CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Zankel Hall
Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 4:00 PM

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
·· Jacques Zoon, Flute
·· Wolfgang Meyer, Clarinet
·· Ilya Gringolts, Violin
·· Mirijam Contzen, Violin
·· Simone Jandl, Viola
·· Clemens Hagen, Cello
·· Rafael Rosenfeld, Cello

MOZART Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478
RAVEL Piano Trio
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony, Op. 9 (arr. Webern)

Program Notes:

The Concert At a Glance

Each of the three pieces on this afternoon’s program expanded the range of chamber music with piano at the time it was written. Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478, was the first important composition of its kind when it was composed, in 1785. In it, Mozart brought something of the brilliant keyboard writing of his piano concertos to the more intimate realm of chamber music.

With this piece, Mozart essentially brought the piano quartet genre into being. By contrast, Ravel’s Piano Trio, composed in 1914, employs a familiar and well-established instrumental combination in innovative and imaginative ways. Lively rhythmic asymmetries mark its opening and closing movements, while its central panels explore unusual thematic workings and formal designs.

Our final piece is perhaps the most novel of all. Arnold Schoenberg composed his Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, in 1906 but found its music too advanced for most of the concert-going public at that time. Unable to secure adequately prepared performances of the work, Schoenberg took to conducting the work himself in this arrangement for five instruments by his student Anton Webern.

Notes on the Program
By Paul Schiavo

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478
Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Composed between July and October of 1785, Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on December 12, 1924, with Wanda Landowska, piano; Paul Kochanski, violin; Rene Pollain, viola; and Evsei Beloussoff, cello.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a superb composer but he had little interest in devising new compositional forms or genres. Rather, he found it sufficient to work within a received tradition of musical style and compositional procedures, assimilating these and using them in his own way. However, Mozart did give us one new genre: the piano quartet. While a few works of the kind had been attempted earlier in the 18th century, Mozart’s two piano quartets essentially established this type of composition.

The first of Mozart’s two piano quartets, which we hear now, is one of a handful of pieces by the composer in the key of G minor. The other notable members of this group are the magnificent String Quintet, K. 516, and the famous Symphony in G Minor, K. 550. Those works suggest that Mozart associated G minor with dark drama, pathos, and emotional turbulence. Such sentiments are, on the whole, not so strongly articulated in the present Piano Quartet. Still, the spirit of G minor and the kind of musical ideas it suggested to Mozart lend the work’s first movement an unusually serious character.

That character is established in the opening moments with a stern statement from the entire ensemble playing in unison (to which the piano gives plaintive answer). This initial gesture proves especially consequential, as Mozart uses it again and again in varied forms as the movement unfolds. The instrumental writing also merits a few words. A number of commentators have observed that the keyboard parts of Mozart’s piano quartets entail a degree of virtuosity that approaches that of his piano concertos. Here the violin also has the occasional brilliant turn. At the same time, however, we consistently find an integration of ensemble, a sharing of thematic material and a resort to thoughtful musical dialogue, characteristic of the best chamber music. In this work, Mozart finds a middle ground between concertante and chamber-music writing—more accurately, he combines the two in seamless fusion.

The moderately-paced second movement leaves the somber realm of G minor for the soft light of B-flat major, in which tonality Mozart gives us a relaxed but richly detailed Andante. With the finale, the music returns to G, but not the minor mode. Instead, the piano introduces a bright theme in G major, one that becomes the recurring subject required by a rondo-form movement. Mozart’s mature rondos generally entail more than just the alternation of main theme and contrasting episodes that defines this format. So it is here, the second episode bringing an ingenious development of the rondo theme itself. The movement concludes with a brief coda passage prepared by a fine deceptive harmony.

MAURICE RAVEL Piano Trio
Born March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Pyrénées-Atlantiques; died December 28, 1937, in Paris.

Composed in 1914, Ravel’s Piano Trio was first performed the following year in Paris by Alfredo Casella, piano; Gabriel Willaume, violin; and Louis Feuillard, cello. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on December 30, 1927, in the Chamber Music Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with the Compinsky Trio: Sara Compinsky, piano; Manuel Compinsky, violin; and Alexander Compinsky, cello.

Although he lived in or near Paris from the time he was three months old, Maurice Ravel retained an abiding attachment to the Basque coast where he had been born. As an adult he frequently returned to the twin villages of Ciboure and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, taking refuge there from the noise and distractions of the French capital. Ravel habitually spent the summer months in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, but in 1914 he retreated there as early as February. His purpose in doing so was to compose a piece he had been contemplating for more than half a decade, a trio for violin, cello, and piano.

Ravel evidently made a good start on the work—in March he reported that the first movement was done—but by July progress had halted. The outbreak of World War I, in August, seems to have spurred Ravel to press ahead with the composition; he was eager to wrap up loose ends and volunteer for military service. (The composer would serve at the front for two years as a driver with an artillery regiment.) Still, his fastidious approach to composition precluded a hasty completion of the work, and it was not until September that the score was finished.

The Piano Trio proved one of Ravel’s most inventive compositions thus far in his career. Its initial theme, heard in the opening moments, skews the rhythmic symmetry normally associated with 4/4 meter with eighth-note groupings of 3+3+2. A second subject, announced by the violin, contrasts sharply with the first in its delicacy and relaxed pace. Ravel’s play with these dissimilar themes yields a wide range of sonic colors and texture, and modal contours distance the music from the sound-world of common-practice harmony.

“Pantoum,” the title of the second movement, derives from a verse pattern in Malaysian poetry whose essential feature is the treatment of two themes in alternation. Ravel adapts this notion to music ideas in a kind of scherzo orientale. A quick patter of staccato notes in eccentric rhythms at the start intimates the sound of gamelan music. (That sound had fascinated French composers ever since the visit by a Javanese percussion ensemble to the Paris International Exposition of 1889.) In contrast to this idea stands a lyrical melody marked by short, surging phrases and a chorale-like idea that plays against a flickering background held over from the first theme.

The third movement takes the form of a passacaglia, a compositional procedure widely used during the Baroque era. Traditionally, passacaglia entails contrapuntal overlay upon a recurring theme usually introduced as a short, self-contained bass-line. Ravel gives us just such a theme in the movement’s opening measures and embroiders its successive statements with counter-melodies.

A luminous sonority produced by all three instruments launches the finale, whose animated music is built on irregular metrical patterns (5/4 and 7/4). The writing calls for bravura playing from all three instruments and at times attains an almost symphonic sweep and richness of texture.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony, Op. 9 (arr. Webern)
Born September 13, 1874, in Vienna; died July 13, 1951, in Brentwood, a suburb of Los Angeles.

Composed in 1906, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 9, was arranged for small ensemble by Webern in 1922-23. That arrangement was first performed on April 29, 1925, in Barcelona, under Schoenberg’s direction. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on February 14, 1979, in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with the Da Capo Chamber Players. Schoenberg’s original 1922 work for large orchestra was first performed at Carnegie Hall on April 3, 1923, by The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Arnold Schoenberg was not only one of the most important composers of the early 20th century but also a devoted and influential teacher of composition. His pedagogical inclination stands in marked contrast to most of his major musical contemporaries. Neither Stravinsky, Ravel, Rachmaninov, nor Prokofiev made teaching a significant part of their careers. Bartók spent more time instructing pianists than composers. But Schoenberg gathered about him a circle of talented students. Two of them, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, went on to become major composers in their own rights. Others, Hans Eisler and René Leibowitz among them, became important writers and theorists. Still others, including pianists Rudolf Serkin and Eduard Steuermann, and the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, achieved notable careers as performers.

Schoenberg’s instruction included analysis of music by a wide range of composers, past and contemporary, and examination of his students’ own compositional efforts. It also entailed making arrangements of orchestral scores so that they could be played by small ensembles. There was considerable utility in that endeavor. In an era before recordings were widely available, such arrangements greatly augmented the opportunity to hear orchestral compositions, especially those of controversial modern composers whose music was rarely played by established ensembles. It was in this way that Schoenberg and his students first came to know large-scale works by Debussy, Bartók, Szymanowsky, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Schoenberg himself.

One of Schoenberg’s orchestral pieces to undergo reduction to smaller instrumental scale was his Chamber Symphony in E-flat, Op. 9. Schoenberg had composed this work, perhaps his most important thus far in his career, in 1906, but the challenging nature of its music was such that it waited seven years for performance. When it finally did have its premiere, in 1913, in Vienna, it provoked a riot. Nearly a decade later, at Schoenberg’s request, Anton Webern undertook a transcription of the music for chamber ensemble. Webern’s arrangement, made in the winter of 1922–23, reduced the scoring to an ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, the same ensemble for which Schoenberg had scored his famous melodrama Pierrot Lunaire in 1912. Schoenberg wanted to present Pierrot in different cities. Webern’s arrangement of the Chamber Symphony would fill out the program, and did so on a concert tour of Spain Schoenberg undertook in 1925, during which the reduced version of the piece had its initial performances.

In his Chamber Symphony, Schoenberg turned decisively from the expansive tendencies of late-Romantic composition toward a modern penchant for compression. The work telescopes into a single movement the several sections that traditionally comprise a symphony. Its dramatic opening section is comparable to a symphonic first movement. Subsequent episodes approximate a scherzo, slow movement, and finale in turn. The character throughout is urgent and impassioned, the tonal idiom lies between the late-Romantic style of Richard Strauss and the more advanced musical language of Schoenberg’s later music.


Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Paul Schiavo writes frequently on music and is the program annotator
for the Seattle Symphony and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano
Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and as a leading interpreter of the standard piano repertoire, Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated career which transcends traditional boundaries.

Aimard performs throughout the world each season with major orchestras under conductors including Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Franz Welser-Möst.

During the 2006–07 season, he curated and performed in his own Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall in New York as well as a carte blanche at the Konzerthaus Vienna, and was pianist-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker. 2007 has also featured a ground breaking song and chamber music recital series at the Palais Garnier and his invitation as “artiste étoile” at the Lucerne Festival.

In 2008, he is Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, London’s Messiaen festival, and Artist-in-Residence both for the Mozarteum Salzburg and with The Cleveland Orchestra. The Cité de la Musique (Paris) also invites him to curate a Domaine privé, and he continues as Artistic Partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Through professorships in Cologne and Paris, as well as series of concert lectures and workshops worldwide, he sheds an inspiring and very personal light on music from all periods. He was the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award in spring 2005.

Born in Lyon, France, in 1957, Pierre-Laurent Aimard studied at the Paris Conservatory with Yvonne Loriod and in London with Maria Curcio. Early career landmarks included winning first prize in the 1973 Messiaen Competition and being appointed at the age of 19 by Pierre Boulez to become the Ensemble InterContemporain’s first solo pianist. For more than 15 years Aimard collaborated closely with György Ligeti, recording his complete works.

In recent years Pierre-Laurent Aimard has been honored with ECHO Classic Awards, both in 2003 for his recording of the complete Beethoven piano concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and in 2004 for his recording of Debussy’s Images and Etudes. Aimard’s recording of Ives’s “Concord” Sonata and Songs with Susan Graham was a Grammy Award winner in 2005. Recent releases include recital discs of Ravel, Carter, and Schumann, while Mozart piano concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, directed from the keyboard by Aimard, have been hailed as “one of the most exquisite Mozart recordings of all time.” In August 2007, Pierre-Laurent Aimard signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft—his first disc under this agreement, Bach: Art of Fugue, is due for release in spring 2008.

Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
·· Jacques Zoon, Flute
·· Wolfgang Meyer, Clarinet
·· Ilya Gringolts, Violin
·· Mirijam Contzen, Violin
·· Simone Jandl, Viola
·· Clemens Hagen, Cello
·· Rafael Rosenfeld, Cello
After studying flute with Koos Verheul and Harrie Starreveld at the Sweelinck Concervatory in Amsterdam, Jacques Zoon won prizes at the Jean-Pierre Rampal Flute Competition and the Scheveningen International Competition. He has appeared as principal flutist with such orchestras as the Amsterdam Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He presently plays in the Orchestra Mozart and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, both headed by Claudio Abbado. Besides his career as a soloist and chamber musician, he teaches in Rotterdam, Boston, Berlin, and Geneva and has made many CD recordings. Mr. Zoon has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2004.

Wolfgang Meyer was born in Crailsheim and studied with Otto Hermann in Stuttgart and Hans Deinzer in Hanover. Since 1989 he has taught at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe. He has been especially active as a soloist in the contemporary repertoire, playing works by Tiberiu Olah, Jean Françaix, Hubert Stuppner, Peter Eötvös, and Edison Denisov. An active chamber musician, he has made many CD recordings reflecting a wide-ranging repertoire and has also worked with period instruments. He has played with Nikolaus Harnoncourt since 1996 and joined the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Claudio Abaddo in 2004. Meyer also concertizes with the London Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Winner of the 1998 International Violin Competition “Premio Paganini,” Ilya Gringolts studied violin and composition at the St. Petersburg Special Music School with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi, and at The Juilliard School in New York with Itzhak Perlman and the late Dorothy Delay. He was also one of 12 young artists selected by the BBC for their New Generation Artists Scheme. In recent and forthcoming seasons, Mr. Gringolts has been invited to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, UBS Verbier Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. In recital, he broadcasts regularly on the BBC and has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Louvre Paris, Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels, and Wigmore Hall. He is also a regular guest at many international festivals such as La Jolla and Verbier Festival, where he has collaborated with artists such as Bashmet, Levine, Shaham, Kirshbaum, Ax, and Andsnes. This year, Mr. Gringolts recorded the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Claudio Abbado / Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela for Deutsche Grammophon as well as a solo violin disc of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst for Hyperion. Mr. Gringolts plays a Ruggeri violin loaned to him by Otto Karl Schenk, Bern/Switzerland. He has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2007.

Born in Münster in 1976, Mirijam Contzen gave her first public recital at the age of five and studied violin with Tibor Varga in Detmold and Sion. Her many awards include prizes from the “Concertino Praga” Radio Competition and the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition. She has appeared at the philharmonic halls in Berlin, Munich, and Cologne; the Vienna Musikverein; London’s Wigmore Hall; the Zurich Tonhalle; and the KKL in Lucerne. She gave her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2004 and has led her own chamber music festival in Cappenberg Castle since 2005. She has concertized with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin and Frankfurt radio symphony orchestras, the Bamberg Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2001 her recording of Favorite Violin Pieces won the Echo Klassik for the best up-and-coming young musician. She plays a violin built by Carlo Bergonzi in 1733. Ms. Contzen has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2007.

Born in Karlsruhe in 1983, Simone Jandl studied viola with Wolfram Christ and chamber music with Walter Levin and Volker Jacobsen. She is presently at the Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin. Besides winning many national and international awards, she has maintained an active concert career in Europe and Israel, playing chamber music with Martha Argerich, Bruno Canino, Jacques Zoon, Enrico Bronzi, Danusha Waskiewicz, Diemut Poppen, and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. She was principal violist of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and is now a member of the Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado. Ms. Jandl has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2003.

Born in Salzburg, Clemens Hagen began to take cello lessons at the age of six and studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum, later turning to Wilfried Tachezi and Heinrich Schiff at the Basle Musikhochschule. He has received many awards and concertized with such orchestras as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Salzburg Camerata, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the NHK Orchestra (Tokyo), and The Cleveland Orchestra under the batons of Claudio Abbado, Sylvain Cambreling, Daniel Harding, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Franz Welser-Möst. In addition to the Hagen Quartet (with members of his own family), he maintains an active chamber music career, playing with Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Oleg Maisenberg, Paul Gulda, and András Schiff, among others. In 1999–2000 he was artist-in-residence for the 50th anniversary of the Jeunesse Musicale in Vienna. His many recordings include the Beethoven cello sonatas with Paul Gulda and the Brahms Double Concerto with Gidon Kremer and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He plays a Stradivarius cello dating from 1698. Mr. Hagen has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra since 2003.

Rafael Rosenfeld was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1973, into a family of musicians. At the age of five he began to take cello lessons. From 1988 he studied with Walter Grimmer at the Zurich College of Music, and in 1992, he entered the master class of David Geringas in Lübeck. Mr. Rosenfeld became solo cellist of Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra at the age of 22; he was at that time the orchestra’s youngest member. Currently, he holds this position on a part-time basis and divides his time between solo, chamber-music, and orchestral duties. Mr. Rosenfeld has won various prizes at national and international competitions: he was a finalist at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1994, a prizewinner at the 1996 International ARD Competition in Munich, and first-prize winner at the Geneva International Music Competition in 2000. He has performed in Milan, Stuttgart, Geneva, Lucerne, Berne, Rotterdam, Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), and Zurich, with such orchestras as the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Mr. Rosenfeld has performed chamber music concerts with András Schiff, Heinz Holliger, Joshua Bell, Alexander Lonquich, Nobuko Imai, Tabea Zimmermann, Patrick and Thomas Demenga, and Daniel Phillips, among others.
In 2002, he co-founded the Merel String Quartet. Since fall of 2005 he has taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel. Mr. Rosenfeld has been a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra sine 2003.