Robert Blocker, piano, Mar 8, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Robert Blocker

Boris Berman, Artistic Director March 8, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Horowitz Piano Series

Robert Blocker March 8, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756–1791

Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K. 332 I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Allegro assai

Mozart

Piano Concerto No. 11 in F major, K. 413, “a Quattro” I. Allegro II. Larghetto III. Tempo di Menuetto Béla Quartet Sissi Yuqing Zhang, violin Sophia Mockler, violin Joshua Newburger, viola Eric Adamshick, cello intermission

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 I. Allegro maestoso II. Andante. Andante espressivo III. Scherzo. Allegro energico IV. Intermezzo. Andante molto V. Finale. Allegro moderato ma rubato

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Artist Profiles

Robert Blocker, piano Robert Blocker, the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean of Music at Yale University, is internationally regarded as a pianist, a leader in arts advocacy, and an extraordinary contributor to music education. Dean Blocker is professor of piano and holds a joint appointment as an affiliate professor with the Yale School of Management. He is honorary professor of piano at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Mr. Blocker concertizes throughout the world. Recent orchestral performances include appearances with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Monterey Symphony, Korean Symphony Orchestra, and Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Prague Chamber Orchestra. The Los Angeles Times has called him a pianist of “great skill and accomplishment, a measurable virtuoso bent and considerable musical sensitivity.”

His many contributions to the music community have included service on the advisory boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Avery Fisher Artist Program, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise L. Stoeger Prize, the Gilmore Artist Award, the Curatorium of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary, and the Van Cliburn Foundation. A Steinway Artist, he appears regularly on national radio and television programs as an artist and commentator and is active as a consultant to several major educational institutions and government agencies. In 2000, Steinway & Sons featured him in a film commemorating

the tercentennial year of the piano. In 2004, the Yale University Press published The Robert Shaw Reader, a collection of Shaw’s writings edited by Blocker that is now in its third printing. His recordings are on the Naxos and Credia labels.

Béla Quartet Formed in 2015 as part of the chamber music program at the Yale School of Music, the Béla Quartet has been working together for the last year and a half. The quartet consists of violinists Sophia Mockler (’17mm) and Sissi Yuqing Zhang (’18mm), violist Joshua Newburger (’17mm), and cellist Eric Adamshick (’17mm). In 2015 and 2016, the quartet performed in Morse Recital Hall on Vista Chamber Music concerts and as winners of the YSM’s 2016 Chamber Music Competition, performing Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, and Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2. In October of 2016, the Béla Quartet traveled to London, England, with Dean Robert Blocker as part of a series of concerts for alumni and friends of Yale, performing works by Schubert and Elgar at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Automobile Club.

During their time as a quartet, they have been fortunate to work with many esteemed artists including Mischa Amory, Serena Canin, and Nina Lee — all members of the Brentano String Quartet, YSM’s quartet in residence — and School of Music faculty members Robert Blocker, Paul Berry, Ani Kavafian, and Ettore Causa.

Notes on the Program

wolfgang amadeus mozart

Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K. 332 While Mozart was churning out and performing masterful symphonies, piano concerti, and operas to large, generally enthusiastic audiences, it is a wonder that he took such exquisite care with his smaller works, intended for either personal practice or small, private gatherings. Written in the early 1780s while he and his wife, Constanze, were visiting his father, Leopold, in Salzburg, Mozart’s Sonata No. 12 bears all the composer’s fingerprints: lyricism, balance, and vibrant rhythmic energy.

Within the first twenty-two measures alone, Mozart seamlessly assembles a montage of four distinct styles from several decades.

At first, we are in the opera house; a soprano sings a cantabile melody atop a pleasantly rolling alberti bass. Suddenly the vocal line harks back to the “learned” contrapuntal style of Handel and Bach, shapeshifting quickly into a courtly minuet. The scene changes yet again as horn calls bring us outside for a hunt. A stormy D minor passage gives way to a buoyant, secondary theme in C major that Verdi was surely humming as he wrote “La Donna e Mobile,” from Rigoletto. The movement continues in jagged juxtapositions of thematic material. The Adagio maintains the sense of contrast established in the first movement, with warmer hues. As indicated by his first published version of the Sonata, this movement allows the performer to shine brilliantly within a slow tempo with elaborate ornaments in the second half. The dazzling final movement begins in a frenzied hurry. The bright and cheery disposition of the music betrays the taxing demands it puts on the performer. With

all the virtuosic flashes of the opening and development, the movement surprisingly closes with a faint whisper, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. wolfgang amadeus mozart Piano Concerto No. 11 in F major, K. 413, “a Quattro” Within a few years of his move to Vienna in 1781, Mozart entered into an inspired and prolific period — one that produced nearly fifteen piano concerti. Such a rich outpouring in this genre showcases Mozart’s prowess as a composer and virtuoso. He often premiered these works himself and earned the majority of his income from concerts and publications. Mozart’s Concerto No. 11 was part of the first set of piano concerti, K. 414–415, composed upon his arrival in Vienna. It served as a flashy musical introduction intended to impress new audiences in his adopted city. Mozart wished to win over serious music lovers and dilettantes alike. In a letter to his father, Leopold, he wrote: “These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural without being vapid. There are also passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less discriminating cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.”

The score calls for a typical concerto orchestration, but Mozart also arranged this and the other concerti of the set for string quartet or quintet accompaniment.

Assuming that the various versions of the works would increase their marketability,

Notes on the Program

Mozart took out a hefty loan to publish them and was dumbfounded and troubled when they did not sell. In the first movement, the pianist subtly emerges from the orchestra tutti without the usual pomp and circumstance. The second movement charms with its prayerful, sinuous melodies and delicate ornamentation. The final movement is a courtly minuet. The end is neither triumphant nor celebratory. It peacefully and appropriately closes an extraordinarily graceful and elegant work.

– Julia Clancy

johannes brahms

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 “It seemed to me that there would and indeed must suddenly appear one man who would be singled out to articulate and give the ideal expression to the tendencies of our time,” wrote Robert Schumann in his journal Zeitschift für Musik, “one man who would show us his mastery, not through a gradual process, but, like Athene, spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. And he has come, a young man over whose cradle Graces and Heroes stood guard.

His name is Johannes Brahms.”

With the publication of this 1853 article, the twenty-year-old Brahms (who had met Schumann only a few months prior) became a celebrity. He was both a composer and an accomplished pianist; Wagner is said to have “overwhelmed him with praise” and pronounced that Op. 5 “shows what may still be done with the old forms, provided that one knows how to treat them.”

The Piano Sonata No. 3 strikes a fine balance between Romantic gesture and Classical construction.

According to James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy in their Elements of Sonata Theory, the formal essence of the Classical sonatas of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven lies in the dialogue between key areas and cadences in expositions, as compared to recapitulations. In the exposition of Op. 5, the secondary theme begins with a lyrical declaration in A-flat major, which, unconventionally, glides down a fifth into D-flat.

In the recapitulation, notice how Brahms treats the atypical second theme: he begins with F major, again drifts downward toward B-flat major, but then with a Romantic durchbruch, or breakthrough gesture, returns to the opening theme in F major as part of the coda. Schumann was pleased with the precocious way in which Classical chiaroscuro and formal restraint balance Brahms’ grand Romantic gestures.

The passionate Andante movement is prefaced with a verse by Sternau: The evening dims The moonlight shines There are two hearts That join in love And embrace in rapture.

After the Scherzo, instead of proceeding to the finale, Brahms inserts an Intermezzo with the subtitle “Rückblick.” This movement is a more tragic “look backward” at the Andante. In Brahms’ notebook, following the verse from the Andante, is another

by Sternau: If ye knew how soon, How soon the trees are withered, And the wood is bare, How soon comes the dreary day When the heart’s beat is dumb.

— Samuel Suggs

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HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES Boris Berman Artistic Director Wednesdays at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

MASTER CLASSES Most master classes take place Thursdays at 10:30 am in Morse Recital Hall

MAR 9

Boris Berman

APR 13

Murray McLachlan, Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, UK

Upcoming Events Kurt Rohde, guest composer march 9 New Music New Haven A program featuring guest composer Kurt Rohde’s Concertino for violin and small ensemble and works by YSM graduate-student composers Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Free Admission Jerusalem String Quartet march 28 Oneppo Chamber Music Series The Jerusalem String Quartet performs Haydn String Quartet in D major, Op. 64, No. 5, “Lark;” Prokofiev String Quartet No. 1 in B minor, Op. 50; and Beethoven String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59, No. 1, “Razumovsky” Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $26 • Students $13 Joan Tower, guest composer march 30 New Music New Haven A program featuring White Granite and Second String Force by guest composer Joan Tower, “a composer whose directness and eclecticism make her music instantly accessible” (The New York Times), and works by YSM graduate-student composers Sudler Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Free Admission

Bresnick, Prokofiev, and Brahms march 31 Yale Philharmonia Principal conductor Peter Oundjian leads the Yale Philharmonia and pianist Yang Liu, winner of the Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition, in performances of YSM faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s The Way It Goes; Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Yale Faculty/Staff $8 Students $5 • $3 surcharge for purchases at the door Lunchtime Chamber Music april 5 School of Music students perform a midday chamber music concert at the Yale Center for British Art Wendy Sharp, director 1080 Chapel St. | Wednesday | 12:30 pm Free Admission Melvin Chen, piano april 5 Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist and School of Music Deputy Dean Melvin Chen performs a program of works by Couperin, Ravel, and Chausson with violinist Juliette Kang and the Argus Quartet Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $13 • Students $7

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Robert Blocker, Dean