Olga kern program

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Friday

APR 1

7:30 pm

OLGA KERN piano

Vivid stage presence, passionate and confident musicianship

This performance is sponsored, in part, by Richard L. and Jeanette Sias.

Dave and Gunda Hiebert are pleased to sponsor this evening’s performance by Olga Kern.

Sponsored by

APR 1 | Olga Kern

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PROGRAM Domenico Scarlatti: 3 Sonatas Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 24, L495 Piano Sonata in D minor, K. 9, L413 Piano Sonata in C major, K. 159, L104 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53 (Waldstein) Mendelssohn: Variations sérieuses, Op. 54

Intermission: 20 Minutes Boris Frenkshteyn: Homage Variations 1-Homage to Edvard Grieg 2-Homage to Bela Bartok Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op. 15 Liszt: Reminiscences of Don Juan (by Mozart) S. 418

Olga Kern, piano Olga Kern is now recognized as one of her generation’s great pianists. She jumpstarted her U.S. career with her historic Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas as the first woman to do so in more than thirty years. First prize winner of the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition at seventeen, Kern is a laureate of many international competitions.

In 2016, she will serve as Jury Chairman of both the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and first Olga Kern International Piano Competition, where she also holds the title of artistic director.

Kern opened the Baltimore Symphony’s 2015-2016 centennial season with Marin Alsop. Other season highlights include returns to the Royal Philharmonic with Pinchas Zukerman, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice with Giancarlo Guerrero, Rochester Philharmonic and San Antonio Symphony, a month-long tour of South Africa visiting the Cape and KwaZulu Natal philharmonics, Israeli tour with the Israel Symphony, solo recitals at Van Wezel Hall, 92nd Street Y and recitals with Renée Fleming in Carnegie Hall and Berkeley.

Last season Kern appeared with the NHK Symphony, Orchestre National De Lyon, and the orchestras of Detroit, Nashville, Madison, New Mexico, and Austin and gave a recital at Seattle’s Meany Hall. Kern has performed in such famed concert halls as Carnegie Hall, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Symphony Hall in Osaka, Salzburger Festspielhaus, La Scala in Milan, Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Chatelet in Paris.

Kern’s discography includes her Grammy Nominated recording of Rachmaninoff’s

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APR 1 | Olga Kern

Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), Brahms Variations (2007) and Chopin Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3 (2010). She was featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.

Program Notes The following are program notes about Frenkshteyn and his new work. For additional composer information visit lied.ku.edu or reference your pre-performance email.

Boris Frenkshteyn (b. 1949) Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, is a graduate of the Moscow State Conservatory where he studied both composition and piano. His works include operas, symphonies, and a large body of vocal and vocal-instrumental pieces.

Frenkshteyn is a brilliant pianist in his own right and performs not only his works, but also the new works of his colleagues. He additionally teaches composition at Maimonides State Classical Academy in Moscow. He frequently conducts workshops on contemporary music performance and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Moscow Composers’ Union “for contribution to the cultivation and promotion of contemporary music.” Frenkshteyn has collaborated and continues to work with many great musicians including Boris Pokrovsky, Yuri Bashmet, Olga Kern, and many other masters. Irina Severina, correspondent of the newspaper Kultura, writes, “Music

by Boris Frenkshteyn is striking in its extraordinary impulsiveness and absolute freedom from any stamps and pre-planned schemes.”

Variations “Homage” Double cycle Dedicated to Olga Kern 1 – Homage to Edvard Grieg 2 – Homage to Bela Bartok Edvard Grieg and Bela Bartok both utilized the folk tune medium in their compositions. Frenkshteyn focused on Grieg’s 19 Norwegian Folk Tunes, Opus 66 and its clear influence on Bartok. Grieg’s work displayed a fresh propensity for folk songs unfettered by the convoluted harmonic alterations which were in vogue at the time. This bare presentation impressed Bartok in his studies and surely affected his early works. Motivic development and arrangement techniques from Grieg’s opus 66 appear throughout Bartok’s For Children (Sz. 42), a cycle of short piano solos used for teaching. Another interesting comparison is in both composers’ decisions to link pieces within their cycles. Four units of two songs each are notated attacca, to be played straight through, within the Grieg Opus 66, and nine groupings exist throughout Bartok’s For Children. Similarly, Frenkshteyn has written his two cycles to be played with no break. He says of this structure, “this takes a great deal of courage, bravery, freedom and piano filigree to play a double loop – most especially in the homage to Bartok.”