CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Stephen Hough

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Stephen Hough, Piano

BACH Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 (arr. Cortot/Hough)
FAURÉ Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat Major, Op. 63
FAURÉ Impromptu No. 5 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 102
FAURÉ Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 66
FRANCK Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue
COPLAND Piano Variations
CHOPIN Nocturne in B Major, Op. 62, No. 1
CHOPIN Sonata in B Minor, Op. 58

Encores:
ALBÉNIZ Evocation from Iberia, Book I
STEPHEN HOUGH On Falla
DEBUSSY La fille aux cheveux de lin from Preludes, Book I, No. 8

Program Notes:

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565

The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor was first performed at Carnegie Hall in Carl Tausig’s arrangement on January 21, 1892, with Ferruccio Busoni; tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Alfred Cortot and Stephen Hough’s arrangement of the work.

The old joke that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor even an empire may have a musical parallel in J. S. Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue for organ in D Minor. Questions have been raised about its authorship: It may not even be by Bach. And likely it wasn’t written for organ; serious technical problems in the writing suggest it was perhaps composed for solo violin. If so, it was probably not originally in D minor but rather in another key. This has not prevented the work from becoming one of “Bach’s” most famous pieces. It has shown up prominently in film: James Mason (as Captain Nemo) played it in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954), and Leopold Stokowski conducted his own orchestral transcription in Fantasia (1940). The piano transcription on this program belongs to a long tradition of adaptations of this demonically spellbinding work, whatever its origins.


GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845–1924)
Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat Major, Op. 63; Impromptu No. 5 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 102; Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp Major, Op. 66

The Fauré works on tonight’s program received their Carnegie Hall premieres as follows: the Nocturne No. 6 on October 20, 1946, with Claudio Arrau; the Impromptu No. 5 on March 12, 1978, with Vladimir Horowitz; and the Barcarolle No. 5 on November 12, 1954, with Robert Schrade.

Like Bach and Franck, Gabriel Fauré was an organist who earned his living not as a composer but as a practicing musician; again like Franck, Fauré taught extensively and so mostly relegated composing to summer vacations. Only after age 50 did Fauré enjoy any real renown. As professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory (and later director), acquaintance of Liszt and Proust, and friend of the American painter John Singer Sargent, Fauré was welcomed in the fashionable salons of Paris and London.

The Nocturne and Barcarolle together represent the melodic and rhythmic riches of Fauré’s mature style. At the beginning of the Nocturne, a languorous melody unfolds above a simple accompaniment; the music grows more fervent only gradually, rising in register and in intensity nearly imperceptibly. But the quietude suggested by the title never truly breaks, and the middle section of the A-B-A form exudes a sleepy sweetness.

The Barcarolle No. 5, one of 13 that Fauré composed between 1880 and 1921, captures not the gentle, rocking rhythm of a gondola on the canals but rather the choppy waters of the Venetian harbor. The compositional process itself was not smooth sailing: “I’m grinding away at three new piano pieces,” Fauré complained to his friend and fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns in October 1894, referring to both the Barcarolle No. 5 and Nocturne No. 6.

The brief Impromptu brings to mind the music of the next generation of French composers, namely Debussy and Ravel, in its use of the whole-tone scale, a synthetic scale outside the tonal major-minor framework that occludes a sense of harmonic progress toward a goal. Freed from traditional scales and harmonies, the music enjoys a new buoyancy. The humorous concluding gestures seem to laugh off any attempt to take the piece—or its good-natured composer—too seriously.


CÉSAR FRANCK (1822–1890)
Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue

The Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue was first performed at Carnegie Hall on October 28, 1916, with Olga Samaroff, piano.

Franck composed his Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue in 1884—late in life, but during one of his most productive phases, even if his role as professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory meant that he was largely confined to composing during summer breaks. The form of the three-part work harkens back to the world of Bach, but the harmony is utterly contemporary and owes to Wagner as well as Liszt in its intense chromaticism and bracing virtuosity. Moreover, the piece reveals the Romantic interest in organicism and unity: Many 19th-century composers cultivated a large work from a small musical idea and knit together what could be a multi-movement work into distinct but linked sections.

Here the three different parts move seamlessly one into another. The Prelude passes by in a blur and, after a clear cadence, runs right into the slower Chorale. A more distinct melody than has yet been heard emerges in the pianist’s right hand, but the bass line (in his left) soon comes to the fore, slowly and methodically moving down, step by step. The patterns above merely accompany the inexorable descent to the depths of the instrument; soon plodding bass and swirling accompaniment are staggered and offset in an uneasy rhythm. The chief motive from the Prelude—a falling three-note figure—returns as the subject of the concluding Fugue, its contour almost the mirror image of the ascending line familiar from the Prelude of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Both gestures capture a keen sense of yearning. Franck’s distinctive gloominess (for perhaps no other composer so loved the minor mode) weighs down the entire work, which comes to a climax with impassioned chords and fast finger-work that combines the theme of the Fugue with the general affect of the opening Prelude. The brief major-mode flourish at the end does little to relieve the heavy emotionality of the whole.


AARON COPLAND (1900–1990)
Piano Variations

Copland’s Variations received their Carnegie Hall premiere on March 4, 1949, with Frank Glazer.

Although Copland’s Piano Variations dates from his so-called “abstract” period and has most often been related to a Neoclassical aesthetic, the work can also be connected to radical politics. In 1934, this imposing 12-minute piece for solo piano was featured on an all-Copland program at New York’s Pierre Degeyter Club, named for the composer of the Communist anthem, “The Internationale.” Reviewing the performance for the Communist periodical the Daily Worker, Charles Seeger proclaimed Copland’s Variations “one of the most undeniably revolutionary pieces of music ever produced here.” The political content of the music was apparently a subject of discussion at the concert. “In answer to a question as to what had this music to do with the proletariat,” Seeger recalled, a steel worker stood up and explained that it “seemed to him to be in keeping not only with the daily job but with the trip to and from it—even with the lunch hour.” Copland “rejoined that had felt that his music must be able to stand up against modern life.” He was himself sympathetic to left-wing radical politics and, only a few years later, made a rousing political speech supporting the Communist cause to farmers in Bemidji, Minnesota. Such activities would eventually land the composers in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

As was typical among artists aligned with the political left, Copland links a modernist, innovative musical style to a radical politics; both are, indeed, opposed to the hegemony of tradition, whether musical or capitalist. Challenging the very nature of a variation set, Copland’s piece takes as its subject a decidedly brusque, four-note cell rather than a more traditional melodic theme. In this sense the work stands up against convention and expectation, while at the same time it draws a connection to the noise, dynamism, and dissociation of life in the modern industrial city; the thorny dissonances and percussive energy suits the restless spirit of its age.

The music sweeps through nine variations, each of a distinct character, and climaxes in the tenth. It briefly pulls back, only to rise up again in the 20th variation; the work concludes with a rather resolute coda.


FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Nocturne in B Major, Op. 62, No. 1; Sonata No. 3 in B Minor

The Nocturne in B Major was first performed at Carnegie Hall on November 9, 1895, with Ignacy Jan Paderewski; the Sonata in B Minor received its first Carnegie Hall performance in Recital Hall (now Zankel Hall) on April 7, 1891, with Arthur Friedheim.

Chopin is best known as a composer of miniatures and character pieces: delicate preludes and short etudes, fleeting mazurkas, evocative nocturnes, impromptus, and polonaises. But beginning in 1840, he developed a new interest in larger forms and more complicated textures, composing his second Piano Sonata, Op. 35, while summering with his lover Georges Sand at her home, Nohant, in central France. His third Sonata followed in the summer of 1844. Its first movement reveals Chopin’s study of Bach in its contrapuntal lines and dense textures, as does the late Nocturne, Op. 62.

The first movement of the Sonata hews closely to the German tradition, not only in its imitative textures but also in its presentation of sonata-allegro form. Two contrasting themes (one martial, the other more lyrical) and two contrasting keys (minor and major) unfold in the exposition, although it is unusual that both themes are initially presented in the tonic, B minor; only at the very end does the related major key emerge. The middle section develops the first theme, and—atypically—the second theme returns in the final section, the recapitulation. The epigrammatic scherzo again weaves together various musical lines. The slow third movement has been likened to a nocturne, but one scholar instead compares it to the “aloof trio of a funeral march”—a distant echo, perhaps, of the famous funeral march in Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Minor, Op. 35. The music of the finale stems entirely from the rest of the Sonata, testament to the Romantic preoccupation with unity: Even while each movement retains its specific character and musical independence, all are bound together by common themes.

—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

Stephen Hough, Piano
Stephen Hough is widely regarded as one of the most important and distinctive pianists of his generation. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, joining prominent scientists, writers, and others who have made unique contributions to contemporary life. He is also the 2008 winner of Northwestern University School of Music’s Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance.

Mr. Hough has appeared with most of the major American and European orchestras and plays recitals regularly in the major halls and on concert series worldwide. He is also a guest at festivals such as Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Blossom, Hollywood Bowl, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, and the BBC Proms, where he has made more than a dozen concerto appearances. Recent engagements include performances with the New York, Los Angeles, and London Philharmonics; the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras; London Symphony; the Berliner Philharmoniker in a worldwide televised performance with Sir Simon Rattle; and a US tour with the Russian National Orchestra led by Vladimir Jurowski.

Over the next season, Stephen Hough returns to the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Detroit and Baltimore symphonies, among others; performs recitals at Carnegie Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London; begins recording all of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos in live concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra led by Osmo Vänskä for Hyperion; and makes numerous other orchestral and recital appearances, including in London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Frankfurt, Moscow, Hong Kong, and Sydney. In addition, he tours with the Irish Chamber Orchestra as pianist, conductor, and composer.

An exclusive Hyperion recording artist, many of Mr. Hough’s catalogue of more than 40 CDs have garnered international prizes, including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’or, Monde de la musique, multiple awards from Gramophone Magazine (seven awards including Record of the Year in 1996 and 2003), and several Grammy nominations. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff piano concertos with the Dallas Symphony and Andrew Litton became the fastest-selling recording in Hyperion’s history, while his 1987 recording of Hummel concertos is Chandos’s best-selling disc to date. At the Classic FM Gramophone Awards in September 2008, his recording of the complete works for piano and orchestra by Saint-Saëns received the Golden Disc award for being voted the most popular recording of the past 30 years. His most recent release is A Mozart Album, featuring works by Mozart, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Friedman, Liszt/Busoni, and Mr. Hough.

Mr. Hough is also an avid writer and composer. In addition to scholarly and critically acclaimed CD liner notes and published musical articles, his interest in theology has led to a book, The Bible as Prayer, which was published in the US and Canada by Paulist Press in September 2007. Earlier that same year his cello concerto was premiered by Steven Isserlis and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and two choral works—Mass of Innocence and Experience and Missa Mirabilis—were performed at London’s Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral, respectively. Mr. Hough has also published numerous compositions with Josef Weinberger Ltd.

A resident of London, Stephen Hough is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester. Please visit stephenhough.com for more information.