The 4th Annual Chiang Mai Music Festival 2552 (2009)

Ban Wangtan Concert Stage - Saturday, February 7th at 19:30

Great Romantic Piano Concerti

Welcome to this wonderful and extraordinary event in the musical calendar of Chiang Mai and the highlight of the fourth Chiang Mai annual music festival – the evening dedicated to two main musical features – firstly, to three young 10th grade pianists from Sunhwa Arts High School in Seoul, Korea, and secondly to three of the greatest piano concerti from the Romantic period, by Chopin, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. All the personnel involved in bringing this simply beautiful music to you hope that you will relax and enjoy what promises to be a uniquely inspiring and delightful evening.

The piano has had more concerti written for it than any other instrument. And the three concerti featured tonight help form the core of what is known as the Romantic classical period. By the time the first of these concerti had been written, in 1830, the piano had become established more or less in the form that we know it today – an instrument of great virtuosity, very popular with musicians and audiences alike, and capable of providing a great range of sound, musical tones and thrilling harmonies. During this period, the piano had often taken centre-stage, and so it is with great delight that it does so again tonight. The piano embraces many octaves and thus balances the very high notes with the very low, something that few instruments can accomplish so successfully. The touch of the performers allows the fortissimo to contrast and balance with the pianissimo. The pedals can help to enhance this balance, while adding echo and vibration; and the frequent key changes balance the more somber minor with the more joyful major.

But not only is the music in balance – the origin and performance of these pieces also reflects that same dimension. One concerto was composed in Copenhagen in Denmark, another in Warsaw, Poland and the third in Moscow, Russia, spanning most of western and central Europe. And the music was written over a period of nearly 35 years which saw the rise of so many wonderful composers in addition to the three we are to hear tonight. The concept of balance can be taken even further – the first performances of the last of these concerti took place in the USA and tonight the performance will be in south-east Asia by more northerly Asian performers – certainly a northern hemisphere perspective. And in these concerti, we will often hear the balance between fast and slow, tender and strident, bitter and sweet, happy and sad.

So now, how do we define a concerto? Like all pieces of music, it changed its format and construction over time, due to the emergent genius of various inventive composers and to the continual development of the instruments themselves. Tobin, the distinguished British musicologist once wrote that the word concerto spells ‘dazzle, display, delight and dexterity’. And those words are so frequently brought alive in the cadenza section which forms part of the first and final movements in most cases. The cadenza was intended as an opportunity for the soloist alone to show off his or her skills in a special section set aside for that purpose. Often the cadenza was an improvisation, but many composers also annotated them as well. Tobin also wrote that the romantic concerto was cast in the mould fixed by its originator who wrote more than fifty such virtuoso compositions which foreshadowed almost every improvement in its design since his time, that great master of balance – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Today, the majority of critics agree that Mozart, and especially in his piano concerti of which there are 27, achieved the perfect balance between piano and orchestra, and that few if any composers since, have either achieved that or surpassed it. Tonight there will be no orchestra for us to form a similar or contradictory opinion. We will hear these concerti played on the piano and supported by a second piano playing what normally would be the orchestral parts.

Program

Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16

This early work of Grieg – he was 24 when he wrote it in 1868 - owes much to the influence of Liszt and Schumann, although the former, a distinguished pianist and composer himself did not care very much for it – in fact he was quite critical of it. Yet it has become one of the favourite concerti of performers and audiences alike and it is a regular feature of concert programs around the world today. It was actually written not in Grieg’s native Norway, but in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the composer had studied some years earlier and to where he returned periodically. On a visit to Leipzig in 1858, he had heard Clara Schumann play the Robert Schumann Piano Concerto, also in the same key and which he greatly admired. But that aside, the Grieg composition is very different in its thematic material and in its character, reflecting northern, rather than central European melodies. The concerto contains a wealth of picturesque detail and some fine opportunities for the soloist in the form of an elaborate cadenza in the first movement and a brief yet forceful cadenza in the third movement.

The work has three movements:

1. Allegro molto moderato (in the dominant key of A minor)
2. Adagio (in D flat major)
3. Allegro molto e marcato (in A minor, then F major leading to A major)

Tonight’s performance will be by Song-I Jeong accompanied by Professor Jung-Hwa Hur

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Opus 11

This is another relatively early work in the great musical outpouring of Chopin’s all-too-brief life. It was written in 1830, three years after the death of Beethoven, in Warsaw, Poland where it was given its performance that same year, just before Chopin left his native land for Paris where he spent the rest of his life. Despite the E minor dominant key, the work is surprisingly fresh and buoyant and full of youthful charm. Critics are sharply divided over the scoring of the concerto, some claiming the orchestration to be overpowering and interfering, others implying that the orchestra is nothing more than simple support for the wonderfully expressive piano sections.

Tonight we will have no worries on that score – our young pianist, You Min Shin will be accompanied by her Professor Tong-Il Han who has an interesting association with this piece. At the age of eleven and for ten more years, Professor Tong-Il was a student of the much admired and great Russian mentor of young pianists, Madame Rosina Lhevinne. This remarkable woman made her debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1963 performing this concerto under no less a distinguished baton than that of Leonard Bernstein – when she was aged 82 years old! She had played the very same piece at her graduation from the Moscow Conservatory 65 years earlier. How wonderful this opportunity must be for Professor Tong-Il Han to recall many cherished memories from those days as he accompanies our soloist in tonight’s performance.

The concerto falls into three sections: Allegro maestoso, Romance marked larghetto, and finally Rondo vivace.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor Opus 23

Composed during the winter of 1874/5, this majestic work was dedicated to Nicholas Rubinstein, one of the world’s greatest pianists of his time. Having heard a preliminary performance of the piece played by Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein declared it to be worthless and unplayable, adding that it was bad, trivial and vulgar, with only one or two pages having any value. This did not exactly please the mercurial Tchaikovsky who immediately removed the original dedication and re-dedicated it to another great pianist of his time, Hans von Bulow, who described it as lofty, strong and original. And it was von Bulow who gave the first two performances of the piece to rapturous audiences in Boston and New York in 1875. The critics in the USA did not care much for it, either, but Rubinstein later changed his mind and it became a standard work in his repertoire.

Tonight it will be performed by Seol-Hwa Kim with her mentor Professor Tong-Il Han accompanying her. This concerto has three movements:

1. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso (in the dominant key of B flat minor) leading to allegro con spirito (in B flat major)
2. Andantino simplice leading to prestissimo (in D flat)
3. Allegro con fuoco (in B flat minor leading to B flat)

All three movements have folk links – in the first movement, the opening theme was one Tchaikovsky heard played by blind beggar musicians in the streets of a small town near Kiev; the second movement contains a version of a French chansonette, and in the final movement there are both Russian and Ukranian folk songs. And once again there are several cadenza passages for our performer to display her expertise and command of this wonderful instrument.

Program notes by Jai-Pee