CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Inon Barnatan, Piano
Part of: Keyboard Virtuosos III: Keynotes
Performers
Inon Barnatan, Piano
Program
MENDELSSOHN Selections from Songs Without Words
STEVENSON Peter Grimes Fantasy
GERSHWIN Prelude No. 2
GERSHWIN "I Got Rhythm" (arr. Wild)
SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959
Encore:
MENDELSSOHN Rondo capriccioso, Op. 14
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.In honor of the centenary of his birth, Carnegie Hall’s 2019–2020 season is dedicated to the memory of Isaac Stern in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to Carnegie Hall, arts advocacy, and the field of music.
At a Glance
MENDELSSOHN Selections from Songs Without Words
Mendelssohn is often credited with inventing the instrumental genre of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words). The dozens of these songs that he wrote are among his most beloved works. They inspired Grieg, Moscheles, and other composers to write their own wordless piano pieces in a similarly lyrical vein.
STEVENSON Peter Grimes Fantasy
Ronald Stevenson’s short, technically demanding fantasy—based on themes from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes—evokes the 19th-century genre of the virtuoso concert paraphrase. In adapting Britten’s moodily atmospheric orchestrations for the piano, the Scottish composer-pianist was motivated by a “conviction that free composition, free transcription, and free variation … are all essentially the same thing.”
GERSHWIN Prelude No. 2; “I Got Rhythm” (arr. Wild)
Gershwin was equally at home in the worlds of popular and classical music. Just as the second of his Three Preludes is permeated with the bittersweet sound of the blues, so his iconic show tune “I Got Rhythm”—heard this evening in a bravura arrangement by pianist Earl Wild—evokes the pyrotechnical feats of Liszt and other 19th-century piano virtuosos.
SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959
One of Schubert’s last three piano sonatas, D. 959 was written in the spring and summer of 1828 and completed that September, only a few weeks before the composer’s untimely death. In contrast to the Sonata in C Minor written the same year, the mood of the A-Major Sonata is not primarily tragic: Schubert seems content to let us peer into the abyss without tumbling in.
Bios
Inon Barnatan
“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (The New York Times), Inon Barnatan is celebrated for his poetic sensibility, musical intelligence, and consummate artistry. He inaugurated his tenure as music director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest this year.
Mr. Barnatan is a frequent soloist with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conductors. His 2019–2020 concerto collaborations include Mozart with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gershwin and Ravel with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rachmaninoff with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and a recreation of Beethoven’s legendary 1808 concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Barnatan served for three seasons as the inaugural artist-in-association of the New York Philharmonic. In recent seasons, he made debuts at the BBC Proms and with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; the London, Helsinki, and Hong Kong philharmonic orchestras; the Baltimore, Fort Worth, and Indianapolis symphony orchestras; and the Nashville, San Diego, and Seattle symphonies.
The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, Mr. Barnatan is also a sought-after recitalist and chamber musician. This season he returns to Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and reunites with frequent cello partner Alisa Weilerstein for tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Barnatan has previously given solo recitals at such major international venues as 92nd Street Y, Celebrity Series of Boston, Chicago’s Harris Theater, Vancouver Recital Society, and London’s Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall. Passionate about contemporary music, he has commissioned and performed works by many living composers and premiered works by Thomas Adès, Sebastian Currier, Avner Dorman, Alan Fletcher, Joseph Hallman, Alasdair Nicolson, Andrew Norman, and Matthias Pintscher.
This season, Mr. Barnatan releases a recording of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with Alan Gilbert and London’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. His acclaimed discography also includes Messiaen’s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles, recorded live at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; Rachmaninov & Chopin: Cello Sonatas, recorded with Ms. Weilerstein for Decca Classics; two solo Schubert albums; and Darknesse Visible, which was hailed by BBC Music Magazine and The New York Times.