Henry Kramer, piano, Oct 18, 2018

Robert Blocker, Dean

doctor of musical arts degree recital

Henry Kramer, piano Thursday, October 18, 2018 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Maurice Ravel 1875–1937

Miroirs, M. 43 I. Noctuelles. Très léger II. Oiseaux tristes. Très lent III. Une barque sur l’océan. D’un rythme souple IV. Alborada del gracioso. Assez vif V. La vallée des cloches. Très lent

Claude Debussy 1862–1918

L’isle joyeuse, L. 106

intermission

Franz Liszt 1811–1886

2 Orchestersätze aus dem Oratorium Christus, S. 498b I. Hirtengesang an der Krippe, Pastorale

Franz Schubert 1797–1828

Fantasy in C major, D. 760, “Wanderer Fantasy” I. Allegro con fuoco ma non troppo II. Adagio III. Presto IV. Allegro

This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited.

Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profile The winner of the 2015 William Petschek Recital Debut Award from The Juilliard School and the second-prize winner of the 2016 Queen Elisabeth Competition, pianist Henry Kramer’s performances have been praised by The New York Times as “triumphant” and “thrilling.” Kramer has also earned top prizes at the 2015 Honens International Piano Competition, the 2011 Montreal International Music Competition, and the sixth China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He was a prizewinner at the eighth National Chopin Competition in Miami and received the 2014 Harvard Musical Association’s Arthur Foote Award. He is a winner of Astral’s 2014 National Auditions.

Kramer has appeared with the National Belgian Orchestra, Bilkent (Turkey) Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Métropolitain, and the Brussels, Calgary, and Shanghai philharmonics. He has collaborated with conductors Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Hans Graf. In 2012, Kramer gave his European recital debut at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and appeared in Havana, Cuba, as a cultural ambassador. Festival appearances have included Verbier, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and La Jolla Music Society’s Summerfest. Kramer earned degrees from The Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music. He holds the L. Rexford Whiddon Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music in Columbus, Georgia.

Program Notes Miroirs ravel Henry Kramer Before 1905, Maurice Ravel’s piano output consisted of shorter works whose names (Pavane, Menuet, Fugue) showed a deep longing for the forms of the past. Except for the perfection of the neoclassical Sonatine and wonderful tonal and pianistic originality of Jeux d’eau, he had not yet embarked on a major work for the piano. Miroirs, completed by late autumn of 1905, was Ravel’s most harmonically daring and structurally grand piano piece up until that point, the first of many masterworks he would contribute to this instrument over his lifetime. Roger Nichols gives some clarity to the enigmatic title in the preface to his edition of the work. By way of the American scholar Arbie Orenstein, he recounts a quote in which Ravel says: “the word ‘mirror’ should not lead one to assume that I want to affirm a subjectivist theory of art. A sentence by Shakespeare helped me to formulate a completely opposite position: ... the eye sees not itself But by reflection, by some other things (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2)” Ravel’s critics were quick to lump these pieces into the Impressionist painting movement, but the above quote reveals that they are more related to the Symbolism of French poets. Ravel used the text of poems by Henri de Régnier as epigraphs for Jeux d’eau and Valses nobles et sentimentales.

The overlap in aesthetic between the Symbolists and Ravel in Miroirs is that the art aims to represent absolute truths indirectly.

Ravel communicates the emotional world of Miroirs refracted through sensual and dreamy soundscapes. Beginning with “Noctuelles,” he invites the listener to examine the night moth flitting about, sometimes clumsily and at others with acrobatic flair. Vladamir Jankelevitch, noted Ravel analyst, compared the piano figurations in the right hand to those in Liszt’s Waldesrauschen. A central interlude presents one of the recurring compositional threads between the five pieces: the repeated pedal tone, which by means of syncopation creates a buoyancy for the piquant harmonies of the right hand to float on.

The opening bird calls in “Oiseaux tristes” are reminiscent of the pedal tone F in the central episode of “Noctuelles,” but here appear a fifth away on B-flat. As if calling to each other on the hottest summer day, the birds languor, singing over an everchanging and somber harmonic landscape.

It is not the birds who are sad here, but rather it is us, who experience tristesse through their calls.

As in a dream, the rocking of the bird’s repeated note call transforms into the opening rhythmic motif of “Une barque sur l’océan.” In Ravel’s own orchestration, the flutes evoke the rocking of a boat over the fantastic arpeggiations of the strings.

The third character in this trio of elements is rendered first by the oboe. Its rising minor triad strives to reach its fulcrum, only to settle back into the sea. In the piano version, the oboe is taken over by the thumb, an effect reminiscent of the “three-hand” technique made popular in the mid 1800s by the virtuoso Sigismund Thalberg.

The final spray of sea foam in “Une barque,” a contained arpeggiation, is taken up as the tight, somewhat violent strummings of an Andalusian guitar in the opening of “Alborada del gracioso” – one of several Spanish-inspired pieces in Ravel’s output.

Also orchestrated by the composer, the central cante jondo is given to the bassoon, while the repeated note figure in the outer sections are in the flute. The gracioso is a character of Spanish theater, at once comedic and slightly sinister. One can hear his jesting in sudden changes of dynamics and constantly shifting accents, which lend an ambiguity to the meter.

The final movement, “Valée des cloches,” is the only one to employ three staves in the score. Sounding over the expanse of the multi-layered registral timbres of the piano, the motifs heard throughout the work (the repeated tone, the descending third) become diffused in an autumnal landscape of bells. The work closes with four progressively fading chimes, allowing the listener to revel in the sonic dream that has seduced him or her for the past half hour.

L’isle joyeuse debussy Henry Kramer Debussy generally shied away from explicitly stating the extra-musical inspirations for his works. In the case of his piano Préludes, for instance, the suggestive titles (which often point us toward a poem or painting) come at the end of the score, as if to assert the music’s primacy. His virtuosic single-movement L’isle joyeuse putatively

takes Watteu’s painting L’Embarquement pour Cythère as its inspiration. However, according to a letter published in 2003, when asked for advice on how to approach this work, Debussy downplays the influence of the painting: “...there’s also a bit of L’embarquement pour Cythère with less melancholy than in Watteau: you find the masks of the commedia dell’arte, young women singing and dancing; everything culminating in the glory of the setting sun.” The melancholy he speaks of refers to the central figure of the painting, a woman glancing back at amorous couples as if she were about to leave the joyous island, not arrive. The reference to commedia dell’arte characters sets the tone for the work, with its evocative strummed accompaniments and melismatic figures (reminiscent of Fauré’s Mandoline).

Debussy composed L’isle joyeuse in the summer of 1904 while vacationing with Emma Bardac on the Isle of Jersey following their elopement. The first sounds come in the form of a cadenza in the right hand – a trill on C-sharp and D-sharp combusting into a series of descending arpeggiated augmented triads. This morphs into the main theme, a dancing flute-like melody in triplets and dotted rhythms, traversing an adjusted A major scale with a raised fourth (D-sharp) and lowered seventh (G-natural). Debussy presents the listener with material colored in his signature whole-tone and pentatonic sonorites.

After a harmonization of the opening cadenza in C-sharp major, the music sets sail with a waltzing theme buoyantly rocking over the waves of a quintuplet

Program Notes cont. arpeggio figure in the left hand. While the work does not lend itself easily to older forms, one might say a development ensues, expounding on the arpeggiations of the left hand in the opening theme, and setting the waltz theme in whole-tone.

The main theme returns with drums and pipes. A juxtaposition of the whole-tone theme with brass fanfares gives way to an extravagant final statement of the waltz theme, this time sonorous with generous chordal writing. One hears the cadenza theme one more time before an ecstatic Lisztian flourish catapults the work to a rousing finish.

Christus - Hirtengesang an der Krippe liszt Henry Kramer The German musicologist Arnold Schering defined the four powers of Liszt’s soul as “the religious, the idyllic, the heroic, and the erotic.” One of the most dynamic figures of 19th century Europe, Franz Liszt sought in to synthesize his multifaceted aesthetic and religious convictions in his two oratorios composed later in life after years as a traveling virtuoso. As early as 1835, he wrote an article for the Révue et Gazette musicale de Paris proclaiming the need for a new type of church music that could communicate humanitarian ideals.

In 1865, Liszt travelled to Rome where he became ordained as an abbé in the lower orders of the Roman Catholic Church. It was during this time he composed his second Oratorio Christus. Prominent Liszt biographer Alan Walker describes this work as, “a choral masterpiece, which

after decades of neglect... now being hailed as the finest oratorio to come out of the nineteenth century.” Set in three sections, the work opens with a Christmas Oratorio whose final two sections, the pastorale scene by the cradle and the march of the cross bearers, are exclusively instrumental.

Liszt transcribed both pieces for piano. The transcriptions are in the vein of his Beethoven Symphony transcriptions from 1865, that is to say, not the virtuoso paraphrases of his youth, but rather faithful transferences of the orchestral score to the piano.

Set in the key of A major, the Hirtengesang an der Krippe opens peacefully in the orchestral version with calls from the oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. Winds feature prominently in this opening 6/8 creating a pastoral scene of shepherds welcoming the baby Jesus.

The ensuing Andante, marked “religioso,” presents a chorale in a quartet of winds.

The 4/4 time signature of the chorale turns into 12/8 for the more rolicking Pastorale, alternating solo viola with wind commentary.

The flowing triplets of this meter provide basis for a more energized variation of the chorale theme, which follows the Pastorale.

This builds to a climactic reprise of the main theme from the opening Allegretto.

After a return of the A section, the piece comes to a close with a lullaby that features a lydian mode melody.

Fantasy in C major, “Wanderer Fantasy” schubert Henry Kramer During his lifetime, Schubert was known in his home city of Vienna primarily as a composer of lieder. While perusing a

portfolio of Schubert’s lieder on his deathbed, Beethoven is said to have exclaimed, “Truly, in this Schubert there dwells a divine spark!” Though Schubert composed in large instrumental forms throughout his short life, many of these pieces were not published until after his death, and therefore his reputation to contemporaries and audiences rested on the more widely distributed songs.

comes the connective thread of this work.

Each movement presents this figure in different permutations – either sped up, reversed, or even fashioned into a Viennese waltz as in the third section. Franz Liszt, who undoubtedly was attracted to the flamboyant virtuosity of this work, transcribed it as a piano concerto and used the same technique of thematic transformation in his own Piano Sonata from 1853.

Perhaps due to a self-conscious awareness of this fact, Schubert turned to his own lied as inspiration for many of his instrumental works. Late in 1822 he composed his Fantasy for Piano, which would be published in 1823 as Op. 15 (760 in the Deutsche catalogue). It takes the nickname “Wanderer” from the second section of the piece, which is a set of variations on the central theme of his 1816 song Der Wanderer, D. 489. This Adagio, set in the same key of C-sharp minor as its original inspiration, becomes a Lied ohne Worte quoting the part of the song where the singer despairs:

The work progresses without pause between movements, perhaps drawing from Beethoven’s Sonatas quasi fantasias, Op. 27 from 1801. Schubert would use this model late in his life for the Fantasy for Violin and Piano and the Fantasy in F minor for one piano four-hands. Harmonically, the work is build on a relationship thirds, essentially moving through C–E–A-flat–C over the course of its four “movements.”

Die Sonne dünkt mich hier so kalt, Die Blüte welk, das Leben alt, Und was sie reden, leerer Schall; Ich bin ein Fremdling überall..

[The sun seems so cold to me here, The flowers faded, the life old, And what they say has an empty sound; I am a stranger everywhere.]

Through compositional methods of transformation, the rhythmic pattern of a quarter note followed by two eighth notes, central to the funereal quality of the adagio, be-

Upcoming Events oct 24 Boris Berman, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Boris Berman performs Haydn’s “London” Sonatas and late sonatas by Prokofiev.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, Yale faculty/ staff from $7, students free

nov 7

oct 25 Larry Weng, piano

Doctor of Musical Arts Recital 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

free

nov 13 Escher String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series The Escher String Quartet performs music by Mozart, Korngold, and Beethoven.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13

Oct 26 Jean-Marie Zeitouni, guest conductor Yale Philharmonia

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and works by Saint-Saëns and Debussy.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students free* nov 2-3 Fall Scenes

Yale Opera

A variety of scenes from beloved comic and tragic operas.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

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Wei-Yi Yang, piano Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang performs an all-Schumann program that includes Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7

nov 15 Peter Oundjian, principal conductor

Yale Philharmonia Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, with Sophiko Simsive, and Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5

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