Pinchas Zukerman, violin and Angela Cheng, piano SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2018 • 8PM Jackson Hall, UC Davis Support provided by Grace and John Rosenquist John and Lois Crowe
Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1 Allegro con brio Theme and Variations: Andante con moto Rondo: Allegro
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in E-flat Major, Op. 12, No. 3 Allegro con spirito Adagio con molto espressione Rondo: Allegro molto
Beethoven
INTERMISSION
Sonata No. 5 for Violin and Piano in F Major, Op. 24, “Spring” Allegro Adagio molto espressivo Scherzo: Allegro molto Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo
Beethoven
The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular devices. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden.
PROGRAM NOTES
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Born December 16, 1770 in Bonn Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna) Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1 (1798) Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in E-flat Major, Op. 12, No. 3 (1798) In November 1792, the 22-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, bursting with talent and promise, arrived in Vienna. So undeniable was the genius he had already demonstrated in a sizable amount of piano music, numerous chamber works, cantatas on the death of Emperor Joseph II and the accession of Leopold II, and the score for a ballet, that Maximilian Franz, the Elector of Bonn, his hometown, underwrote the trip to the Habsburg Imperial city, then the musical capital of Europe, to help further the young musician’s career (and the Elector’s prestige). Despite the Elector’s patronage, however, Beethoven’s professional ambitions quickly consumed any thoughts of returning to the provincial city of his birth, and, when his alcoholic father died in December, he severed for good his ties with Bonn in favor of the stimulating artistic atmosphere of Vienna. During his first years in Vienna, Beethoven was busy on several fronts. Initial encouragement for the Viennese junket had come from the venerable Joseph Haydn, who had heard one of Beethoven’s cantatas on a visit to Bonn earlier in the year and promised to take the young composer as a student if he came to see him. Beethoven therefore became a counterpoint pupil of Haydn immediately upon his arrival late in 1792, but the two had difficulty getting along— Haydn was too busy, Beethoven was too bullish—and their association soon broke off. Several other teachers followed in short order—Schenk, Albrechtsberger, Förster, Salieri. While he was busy completing fugal exercises and practicing setting Italian texts for his tutors, Beethoven continued to compose, producing works for solo piano, chamber ensembles and wind groups. It was as a pianist, however, that he gained his first fame among the Viennese. The untamed, passionate, original quality of his playing and his personality first intrigued and then captivated those who heard him. When he bested in competition Daniel Steibelt and Joseph Wölffl, two of the town’s keyboard luminaries, he became all the rage among the gentry, who exhibited him in performance at the soirées in their elegant city palaces. In catering to the aristocratic audience, Beethoven took on the air of a dandy for a while, dressing in smart clothes, learning to dance (badly), buying a horse and even sporting a powdered wig. This phase of his life did not outlast the 1790s, but in his biography of the composer,
Peter Latham described Beethoven at the time as “a young giant exulting in his strength and his success, and youthful confidence gave him a buoyancy that was both attractive and infectious.” Beethoven took some care during his first years in Vienna to present himself as a composer in the day’s more fashionable genres, one of which was the sonata for piano nominally accompanied, according to the taste of the time, by violin. Mozart had addressed the form in 42 works, some of which moved beyond the convention that expected the keyboard to dominate the string instrument toward a greater equality between the partners. Beethoven continued on this tack so decisively that, despite their conservative structure and idiom, his first three string sonatas, Op. 12 of 1798, presage the full parity that marks the 19th-century duo sonata. The Op. 12 Sonatas are products of Beethoven’s own practical experience as both pianist and violinist, an instrument he had learned while still in Bonn and on which he took lessons shortly after settling in Vienna with the noted performer (and, later, great champion of his chamber music) Ignaz Schuppanzigh. In view of their gestating friendship, it was fitting that Schuppanzigh and the composer presented one of the Op. 12 Sonatas at a public concert benefiting the singer Josefa Duschek on March 29, 1798. The works were published by Artaria early the following year with a dedication to Antonio Salieri, Kapellmeister to the Habsburg Court, with whom Beethoven was then studying opera and Italian text setting. Though the Sonatas seem conventional in view of Beethoven’s later achievements, they caused considerable consternation when they were new for their imputed daring originality and restless expressiveness. The review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig displayed the mixture of bafflement and admiration with which Beethoven’s contemporaries often greeted his works: “The three Violin Sonatas, Op. 12, are overladen with difficulties. Herr Beethoven goes at his own gait, but what a bizarre and singular gait it is! To be accurate, there is only a mass of learning here, without good method, obstinacy which fails to interest us, a striving after strange modulations, a heaping up of difficulties on difficulties until one loses all patience or enjoyment.... [However] the critic, after he has tried more and more to accustom himself to Herr Beethoven’s manner, has learned to admire him more than he did at first.” An abundance of themes shared with conversational equality by the participants opens the D major Sonata: a heroic unison motive; quietly flowing scales in the piano supporting a striding phrase in the violin; and several related ideas in quicker rhythms cobbled from conventional scale and chord patterns. Tension accumulates in the transition, and is relaxed for the second theme, a scalar
melody gently urged on by syncopations. The closing material begins with strong block chords, which return to mark the start of the brief development section. A full recapitulation of the exposition’s themes, appropriately adjusted as to key, gives formal and expressive balance to the movement. The Andante takes as its theme a tender melody presented in alternate periods by the piano and the violin. Four variations follow, the third of which drops into a somber minor mode for some dramatic strains that hint of the musical worlds Beethoven was soon to explore. The finale is a large, thematically rich rondo which takes as its principal subject a bounding melody of opera buffa jocularity. * * * The E-flat major Sonata (Op. 12, No. 3) opens with a spirited sonata-form movement whose thematic fecundity recalls the music of Mozart (dead just seven years when this piece was composed, and still fondly remembered in Vienna). The sweeping arpeggiated gesture from the piano that serves as the main theme is followed by several other melodic fragments; one containing a limpid rising chromatic scale serves as the formal second subject. The development section is full of energy and surprise. The Adagio, the expressive as well as the structural heart of the Sonata, is one of Beethoven’s greatest early movements. Its broad thematic arches and majestic demeanor created for the composer’s biographer Frederick Niecks “a sublimity of feeling and a noble simplicity.” The finale, a bustling rondo, serves both as foil to the profound musical statement that preceded it and as a suitably lively close to this handsome Sonata.
Sonata No. 5 for Violin and Piano in F Major, Op. 24, “Spring” (1800–1801) In a world still largely accustomed to the reserved, genteel musical climate of pre-revolutionary classicism, Ludwig van Beethoven burst upon the Viennese cultural scene like a fiery meteor. The most perceptive of the local nobility, to their credit, recognized the genius of this gruff Rhinelander and encouraged his work. Shortly after his arrival, for example, Prince Karl Lichnowsky provided Beethoven with living quarters, treating him more like a son than a guest. Lichnowsky even instructed the servants to answer the musician’s call before his own, should both ring at the same time. Another of the composer’s staunchest patrons was Count Moritz von Fries, proprietor of the prosperous Viennese banking firm of Fries & Co. and treasurer to the imperial court. Fries, seven years Beethoven’s junior, was a man of excellent breeding and culture. A true disciple of the Enlightenment, Fries traveled widely (Goethe mentioned meeting him in Italy), and lived for a period in Paris, where
he had himself painted by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (remembered for her portraits of Marie Antoinette and Mme. de Staël) and, with his wife and baby, by François Gérard (court painter to Louis XVIII). Fries’ palace in the Josefplatz was designed by one of the architects of Schönbrunn, the Emperor’s suburban summer residence, and housed an elegant private theatre that was the site of frequent musical presentations. In April 1800, Fries hosted what developed into a vicious piano-playing competition between Beethoven and the visiting German virtuoso and composer Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823), which Beethoven won in a unanimous decision. Following that victory, Beethoven composed for Fries two Sonatas for Violin and Piano (Op. 23 and 24) and the String Quintet, Op. 29, whose dedications the Count eagerly accepted. Fries remained among Beethoven’s most devoted patrons, providing him with a regular stipend until he tumbled into bankruptcy in 1825 following the Napoleonic upheavals; the Seventh Symphony of 1813 was dedicated to Fries. The two Sonatas for Violin and Piano Beethoven composed for Count Fries in 1800–1801—the passionate A minor (Op. 23) and the pastoral F major (Op. 24, appropriately subtitled “Spring”)—were apparently conceived as a contrasting but complementary pair, perhaps intended to be performed together. (Beethoven headed the manuscript of the F major piece “Sonata II,” and originally instructed the Viennese publisher T. Mollo to issue the two works under the single opus number 23. An apparent engraver’s error, however, caused the two violin parts to be printed in different formats—one upright, one oblong—making printing in a single volume awkward, so the Sonatas were reissued separately with individual opus numbers.) The F major Sonata, Op. 24, one of Beethoven’s most limpidly beautiful creations, is well characterized by its vernal sobriquet. The opening movement’s sonata form is initiated by a gently meandering melody first chanted by the violin. The gracenote–embellished subsidiary subject is somewhat more vigorous in rhythm and chromatic in harmony, but maintains the music’s bucolic atmosphere. Wave-form scales derived from the main theme close the exposition. The development section attempts to achieve a balance between a downward striding arpeggio drawn from the second theme and flutters of rising triplet figures. A full recapitulation and an extended coda based on the flowing main theme round out the movement. The Adagio is a quiet flight of wordless song, undulant in its accompanimental figuration and delicately etched in its melodic arabesques. The tiny gossamer Scherzo is the first such movement Beethoven included in one of his Violin Sonatas. The finale, a rondo that makes some unexpected digressions into distant harmonic territories, is richly lyrical and sunny of disposition. ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
PINCHAS ZUKERMAN VIOLIN With a celebrated career encompassing five decades, Pinchas Zukerman reigns as one of today’s most sought after and versatile musicians—violin and viola soloist, conductor and chamber musician. He is renowned as a virtuoso, admired for the expressive lyricism of his playing, singular beauty of tone and impeccable musicianship. A devoted teacher and champion of young musicians, he has served as chair of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music for 25 years. He singularly pioneered the use of distancelearning technology with the first technological installment at the Manhattan School and has established an advanced training program for gifted young artists as part of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He has taught prominent music educational programs in London, Israel and China, among others, and was appointed as the first instrumentalist mentor in music of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The 2018–2019 season marks Zukerman’s tenth season as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) in London and his fourth as Artist-in-Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia. He leads the RPO on a tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland, conducting works by Mozart and Vaughan Williams and performing as soloist in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Zukerman joins the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor, on tour in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. He appears as soloist and conductor with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the symphony orchestras of Toronto and Indianapolis. Zukerman makes concerto appearances in North America with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony and in Europe with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Salzburg Camerata and Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. Zukerman conducts the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and conducts and is soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on a tour of South Korea. As a founding member of the Zukerman Trio, along with cellist Amanda Forsyth and pianist Angela Cheng, Zukerman appears in Baltimore and New York’s 92nd Street Y, tours Italy, including Bologna, Milan and Naples, and gives performances in Germany at Villa Musica in the Rhineland-Palatinate and in Mönchengladbach. Zukerman and Forsyth join the Jerusalem Quartet in a program of Strauss, Schoenberg and Tchaikovsky sextets in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Princeton, Berkeley and Vancouver. Zukerman also appears with Forsyth in performances of the Brahms Double Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and joins violinist Viviane Hagner and the National Centre Arts Orchestra for performances of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante. Born in Tel Aviv, Zukerman came to the United States where he studied at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian as a recipient of the American-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship. An alumnus of the Young Concert Artists program, Mr. Zukerman has also received honorary doctorates from Brown University, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Calgary. He received the National Medal of Arts from
President Ronald Reagan and is a recipient of the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence in Classical Music. Zukerman’s extensive discography includes more than 100 titles, for which he gained two Grammy® awards and 21 nominations. His complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Philips were released in July 2016 in a 22-disc set comprising Baroque, Classical and Romantic concertos, and chamber music. Recent albums include Baroque Treasury on the Analekta label with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, cellist Amanda Forsyth and oboist Charles Hamann in works by Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Tartini; Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 and Double Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Forsyth, recorded live at Ottawa’s Southam Hall; and a critically acclaimed album of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. ANGELA CHENG PIANO Consistently praised for her brilliant technique, tonal beauty, and superb musicianship, Canadian pianist Angela Cheng is one of her country’s national treasures. In addition to regular guest appearances with virtually every orchestra in Canada, she has performed with the symphonies of Alabama, Annapolis, Colorado, Flint, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Saint Louis, San Diego, Syracuse and Utah, as well as the philharmonic orchestras of Buffalo, Louisiana, London, Minas Gerais/Brazil and Israel. In June 2016, she returned to Virtuosi Concerts Winnipeg as “Poet of the Piano,” in celebration of their 25th anniversary season. An avid recitalist, Angela Cheng appears regularly on recital series throughout the United States and Canada and has collaborated with numerous chamber ensembles including the Takács, Colorado and Vogler quartets. Festival appearances have included Banff, Bravo! Vail, Chautauqua, Colorado, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla’s SummerFest, Ravinia, Vancouver, the Festival International de Lanaudière in Quebec, MasterWorks Festival, Toronto Summer Music Festival and the Cartegena International Music Festival in Colombia. Ms. Cheng has made several recordings for CBC, including discs of Mozart and Shostakovich concerti, as well as a CD of four Spanish concerti with Hans Graf and the Calgary Philharmonic. Most recently, an all-Chopin recital CD was released by Universal Music Canada. Angela Cheng has been Gold Medalist of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition, as well as the first Canadian to win the prestigious Montreal International Piano Competition.
We mourn the passing of our dear friend and supporter
Eldridge Moores 1938–2018