If one can find a relevant conversation with the music that we do and what is going on with the world, it’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to always look for something. It can be fabricated.
by Andsnes
Program
VUSTIN Lamento
JANÁČEK Sonata 1.X.1905, "From the Street"
VALENTIN SILVESTROV Bagatelle, Op. 1, No. 3
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, "Pathétique"
DVOŘÁK Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85
Detail and From the program note
https://www.carnegiehall.org/api/sitecore/eventseries/eventprogramnotes?eventid=44017
Alexander Vustin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vustin
Lamento
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NQclGV1DrM
At once dramatic and hauntingly atmospheric, is typical of Vustin’s richly evocative soundscapes: a flighty, clangorous melody, replete with angular leaps and flowing roulades, stands out in sharp relief against an undertow of softly pulsating chords, creating a tension that the final, lingering consonance fails to resolve.
Came his peak in 60-70's
Uesed serialism
Halfway house between traditional Slavic mysticism and the tightly organized rationalism promulgated by the postwar Euro-American avant-garde.
Leoš Janáček
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo%C5%A1_Jan%C3%A1%C4%8Dek
Sonata 1.X.1905
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqPHe3ZIn14
Autobiographical
“Here an ordinary worker František Pavlík falls, stained with blood,”
The composer seems to have harbored a death wish for his own creation: He burned the original finale just before the premiere, and later tried to drown the remaining two movements in the Vltava River.
The two movements are united by their elegiac mood and somber E-flat–minor tonality. “Presentiment” opens with a tender, plangent melody.
“Death” is by turns serene and agitated, its hollow octaves and irregular rhythms conveying a sense of resignation and anguish.
Valentin Silvestrov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentyn_Silvestrov
Bagatelle, Op. 1, No. 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeu-wXD8-nM
Like walking through a forest, light shining through the boughs
Silvestrov’s deceptively simple miniatures is a poetic essay in easy-on-the-ear tonal harmonies, delicate, pointillistic patterns, and lingering resonances.
“A remembrance of things past”
Silvestrov’s Prayer for Ukraine
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, “Pathétique”
Approach to the keyboard, which wreaked havoc on the light-framed fortepianos of the day
“greater eloquence, weightier ideas, and is more expressive—in short, he is more for the heart.”
Crazy music, in opposition to all rule
In them found a solace and a delight such as no other composer afforded me.
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85
About Pianist
‘The Great Czech Piano Cycle’ Arrives at Carnegie Hall
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/arts/music/leif-ove-andsnes-dvorak.html
By David Allen
Jan. 29, 2023
Andsnes has known the work since he was a boy; his father had one of its few recordings in his collection. But he came to study it properly only in the time afforded by the pandemic.
a picture of Czech life. What I love about the cycle is, you have very spiritual pieces, the mystery of “The Old Castle” and “Twilight Way,” and on the other hand you have a piece called “Toying.” Another piece is called “Tittle-Tattle.” It’s everyday life, which you also have in “Pictures at an Exhibition,” or even in late Beethoven.
Dvorak always suffers a bit in comparison with Brahms, because they were contemporaries and admired each other. Brahms has this obvious counterpoint and resistance in the music, we always feel that every voice is so rich. Dvorak doesn’t have that, and one can feel that the music is a little bit too easy to swallow. It depends on the performer to bring out all these subtleties.
And in grim times, we often turn to Beethoven.
So often there is a feeling of going through struggle, or fight in Beethoven’s music, trying to find solutions, or answers, or victory — somehow.
by David Alen
https://davidallenhistory.com/music/
If one can find a relevant conversation with the music that we do and what is going on with the world, it’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to always look for something. It can be fabricated.
by Andsnes
Review by Joshua Barone
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/arts/music/leif-ove-andsnes-carnegie-hall-review.html
At Carnegie Hall until Tuesday evening, as the dreamily kaleidoscopic, recital by Leif Ove Andsnes.
Folk tune or a naïve melody, a solemn march, or a sentimental dance.
Vustin, a Russian composer who is thought to have died of complications from Covid-19 early in the pandemic, straddled tonality and the avant-garde fashions of post-World War II music.
Vustin, “Lamento,” Andsnes’s left hand faintly beat chords of shifting harmonies, while his right one, more angular and unpredictable, entered with a trill before letting out atonal flourishes and chirping interjections — but never for long, like fervent ideas held back from full expression.
By the end, all that remains are the chords, at a whisper, which on Tuesday led naturally into the quiet, pained opening of Janacek’s sonata “1.X.1905, ‘From the Street,’” written in memory of a 20-year-old Czech worker who was killed — pointlessly, Janacek believed — by a German soldier during a political demonstration. Here, it was as if the sentiment of “Lamento” had surfaced in mournful lyricism and waves of rage.
Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s pre-eminent composer. Like many Silvestrov pieces, after the Janacek, its insistent serenity came off as a plea for beauty, if not for peace.
“Twilight Way,” the first of the “Poetic Tone Pictures.” (Hardly representational, Dvorak’s character pieces would be better served by a more literal translation from their Czech title, “Poetic Moods.”) From there, Andsnes was a masterly shepherd of this score, never losing sight of its sometimes obscured line and maintaining control of its agonizingly tricky articulations to bring out the reverent dignity of “In the Old Castle”; the sweet, I-could-have-danced-all-night shadow of a melody in “Furiant”; and the shards of light cutting through a chorale in “On the Holy Mountain.”