Pianist Per Tengstrand. Courtesy/SFPM
SFPM News:
An event marked by virtuosity and variety, this season’s Classical Weekend features pianist Per Tengstrand in recital at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21 at St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Tengstrand also will perform with the Santa Fe Pro Musica Orchestra at 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24 and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. Thomas O’Connor, Santa Fe Pro Musica Conductor and Music Director, will present a “behind the scenes” discussion of the music one hour prior to each orchestra concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center free to ticket holders.
Tickets are $20, $35, $45, $65 at the Santa Fe Pro Musica Box Office 505.988.4640, Tickets Santa Fe at The Lensic 505.988.1234, or online at www.santafepromusica.com
Per Tengstrand has firmly established himself as one of today’s most exciting pianists. The Washington Post describes him as “technically resplendent, powerful, intuitively secure,” and the New York Times as “a superb Swedish pianist” whose recital “was rewarding, both for its unusual programming and for his eloquent, technically polished performances”. He is the subject of a highly acclaimed Swedish documentary entitled Solisten (The Soloist), which was featured at the International Festival of Cinema and Technology in New York City.
In 2005, he was decorated by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with the Royal Medal Litteris et Artibus for outstanding service to the arts, the youngest recipient ever to be so honored. His busy 2014-15 season includes concerts and recitals on both sides of the Atlantic. In Sweden he plays Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2, Brahms’ Concerto No. 2 and Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto; and the Tengstrand-Sun Piano Duo performs an adaptation of The Rite of Spring before returning to the U.S., where he continues his recital series at Scandinavia House in New York City. He was recently named artist-in-residence at the new Spira Concert House in Jönköping (Sweden).
The Recital Program:
Beethoven: Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3
Beethoven: Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 “Pathétique”
Grieg: Lyric Pieces
Liszt” Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3
Sonata as a musical genre first appears during the Renaissance Era as a designation for instrumental music: sonata (suonare, to sound) as opposed to cantata (cantare, to sing, or vocal music) and toccata (toccare, to touch, or keyboard music). This is a very popular type of music and currently refers to a multi-movement instrumental work.
The sonata as a compositional technique features a highly structured form, and is essentially the opposite of the fantasy. It is divided into sections with each performing specific functions in the musical argument. Its three sections include an exposition section that presents the themes, a development section where these themes are submitted to an exploration of possibilities, and a recapitulation section where all the themes are restored to their original shape and function.
Completed in 1798, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 7 was the last of a set of three sonatas dedicated to the Countess Anna Margarete von Browne, whose husband was one of Beethoven’s chief early patrons. Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, and had, by this time, established himself as the leading keyboard virtuoso of this city where competition for noble patronage was fierce. In the ambitious opening Presto movement, Beethoven implies notes that reach beyond the range of the keyboards in existence at his time. The second movement Largo e mesto (in D Minor) is saturated with despair, but a happier D Major returns with the third movement, a sweet Menuetto. The final movement is a rondo in which the principal theme alternates with contrasting themes. “The Rondo finale is a showcase for Beethoven’s variation technique. The rondo theme is altered upon return, as is the material of the first episode, which is spliced to the beginning of a new episode later in the movement” (All Music Guide, 2008).
Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 “Pathétique”
Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 in C Minor was published in 1799 with a dedication to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, one of his most important patrons (and a piano pupil of Mozart). Although it could have been Beethoven’s publisher who gave the sonata its subtitle, many believe that Beethoven named his sonata Pathétique (pathetic; pitiful; causing sympathetic sorrow) to describe its emotional drama.
Anton Schindler, a friend of Beethoven, once observed to the composer that “two principles” are operating in the second movement. “[Beethoven] not only agreed with him but allegedly suggested that the music represents an extended dialogue between a man and a woman that is finally resolved at the end of his next two sonatas, Opus 14.” (Robert K. Wallace, Emily Bronte and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music, 42).
The first movement opens in Grave that alternates between dramatic and tender, followed by a contrasting Allegro di molto e con brio (fast, with brilliance). The second movement Adagio cantabile (slow and singing) is in A Major and holds its own harmonic surprises. “Whatever Beethoven’s actual program, if any, for the second movement, he created striking contrasts between the refrain and the episodes, between major and minor, and between the voices that embody dialogue from low to high and from high to low. More striking, of course, is the principle of contrast as it operates between the second movement and the first” (Wallace, 43). The final movement is a stormy Rondo.
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) Lyric Pieces
Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg received his early childhood piano training from his mother Gesine Hagerup. He later entered the Leipzig Conservatory where he found inspiration in the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann. When he moved to Copenhagen in 1863, he came into the company of Norwegian nationalist composer Rikard Nordraak. According to Grieg, “Through him (Nordraak), I first learned to know the northern folk tunes and my own nature.”
Grieg published his first book of Lyric Pieces in 1867, composing ten compilations of “Lyric Pieces” (66 short pieces for solo piano, in all), qualifying Grieg as an “undisputed master of the genre” (Piano Society). In a letter to a close friend, Grieg jokingly wrote, “I have been lyric once again. Can’t you please cure me of this affliction?” Each of these character pieces is of a style and form unique to Grieg, colored by the rhythms and melodies of Norwegian folk music.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata
A piano prodigy, Lizst was composing by the age of eight and performing in concert halls by the age of nine. His father brought him to Vienna, where he studied composition with Antonio Salieri (known to most as Mozart’s rival) and piano with Carl Czerny (a former student of Beethoven). At fifteen, Liszt was traumatized by his father’s early death from typhoid fever. He turned to reading books on art and religion, which would influence his later compositions.
At the age of 22, Liszt met Marie d’Agoult, with whom he had an affair and three children. His travels with Marie d’Agoult in Switzerland and Italy produced his two volumes of Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). Inspired by the great Italian artists, volume two is where we find the “Dante Sonata,” the seventh and final piece of this book, drafted in 1837.
“It is not known which specific scenes from Dante’s Divina Commedia Liszt had in mind when he wrote the piece…the piece contains no pertinent clues whatsoever” (Ernst Herttrich, G. Henlie Verlag preface). In a letter to Marie d’Agoult, Liszt wrote, “Maybe I am a would-be genius; that is something that only time can tell…My mission, as I see it, is to be the first to introduce poetry into the music of the piano with some degree of style.”
The Orchestra Program:
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony No. 92 in G Major “Oxford”
In 1791 Europe’s most famous composer Franz Joseph Haydn visited England at the invitation of the impresario Johann Peter Salomon. The music writer Charles Burney suggested to Oxford University (his alma mater) that they invite Haydn to their distinguished city and give him an honorary doctorate. He responded, “The University of Oxford, whose esteemed reputation I have heard abroad, is too great an object for me not to see before I leave England, and I shall take the earliest opportunity of paying it a visit.” Two months later he fulfilled his pledge, and accepted the university’s award. One of Haydn’s symphonies was selected to be performed at the event and has since become known as the Oxford Symphony. However, this symphony was originally one of three that Haydn had already written in the late 1780s for a group of aristocrats in Paris and Bavaria and was not composed with Oxford in mind at all!
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Concerto in E-flat “Dumbarton Oaks”
The 20th century Russian composer Igor Stravinsky composed his Concerto in E-flat in 1937 on a commission from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss. The first performance was given in 1938 at Dumbarton Oaks, the family estate in Washington D.C., in celebration of their 30th wedding anniversary. Although the official title of this work is Concerto in E-flat, it is more commonly referred to as Dumbarton Oaks. (Today Dumbarton Oaks is Harvard University’s Center for Byzantine Studies.) Mrs. Bliss wanted the work to be called Dumbarton Oaks Concerto with an implied analogy to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Stravinsky’s publisher, Willy Strecker, objected that “No one outside of America will understand the designation or be able to pronounce it…” Strecker suggested a compromise: give the work a formal title, Concerto in E-flat, with the subtitle Dumbarton Oaks.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Mozart wrote 12 of his 27 piano concertos between 1784 -1786, a period of exceptional musical fertility for him. No. 24 is often regarded as Mozart’s grandest essay in the field of concerto composition. It is the only one he composed in that particular key and one of only two he composed in a minor key.
For more information, visit www.santafepromusica.com.