22|23: Risa Hokamura, violin - Performance Program

RISA HOKAMURA, VIOLIN

SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 2023 | 2:00 P.M.

Program

RISA

HOKAMURA, VIOLIN NOREEN CASSIDY-POLERA, PIANO

Sonata for Solo Violin No. 3 Eugène Ysaÿe

Sonata for Solo Violin No. 4 Eugène Ysaÿe

Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K.304 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I. Allegro

II. Tempo di Menuetto

Poème Ernest Chausson

INTERMISSION

Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45 Edvard Grieg

I. Allegro molto ed appassionato

II. Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza – Allegro molto – Tempo 1

III. Allegro animato

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso

Young Concert Artists, Inc. 1776 Broadway, Suite 1500 New York, New York 10019 212.307.6655

yca.org

Camille Saint-Saëns

PROGRAM NOTES

Sonata for Solo Violin No. 3

Eugène Ysaÿe

Born July 16, 1858, in Liège; died May 12, 1931, in Brussels

Ysaÿe dedicated each of his violin sonatas, influenced by the six Bach Solo Violin Sonatas/Partitas, to a famous violinist and tailored each to the composer’s sense of the specific performer’s style. The one-movement unaccompanied Sonata No. 3 is dedicated to George Enescu, a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher and the principal teacher of the 20th century violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

A fiery caprice full of bohemian temperaments, this powerfully individual work presents both an extremely technical and a musical challenge. It explores the sonorities of the violin, creating original harmonic effects. A dramatic sonata, subtitled Ballade, begins with a recitative that leads to a series of variations on a theme characterized by a group of four repeated notes.

“I'm very fond of Ysaÿe’s solo sonatas,” violinist Joshua Bell has commented. “If the Bach sonatas and partitas are the Old Testament, then these are the New Testament. They are a tribute to Bach, but they are also very contemporary, amazing pieces in their own right.”

Sonata for Solo Violin No. 4

Eugène Ysaÿe

Sonata No. 4, “The Kreisler,” is the most classical of Ysaÿe’s six violin sonatas in form. It is known by its name because of how its dedication to Fritz Kreisler informs the content of the work. In this sonata, Ysaÿe incorporated his memories of the great Viennese virtuoso’s playing. The first movement, Allemande, has a stately and noble character. The second movement, Sarabande, begins with vibrating pizzicati, which mark the first theme, indicated by four notes printed in the manner of liturgical plainsong. The harmonic and technical details of the movement are unfolded around the four notes. In the final third movement, the composer takes up the themes of the first and second movements again.

The composer’s students and Fritz Kreisler first performed Ysaÿe’s first four sonatas in public. Kreisler played this one in 1930 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In her royal box, H.M. Queen Elisabeth sat next to Eugène Ysaÿe for the performance. Before the performance began, Kreisler said, “I feel ashamed to play this work in front of the master, for I must confess there is a passage I am unable to play as it is written. Therefore, I take the daring liberty of altering it a little, and so that [Ysaÿe] does not imagine that my memory fails me, please offer him my apologies so and show him. . . where I indicated the alteration.”

This sonata was a required piece in 1937 at the Eugène Ysaÿe International Contest, organized by the Queen Elisabeth Musical Foundation. One of the most renowned violinists of the 20th century, David Oistrakh, won the competition.

Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K.304

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna

Notes on this piece will be presented from the stage.

Poème, Op. 25

Ernest Chausson

Born January 21, 1855, in Paris; died June 10, 1899, in Limay

Ernest Chausson was the son of a wealthy Parisian family who required him to study law, but at the age of 25, he was finally able to turn to music and enrolled at the Paris Conservatory as a pupil of Massenet. When he failed to win the Prix de Rome because his musical ideas were too radical, Chausson left the Conservatory and became a private pupil of César Franck, who exerted a strong influence over his work. Another composer whose work is reflected in Chausson’s music is Richard Wagner. While still at the Conservatory, Chausson went to Germany to hear Wagner’s music dramas performed and brought back to Paris what his professor called the “dangerous” score of Parsifal. Chausson’s career was brief because at the age of 44 while riding a bicycle down a hill at his country estate in 1899, he lost control and died as a result of his fall.

Much of Chausson’s music, a relatively small output, was not recognized until after his death. His oeuvre possesses a strong, sensual appeal that has made his relatively few works especially memorable. Most well-known today is a symphony, Poème for violin, a concerto for violin, piano, and string quartet, and some exquisite songs. Chausson was a shy man, but a magnanimous one, who was generous with his considerable wealth and helped many fellow composers.

In 1896, he wrote the richly expressive romantic tone poem Poème for the Belgian violinist and composer, Eugène Ysaÿe. Conceived for violin and orchestra, it is often played now with piano accompaniment. The initial theme is introduced by an unaccompanied solo and is then echoed by the piano, but it is not until the solo violin plays a rhapsodic cadenza-like passage that the main body of the work really begins to unfold. Viewed as a whole, Poème is not a virtuosic piece full of technical feats, but a composition remarkable for its emotional intensity and poetic style.

Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor, Op. 45

Edvard Grieg

Born June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway; died September 4, 1907, in Bergen

Notes on this piece will be presented from the stage.

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28

Camille Saint-Saëns

Born October 9, 1835, in Paris; died December 16, 1921, in Algiers

Saint-Saëns was one of the notable child prodigies in the history of music, as remarkable a young musician as Mozart or Mendelssohn, even though he never became as great a composer as either of them. He began to play the

piano while he was still only a toddler, and when he was 2, it was discovered that he had absolute pitch. By the time he was 5, he could play an opera score on the piano, and he was already accompanying a professional violinist in a Beethoven sonata. When he was 6, he began to compose, although he did not begin to study harmony until he was 8. He played the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven at the same age but did not make his formal debut in a solo piano recital until the age of 10 1/2 when he played a long program from memory in one of the great concert halls in Paris. He waited to write his first symphony until he was 15, and soon thereafter, he began his long and influential career as one of Europe’s most important musicians.

Saint-Saëns’ talents were multiple: he was a composer, conductor, pianist, and author of 11 books on music, collections of poetry, and scientific studies in astronomy and archaeology. He traveled extensively on concert tours and for pleasure, visiting the United States twice, and he even made his South American debut at the unlikely age of 81. “He has,” Romain Rolland wrote in 1915, “a clarity of thought, an elegance and precision of expression, and a quality of mind that make his music noble.” In France at that time, opera was the pre-eminent form; SaintSaëns helped to establish the importance of instrumental composition in France. The renowned Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1890), a violinist and composer who was an impeccable performer, and a technician whose performing style stressed the beauty of tone and grace of manner, was the dedicatee of two of Saint-Saëns’ violin concertos. Sarasate also performed the premiere of this Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso at a concert in Paris on April 4, 1867.

The Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, written in 1863, is a work full of charm, including the most vivid, memorable Saint-Saëns melodies. It immediately became part of the standard repertoire, and after Georges Bizet transcribed the orchestral accompaniment for piano, the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso became part of the violinist’s recital repertory, too. A showpiece for the violin, the relatively brief work in two sections has a melancholy, elegiac opening section, the Introduction, in which the violin sings a plaintive, elegantly expressive theme; the second section is a spectacular Rondo Capriccioso, full of songfulness and virtuosity, whose “capriciousness” is enhanced by the syncopated rhythms of its main theme. It ends with a stunning and demanding solo cadenza and a coda of dazzling brilliance.

— Program notes © Susan Halpern, 2023

RISA HOKAMURA, VIOLIN

Risa Hokamura began studying the violin at the age of 3, and by the age of 10 had captured top prizes in competitions in Japan. She first came to international attention upon winning First Prize in the 2018 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions at the age of 17, as well as the Tannery Pond Concerts Prize, The Ruth Laredo Memorial Prize, The Ronald A. Asherson Prize, and the Silver Medal at the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, where she performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Hokamura has gone on to perform with many orchestras such as the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Muncie Symphony Orchestra, Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra. This season, Risa will make her New York debut at Merkin Concert Hall and her Washington, D.C., debut at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. In addition to her debut at Music@Menlo this past summer, Risa will appear in chamber concerts at Clarion Concerts and the Morgan Library & Museum, and in recital at Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota, University of Florida Performing Arts (Gainesville, Fla.), Arts at Abingdon (Gloucester, Va.), Arts Council of Moore County (Southern Pines, N.C.), and the Port Washington Library Series. A native of Japan, Risa studied at the Artist Diploma program of the Tokyo College of Music as the Honorary Scholarship student under the tutelage of Koichiro Harada, Mayuko Kamio, and Machie Oguri. She continued her studies this year at the Manhattan School of Music as the Full Scholarship student under the tutelage of Koichiro Harada and Lucie Robert, and additional studies with Cho-Liang Lin. She is also a recipient of scholarships from the Ezoe Memorial Foundation and the Rohm Music Foundation. Risa Hokamura is represented in Japan by Kajimoto.

Risa plays the 1722 “Jupiter” Stradivarius violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

Photo © Sho Yamada

NOREEN CASSIDYPOLERA, PIANO

Pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera ranks among the most highly regarded and diverse chamber artists performing today. She maintains a career that has taken her to every major American music center and abroad to Europe, Russia, and Asia. Recent performances include those at Alice Tully Hall, Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Jordan Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Kennedy Center, and Salle Cortot. She has appeared at the Caramoor, Bard, Grand Teton, and Cape Cod music festivals, and has performed with the chamber music societies of Philadelphia and La Jolla. She has recorded for Sony, EMI, Audiophon, and Centaur Records.

Ms. Cassidy-Polera has collaborated with leading soloists, including David Shifrin, Matt Haimovitz, Carter Brey, Antonio Meneses, Aurora-Natalie Ginastera, Yo-Yo Ma, and Leonard Rose. Winner of the accompanying prize at the VIII International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, she regularly collaborates with laureates of the Queen Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky, and Naumburg international competitions.

Ms. Cassidy-Polera’s mastery and affection for the complete standard cellopiano repertory is well-known, as is her attention and dedication to the works of contemporary composers. In recent seasons, she performed Elliott Carter’s venerable Sonata for Cello and Piano on tour in Paris, New York, and Philadelphia, along with new works by Lowell Liebermann, Benjamin C. S. Boyle, and Kenji Bunch to critical acclaim. Her CD recording, Sound Vessels (with cellist Scott Kluksdahl), features the recording premiere of Richard Wernick’s Duo, as well as works by Robert Helps, Augusta Read Thomas, and Elliott Carter.

Ms. Cassidy-Polera holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Martin Canin.