Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

7:30 PM MONDAY, JULY 12, 2021 GARRICK OHLSSON, piano The Breadth of Brahms for Solo Piano Part 4 of 4 Scherzo, op. 4 Piano Sonata No. 1 Allegro Andante Scherzo: Allegro molto e con fuoco Finale: Allegro con fuoco Sixteen Waltzes, op. 39 No. 1 in B major No. 9 in D minor No. 2 in E major No. 10 in D major No. 3 in G-sharp minor No. 11 in B minor No. 4 in E minor No. 12 in E major No. 5 in E major No. 13 in B major No. 6 in C-sharp major No. 14 in G-sharp minor No. 7 in C-sharp minor No. 15 in A-flat major No. 8 in B-flat major No. 16 in C-sharp minor Four Piano Pieces, op. 119 No. 1. Intermezzo in B minor No. 2. Intermezzo in E minor No. 3. Intermezzo in C major No. 4. Rhapsody in E-flat major There will be no intermission in this program. Making its debut across these concerts is a brand-new Hamburg-made Steinway grand, personally auditioned and selected by Garrick Ohlsson for Ravinia. Following its performances in the Pavilion all this season, it will reside in the Martin Theatre, taking the place of the recently retired Steinway that resonated under the hands of more than 200 different pianists over 28 Ravinia seasons. Ravinia is deeply grateful to Howard L. Gottlieb and Barbara G. Greis for the gift of this new piano and looks forward to its many years of making exceptional music. PAVILION JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–97) Scherzo in E-flat minor, op. 4 Robert Schumann proclaimed a previous- ly unknown pianist from Hamburg “a new force in music” in his article “New Paths” in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (October 28, 1853). That pronouncement surprised no one more than the 20-year-old pianist himself— Johannes Brahms: “The public praise you have deigned to bestow on me will have so greatly increased the musical world’s expec- tations of my work that I do not know how I shall manage to do even approximate justice to it. Above all, it forces me to exercise the greatest caution in the choice of pieces for publication.” Unrelated accounts by Brahms and Schumann surveyed the early compositions ready for publication: piano sonatas, songs, independent piano pieces, trios for unspec- ified instrumentation, violin sonatas, and string quartets. Brahms decided his first four published opus numbers within two weeks of the “New Paths” article: he reserved opp. 1 and 2 for piano sonatas in C major and F-sharp minor, op. 3 for the Sechs Gesänge for voice and piano, and op. 4 for the Scherzo in E-flat minor. Brahms had composed the Scherzo in August 1851 and dedicated its published score to Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel (1808–80), a former piano student of Friedrick Wieck and a close friend of Robert and Clara Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Wenzel served on the pi- ano faculty of the Leipzig Conservatory from its founding in 1843 until his death, instruct- ing hundreds of gifted pianists including Ed- vard Grieg. His circle of acquaintances in Leipzig included members of Schumann’s Davidsbund. Wenzel also was an early con- tributor to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . The Scherzo employs a double-trio structure, which allows more thematic contrast and in- tegration than the more common three-part form derived from the minuet. The opening section possesses the minor-key intensity of Chopin’s scherzos (three of four are in minor keys) while borrowing developmental princi- ples from the sonata form. The musical char- acter changes in the first trio, which shifts to major mode and alternates descending scale passages with short, rhythmically erratic mo- tives. Brahms modulated to the more distant key of B major in the second trio, again intro- ducing two distinct musical ideas: an expres- sive chordal theme and a tender ballade with sweeping left-hand accompaniment. Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, op. 1 Simple folk material inspired a work of co- lossal dimension in Brahms’s first published work, the Piano Sonata No. 1 in C minor. Ear- ly in 1852, the 19-year-old keyboard virtuoso composed a set of four variations on “Vers- tohlen geht der Mond auf ” (“Stealthily Rises the Moon”), an “old German Minnelied ” he discovered in the Deutsche Volkslieder col- lection by Andreas Kretzschmer and Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio. Three additional movements, which occasionally incorporat- ed folk-styled themes, joined the Andante Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel variations a year later to complete this mag- nificent sonata. One episode in the finale married rustic lyri- cism with a hidden reference to the idyllic verses of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Brahms’s friend Albert Dietrich identified the literary source as “My Heart’s in the High- land,” most likely known in the lied setting by Robert Schumann—“Mein Herz ist im Hoch- land” from Myrthen , op. 25. Several scholars have observed that Burns’s text easily fits the piano melody. Brahms played the Sonata in C major, along with several other piano pieces, for Robert Schumann on September 30, 1853. Though numbered as the first piano sonata, this score postdates the Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor. In fact, the composer’s manuscript identi- fies the C-major work as his “Vierte Sonate” (Fourth Sonata). Two precursor sonatas evi- dently have been lost or destroyed. The sheer force and breadth of Brahms’s music motivated Schumann to end his decade-long retirement as critic for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . His article “New Paths” (1853) praised the piano sonatas as “veiled symphonies.” However, it was the critic’s more grandiose proclamation—“he has come, a young blood at whose cradle graces and heroes mounted guard”—that instantaneously lifted Brahms from near obscurity into the glaring, critical spotlight of celebrity. Sixteen Waltzes, op. 39 Brahms’s initial foray into popular Viennese musical forms obviously caught the critic Eduard Hanslick—a strong champion of the Brahms aesthetic—off guard. Reviewing the Sixteen Waltzes, op. 39, in their original ver- sion for four-hands piano, Hanslick wrote, “Brahms and waltzes! The two words stare at each other in positive amazement on the elegant title page. The earnest Brahms, a true Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Original-Weisen (1840) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 1 – JULY 23, 2021 50