CLIBURN AT THE BASSNANCY LEE AND PERRY R. BASS PERFORMANCE HALL

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2016 AT 7:30 PM

GARRICK OHLSSON piano

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110 Moderato cantabile molto espressivo Allegro molto Adagio ma non troppo; Fugue: Allegro, ma non troppo SCHUBERT Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 (“Der Wanderer”)

intermission

CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, op. 54

Etude in E Minor, op. 25, no. 5 Etude in G-sharp Minor, op. 25, no. 6

Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48, no. 1

Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, op. 23

Mr. Ohlsson appears by arrangement with Opus 3 Artists LLC.

This concert has been made possible by generous contributions from

American AirlinesTexas Commission on the Arts

Electra Carlin Estate*

*Made possible by a generous gift to the Cliburn Endowment

Steinway & Sons is the official piano of the Cliburn.

Please silence all electronic devices. This concert is being webcast live and recorded for broadcast.It will be available for on-demand viewing at Cliburn.org in one week, pending artist approval.

The Board of Directors of the Cliburn salutes with gratitude the generosity of

as the exclusive corporate sponsorfor the performance of

GaRRiCK oHLSSon

GaRRiCK oHLSSon piano

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date, he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, many commissioned for him.

The 2015–2016 season includes recitals in Berkeley, New York, Indianapolis, Brisbane, Seattle, La Jolla, Evanston, Lincoln, and Costa Mesa. In return visits to Australia, he will appear in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide and, for the first time, with the New Zealand Symphony in Wellington and Auckland. With concerti as diverse as Beethoven, Brahms, Barber, and Busoni, he can be heard with orchestras in Boston, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Nashville, Indianapolis, Oregon, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Manchester, and Lugano. In the fall, he served as a judge at the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano

Competition in Warsaw, and in April he will join the Takács Quartet for a brief East Coast tour culminating at Carnegie Hall.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. Passionate about singing and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podles.

Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion, and Virgin Classics labels. His discography includes the complete Beethoven sonatas for Bridge Records—the third volume for which he won a GRAMMY®—the complete works of Chopin for Hyperion, and works by Bartók, Brahms, Debussy,

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Granados, Griffes, Liszt, Prokofiev, Scriabin, and others. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary The Art of Chopin, co-produced by Polish, French, British, and Chinese television stations.

A native of White Plains, New York, Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne, and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was

his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the gold medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor. He is also the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music. He makes his home in San Francisco.

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Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVENb. 1770 (Bonn, Germany)d. 1827 (Vienna, Austria) • Plagued with personal, health, and creative problems, Beethoven virtually stopped composing during the period 1813–1820. It was not until 1820 that he was able to marshal his energies together as a composer, and commit to writing his final three piano sonatas. • All three of the final sonatas are worlds apart, but perhaps the Opus 110 shows some of the most original touches.

The years 1813 through 1820 were exceptionally difficult for Beethoven, who virtually stopped composing. There were several reasons for this: his deafness was now nearly complete, he suffered periods of poor health, and much of his energy was consumed with his struggle for legal custody of his nephew Karl. And—perhaps most importantly—he had reached a creative impasse brought on by the exhaustion of his “Heroic Style.” Where the previous two decades had seen a great outpouring of music, now his creative powers flickered and were nearly extinguished. Not until 1820 was he able to put his troubles, both personal and creative, behind him and marshal his energy as a composer. At the end of May 1820, he committed himself to writing three piano sonatas for the Berlin publisher

Adolph Martin Schlesinger; these would be Beethoven’s final sonatas. Although he claimed he wrote them “in one breath,” their composition was actually spread out over a longer period than he expected when he agreed to write them.

The Sonata in A-flat Major, completed in December 1821, shows some of the most creative touches in a group of sonatas that are all distinguished for their originality. The first movement, Moderato cantabile molto espressivo, is remarkable for its lovely and continuous lyricism. Beethoven notes that the opening is to be played con amabilita, and that spirit hovers over the entire movement. The essentially lyric quality of this movement is underlined by the fact that the second theme grows immediately out of the first: the opening idea has barely been stated when the second seems to rise directly out of it. By contrast, the bluff Allegro molto is rough and ready: it is a scherzo with a brief trio section full of energy and rhythmic surprises.

The long final movement is of complex structure; it performs the function of both adagio and finale, yet even these elements are intermixed with great originality. The main theme of the Adagio, marked Arioso dolente, arches painfully over a steady chordal accompaniment before Beethoven introduces a fugue marked Allegro, ma non troppo. After a brief working-out, the fugue comes to a halt and the Arioso

PROGRAM NOTESby Eric Bromberger

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theme returns. This time, however, Beethoven has marked it Ermattet, klagend (exhausted, grieving), and here the music seems almost choked and struggling to move. Yet gradually the music gathers strength and the fugue returns, but this time Beethoven has inverted the theme and builds the fugue. The sonata ends with a great rush upward across five octaves to the triumphant final chord.

Composed in 1821. Approximately 19 minutes.

Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 (“Der Wanderer”)FRANZ SCHUBERTb. 1797 (Vienna, Austria)d. 1828 (Vienna, Austria)

• Based in part on Schubert’s song “Der Wanderer,” the Wanderer Fantasy falls into four interconnected sections which are linked by interesting thematic and rhythmic elements.

• Considered by some to be Schubert’s first mature composition for the piano, it is also extremely difficult, with even the composer stepping away during performance exclaiming, “The devil may play this stuff! I can’t!” It is now a favorite of many virtuoso pianists.

In the fall of 1822, Schubert set to work on a new symphony. He completed the first two movements and began a scherzo, but then became interested in writing an extended work for solo piano and set

the symphony aside. He completed the piano work in November 1822, and it was published the following February; he never returned to the symphony, and it is known to us today as the “Unfinished Symphony.”

This piano piece has taken the name Wanderer Fantasy, for it is based in part on Schubert’s song “Der Wanderer,” composed in 1819. The Wanderer Fantasy is in one long movement—just over 20 minutes in length —that falls into four sections. While the title “fantasy” may imply a lack of attention to form, exactly the reverse is true here; there are unusual thematic and rhythmic connections between the four sections, so that this music is tightly disciplined throughout. It is also extremely difficult to perform. The Wanderer Fantasy has been called the first of Schubert’s mature compositions for the piano, and in fact it was too difficult even for its creator. Schubert is reported to have given up during a performance of it and stormed away from the piano, exclaiming in frustration, “The devil may play this stuff! I can’t!” The brilliance and difficulty of this music have made it a great favorite of virtuoso pianists. Franz Liszt admired and frequently performed the Wanderer Fantasy, and its cyclic structure of interconnected movements had a strong influence on Liszt’s own music.

The opening provides the basic dactylic pulse that will recur throughout the Fantasy. This steady, pounding rhythm will return in many

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forms; in this opening section, it repeats frequently, and some of these repetitions are brilliant, generating a vast volume of sound. The second section (there are no pauses between the different sections) quotes a fragment of Schubert’s song Der Wanderer at a very slow tempo and then offers a series of variations on it. Again, these variations grow increasingly brilliant before this section subsides to end quietly. The third section, playful and fast, is built upon a dotted rhythm that now begins to dominate the music; this dancing rhythm will reappear in several other themes in this carefree interlude. The final section brings back the theme that opened the Fantasy, but now that rhythmic figure is treated fugally, and this impressive music powers its way to a dramatic conclusion.

Composed in 1822. Approximately 23 minutes.

Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, op. 54FRÉDÉRIC CHOPINb. 1810 (Zelazowska Wola, Poland)d. 1849 (Paris, France)

• Chopin took the quick tempo and 3/4 meter of the Classical scherzo, developed by Haydn and Beethoven, and adapted its general shape for his own purposes: brilliant, exciting music for the piano.

• The Fourth Scherzo is sunny and rhapsodic. Its music is unified by some extent around the first five notes, which will reappear throughout the

work in a variety of guises.

Though the term had been used earlier, it was Haydn who conceived of the scherzo in its modern sense. In 1781, he called the third movement of some of his string quartets a “scherzo.” What had been the old minuet-and-trio movement now became a scherzo (and trio), and Haydn’s choice of that name indicated that he wanted more speed and liveliness. Beethoven took this evolution one step further: his scherzos, usually built on very short rhythmic units, explode with violent energy and with enough comic touches to remind us that scherzo is the Italian word for joke.

In his four scherzos, Chopin does not copy the forms of Haydn or Beethoven, but adapts the general shape of the Classical-period scherzo for his own purposes. He keeps the quick tempo, the 3/4 meter, and (usually) the A-B-A form of the earlier scherzo, but makes no attempt at humor—the emphasis is on brilliant, exciting music for the piano. The general form of the Chopin scherzo is an opening section based on contrasted themes, followed by a middle section (Chopin does not call this a trio) in a different key and character. The scherzo concludes with the return of the opening material, now slightly abridged.

Chopin’s Scherzo in E Major, his final work in this form, was composed in 1842 and is suffused with a spirit

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more relaxed than one generally associates with the scherzo—it is full of sunny, almost rhapsodic music. It is also his longest, and the entire Scherzo is to some extent unified around its first five notes, which will reappear throughout in a variety of guises. Particularly striking is the central episode in C-sharp minor, in which a flowing melody moves along easily over a rocking accompaniment. The return of the opening material is extended, and the final pages are brilliant.

Composed in 1842. Approximately 12 minutes.

Etude in E Minor, op. 25, no. 5Etude in G-sharp Minor, op. 25, no. 6

• Inspired by a performance of Paganini’s Caprices for Solo Violin while still a teenager, Chopin resolved to write something that presented specific technical problems that also managed to be engaging music.

• Chopin’s Opus 25 Etudes were composed when he was living in Paris. Written for his students to address different pianistic challenges, they also offer breathtaking music for a general audience.

While still a teenager in Warsaw, Chopin heard a performance of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices for Solo Violin and was astonished (as were so many other musicians of that era) by what the Italian composer had achieved in this music. Here were extraordinarily complex works

for the violin that presented specific technical problems for the performer yet managed to be exciting and engaging music at the same time. Chopin resolved to write something similar for the piano, and over the next few years, a difficult time for the composer, he did just that.

The 12 etudes of Chopin’s Opus 25 date from 1839, when the composer was living in Paris. The Etudes should be understood first as teaching pieces. Written for Chopin’s students, these brief studies present different kinds of pianistic problems, ranging from the most finger-breaking virtuoso hurdles to the ability to sustain a long melodic line. Along the way, however, they offer breathtaking music that delights general audiences while it challenges pianists. The two etudes of Opus 25 on this program create specific technical problems for the pianist: No. 5 in E Minor is in Lombard rhythms (dotted rhythms with the short note coming first), while No. 6 in G-sharp Minor is in thirds.

Composed in 1837. Approximately 6 minutes.

PROGRAM NOTEScontinued

Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48, no. 1

• The Nocturne in C Minor was written when Chopin was 31 years old and living in Paris.

• Though “nocturne” suggested a restrained atmosphere, this piece moves from a quiet opening to an almost frenzied climax, finally concluding with three quiet chords.

Chopin wrote the dramatic Nocturne in C Minor in 1841, when he was 31 years old and living in Paris. The title “nocturne,” with its suggestion of a restrained and subdued atmosphere, might seem inappropriate for the piece, which moves from a quiet beginning to an almost frenzied climax. The understated beginning (Chopin marks it mezza voce: “middle voice”) soon introduces widely-spaced chords in the left-hand accompaniment, and these in turn give way to rolled chords and then to thunderous octave runs; these runs, four octaves deep, require the utmost power from a performer, and the chordal theme emerges almost in passing. Chopin drives the music to a huge climax full of rhythmic complexity—the closing section consistently sets three against four—until suddenly the fury subsides and the music concludes on three quiet C-minor chords.

Composed in 1841. Approximately 6 minutes.

Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, op. 23

• Chopin was the first composer to use the term “ballade” for a piano composition. Like the literary ballad, he infuses his four ballades with lyricism and drama, writing intensely dramatic, almost explosive, gestures.

• Because of the literary association with the term “ballade,” many have looked for extra-musical inspiration or programmatic elements, but Chopin discouraged this speculation, asking listeners to take the music on its own terms.

Chopin himself was the first to use the term “ballade” to refer to a piano composition, appropriating the name from the literary ballad: He appears to have been most taken with the lyric and dramatic possibilities of the term, for his four ballades fuse melodic writing with intensely dramatic, almost explosive, gestures. After Chopin’s death, Liszt, Grieg, Fauré, and Brahms would compose works for solo piano that they too called ballades.

Formally, Chopin’s ballades most closely resemble the sonata-form movement (an opening idea contrasted with a second theme-group, and the two ideas developed and recapitulated), but the ballades are not strictly in sonata-form, nor was Chopin trying to write sonata-form movements. His ballades are quite free in form, and their thematic development and harmonic progression are sometimes wildly

PROGRAM NOTEScontinued

sweeping drama of this music. All four demand a pianist of the greatest skill.

Because of the literary association and the dramatic character of the music, many have been quick to search for extra-musical inspiration for the ballades, believing that such music must represent the attempt to capture actual events in sound. Some have heard the Polish struggle for independence in this music, others the depiction of medieval heroism. Chopin himself discouraged this kind of speculation and asked the listener to take the music on its own terms rather than as a representation of something else.

Chopin began work on the Ballade in G Minor in 1831 in Vienna and completed it four years later in Paris. A portentous seven-bar introduction of uncertain tonality gives way to the opening episode, a waltz-like theme in G minor. The second theme is much more dramatic but—curiously—is related to the waltz theme. This second theme undergoes a brilliant development, though this ballade lacks the recapitulation that would be expected at this point in a sonata-form movement. Instead, Chopin brings back the waltz theme briefly before launching into the coda, appropriately marked Presto con fuoco.

Composed in 1831. Approximately 10 minutes.

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