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Jon Nakamatsu with Members of the Ying Quartet
This concert is sold out. This concert will also livestream at bowdoinfestival.org/festivalive.
J.S. BACH [ARR. MYRA HESS]
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (Chorale from Cantata No. 147 arranged for Solo Piano)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, Op. 28, “Pastorale”
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace — Trio
IV. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
I. Allegro
II. Intermezzo. Allegro, ma non troppo — Trio. Animato
III. Andante con moto
IV. Rondo alla zingarese. Presto
Robin Scott, violin • Phillip Ying, viola • David Ying, cello • Jon Nakamatsu, piano
Festival faculty member Jon Nakamatsu is generously sponsored by Peter and Harriette Griffin.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, Op. 28, “Pastorale” (1801)
By the turn of the nineteenth century, Beethoven had established himself in Vienna as the leading light of a young generation: as a pianist, he impressed elite audiences through his performances, improvisations, and even his fair share of piano “duels,” a popular pastime in the aristocratic salons. As a composer, he achieved public success through his First Symphony and his Septet — the latter being among his most popular works during his lifetime. Piano sonatas gave Beethoven an additional vehicle with which to translate the trademarks of his pianism into compositions that could inhabit both the private sphere and the public stage.
In 1801, Beethoven began to take his piano sonatas in a distinctly new direction. The pair of Op. 27 sonatas, his thirteenth and fourteenth, are experimental: both bear the marking, “Quasi una fantasia” — evocative of Beethoven’s reputation as an improviser — although the latter of the two is better known as the “Moonlight.” Yet the broody, dreamlike character of that famous work could hardly seem more distant from Beethoven’s next sonata, Op. 28. Unlike the “Pastoral Symphony” of 1808, which Beethoven nicknamed himself, this sonata’s moniker was the conceit of his Hamburg-based publisher, August Cranz. Cranz was quite right: the nickname aptly captures the work’s rustic charm, conveyed through features like the steady bass D that pulses through the first movement, and which returns in the form of a gently rocking bassline in the Rondo Finale. (Contrast these bucolic qualities — the drone-like stasis and melodic lucidity evocative of folk music — with the foreboding harmonic progression and tolling bells that open the “Moonlight.”)
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49 (1841)
Chopin’s gallant lyricism earns him more frequent comparisons with Mozart than with Beethoven: if Liszt is the pianistic heir apparent to Beethovenian drama, Chopin admitted to finding Beethoven “obscure,” pledging allegiance instead to Mozart’s charm and luminosity. Yet Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata (which, recall, was marked Quasi una fantasia) struck a chord with Chopin, who used it as the model for his Fantasy- Impromptu, composed in 1835 but published only posthumously. There is something Beethovenian, too, about the Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49 (1841), with its stark contrasts, staunch rhythms, and taut, diminished harmonies. But Chopin also had worthy models in Mozart’s keyboard fantasies — such as the popular Fantasy in D Minor, K. 397, with its free succession of characters and moods — or, chronologically closer, the fantasies of Robert Schumann, to whom Chopin had dedicated his second Ballade. Recent research suggests that Chopin also knew and played Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor for piano four-hands, and perhaps also the Wanderer Fantasy.
In terms of dramatic intensity, Chopin’s Fantasy Op. 49 is similar to his four Ballades, distinguished by a greater proliferation of stylistic and thematic materials. The work begins with a pair of marches, which some critics have heard as a nationalist gesture from a composer who enjoyed alluding to the music of his native Poland (in fact, the only other fantasy Chopin published during his lifetime was a Fantasy on Polish Airs, just after his twentieth birthday). Four themes follow, by turns agitated or graceful and each rising in key by an interval of a third, until we arrive at a conclusive march in E-flat Major closing out the work’s “exposition,” or first section. If this breathless succession of personalities is bizarre from the point of view of classical form, it is also exhilarating, aptly described by Chopin’s nineteenth-century biographer, Frederick Niecks, as “enthralling weirdness” and “fantastic waywardness.” The effect is further enhanced by the diverse virtuosic demands each successive theme places on the pianist.
Writers often cite the letter Chopin wrote to his close friend, Julian Fontana, in which he declared: “Today I finished the Fantasy — and the sky is beautiful, a sadness in my heart — but that’s all right. If it were otherwise, perhaps my existence would be worth nothing to anyone.” It is difficult to know what, if anything, to make of such a declaration, except to ask whether the Fantasy’s triumphant major-key conclusion is, if anything, too victorious — an effort to stamp out, through sheer force of insistence, the sense of melancholy and nostalgia that imbues the work’s more tender moments.
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 (1857–1861)
Before Brahms had ever visited Vienna — the city where he would eventually settle for the majority of his career — he worked between his native Hamburg and the small court of Prince Leopold III at Detmold. He secured his post at Detmold thanks to Clara Schumann, whom he had met in Düsseldorf in 1853. Schumann was impressed by Brahms’ talent even at age twenty, and she remained a lifetime friend, supporter (and of course, love interest) of the composer. During these stable years, Brahms spent his winters at the court, where he gave lessons to Princess Friederike; the rest of the year, sustained by the stipend he received from his court position, Brahms returned to Hamburg, where he founded the Hamburg Ladies’ Choir and composed a wide range of chamber music — including both String Sextets, the Piano Quintet, his first two Piano Quartets, and an abundance of songs and choral music.
The Piano Quartet, Op. 25 is a composition on a grand scale, in a complex form rich in development and full of contrasts, seemingly designed for the concert stage rather than the domestic salon. (Indeed, a few decades later, Schoenberg saw its symphonic potential, which he realized by orchestrating it.) Its exhilarating Finale is marked “alla Zingarese,” which translates to “in the Gypsy style,” an allusion to the popular Romani music which could be heard in streets and cafés across Germany and Austria. The Quartet received its premiere performance in Hamburg in 1861, with none other than Clara Schumann handling the fiendish keyboard part; and it was among the first works Brahms performed when he moved to the Austrian capital the following year, arousing excitement among Vienna’s artistic circles over the up-and-coming new musical personality.
Program Notes by Peter Asimov