Nobuyuki Tsujii, Piano
The 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner returns to Carnegie Hall for a program that showcases his “singing tone and eloquent phrasing” (London's Evening Standard). Nobuyuki Tsujii's “sensitive ear [and] light touch” (Financial Times) are ideally suited to the delicate timbres and subtle colors that make the music of three French masters so beautiful, while his virtuosity intensifies the drama of Chopin’s passionate scherzos.
Performers
Nobuyuki Tsujii, Piano
Program
SATIE Trois Gymnopédies
DEBUSSY Images, Book I
RAVEL Sonatine
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 1
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 2
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 3
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4
Encores:
DEBUSSY "Clair de lune" from Suite bergamasque
NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN Prelude: Allegro assai from Eight Concert Etudes, Op. 40, No. 1
FOSTER "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (arr. Nobuyuki Tsujii)
CHOPIN Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12, "Revolutionary"
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.At a Glance
SATIE Trois Gymnopédies
The leader of a group of irreverently anti-Romantic composers known as “Les Six,” Erik Satie exerted a powerful influence over a long line of composers, from Debussy and Stravinsky to John Cage and Steve Reich. The three closely related piano pieces known as Gymnopédies, after an ancient Greek ceremonial dance, are among his earliest and most enduringly popular works.
DEBUSSY Images, Book I
At once radical and traditionalist, Debussy rebelled against the ponderous academic style of establishment composers like Saint-Saëns and d’Indy, urging his compatriots to return to the “pure French tradition” that he admired in the music of Rameau. Debussy’s first book of Images, composed between 1901 and 1905, combines an homage to the Baroque master with a pair of exquisitely crafted tone poems.
RAVEL Sonatine
As a member of the Parisian artists’ circle known as “Les Apaches,” the young Ravel aligned himself with the gadflies who stood apart from France’s hidebound cultural establishment. The Sonatine, with its graceful lyricism and crystalline textures, anticipates the novel harmonies that would characterize his soon-to-be-finished piano cycle Miroirs.
CHOPIN Four Scherzos
In his four scherzos, as in his contemporaneous polonaises and ballades, Chopin deliberately set out to work on a grander scale than in his earlier waltzes, mazurkas, nocturnes, and other salon pieces. Composed over a period of some eight years, the scherzos illustrate both Chopin’s innovative approach to the keyboard, and the extraordinary range and subtlety of his musical language.