Experience an evening bar concert or attend a lunchtime concert in the Ames Family Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Experience an evening bar concert or attend a lunchtime concert in the Ames Family Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
ZHU WANG
DANIELA LIEBMAN
April 15 | 12 PM April 16 | 6 PM CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART HOFBRÄUHAUS CLEVELAND
April 15 | 12 PM April 16 | 6 PM May 13 | 12 PM May 14 | 6 PM
May 13 | 12 PM May 14 | 6 PM CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART BREWDOG CLEVELAND OUTPOST
Leif Ove Andsnes, piano
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 7:30 PM
EDVARD GRIEG (1843–1907)
GEIRR TVEITT (1908–1981)
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 7
I. Allegro moderato
II. Andante molto
III. Alla Menuetto, ma poco più lento
IV. Finale: Molto allegro
Piano Sonata No. 29, Op. 129, “Sonata Etere”
I. In Cerca Di: Moderato
II. Tono Etereo in Variazioni: Tranquillo ma deciso
III. Tempo di Pulsazione
INTERMISSION
24 Preludes, Op. 28
No. 1 in C major (Agitato)
No. 2 in A minor (Lento)
No. 3 in G major (Vivace)
No. 4 in E minor (Largo)
No. 5 in D major (Molto allegro)
No. 6 in B minor (Lento assai)
No. 7 in A major (Andantino)
No. 8 in F-sharp minor (Molto agitato)
No. 9 in E major (Largo)
No. 10 in C-sharp minor (Molto allegro)
No. 11 in B major (Vivace)
No. 12 in G-sharp minor (Presto) No. 13 in F-sharp major (Lento)
No. 14 in E-flat minor (Allegro)
No. 15 in D-flat major, “Raindrop” (Sostenuto)
No. 16 in B-flat minor (Presto con fuoco)
No. 17 in A-flat major (Allegretto)
Generous support for the 2024–25 Recital Series provided by the Art of Beauty Company, Inc.
Leif Ove Andsnes’s performance is generously sponsored by Astri Seidenfeld
No. 18 in F minor (Molto allegro)
No. 19 in E-flat major (Vivace)
No. 20 in C minor (Largo)
No. 21 in B-flat major (Cantabile)
No. 22 in G minor (Molto agitato)
No. 23 in F major (Moderato)
No. 24 in D minor (Allegro appassionato)
PIANO SONATA IN E MINOR, OP. 7
By Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Composed: 1865
Duration: about 20 minutes
While Edvard Grieg ’s music for Peer Gynt, his Piano Concerto, and the Holberg Suite have remained in the world’s concert repertories, his piano music and songs have gradually fallen from the high esteem they enjoyed at the time of his death in 1907 and in the early years of the last century. In Norway, of course, he is held in particular honor as the greatest of the nation’s composers, and a Norwegian flavor can be detected in almost everything he wrote.
Yet, when he wrote the Piano Sonata in 1865 (at age 22), he was more attached to Denmark than to Norway. Danish was the language he spoke at home, and after four teenage years spent at the Conservatory in Leipzig, he lived for four years mostly in Denmark, where he was in close touch with Danish musicians. The Piano Sonata is dedicated to the Dane Niels Gade, with a clear debt to Gade’s own music. The much-loved Piano Concerto was composed in Denmark.
Once he had moved back to Norway and discovered the richness of Norwegian folk music, this became his predominant musical interest and a source of great richness in his output. As a pianist, he toured Europe many times, and the stream of smaller piano pieces and songs from his pen never dried up.
The Piano Sonata is unusual in being cast in the larger Beethoven-like form but with a harmonic flavor derived from Robert Schumann . It has a youthful vigor and boldness in the first and last movements, and the slow movement betrays a lyrical gift we recognize as very personal. In the third movement, a minuet far removed from its Classical model, a Norwegian voice can surely already be heard.
EVGENY KISSIN IN RECITAL
PIANO SONATA NO. 29, OP. 129, “SONATA ETERE”
By Geirr Tveitt (1908–1981)
Composed: c. 1943
Duration: about 35 minutes
Like Grieg , Geirr Tveitt was born in Bergen and educated in Leipzig; furthermore, he concertized around Europe as a pianist and was a lifelong advocate for Norwegian music, especially Hardanger fiddle music. In the 1950s and ’60s, he was better known in Norway as a critic and broadcaster, and often faced controversy for his music’s rugged character and for his extreme nationalist views. By 1970, he had become isolated from the center of Norwegian music when the farmhouse where he lived burned to the ground. As many as 300 works were lost, including six piano concertos — some of which have been retrieved or reconstructed — and an unknown number of piano sonatas. No. 29 is the only one to survive.
If Tveitt’s style was earlier influenced by Debussy and Stravinsky, it is Bartók ’s percussive style that pervades the Piano Sonata No. 29, first performed in 1947. Its subtitle, “Sonata Etere,” suggests the heavens or the ether. In the first movement, headed “In Cerca Di” (In Search of), the right hand keeps up a constant flow of notes, often in minimalist style, with a few melodic phrases, while the left hand has its own themes and a heavy tone that often threatens to overwhelm the upper music.
The longer second movement presents a theme — or, as Tveitt calls it, “Tono Etereo” (Ethereal Tone) — in 18 variations. The theme has already been heard in the left hand in the first movement, and it is now stabbed out with the right hand while the left arm silently depresses the white keys over two lower octaves. The strange acoustic effect is to be manipulated at the end of each phrase “by radio.” The variations stay close to the theme, in general, and the 16th variation returns to the arm-press from the opening. In the final variation, the arm holds the black keys down.
The last movement may also be seen as variations since every few bars, the textures and rhythms are reset with much rhythmic ingenuity, while the melodic fragments retain their shape. At the end, the music seems finally to find an “ethereal” tranquility, and the final notes are heard over the now familiar arm-press.
24 PRELUDES, OP. 28
By Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Composed: 1835–39
Duration: about 35 minutes
We imagine that composers of the Romantic age liked to dream of nightingales and sunsets or somehow dramatize their own turbulent lives in music. Many of them did do so, but many also wrote music that was not about any of those things, but was simply about itself, or “absolute,” as later critics liked to call it. No musical form could be more absolute than the prelude and fugue, immortalized by J.S. Bach’s 48 and imitated by many. But while composers of Frédéric Chopin’s generation wrote preludes in abundance, few of them, least of all Chopin, went so far as to couple them with fugues.
The prelude could be anything from a brief improvisation to an étude, a song without words, or an evocation of a picturesque scene. Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, are all of these and more, but even though some may sound improvisatory, they are all carefully worked-out compositions. Furthermore, the composer imposed a discipline on himself by allotting the preludes to the 24 major and minor keys in the sequence of C major, A minor, G major, E minor, and so on, each major key being followed by its relative minor.
Many of the set are within the reach of the modest pianist and have become familiar as a result. Nos. 4, 7, 15 (commonly known as the “Raindrop” Prelude), and 20 are in this category. Some demand a virtuoso, such as Nos. 3, 5, 8, 16, and 19. Nos. 7 and 20 are also remarkable in being, alongside Beethoven’s bagatelles, the shortest works in general circulation. If Chopin had not repeated four bars of the great C-minor Prelude, extending it from nine bars to 13, it could have been shorter still ...
— Program notes by Hugh Macdonald
Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.
LEIF OVE ANDSNES
Piano
With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, celebrated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has won acclaim worldwide, playing in the world’s leading concert halls and with its foremost orchestras, while building an esteemed and extensive discography. An avid chamber musician, he is the founding director of the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival and was co-artistic director of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music for nearly two decades. He was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2013.
In the 2024–25 season, Andsnes appears with the Berlin Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, among others, and on tour with the Oslo Philharmonic. He also embarks on an extensive transatlantic recital tour, featuring dates at Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. The latter forms part of a season-long residency at the London venue, to which he returns for chamber collaborations with pianist Bertrand Chamayou and with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), as the culmination of their European tour.
As the MCO’s first artistic partner, Andsnes has led the ensemble from the keyboard in two major, multi-season projects: Mozart Momentum 1785/86 and The Beethoven Journey. As captured on Sony Classical, these have been recognized with numerous awards, including the BBC Music Magazine ’s Recording of the Year Award and an International Classical Music Award nomination. Altogether, Andsnes’s discography comprises more than 50 titles, which have received 11 Grammy nominations, seven Gramophone Awards, and numerous other international honors. The recipient of both the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award, Andsnes has also received Norway’s Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav and the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize.
Andsnes studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under Jirí Hlinka , also receiving invaluable advice from Jacques de Tiège. Today, he lives with his wife and their three children in Bergen, where he is an artistic adviser at the city’s Prof. Jirí Hlinka Piano Academy.
Editorial: Kevin McBrien, Publications Manager (kmcbrien@clevelandorchestra.com)
Design: Melissa Leone (melissa@melissaleone.com)
Program books for Cleveland Orchestra concerts are produced by The Cleveland Orchestra and are distributed free to attending audience members. The Cleveland Orchestra is proud to have its home, Severance Music Center, located on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, with whom it has a long history of collaboration and partnership.
