Ravinia 2024 Issue 1

different preoccupation: the impossible task of saying goodbye. In a distant, desolate C-sharp minor, its main theme is somehow stoic and anguished all at once. The rhythm of the accom- panying left hand is implacable, moving deliber- ately, inexorably towards death. The melody itself unfolds as a series of sighs; the ache of it is over- whelming. Nothing else Schubert wrote—none of the hundreds of songs—so thoroughly com- municates the Sehnsucht (“longing” is as close as English comes) that was the core of his character. A central episode in A major attempts to bring the piece back to earth: its lyricism, glorious as it is, seems to come from normal circumstances, so unlike the music that surrounds it. But its respite cannot be permanent, and, inevitably, it leads back to the music of the opening, its sorrowmore devastating than ever. For the first few measures, its shape is fundamentally unchanged from its first appearance. Then comes a modulation into Cmajor so sudden and so unexpected, to listen to it is to have the blood drain from your face. Many a music-loving agnostic has remarked that living with Schubert has made them believe in a higher power. This C major is Schubert’s trans- figuration. The music does find its way back to its home tonality, but the man has crossed a threshold. If Schubert ever truly belonged to this earth, as of this moment, he has left it. A third movement is not a necessity in a pia- no sonata. Beethoven’s final work in the genre, Op. 111, has only two movements, ending in a different sort of sublime void. Schubert himself wrote a two-movement piano sonata, either by design or on account of a loss of inspiration: the magnificent Relique in C major. If Schubert had left the B-flat major a two-movement work, no one would think it incomplete. These two move- ments guide us through life’s end: what more could there be? Lithograph of Franz Schubert by Josef Kriehuber (1846) In fact, the Sonata in B-flat major has not one but two more movements, and they are magic. Following the unfollowable, they manage to feel both inevitable and necessary. The third move- ment is not precisely high-spirited—it is a dance of the spirits, Schubert using the highest register of the piano as an angelic counterpoint to the trills that so destabilized the first movement. The last movement achieves the impossible, giving true closure to a work whose subject is life’s most mysterious experience. Each time this rondo’s main theme appears, it is heralded by an extended, accented G. This note is not an invitation, but a challenge, nearly a threat: it is a minor third and a whole world away from the B-flat that ought to launch the movement. The confrontational nature of this introductory note keeps the theme from being jovial, which it might have seemed in its absence. Much in the same way that the foreboding trill complicat- ed the emotional world of the first movement, this note ensures that the finale remains evenly poised between light and dark. As the rondo theme makes its final return, one last wondrous thing happens. That G, stubborn- ly persistent throughout the movement, loses its footing, slipping down a step to a G-flat. In doing so, it transforms from a declamation to an entreaty. Up until this point, whether the music was optimistic or sinister, this movement pro- jected confidence. With nothing more than a shift of a half-step, Schubert has re-introduced the vulnerability that makes not just this work, but the whole of his oeuvre so extremely moving. With the next half-step shift, this time down to the dominant F, resolution feels imminent. And so it is: we are launched into the briefest of codas, back on the firm ground of B-flat major, presto, and at least on the surface, not just happy but recklessly happy. Is this Schubert storming the gates of heaven? That is for each listener to decide. All I can say with certainty is that play- ing this sonata has changed me. The piano liter- ature is a treasure trove—there is more music of the highest quality than one person could ever get through in a lifetime. But Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major is unique in its impact. Its beauty is itself awe-inducing, but its unflinching hon- esty and total vulnerability take it to a different realm. It is almost too much to bear; playing it has been the privilege of my life. –Program notes © 2024 Jonathan Biss JONATHAN BISS, piano The younger son of Miriam Fried and Paul Biss, longtime faculty members of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Jonathan Biss continues the fam- ily tradition of sharing music as co-artistic direc- tor of the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also been an RSMI faculty member in three different seasons and on the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music since 2010. Beginning to study piano at age 6, Biss grew up playing with his parents, going on to attend Indiana University under Evelyne Brancart and the Curtis Institute under Leon Fleisher. He was the first American to be selected for the BBC’s New Generation Art- ist program and has been a resident artist for the public radio series Performance Today . Among Biss’s performing honors are an Avery Fisher Ca- reer Grant, awards from Lincoln Center and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, the 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and the 2005 Leonard Bernstein Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. In 2020, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Biss culminated a more than 10-year immersion in the composer’s music that featured concert series, recordings, writings, lec- tures, and commissions of Beethoven-inspired works. The latter included a five-year piano con- certo project with the Saint Paul Chamber Or- chestra that premiered Timo Andres’s The Blind Banister (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), Sally Beam- ish’s City Stanzas , Salvatore Sciarrino’s Il Sogno di Stradella , Caroline Shaw’s Watermark , and Brett Dean’s Gneixendorfer Musik . Biss recorded a nine-disc cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas on Orchid Classics over this period, and he also completed a free online lecture series with Cour- sera entitled Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sona- tas , which has reached more than 150,000 people across nearly every country since 2013. Among his four audio- and e-books is Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven , the first Audible Original by a classical musician. Tonight marks Jonathan Biss’s 18th season at Ravinia, where he first performed in 1998. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JUNE 7 – JUNE 30, 2024 76