CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Murray Perahia

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Murray Perahia, Piano

BACH Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 830
BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109
SCHUMANN Kinderszenen, Op. 15
CHOPIN Etude in A-flat Major, Op. 25, No. 1, "Aeolian Harp"
CHOPIN Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59, No. 2
CHOPIN Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3
CHOPIN Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4

Encores:
BRAHMS Intermezzo in C Major, Op. 119, No. 3
CHOPIN Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 10, No. 4, "Torrent"

Program is approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes, including one intermission

Program Notes:

THE PROGRAM

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 830

About the Composer

In May of 1723, J. S. Bach arrived in Leipzig to become music director of the city churches and cantor at the St. Thomas School. He immediately devoted himself to composing and performing cantatas for nearly every Sunday and feast day, totaling some 60 each year. But he continued to write non-liturgical music with an eye toward publication and profit: Between 1726 and 1730 he published six partitas, one at a time. (The autograph of No. 6, in Bach’s hand, dates to 1725.) Seeing that they sold well, Bach reprinted all six as a single volume in 1731. He served as his own publisher, supervising the production of the individual prints as well as the collection.


About the Work

As in his French and English suites, the movements in Bach’s partitas are based on traditional dances, but these bear little relation to actual choreography. Instead, the movements are stylized templates; each follows conventions of tempo, meter, rhythm, phrasing, and organization. The challenge to the composer was to show what could be done afresh with familiar and stylized conventions. The sixth partita pours musically robust new wine into these old formal jugs.


A Closer Listen

The first movement of the Partita No. 6 (as in the previous five) is an improvisatory-sounding introduction with a remarkably dissonant fugue at its core. The characteristic gesture is a sweep up to a dissonant note that resolves down into a consonant harmony. A similar descending gesture lies at the heart of the fugue subject. The ensuing Allemande features uneven, dotted rhythms and grows ever more virtuosic, especially in its melodic embellishments. The solemn melody of the stately Sarabande is likewise decorated by scales, flourishes, and trills. A surprisingly serious-minded Gigue concludes the suite, deemed by one scholar “the crowning work of the set and Bach’s greatest suite.”

Performance Time: approximately 30 minutes

Composed in 1725, the Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 830, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 23, 1927, with Walter Gieseking, piano.



LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109


About the Composer

The years between 1812 and 1820 were generally unhappy and unproductive for Beethoven, personally and professionally. His hearing loss, first felt in 1802, had become true deafness. He had decided not to marry (in the wake of his affair with Antonie Brentano, the “Immortal Beloved”) but suddenly found himself with a family: His brother, Caspar Carl, having died in 1815, left his son Karl in Beethoven’s care. Karl’s mother waged a custody battle, which she lost in 1820, but Beethoven celebrated a short victory. Karl attempted suicide in 1826, partly to escape his domineering uncle. The first movement of Op. 109 marks Beethoven’s return to composing after these personal struggles.


About the Work

Although neither his hearing nor his health improved, Beethoven’s last years were productive ones. He completed the Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 109, in 1820 while also completing the Missa Solemnis. The second and third in the trio of late piano sonatas were finished in the subsequent years (Op. 110 in 1821 and Op. 111 in 1822). All are characterized by what Beethoven’s best biographer, Maynard Solomon, describes as “a variety of rigorous polyphonic textures and an etherealized improvisatory tone,” and each follows a teleological trajectory that puts the climax in the finale.


A Closer Listen

The first movement is a highly compressed sonata form with two contrasting themes squeezed into the opening 15 seconds. The first theme proceeds at a gentle gallop, but runs up against a rolled chord; the second theme then downshifts dramatically to a slower pace. Improvisatory scales and runs usher in the development, dominated by a long series of pulsing chords marking each beat. The second movement, also in sonata form, begins with a crashing forte even before the final chord of the first has decayed. Overlapping lines create a thick polyphonic texture typical of Beethoven’s later works. The third movement is a theme and variations twice the length of the first two movements. There are six variations—the last of which includes stunning double trills, capped by an exact return of the theme.

Performance Time: approximately 19 minutes

Composed in 1820, the Sonata in E Major, Op. 109, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 19, 1898, with Moriz Rosenthal, piano.


ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)
Kinderszenen, Op. 15

About the Composer

When in 1830, at 20 years old, Schumann decided that he would make his career as a pianist, he then set about composing: It was expected that concert artists would write music for their own performance. His hopes were soon thwarted by a lazy ring finger, however, and so he devoted himself to composition. Throughout the 1830s he wrote piano music nearly exclusively.

About the Work

The 13 brief character pieces in Kinderszenen are “more cheerful, gentler, more melodic,” the composer himself claimed. Schumann presented Kinderszenen to pianist and composer Clara Wieck as “gentle and loving and happy—like our future.” They belong “only to us,” she wrote in 1838. But that happy future was hard earned. At the time, Schumann was mired in a struggle to marry Clara over her father’s strident objections. The two waged a fierce battle in court. Wieck charged Schumann with drunkenness; Schumann countersued (successfully) for defamation of character. Wieck eventually conceded, clearing the way for Schumann and Clara to wed in September 1840.

A Closer Listen

The melodies in Kinderszenen insinuate themselves into memory like photographs from a childhood album. Even if foreign at first, gestures soon become intimately familiar. The opening leap in “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen” (Of Foreign Lands and People) repeats twice before a single note changes the phrase and leads to a cadence; in the contrasting section, the bass line draws attention for its own melodic shape. Throughout the set, the lines in the pianist’s left hand remain just as interesting as the melodies in the right. The mad dash of scales divided between hands in “Catch Me if You Can” perfectly exemplifies the playful title, as do the rollicking rhythms and bouncing back and forth in “Knight of the Hobbyhorse.”

Performance Time: approximately 18 minutes

Composed in 1838, Kinderszenen, Op. 15, received its first complete performance at Carnegie Hall on February 29, 1908, with Katharine Goodson, piano.



FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Etude in A-flat Major, Op. 25, No. 1, “Aeolian Harp”; Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59, No. 2; Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3; Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3; Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54


About the Composer

In 1830, Chopin quit his native Warsaw for Vienna, the musical (and political) capital of the Hapsburg Empire, but he quickly grew homesick. “I curse the moment of my departure,” he wrote to a friend. His nostalgia 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). The next year he moved to Paris, where he felt quite at home and found himself in demand socially as well as professionally, teaching, composing, and performing in elite salons. His Polish accent—in life as in his music—attracted considerable attention among Parisian audiences hungry for the exotic and the virtuosic.


About the Works

Chopin’s first mazurkas in opp. 6 and 7 (composed in Vienna) defined the genre, and his later works in opp. 50 and 59 expanded its expressive range. What had been a charming triple-meter folk dance became a full-fledged Romantic essay. Likewise, he transformed the etude from a purely didactic technical exercise into a character piece. The epitome of the Romantic piano repertoire, character pieces are typically solo works that capture a certain mood or portray a given subject; Chopin and Schumann were undisputed masters of the genre. As expected, the etudes demand a virtuosic technique, as do Chopin’s four scherzos, although in this case the genre does little to determine the musical content; rather, each creates its own musical realm.


A Closer Listen

Chopin’s works for solo piano demand an extraordinary technique, yet the fast runs, sweeping arpeggios (broken chords), and delicate ornaments always decorate—rather than dominate—the melody. In “Aeolian Harp,” for example, the fluttering figurations that test the pianist’s dexterity embellish the languorous musical line unfolding above. Technical challenges are matched by musical ones. In only a few minutes, the Mazurka Op. 50, No. 3, moves through a wide range of moods—from stormy and intense to lighthearted and dancelike; similarly, the Scherzo No. 4 may begin in a sprightly vein, but brilliant bravura passages immediately hint at the drama to come. Melody remains first and foremost.


Performance Time: approximately 23 minutes

Composed in between 1835 and 1837, the Etude in A-flat Major, Op. 25, No. 1, "Aeolian Harp," received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 9, 1896, with Ignace Jan Paderewski, piano.

Composed in 1842, the Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59, No. 2, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 21, 1908, with Josef Lhevinne, piano.

Composed in 1845, the Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on October 29, 1932, with Josef Lhevinne, piano.

Composed in 1845, the Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on December 16, 1899, 1932, with Ignace Jan Paderewski, piano.

Composed in between 1842 and 1843, the Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 1, 1905, with Vladimir de Pachmann, piano.

The finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 109, recalls Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Both works take a sarabande dance as its theme, feature trills and turning figures, deploy non-fugal counterpoint, and conclude with a full and satisfying return of the opening theme.


—Elizabeth Bergman
© The Carnegie Hall Corporation

More Information:

One of the most inspiring of all pianists performs some of the music that means the most to him. Perahia ranges here from the depth of Bach and Beethoven to the tenderness of Schumann. BBC Music Magazine says, “his natural sense of narrative along with an inimitable touch make for illuminated performances.”

Murray Perahia, Piano
MURRAY PERAHIA

With more than 35 years on the concert stage, American pianist Murray Perahia has become one of the most sought-after and cherished pianists of our time. He is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with whom he has toured as conductor and pianist throughout the US, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

Born in New York, Mr. Perahia majored in conducting and composition at Mannes College The New School for Music and spent his summers at the Marlboro Festival, where he collaborated with Rudolf Serkin, Pablo Casals, and the Budapest String Quartet, among others. He also studied with Mieczyslaw Horszowski and later developed a close friendship with Vladimir Horowitz, whose perspective and personality were an abiding inspiration.

In 1972, Mr. Perahia won the Leeds International Piano Competition; in 1973, he gave his first concert at the Aldeburgh Festival, where he worked closely with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears—accompanying the latter in many lieder recitals—and later served as the festival’s co-artistic director from 1981 to 1989.

During the 2009–2010 season, Mr. Perahia performs recitals across North America. In Europe, he tours with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (London, Paris, Berlin, and Prague) and appears with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the baton of Bernard Haitink. Mr. Perahia’s 2008–2009 season included a European tour and Chicago performances as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Mr. Haitink, an extensive recital tour of Asia, and numerous recitals across the US and Europe.

Mr. Perahia has a wide and varied discography. In September 2009, Sony Classical released his recording of Bach partitas nos. 1, 5, and 6. Previous solo recordings feature Beethoven sonatas, opp. 14, 26, and 28; and Bach partitas nos. 2–4. He is the recipient of two Grammy Awards for his recordings of Chopin etudes, opp. 10 and 25, and Bach English suites nos. 1, 3, and 6, respectively. Mr. Perahia has also won several Gramophone Awards. In 1998, Sony Classical released a four-disc set commemorating 25 years of his recordings.

Mr. Perahia recently embarked on an ambitious project to edit the complete Beethoven sonatas for the Henle Urtext edition. He also produced and edited several hours of recently discovered recordings of master classes by legendary pianist Alfred Cortot, which resulted in the highly acclaimed Sony CD release, Alfred Cortot: The Master Classes.

An honorary fellow of the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, Mr. Perahia holds honorary doctorates from Leeds University and Duke University. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary KBE by Her Majesty The Queen, in recognition of his outstanding service to music.