PROGRAM NOTES
Sonata for Piano No. 14 (Sonata quasi una Fantasia), in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (Moonlight Sonata)
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna
In 1800 and 1801, Beethoven wrote two unconventional piano sonatas that were published in 1802 as his Op. 27, each bearing the subtitle sonata quasi una fantasia, a sonata like a fantasy, or perhaps almost a fantasy. The second of the pair is now popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata
With his habitual gruffness, Beethoven tried to deny its appeal, about ten years after it was written, saying, “Everyone is always talking about the C-Sharp minor Sonata, but I have written really better things.” A critic reviewing the first edition wrote, “It is hardly possible that anyone whom Nature has not denied any feeling for music will not be profoundly moved by the opening Adagio of this Sonata.” The Viennese found it pastoral or sylvan and, at first, nicknamed it the Leafy Arbor Sonata, after the kind of place where they thought it might have been composed. Berlioz said that it was like a sunset on the Roman campagna An early Beethoven biographer claimed that its subject was death, the death of a friend or the death of the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. About five years after Beethoven died, Ludwig Rellstab, an influential figure of the Romantic era, a soldier, philosopher, historian, mathematician, novelist, poet, dramatist, composer, and critic, wrote that the music made him think of “a boat passing the wild country around Lake Lucerne by moonlight.” It was his description that gave it the name by which it has subsequently been known: the Moonlight Sonata.
The opening Adagio sostenuto is, in effect, an extended prelude to the second movement. Berlioz called it “one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.” The triplet accompaniment figure continues almost hypnotically throughout the movement, sometimes seeming more important than the melody.
Beethoven said that his gentle scherzo, Allegretto, must follow the Adagio sostenuto immediately, without pause. Liszt once described the second movement, somewhat cryptically as “a flower between two chasms.” The dynamic level never rises above a soft piano until the middle of this graceful and melancholy movement. After a brief pause comes the climactic finale, Presto agitato, suddenly contrasting and ferociously tumultuous, the longest movement of the sonata and its most conventional one; in it, the music is organized structurally in what is usual for first-movements of sonatas, sonataallegro form. Charles Rosen commented, “It must have been with music like this finale that Beethoven smashed the hammers and strings of his instruments, as he was reputed to do. The contrast between the opening and closing movements of this sonata exceeds anything else conceived for the keyboard until then.”
Ramble on Love, duet from Der Rosenkavalier
Richard Strauss, composer
Percy Grainger, arranger
Born July 8, 1882, in Melbourne, Australia; died February 20, 1961, in White Plains, New York
Percy Grainger’s musical gifts became apparent when he was very young. At the age of 12, he left his native Australia to study piano and composition in Germany. He began his professional career in 1900 with his London debut as a pianist, at the same time when he began to develop his personal style as a composer. In 1906, he met Edvard Grieg, who became his mentor and helped him focus on creating new ways of incorporating folk and popular music into his compositions. Grainger moved to New York in 1914, served in the United States Army, and became an American citizen, but he continued to travel widely in the parts of the world that held a special interest for him: Australia, Britain, and Scandinavia.
Grainger’s artistic ideal was a kind of “free music.” Because his folk-based works have become so familiar, it is easy to forget that he invented an original and highly idiosyncratic kind of musical expression, often using advanced techniques of his own invention that would much later be generally associated with other more radical composers than he. Many of Grainger’s works were sketched and written over long periods of time, and then arranged and re-arranged for very different media of performance.
Grainger was an eager follower of the Romantic tradition of piano transcription, inspiring him to compose numerous “free-rambles,” and he greatly admired Richard Strauss’s music. He wrote that he thought Strauss “a humane soul whose music overflowed with the milk of human kindness.” The two met often; Strauss conducted Grainger’s music on several occasions. Ramble, Grainger’s tribute to his fellow composer, is based on a memorable moment, a love duet in the second act of Strauss’s 1911 opera Der Rosenkavalier, an opera which tells the story of a young Count, the Rosenkavalier (rose bearer) who falls in love while he is delivering an engagement rose.
Grainger began the lush and rhapsodic Ramble on Love, Duet before 1920, but it was after his mother’s suicide in 1922 that he completed this most elaborate of all his piano paraphrases, with his mother’s name obliquely memorialized in the title. In the course of this piece, which he created by freely extrapolating on the original rather than just transcribing it for piano, he augments the original love duet with unique harmonies and flourishes. This tour-de-force of pianistic virtuosity is one of the most carefully notated piano pieces in the repertoire, with copious instructions to the pianist about how to use the sostenuto (middle) pedal.
Pi Huang for piano
Zhao Zhang
Born in Yunnan, China, in 1964
Zhang Zhao is among the most prolific contemporary Chinese composers. He is currently a professor at the School of Music of the MINZU University of China. As a recipient of many national awards, Zhang has been commissioned to create works for many well-known musicians, including Lang Lang and Yundi Li. He was also the first Chinese composer to have his works chosen to be used as audition selections by ABRSM, Trinity College London and the national piano grading of Australia.
Zhang Zhao spent the first 14 years of his life in the Ailao, a mountainous region in southern Yunnan, during which period he received much exposure to local folk music. As a youth, he enjoyed art, poetry, and calligraphy. He began learning to play the yangqin, a traditional Chinese hammered dulcimer, from his mother when he was 5, then violin at age 6, piano at 7, and accordion at 10. When he was 11 years old, he began studying composition with his father. At the age of 14, he entered the Provincial Arts School at Dianchi Lake to study piano. During the five years he spent there, he began composing. After five years, he entered MINZU University of China, graduating with a double major in piano and composition in 1987.
In 1998, he completed his post-graduate study in the composition department of the Central Conservatory of Music. Zhang later served as the music director for the Vibrant China world tour held by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission of China during which, over the course of a decade, he visited many countries in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. He is currently a Professor of Composition at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing.
Zhang Zhao’s musical style fuses ethnic sounds with his own imagination. He completed Pi Huang (Moments in Beijing Opera) in 2005. In 2007 in Beijing, he was awarded First Prize in the Palatino competition held by the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing to promote compositions with Chinese elements. The music vividly depicts typical scenes in a traditional Beijing opera production through its recitatives and arias, along with percussion punctuations and imitations of typical Chinese instruments. He includes dance, martial arts, and acrobatics in this short piece, filled with trills and tremolos, rustling arpeggios, and beguiling melodies.
A striking feature of Chinese traditional music, rhythmic flexibility, is used in the work’s introduction. The music of the whole piece is built upon three pitches that are blended in its charming melodies and harmonies. Pi Huang includes an introduction and nine variations on the theme. With a variety of meter, mood, and color changes, Zhang has transformed operatic music into a brilliant and effective solo piano piece. Pi Huang freely combines Chinese musical modes, Western harmony, and contemporary compositional techniques.
Three Selections for Piano
François Couperin
Born November 10, 1668, in Paris; died there September 1733
François Couperin was part of a French musical family who, for many generations, held the post of organist at the Church of Saint-Gervais in Paris. He was dubbed Couperin le Grand when he was only 17 years old, at the time that he was appointed to the post of organist in the service of King Louis XIV. Couperin held several positions as a musician to the royal court, teaching and serving as harpsichordist in many court chamber concerts.
Couperin’s keyboard music is in the style of the Court of Louis XIV and the “French manner” of the 18th century influenced by Lully: the music is noble and ornate, fluent and graceful; it is sometimes stately yet also often charming, and above all, delightful. When he was only 25, he was appointed a royal organist; later, he was also harpsichordist for royal chamber music. Chamber music, at that time, was very much in fashion at the French court and was regularly played for entertainment after banquets. Louis XIV even liked to have music played for him when he dined alone, when he got up in the morning, and when he went to bed.
Couperin wrote around 225 pieces, grouped in ordres according to key and, to some extent, determined by mood. Each has a title, which might be the name of a particular person or a state of mind, or a familiar institution, or even a natural phenomenon. A few pieces simply have dance titles. Some are little portraits. In all, he composed 27 Ordres (Suites), in four books, but none was intended for performance as a complete Ordre. In the 18th century, attitudes about publication and performance were very different from what they are now; composers grouped material by key or genre, expecting performers to make a selection of works, depending on their needs. The musician decided on how many pieces he would play and in what order, according to the constraints and opportunities of the occasion.
Couperin also published the Concerts royaux (Royal Concerts) in 1722 and described them in the preface to the work: “The pieces that follow are different from those that I have published in the past. They are suited to the harpsichord alone and also to the violin, flute, oboe, viol, and bassoon. I composed them for the little chamber concerts to which Louis XIV commanded me nearly every Sunday of the year. . . I played the harpsichord. I have written enough of these pieces to publish several collections in the future, if they please the public as much as they did the late King. I have arranged them by key and have given them the title under which they were known in court in 1714 and 1715.” The musicologist Wilfred Mellers said that Couperin’s intent was to “soften and sweeten the King’s melancholy.”
One unusual aspect of Couperin’s pieces is the strange, often mysterious titles he gave to them. They usually suggest that the music will be unusual and descriptive. His work over time had great influence on later composers. Brahms performed Couperin’s music in public, and he contributed to the first complete edition of Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin edited by Friedrich Chrysander in the 1880s.
Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin)
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France; died December 28, 1937, in Paris
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Ravel tried repeatedly to enlist in the French army, but he was rejected because of his height and physical frailty. He decided then that he would express his love for his country in music by composing a Suite française for piano. He based it not on patriotic songs but on old French dances of the kind used in the many harpsichord suites by François Couperin (1668-1733), (see above) the favorite composer of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV. In 1916, while the work was still in progress, Ravel was finally accepted into the army, served a few months as a truck driver under extremely hazardous conditions, and then was discharged because of his failing health. When he regained his strength, he began to work at his music again, and in November 1917, he finished the French Suite for piano.
Ravel renamed the French Suite calling it finally Le Tombeau de Couperin (literally “The Tomb of Couperin” or “Couperin’s Tombstone”), after the 17th and 18th century French practice of using the word tombeau (tomb) in the title of memorial compositions. Ravel wrote that the work was “really less a tribute to Couperin himself than to 18th century music in general.”
Ravel’s original intentions for this work changed dramatically after he witnessed the horrors of World War I. He decided to dedicate each of the six movements of this piece to the memory of one of his friends who had died in the war; nevertheless, the music he conceived is not somber. Ravel instead celebrates the joy and warmth of his friends through the use of traditional baroque dance styles.
After many delays, the great French pianist Marguerite Long, to whose late husband the Toccata of the original suite was dedicated, performed the premiere on April 11, 1919. Ravel orchestrated four of the movements in 1919. The Swedish ballet of Paris used the orchestral version for a very successful production. The work is now more frequently heard in concert than is the original piano suite.
The form of Ravel’s Tombeau is a suite of dance movements, a common configuration for instrumental baroque music. It begins with a lively Prélude, based principally on the opening running figure and dedicated “To the memory of Lieutenant Jacques Charlot” (who transcribed Ravel’s four-hand piece Ma Mère l’Oye for solo piano). Then comes the Fugue, in memory of Second Lieutenant Jean Cruppi (to whose mother Ravel had also dedicated a oneact opera, L’heure espagnole). Next comes Forlane, a gently rocking dance of Venetian origin, in memory of First Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc, a Basque painter. It is followed by a spirited Rigaudon, a lively dance from Provence, “to the memory of Pierre and Pascal Gaudin” (brothers killed by the same shell). The graceful Minuet, “To the memory of Jean Dreyfus” (at whose home Ravel recuperated after he was demobilized), is the penultimate selection. The finale of the Suite is a Toccata in memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave, a musicologist and the husband of Marguerite Long.
— Program notes © Susan Halpern, 2024
YING LI
Twenty-four-year-old Chinese pianist
Ying Li is the First Prize winner of the 2021 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, as well as recipient of The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Prize and the Tri-I Noon Recitals Prize. She has received top awards in numerous national and international competitions including the inaugural Antonio Mormone International Prize, Sarasota Artist Series Piano Competition, Brevard Music Festival, International Liszt Piano Competition for Young Pianists, and was a finalist at Concours musical international de Montréal.
Ying has performed with many leading orchestras such as The Philadelphia Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Brevard Music Festival Orchestra, L’Accademia Orchestra del La Scala, and the NWD-Philharmoniker, and with conductors such as Lina Gonzalez-Granados, Xian Zhang, Eric Jacobsen, and Jonathon Heyward.
Ying will make her New York City recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and her Washington, D.C., debut at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater with additional U.S. recitals at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore, Sunday Musicale in New Jersey, Southeastern Piano Festival, and the Honest Brook Music Festival.
Upcoming and recent recitals also include Sala Verdi in Milan, Hammerklavier International Piano Festival in Barcelona, Musica Insieme Bologna, Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, Fazioli Pianoforti in Sacile, and the C. Bechstein Series at the Konzerthaus in Berlin. Ying was also featured on WQXR’s Eine kleine Birthday-musik, a free, all-Mozart live streamed concert from The Greene Space in New York City, to celebrate Mozart’s 266th birthday.
As an avid chamber musician, Ying has appeared at prestigious festivals around the world including the Verbier Festival Academy, ClassicheFORME International Chamber Music festival in Lecce, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, La Jolla Music Society, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Artists Series Concerts in Sarasota, and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival.
Photo © Shervin Lainez
