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2007/2008

Portland Piano International

Michael RollSunday, March 9, 2008 • 4:00 pm

Monday, March 10, 2008 • 7:30 pm

Newmark Theatre • Portland, Oregon

Program

StrauSS Selections from Stimmungsbilder, Op. 9 Träumerei (Reverie) Intermezzo An einsamer Quelle (At the Spring)

Schumann Kreisleriana, Op. 16 Ausserst bewegt Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch Sehr aufgeregt Sehr langsam Sehr lebhaft Sehr langsam Sehr rasch Schnell und spielend

IntermISSIon

choPIn Impromptu No. 1 in A-flat Major, Op. 29 Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1 Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 (posthum.)

Beethoven Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 (“Appassionata”) Allegro assai Andante con moto

Allegro ma non troppo

Program subject to change

Michael Roll appears by arrangement with Konzertdirektion Martin Müller,Uhrs Knäppken 8, D-59320, Ennigerloh-Ostenfelde, Germany info@kdmueller.de

Generously sponsored by: Craig & Nancy Casey (March 9)

Ron & Minnie Quiring (March 10)

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mIchael rollMichael Roll is one of Britain’s most distinguished pianists. He was born in England, the son of Viennese parents, and at a very early age he began studying piano with the legendary Dame Fanny Waterman. He made his concert debut with the City of Birmingham Orchestra at the age of ten, and his Royal Festival Hall debut at the age of twelve — playing the Schumann Concerto (Sir Malcolm Sargent, conducting). His success at the first Leeds International Piano Competition in 1963, where he won first prize at the age of seventeen, led to the start of a career that has taken him all over the world. He has appeared with such conductors as Barbirolli, Boulez, Giulini, Gergiev, Haitink, Leinsdorf, Masur, Previn, Sanderling, and Sawallisch.

He toured Japan with the BBC Symphony; Europe with the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool and English Chamber Orchestras; appeared at the first Hong Kong Festival with the London Philharmonic; and at the Edinburgh Festival with the London Symphony. He made his American debut in 1974, appearing in Boston and New York with the Boston Symphony and Sir Colin Davis.

In Europe, Michael Roll has appeared with major British orchestras as well as with the Swedish Radio, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Residentie, and Kirov Orchestras under the batons of Masur, Gergiev, Svetlanov, DePreist, and Kamu.

Michael Roll has given recitals

in London, Edinburgh, New York, Milan, Leipzig, Berlin, and Dresden, and appeared at leading international festivals such as Aldeburgh (together with Benjamin Britten), Bath, Edinburgh, Granada, Hong Kong, Vienna, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and the Promenade concerts. He also holds a Professorship at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany.

His three CD recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under Howard Shelley, received high praise from the critics. The first CD of his Beethoven Concerto Cycle with the RPO under Howard Shelley for Tring Records was enthusiastically received as an “exceptionally fine recording” (Gramophone), “the playing [being] world class from the outset” (Classic CD), “Roll ... is masterly from first note to last” (BBC Music Magazine). The second CD of this cycle was awarded Gramophone’s “Editor’s choice.” The third and last CD received exceptionally fine reviews both in Gramophone and in BBC Music Magazine.

Engagements in recent seasons have led Michael Roll to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark, Romania, United Kingdom, and to Germany (where he appeared in Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg with Andrey Boreyko). He played the Grieg and Schumann Concertos with the Bournemouth Symphony and Marin Alsop; and his return to the BBC Philharmonic, at Barry Douglas’ Mozart festival in Manchester, was a huge success. He recently made his debut with the Suisse

Romande in Geneva, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, and with the Dallas Symphony, conducted by Andrey Boreyko.

Engagements in the 2007–08 season include Schumann’s Piano Concerto in Berlin and Munich, Mozart’s Double Concerto (with Elisabeth Leonskaja as partner) in Hamburg, a recital tour of the U.S. West Coast, and appearances in Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Romania, and the U.K.

Program noteS

rIchard StrauSS

(Born June 11, 1864, in Munich; died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch)Selections from Stimmungsbilder, Op. 9

Richard Strauss’s father was a dogmatically conservative musician who brought his son up on a strict diet of the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and did not allow him to know the “radical” works of Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms, let alone those of Liszt and Wagner. Yet, children inevitably deny the strictures of their parents, and Richard Strauss’s music makes that turning away from the older generation palpable, especially over time.

Meet the Artist!Join Michael Roll in the lobby

immediately following the

concert where he will be happy to

autograph copies of his recordings,

available for purchase courtesy of

Classical Millennium.

In the early pieces of the Stimmungsbilder, Strauss began to show some characteristics of his later work, as well as to display his talent quite clearly. One can sense that he is moving away from the Romantic period models, especially that of Schumann, with whom these works and their titles, in particular, can be best associated.

Träumerei (Reverie) is a quiet and restrained character piece that feels more like what we associate with Strauss than with Schumann.

The third piece in the group of five, Intermezzo, Allegretto, is a varied little work and incorporates mood and tempo changes (to Allegro molto agitato). Lively, playful sections contrast with the more reflective moments.

An einsamer Quelle (At the Spring), Lento, the second piece

of Strauss’s five, is quiet and gently effervescent, suggesting the lapping of water or the bubbling of a fountain, with its continuous, accompanying figuration.

roBert Schumann

(Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau; died July 29, 1856, in Endenich)Kreisleriana, Op. 16

The fabulist E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) invented Johannes Kreisler, a fictional conductor and composer. Hoffmann, a lawyer, judge, conductor, composer, music critic, and writer of fiction, and who is now best remembered for his fiction (the source of such musical works as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Delibes’s Coppelia, and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann), not only captured the Romantic imagination, but became important in the lives of many musicians of his time. In 1812 and 1813,

Hoffmann wrote two critical essays that helped to establish Beethoven’s music and Mozart’s Don Giovanni in the musical repertory; Beethoven, to show his pleasure, composed a punning canon on Hoffmann’s name. Hoffmann even went so far as to sign some of his essays with the name Johannes Kreisler, as the Kreisler of his fiction became his own alter ego, who he pictured as a musician in emotional turmoil, with an artistic soul that could never make peace with the Philistine society that he had to serve.

As a boy, Brahms, who sometimes referred to himself as “Kreisler Junior,” copied his favorite Kreisler stories into notebooks he called Kreisler’s Thesaurus. Some years earlier, Schumann, who became Brahms’s mentor and idol, had entitled a set of eight short piano pieces Kreisleriana. After making

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appearances in two early volumes of Hoffmann’s tales, Kreisler’s “life” came to a literary climax in the unfinished novel Kater Murr (“Murr, the Tomcat, His Views on Life — Together with Fragments of the Biography of Johannes Kreisler, the Conductor — From Loose and Dirty Scraps of Paper”). In this fantastic, schizophrenic text, Murr appears — contented and robust — after writing his bourgeois philosophy of life on paper torn from Kappellmeister Kreisler’s biography. The printer, who prepares the manuscript for publication, sets both texts, in type, as a book-within-a-book, or two concurrent books, so that Murr’s worldly wisdom becomes interwoven with the story of Kreisler’s struggles to live and work as an artist. Some musicians find

reflections of specific incidents from the Murr-Kreisler stories in Schumann’s Kreisleriana.

In 1838, when Schumann composed Kreisleriana, he was deeply in love with his piano teacher’s daughter, Clara Wieck, who was then only nineteen, two years shy of the date when her father’s objections could no longer prevent her from marrying. Robert wrote to her, “There is so much music in me now, and such beautiful melody! I have written a whole sheaf of new things, and I shall call them Kreisleriana. You and the thought of you play the principal role in them and I shall dedicate them to you — yes to you and to no one else. You will smile so sweetly when you discover yourself in them.” A year later, Schumann wrote to a Belgian admirer that he liked Kreisleriana best of his recent compositions, but in explaining Kreisler’s identity, he added, “The titles of all my works never come to me until after I have finished writing them.” These statements make Kreisleriana seem less a series of pictures of Hoffmann characters than a collection of imaginative romantic images conceived in the struggling, romantic artist’s spirit. For reasons lost to history, when he published the music, Schumann dedicated it not to Clara but to Chopin, who, in return, in 1840, dedicated his F Major Ballade to Schumann.

In Kreisleriana, the beauty of the musical statements outshines their presumed literary source. The eight fantasies of Kreisleriana contain a sequence of lovely romantic effusions that change quickly in character as they alternate between fast and slow, and are, by turns, passionate, contemplative, agitated, introspective, elfin (or

perhaps feline), retrospective, and valedictory.

FrédérIc choPIn

(Born ca. March 1, 1810, in Zelazowa Wola, Poland; died October 17, 1849, in Paris)Impromptu No. 1 in A-flat Major, Op. 29

The Romantic period gave birth to the Impromptu, a work intended to suggest the results of sudden inspiration. By nature a very pianistic form, it traditionally had a three-part shape, with the middle section featuring a contrast with the principal section. In the case of Chopin’s Impromptu No. 1, the main theme is a fast-moving triplet figure, rather than a lyrical theme.

This Impromptu — composed in 1837, the year when Chopin’s engagement with Maria Wodzinska was broken off — has a fairly large and elaborate structure, and makes complex demands on the pianist’s technique. Its more lyrical middle section progressively requires more and more ornamentation, emphasizing the section’s marked contrast to the outer sections. When the Impromptu No. 1 was first published, some critics complained that it traveled through too many keys in a short time. Now, critics admire the ease with which Chopin negotiates the harmonic design of his work.

Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1

In the eighteenth century the notturno (night piece) was a serenade, intended for a small ensemble, often of wind

instruments. The notturni were generally performed outdoors and normally had three to five movements. Chopin’s Nocturnes were not based on this model. Instead, Chopin took his idea of the musical nocturne from the Irish composer, John Field (1782–1837), and the Polish pianist and composer, Maria Szymanowski (1789–1831). He adapted it to his own greater expressive purposes; over time, he wrote about twenty pieces in the nocturne form, ennobling it by giving it greater breadth, passion, and grandeur.

These lyrical works are generally hushed reveries, quiet, reflective, poetic pieces in a simple three-part form: the first part consisting of a melody with an accompaniment; the second, a contrasting idea with more motion; and the third, a varied return of the first. In Chopin’s Nocturnes, the melody is usually ornamented with grace notes, coloratura-type runs, and other elaborate ornamentation. He often gives out his melodic lines in parallel thirds, sixths, and even octaves at the climaxes. Field’s Nocturnes often preserved the same character throughout, but Chopin often composed a contrasting middle section in a different key using different thematic material.

The Three Nocturnes, Op. 15, were published by Maurice Schlesinger in 1834, and were dedicated to the German pianist, composer, and conductor Ferdinand Hiller, a close friend of Mendelssohn’s, who as a boy had impressed Chopin with his great talent. They are very original, very personal expressions.

The Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1, Andante cantabile, follows Chopin’s typical nocturne form, having a ternary ABA structure. In the outer sections, a very lovely cantilena melody sings over a quiet accompaniment in the left hand, creating a tranquil feeling. The passionate and turbulent central section in F minor, Con fuoco, is a strong contrast, but Chopin returns to the initial serenity for the final section.

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Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 (posthum.)

Chopin published three of his Impromptus a year or so after they were written, but for some reason he kept aside an early one from 1834, which did not appear in print until twenty years later, several years after his death, with the title altered by the publisher to Fantaisie-Impromptu. For years musicians wondered why he had withheld this passionate and forceful work, for like every composer before and since his time, Chopin was eager to have the money and the reputation that only publication brings.

The best answer to this question came more than a century after the music was written, upon the observation of the close resemblance between the opening theme and that of an Impromptu by Ignaz Moscheles, a composer and pianist now very little known. At that time, Moscheles was a figure of great importance, Mendelssohn’s mentor, and Chopin’s friend. The similarity is too close to have been accidental. Chopin must have read through his friend’s piece and then decided to test the idea of writing a similar one by simply paraphrasing Moscheles’s opening measures. Most musicologists, as well as performers, deem the contrasting section to be one of Chopin’s most inspired inventions, but he initially put the whole work aside, perhaps with the intention of rewriting it some day.

This work, like the other three Impromptus, uses thematic material that is less lyrical than that found in his Nocturnes. In this technically demanding work,

Chopin uses a figure consisting of a complex two-against-three pattern actually made up of four groups of sixteenth notes against two sextuplets of eighth notes. The central section contrasts strongly with the principal section.

ludwIg van Beethoven

(Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna)Sonata No. 23, in F minor, Op. 57 (“Appassionata”)

Beethoven’s pupil, Carl Czerny, said that the composer thought this piece was his finest piano sonata. When the work was composed, it had no precedent in the boldness of its expression, the unity and equilibrium of its form and content, and in the intimate interrelationship among its movements. Beethoven worked on this monumental sonata in 1804 and 1805, and perhaps

even as late as 1806, when his maturity and the mastery that accompanied it allowed him to write an uninterrupted series of great works. He did not give it the title “Appassionata,” but it was so named during his lifetime, and presumably he heard the nickname and did not object to it. The sonata first was published in 1838 in an arrangement for four hands at one piano, which made this difficult music accessible to players who had only modest technical skills.The first movement, Allegro assai, is a great, stormy, violent, musical declamation, cast in regular, symmetrical form. Enclosed within its gorgeous lyricism is strong emotion, growing from powerful and concentrated rhythmic cells. The rhythm of the quiet descending minor triad at the beginning initiates the tragic character of the movement. This

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theme, characterized by its dotted rhythm, with its low point falling to what was at that time the lowest note on the piano, has a dramatic, passionate character and a subdued dynamic. The themes of the movement are all similarly short and highly characteristic of Beethoven in their potential for development. The contrasting secondary theme has the rhythm and triadic nature of the first. Beethoven wrote the exposition of the last theme in this movement in the minor form of the relative major key, a new method for accentuating the tragic quality of his music, and he dispensed with the repetition of the exposition, traditional at that time. By the end of the coda, the themes are almost joined together in one melodic line, reconciling the opposites, before the movement ends very quietly with the same motif with which it had begun.

The second movement, Andante con moto, provides a respite as it lessens the tension with its simple, tranquil, balanced, chorale-like theme and variations that seem to stretch the melody without altering its structure, even though they are increasingly decorated and energetic. To build tension, Beethoven makes his subject rise gradually from the piano’s lowest register. At the same time, he creates speed, without changing the tempo, by subdividing the measures into smaller and smaller note values. At the end, two long chords connect this slow movement with the rushing, furious whirlwind of the finale, Allegro ma non troppo.

The third movement, in sonata form, returns to the mood of the first movement. In its structure it is less complex than the opening movement, and yet it contains

greater weight. Here Beethoven makes an important formal innovation. He repeats only the second part of the movement, the development section and the recapitulation, rather than the first part, the exposition, intensifying the mood of desperation. The fierce coda, Presto, beginning with a wild dancelike section in an AB form with repeats, brings back the motif of the first movement at its close without really resolving the turbulence Beethoven introduced at the beginning. The sonata ends abruptly, dazzlingly, and intensely.

— Program notes © 2008 by Susan Halpern

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Board of DirectorsBetty Bell

Craig J. CaseyRichard ChapmanRebecca C. GreenLouis H. McCrawJohn Montague

Ron QuiringBarbara RobertsNancy StephensMary A. ToozeLarry Vollum

This project is supported in part by a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the Regional Arts & Culture Council, including support from the City of Portland, Metro, and Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties; and by Work for Art, including contributions from hundreds of employees at companies throughout the Portland metropolitan area.

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