CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Francesco Tristano Schlimé

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Francesco Tristano Schlimé, Piano

BERIO Cinque variazioni
FRESCOBALDI Toccata in A Minor, "per l'organo da sonarsi alla levatione," No. 4, from Il secondo libro...
FRESCOBALDI Toccata in F Major, No. 11, from Toccate e partite d'intavolatura di cimbalo…libro primo
FRESCOBALDI Toccata in F Major, No. 9, from Il secondo libro...
BACH French Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 815
CARL CRAIG Technology (adapted Francesco Tristano Schlimé)
JUSTIN MESSINA NYTectonics: 4 City Bridges (NY Premiere)
HAYDN Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48
BERIO Wasserklavier
FRANCESCO T. SCHLIMÉ Nach Wasser, noch Erde (Improvisation)

Encore:
FRANCESCO T. SCHLIMÉ The Melody

Rising Stars is a project of the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO), supported by the European Commission. For this series, the directors of Europe’s most important concert halls and Carnegie Hall—the only non-European member of ECHO—nominate young soloists or ensembles from their own countries to appear in other ECHO halls. Rising Stars nominees appear at Carnegie Hall in the Distinctive Debuts series in Weill Recital Hall.

Francesco Tristano Schlimé was nominated by the Philharmonie (Luxembourg).

The Distinctive Debuts series is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for the presentation of young artists generously provided by The Lizabeth and Frank Newman Charitable Foundation.

Additional endowment support for international outreach has been provided by the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.

Program Notes:

By Paul Griffiths

LUCIANO BERIO Cinque variazioni
Born 1925, in Oneglia, Italy; died May 27, 2003, in Rome.

Composed in 1952–53 and revised in 1966, the Cinque variazioni were first performed in 1953 in London; they received their Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on April 29, 1972, with Benjamin Whitten, piano.

Berio as a young man had ambitions as a pianist, and though these were thwarted when a gun went off in his hand while he was doing military service, throughout his life he enjoyed coming back to the piano as a machine for harmony and memory. His first piano composition, written soon after he had completed his training with a summer under Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood, is a work that begins by discovering its material note by note. It then develops that material, sometimes abruptly and at hectic speed, but more commonly in a slow and searching manner, allowing full scope to how the composer’s characteristic chords want to linger and reverberate, touching off echoes around the keyboard.


GIROLAMO ALESSANDRO FRESCOBALDI Toccata in A Minor, “Per l’organo da sonarsi alla levatione,” No. 4 from Il secondo libro di toccate; Toccata in F Major, No. 11 from Toccate e partite d’intavolatura di cimbalo . . . libro primo; Toccata in F Major, No. 9 from Il secondo libro di toccate
Born September 1583, in Ferrara, Italy; died March 1, 1643, in Rome.

Born in Ferrara, Frescobaldi was brought up at that city’s highly musical court, where madrigals and keyboard music were cultivated with an ear for piquant harmonic progressions. He spent almost his entire adult life in Rome, playing the organ at St. Peter’s and the harpsichord for his cardinal patrons, but his several published volumes of keyboard pieces carried his music and his fame all over Europe. Among those volumes, two start boldly with toccatas: compositions explicitly to be touched (toccata) at the keyboard but planned, Frescobaldi said in his preface to the first book, to mimic madrigals in their expressive intensity and, often, their quick movement from one mood to another.

Mr. Schlimé, who has made these toccatas a central part of his repertory, has said of them: “Little by little I am finding ways to establish a real dialogue, a dialogue between time and space, between contrasted cities and epochs, between score and moment, between harpsichord and piano. It is also a dialogue between movement and dead stop, between learned music and nightclub, between acoustics and technology.”

The first of Mr. Schlimé’s selections here is a toccata devised for organists to play at the solemn moment in the mass when the priest lifts up the consecrated host. This and the next piece are strongly integrated, and take their time to explore harmonic strangenesses. The third piece is, by contrast, capricious. It is also virtuoso, the composer advising the performer: “Not without difficulty will you reach the end.”


JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH French Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, BWV 815
Born March 21, 1685, in Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, in Leipzig.

Composed about 1722, the French Suite No. 4 received its first Carnegie Hall performance in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 13, 1962, with Ralph Kirkpatrick, clavichord.

Bach’s French suites gained their name only after his death, when someone grouped under this title a set of six suites lacking preludes; there is nothing specially French about them, and indeed their Courantes are of the dashing Italian type rather than the stately French. The suites date from around the time when Bach, the widowed father of four young children, remarried. Probably he intended them as teaching material for his highly gifted eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, who would certainly have been able to learn much here about finger dexterity, phrasing, balance, and, not least, lithe counterpoint: the movements are generally in two parts, and the later ones in this E-flat Suite are full of canonic writing. In each half of the Allemande, the bass line progressively speeds up, equalling the right hand’s sixteenth-note motion just before the end. The Courante’s bass maintains an exciting dotted rhythm against the right hand’s triplets.


CARL CRAIG Technology (adapted by Francesco Tristano Schlimé)
Born 1969, in Detroit.

Composed in 1995, Technology receives its Carnegie Hall premiere tonight in an adaptation by Francesco Tristano Schlimé.

Carl Craig has been one of the leading figures in Detroit’s techno music scene since the early 1990s. Mr. Schlimé has written as follows:

The composition Technology is taken from Carl Craig’s seminal 1995 album Landcruising. In my adaptation I am not aiming literally to transcribe the different layers of the piece for piano; rather, I intend to make a sort of “acoustic remix.” Taking original elements from the piece, transforming them pianistically, and altering the structure are all part of this organic process. Technology then becomes a work in progress that exists well beyond the genre commonly known as Detroit techno.


JUSTIN MESSINA Tectonics: 4 New York Bridges
Born 1980

Composed in 2006, Tectonics: 4 New York Bridges was first performed on July 25 of that year in Montpellier, France, with Francesco Tristano Schlimé; it receives its New York premiere tonight.

Mr. Messina was born in Southern California and studied at Indiana University with Christopher Rouse and The Juilliard School with Robert Beaser. In addition to tonight’s piece, his compositions include Abandon for ensemble and electronic soundtrack, played by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall last year.

The composer has written the following about Tectonics:

This work is an unmistakably urban composition inspired by New York, my home for the last five years. It is a set of reactions to the arteries of Manhattan, sometimes concrete, but always emotional. While the most immediate references within the work are to the bridges mentioned above, the music of the city and that urban artist the DJ are also strong influences. This can be heard in those moments between movements, where the codas and introductions overlap, to form a seamless flow of material. Two additional sets of loops may be inserted at these transition points at the performer’s discretion. There is no predetermined order to the movements; thus, each performance features different forms, and meanings. The work was composed for Francesco Tristano Schlimé, my friend and fellow urbanite.


JOSEPH HAYDN Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Lower Austria; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna.

Composed in 1789, the Sonata in C Major received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 4, 1960, with Nikita Magaloff, piano.

Haydn produced 20 piano sonatas during the 1770s and only a few thereafter, this one being among the last. Many of these works, like Bach’s French suites, seem to have been intended for pupils, to provide them with clear examples of keyboard technique and compositional art, but this C-major sonata perhaps has a more personal quality. Its opening movement is in one of Haydn’s favorite forms: a set of variations (on an elegantly ornamented theme) alternating between major and minor. Then, as was his custom when presenting a slow movement as the main dish, Haydn rounds off the sonata with a quick finale—a rondo that, in this case, opens with a bounce and maintains it to the end.


LUCIANO BERIO Wasserklavier
Composed in 1965, Wasserklavier was first performed in Brescia in 1970, Brescia, with Antonio Ballista; it received its first Carnegie Hall performance in Weill Recital Hall on May 15, 1992, with Robert Miller, piano.

In his Waterpiano, Berio creates a surprising Romantic miniature. He subsequently added three studies to complete the set of ancient elements—Erdenklavier, Luftklavier, and Feuerklavier—and two more pieces to make what he published as Six Encores.


FRANCESCO TRISTANO SCHLIMÉ Nach Wasser, noch Erde (Improvisation)


Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Francesco Tristano Schlimé, Piano
Francesco Tristano Schlimé was the winner of the 2004 International Piano Competition in Orléans, France, and was recently selected by the Philharmonie in Luxembourg to take part in the Rising Stars network of European concerts.

Mr. Schlimé has participated in numerous festivals and has performed as soloist throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. He made his US debut as a soloist in 2000 with Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra and has since performed with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchstre symphonique d’Orléans, Chamber Orchestra of Wrocław, Orchestre Royal de chambre de Wallonie, and the New Juilliard Ensemble under the batons of Claus-Peter Flor, Emmanuel Krivine, Pierre-Michel Durand, Jean-Marc Cochereau, Georges Octors, Janos Fürst, and Joel Sachs.

In 2001 Mr. Schlimé founded the chamber orchestra New Bach Players, with which he performs as both soloist and conductor. In 2004 he presented and conducted, at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and the Beaux-Arts in Brussels, an original transcription/adaptation for piano and strings of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Mr. Schlimé has been composing and improvising since childhood; his works E pur si muove and Sonnet for Viola and Cello are examples of early compositions in the Classical style. Also inspired by contemporary genres, he has written jazz works for solo piano and jazz ensembles. He also explores his interest in improvisation with pianist Rami Khalifé (with whom he integrates the band Aufgang) or with soloists of the Russian National Orchestra

Mr. Schlimé has recorded the “Goldberg” Variations and the complete cycle of Bach’s keyboard concertos with the New Bach Players in Warsaw,a recording of which is available from CD Accord. His recording of Luciano Berio’s complete piano works was released in France in 2005 on the Sisyphe/Abeille Musique label. In 2006, he made his debut recording on PentaTone Classics, performing Ravel’s Concerto in G and Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 5 with Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra. In 2007 two more CDs, featuring Frescobaldi’s first book of toccatas and Bach’s French suites, will be released by Sisyphe/Abeille Musique.

Born in 1981 in Luxembourg, Mr. Schlimé attended conservatories there and in Brussels, Riga, and Paris before entering The Juilliard School, where he earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees. He has studied with Béatrice Rauchs, Emile Naoumoff, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden, Jerome Lowenthal, Jacob Lateiner, Rosalyn Tureck, Bruce Brubaker, and Mikhail Pletnev.