CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Mitsuko Uchida & Friends

Zankel Hall
Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Mitsuko Uchida, Piano
Llŷr Williams, Piano
Martin Fröst, Clarinet
Soovin Kim, Violin
Christian Poltéra, Cello

LISZT La Lugubre gondola
BARTÓK Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano
MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps

This concert is made possible, in part, by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Program Notes:

By Paul Griffiths

FRANZ LISZT La lugubre gondola
Born October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Doborjan; died July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth.

Composed in 1882–85, La lugubre gondola received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on February 22, 1972, with Justin Blasdale, piano.

The scene is laid at the Palazzo Vendramin, on the Grand Canal in Venice, December 1882. Wagner is dying. Liszt, his father-in-law, imagines the event before it happens—imagines it as music, whose title invites us to imagine a funeral gondola, draped in black under a gray sky, making its way across the lagoon to the cemetery island of San Michele. The opening of Wagner’s Tristan sounds out and develops into outbursts of—what? Protest or yearning? All the time, darkness is sustained by heavy use of the tritone, the interval of three whole tones inimical to traditional harmonic movement.

Having finished the piece, Liszt quickly wrote an extended version, which he later arranged for cello (or violin) and piano.


BÉLA BARTÓK Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano
Born March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Sînnicolau Mare, Romania); died September 26, 1945, in New York.

Composed in 1938, Contrasts was first performed in its entirety in April 1940 at Columbia Recording Studio in New York by Joseph Szigeti, violin; Benny Goodman, clarinet; and Béla Bartók, piano. Movements one and three of Contrasts were performed earlier that year at Carnegie Hall on January 9, 1939, by Joseph Szigeti, violin; Benny Goodman, clarinet; and Endre Petri, piano.

Though Bartók was still living in Budapest, this could be counted his first American work. The prompt came from his compatriot Joseph Szigeti, one of the violinists he had sometimes partnered in concerts, and for whom he had, 10 years before, written a rhapsody with piano or orchestral accompaniment. Working increasingly in the US since that time, Szigeti had gotten to know Benny Goodman, and he asked Bartók for another rhapsody that would include a part for clarinet. Bartók obliged with a rather larger work in three movements, with cadenzas (for clarinet in the first movement, violin in the last), as Szigeti had requested.

The first movement is named for the verbunkos, or recruiting dance, which was apparently part of the lure when officers of the imperial army visited Hungarian villages to attract recruits in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Bartók follows the pattern for the first part of such a dance by writing a movement in march tempo. But however conscious of Hungarian antecedents, he was also thoroughly aware of the other culture Goodman brought into the picture—a culture whose elements of harmony, rhythm, and gesture he took on board, just as he had paid attention to those elements in the folk traditions of central Europe, north Africa, and Turkey.

His title, Contrasts, fairly describes the piece. Besides its transatlantic antitheses, the work sports three dissimilar instruments (in a grouping Stravinsky had used for a reduced version of his A Soldier’s Tale score), whose music bounces with oppositions of theme and rhythm as well as color. Yet perhaps “Confluences” would have been an even better title, for Bartók draws the instruments into a conversation and has them approaching each other right from the start, where it is the violin that sounds most jazzy, while the clarinet opens with the sort of folk-style melody Bartók had been writing for this instrument since The Wooden Prince. Another such passage of exchange comes in the finale, where Bartók interrupts the usual speeding duple time of his dance finales to introduce a complex meter of the kind he had learned from Bulgarian folk music (3-2-3 + 2-3 beats per measure) for a spot of “jazz” syncopation. One unifying feature is the tritone, which is emphasized in the first movement’s principal figure and to which the violinist has retuned the top and bottom strings (from high to low, E flat–A–D–G sharp) of a second instrument used to open the finale. The three instruments play with the music of the world, and, through moments of abrasion and discord, create an image of communality.


OLIVIER MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps
Born December 10, 1908, in Avignon; died April 28, 1992, in Paris.

Composed in 1940–41, Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps was first performed on January 15, 1941, in Görlitz, Silesia, by Henri Akoka, clarinet; Jean le Boulaire, violin; Étienne Pasquier, cello; and Olivier Messiaen, piano. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 24, 1965, with Jerome Bunke, clarinet; Stanley Hoffman, violin; Gerald Kagan, cello; and Susan Kagan, piano.

If Bartók’s Contrasts is music of the earth, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time settles its gaze on heaven. Composed largely under the arduous conditions of a prisoner-of-war camp during a northern European winter, the work is a vision (or audition) of eternity, stimulated by a passage in the Revelation of St. John that the composer abbreviated thus:

I saw a mighty angel descending from heaven, clothed in a cloud and having a rainbow on his head. His face was like the sun, his feet like pillars of fire. He put his right foot on the sea, his left foot on the land, and, holding himself up on the sea and the land, he raised a hand toward heaven and swore by Him who lives forever, saying: “There shall be no more Time; but on the day of the seventh angel’s trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled.”

The images here of power, color, and sound are extraordinarily conveyed by just four instruments, but the central theme is that of the end of time. Music, which depends on time’s unfolding for its existence, is made to suggest the changelessness, the endless instant, of eternity, and Messiaen does this in several ways: by setting up systems that could keep going for aeons (the long ostinatos of Liturgie de cristal); by using extremely slow tempos (the two Louanges); by imitating the songs of birds, which have been around since long before there were human beings on the globe (Abîme des oiseaux); by creating forms that circle back in repetition; by choosing irregular rhythms; and by basing his harmony on symmetrical scales (again with tritones prominent), so that progressive functions are repressed. Even the number of movements is symbolically relevant. “Seven is the perfect number,” Messiaen writes in his elaborate preface to the score, “the creation of six days sanctified by the divine sabbath; the seven of this rest is prolonged into eternity and becomes the eight of imperishable light, unalterable peace.”

This preface also gives notes on the movements in turn:

I. Liturgie de cristal (“Crystal Liturgy”). Between three and four in the morning, the reawakening of the birds: a solo thrush or nightingale improvises, surrounded by dusts of sound, by a halo of trills lost high in the trees. Transpose that onto the religious plane, and you have the harmonious silence of heaven.
II. Vocalise pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (“Vocalise, for the Angel who Announces the End of Time”). The first and third parts, very short, evoke the power of this immense angel. The middle section presents the impalpable harmonies of heaven. Gentle cascades of blue-orange chords in the piano make a distant carillon around the plainsong-like melody of the violin and cello.
III. Abîme des oiseaux (“Abyss of the Birds”). Clarinet solo. The abyss is Time, with its miseries, its fatigues. The birds are the contrary to Time: our desire as light, as stars, as rainbows, as jubilant vocalises!
IV. Intermède (“Interlude”). Scherzo, of a more outward character than the other movements, but nevertheless linked to them by melodic “recollections.”
V. Louange a l’Éternité de Jésus (“Paean to the Eternity of Jesus”). Jesus is considered here as Word. A long cello phrase, infinitely slow, lovingly and reverently exalts this powerful, gentle Word, “which the years will never exhaust.”
VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (“Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets”). Rhythmically the most characteristic movement of the cycle. The four instruments in unison take on the magic of gongs and trumpets. Use of the added value, augmented and diminished rhythms, non-retrogradable rhythms. Stone music; irresistible movement of steel, of huge blocks of purple fury, of frozen inebriation. Listen above all to the terrifying fortissimo of the theme, by augmentation and registral change to its several notes, toward the end of the piece.
VII. Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (“Bunches of Rainbows, for the Angel who Announces the End of Time”). Some passages from the second movement return. The Angel of enormous force appears, and especially the rainbow over him (the rainbow: symbol of peace, of wisdom, of all kinds of light and sound vibration). In my dreams I hear and see classified chords and melodies, known colors and forms; then, after this transitory stage, I pass into the irreal and submit myself ecstatically to a tumbling, a spinning interpenetration of superhuman sounds and colors. These fire swords, these blue-orange lava flows, these sudden stars: here are the bundles, here are the rainbows!
VIII. Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus (“Paean to the Immortality of Jesus”). Grand violin solo, making a pendant to the cello of the fifth movement. Why this second act of praise? It is addressed more particularly to the second aspect of Jesus, to Jesus-Man, to the Word made flesh, resurrected immortal to communicate to us his life. It is all love. Its slow rise toward the extreme treble is the ascension of man towards his God, of the child of God toward his Father, of deified creatures towards Paradise.


Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation Walter
Paul Griffiths is the author of numerous books on music, including The New Penguin Dictionary of Music and, most recently, A Concise History of Western Music (Cambridge University Press).

Mitsuko Uchida, Piano
Mitsuko Uchida is a performer who brings a deep insight into the music she plays through her own search for truth and beauty. She is renowned for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert, but she has also illuminated the music of Berg, Schoenberg, Webern, and Boulez for a new generation of listeners. Her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra won four awards, including The Gramophone Award for Best Concerto. Over the last two years she has been giving performances of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, and her Royal Festival Hall performance was described as “one of the most transporting concerts London has heard all year.”

Ms. Uchida performs throughout the world with many different partners. She is Artist-in-Residence at The Cleveland Orchestra, where she directed all the Mozart concertos from the keyboard over a number of seasons. She has been featured in the Concertgebouw’s Carte Blanche series, where she collaborated with Ian Bostridge, the Hagen Quartet, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as directed from the piano a performance of Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire.

Ms. Uchida’s engagements this season include recitals in Vienna, Amsterdam, London, and New York. She performs with the London and Boston symphony orchestras with Sir Colin Davis; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain with Pierre Boulez; and The Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst. She also play-directs Mozart concertos from the keyboard with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Next season, she will be artist-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchestra.

Ms. Uchida records exclusively for Decca; her recordings include the complete Mozart piano sonatas and piano concertos; the complete Schubert piano sonatas; Debussy’s Etudes; the five Beethoven piano concertos with Kurt Sanderling; a CD of Mozart sonatas for violin and piano with Mark Steinberg; and Die Schöne Müllerin with Ian Bostridge for EMI. Her recording of Beethoven’s Opp. 101 and 106 has recently been released.

In April, 2008 BBC Music Magazine awarded its Disc of the Year and Instrumental Award to Ms. Uchida.

Ms. Uchida has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to aid the development of young musicians and is a trustee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. She is also Co-director, with Richard Goode, of the Marlboro Music Festival.

Llŷr Williams, Piano
Llŷr Williams brings an extraordinary musical intelligence to all his work, as soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician. He has performed with such orchestras as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Sinfonia Cymru, London Mozart Players, and the Hallé Orchestra. He has performed at the BBC Proms in London and has given many remarkable performances at the Edinburgh Festival. Last season, he completed a successful tour of the US with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and gave a stunning recital of Schumann and Schubert at the Wigmore Hall.

This season, he gives recitals throughout the UK and makes his debut in Hannover’s prestigious Pro Musica series. He will perform a series of concerts with other Borletti-Buitoni Trust award winners in the US. He also gives a series of three recitals at Perth Concert Hall with violinist Alexander Janiczek; together they are exploring Beethoven’s early sonatas for violin and piano. He will work with BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Welsh National Opera Orchestra. Mr. Williams has recently returned from Milan, working with I Pomeriggi Musicali and Antonello Manacorda, performing Elliott Carter’s Dialogues and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy; their performances received standing ovations. Other future plans include his US recital debut in Carnegie Hall, and a recital at the Wigmore Hall in March 2009.

Mr. Williams read music at The Queen’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1998 with a first class alpha degree. He went on to take up a postgraduate scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, where he won every prize and award. In 2002 Mr. Williams was selected for the Young Concert Artists Trust scheme, and in 2004 he received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. His first commercial CD featuring Chopin’s Préludes was released in March 2006 on the Quartz label.

Martin Fröst, Clarinet
Swedish clarinet virtuoso Martin Fröst is a charismatic and multi-talented soloist, appearing regularly in leading music centers and with major orchestras worldwide. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2007 playing Mozart’s clarinet concerto with the Mozarteum Orchestra and Giovanni Antonini. In this season and in 2008–09, Mr. Fröst returns to the Rotterdam Philharmonic and debuts with the Staatsorchester Stuttgart and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. Other highlights include Nielsen’s clarinet concerto in Stockholm and Athens with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Mr. Fröst will tour with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel in summer 2008, and appear with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Garry Walker at the Barbican’s Mostly Mozart series in July 2008. In 2009, he will return to Salzburg for concerts with the Camerata Salzburg and Heinz Holliger during Mozartwoche.

Many orchestras are keen work with Mr. Fröst, and he is returning to the Stockholm Philharmonic and Hamburg Symphony as artist-in-residence. The Konzerthaus Dortmund appointed him one of their Junge Wilde artists beginning in the 2006–07 season for the duration of three years. He will also be artist-in-residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in spring 2010.

In 2006 Mr. Fröst gave the world premiere of Kalevi Aho’s clarinet concerto (commissioned for Fröst by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust) with Osmo Vänskä and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded the Aho clarinet concerto with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, and performed the work again with this orchestra in October 2007. In 2009, he will perform the concerto with the Czech Philharmonic and the BBC Scottish Symphony.

Mr. Fröst records exclusively for BIS. His most recent recording of the Nielsen clarinet concerto has been acclaimed by BBC Music Magazine as “the benchmark Nielsen and likely to remain so for many years to come.”

Soovin Kim, Violin
American violinist Soovin Kim is an exciting young player who has built on the early successes of his prizewinning years to emerge as a mature artist, equally gifted in concerto, recital, and chamber music repertoire. Highlights of Mr. Kim’s 2007–08 season include performances of the Brahms Violin Concerto, Op. 77, with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of José-Luis Novo; playing the world premieres of new chamber works by William Bolcom, R. Murray Schafer, and Esa-Pekka Salonen; prestigious chamber music tours of the US in collaboration with the Guarneri String Quartet, Musicians from Marlboro, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, and Charles Wadsworth; and a series of recitals with pianist Jeremy Denk, with whom Mr. Kim recently recorded a new CD. Recent concerto appearances include performances of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with both the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the National Philharmonic; the Mozart Concerto in A Major, K. 219, with the Nashville Symphony; and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia under the direction of Ignat Solzhenitsyn. Last season Mr. Kim performed with a groundbreaking new music group in Korea, M. I. K, and he will continue to do so this season.

Mr. Kim’s fifth recording is about to be released by Azica Records, a collaboration with pianist Jeremy Denk and the Jupiter String Quartet. Mr. Kim’s new recording features Fauré’s A-Major Violin Sonata, Op.13, performed with Mr. Denk; they are then joined by the Jupiter String Quartet in Chausson’s rarely performed Concerto in D Major for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Op. 21. Mr. Kim’s first solo CD (Azica Records) of Nicolò Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices for Solo Violin zoomed to Billboard’s Classical Chart and was named Classic FM magazine’s Instrumental Disc of the Month.

Born in the US, Mr. Kim started to play the violin at age four. At 15, he was accepted to the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein; he ultimately moved to The Curtis Institute of Music, where he worked with Victor Danchenko and Jaime Laredo. He plays the 1709 “ex-Kempner” Stradivarius.

Christian Poltéra, Cello
Christian Poltéra was born in Zurich in 1977. After working with Nancy Chumachenco and Boris Pergamenschikow, he studied with Heinrich Schiff in Salzburg and Vienna. Besides his appearances as a soloist with numerous renowned European orchestras, he dedicates himself intensively to chamber music, playing with partners such as Leonidas Kavakos, Gidon Kremer, Julius Drake, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Mitsuko Uchida, as well as the Auryn, Guarneri, Artemis, and Zehetmair quartets. Furthermore, he works regularly with the pianists Kathryn Stott and Polina Leschenko.

In 2006 Mr. Poltéra made his solo US debut with the American Symphony Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. He is frequently invited to festivals like Salzburg, Lucerne, Lockenhaus, Heimbach, and Risør, among others. His recordings on CD, including cello concertos by Dvořák and Toch as well as various chamber music, appear on the BIS, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Chandos, Naxos, and Tacet labels.

Mr. Poltéra gained special attention from the international press for a highly successful three-CD series on the Swedish label BIS, featuring the cello concertos of Othmar Schoeck, Arthur Honegger, and Frank Martin combined with seldom heard chamber music works by these composers. In December 2007, the CD Christian Poltéra plays Arthur Honegger was awarded the Diapason d’Or.

Between 2004 and 2006, Mr. Poltéra was a member of the prestigious New Generation Artists scheme of the BBC Radio 3. In 2004 he received the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. In 2006–07 he was appointed by Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels to take part in the renowned concert series Rising Stars together with the pianist Polina Leschenko, which included performances in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and New York, among others.

Mr. Poltéra is part of the newly founded string trio with Frank Peter Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit, playing concerts in various European cities such as London, Paris, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Milan, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Essen during the following seasons.