CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Luca Pisaroni
Vlad Iftinca

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Luca Pisaroni, Bass-Baritone
New York Recital Debut
Vlad Iftinca, Piano

SCHUBERT "Il traditor deluso," D. 902, No. 2
SCHUBERT "Pensa, che questo istante," D. 76
SCHUBERT "Il modo di prender moglie," D. 902, No. 3
SCHUBERT "L’incanto degli occhi," D.902, No. 1
ROSSINI "La promessa" from Les Soirées musicales
ROSSINI "L'ultimo ricordo," Vol. I, No. 4 from Péchés de vieillesse
ROSSINI "L'orgia" from Les Soirées musicales
MEYERBEER "Sie und ich"
MEYERBEER "Der Garten des Herzens"
MEYERBEER "Die Rosenblätter"
MEYERBEER "Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube"
MEYERBEER "Hör ich das Liedchen klingen"
MEYERBEER "Komm du schönes Fischermädchen"
MEYERBEER "Scirocco"
MEYERBEER "Lied des venezianischen Gondoliers"
MEYERBEER "Menschenfeindlich"
LISZT "Im Rhein, im schönen Strome"
LISZT "Es muss ein Wunderbares sein"
LISZT "Es rauschen die Winde"
LISZT "O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst "
LISZT "Die Vätergruft"
LISZT Tre sonetti di Petrarca
·· Pace non trovo
·· Benedetto sia'l giorno
·· I' vidi in terra angelici costumi

Encore:
SCHUBERT "Rastlose Liebe," D. 138

Program is approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes, including one intermission

Program Notes:

THE PROGRAM


FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)

About the Composer

Franz Schubert, one of the 19th century’s greatest composers, spent his life in his native Vienna. He was educated at the Imperial and Royal City College, and studied composition with Antonio Salieri. Exploding into full-fledged creativity in autumn 1814, he composed over a thousand works before dying a little more than two months short of his 32nd birthday. He is one of the most celebrated German song composers of all time, with over 600 songs to his credit.


About the Songs

The “Three Songs for Bass Voice” of 1827—“Il traditor deluso,” “Il modo di prender moglie,” and “L’incanto degli occhi”—were dedicated to the famous singer Luigi Lablache (1794–1858), and were probably written for him. Italian poet Metastasio, who spent much of his life in Vienna and wrote numerous opera librettos, is the source of texts for two of these songs. The words for “Il traditor deluso” are those of the “Aria di Atalia” from Metastasio’s sacred drama Gioas, Rè di Giuda (Joab, King of Judah). The anonymous poet of “Il modo di prender moglie” is amusingly cynical about marriage-for-money, while the words of “L’incanto degli occhi” come from Act II, Scene 5, of the Metastasio’s 1740 libretto for the opera Attilio Regolo. The latter’s historical title character is the general and consul Marcus Atilius Regulus, who died around 250 BCE. In this fictionalized tale, Regulus has a daughter Attilia, who plots to save her father’s life with the help of her beloved Licinio, whose words make up this song. Also taken from Metastaio—his Alcide al bivio (Hercules at the Crossroads)—is “Pensa, che questo istante,” sung by Fronimo, tutor to the young Hercules and to whom this aria is addressed.

A Closer Listen

The musical model for all four songs is Gioachino Rossini’s operas, both comic (opera buffa) and serious (opera seria). His music was enormously popular in Schubert’s Vienna, and here the composer copies his style with genial, at times slightly mocking, exactitude. “Il traditor deluso” is set as a recitative and da capo aria (da capo means that the initial section of the aria comes back as the final section, usually with added ornamentation by the singer). The persona works himself up into an impressive frenzy, full of melodramatic touches, syncopation, challenges to the pianist’s dexterity, and lots of vocal pyrotechnics. “Il modo di prender moglie” is a lively, bustling work in a Rossinian comic vein. In the Schubert-Rossini amalgam, “L’incanto degli occhi,” listen for the sudden dynamic changes, the leaps between high and low registers, and the switches between pathos and flirtatiousness in the purest operatic style.


GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868)

About the Composer

Born in Pesaro of a musical family, Gioachino Rossini composed his first opera in 1810, and rapidly became a “hit” with such works as the tragedy, Otello, and the comic operas La gazza ladra and Almaviva, ossia L’inutile precauzione, which we know as Il barbiere di Siviglia. He settled in Paris in 1824 to compose for its famous opera houses; between the ages of 19 and 37, he composed 40 operas and then abandoned opera altogether for the remaining 40 years of his life.

About the Songs

In the early 1830s, Rossini held weekly musical salons at his home; the eight chamber arias and four duets he composed for these occasions were published in 1835 as Les soirées musicales. In 1836, he moved to Bologna for some 12 years, and then returned to Paris with his wife, Olympe Pélissier, in 1857 to start a new life after 20 years of invalidism and exhaustion. There in his apartment on the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, he reigned over Saturday musicales for which he composed Péchés de vieillesse, or Sins of Old Age, with the likes of Liszt, Verdi, and Saint-Saëns in attendance. Happily for us, Rossini sinned a lot between 1857 and 1868, and the results were gathered into 13 volumes.

A Closer Listen

Les soirées musicales begin with three “canzonettas,” or song-like arias, including “La promessa” to words by Metastasio. Love’s eternal promise never to be unfaithful is summed up in a song in barcarolle style (imitations of folk songs by Venetian gondoliers), with a more impassioned middle section; the words sin ch’io vivrò (“as long as I live”) are particularly intense. “L’ultimo ricordo” is the song of a dying man who gives his Olympia the faded flower he first took from her bosom on the day she became his beloved. The piano introduction, rising in successive waves of intensity, and the quasi-chanted initial phrases for the singer already tell us that this is not frivolous salon entertainment. By contrast, “L’orgia” celebrates the joys of wine and love, of Bacchus and Cupid, in a lively brindisi (a song in which the company is exhorted to drink or join in a toast).


GIACOMO MEYERBEER (1791–1864)

About the Composer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was born Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer into one of German-Jewish society’s most distinguished families. He began his career as a pianist who studied with Muzio Clementi, Antonio Salieri, and Carl Friedrich Zelter, but a trip to Paris in November 1814 turned his attention to opera. During his nine years in Italy, he underwent a metamorphosis into one of Europe’s leading composers of Italian opera and French grand opera, his works including Les Huguenots, Le prophète, and L’Africaine.

About the Songs

Meyerbeer’s name is so bound up with operatic history that it is surprising to discover that he also wrote songs in Italian, French, and German. The lieder on tonight’s program were all composed in the 1830s and set to poems by his own brother Michael or such well-known poets as Friedrich Rückert, Wilhelm Müller (the poet of Schubert’s two song cycles), and Heinrich Heine. Schubert was among those who discovered Rückert’s collection of Östliche Rosen (Eastern Roses), of which he set six poems to music, including “Dass sie hier gewesen,” which is the same text that Meyerbeer used for his “Sie und ich.” We know the words of “Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube” and “Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen” from Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love), where they are respectively the third and 10th songs of 16, but Meyerbeer was drawn to these words several years before Schumann’s famous cycle. Meyerbeer’s brother Michael was the poet for the three final songs of the group, beginning with “Scirocco,” which takes its title from the Mediterranean winds that come from the Sahara.

A Closer Listen

In “Sie und ich,” listen for the gentle puffs of breeze in the piano between the singer’s phrases and the sensuous harmonies that tell of erotic feeling. In another love song, “Der Garten des Herzens,” a multitude of piquant grace notes and echoes in the piano bring to sounding life Müller’s lighthearted sexual innuendos (the “garden” with the “narrow little gate” to which his sweetheart has the key). For “Die Rosenblätter,” the composer of huge operas concocts a delicate confection, with echo effects that vanish into the piano’s upper reaches. “Hör ich das Liedchen klingen” is a melancholy air in the 6/8 meter and minor mode traditional for barcarolles. For “Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube,” the rhyming attributes of the beloved (“die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine”) are set as grace-noted figures for a dainty sweetheart, followed by ever-so-slightly overdone lover’s swooning over the rose, lily, dove, and sun. In Meyerbeer’s setting of “Komm du schönes Fischermädchen,” we hear both the darkness in this seducer’s soul and his seductive grace and power. In “Scirocco,” the composer and his brother merge images of the scirocco with the winds of passion that prevent a young woman from sleeping. The charming “Lied des venezianischen Gondoliers,” whose persona bids his sweetheart come out in the gondola with him (after all, her mother is asleep), makes clear that Meyerbeer wrote his 60 or so songs for professional singers, not parlor amateurs. So too does “Menschenfeindlich,” a brief, bitter study in self-hatred that is set to music in dramatic style.



FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886)

About the Composer

The Hungarian-born Franz Liszt was one of the “New German School” of Romantic composers: He revolutionized musical form, experimented in radical ways with harmony, and invented the genre of the symphonic poem. After a glittering career as a virtuoso, Liszt spent 13 years at the court in Weimar along with Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, the second great love of his life, and then went from Weimar to Rome in 1859. Anyone surveying his gigantic oeuvre realizes that song was marginal to him, but he still wrote more than 70 in German, French, Italian, English, Hungarian, and Russian.

About the Songs

The initial friendship between the great poet Heinrich Heine and Liszt foundered, but “Im Rhein, im schönen Strome” proves that Liszt was one of Heine’s best composers. The Bavarian poet Oskar von Redwitz became famous at age 26 for his sentimental epic Amaranth, and “Es muss ein Wunderbares sein” is no less sentimental. But its theme of love that lasts throughout a lifetime appealed to the composer, who was not so fortunate and who fashioned a beautiful song from these words. We know Ludwig Rellstab’s name principally from the seven songs to his words in Schubert’s posthumous compilation Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and also as the man who called Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2, the “Moonlight” Sonata; he also wrote the words for “Es rauschen die Winde,” set to music earlier by Schubert (as “Herbst,” D. 945) and twice by Liszt (a common practice for him). “O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst” is a setting of a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath, famous in the 1840s for rabble-rousing political verse—but this is a love song. “Die Vätergruft” is a ballad by the German Romantic poet Ludwig Uhland: An old man enters the crypt where his ancestors are buried and then joins their company. The final songs on the program are three settings of sonnets by the 14th-century poet Francesco Petrarca, whose love for Laura from afar inspired some of Italy’s greatest poetry.

A Closer Listen

Schumann also set “Im Rhein, im schönen Strome” in his Dichterliebe, Op. 48, but where Schumann drew on the concept of reflections in the water, Liszt paints rippling waters and the fluttering of angels’ wings. “Es muss ein Wunderbares sein” has long been one of Liszt’s most popular songs for its merger of a simple texture and a sophisticated harmonic language. Typically for Liszt, the second setting of “Es rauschen die Winde” is pared down from the first version, and draws a sharper contrast between the rose-bedecked days of love and the cold winds that blow over the grave. Some will recognize in ”O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst” its kinship with “Liebesträume,” No. 3, S. 541, one of Liszt’s most popular piano compositions. “Die Vätergruft” begins with austere single pitches, walking solemnly upward from the low bass, and gives the old warrior a majestic final song to sing before the echoing eeriness of the tomb envelopes him. The first Petrarca song, “Pace non trovo,” begins with an agitated succession of Liszt’s most advanced harmonies—the prelude to a luscious outpouring of pure song. In “Benedetto sia’l giorno,” Petrarca calls for multiple blessings on everything to do with Laura; Liszt bids the piano harmonies waft upwards like blessings to heaven in the piano introduction and then embarks on a succession of blessings that shift from key to key in Liszt’s usual adventurous manner. “I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi” tells of angels on earth and the earth-shattering beauty in the person of Laura, for whom Liszt pours out his most celestial music.

Luca Pisaroni, Bass-Baritone
New York Recital Debut
LUCA PISARONI

Luca Pisaroni grew up in Verdi’s hometown of Busseto in Parma, Italy, and received his musical education at the Conservatorio di musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, in Buenos Aires, and in New York.

Mr. Pisaroni regularly performs with the leading opera companies of Europe and North America. Recent appearances include the roles of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Leporello (Don Giovanni), and Melisso (Alcina) at the Opéra Bastille; Figaro at The Metropolitan Opera and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) for Glyndebourne; Papageno (Die Zauberflöte) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; and an appearance in a staged version of Bach’s St. John Passion at the Théâtre du Châtelet, directed by Robert Wilson.

During the 2009–2010 season, Mr. Pisaroni returns to The Metropolitan Opera as Figaro in a production conducted by Fabio Luisi. He also reprises that role at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, where he also appears as Aeneas in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants in a production by Deborah Warner, which will also run at London’s Barbican Centre. Mr. Pisaroni’s concert engagements include Mozart’s Requiem with Roberto Abbado and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, and Jaap van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony, in a special concert to celebrate the grand opening of the new AT&T Performing Arts Center. In addition to this evening’s performance, Mr. Pisaroni’s fall tour includes recitals in Georgia and at the Ravinia Festival.

Mr. Pisaroni’s concert performances have included Hasse’s I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro Signore at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and Cherubini’s Missa Solemnis for the Maggio Musicale Florence under the baton of Riccardo Muti. He has also sung Leporello with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of Don Giovanni at Tanglewood; Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri with Sir Simon Rattle and The Philadelphia Orchestra, both in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall; and Zebul in Handel’s Jephtha with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

His performances as Publio (La clemenza di Tito) and Masetto (Don Giovanni) at the Salzburg Festival are available on DVD as part of the acclaimed Mozart 22 series on the Decca and TDK labels. Additional DVD releases include his highly acclaimed portrayal of Guglielmo in Nicholas Hytner’s production of Così fan tutte in Glyndebourne, and the title role in Le nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, conducted by René Jacobs. Mr. Pisaroni is also featured on Cecilia Bartoli’s recording, Maria.

Vlad Iftinca, Piano
VLAD IFTINCA

Vlad Iftinca is currently part of the 2009–2010 Metropolitan Opera music staff roster and is also the Staff Music Coach for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Born in Romania, he received his primary education at Reina Sofia School of Music and the Real Conservatorio in Madrid, Spain. He pursued additional studies at Mannes College The New School for Music and The Juilliard School.

Mr. Iftinca has collaborated with such distinguished artists as singers Hei-Kyung Hong, Thomas Hampson, Shenyang, and Isabel Leonard; pianist-conductor Leon Fleisher; violinist José Luis García Asensio; and violist Gérard Caussé. This past summer, Mr. Iftinca was featured in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009 Summer Recital Series. Other recent engagements include performances at Alice Tully Hall; recitals in Los Angeles and San Francisco; and appearances at the Hong Kong Arts Festival; Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny with the Spoleto Festival USA; and the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute for Young Artists.

Mr. Iftinca has been part of the music staff at the Renata Scotto Opera Academy in Westchester, New York. From 2004 to 2006, he collaborated with Regina Resnik Presents, performing in San Francisco and New York. Mr. Iftinca also recorded the complete works for four hands and two pianos of Joaquín Rodrigo with Spanish pianist Consuelo Martín Colinet, which was released in 1999 under Spanish record label Dial Discos.