Michael Noble, piano, September 26, 2019

Robert Blocker, Dean

doctor of musical arts degree recital

Michael Noble, piano Thursday, September 26, 2019 | 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Nico Muhly b. 1981

A Hudson Cycle (2005)

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

Ballades, Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor. Andante No. 2 in D major. Andante No. 3 in B minor. Intermezzo. Allegro No. 4 in B major. Andante con moto

intermission

Muhly

Frederic Rzewski b. 1938

“Quiet Music” from Three Etudes for Piano (2003)

De Profundis (1992)

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

Since his first recital at the age of six, he has won prizes in numerous competitions.

Michael has been called “a pianist to remember” by Het Nieuwsblad, and his playing has been hailed as “elegant, stylish, and powerful” (Peninsula Reviews).

Michael has performed in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall, Orchestra Hall, and the Jewish Museum in Warsaw. He is a sought-after guest artist, appearing regularly at festivals including the Gentsche Festspiele (Belgium), the Kwadrofonik Festival (Poland), and the Thailand International Composition Festival. Additionally, Michael has been featured as soloist with the Monterey and Tulsa Symphonies, and the Idyllwild Arts Academy Alumni Orchestra, among others.

Michael obtained his bachelor of music in piano performance and bachelor 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 degrees at the Yale School of Music and is now a candidate for the doctor of musical arts degree there.

Program Notes

by Michael Noble A Hudson Cycle Muhly

Ballades Brahms

Nico Muhly is one of America’s most prominent living composers. As a composer who straddles the boundary between popular and classical genres, he has collaborated with Björk, is a member of the Icelandic music collective/recording label, Bedroom Community, and has also written a number of acclaimed choral, operatic, symphonic, chamber, and solo works. Most recently, his opera, Marnie, was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in their 2017–18 season.

Brahms published the four Ballades, Op. 10 in 1856. These are the first opus of the groups of small works that were to become his primary pianistic genre later in life.

Brahms was certainly familiar with Chopin’s Ballades as he was the progenitor of this genre, however, Brahms takes a different approach. While both Chopin and Brahms conceived of their ballades with a narrative approach in mind, Chopin’s, according to Jim Samson, “draw heavily upon the sonata principle, and particularly on thematic dualism of the sonata,” while Brahms’ assume a loose ternary form.

A Hudson Cycle was written in 2005 as a wedding gift for two friends leaving New York City. Muhly describes the work as one “of longing and anticipation; losing a beautiful place, approaching a beloved person. The right hand and the left struggle to synchronise, now succeeding, now failing to coincide.” The piece features polyrhythms between the hands, two beats in the right for every three in the left, which recalls the uneven surges of the Hudson River.

Of the four, only the first in D minor is based on an actual ballad: that of the Scottish Edward Ballad, which Brahms had read in Herder’s German translation.

The story is about a child, Edward, who is questioned by his mother about the blood on his sword. He eventually admits that it was his brother or father (depending on the version) whom he has killed and that he will leave and never return. The mother asks what she will gain from his departure, and he replies “a curse from hell” and implicates her in the murder. This Ballad features Brahms’ ossianic style replete with open fifths that recall an ancient Scottish past. The middle section in D major provides a strong contrast with a growing fanfare-like motive that reaches a resonant climax before the opening material returns with austere accompaniment.

The second Ballad is in the parallel major and presents a mellifluous arpeggiated melody that is contrasted with a second section in B minor. At first, this section is characterized by relentless eighth notes before it abruptly moves to a galloping section in the parallel major. The restless eighth notes return before the first theme returns (now in B major and even warmer than before) before settling back into D major.

The third Ballad in B minor is entitled “Intermezzo,” and is in the clearest ternary of the four. It consists of an unsettled, demoniacal A section that is contrasted with an ethereal bell-like Trio in F-sharp major before the A section returns as a ghostly shadow of its former self.

The last Ballade in B major is the most expansive of the four. It opens with a melancholic melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment before moving to a moment of utmost intimacy in which the melody in the middle voice is to be brought out only slightly from its undulating accompaniment. What follows is a reprise of the first half of A before a chorale section provides a brief interlude. Finally, the intimate brook-like music returns to close the set.

“Quiet Music” muhly Muhly’s Three Etudes were composed in 2003 in preparation for a larger (and still incomplete) work for piano. Each deals with a particular rhythmic and harmonic feature. The second, “Quiet Music,” focuses on drones and chant-like music with intervals frequently spanning a tenth in each hand. The sense of space and timelessness with which the piece begins gives way to a steady pulsation of eighth notes in the middle that accelerates before dissolving into a wisp at the end.

Program Notes, cont.

De Profundis rzewski Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis is a seminal work in the pianistic repertoire and the first major composition for speaking pianist.

Written in 1992 for Anthony De Mare and Larry Brose, De Profundis is a setting of portions of Oscar Wilde’s letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, that he wrote while incarcerated in Reading Gaol. De Profundis recounts Wilde’s previous relationship and the lavish lifestyle that led to his imprisonment, speaks of the hardships of prison life, and culminates in his own self-realization as he accepts his suffering through an artistic and spiritual process.

Rzewski’s setting adds not only the musical, but also the dramatic; indeed it is best described as a monodrama for pianist.

The piece begins with the pianist inhaling and exhaling intensely in-between (and during) brief fragments of music, which conjures Wilde’s hyperventilation before arriving in prison. In addition, Rzewski instructs the pianist to whistle, sing, shout, laugh, woof like a dog, hit the piano and his/herself, and sob throughout. Amidst this theatricality, there are two virtuosic piano solos, the first of which is a fugato that follows the text: “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualizing of the soul.” Additionally, Rzewski quotes snippets of Don Giovanni and nursery rhymes throughout.

Wilde’s De Profundis is a profound work and monument of literature on its own, but here Rzewski has created his own

monument by accentuating these sentiments through his awe-inspiring setting. He expertly traces Wilde’s arc from desperation and humiliation to anger to resignation and finally to acceptance of his plight.

However, it is a passage that Rzewski omits that may describe this arc most poignantly: “I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sunlit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.”

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Tickets start at $15, students $7 oct 2

OCT 3 Hannah Lash & Christopher Theofanidis, faculty composers

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OCT 10 Sean Kennard, piano

DMA Recitals Music by Debussy, Berg, Ravel, and Prokofiev.

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free Carol Jantsch, tuba Faculty Artist Series Giancarlo Castro’s Sonatina for Tuba, and arrangments of music

by Brahms, Faure, Korngold, and Raymond Scott.

3:00 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

free OCT 13

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

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