Michael Noble, piano, Nov 15, 2018

Robert Blocker, Dean

doctor of musical arts degree recital

Michael Noble, piano Thursday, November 15, 2018 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Frederic Rzewski b. 1938 Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

“Down by the Riverside” from North American Ballades

Eight Klavierstücke, Op. 76 I. Capriccio in F-sharp minor. Un poco agitato.

Unruhig bewegt (uneasily moving).

II. Capriccio in B minor. Allegretto non troppo.

III. Intermezzo in A-flat major. Grazioso. Anmutig,

ausdrucksvoll (gracefully, expressive).

IV. Intermezzo in B-flat major. Allegretto grazioso.

V. Capriccio in C-sharp minor. Agitato, ma non troppo

presto. Sehr aufgeregt, doch nicht zu schnell (very

excited, but not too quickly).

VI. Intermezzo in A major. Andante con moto. Sanft

bewegt (gently moving).

VII. Intermezzo in A minor. Moderato semplice.

VIII. Capriccio in C major. Grazioso ed un poco vivace.

Anmutig lebhaft (gracefully energetic).

intermission

Frederic Rzewski b. 1938

“Bells” from Dreams, Part II

Ye Xiaogang b. 1955

Namucuo

Alexander Scriabin 1871 – 1915

Fantasie in B minor, Op. 28

Rzewski

“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” from North American Ballades

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 Michael Noble, piano Michael Noble has developed an international reputation as an “astonishing” (Het Nieuwsblad) and versatile pianist whose performances and initiatives have engrossed audiences throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Since his first recital at the age of six, he has won prizes in numerous competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Carmel Music Society Competition, Gold Medal at the Crescendo Music Awards (Tulsa, OK), and prizes in the Chopin International Competition of the 1000 Islands. Michael has been called “a pianist to remember” by Het Nieuwsblad, and his playing has been hailed as “elegant, stylish, and powerful” (Peninsula Reviews) and “poetic” (Het Nieuwsblad). Most recently, he was described, in his performance of Dvořák’s Piano Concerto with the Monterey Symphony, as “a pianist with an admirable ability to serve the music with the subtlety of a master chamber music player, and also at times to blaze forth with commanding virtuosity and to carry us to dramatic climaxes” (Lyn Bronson, Peninsula Reviews).

Michael has performed in renowned venues, including Carnegie Hall, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, the National Academy for the Performing Arts of Trinidad and Tobago, the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, and the Sunset Center in Carmel, California.

Additionally, he is a sought-after guest artist, appearing regularly at festivals including the Gentsche Festspiele (Belgium),

the Kwadrofonik Festival (Poland), the Lake George Music Festival, Musiksommer Schloss Rosenegg (Austria), and the Thailand International Composition Festival. Michael is also the co-founder and co-director of the Monterey-based “Music of Changes,” a festival that presents adventurous thematically-based programs.

In addition, Michael is a founding member of The Noble Trio along with flutist Teresa Villalobos and violist Gregory Perrin. The trio gave their debut performance in July 2017 to a sold-out audience at the Coachella Valley Repertory Theatre in California.

During the 2018-2019 season, the trio will perform on numerous series throughout the United States, including an inaugural concert tour of several Spanish missions throughout California.

Michael has been featured as soloist with the Monterey and Tulsa Symphonies, and the Idyllwild Arts Academy Alumni Orchestra, among others, and has had the privilege of working with eminent conductors including Ransom Wilson, Gisele Ben-Dor, and Max Bragado-Darman.

Additionally, he has worked with the most renowned artists in the field including Gary Graffman, the late Claude Frank, Christopher Elton, Ursula Oppens, John Perry, Boris Berman, Hung-Kuan Chen, Robert McDonald, and members of the Brentano and Tokyo Quartets.

After attending the Paris Conservatoire, Michael obtained his bachelor of music degree in piano performance and bachelor

Artist Profile cont.

Program Notes

of arts in English literature cum laude from the Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester respectively. He received his master of music and master of musical arts at the Yale School of Music and is now a candidate for the doctor of musical arts degree there. Subsequently, Michael completed a one-year residency in Ghent, Belgium, as a fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation where he focused on contemporary music. His principal teachers include Peter Frankl, Nelita True, Melvin Chen, Nicholas Angelich, and Nelms McKelvain, while significant mentors include Daan Vandewalle, Marc Durand, John O’Conor, Martin Bresnick, and Ani Kavafian.

“Down by the Riverside” Rzewski Michael Noble

Highlights of the current and upcoming seasons include serving as music director and conductor for Idyllwild Arts’ production of A Chorus Line, a performance on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago, a return engagement at the Gentsche Festspiele, a performance at Musiksommer Schloss Rosenegg, performances at Spectrum in Brooklyn as part of Frederic Rzewski’s 80th birthday celebration, a tour of Florida and Southern California with The Noble Trio, and performances throughout Austria, Belgium, Canada, Poland, and the United States.

Frederic Rzewski is one of the foremost composers of our time and one whose leftist politics lie at the heart of his most significant compositions. He is also one of the last composers (if not the last composer) to simultaneously have a career as a virtuoso pianist just as Brahms and Scriabin did. Much of his music from the 1960’s to the present deals with human rights abuses, including such seminal works as The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, Coming Together, De Profundis, and Ten War Songs for Piano.

His four North American Ballads are no exception; in these ballads, Rzewski is indebted to both Chopin and Brahms. It is generally accepted that Chopin created the form, and both he and Brahms wrote four each. Rzewski’s take after Brahms’ ballads in their scope and structure and in the literary/textual inspiration for them as well.

Written between November 1978 and May 1979 each ballad is based on a different protest song from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I will be performing two this evening: “Down by the Riverside” and “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.”

“Down by the Riverside” was composed over the course of two days in February 1979 and incorporates the melody of the spiritual of the same name. Although it was first published in 1918 in Plantation Melodies: A Collection of Modern, Popular and Old-time Negro-Songs of the Southland, its genesis goes back to the Civil War and, as with many spirituals, the biblical text can

be seen as a metaphor for escaping slavery by crossing the River Jordan into the Promised Land.

In Rzewski’s version, the melody of the spiritual is heard with accompaniment before undergoing rigorous fragmentation and contrapuntal treatment (perhaps an acting-out of the struggle to escape slavery).

This freneticism is interrupted by two melodic and ethereal episodes that anticipate the triumphant chorale-like return of the melody at the end.

Eight Klavierstücke, Op. 76 brahms Michael Noble Brahms wrote the majority of his Eight Klavierstücke, Op. 76 at the beginning of his summer residency at Pörtschach in June 1878. However, the original order of the pieces was different from the published edition as it began with No. 5 (the Capriccio in C-sharp minor) and ended with No. 4 (the Intermezzo in B-flat major). It is unclear when Brahms established the final order of the pieces, but it is clear, in typical Brahmsian fashion, that he was in no hurry to have the pieces printed despite his publisher’s repeated inquiries about them from August 1878 onward. In December he wrote to Brahms “If the piano pieces do not arrive soon, I shall apply to requisition your furniture and by the way there should be established a ‘Society against Cruelty to Publishers’ in the manner of the ‘Society against Cruelty to Animals’ - ‘pooh’: you should be ashamed to submit me to this rack of torture, deprived of your songs and piano pieces - how many

volumes must you send to set things right again?” (Johannes Brahms und Fritz Simrock, Weg einer Freundschaft: Briefe des Verlegers an den Komponisten, ed. Kurt Stephenson, 132).

In the published order, the Capriccio in F-sharp minor opens the set and begins with an ominous wave-like motive that recurs throughout. The next in the set is a gypsy-like Capriccio in B minor followed by two Intermezzos, the second of which, in B-flat major, seems to exist in a tonal netherworld exhibiting a tendency to more strongly assert the relative G minor than B-flat. Next, we arrive at the penultimate Capriccio. The Capriccio in C-sharp minor with its striking agitato character, pervasive chromaticism, and abundant syncopations and hemiolas, marks a turning point in the set, which reaches its triumphant conclusion in the final Capriccio. The final piece, Op. 76/8, features quick-moving counterpoint that weaves through both hands creating a wave-like tapestry, reminiscent of Op. 76/1.

Though the key signature indicates C major, Brahms once again delays any firm cadential affirmation until the very end.

The result is a heightened sense of longing, as though the entire opus has lead up to the exhilarating final crescendo and cadence of the last measures.

“Bells” from Dreams, Part II rzewski Michael Noble Rzewski’s “Bells” from Dreams, Part II was written in 2014 and dedicated to Igor Levit. It was inspired by Japanese director

Program Notes cont.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film Dreams which is a collection of episodes based on Kurosawa’s actual dreams.

Namucuo Ye Xiaogang Michael Noble

“Bells” is the most recent in a long line of pieces that evoke the sound of bells, such as Rachmaninoff’s choral symphony, The Bells, Debussy’s Cloches à travers les feuilles and Ravel’s La vallée des cloches to name a few. Rzewski seems more interested in the resonances that the piano can produce in a static, unhurried tempo.

Ye Xiaogang is one of China’s most renowned composers who blends Eastern and Western traditions in his music. I had the pleasure of meeting Ye at the Thailand International Composition Festival in 2017 at which I performed Namucuo. Composed in 2006, Namucuo was commissioned by a young Chinese pianist for his Carnegie Hall debut.

“Bells” is the fifth movement of a much larger eight movement work, a character piece or miniature like Brahms’ Eight Klavierstücke and Rzewski’s North American Ballads. In addition, its bell-like sonorities and structure recall Scriabin’s Fantasie as both are in ternary (ABA’) form with a coda.

The piece is named after a lake located on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of over 15,000 feet and surrounded on all sides by dramatic snow-capped mountains.

It is one of three holy lakes in the Tibetan tradition. Ye was deeply moved by the lake’s serenity and its surroundings when he visited in 2001.

The beginning tempo is given as “Slow” and begins with an almost funereal solemnity with chords or single notes being played and given time to ring in the lowest register of the piano. Eventually Rzewski spreads the hands apart until the right hand is in the highest register and the left is in the lowest. The middle section features quicker passage work, at times evoking the sounds of chimes blowing in the wind before returning to the somber music of the beginning. The piece ends with a brief coda that trails off into the lowest register of the piano. Indeed, this piece is a far cry from the more accessible North American Ballads.

In Rzewski’s later works, while his style is not functionally tonal like the Ballads as he does away with key signatures, he still constructs sections around tonal centers.

As one of China’s foremost composers and a professor and Assistant President of the composition department at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, it is notable that Ye wrote a piece inspired by a Tibetan lake given the inevitable political baggage that comes with writing such a work. Is Ye towing the party line and writing this piece as a nationalist, affirming that Tibet is indeed part of China despite its differences? Or is he being subversive and writing a sort of ode to their struggle? Unlike Rzewski’s works, no political program exists, so his intentions are unknown.

Another miniature, Namucuo features a haunting tapestry of bell-like sonorities and begins with haunting rapid-fire chromatic figurations in the piano’s highest

range before a slower-moving tremolo provides respite to the frenzy. Both sections are repeated with slight variation and a gradual slowing of the tempo before the piece fades away with the glistening tremolos.

Fantasie in B minor, Op. 28 scriabin Michael Noble Scriabin’s Fantasie in B minor, Op. 28 is from his early stylistic period. Although his distinctive voice is evident in the Fantasie’s triplet figures and cross-rhythms, it is pervaded by the influence of Liszt and Chopin in its figurations and harmonies.

The Fantasie was written in 1901 during Scriabin’s tenure as a piano professor at the Moscow Conservatory and is one of the few compositions of substantial length that Scriabin finished at the time. Despite the freedom of form connoted by its name, the Fantasie adheres to a strict sonata-form structure with an extended coda; the fantastical sentiment may be better understood, in this context, not by form, but by the enchanting second theme that follows the ominous first theme and that culminates in a stunningly virtuosic and grandiose climax in the recapitulation characterized by repeated chords in the middle register in addition to vast registral spacing between the hands. It is considered one of his most brilliant, albeit underplayed, and virtuosic pieces for piano.

“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” rzewski Michael Noble “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” serves as a thrilling capstone to the North American Ballads. Rzewski takes the 1930’s industrial protest song as his point of departure.

For a bit of background: textile mills were constructed in and around Winnsboro, South Carolina beginning in the late 19th century (originally restricted to white workers despite the majority black population). The song developed after the Winnsboro mill had been converted to a tire manufacturing plant which reflected the widespread expansion of the auto industry. The song utilizes irony to draw attention to labor’s relation to capital: When I die don’t you bury me at all Hang me up on the schoolroom wall Place a bobbin in my hand So I can keep on a-workin’ in the Promised Land Rzewski’s piece begins with a minimalist and ominous two-note chromatic pattern reminiscent of the soundtrack to the movie Jaws. This pattern begins to incorporate more notes and quickly evokes the atmosphere of a cotton mill through his directive to play the chord clusters in both hands “with forearms . . . both black and white notes.” Following a chilling climax where the pianist allows the cacophony of the preceding music to resonate for an extended period with sostenuto pedal depressed, a lyrical blues section begins. After this section reaches its zenith, it is interrupted by the

Program Notes, cont.

Upcoming Events

incessant noise of the cotton mill once again which takes the music into a complex and virtuosic contrapuntal section that is capped off by the first full iteration of the tune. Instead of an exultant ending, however, the evocation of the mill machines returns in shocking fashion and thoroughly overwhelms the tuneful protest song.

nov 28 Melvin Chen, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Melvin Chen performs an arrangement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, and works by Sibelius and Ravel.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7 nov 29 Paul Kerekes, composition

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

free dec 1 Vista: Chamber Music

YSM Ensembles 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Free dec 4 Emerson String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

A performance by the legendary Emerson String Quartet, an ensemble The New Yorker has said is “as eminent as ever.”

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $28, students $13 dec 5

Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Joseph Slifka Center Free

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