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presents…

EMMANUEL PAHUD | Flute ALESSIO BAX | Piano

Wednesday, February 21, 2018 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

POULENC Sonata for Flute and Piano Allegro malinconico Cantilena: Assez lent Presto giocoso

SCHUBERT Sonata in A minor, D. 821 “Arpeggione” Allegro moderato Adagio Allegretto

INTERMISSION

BACH Sonata in E-flat Major for Flute and Keyboard, BWV 1031 Allegro moderato Siciliano Allegro

MENDELSSOHN Sonata in F Major Allegro vivace Adagio Assai vivace

Emmanuel Pahud records exclusively for Warner Classics.

Exclusive Tour Management, Opus 3 Artists470 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor North, New York, NY 10016opus3artists.com

Alessio Bax appears courtesy of Arts Management Group.

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco.

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ARTIST PROFILES

San Francisco Performances presents Em-manuel Pahud for the fourth time; he made his SF Performances debut with guitarist Manuel Barrueco in 1999. Alessio Bax returns for a second time; he first appeared with cellist Sol Gabetta in 2016.

Swiss-and-French flautist Emmanuel Pahud began studying music at the age of six. He graduated in 1990 with the 1er Prix from the Paris Conservatoire, and went on studying with Aurèle Nicolet. He won 1st Prize at the Duino, Kobe and Geneva Com-petitions, and at age 22 Emmanuel joined the Berliner Philharmoniker as Principal Flute under Claudio Abbado, a position that he still holds today. In addition, he enjoys an extensive international career as soloist and chamber musician.

Pahud appears regularly at leading con-cert series, festivals and orchestras world-wide, and has collaborated as a soloist with top conductors such as Abbado, Antonini, Barenboim, Boulez, Fischer, Gergiev, Gar-diner, Harding, Järvi, Maazel, Nezet-Sé-guin, Orozco-Estrada, Perlman, Pinnock, Rattle, Rostropovich, Zinman.

Pahud is a dedicated chamber musician and regularly gives recitals with pianists Eric Le Sage, Alessio Bax, Yefim Bronfman, Hélène Grimaud, Stephen Kovacevich, as well as jazzing with Jacky Terrasson. In 1993, Emmanuel founded the Summer Music Festival in Salon de Provence to-gether with Eric Le Sage and Paul Meyer, which is still a unique chamber music festival today. He also continues chamber music performances and recordings with “Les Vents Français” with top wind play-

ers François Leleux, Paul Meyer, Gilbert Audin and Radovan Vlatkovic.

He is committed to expanding the flute repertoire and commissions new flute works every year to composers such as El-liott Carter, Marc-André Dalbavie, Thierry Escaich, Simon Holt, Toshio Hosokawa, Mi-chaël Jarrell, Luca Lombardi, Philippe Ma-noury, Matthias Pintscher, Christian Rivet.

Since 1996 Pahud records exclusively for EMI / Warner Classics, one of the most significant contributions to recorded flute music: more than 25 recordings, which all have received unanimous critical acclaim and winning awards.

Pahud was honoured to Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his con-tribution to music, and is HonRAM of the Royal Academy of Music. He also is an Am-bassador for UNICEF.

Alessio Bax, a pianist of authority, el-egance and intensity (as described respec-tively by the Daily Telegraph, the New Yorker and Gramophone), is praised for his lyrical performances and compelling, insightful interpretations. As First Prize winner at the Leeds International Piano Competi-tion, and the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, he has appeared as solo-ist with more than 100 orchestras, includ-ing the London and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, Houston and Cincinnati Sym-phonies, Japan’s NHK Symphony, Dallas Symphony with Jaap van Zweden, St. Pe-tersburg Philharmonic with Yuri Temir-kanov, and the City of Birmingham Sym-phony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle. In 2017 Bax was appointed Artistic Director of Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival

for a three-year term. He has a burgeoning discography that includes works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky as well as a Russian album and a lullaby collection (Lullabies For Mila is dedicated to his daughter, Mila)—all of which have been singled out for distinction by the most discerning critics.

In summer 2017, Bax launched Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2017–18 season in company with his wife and fel-low pianist, Lucille Chung. Further high-lights of his full season include a pair of high-profile U.S. duo recital tours with violinist Joshua Bell and flutist Emman-uel Pahud, respectively; UK solo recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall and the Leeds Piano Festival; collaborations with U.S. orchestras from the Minnesota Orchestra to the North Carolina Philharmonic, on concertos by Gershwin, Grieg, Rachmani-nov, Saint-Saëns, and Schumann; return engagements in Yerevan with the Arme-nian Philharmonic and in Hong Kong; and Signum Classics’ release of his recording of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto with the Southbank Sinfonia, paired with rarely heard solo works by the master composer.

PROGRAM NOTES

Sonata for Flute and Piano

FRANCIS POULENCBorn January 7, 1899, ParisDied January 30, 1963, Paris

Poulenc’s reputation rests on his dra-matic works, religious settings, songs, and music for piano, and in this distinguished company it is easy to overlook the three sonatas for woodwind instruments he wrote late in life: for flute (1957), for clari-net (1962), and for oboe (1962). An interest in these instruments was no late discov-ery, however; thirty years earlier, Poulenc had written his famous Sextet for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, noting that he intended that music as “homage to the wind instru-ments I have loved from the moment I be-gan composing.”

The Flute Sonata has been acclaimed one of the finest of Poulenc’s late works. Composed at the Cannes Hotel between December 1956 and March 1957, it is dedi-cated to the memory of the American pa-tron of music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The overall progress of this brief (twelve-minute) sonata is from the dark opening movement (marked “melancholy”) to the

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high-spirited finale (marked “happy”). The three-part first movement opens with a 32nd-note swirl that will recur through-out; the sinuously winding main theme—which descends melodically and chromat-ically—is one of those melodies that stay to haunt the memory. The second movement, marked Cantilena, has always been a favor-ite of audiences—at the first performance, given in Strasbourg by Jean-Pierre Rampal and the composer on June 18, 1957, it had to be repeated. A critic described this move-ment at that time as “a great rainbow of melody”; characteristically, Poulenc in-structs the pianist to make that part sound “sweetly bathed in pedal.” The brief finale rounds off the traditional fast-slow-fast se-quence of movements with bright energy.

Sonata in A minor, D.821 “Arpeggione”FRANZ SCHUBERTBorn January 31, 1797, ViennaDied November 19, 1828, Vienna

In 1823, the Viennese instrument maker Johann Georg Stauffer invented a new in-strument, which he called the “guitar-vio-loncello” or the “guitarre d’amour.” About the size of a cello, it had six strings and frets and was tuned like a guitar; unlike a guitar, however, it had a curved bridge and was played with a bow. The instrument never caught on. Performers did not take it up and few composers were interested, and the instrument quickly lapsed into the ob-scurity where it would have remained were it not for one piece of music composed for it.

A musician named Vincenz Schuster had learned to play the new instrument, and he asked his friend Franz Schubert to write a piece for him to play on it. In No-vember 1824, Schubert composed a three-movement sonata for Schuster and in the process contributed a new name for the instrument—Schubert referred to it as an “arpeggione,” and that name has stuck to the now nearly forgotten instrument. The instrument may have been relegated to the history books, but the music Schubert wrote for it is so good that it has refused to join the arpeggione in obscurity. A number of different musicians have wanted this so-nata for their own instrument, and it has been transcribed for (and recorded upon) such instruments as cello, viola, violin, double bass, flute, clarinet, and guitar; on this program the “Arpeggione” Sonata is heard in a transcription for flute and piano.

The most striking characteristic of this

music is how gentle it is. Though full of Schubert’s characteristic fine shading, the sonata remains serene throughout; the composer appears to have been im-pressed with an element of tonal restraint built into Stauffer’s instrument. The open-ing Allegro moderato is constructed on two ideas: a dark and lyric opening melody and a busy, good-natured second subject. The development of these ideas, though ex-tended, stays within the restrained char-acter of these themes. A brief Adagio in E Major leads without pause into the rondo-finale marked Allegretto, which swings along agreeably on its 3/8 meter. There are vigorous episodes along the way—and one episode full of wistful Viennese charm—but the amiable spirit that pervades this sonata is never violated.

Sonata in E-flat Major for Flute and Keyboard, BWV 1031

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACHBorn March 21, 1685, EisenachDied July 28, 1750, Leipzig

While the Sonata in E-flat Major for Flute and Harpsichord cannot be dated with cer-tainty, it appears that Bach composed it before 1734. Six flute sonatas by Bach sur-vive: three for flute and harpsichord and three for flute and basso continuo. The So-nata in E-flat Major is one of the former: the parts for both players are fully written out, though Bach would have expected both his performers to ornament their lines in individual (and spontaneous) ways—ide-ally, no two performances should ever be exactly the same.

One of the impressive features of Bach’s sonatas for flute and keyboard is the lib-eration of the latter from a purely con-tinuo role: flute and keyboard are joint partners in the musical enterprise here. This is evident from the first instant of the Sonata in E-flat Major, where (in this case) piano alone opens the Allegro moderato, and only after its complete opening state-ment does the flute enter; the melodic line rides smoothly along the almost perpetual pulse of sixteenth notes here, flowing eas-ily between the two instruments. The flute introduces the dotted main idea of the cen-tral Siciliano; here the piano plays a largely accompanying role. They become equal partners once again in the final move-ment, a brisk binary form Allegro that races nimbly along its 3/8 meter.

Sonata in F Major

FELIX MENDELSSOHNBorn February 3, 1809, HamburgDied November 4, 1847, Leipzig

In 1835, at the age of 29, Mendelssohn became conductor of the Leipzig Gewand-haus Orchestra, and he threw himself into that work, lengthening the season, raising standards (and players’ salaries), and performing unfamiliar music. After several hectic years, Mendelssohn finally found time to get away during the sum-mer and compose. In the summer of 1838, happy with a new wife and an infant son and the chance to relax, he found himself interested in chamber music. To his friend Ferdinand Hiller, Mendelssohn wrote: “A very important branch of piano music that I particularly like—trios, quartets, and other things with piano accompani-ment—is quite neglected these days, and I feel strongly the need for something new in that line . . . With this in mind I have just written the sonata for violin, and the one for cello, and I am now thinking of writing a couple of trios.”

Chamber music did pour out of Mendels-sohn over the next two years, and almost all of it has become part of the standard repertory: the Cello Sonata in B-flat Major, two of the string quartets of Opus 44, and the famous Piano Trio in D minor. But one of these chamber works, a Violin Sonata, com-pleted on June 15, 1838, promptly vanished. Mendelssohn never published it, and this music remained completely unknown un-til the young Yehudi Menuhin discovered Mendelssohn’s manuscript and had it pub-lished in 1953. The sonata was at that point 115 years old.

It is hard to imagine why Mendelssohn did not have this music published. At mo-ments it demonstrates a concerto-like bril-liance that can seem at odds with the more intimate atmosphere one expects in cham-ber music, but the Sonata in F Major is lyric and exciting music, much superior to vir-tually all other mid-century violin sonatas. Perhaps if Mendelssohn had lived a normal lifetime (he died suddenly at 38), he would have seen this music through the press and it would have earned the popularity it de-serves. The music is heard at the present recital in a version for flute and piano.

The sonata is in the expected three movements. Solo piano opens the Al-legro vivace, and the flute picks up this idea when it makes its own entrance. The

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Pahud Notes continued from page 3

flowing second subject actually retains some of the shape of this first theme, and from them Mendelssohn builds a lengthy sonata form movement, full of energy and steady motion, that drives to a full-throated close. The piano also introduces the singing Adagio, and once again the

flute picks up this theme within measures. This movement develops by repetition, but near the end this gentle music rises to a surprising climax, full of cadenza-like declamation, before subsiding to the quiet close. The concluding Assai vivace seems to be in constant motion, and it has reminded many listeners of the scherzo of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Mid-

summer Night’s Dream (which would not be composed until five years later, in 1843). Despite its brilliance, this is true chamber music, and the musical line flows seam-lessly between flute and piano as this fi-nale dashes along on an unending supply of happy energy.

—Program notes by Eric Bromberger