Cliburn Concerts: Alexandre Tharaud Digital Program Book

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ALEXANDRE THARAUD BACH GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

THURSDAY & FRIDAY, APRIL 4 & 5, 2019 I 7:30 PM KIMBELL ART MUSEUM RENZO PIANO PAVILION PERFORMANCE SPONSORED BY

The Board of Directors of the Cliburn salutes with gratitude the generosity of

SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION ROSALYN G. ROSENTHAL & MANNY ROSENTHAL ‡* LKCM

for supporting these performances of

ALEXANDRE THARAUD

PA G E

26

‡Deceased *Made possible by a generous gift to the Cliburn Endowment

CLIBURN AT THE KIMBELL: MASTERS Kimbell Art Museum Renzo Piano Pavilion Thursday & Friday, April 4 & 5, 2019 I 7:30 p.m.

ALEXANDRE THARAUD piano Johann Sebastian Bach

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Aria Variation 1 Variation 2 Variation 3. Canon on the unison Variation 4 Variation 5 Variation 6. Canon on the second Variation 7 Variation 8 Variation 9. Canon on the third Variation 10. Fughetta Variation 11 Variation 12. Canon on the fourth Variation 13 Variation 14 Variation 15. Canon on the fifth Variation 16. Overture Variation 17 Variation 18. Canon on the sixth Variation 19 Variation 20 Variation 21. Canon on the seventh Variation 22. Alla breve Variation 23 Variation 24. Canon on the octave Variation 25 Variation 26 Variation 27. Canon on the ninth Variation 28 Variation 29 Variation 30. Quodlibet Aria da capo

Alexandre Tharaud appears by arrangement with Opus 3 Artists.

Steinway & Sons is the official piano of the Cliburn. This concert is being recorded.

Please silence all electronic devices.

ALEXANDRE THARAUD

piano

Alexandre Tharaud has distinguished himself as one of France’s leading pianists. Recognized on the international stage as an artist of unique vision and originality, Alexandre is heralded for his brilliantly conceived programs and bestselling recordings that range from Bach, Chopin, Rameau, and Ravel to music inspired by Paris cabaret of the 1920s.

This season, his recital tour of North America includes a return to Carnegie Hall and recitals in Washington, D.C., and Montreal. He also continues to appear frequently with Les Violons du Roy—with whom he has recorded Bach and Mozart for Warner Classics—and in recent seasons made debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and returned to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Other recent highlights in North America include appearances in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Upcoming highlights include performances with the Cleveland, Utah Symphony, and Montreal Symphony Orchestras. Alexandre has enjoyed working with such conductors as Peter Oundjian, Bernard Labadie, Daniele Gatti, Stéphane Denève, Vladimir Jurowski, and Yannick NézetSéguin, among others.

In Europe, Alexandre performs extensively in Germany (Essen and Cologne Philharmonies; Alte Oper Frankfurt; Ludwigsburg Festival) and France (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; Opéra de Versailles), as well as at the Warsaw Philharmonie, Victoria Hall in Geneva, Muziekgebouw and Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, BOZAR in Brussels, Wigmore Hall in London, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Santa Cecilia in Rome, Tonhalle in Zürich, Rudolfinum in Prague, and Musikverein in Vienna. His festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival, Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, Aix-en-Provence, Rheingau, Ruhr Piano Festival, Nuits de Décembre de Moscou, and Lanaudière.

A Beethoven recording featuring the three last sonatas was released on the ERATO/Warner Classics label in Fall 2018. This follows a tribute to one of the greatest French singers of all times, Barbara, presented at the Philharmonie de Paris in October 2017, and a Brahms disc together with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, a regular chamber music partner for 20 years.

Among the performing highlights of the next two seasons are a European tour with the Orchestra Métropolitain and its chief conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and a tour of Japan including a concert with the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra. Further tours will take place across Europe together with NDR Radio Philharmonie, Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, Münchener Kammerorchester, Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, and Orchestra Verdi.

Contemporary music is featured prominently in Alexandre’s activities, and January 2016 saw him present the world premiere of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s new Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Left, alone, at the Cologne Philharmonie, collaborating with the WDR Sinfonieorchester. Subsequent performances followed with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, DR SymfoniOrkestret, and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the latter under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Seguin.

Alexandre’s discography reflects his eclectic affinity to many musical styles. His recordings range from Bach, Mozart, and Haydn (with Les Violons du Roy) to Le Bœuf sur Le Toit: an homage to the roaring twenties. Other discs for ERATO include Autograph, Scarlatti, Journal Intime (Chopin), and the major release of 2016: Bach’s Goldberg Variations. His latest recording features Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, together with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2014, he published his first book, Piano Intime, which was followed in early 2017 by a more personal narrative view on his career: Montrez-moi vos mains. Alexandre Tharaud is also featured in a film directed by Michael Haneke (the Academy Award-winning Amour ), as well as in Swiss filmmaker Raphaëlle Aellig-Régnier’s Le Temps Dérobé. He has completed a new edition of Maurice Ravel’s complete solo piano works for the German publisher Bärenreiter.

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PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY

Aria with Diverse Variations (“Goldberg Variations”), BWV 988 Johann Sebastian Bach b. March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany d. July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany AN ORIGIN MYTH Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote the first biography of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1802, some 50 years after the composer’s death—at a time when Bach was largely forgotten. In that biography, Forkel explains that Bach wrote his monumental Aria with Diverse Variations for harpsichord to help his friend and pupil Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, whose employer, Count Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to Saxony, suffered from chronic insomnia. Goldberg, so Forkel tells us, soothed the sleepless Keyserlingk by playing the lengthy set every night; Keyserlingk in turn rewarded Bach with “a goblet filled with 100 golden coins.”

There is, alas, little evidence that the story is true; mark it up as one of those pleasant tales (like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree) that have become part of our collective cultural memory. Just as Mason Weems’ Washington story implored generations of American youngsters to be honest, the myth of the origin of the Goldberg Variations (invented at approximately the same time as the cherry tree anecdote) serves as a parable of the emotional power of music, and the potential reward (symbolized by golden florins) of creativity.

And we might well forgive Forkel for attempting to fill in the blanks in explaining the existence of what has come to be regarded as one of the towering monuments of keyboard music. For we have little documented evidence of why Bach composed the Goldberg Variations. We know that it was published in approximately 1741, in an edition of 100 copies, as one of the few works of Bach actually published in his lifetime. Having settled in Leipzig in 1723, Bach had served the deeply intertwined civic and Lutheran church establishments of that city as a chief performer, organizer, and composer. By the early 1740s, he enjoyed a minor international reputation as an organist, as the father of several talented sons who were in the process of making reputations of their own across Europe, and as the masterful composer of complex, contrapuntal compositions—of the sort that were rapidly going out of style at that time.

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PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

BACKGROUND By the time of the composition of the Goldberg Variations, Bach had already created a large body of sacred choral music for the churches of Leipzig, as well as the instrumental concertos that would become one of the foundations of classical symphonic music. He had already also composed the epic two volumes of The Well-Tempered Clavier for solo keyboard, as well as the first three volumes of the Clavier-Übung (“Keyboard Practice”), including two sets of works for solo harpsichord and one volume of organ works. The Goldberg Variations became Volume IV of Clavier-Übung.

Unlike much (but not all) of Bach’s keyboard music, the Goldberg Variations are designated on the title page as a work for harpsichord with two manuals (i.e. two keyboards); it is by far the most demanding of all of Bach’s works for harpsichord, both in terms of length (at approximately one hour, depending on tempo selected by the performer) and technique.

On piano, the Variations have to be played on one keyboard, instead of two, as Bach had written it. This presents enormous technical challenges to the performer: a pianist’s fingers can easily get tangled up or crash into each other, not to mention the leaps across the keyboard. On top of that, the work is very clean, requiring extra precision in voicing, articulation, phrasing, color, and rhythm to hold together over 30 variations.

The “Aria” itself existed independently before the variations were composed, though only as an instrumental work—not, as the designation implies, as a vocal work, but rather as a work with an obvious “singing” melody. Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, copied the aria into her famous musical notebook; it resembles, in its bass line, the eightmeasure phrase on which Handel built a substantial set of 64 variations for harpsichord in 1733. This has led to speculation that Handel’s work may have provided the inspiration for Bach—and even that Bach, with his much more complex Goldberg Variations, may have been trying to prove himself a greater master of keyboard idiom and variation technique than Handel.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

AN INGENIOUS STRUCTURE Like many of Bach’s larger works, the Goldberg Variations are housed within a momentous symmetrical structure: after the initial statement of the almost plaintive Aria, Bach launches a series of triptychs of variations, each culminating on a canon (an imitative overlay of voices similar to a round) based on the bass line of the original aria. Each canon, in turn, is built on the interval separating the voices, beginning with an interval of the unison in the third variation, followed by the interval of a second in the sixth variation, and extending to the interval of a ninth in the 27th variation.

A majestic “Overture” with rippling scales and majestic dotted rhythms provides the keystone of the arch as the central 15th variation. Rather than a canon at the interval of a 10th for the 30th and last variation, which the established pattern implies, Bach shows his sense of humor with a “quodlibet” (a clever combination of popular tunes) in which he introduces the folk melodies “Cabbage and Beets Have Driven Me Away” and “I have for so long been away from you.” Rather than ending with a virtuosic flourish—as variations are wont to do—Bach brings the initial Aria back in its quiet simplicity, rounding out the set with a transformative sense of arrival and completion. Along the way, Bach has given his listeners a pilgrimage through the technical and emotional possibilities of Baroque counterpoint and harmony, combining the scholarly exactitude of the canons with an improvisational array of moods from pure happiness to busy velocity to serene introspection.

PROGRAM NOTES

BY WAYNE LEE GAY (CONTINUED)

IMPACT AND MODERN RESURGENCE As 19th-century musicians and audiences began to learn of and explore all of the music of Bach, the Goldberg Variations of course drew increasing attention. The late romantic German-Italian virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni (primarily remembered today for his piano transcriptions of organ and violin works of Bach) produced and performed a version adapting (and occasionally rewriting) the intricacies of the original conception to the possibilities of the modern concert grand piano and the tastes of early-20th century audiences.

Harpsichordist Wanda Landowska followed Busoni with a history-making recording in 1933—albeit on a massive 20th-century harpsichord which Bach would hardly have recognized. Notoriously eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould likewise produced a landmark recording of the Goldberg Variations on the piano in 1955, which created even wider audiences for the work (and which still enjoys a cult status).

Meanwhile, musicologists, scholars, and Bach specialists have delighted, for nearly two centuries, in exploring the contrapuntal and harmonic complexities of the work. It has also seen a recent resurgence: there have been at least 10 major-label releases of the Goldbergs in the past few years, with pianists desiring to understand, surmount, and present this pinnacle of the keyboard literature. Pianist Conrad Tao performed the work in its entirety with choreographer and tap dancer Caleb Teicher, and Igor Levit worked with performance artist Marina Abramovic to present the Goldbergs in a new experiential way.

Our pianist tonight, Alexandre Tharaud, took a nine-month sabbatical to learn the Bach Goldberg Variations, and recorded them over 10 days in 2015. The disc was named one of The New York Times’ best classical recordings of 2015, and Gramophone magazine proclaimed that Tharaud’s “fresh voice and genuine musicality warrant placement in the vast Goldberg Variations discography’s top tier.” Of Bach’s music, Tharaud said in a 2016 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I think Bach is the only composer to talk directly to people… the Goldberg Variations give the audience and the pianist a chance to be quiet together. It’s a communion.”

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