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Program Notes Frédéric Chopin Two Nocturnes, Opus 27 Frédéric Chopin (b. near Warsaw, 1810; d. Paris, 1849) Liszt credited Irish composer-pianist John Field (1782- 1837) with the invention not only of the nocturne, but with “all pieces designed to portray subjective and profound emotion.” Czerny linked the nocturne to the serenade: “The peculiar object of such work—that of being performed at night, before the dwelling of an esteemed individual—must always exercise an infl uence upon its character.” The Two Nocturnes, Opus 27, were composed in 1835, the year of Schumann’s Carnaval, but also the year Chopin became reacquainted with Maria Wodzińska, whose family would ultimately reject his suit. Chopin’s nocturnes had hitherto been published in groups of three. With Opus 27, he began to issue them in pairs, elevating their status. These nocturnes have a particularly intimate relationship. They share a tonic, and are as inseparable as light from shadow. Yet they are quite different in structure and mood. The fi rst nocturne begins on the dark side of the moon, and struggles to fi nd a voice. The acoustics of the opening undulations lead the ear to expect a major third: E-sharp. But the fi rst, plaintive melody note is the minor mode’s E instead, and the line that follows is more emanation than tune. A contrasting middle section briefl y strikes up a cheery waltz, but loses its footing. Only falling sighs in duet confi rm the major mode. The voice sought in No. 1 is found in No. 2. This is a different structure, a lyric poem in three-stanzas. Under the full moon, a richly embroidered right hand falls and rises, aspiring to a diva’s power to wax and wane. A second voice joins the fi rst—another duet!—in operatic fashion. The coda falls under the timeless spell of a tonic pedal point. Program note © 2012 by David Evan Thomas 14 THE SCHUBERT CLUB An die Musik Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Opus 5 Johannes Brahms (b. Hamburg, 1833; d. Vienna, 1897) Brahms was twenty, blond, beardless and slender when he composed this sonata, the earliest of his works to have found a steady place in the repertory. He had just been “discovered” by Schumann, who closed his career as music critic with the celebrated article to which he gave the title “New Paths”: “I have always thought that some day one would be bound suddenly to appear, one called to express in ideal form the spirit of his time, one whose mastery would not reveal itself to us step by step, but who, like Minerva, would spring fully armed from the head of Zeus. And he is come, a young man over whose cradle graces and heroes have stood watch. His name is Johannes Brahms.” By then, moreover, Schumann had already written to Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, urging them to publish the young man’s music. All three sonatas are works of enormous scope and ambition, the fi rst of them even making the boldest possible claim for a place in the central tradition by beginning with an unmistakable allusion to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Brahms went on to write many more works in the sonata style and very much more music for solo piano, but he never again wrote a piano sonata. Maria Wodzińska
Johannes Brahms, 1853 Brahms begins with a movement so massive in sonority, so imperious in its gestures (he even gives the direction “fi rm and defi nite”) that we are apt to be surprised by its compact form. The Andante has an epigraph of three lines by the Romantic poet Wilhelm Sternau: “It is evening, the moonlight glows,/Now two hearts are united in love/And hold each other in blissful embrace.” The music itself is songful, expansive, quietly passionate, rich in contrast. The descending chain of thirds with which Brahms begins was to be a signature all his life. After a roistering Scherzo—but with a broad and calm Trio—Brahms prefaces the fi nale with an Intermezzo which he also calls Retrospect (Rückblick). What he looks back upon is the Romantic scene of the Andante, but now he makes its melodies harder in contour and gives them an accompaniment of muffl ed drums. That leads without break into the grandly energetic, often capricious fi nale. Adapted from notes by Michael Steinberg Sonata No. 2, Notturno luminoso (2011) Stephen Hough (b. Heswall, UK, 1961) The subtitle for my second Piano Sonata, ‘Notturno luminoso,’ suggests many images: the refl ection of the moon on a calm lake perhaps, or stars across a restful sky. But this piece is about a different kind of night and a different kind of light: the brightness of a brash city in the hours of darkness; the loneliness of pre-morning; sleeplessness and the dull glow of the alarm clock’s unmoving hours; the irrational fears or the disturbing dreams which are only darkened by the harsh glare of a suspended, dusty light bulb. But also suggested are nighttime’s heightened emotions: its mysticism, its magic, its imaginative possibilities. The Sonata’s form is ABA and there are three musical ideas: one based on sharps (brightness), one based on fl ats (darkness), and one based on naturals (white notes) representing a kind of blank irrationality. The piece opens clangorously, its bold, assertive theme – sharps piled upon sharps – separated by small cadenzas. Yearning and hesitating to reach a cadence it fi nally stumbles into the B section where all accidentals are suddenly bleached away in a whiteout. Extremes of pitch and dynamics splatter sound across the keyboard until an arpeggio fi gure in the bass gathers rhythmic momentum and leads to the ‘fl at’ musical idea, jarring in its romantic juxtaposition to what has gone before. This whole B section is made up of a collision, a tossing and turning, between the two tonalities of fl ats and naturals, interrupting each other with impatience until the whiteout material spins up into the stratosphere, a whirlwind in the upper octaves of the piano. Under this blizzard we hear the theme from the beginning of the piece, fi rstly in purest, brilliant C major in the treble, then, after it subsides to pianissimo, in a snarl of dissonance in the extreme bass of the instrument. The music stops … and then, for the fi rst time, we hear the full statement of the ‘fl at’ material, Andante Lamentoso. The music’s sorrow increases with wave after wave of romantic ardour, deliberately risking overkill and discomfort. At its climax the music halts twice at a precipice then tumbles into the recapitulation, the opening theme now in white-note tonality and unrecognizably spotted across the keyboard. As this peters out we hear the same theme but now with warm, gentle, romantic harmonies. A fi nal build-up to an exact repetition of the opening of the piece is blended with material from the B section and, in the last bar, in a fi nal wild scream, we hear all three tonalities together for a blinding second-long fl ash, brighter than noon, before the fi nal soft chord closes the curtain on these night visions. – Stephen Hough schubert.org 15
Page 1: 130th Anniversary Ad November 1 - D
Page 5 and 6: An die Musik November 1 - December
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Page 10 and 11: 10 THE SCHUBERT CLUB An die Musik T
Page 12 and 13: Goerne Stephen Program Hough, piano
Page 16 and 17: Program Notes continued Carnaval, S
Page 20 and 21: Program Notes Antonio Vivaldi Of al
Page 22 and 23: Texts and Translations Arias from t
Page 24 and 25: Texts and Translations continued Vo
Page 26 and 27: Photo: Marco Borggreve Calendar of
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Page 32 and 33: Program Notes Beginners in music ar
Page 34 and 35: The Schubert Club Museum Sunday - F
Page 36 and 37: Courtroom Concert November 8, 2012
Page 38 and 39: Courtroom Concert December 6, 2012
Page 40 and 41: Courtroom Concert December 13, 2012
Page 42 and 43: The Schubert Club Annual Contributo
Page 44 and 45: Richard and Mary Ann Pedtke Patrici
Page 46 and 47: The Schubert Club Endowment and The

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