CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Veronika Eberle
Oliver Schnyder

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

Veronika Eberle, Violin
New York Recital Debut
Oliver Schnyder, Piano

BEETHOVEN Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 96
SCHUBERT Rondo in B Minor, D. 895, "Rondo brillant"

JANÁČEK Violin Sonata
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18

Encore:
SCHUBERT Andantino from Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, D. 574, "Duo"

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:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 96

Beethoven’s final violin sonata, falling at the end of his so-called “middle” period, looks forward to his “late” period and the crowning achievements of his life. From the beginning we hear the intimacy that characterizes the work: The piano and violin are close partners in the first movement, with the piano occasionally pulling out some two-handed bombast to urge the violin forward. This 1812 sonata’s close teamwork is also apparent in the composer’s “Archduke” Trio (written in 1810 and 1811), as well as the Sonata for Piano, Op. 78 (“Lebewohl”) from 1809.

Beethoven concludes this sonata with a light and airy finale, a set of variations upon a little ditty. He had previously tried out this final-movement variations form in his Ninth Violin Sonata of 1802, the “Kreutzer,” and later again in the Opus 74 String Quartet, the “Harp,” of 1809.

Composed in 1812, the Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major received its Carnegie Hall premiere on February 19, 1933, with Toscha Seidel, violin, and Herbert Jaffe, piano.

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828)Rondo in B Minor, D. 895, “Rondo brillant”

Schubert composed less than an hour’s worth of violin music, half of it charming— including three sonatas (miniature pieces more accurately called sonatinas)—and the other half daring and filled with deep longing—namely the “Rondo brillant” and Fantasie in C Major. The composer was wracked with symptoms of secondary syphilis by 1825, the disease worsening by 1826 when he began this Rondo in B Minor. He had recently written his Ninth Symphony (the “Great” C-Major), as well as two large-scale piano sonatas, when the “Rondo brillant” premiered in 1827. The piece’s technical demands are great on both violinist and pianist; yet, as “one of the best-kept secrets” of Schubert’s mature years (according to Schubert scholar Brian Newbould), the Rondo more than earns the performers’ dedication. Schubert would go on to write the song cycle Der Winterreise and begin work on his Symphony No. 10, but this work, from its dramatic beginning to high-spirited end, is plenty inspiring on its own.

Composed in 1827, the Rondo in B Minor received its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 12, 1894, with Bronislaw Huberman, violin, and Elly Ney, piano.

LEOŠ JANÁÈEK (1854–1928)Sonata for Violin and Piano

Janáèek actually wrote three violin sonatas, but only this one remains for today’s performers to tackle. Two early sonatas were destroyed, and it is a bit of a miracle that this one survived. The first sonata was written as an entrance piece to the Vienna Conservatoire in 1880, but the young Moravian did not make the cut, judged to be “too academic”—Janáèek tore up the piece. With the sonata, he would join a line of composers who did not find success in academia, including Berlioz before him and Ravel in the 20th century. (Had he been accepted, he would have studied with Anton Bruckner. Given the intense love and adoption of folklore in his music, his gifts for operatic writing, and his distaste for Austro-German counterpoint, we can deem it fortunate that Janáèek’s talent was not directed by the orthodox Bruckner.) The surviving sonata is a remnant of World War I, and reflects Janáèek’s mindset from those years. He began it in 1915, when the Russian army was massed along the Hungarian border. Russian flavor runs through the entire piece, and the composer even claims that the piano’s high tremolo during the final movement represents the Russians entering Hungary. (While the Russians did enter Hungary, they had to retreat and the war continued another three years.)

Janáèek continued the piece after the war, and finished in 1922. Its second movement is the only one that was not extensively revised, and was published separately., there are Motifs in the first and third movement—foreshadowing Janáèek’s operatic future—strongly resemble themes from his later Kát’a Kabanová.

The sonata is a work of conflicts, with the violin and piano not always in accord. Throughout the final movement, in particular, the violinist interrupts the piano at every turn as if trying to bring the piece to a halt. The movement eventually burns itself out from exhaustion; Janáèek marked the final two measures to be played morendo, “dying away.”

Composed in 1922, the Sonata for Violin and Piano received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 7, 1968, with Ann Rylands, violin, and Barbara Sucoff, piano.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949)Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18

Strauss was a precocious young composer determined to write the music of the future. He referred to abstract sonata form (heard in the first movement of tonight’s Beethoven sonata) as “a hollow shell.” It is thus somewhat surprising that he composed something titled “sonata” at all. But in tonight’s Violin Sonata we hear the heroic striving that would manifest in the big, brawny orchestral tone poems Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben. Strauss composed the sonata at age 22 when working as a conductor at the Munich Hofoper. He had met Gustav Mahler the previous year, and would soon meet his future wife, soprano Pauline de Anha. Strauss’s tone poems—Macbeth, Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung—date from this Munich years, and the sonata heard tonight shares some of Don Juan’s thrusting power.

In lieu of what he considered Beethoven’s “hollow shell,” Strauss treats the sonata form as a show of contrasts, with compositional muscle always flexing. Even during most of the violin’s most rhapsodic flights in the first movement, the piano is usually moving the music forward. Strauss indulges his love of high-flown operatic writing in the second movement, to be played with the freedom of an improvisation; the piano ripples with grace around the singing violin. The beginning of the third movement again surges gallantly forward, and the young composer earns the gold medal for which he sounds like he is reaching. Respite would eventually come near the end of Strauss’s life with the late opera Capriccio, but the sonata is the work of a young man with things to prove.

Coincidentally, Veronika Eberle was a student at the Richard Strauss Konservatorium in Munich, made her debut at age 10 with the Munich Symphony Orchestra, and now studies at that city’s Hochschule. Strauss’s violin sonata is certainly representative of the composer’s time spent there, and it’s fitting to have a young soloist play the sonata of a young composer—younger than the composer was when he wrote it, in fact.

Composed in 1886, the Violin Sonata in E-flat Major received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 17, 1930, with Hans Lange, violin, and Harry Cumpson, piano.

—Marc Geelhoed

Marc Geelhoed manages the CSO Resound, the in-house record label of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was the associate music editor at Time Out Chicago, and has contributed to Slate, the Financial Times and the New Statesman.

Veronika Eberle, Violin
New York Recital Debut
Only 19 years old, Veronika Eberle is rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most promising violinists to emerge from Germany in recent years.

Her future concerto appearances include debuts with the Rotterdam Philharmonic (Sir Simon Rattle), Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, NHK Symphony and Prague Symphony (Jiri Kout), Nürnberger Symphoniker, Frankfurter Museumgesellschaft Orchester, Auckland Philharmonia, as well as return engagements with the Bamberger Symphoniker, Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt (Andris Nelsons), NDR Hamburg, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland Pfalz, Württembergisches Philharmonie, and Gävle Symphony.

In the 2008–2009 season Ms. Eberle also gives debut recitals in New York (Carnegie Hall), Paris (Theatre de la Ville), Salzburg (Mozarteum), Brussels (Bozar), Birmingham (Symphony Hall), and Gstaad Menuhin Festival. She also returns to Munich (Herkulesaal), the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele, and Weilburger Schlossfestspiele.

Veronika Eberle was born in 1988 in Donauwörth, Southern Germany, where she started violin lessons at age six. Four years later she became a junior student at the Richard Strauss Konservatorium in Munich, with Olga Voitova. After studying privately with Christoph Poppen for a year, she joined the Hochschule in Munich, where she has been studying with Ana Chumachenco since 2001.

Since giving her concerto debut at age 10 (Münchener Symphoniker), Ms. Eberle has appeared with some of Germany’s finest orchestras. Most recently she was introduced to a packed Festpielhaus at the Salzburg Easter Festival, in a performance of the Beethoven concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle. In recent years Ms. Eberle has also appeared at some of Europe’s most distinguished festivals, including Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Salzburg Osterfestspiele. Her chamber music partners include Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Antje Weithaas, Tatjana Masurenko, Gustav Rivinius, and Julia Fischer.

Ms. Eberle’s exceptional talent, poise, and maturity have been recognized by a number of prestigious organizations, including the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (who awarded her a Fellowship in February 2008), the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben Hamburg, and the Jürgen-Ponto Stiftung Frankfurt. She won the first prize at the 2003 Yfrah Neaman International Competition in Mainz, and was awarded Audience Awards by the patrons of the Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals.

Ms. Eberle plays the Giovanni Battista Guadagnini “ex-Busch” violin (Turin 1783), on kind loan from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

Oliver Schnyder, Piano
Since his debut recital at the Kennedy Center, and his solo debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman, Oliver Schnyder has been busy pursuing an international performance career. He appears regularly as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, Japan, and China. He appears at venues in London (Wigmore Hall), New York (Carnegie Hall), Moscow’s Great Hall, and equivalent venues in San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing, Tokyo, Osaka, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Brussels, Salzburg, Zurich, Hong Kong, Lucerne, St. Petersburg, Oslo, and Milan. Mr. Schnyder also appears at international festivals such as Verbier, Schwetzingen, Ruhr Piano, Petworth, Zürcher Mozart Festival, and many more.

As a soloist, Mr. Schnyder works with the Tonhalle Orchestra, Moscow Radio Symphony
Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Music College
Winterthur, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic, Cologne Chamber Orchestra,
Brandenburg State Symphony, the Columbus Chamber Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Aargau Symphony Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta, Camerata Berne, Oslo Camerata, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Cappella Istropolitana, and the Southwest German Philharmonic under conductors such as David Zinman, Mario Venzago, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Semyon Bychkov, Muhai Tang, Jac Van Steen, John Axelrod, Douglas Bostock, Helmut Müller-Brühl, and Howard Griffiths.

Mr. Schnyder’s frequent chamber music partners include Julia Fischer, Veronika Eberle, and Sol Gabetta. Schnyder’s performances have been recorded for radio and television in the US, Europe, Japan, and China. He has recorded albums in collaboration with Sony BMG, Telos Music Records, Avie, Art Unity, Musiques Suisses, and Classico. Mr. Schnyder also works intensively with contemporary composers such as David Philip Hefti and David Noon.

Oliver Schnyder was a student of Emmy Henz-Diémand and Homero Francesch in Zurich and the legendary Leon Fleisher in Baltimore. Please visit oliverschnyder.com for more information.