Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

PAVILION 7:30 PM THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021 VLADIMIR FELTSMAN, piano BEETHOVEN Seven Bagatelles, op. 33 Andante grazioso, quasi allegretto Scherzo: Allegro Allegretto Andante Allegro ma non troppo Allegretto quasi andante (Con una certa espressione parlante) Presto SCHUBERT Four Impromptus, D. 935 Allegro moderato in F minor Allegretto in A-flat major Andante in B-flat major Allegro scherzando in F minor There will be no intermission in this program. Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Sponsor Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation . LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Seven Bagatelles, op. 33 Beethoven often turned to the slight, unas- suming bagatelle at the close of a consum- ing period of piano sonata composition. He completed the first collection of Seven Bag- atelles, op. 33, in 1802, the same year as the three sonatas of op. 31. In fact, Beethoven had written eight sonatas over the course of the previous three years. Two final sets of baga- telles postdate Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, opp. 109, 110, and 111 (1820–22). The Eleven Bagatelles, op. 119, originated during the same two-year span, while the more high- ly integrated Six Bagatelles, op. 126, were the products of 1824. Throughout his career, Beethoven appears to have composed bagatelles for pleasure rather than for immediate publication. Few baga- telles—a handful scattered among his larger compositions—predated his published ex- amples. Late-Baroque French composers had employed the term occasionally in keyboard and chamber music of the short, lightweight variety. The most direct antecedent of Bee- thoven’s bagatelles appeared in Carl Wilhelm Maizier’s Musikalische Bagatellen , a collection of dances and songs published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1797. Beethoven invoked the bagatelle’s French heritage when issuing his first collection in 1803. The Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie in Vi- enna published the seven op. 33 piano pieces as “ Bagatelles pour le Pianoforte .” This volume represented a collection of pre-existent com- positions tracing back to Beethoven’s years in Bonn (the first bagatelle bears the date 1782). FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Four Impromptus, D. 935 The impromptu was an improvisatory type of composition for solo instruments. The term was first applied by two separate composers in 1822: a set of six piano pieces, op. 7, by Jan Václav Voříšek (1791–1825), a Bohemian com- poser living in Vienna and recently appoint- ed assistant court organist; and the two sets of impromptus for piano, opp. 22 and 23, by Heinrich August Marschner (1795–1861). Schubert composed eight piano works enti- tled “impromptus.” He published the initial set of four impromptus, D. 899, as op. 90. The first two pieces appeared in print in 1827, but the final two were not released until 1857. A second set of four impromptus, D. 935, was composed in December 1827 and issued in two volumes in 1839 (after the composer’s death) as op. 142. The composer’s manuscript identified these impromptus as nos. 5–8, sug- gesting that Schubert considered this set a sequel to op. 90. His final collection of piano pieces, the Drei Klavierstücke , D. 946, dates from 1828 and was probably intended as the first three in a further set of impromptus. Three of the D. 935 impromptus impressed Robert Schumann as material for a “hy- pothetical” piano sonata. “But if the first two impromptus are played in succession and rounded with the fourth to make a lively close,” Schumann wrote in the Neue Zeitschrift on December 14, 1838, “we shall possess, if not a complete sonata, one more beautiful memory of Schubert.” The first piece in F minor out-dimensions the typical impromptu. Though a sonata-rondo (rather than the traditional sonata-allegro), its sheer size and scope compare favorably to an open- ing sonata movement. Schubert’s second im- promptu in A-flat major follows a three-part design, more similar to one of Schumann’s pi- ano miniatures than the old-fashioned minu- et. The final impromptu in F minor possesses an exotic, almost Slavic character, identical in spirit and key to the Moment musical , D. 780, no. 3, the so-called “Air russe.” Schumann placed little value in the third im- promptu in B-flat major, a set of five varia- tions based on the entr’acte from Schubert’s incidental music to Rosamunde (1823): “They are wholly devoid of invention or fancy— qualities which Schubert has displayed to so high a degree in other sets of variations.” Schubert also incorporated a version of this same melody in the slow movement of his String Quartet in A minor, D. 804. –Program notes © 2021 Todd E. Sullivan Franz Schubert by Josef Kriehuber (1846) VLADIMIR FELTSMAN, piano Born in Russia in 1952, Vladimir Feltsman made his piano performance debut at age 11 with the Moscow Philharmonic. He fur- thered his piano training under the guid- ance of Jacob Flier at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of Music beginning in 1969, later studying conducting at the Mos- cow and Leningrad Conservatories. Feltsman won the grand prize at the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris in 1971, launching a touring career throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe, and Japan. Granted permission to emigrate from the So- viet Union in 1987, Feltsman arrived in the United States and gave his first North Ameri- can recital at the White House. He also made his Carnegie Hall debut that year, setting the stage for decades of performance programs in New York. Between 1992 and 1996 Felts- man presented the major keyboard works by Bach at the 92nd Street Y, and in 2003 he served as artistic director and primary per- former on the Lincoln Center’s “Masterpieces of the Russian Underground” series, a survey of piano and chamber works by 14 contem- porary Russian composers, from Shostakov- ich to present-day figures. In 2006 Feltsman performed all of Mozart’s piano sonatas at the Mannes College of Music, where he is on the piano faculty. He is also on the faculty of the State University of New York at New Pal- tz, where he founded the three-week Piano- Summer festival. Feltsman’s discography in- cludes eight albums of Bach’s works, many of Beethoven’s sonatas, solo works by Liszt and Mussorgsky, and concertos by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, as well as solo works and con- certos by Brahms, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. He recently completed recording complete cycles of Schubert’s and Schumann’s solo works for the Nimbus label. In 2019 Feltsman published his book Piano Lessons , addressing a variety of topics on practicing, performing, learning, and recording, as well as providing detailed notes on his many recordings. Vladi- mir Feltsman made his Ravinia debut in 1988 and returns tonight for his 15th season at the festival. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 1 – JULY 23, 2021 44