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Busoni. Petri launched his solo career in 1902,
which he maintained for decades in combina-
tion with teaching positions at the Manches-
ter Royal College of Music, Berlin Academy of
Music, and, after the outbreak of World War II,
Cornell University, Mills College, and San Fran-
cisco Conservatory of Music. Petri’s piano stu-
dents included Earl Wild and John Ogdon.
LEON KIRCHNER (b. 1919)
For the Left Hand
A native of Brooklyn, Leon Kirchner moved to
California after the age of 9. On the advice of
Ernst Toch, Kirchner enrolled at UCLA to study
with Arnold Schoenberg, whose stylistic influ-
ence shines most clearly in his early works. His
later work with Ernest Bloch at UC–Berkeley
had even greater significance to his develop-
ment as a composer. While a student, Kirchner
received the George Ladd Prix de Paris in 1942.
France was closed due to the war, so he studied
with Roger Sessions in New York.
Four years of military service interrupted his
graduate work at UC–Berkeley; by the time
Kirchner returned, Sessions had joined the fac-
ulty. Following graduation, Kirchner was ap-
pointed a lecturer at UC–Berkeley. He served on
the faculty of USC between 1950 and 1954 before
leaving to become the Luther Brusie Marchant
Professor at Mills College in Oakland. Harvard
offered Kirchner a position in 1961, and in 1966
he succeeded Walter Piston as the Walter Bige-
low Rosen Professor of Music, a title he retained
until his retirement in 1989.
Kirchner’s accomplishments as a pianist, con-
ductor, and composer have garnered numerous
awards: his String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 received
the New York Critics Circle Award; Piano Con-
certoNo. 1 was granted a Naumburg Prize; String
Quartet No. 3 earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1967;
and Music for Cello and Orchestra received the
Friedheim Award. His style assimilates charac-
teristics of Bartók, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg,
and Webern into a personal idiom remarkable
for its compact structure, dissonant language,
and immaculate handling of texture.
For the Left Hand
resulted from a special re-
quest from pianist Leon Fleisher. Kirchner
wrote, “Leon Fleisher is an old friend. He need-
ed music for the left hand. I stopped whatever I
was doing at the time to write a piece for him.”
Fleisher gave the world premiere at Carnegie
Hall on December 6, 1995. Kirchner’s music
was inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem “Wild
Nights” and an excerpt from Edna St. Vincent
Millay’s “Renascence.”
“Wild Nights”
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
– Emily Dickinson
“Renascence” (excerpt)
… a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–91)
Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 385p/414
(arranged for piano and string quintet by Ignaz Lachner)
Mozart proudly announced the completion of
one new piano concerto (K. 385p/414)—part
of a planned concerto trilogy for the upcoming
winter concert season—in a letter to his father
on December 28, 1782: “These concertos are a
happy medium between what is too easy and
too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to
the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There
are passages here and there from which the con-
noisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these
passages are written in such a way that the less
learned cannot fail to be pleased, though with-
out knowing why.”
Professional advice that Leopold Mozart had
imparted to his son five years earlier now ap-
peared quite sound. The father had grown dis-
pleased by reports from Paris that Wolfgang
might never secure regular employment because
of his easygoing nature and overly intricate
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
“Schafe können sicher weiden” from
Was mir
behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd!
, BWV 208
(“Hunting [or Birthday] Cantata”)
(arranged for piano by Egon Petri)
In 1708, Bach became court organist (and later
Konzertmeister) to the Duke of Weimar. His re-
sponsibilities included performing at the duke’s
request and periodically composing cantatas
for church services and for special celebratory
events. One such occasion was the resplendent
birthday observances of the junior Duke Chris-
tian of Saxe-Weissenfels, beginning on Febru-
ary 23, 1713. Bach composed the cantata
Was mir
behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd!
(
The Hunt Alone
Is What Pleases Me
; also known as the “Hunting
[or Birthday] Cantata”) to praise the duke’s reign
and favorite hobby.
The allegorical libretto by Salomo Franck recalls
the tale of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, and
her companions Endymion, Pan, and a chorus
of shepherds. Appropriately, Bach called for a
“pastoral” instrumental ensemble containing
two recorders, two oboes, oboe da caccia, bas-
soon, two horns, strings, and continuo. Despite
the secular origin, Bach later reused several
movements in his sacred cantatas.
Bach’s 10th movement is the aria “Schafe kön-
nen sicher weiden” (“Sheep May Safely Graze”),
which is sung by the divine Pales, an androgy-
nous mythological figure who here praises the
regent’s peaceful regime with a goddess’s voice.
Bach scholar Malcolm Boyd succinctly, and
quite convincingly, refuted any Christological
symbolism in this aria, “whose first couplet has
misled many into association it with the Good
Shepherd. As the rest of the strophe makes clear,
the ‘good shepherd’ is in this case not Christ, but
Christian.”
German-born pianist Egon Petri (1881–1962)
gained an appreciation for piano transcriptions,
particularly the music of Johann Sebastian Bach,
from his piano teacher and mentor, Ferruccio
Leon Kirchner (2008)
The anonymous Volbach Portrait of Johann
Sebastian Bach (1750)
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