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DREW PETERSEN,
piano
e winner of a
Avery Fisher Career Grant,
pianist Drew Petersen began performing public-
ly at a very young age, taking the stage of Carne-
gie’s Weill Recital Hall at age and playing a solo
recital at Steinway Hall in Manhattan four years
later for Steinway & Sons’
th-anniversary
celebrations. He subsequently won prizes from
the Leeds International Piano Competition,
Hilton Head International Piano Competition,
Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition,
and New York Fryderyk Chopin Piano Com-
petition. Additionally, Petersen was the winner
of the
American Pianists Award and the
American Pianists Association’s Christel De-
Haan Fellowship, and he is embarking on a two-
year residency at the University of Indianapolis.
He has frequently been a featured guest on the
McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase
on WQXR
radio and has also been broadcast on American
Public Media’s
Performance Today
, NPR’s
From
the Top
, and WFMT’s
Impromptu
. Petersen
made his recording debut this past spring on
the Steinway & Sons label with a collection of
th- and st-century American piano music,
including works by Barber, Carter, Gri es, and
Ives, as well as the premiere recording of Ju-
dith Lang Zaimont’s
Attars
. In concert, he has
recently been featured with the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Tucson
Symphony Orchestra, Symphony in C, Milwau-
kee Symphony Orchestra, Adelphi Orchestra,
and Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, among
several other ensembles, and he has given re-
citals at such venues, festivals, and series as the
Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, Dame
Myra Hess Concert Series, Verbier Festival,
Euro Arts Music Festival, Tel Aviv Museum of
Art, and e University Club of New York. Pe-
tersen’s prodigious pianism has also been a sub-
ject of
New York Magazine
and
New York Times
features, the documentary
Just Normal
, and the
book
Far From the Tree
. Currently pursuing an
Artist Diploma at Juilliard, he already holds
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from
the school, and he earned a bachelor’s in social
science, graduating
cum laude
, from Harvard
at age . Drew Petersen was a fellow at Ravin-
ia’s Steans Music Institute in
and tonight
makes his rst return to the festival.
of Enchantment there issued into the night
sounds of unearthly revelry. / Troops of genii
and other fantastic spirits danced grotesquely
to a music now weird and mysterious, now wild
and joyous.”
SAMUEL BARBER (1910–81)
Piano Sonata, op.
To commemorate the League of Composers’
th anniversary, members Richard Rodgers
and Irving Berlin invited Samuel Barber to com-
pose a piano sonata. A public announcement
appeared in September
, and, by the end of
December, Barber had nished the rst move-
ment. Unfortunately, a stay at the American
Academy in Rome in early
brought work to
a grinding halt for almost six months. Returning
to the United States in August, Barber quickly
completed the scherzo and began a slow nale.
At this critical juncture, the sonata’s interpret-
er entered the scene—Russian keyboard wizard
Vladimir Horowitz. For years, Horowitz had de-
clared his desire to perform a major American
sonata. Samuel Barber’s work-in-progress of-
fered all the appropriate technical and interpre-
tive challenges. Horowitz later remarked in
that “Barber is one of the few American com-
posers who knows how to write for the piano.
… Somehow American composers don’t under-
stand the piano too well. Either they write music
that is very pianistic, but has no substance, or
write music that has substance, but isn’t pianis-
tic.” Despite Horowitz’s close association with
the sonata, the work was not composed speci -
cally for him, a fact composer and pianist both
made clear.
Horowitz suggested a fourth movement, but
Barber found himself short on new musical
ideas. (Apparently, Horowitz made other, rela-
tively minor revisions, which Barber accepted.)
It was the pianist’s wife—Wanda Toscanini,
daughter of legendary Italian conductor Arturo
Toscanini—who provided an unpleasant, but
necessary catalyst leading to the work’s com-
pletion. Barber explained that “Mrs. Horowitz
called me up and said, ‘ e trouble with you
is you’re
stitico
’—it means constipated—‘that’s
what you are, a constipated composer.’
at
made me so mad that I ran to my studio and
wrote that [fugue nale] in the next day.” Bar-
ber’s mastery of fugal technique was greatly en-
hanced by his recent intense study of music by
Johann Sebastian Bach.
Ironically, Horowitz introduced the “great
American piano sonata” in Havana, Cuba, on
December ,
.
is championing by an in-
ternational virtuoso was a landmark event in
the history of American music. Horowitz also
gave the rst private and public performances
in the US—January ,
, at the G. Schirmer
building in New York, and January ,
, at
Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, respec-
tively.
ree months later, Horowitz made his
remarkable RCA long-playing recording of Bar-
ber’s sonata, coupled with Chopin’s Sonata No.
in B- at minor, op. .
Vigorously dotted contrapuntal writing launch-
es the
Allegro energico
. Barber’s typically
neo-Romantic style sti ens beneath a high-
ly chromatic language, at times employing all
twelve tones with nearly equal weight. A mys-
tical, nocturne-like segment introduces another
important musical idea. Barber continues with
the remaining development and recapitulation
portions of the sonata form. e
Allegro vivace e
leggero
casts a pixyish spell with its treble-regis-
ter gurations. A contrasting
trio
adopts a waltz-
like rhythm. Barber combines a Baroque com-
positional device—a repeated six-chord pattern,
like a passacaglia—with a modernist -tone
language (two pitches per chord).
e nale is
a four-voice, toccata-like fugue. Barber packs
many fugal devices in this compact movement,
including augmentation, stretto, retrograde, and
inversion. e dazzling coda transforms his sub-
ject into a rollicking triple meter.
–Program notes ©
Todd E. Sullivan
Samuel Barber
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