “recorded” (on multiple passes) on Duo- Art piano rolls in 1925, and another for solo piano in 1927.
Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky
Born March 21, 1839 in Karevo, Pskov District, Russia. Died March 28, 1881 in St. Petersburg.
Composed in 1874 .
In the years around 1850, with the spirit of nationalism sweeping through Europe, several young Russian artists banded together to rid their native art of foreign influences in order to establish a distinctive character for their works. At the front of this movement was a group of composers known as “The Five,” whose members included Mussorgsky, Rimsky- Korsakov, Borodin, César Cui and Mily Balakirev. Among the allies that The Five found in other fields was the artist and architect Victor Hartmann, with whom Mussorgsky became close personal friends. Hartmann’s premature death at 39 stunned the composer and the entire Russian artistic community. The noted critic Vladimir Stassov organized a memorial exhibit of Hartmann’s work in February 1874, and it was under the inspiration of that showing of his late friend’s works that Mussorgsky conceived his Pictures at an Exhibition. Promenade depicts Mussorgsky, wrote Stassov, “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly, and, at times sadly, thinking of his friend.” The Gnome is Hartmann’s drawing for a fantastic wooden nutcracker representing a troll- like creature who gives off savage shrieks. In Promenade – The Old Castle a troubadour sings a doleful lament before an ancient fortress. Promenade – Tuileries shows a corner of the famous Parisian garden filled with nursemaids and their youthful charges. Bydlo depicts a rugged wagon drawn by oxen. The peasant driver sings a plaintive melody heard first from afar, then close- by, before the cart passes away into the distance. Promenade – Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells , Hartmann’s costume design for the 1871 fantasy ballet Trilby , shows dancers enclosed in enormous egg shells, with
only their arms, legs and heads protruding. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle was inspired by two pictures Hartmann presented to the composer showing a pair of residents of the Warsaw ghetto, one wealthy and pompous, the other poor and complaining. Mussorgsky based both themes on incantations he heard on visits to Jewish synagogues. Promenade –The Marketplace at Limoges is a lively sketch of a bustling market. Catacombs, Roman Tombs. Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua shows Hartmann being led by a guide with a lantern through cavernous underground tombs. The movement’s second section, bearing the title “With the Dead in a Dead Language,” is a mysterious transformation of the Promenade theme. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs is a design for an elaborate clock suggested by Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch of Russian folklore who flies through the air on her magic pestle, and Mussorgsky’s music suggests a wild, midnight ride. The Great Gate of Kiev was inspired by Hartmann’s plan for a gateway for the city of Kiev in the massive old Russian style crowned with a cupola in the shape of a Slavic warrior’s helmet. The work ends with a heroic statement of the Promenade theme and a jubilant pealing of the bells of the city.
©2024 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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