CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Evgeny Kissin

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Evgeny Kissin, Piano

PROKOFIEV Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet
·· The Young Juliet
·· Mercutio
·· The Montagues and Capulets
PROKOFIEV Sonata No. 8 in B-flat Major, Op. 84
CHOPIN Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61
CHOPIN Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 30, No. 4
CHOPIN Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 41, No. 4
CHOPIN Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 59, No. 1
CHOPIN Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1
CHOPIN Etude in A Minor, Op. 10, No. 2
CHOPIN Etude in E Major, Op. 10, No. 3, "Tristesse"
CHOPIN Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 10, No. 4, "Torrent"
CHOPIN Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12, "Revolutionary"
CHOPIN Etude in E Minor, Op. 25, No. 5
CHOPIN Etude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 25, No. 6, "Thirds"
CHOPIN Etude in A Minor, Op. 25, No. 11, "Winter Wind"

Encores:
CHOPIN Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2
PROKOFIEV Devilish Inspiration, Op. 4, No. 4
PROKOFIEV March from The Love for Three Oranges

Sponsored by Ernst & Young LLP

Program Notes:

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)
Excerpts from Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet

Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is easily one of the most familiar and best-loved works of the 20th century, finding favor not only as a ballet (1935) but also as three orchestral suites (the first two from 1936, the third from 1946) and Ten Pieces for piano solo (1937). Yet recent research has revealed that the work performed today, in whatever form, was perhaps not so familiar to the composer himself and certainly departed drastically from his original conception. In the new book The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, musicologist Simon Morrison proves how little was known about this well-known work—until now.

Here, in brief, is the story of Romeo and Juliet that Morrison reconstructed in Moscow from archival documents, many of which were previously unknown and are still sealed.

In November 1934 Prokofiev traveled from his home in Paris to Leningrad to scout possible performances of his operas in the Soviet Union and discuss potential dramatic projects in collaboration with the dramatist Adrian Piotrovsky. Commissions were forthcoming as part of a concerted effort by Soviet officials at the highest levels to lure the composer back to the Soviet Union. A ballet was proposed, and Romeo and Juliet chosen as its subject: “Better cannot be found,” Prokofiev concluded. Having decided to relocate to the Soviet Union, he brought his family to Russia in summer 1935 and set to work on the score, composing music to a scenario authored by Piotrovsky, dramatist Sergey Radlov, and the composer himself. Their story in four acts features a radical departure from the source text: There’s a happy ending. Romeo and Juliet are spared; love lives. Their double-suicide is prevented by Friar Laurence, who stays Romeo’s hand just as Juliet draws a breath. She rouses in Romeo’s arms, and the two dance a final, unscripted pas de deux that, if not tragic, is still heartbreaking. (This original version of the ballet, as restored by Morrison with the assistance of composer Greg Spears and newly choreographed by Mark Morris, will receive its New York City premiere in May 2009.)

Repeated vettings by cultural officials and politically motivated purges in the artistic ranks left the ballet and its composer at loose ends. Initially slated for the 1935–1936 season, the premiere was pushed back to 1936–1937 before being dropped from the rolls of the Bolshoi altogether. To see the work on the Soviet stage, Prokofiev was forced to rewrite not only the ending but also cut a trio of entrancing exotic dances and insert additional variations for Romeo and Juliet as demanded by choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky, who also altered the orchestration without the composer’s consent. Only in 1940 was Romeo and Juliet finally staged in Leningrad. That vandalized version, which Stalin approved, is what is known today.

Paradoxically, then, what was derived from the score preserves Prokofiev’s original intent better than the ballet score itself. Because they were arranged before any bureaucratic meddling, the First and Second Orchestral Suites “provide a better sense of Prokofiev’s intended orchestration of the ballet than the actual score,” Morrison explains, “even though they were assembled for nontheatrical concert performance.” The Ten Pieces likewise predate the mandated revisions and preserve something of Prokofiev’s compositional process. He always wrote at the piano, and many of his signature harmonic moves—the slippery chord changes in “The Young Juliet” and crushing dissonances in the “Montagues and Capulets,” for example—fall perfectly under a pianist’s hand. Such striking turns of phrase may owe less to abstract musical logic than a natural touch at the instrument.

What’s more, the happy ending echoes in the poignant moments of “The Young Juliet,” where it mingles with the tragic. The sprightly C-major scales at the outset, which stand for divine purity of spirit and guileless innocence, alternate with two quieter and more contemplative episodes that bespeak a nascent maturity eventually realized in the ending(s) of the ballet. Comparing two, Morrison discovers a “striking overlap: the music associated with the reunion of the two lovers in the happy version . . . became the music of Juliet’s death in the tragic version.” Thus within one short piece live the themes of love and death, transcendence and tragedy.


SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Sonata No. 8 in B-flat Major, Op. 84

Shostakovich and Prokofiev each composed a wartime trilogy: the former of symphonies (Nos. 7–9), the latter piano sonatas. Yet Prokofiev’s Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth sonatas, conceived as a set in 1939, seem to address worldly conflicts less than musical and spiritual ones. In The People’s Artist, Morrison presents the Sixth Sonata as a “fusion between violent impulse and classical discipline . . . a dialogue between neoprimitivism and neoclassicism,” between Romantic passion and Classical logic; the same may be said of the Seventh and Eighth. All three, Morrison writes, “are united in the radiant discord of their melodic and harmonic language and the willfulness of their rhythmic writing.”

Through such fusion, dialogue, and union, Prokofiev appears to assert the tenets of his faith in music. The composer was a committed Christian Scientist who believed in the divinity of his own talent and dismissed the evils of the temporal world as mere illusion. Thus traditional structures cannot contain the creative impulse; the spirit of music supersedes the materiality of its own earthly logic. As Morrison suggests, “the three sonatas transcend their own structural and syntactical constraints, revealing those constraints to be the false postulates of false reasoning” (or false consciousness, if Marx might be invoked alongside Mary Baker Eddy). Always, however, Prokofiev sought to serve the world, not forsake it, and so aspired to the better. Above the stuff of harmony and melody lay timeless truths.

The first and third movements abound in conflicts of all sorts—rhythmic, melodic, tonal, and textural—as typical of a sonata in the tradition of Beethoven. (Morrison points to the “Appassionata” as inspiration.) But the second movement, a fantastic mazurka, stands utterly apart; it is something otherworldly, seemingly imagined, slightly unhinged. The bass plods along steadily enough at the opening (although the harmonies are subtly off-kilter) but is soon jolted, as if pushed off balance by an unseen hand. Even as the melody repeats exactly (although the harmonies are again strange, having shifted to a far-removed tonal realm) the bass is offset; melody and accompaniment do not match. Another harmonic shift introduces a new, contrasting section that seems a non sequitor. The opening theme returns with an even more bizarre, serpentine accompaniment, but ultimately the melody itself, once the grounding force, dissipates altogether. The music comes unmoored from formal constraints as well as from reality.

Although the delusional qualities of the mazurka might be ascribed to spiritual forces or wartime circumstance, the music in fact attaches to fictional events. The second movement of the sonata originated as incidental music Prokofiev composed for Eugene Onegin. There the dance is part of a name-day celebration for Tatyana, who has confessed her love to Onegin. He rejects and admonishes her as drunken dancers swirl around them, oblivious and uncaring. Humiliated by her own heart, she chokes back bitter tears.


FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas; Selections from Etudes, Op. 10 and Op. 25

Frédéric Chopin was a child of material and cultural comforts, delicate constitution, and prodigious gifts; an exceptional pianist from a solidly middle-class background, he charmed the best of Polish society yet longed to explore the world outside Warsaw. After graduating from high school in 1830, Chopin traveled to Vienna, but the city proved inhospitable—through no fault of his own. He arrived a week after the November uprising in Warsaw, a violent challenge to Russian Imperial authority that had Austria siding with Russia against the Poles. With no hope of promoting himself or his music, Chopin grew homesick. “I curse the moment of my departure,” he wrote to a friend. His nostalgia for Poland colored his compositions: while in Vienna, he wrote two sets of mazurkas, a Polish folk dance in triple meter with a heavy accent on the second or third beats (unlike a waltz, also in three beats but emphasizing the first), as well as polonaises, another typical Polish dance in triple meter. In 1831 he moved to Paris, where he found himself in demand socially as well as professionally, teaching, composing, and performing in elite salons. There he met fellow pianist-composer Franz Liszt (to whom the 12 etudes of Op. 10 are dedicated), his mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult (dedicatee of Op. 25), and Georges Sand, to whom Chopin would dedicate himself as a romantic partner.

Chopin devoted himself to the piano, developing as a composer in tandem with such genres as the nocturne, prelude, mazurka, and etude. If he did not invent any of these, he surely refined and elevated them. Earlier etudes had been simply didactic, intended primarily to improve a performer’s technique, but Chopin’s are musically and pedagogically effective. Although the descriptive titles come not from the composer, but rather a publisher seeking sales, they capture the general character of the music. The “Revolutionary” Etude exudes a militant spirit, the right hand seeming to bark orders above frenzied figures in the left hand, and “Winter Wind” sends chills down the spine as the right hand whips up and down the keys in a blur.

Chopin would not have performed these pieces in major concerts before large audiences (Liszt’s native habitat) but in intimate salons populated by devoted listeners and dear friends. Ironically for a composer whose pieces have always met with success on the grandest of stages, Chopin despised public performance. “The crowd intimidates me,” he confessed to Liszt, “and I feel asphyxiated by its eager breath, paralyzed by its inquisitive stare, silenced by its alien faces.” Such audacious works as the Polonaise-fantaisie thus display a bravura the composer did not himself possess.

—Elizabeth Bergman

Elizabeth Bergman earned her Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University, and has authored numerous award-winning books and articles.


© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Evgeny Kissin, Piano
Evgeny Kissin was born in Moscow in October 1971 and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At age six he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has remained his only teacher. At age 10 he made his concerto debut, playing Mozart’s Concerto K. 466, and gave his first solo recital in Moscow one year later. He came to international attention in March 1984 when, at the age of 12, he performed Chopin’s Concertos 1 and 2 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko. This concert was recorded live by Melodia, and a two-LP album was released the following year. During the next two years, several Kissin performances in Moscow were recorded live and five more LPs were released by Melodia.

Mr. Kissin’s first appearances outside Russia were in 1985 in Eastern Europe, followed a year later by his first tour of Japan. In 1987 he made his West European debut at the Berlin Festival. In 1988 he toured Europe with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov and also made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. In December of the same year he performed with Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker in a New Year’s concert which was broadcast internationally, with the performance repeated the following year at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Audio and video recordings of the New Year’s concert were made by Deutsche Grammophon.

In 1990 Mr. Kissin made his first appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London and that same year made his North American debut, performing both Chopin concertos with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. The following week he opened Carnegie Hall’s Centennial season with a spectacular debut recital, which was recorded live by BMG Classics.

Musical awards and tributes from around the world have been showered upon Mr. Kissin. In 1987 he received the Crystal Prize of the Osaka Symphony Hall for the best performance of the year 1986 (which was his first performance in Japan). In 1991 he received the Musician of the Year Prize from the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, Italy. He was special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards Ceremony, broadcast live to an audience estimated at over one billion, and became Musical America’s youngest Instrumentalist of the Year in 1995. In 1997 he received the prestigious Triumph Award for his outstanding contribution to Russia’s culture, one of the highest cultural honors to be awarded in the Russian Republic, and again, the youngest-ever awardee. He was the first pianist to be invited to give a recital at the BBC Proms (1997), and, in the 2000 season, was the first concerto soloist ever to be invited to play in the Proms opening concert. In May 2001 Mr. Kissin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the Manhattan School of Music. In December 2003 in Moscow, he received the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia’s highest musical honors. In June 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Mr. Kissin’s recordings have also received numerous awards and accolades, including the Edison Klassiek in the Netherlands and the Diapason d’Or and the Grande Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque in France, as well as awards from music magazines throughout the world. His recording of works by Scriabin, Medtner, and Stravinsky won him a Grammy in 2006 for Best Instrumental Soloist, and in 2002 he was named Echo Klassik Soloist of the Year.

Mr. Kissin’s first studio recording, in 1988 for RCA Red Seal, was of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra, and six Etudes-tableaux, Op. 39. Among other works he has recorded for RCA Red Seal are two Chopin recital programs, one with the four ballades, Barcarolle, Berceuse, and Scherzo No. 4, and another with the 24 Preludes, Op. 28, Sonata No. 2, and Polonaise in A-flat; Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, and Franck’s Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue; Schumann’s Fantasy. Op. 17, and five Etudes d’execution transcendante by Liszt; Schumann’s Kreisleriana and the Bach-Busoni Chaconne; the Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, Glinka-Balakirev’s The Lark, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp Minor and Carnaval; and an all-Brahms disc including Sonata No. 3 in F Minor and five Hungarian Dances. His latest recording, released in September 2005, includes works by Scriabin and Medtner and Stravinsky’s Movements from Pétrouchka. A recent duo recital with James Levine of works by Schubert was recorded live at Carnegie Hall and will be a forthcoming release on RCA Red Seal.

Other recital albums include Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major and Schubert-Liszt’s Four Songs (BMG/RCA Victor Red Seal), Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasie, Brahms’s Seven Pieces, Op. 116, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 (Deutsche Grammophon) and Haydn Sonata No. 30 in A Major, Sonata No. 52 in E flat major, and Schubert Sonata in A Minor D784 (Sony).

Concerto recordings include the complete Beethoven concertos, and Mozart’s Concerto No. 24 and the Schumann Concerto with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (EMI); the Schumann Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and Giulini (Sony Classical); Beethoven’s Concertos Nos. 2 and 5 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and James Levine (Sony Classical); Prokofiev’s Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon), and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the Boston Symphony and Seiji Ozawa (RCA Red Seal); Mozart Concertos Nos. 12 and 20 and Rondo in D Major KV. 382, Haydn’s Concerto in D Major, Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 with the Moscow Virtuosi and Spivakov (RCA Red Seal); Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon).

Christopher Nupen’s documentary film Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music was released in 2000 on video and DVD by RCA Red Seal.

Mr. Kissin’s musicality, the depth and poetic quality of his interpretations, and his extraordinary virtuosity have placed him at the forefront of the world’s new generation of young pianists. He is in demand the world over, and has appeared with many great conductors, including Abbado, Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Dohnányi, Giulini, Levine, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Svetlanov, and Temirkanov, as well as all the world’s major orchestras. He makes regular recital tours to the US, Japan, and throughout Europe.

During the 2008–2009 season Mr. Kissin will give recitals with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, and London. He will also play solo recitals throughout Europe, the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia.