Peter Serkin-WI Union

Great History, Bright Future 92nd Annual Concert Series

Peter Serkin, Piano Saturday, May 5, 2012

www.uniontheater.wisc.edu 608-265-ARTS (2787) 800 Langdon St., Madison, WI 53706 Peter Serkin 1

Presented by the Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee, directed this year by Shawn Werner.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional support provided by: Fan Taylor Fund for the Performing Arts, the Onion, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Union Theater Endowment Fund, WORT 89.9 FM, and WSUM 91.7.

UW-Madison students: to join the Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee and help program our upcoming events, please contact Shawn Werner at sawerner@wisc.edu

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PROGR A M Peter Serkin, Piano Variations, Op. 24 (1989)................................................................................................Oliver Knussen

b. 1952 Notes by Oliver Knussen For Away ...........................................................................................................................Toru Takemitsu 1930-1996 Adagio ( 2011)............................................................................................................Charles Wuorinen

b. 1938 This composition was made possible by a grant from the Jebediah Foundation New Music Commissions and with the collaboration of New York’s 92nd Street Y as co-commissioner and with private support.

- Intermission Ludwig van Beethoven............................................................ Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz (1770-1827)

by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120

Theme: Vivace

Variation 1: Alla Marcia maestoso

Variation 2: Poco allegro

Variation 3: L’istesso tempo

Variation 4: Un poco più vivace

Variation 5: Allegro vivace

Variation 6: Allegro ma non troppo e serioso

Variation 7: Un poco più allegro

Variation 8: Poco vivace

Variation 9: Allegro pesante e risoluto

Variation 10: Presto

Variation 11: Allegretto

Variation 12: Un poco più moto Variation 13: Vivace

Variation 14: Grave e maestoso

Variation 15: Presto scherzando

Variation 16: Allegro

Variation 17: Allegro

Variation 18: Poco moderato

Variation 19: Presto

Variation 20: Andante

Variation 21: Allegro con brio – Meno allegro Tempo primo - Meno allegro

Variation 22: Allegro molto,

alla ‘Notte e giorno faticar’ di Mozart

Variation 23: Allegro assai

Variation 24: Fughetta. Andante

Variation 25: Allegro

Variation 26: (Piacevole)

Variation 27: Vivace

Variation 28: Allegro

Variation 29: Adagio ma non troppo

Variation 30: Andante, sempre cantabile

Variation 31: Largo, molto espressivo

Variation 32: Fuga. Allegro

Variation 33: Tempo di Minuetto moderato Mr. Serkin has recorded for Arcana, Boston Records, Bridge, Decca, DGG, ECM, Koch Classics, New World Records, RCA/BMG, Sony, Telarc and Vanguard Classics.

Peter Serkin appears by arrangement with CM Artists. Peter Serkin 3

ABOUT THE MUSIC Variations, Op. 24 (1989), Oliver Knussen Commissioned for Peter Serkin by the 92nd Street Y with funds partly provided by the Mary Flager Cary Charitable fund.

My Variations were composed in September – October 1989, partly from sketches made during the previous spring. Although they are concise – the twelve variations play for a little more than six minutes in all – I have tried to integrate some highly contrasted textural and expressive approaches to a very limited amount of raw material (the theme is itself variations on its first six notes) within a three-part dramatic design: an initial group of five character-variations, a central passacaglia enclosing four more variations, and a final set of three, more etude-like variations functioning as coda to the whole.

I should like to acknowledge some things which were constantly in mind while composing this piece: the variation of Stravinsky, Copland and Webern, which provided positively intimidating models of richness of design and character in extreme concision; and the artistry and musical intelligence of Peter Serkin, for whom it was commissioned and who was a constant source of encouragement during the composition. My Variations are dedicated affectionately to Peter and Regina Serkin. O.K. 10/31/89 Notes by Oliver Knussen For Away, Toru Takemitsu The Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, noted for his beautiful soundscapes and fluid ideas, was also a personal friend of Peter Serkin, and Mr. Serkin has been a faithful exponent of his friend’s music, performing more than 20 of Takemitsu’s works. For Away was written in 1973, and was Takemitsu’s first work for solo piano in some ten years. It was inspired by a trip to Bali, where the composer found he loved the country and its Gamelan music. The title is a reference to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

Takemitsu called this piece “An expression of extolment and offering to the Galaxy of Life--a galaxy that is not the sole domain of mankind.”

Adagio ( 2011), Charles Wuorinen Charles Wuorinen has had the reputation, like the late Milton Babbitt, of being “an unremittingly difficult serial composer,” as one reviewer put it. Yet when Peter Serkin went to Wuorinen to ask him to write an adagio as a kind of foil to his 2008 Scherzo, Serkin tells us “I mentioned that I had just had a dream of this piece, and in it, towards its ending, there was a sense of everything kind of stopping…”

Then an extraordinary work emerged from the composer--a slow movement of some thirteen minutes in which a dissonant minor second creates tension and an open fifth is used to calm and quiet. Near the end a languid single descending line leads to a sudden forte chord to which these two intervals contribute, dissonant but oddly conclusive. And then everything kind of stops--one must believe in kindred spirits.

The historic 92nd Street Y in New York City has had a long and fruitful relationship with pianist Peter Serkin who first performed there on October 30, 1965, with the Guarneri String Quartet when he was still in his teens. The “Y” has also been an important partner in commissioning new works for Mr. Serkin, such as Charles Wuorinen’s Scherzo of 2008. Such was again the case on December 10, 2011, when Mr. Serkin gave the New York premiere of Wuorinen’s Adagio at the 92nd Street Y, another work commissioned for him by that institution. It is included on tonight’s program along with the other two pieces that Mr. Serkin chose to present with it in the first half of the premiere recital. Also, continuing to support his reputation as an interesting and challenging programmer, tonight these three works stand as they did at the “Y” as contrast and compliment to Beethoven’s monumental Diabelli Variations.

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A B O U T T H E M U S I C ( c o n t .)

Diabelli Variations, Beethoven In 1819, Anton Diabelli decided to celebrate the anniversary of his Vienna music publishing house with a rather unusual project. He circulated a modest little waltz of his own invention among fifty contemporary composers and requested each to contribute a variation on it that would then be included in a published volume.

Among those who sent in variations were Schubert, Hummel, Czerny (who also supplied a coda), and even the young Franz Liszt. Beethoven, too, was contacted, and at first he disdained Diabelli’s little dance as “cobbler’s work” not suitable for serious consideration. Then he overreacted--perhaps out of a somewhat didactic desire to show what could be done with such material--by composing not one but twenty-three variations. He then set the work aside, being engaged on the great Missa Solemnis.

In 1823 he returned to his Diabelli draft, expanding it with ten more variations (nos. 1-2, 15, 23-26, 28-29, and 31) thus bringing it to its final form. It stands as his longest and perhaps greatest composition for piano solo, a culminating work of remarkable variation of technique and transformation, one which spans a wide diversity of moods while still achieving a palpable unity as a single work with its own individual, inevitable journey.

In this supreme work it is instructive and admirable to note how in each variation, Beethoven single-mindedly works out (or transforms) some aspect of the original theme. There are three main features of the theme that are used. First, and most prevalent, is the seemingly trivial little turn with which it begins. This figure is the basis of fourteen of the variations. In No. 9 it gets rather rudely trampled on; in No. 11 it becomes a sweet caress; in No. 12 it is slightly lengthened and turned upside down. It will also be prominent in two of the three late minor variations (Nos. 29 and 31) of which more will be said.

The second most important aspect of the theme is the dropping interval of a fourth and a fifth respectively, found in measures 1 and 5 of the theme. Perhaps this technique’s most obvious application is in Variation 22, where Beethoven uses it to refer to Leporello’s opening aria in Mozart’s Don Giovanni,“No rest, day or night”. Here the reference is not only musical but literal: Diabelli had been pestering Beethoven to finish the Variation, and no doubt Beethoven felt his relationship to Diabelli’s theme was like Leporello’s to the Don: faithful yet critical. This is just one of the many fine instances of humor in this work. Also, ironically, the variations after this show an increasing capacity for disguise and allusion. Variation 23 is a parody of the kind of pianistic virtuosity found in the “Pianoforte-Method” by J. B. Cramer, while Variation 24, the Fughetta, shares an affinity with some of the subtler organ pieces of J. S. Bach’s Clavieruebung.

Thirdly, Beethoven uses what in his initial disdain he called a “cobbler’s patch”, referring to Diabelli’s unimaginative series of ten repeated C major chords in the right hand accompaniment. Immediately it forms that basis of Variation 1, the sarcastic, blackhumored march, which at the very outset seems to characterize the composer’s attitude towards his given theme. The “patch” is very evident in Variants 15 and 16, and in No. 21 it forms the left hand accompaniment against the descending trills in the right hand which themselves have been made from the aforementioned opening turn of the theme. In No. 25 both these elements are turned into a humorous German dance. But the most startling application of the repeated-note “patch” is as the basis of the great fugue (Variation 32), which prepares the way for the remarkable conclusion of Beethoven’s Op. 120.

Variations 29-31 begin the transformation. These are a series of three pieces in the minor mode, the last of which, referred to earlier, is a beautiful, slow, elaborated Aria consciously reminiscent of the decorated minor variation of Bach’s “Goldberg” set and which also foreshadows Chopin. Then comes the towering E-flat major Fugue whose increasing Handelian energy, combining simultaneously three subjects, builds to a tremendous climax, which dissipates into a powerful dissonant chord.

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A B O U T T H E M U S I C ( c o n t .)

Now the miracle: an almost unearthly transition leads back to C major and the final Variation, a disarmingly simple Mozartian minuet which none the less seems to be lit from within. This illumination brings forth an ethereal coda, and it can finally be understood that this light comes from the final, transformational Arietta movement of Beethoven’s own last piano sonata, his Op. 111 of 1822.

So we have come full circle from the commonplace C major of Diabelli’s little waltz to the infinitely visionary C major of Beethoven’s own last sonata, whose final movement was itself influenced by the Diabelli project. Probably only Beethoven could have accomplished this at this time, one of the fundamental reasons why the Diabelli Variations should stand as his culminating work for the piano.

Notes by Perry Allaire

ABOUT THE ARTIST Recognized as an artist of passion and integrity, the distinguished American pianist Peter Serkin is one of the most thoughtful and individualistic musicians appearing before the public today. Throughout his career he has successfully conveyed the essence of five centuries of repertoire and his performances with symphony orchestras, recital appearances, chamber music collaborations and recordings are respected worldwide.

Peter Serkin’s rich musical heritage extends back several generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father pianist Rudolf Serkin. Mr. Serkin has performed with the world’s major symphony orchestras with such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Herbert Blomstedt and Christoph Eschenbach.

Also a dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Budapest, Guarneri and Orion string quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member.

An avid proponent of the music of many of the 20th and 21st century’s most important composers, Mr. Serkin has been instrumental in bringing the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Henze, Berio, Wuorinen, Goehr, Knussen and Lieberson, among others, to audiences around the world. He has performed many important world premieres, in particular, works by Toru Takemitsu, Peter Lieberson, Oliver Knussen and Alexander Goehr, all of which were written for him.

Peter Serkin’s recordings also reflect his distinctive musical vision. The Ocean that has no West and no East, released by Koch Records in 2000, features compositions by Webern, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Knussen, Lieberson and Wuorinen. Mr. Serkin’s recording of the six Mozart concerti composed in 1784 with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy and received the prestigious Deutsche Schallplatten as well as “Best Recording of the Year” by Stereo Review magazine. Other Grammy nominated recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus and Quartet for the End of Time on BMG and a solo recording of works by Stravinsky, Wolpe and Lieberson for New World Records.

Mr. Serkin currently teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Longy School of Music. He resides in Massachusetts with his wife, Regina, and is the father of five children.

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Coming Soon to the Wisconsin Union Theater Travel Adventure Series Karin Mueller, Along the Royal Inca Road Monday and Tuesday, May 7 and 8, 7:30pm

Jazz Festival Free!

Friday-Saturday, June 1-2, 2012 2012-2013 Concert Series All concerts are at Mills Hall, Humanities Building, 455 N. Park Street Imani Winds Friday September 28, 2012, 8pm, Mills Hall UW Symphony Orchestra with Joshua Roman, cello Saturday November 10, 2012, 8pm, Mills Hall The Knights with Wu Man, pipa Saturday February 9, 2013, 8pm, Mills Hall Jeremy Denk, piano Thursday April 11, 2013, 8pm, Mills Hall