Sofya Gulyak, piano, September 18, 2019

horowitz piano series Boris Berman, artistic director

Sofya Gulyak

Wednesday, September 18, 2019 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750 arr. Ferrucio Busoni

Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 V. Chaconne

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24

intermission

César Franck 1822–1890

Prélude, Fugue, et Variation, Op. 18 I. Andantino II. Lento III. Allegretto ma non troppo IV. Andantino

Richard Wagner 1813–1883 arr. Franz Liszt

Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90 I. Isoldestod

Maurice Ravel 1875–1937

La valse, M. 72

Artist Profile In September 2009 Sofya Gulyak was awarded the First Prize and the Princess Mary Gold Medal at the Sixteenth Leeds International Piano Competition – the first woman in the history of the competition to achieve this distinction. Since then she has appeared all over the world to great acclaim.

Her recital programmes are frequently reviewed in superlatives, and her concerto appearances with major orchestras are noted in glowing terms by the world’s music press.

Sofya has been praised for her “tremendous precision and colouration... exquisite soft playing ...with delicacy” and described as a “Rach star”(Washington Post).

Sofya Gulyak’s resume includes prizes from many prestigious piano competitions: she is a First Prize winner of the William Kapell International Piano Competition in the United States, Maj Lind Helsinki International Piano Competition, Tivoli Piano Competition in Copenhagen, Isang Yun International Piano Competition in South Korea, San Marino Piano Competition, winner of Busoni Competition in Italy and prize winner of the Marguerite Long Piano Competition in Paris.

Recitals and concert appearances have been numerous: she has performed all over the globe in such venues as La Scala Theatre and Sala Verdi in Milan, Herkulessaal in Munich, Salle Cortot, Salle Gaveau and Salle Pleyel in Paris, Tokyo Opera City Hall, Osaka Symphony Hall, Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Kennedy Center in Washington, Hungarian National Opera, Palais de la Musique in Strasbourg,

Hong Kong City Hall, Shanghai Grand Theatre, Musashino Cultural Centre in Tokyo, Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Teatro Municipal and Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Auditorium Manzoni in Bologna, Aberdeen Music Hall, Salle Molière in Lyon, Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, King Theatre in Rabat, Kursaal in Bern, Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen and many others.

Sofya Gulyak is a native of Kazan (Russia) where she studied in a Special Music College under Nailya Khakimova, and then in Kazan State Conservatoire under Professor Elfiya Burnasheva. She continued her studies at the Piano Academy “Incontri coi Maestri” (Imola, Italy) with Boris Petrushansky and at the Royal College of Music in London with Vanessa Latarche.

Sofya Gulyak has served as a jury member for international piano competitions in Italy, Serbia, France, Greece, and the United States, and was invited to teach master classes in China, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Mexico, the United States, and Germany.

She is presently a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music in London.

Her playing has been broadcast on radio and TV in Russia, Poland, France, Italy, Germany, the United States, Finland, Denmark, Serbia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom (BBC 3 and BBC 4).

Program Notes Chaconne bach/busoni Patrick Campbell Jankowski Among the most captivating and beguiling works of art crafted by J.S. Bach, the Chaconne has grown in reputation, and few lovers of music fail to feel something when hearing it mentioned. Bach wrote music in dialogue between himself and the divine. We are simply fortunate to intercept that communication from time to time.

The irony of the chaconne’s ubiquity and monumental status is that its impetus may have been highly personal for the composer. It comes as a surprise in context: a dramatic, meandering dance to conclude a five-part solo violin partita. We might expect other composers, and even Bach himself, to end such a work with a lighter piece. Yet something deeper is at work, and it is speculated that the composer wrote the movement immediately after returning home from a trip to find that his first wife had died.

Johannes Brahms famously loved the chaconne, noting that “the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings.” The emotional range explored through each repetition of the same bass line is remarkably broad.

About two-thirds of the way through the piece, a variation of climactic intensity gives way to one of profound intimacy. In few places in music will you find the duality of human feeling so convincingly realized.

Busoni’s setting exploits the full range of the piano, both in terms of pitch and

dynamic. This is perhaps no better realized than in its conclusion: thunderous bass notes resonate deeply within each chord, so that Bach’s powerful music can be felt in both mind and body.

Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel brahms Patrick Campbell Jankowski We remember Johannes Brahms as one of nineteenth-century western music’s great composers, but he was also one of the more important students of music. He pored over manuscripts and contemporary editions of Renaissance and Baroque composers, and had a hand in bringing some of Bach’s music to publication. This passion for the music of the past, a surprisingly rare thing among composers up that time, helped to inform his own compositional style. His Handel Variations for solo piano showcase his inventiveness within a strict formal framework. While many in his generation were abandoning traditional forms, Brahms embraced them. His twentyfive variations and fugue take as their source an aria from Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in B-flat, and he adheres, in terms of character, to the Baroque spirit of his source. He also seldom ventures from the original tonic key, and the set retains a strong sense of unity throughout. As you listen, you will note the care and attention that Brahms brings to the connections from variation to variation. Each subsequent piece responds to its predecessor, whether by retaining some of its elements, or by pivoting. The grand fugue which concludes the set marks both a departure and a logical continuation… more expansive and

searching than the tightly-bound variations, yet born of the same musical traditions.

Isoldestod wagner/liszt Patrick Campbell Jankowski The lives and music of Wagner and Liszt were intertwined. Wagner married the illegitimate daughter of Liszt, bringing him literally into the family, and each of the composers absorbed, through some sort of artistic osmosis, the musical influence of the other. Liszt created many elaborate piano transcriptions in his lifetime, from the symphonies of Beethoven to the lieder of Schubert. A “Wagner Album” of Liszt’s works includes music from Tannhäuser, Der fliegende Holländer, and Lohengrin, yet “Isolde’s Love-Death” from Tristan und Isolde is especially dramatic. An adaptation of Wagner’s Liebestod is ambitious to say the least. The lush score, with its striving waves of melody, is texturally complex and orchestrally thick. While Liszt could hardly include all the notes, he manages to convey elements of the score through the use of tremolo technique, una corda pedal passages, and throbbing choral pulsations. Not surprisingly from Liszt, there are moments wherein the pianist must read from three staves at once. In composing his music-dramas Wagner gave a primacy to the vocal line that is ironically dissolved into the texture of Liszt’s piano transcription. However, the composer sensitively marks the music so as to allow the soprano melody to come to the fore throughout.

Prélude, Fugue, et Variation franck Patrick Campbell Jankowski César Franck was first a pianist, yet became entranced by the organ, ultimately serving as the resident organist in the Basilica of St. Clotilde in Paris. His playing and improvisation was renowned for its sensitive colorations, and he would often experiment with various stops to achieve unique timbral effects. Originally composed for the organ, his Prelude, Fugue, and Variation is an elegant triptych with a contrapuntal middle and a gently rendered frame at its beginning and conclusion. The prelude’s melody is shaded with a subtle melancholy and somberness that coexists with its simplicity.

Its flowing quality is achieved at least in part by the subdivision of each beat into threes. The marked fugue, by contrast, is rhythmically divided into twos, lending it a touch of sternness.

La valse ravel Patrick Campbell Jankowski The working title for La valse was “Vienne.”

Its source makes sense, as phantasmagoric strains of the Viennese waltz (almost an identity as much as a dance) float through the piece. It is a “choreographic poem” by description, originally conceived as a ballet for Diaghilev. The music is so evocative and rich with possible images that it hardly needs dance in order to convey the spirit of the waltz that so entranced Ravel. He invents a kind of musical fog at the start, within which you can catch fleeting wisps of waltz melodies. Amid cascading gestures

and flowing scales, Ravel gradually allows the waltzes to form more fully. The music builds to a climax, with its emphasis on the traditional rhythmic cells of the dance (heavy beat one, light two, and three somewhere between), before lightening again in mood and character. If there were some sort of narrative which could be derived from La valse, you might hear the dissolution of a rigid dance into frenzy, chaos, and unbridled revelry. The composer allows the dance to self-destruct through its own impulse toward passion, drama, and celebration. That formal dance, by the end of the poem, has broken down. While an orchestral work, its reduction for piano is no less successful. Its first hearing, at which Igor Stravinsky was present, was in a two-piano version. The sheer technical dexterity and physical stamina required to bring the work to life alone parallel the gradients of energy within the music itself.

About the Horowitz Piano Series The legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz chose to leave his papers to Yale upon his death in 1989. Today, Yale honors his legacy through the Horowitz Piano Series, which brings many of the world’s great keyboard artists to Yale and presents the distinguished pianists of the Yale faculty.

Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, and Radu Lupu are among the guest pianists who have performed at Yale. The series also presents pianists who are less known in the United States, such as Paul Lewis, Pierre Réach, and Mikhaïl Rudy.

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Robert Blocker Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme and works by faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis, Brahms, Mozart, and Ravel.

NOV 6

Boris Berman A performance of Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 20, D. 959, and music by Chopin, including the Barcarolle, Op. 60, and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op. 61.

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Mar 25

Lucille Chung and Alessio Bax A performance of Stravinsky’s piano four-hands arrangement of Petrushka, Ravel’s piano four-hands arrangement of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and music by Lutoslawski and Poulenc.

Wei-Yi Yang A program that in part follows Chopin’s musical language into the works of Debussy and Scriabin.

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Upcoming Events Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Yale Philharmonia A performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, featuring YSM faculty members.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 $3 surcharge at the door sep 20

sep 24 Brentano String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series New music by Martin Bresnick, and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 sep 27 Ignacio Berroa Trio

Ellington Jazz Series “The only Latin drummer in the world in the history of American music who intimately knows both worlds: his native Afro Cuban music as well as jazz.”— Dizzy Gillespie 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $22, students $10

Robert Blocker, piano Horowitz Piano Series Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme and works by faculty composer Christopher Theofanidis, Brahms, Mozart, and Ravel.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7 oct 2

oct 22 Akropolis Reed Quintet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series New works by Jeff Scott and Steven Snowden, as well as arrangements of Rameau and Gershwin.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 oct 25 Ludovic Morlot,

guest conductor

Yale Philharmonia Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with Woolsey Hall Concerto Competition winner Jung Eun Kang.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 $3 surcharge at the door

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