Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 9

The professional collaboration between Brahms and conductor Hans von Bülow entered a new phase with the Second Piano Concerto. Bülow had recently changed aesthetic camps from the “futurist” (Liszt and Wagner) to the “traditional- ist” (Brahms), whose works he now championed tirelessly. For the first time, Bülow offered the Meiningen Court Orchestra, which he served as conductor, for private trial performances of the Second Piano Concerto. This arrangement extended to the Third and Fourth Symphonies. A chance encounter between Brahms and Franz Liszt came at the hands of Bülow, who once was married to Liszt’s daughter Cosima. The elder musician asked Brahms for a copy of the concer- to, a request he gladly honored. Liszt responded with a tepid letter of thanks on February 2, 1882. “Frankly speaking, at first reading this work seemed to me a little gray in tone; I have, how- ever, gradually come to understand it. It pos- sesses the pregnant character of a distinguished work of art, in which thought and feeling move in noble harmony.” Virtuosity—demanded in abundance by Brahms’s concerto—is subordi- nate to the painstaking synthesis of piano and orchestra, perhaps accounting for the “grayness of tone” and the imperative “understanding” that troubled Liszt. At the beginning of the Allegro non troppo , a single horn and the piano presages themes to come. A solo piano passage builds to the en- trance of the massed orchestra with the first theme. Strings introduce a twisting, expressive contrasting idea. There is no formal cadenza in this movement. The composer’s “tiny and dainty scherzo,” the Allegro appassionato movement, presents a concise, but unconventional sonata form. A slow ( largamente ) trio appears within the development. Brahms reportedly planned this haunting, minor-key material for his Violin Concerto, but scrapped the idea. “Concerto-within-a-concerto” might best de- scribe the Andante . Within the first and last sections, a solo cello emerges as the leading voice; the keyboard remains detached from this theme. Only in the central section does the pia- no command full attention. Like many of his so- nata-rondo finales, Brahms built a refrain theme from small, repeating motives. Winds present a mournful contrasting theme. The dotted refrain theme returns, and then there is a development. The two previously heard themes lead to a con- cluding statement of the refrain. –Program notes © 2019 Todd E. Sullivan EMANUEL AX, piano Raised in Canada, pianist Emanuel Ax attended Columbia University and The Juilliard School before entering public consciousness in 1974 as the winner of the inaugural Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. The following year he won the Young Concert Artists Michaels Award, and four years later he received the Avery Fisher Prize. Ax has had works written for him by such composers as John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Pen- derecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner, and in 2010 he co-commissioned works fromThom- as Adès, Peter Lieberson, and Stephen Prutsman in honor of the bicentenaries of Chopin and Schumann. He most recently added HK Gru- ber’s Piano Concerto and Samuel Adams’s Im- promptus to his repertoire. In 2012 Ax curated and participated in a two-week residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra titled “Keys to the City,” which celebrated the varied facets of the piano. He subsequently led a similar festi- val with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Over the past year, Ax has returned to the orchestras of Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, San Fran- cisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Washington, Detroit, and Pittsburgh; toured Italy with the Budapest Festival Orchestra; and partnered with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma to pres- ent a European tour of Brahms’s piano trios, which they recently released on Sony Classical. Ax has been an exclusive recording artist with that label since 1987, recently issuing discs of Mendelssohn trios with Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’s Enoch Arden with Patrick Stewart, and two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. He recorded sonatas by Fauré and Strauss with Perlman for Deutsche Grammophon and toured the repertoire to Ra- vinia in 2015, and he won Grammy Awards for the second and third volumes of his Haydn pi- ano sonata cycle, as well as for his recordings of Beethoven and Brahms cello sonatas with Ma. He also contributed to the Emmy Award–win- ning documentary commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. To- night Emanuel Ax returns for his 28th season at Ravinia, where he first appeared in 1975. A MESSAGE FROM MIDTOWN ATHLETIC CLUBS At Midtown Athletic Clubs, we believe active, social people live happier, healthier lives. That involves more than just fitness; it’s also about having a picnic on the lawn at Ravinia with friends and finding ways to engage with your community. For us at Midtown, being active is a way of life, and that includes being active in the community and giving back. Midtown Clubs support a wide variety of charities in the eight communities where they are located. In addition to Ravinia, we sponsor programs like the Ten- nis Opportunity Program in Chicago, ensuring talented young tennis players from underprivi- leged communities get tennis coaching, playing time, and academic tutoring so they in turn get college scholarships; Mindstrong in Montreal, the largest mental-health fundraiser in the prov- ince, raising over $1 million per year; and the Tour de Cure in Rochester, NY, a massive bike ride for diabetes research. In addition to supporting many local organiza- tions, our biggest goal is ending genetic retinal disease, a form of which impacts our founder’s grandson. With support from Midtown, the Foundation Fighting Blindness has funded re- search and doctors around the globe focused on curing Lebers Congenital Amaurosis and other retinal diseases like macular degeneration and retinal pigmentosa. To date, over 50 children have been cured. They see their parents, sib- lings, friends, and the world for the first time! This cure is the first and only gene therapy of any kind ever successfully performed on hu- mans. What was science fiction 15 years ago, is reality today. Amazing. But there is still so much to accomplish on the way to our goal. Our founder’s grandson isn’t one of the lucky few whose specific gene is able to be fixed—yet—but he lives our mission of being social, active, and happy every day. He’s graduating from college this year, and if you visit one of our clubs this summer, you might just see him swimming laps in the outdoor pool. RAFAEL PAYARE, conductor Rafael Payare’s biography appears on page 99. RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2019 102