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presents…

STEPHEN HOUGH | Piano

Thursday, January 18, 2018 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

DEBUSSY Clair de lune

Images, Book II Cloches à travers les feuilles Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût Poissons d’or

SCHUMANN Fantasy in C Major, Opus 17 Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen Mässig. Durchaus energisch Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten

INTERMISSION

DEBUSSY La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

Images, Book I Reflets dans l’eau Hommage à Rameau Mouvement

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata in F minor, Opus 57 “Appassionata” Allegro assai Andante con moto Allegro ma non troppo

The Piano Series is made possible in part by a grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Photographing or recording performances is strictly forbidden.

Stephen Hough is represented by CM Artists, 127 W 96th Street, #13B NY, NY 10025 cmartists.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco.

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ARTIST PROFILES

San Francisco Performances presents Stephen Hough for the seventh time. He made his SF Performances debut in 1991.

Stephen Hough is regarded as a Renais-sance man of his time. Over the course of his career he has distinguished himself as a true polymath, not only securing a reputation as a uniquely insightful con-cert pianist but also as a writer and com-poser. He is commended for his mastery of the instrument along with an individual and inquisitive mind, which has earned him a multitude of prestigious awards and a long-standing international following.

Mr. Hough was the first classical per-forming artist to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2011), and in 2013 was named a Commander of the British Empire. He regularly contributes articles for The Guardian, The Times, Gramophone, and BBC Music Magazine. From 2009 to 2016 he wrote more than six hundred ar-ticles for his The Telegraph blog, which be-came one of the most popular and influen-tial forums for cultural discussion. He has appeared with most of the major European and American orchestras and plays recit-als regularly in major halls and concert se-ries around the world.

During the 2017–18 season, Mr. Hough celebrates the centenary of Claude De-bussy with Hyperion Records’ release of his first all-Debussy recording (Children’s Corner, Estampes, and Images, Books I and II), and recitals featuring Debussy’s “Clair de lune” from Suite bergamasque, “La ter-

rasse des audiences du clair de lune” from Préludes (Book II), and Images (Books I and II) at Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as in Miami, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Toronto, among other cities. This re-cital program also includes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor (“Appassio-nata”) and Schumann’s Fantasy in C Major.

As an orchestral soloist this season, Mr. Hough performs in North America with the Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, New Jersey, and Vancouver Symphonies, as well as with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. In Eu-rope, he performs with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Kammerorchester Basel, Or-chestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Slo-vak Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, with which he is the 2017–18 Artist-in-Residence. As a com-poser, he has written works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, and solo piano, and, this season, performs his own compo-sition Was mit den Tränen geschieht (2009) with the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quin-tet on tour in California and Colorado.

Many of Mr. Hough’s more than 50 al-bums have garnered international prizes including the Deutscher Schallplatten-preis, Diapason d’Or, Monde de la Musique, several Grammy nominations, and eight Gramophone Magazine Awards including the 1996 and 2003 “Record of the Year” Awards and the 2008 “Gold Disc” Award, which named his complete Saint-Saëns piano concertos the best recording of the past 30 years. He has recorded extensively for Hyperion, and his most recent release features Schumann and Dvořák piano con-certos with the City of Birmingham Sym-phony Orchestra.

To learn more about Stephen Hough, visit his website, stephenhough.com, and follow his Twitter (@houghhough) and Facebook fan page (facebook.com/houghhough).

PROGRAM NOTES

Claire de lune

CLAUDE DEBUSSYBorn August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-LayeDied March 25, 1918, Paris

The first half of this program consists of music by Debussy, and Mr. Hough frames the two sets of Images with short pieces drawn from other works by Debussy. The famous Claire de lune is the third move-ment of Suite bergamasque, a collection

of four pieces published in 1905 (though they had been written much earlier). Clair de lune has become so familiar as an im-pressionistic portrait of moonlight that it is surprising to learn that in its earliest version this music had nothing to do with moonlight. When he first composed this music in 1890, Debussy titled it Promenade sentimentale, and the music acquired its familiar name only when it was revised in 1905. Clair de lune fully deserves its popu-larity, for no matter how over familiar they may have become, Debussy’s fluid rhythms, haunting melodies, and delicate shading continue to work their hold on lis-teners (and pianists).

Images, Books One and Two

In the early years of this century, De-bussy’s piano music, already a miracle of subtlety and tone color, took on a new depth and sophistication. It may be pos-sible to find reasons for this in the com-poser’s life. After years of struggle, De-bussy—now in his early forties—had two significant successes: the opera Pelléas et Mélisande was produced in 1902, and La Mer followed three years later. With these achievements behind him—and with a new sense of orchestral sonority derived from composing the opera and La Mer—Debussy returned to composing for piano. He produced the first book of Images in 1905, the second in 1907.

Audiences should both take the title Im-ages seriously and they should ignore it. It is true that some of these six individual pieces have visual titles and seem at first to pro-ceed from the images they suggest. Yet De-bussy’s intention here is much more subtle than mere tone painting. He aims not for literal depiction of the title but for a refined projection of mood, a combination of title, rhythm, and sonority to create an evocative sound world all its own. Debussy was quite proud of his achievement in this music. When he sent the first set off to his publish-er, he wrote: “With no false vanity, I believe that these three pieces are a success and that they will take their place in the literature of the piano, on the left hand of Schumann, or the right hand of Chopin, as you like it.” Few would argue with that claim.

The first book consists of three quite different pieces. Some of Debussy’s fin-est works were inspired by water, and the first of this set— Reflets dans l’eau (“Reflec-tions in the water”)—is one of them. The repetition and growing complexity of the chordal melody from the beginning has in-

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evitably been compared to dropping stones into the surface of water and watching the patterns of ripples interweave. The music rises to a shimmering climax and fades into silence on fragments of sound.

At the same time he was writing Images, Debussy was also editing an edition of the opera Les Fêtes de Polymnie by eighteenth-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, and he wrote this movement quite literally as homage to the older com-poser. Debussy does not quote Rameau but instead writes in a baroque form, the sarabande, as a way of honoring a master whom he revered. A sarabande is an old dance (originally from the sixteenth cen-tury), and this one—in G-sharp minor—dances gravely. The abstractly titled Mou-vement is characterized by great rhythmic energy (Debussy marks it Animé); some have heard pre-echoes here of the sort of ostinato based piano music Stravinsky and Bartók would write a generation later.

Book II of Images comes from two years later, and it shows much greater complex-ity: it is written in three staves throughout and shows new attention to color. Cloches à travers les feuilles (“Bells heard through leaves”) is meant to suggest the sound of distant church bells heard through a for-est on Halloween. It is marked by the so-nority of ringing bells and layers of sound at different dynamics; it is a sign of the refinement of Debussy’s thinking here that he asks that one passage sound “like an iridescent vapor.” Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût (“And the moon descends on a ruined temple”) has a static qual-ity, and some have heard in this steady chordal progression the play of light from the sinking moon over solitary ruins; that title, though, was suggested to Debussy by a friend after the piece was written. The entire work is at a very quiet dynamic, of-ten at the level of pianississimo. The final piece—Poissons d’or (“Goldfish”)—is anoth-er water music piece, but with a difference: it was inspired not by actual goldfish but by a piece of Chinese lacquer with a gold-fish on a shiny black background: flashes of movement and color leap from out of the rippling accompaniment.

Fantasy in C Major, Opus 17

ROBERT SCHUMANNBorn June 8, 1810, ZwickauDied July 29, 1856, Endenich

In 1835, the 25-year-old Robert Schumann learned of plans to create a Beethoven mon-

ument in Bonn and—fired with enthusi-asm for the project—resolved to compose a piano sonata and donate all receipts from it to support the monument. He wrote to his publisher, suggesting an elaborate publication in which the score would be bound in black and trimmed with gold, and he proposed a monumental inscrip-tion for that cover:

Ruins. Trophies. Palms.Grand Piano Sonata

For Beethoven’s Monument

Yet when Schumann began composing this music the following year, his plans had changed considerably. He had fallen in love with the young piano virtuosa Clara Wieck, and her father had exploded: Friedrich Wieck did everything in his power to keep the lovers apart, forbidding them to see each other and forcing them to return each other’s letters. The dejected Schumann composed a three-movement, sonata-like piece that was clearly fired by his thwarted love: he later told Clara that the first move-ment was “the most passionate thing I have ever composed–a deep lament for you.” Yet the score, published under the neutral title Fantasy in 1839, contains enough referenc-es to Beethoven (quotations from the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte at the end of the first movement and from the Seventh Sym-phony in the last) to suggest that some of Schumann’s original plans for a Beethoven sonata remained in this music. And fi-nally, to complicate matters even further, Schumann dedicated the score not to Clara but to Franz Liszt, who would become one of its great champions.

If the inspiration for this music is in doubt, its greatness is not: the Fantasy in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest compo-sitions, wholly original in form, extremely difficult to perform, and haunting in its emotional effect. Schumann was right to call this music a Fantasy–it may seem like a piano sonata on first appearance, but it refuses to conform exactly to the rules of sonata form. The first movement, marked “Fantastic and passionate throughout,” begins with an impassioned falling figure that Schumann associated with Clara. In the quiet middle section, which Schumann marks “In the manner of a legend,” the music moves to C minor; yet the conclu-sion does not recapitulate the opening material in the correct key—the music re-turns to C Major only after the reference to Beethoven’s song from An die ferne Geliebte.

The second movement is a vigorous

march full of dotted rhythms; Schumann marks it “Energetic throughout.” Curi-ously, Clara—the inspiration for the first movement—liked this movement the best; she wrote to Schumann: “The march strikes me as a victory march of warriors returning from battle, and in the Ab sec-tion I think of the young girls from the village, all dressed in white, each with a garland in her hand crowning the warriors kneeling before them.” Schumann con-cludes with a surprise: the last movement is at a slow tempo—it unfolds expressively, and not until the final bars does Schumann allow this music to arrive—gently and magically—in the home key of C Major.

The Fantasy in C Major is one of Schumann’s finest works, yet within years of its composition, Schumann himself was hard on this music, calling it “immature and unfinished . . . mostly reflections of my turbulent earlier life.” By this time, he was happily married to Clara and may have identified the Fantasy with a painful period in his life, yet it is precisely for its turbulence, its pain, and its longing that we value this music today.

La terrasse des audiences du clair de luneCLAUDE DEBUSSY

Debussy composed his two books of pi-ano preludes relatively late in life. The first appeared in 1910, and he composed the sec-ond book of twelve preludes over the next several years while he was completing one of his most subtle orchestral scores, the bal-let Jeux. Book II was published in Paris on April 19, 1913, just six weeks before Stravin-sky’s Le sacre du printemps stood that city on its head. Though he has been inescapably tagged an “impressionist,” Debussy disliked that term. He would have argued that he was not trying to present a physical impres-sion of something but instead trying to cre-ate in sound the character of his subject. So little was he concerned to convey a physical impression that he placed the evocative title of each prelude at its end rather than begin-ning—he did not wish to have an audience (or performer) fit the music into a precon-ceived mental set but rather wanted the music heard for itself first, identified with an idea or image later. In fact, some have gone so far as to say that perhaps Debussy wanted the music to suggest the title.

The twelve preludes of Book II have a dazzling variety of subjects, and Debussy evokes such different locales as Spain, Eng-

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land, Egypt, Germany, and—of course—France. The seventh prelude, La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (“The balcony where moonlight holds court”), was in-spired by tales of India; the last of the pre-ludes to be composed, it features chords at the extreme ends of the keyboard.

Piano Sonata in F minor, Opus 57 “Appassionata”LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVENBorn December 16, 1770, BonnDied March 26, 1827, Vienna

Between May and November 1803, Beethoven sketched the Eroica, a symphony on a scale never before imagined. Nearly half an hour longer than his Second Sym-phony, Beethoven’s Third thrust the whole conception of the symphony—and sonata form—into a new world, in which music be-came heroic struggle and sonata form the stage for this drama rather than an end in itself. It was a world of new dimensions, new sonorities, new possibilities of expression, and with the Eroica behind him, Beethoven began to plan two piano sonatas. These so-natas, later nicknamed the Waldstein and the Appassionata, would be governed by the same impulse that shaped the Eroica.

While Beethoven completed the Wald-stein Sonata quickly, the other sonata, delayed by his work on Fidelio, was not finished until early in 1806. The subtitle “Appassionata” appears to have originated with a publisher rather than with the com-poser, but few works so deserve their nick-name as this sonata. At moments in this music one feels that Beethoven is striving for a texture and intensity of sound un-available to the piano, reaching for what Beethoven’s biographer Maynard Solomon calls “quasi-orchestral sonorities.” Despite the volcanic explosions of sounds in this sonata, however, it remains piano music—the Appassionata may strain the resources of the instrument, but this music is clearly conceived in terms of a pianistic rather than an orchestral sonority.

The ominous opening of the Allegro as-sai is marked pianissimo, but it is alive with energy and the potential for development. As this long first theme slowly unfolds, deep in the left hand is heard the four-note motto that will later open the Fifth Sympho-ny, and out of this motto suddenly bursts a great eruption of sound. The movement’s extraordinary unity becomes clear with the arrival of the second theme, which is effectively an inversion of the opening theme. And there is even a third subject,

which boils out of a furious torrent of sixteenth notes. The movement develops in sonata form, though Beethoven does without an exposition repeat, choosing instead to press directly into the turbulent development. The rhythm of the open-ing rhythm is stamped out in the coda, and—after so much energy, the movement concludes as the first theme descends to near inaudibility. When this sonata was published in 1806, a reviewer—aware of the new directions Beethoven was taking music—tried to offer some measure of this movement: “Everyone knows Beethoven’s way when writing a large-scale sonata…In the first movement of this Sonata (15 pages in 12/8 time) he has once again let loose many evil spirits…”

The second movement, a theme and four variations marked Andante con moto, brings a measure of relief. The theme, a calm chordal melody in two eight-bar phrases, is heard immediately, and the tempo remains constant throughout, though the variations become increasingly complex, increasingly ornate. Beethoven insists that the gentle mood remain constant—in the score he keeps reminding the pianist to play dolce, and even the swirls of 32nd notes near the end remain serene. The sonata form finale, marked Allegro ma non troppo, bursts upon the conclusion of the second movement with a fanfare of dotted notes, and the main theme, an almost moto perpetuo shower of sixteenth notes, launches the movement. The searing energy of the first movement returns here, but now Beethoven offers a re-peat of the development rather than of the exposition. The fiery coda, marked Presto, introduces an entirely new theme.

Beethoven offered no program for this sonata, nor will listeners do well to try to guess some external drama being played out in the Appassionata. Sir Donald Francis Tovey, trying to take some measure of this sonata’s extraordinary power and its unre-lenting conclusion, has noted: “All his oth-er pathetic finales show either an epilogue in some legendary or later world far away from the tragic scene…or a temper, fight-ing, humorous, or resigned, that does not carry with it a sense of tragic doom. [But in the Appassionata] there is not a moment’s doubt that the tragic passion is rushing deathwards.” That may be going too far, but it is true that—in sharp contrast to the shining, exultant conclusions of the Eroica, Fidelio, and the Fifth Symphony—this sonata ends with an abrupt plunge into darkness.

—Program notes by Eric Bromberger

DANISH STRING QUARTETMon Feb 19 | 7:30pm | Herbst TheatreWorks by BARTÓK and BEETHOVEN and FOLK MUSIC from the Nordic Countries

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