Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Mitsuko Uchida, Concert at Carnegie Hall

“Compositions which I keep for myself or for a small circle of music-lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands).” by Mozart

With the 2022–2023 season, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) celebrates its 25th birthday.

Mitsuko Uchida is an incomparable interpreter of Mozart. From her deeply studied readings and performances to her leadership of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard, there is no better way to experience this repertoire. The program boasts two of Mozart’s late piano concertos, each of them a standout work even among the master’s timeless oeuvre. Also featured is Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 1, a work of constant motion and flowing interplay. by Justin Pumfrey / Decca

Performers

Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Mitsuko Uchida, Piano and Director

José Maria Blumenschein, Concertmaster and Leader

This concert presents two late Mozart piano concertos that represent Viennese Classicism at its peak of perfection. One of 12 piano concertos written by Mozart between 1784 and 1786, No. 25 is imperious and commanding, a forerunner of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto. No. 27—Mozart’s last piano concerto—is a work of great intimacy and repose, premiered the last year of his short life. Between the two concertos on the program is Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 1, Op. 9, an important landmark in the journey of the New Viennese School from late Romanticism to modernism and atonality. Its extreme concision is unique, and its turbulent sound world seems disconnected from the world of the piano concertos. Yet Schoenberg was a Classicist as well as a modernist—as demonstrated by the symphony’s compressed sonata form—and he regarded himself as “a pupil of Mozart.”

このコンサートでは、完成度の高いウィーンの古典主義を代表する後期モーツァルトのピアノ協奏曲を 2 曲紹介します。 モーツァルトが 1784 年から 1786 年の間に書いた 12 のピアノ協奏曲の 1 つである第 25 番は、ベートーベンの「皇帝」ピアノ協奏曲の前身であり、威厳があり威厳があります。 第27番—モーツァルトの最後のピアノ協奏曲—は、彼の短い人生の最後の年に初演された、非常に親密で安らかな作品です。 プログラムの 2 つの協奏曲の間には、シェーンベルクの室内交響曲第 1 番 Op. 9、後期ロマン主義からモダニズムと無調への新ウィーン学派の旅の重要なランドマーク。 その極端なまでの簡潔さは独特で、その乱れた音世界はピアノ協奏曲の世界から切り離されているように見えます。 それでもシェーンベルクは、交響曲の圧縮されたソナタ形式が示すように、古典主義者であると同時にモダニストでもあり、自分自身を「モーツァルトの弟子」と見なしていました。

Program

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0002894702872

Track4

Score

https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/nma_cont.php?vsep=157&gen=edition&l=1&p1=163

1. Allegro maestoso

2. Andante in F

3. Allegretto

A Jubilant Concerto

Piano Concerto No. 25 was the last in this series. Written in 1786—the same year as The Marriage of Figaro—it has been compared by some to his final symphony, the “Jupiter,” and by others to Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto. Certainly, the piece looks forward in its ambition, assertiveness, and sense of scale. It is Mozart’s most grandiose concerto, opening with a C-major theme for trumpets and drums that is imperious and commanding, one that makes us sit up in our chairs, followed by a poignant and gentle melody, a dramatic juxtaposition in a work full of contrasts. The pianist’s entrance is virtuosic and cadenza-like—no written-out cadenza exists for this concerto, as Mozart wrote it for himself—and the excitement never lets up. This is very much a work of C-major jubilation, including a march that sounds a bit like the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” but here and in the other movements the piece subtly shifts in and out of minor-key melancholy, delivering the emotional complexity that by now was common in Mozart’s major works. Even the rapidly moving sonata-rondo finale, which takes the excitement of the opening movement to a new level, has a sudden drooping melody near the end that is so tender it nearly steals the show before the final rush toward the finish. The slow movement is a tranquil contrast, with delicate woodwind writing and a sparse piano line that looks forward to the simplicity of Mozart’s final works.

ピアノ協奏曲第25番はこのシリーズの最後でした。 フィガロの結婚と同じ年である 1786 年に書かれたこの曲は、彼の最後の交響曲「ジュピター」と比較される人もいれば、ベートーベンのピアノ協奏曲「皇帝」と比較される人もいます。 確かに、この作品はその野心、自己主張、スケール感において先を見据えています。 それはモーツァルトの最も壮大な協奏曲であり、トランペットとドラムのための威厳と威厳のあるハ長調のテーマで始まり、私たちを椅子に座らせ、その後に感動的で優しい旋律が続きます。 対照的です。 ピアニストの登場は名人芸的でカデンツァのようであり、モーツァルトが自分で書いたように、この協奏曲には書き下ろしのカデンツァはありません。 これは、フランスの国歌「ラ・マルセイエーズ」に少し似た行進曲を含む、ハ長調の歓喜の作品ですが、ここや他の楽章では、マイナーキーのメランコリーに微妙にシフトします。 モーツァルトの主要な作品で今では一般的だった感情的な複雑さを提供します. オープニング楽章の興奮を新しいレベルに引き上げる急速に変化するソナタ・ロンド・フィナーレでさえ、終わり近くで突然垂れ下がったメロディーがあり、フィニッシュに向かう最後のラッシュの前にショーを盗みそうになります。 ゆっくりとした楽章は、モーツァルトの最終作品のシンプルさを期待させる繊細な木管楽器とまばらなピアノの旋律との静かなコントラストです。

SCHOENBERG Kammersymphonie No. 1

https://play.qobuz.com/album/piq6dvbaog7rb

Track1

Fanatical Concision

Schoenberg wrote that his goal in composing this 1906 Chamber Symphony was to create “a style of concision and brevity in which every technical or structural necessity was carried out without unnecessary extension, in which every single unit is supposed to be functional.” This manifesto of brevity and functionality may sound cold, but the emotional impact of the piece is strong, the melodies distinctive, even though they are radically compressed and economically organized. In a single 20-minute movement, we get a short introduction ending in a deceptively gentle major chord, a frenetic exposition presenting one idea after another, a rapid-fire scherzo, an intricate development, a dream-like adagio, and an affirmative finale that recapitulates everything and builds toward hard-earned triumph. The disguised “movements” come one after another, with little room to breathe between them, and despite the wealth of thought and feeling, the piece is over before we know it.

シェーンベルクは、この 1906 年の室内交響曲を作曲する際の目標は、「あらゆる技術的または構造的な必要性が不必要な拡張なしに実行され、すべてのユニットが機能することになっている、簡潔で簡潔なスタイル」を作成することであると書いています。 この簡潔さと機能性のマニフェストは冷たく聞こえるかもしれませんが、根本的に圧縮され、経済的に編成されているにもかかわらず、作品の感情的な影響は強く、メロディーは独特です. 20 分間の 1 つの楽章の中で、一見穏やかなメジャー コードで終わる短いイントロダクション、次から次へとアイデアを提示する熱狂的な説明、急速なスケルツォ、複雑な展開、夢のようなアダージョ、そして肯定的なフィナーレが得られます。 それはすべてを要約し、苦労して獲得した勝利に向けて構築されます。 偽装された「動き」が息をつく間も無く次々とやってきて、思考と感情の豊かさにもかかわらず、作品はいつの間にか終わってしまう。

Virtuosity from Every Player

It’s hard to expect any listener to take in all the work’s complex interrelations in a first hearing; there are multiple ideas tossed out breathlessly and mashed together, instantly vanishing only to reappear later in different contexts. Nonetheless, the visceral excitement of the piece, the sense of forward movement even in the wispy slow section, makes it one of Schoenberg’s most thrilling and accessible pieces despite its complexity. The melodies and motifs keep reappearing in new ingenious forms, a technique going back to Liszt, though he used thematic transformation in a far more expansive way. The final major chord toward which everything builds is jubilant, though like everything else, it is terse.

すべてのプレーヤーの妙技

最初の聴聞会で、作品の複雑な相互関係をすべて聞き取れるとは期待しがたい。 複数のアイデアが息を切らして放り出され、マッシュアップされ、すぐに消えて、後で別のコンテキストで再び現れるだけです。 それにもかかわらず、曲の本能的な興奮、わずかに遅いセクションでも前進する感覚は、その複雑さにもかかわらず、シェーンベルクの最もスリリングでアクセスしやすい作品の1つにします. メロディーとモチーフは新しい独創的な形で再登場し続けています。これはリストにまでさかのぼるテクニックですが、彼ははるかに広範な方法で主題の変換を使用しました。 すべてが構築される最後の主要な和音は歓喜ですが、他のすべてと同様に簡潔です。

Another attraction is the constant virtuosity required of every player, both in ensembles and solos. The heroic horn calls in the finale are particularly breathtaking; the string sighs in the slow movement—ghostly echoes of Mahler—require extreme subtlety and soulful repose. Schoenberg was aware of what he required of players and was frequently disappointed, though the precision of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and other contemporary ensembles who are now accustomed to his extreme demands would probably make him smile. “My music is not modern,” he famously complained, “it is merely badly played.”

もう 1 つの魅力は、アンサンブルとソロの両方で、すべてのプレーヤーに求められる絶え間ない妙技です。 フィナーレの英雄的なホーンコールは特に息をのむほどです。 弦はゆっくりとした動きの中でため息をつきます—マーラーの幽霊のような反響—極度の繊細さと魂のこもった休息が必要です。 シェーンベルクは、彼が奏者に何を求めているかを認識しており、しばしば失望していましたが、彼の極端な要求に慣れているマーラー室内管弦楽団や他の現代のアンサンブルの正確さは、おそらく彼を笑顔にするでしょう. 「私の音楽は現代的ではありません」と彼は有名に不平を言いました。

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0002894683672

Track4

Score

https://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No.27_in_B-flat_major%2C_K.595_(Mozart%2C_Wolfgang_Amadeus)

1. Allegro

2. Larghetto in E♭ major

3. Allegro

A Spiritual Farewell?

Perhaps no other Mozart piano concerto presents a more radical juxtaposition of simplicity and sophistication than his final one. The former is apparent in the lack of flash and pomp (the kind we hear in Piano Concerto No. 25 on this program) and in the innocent charm of the themes, including a children’s song; Charles Rosen writes in The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven that the slow movement attains “a condition of absolute simplicity.” Yet the concerto also has a subtle continuity—everything seems to flow together, even though Mozart uses Classical structures—and the harmonies are often daring.

おそらくモーツァルトの最後のピアノ協奏曲ほど、シンプルさと洗練が過激に並置されているものはないでしょう。 前者は、フラッシュと威風堂々の欠如 (この番組のピアノ協奏曲第 25 番で聞くようなもの) と、童謡を含むテーマの無邪気な魅力に明らかです。 チャールズ・ローゼンは『クラシック・スタイル: ハイドン、モーツァルト、ベートーベン』の中で、ゆっくりとした楽章は「絶対的な単純さの状態」に達すると書いています。 しかし、協奏曲には微妙な連続性もあり、モーツァルトは古典的な構造を使用していますが、すべてが一緒に流れているように見え、ハーモニーはしばしば大胆です.

Current scholars scoff at previous writers who hear in the work a farewell to the world—Alfred Einstein, for example, writing that the concerto “stands at the gate of heaven”—pointing out that Mozart had no idea he would die within a year. Yet from the opening sighs until the final gentle affirmation, there is something otherworldly about the piece. Mitsuko Uchida, tonight’s soloist, finds this quality to be unmistakable, though she believes it shouldn’t be taken too far. “I do have a sense of spiritual farewell playing it,” she says, “though the B-flat Piano Sonata, K. 570, of 1789 has the same flavor, as a warning that we shouldn’t hear it as a premonition.”

現在の学者は、作品の中で世界との別れを聞いた以前の作家を嘲笑し、たとえば、アルフレッド・アインシュタインは協奏曲が「天国の門に立っている」と書いています。 しかし、冒頭のため息から最後の穏やかな肯定まで、作品には別世界の何かがあります。 今夜のソリストである内田光子は、このクオリティは紛れもないものだと感じていますが、行き過ぎてはいけないと彼女は信じています。 「私はそれを演奏することで精神的な別れの感覚を持っています」と彼女は言います。」

Piano Concerto No. 27 is one of two piano concertos composed after No. 25, the last of the 12 written in Vienna between 1784 and 1786. It is part of a stream of final masterpieces, many his greatest works, including the G-minor and “Jupiter” symphonies, the E-Flat String Quintet, the Clarinet Concerto, and The Magic Flute. Again, practical considerations were the inspirati on. Burdened by debt and depressed by the collapse of his independently organized concerts, Mozart needed more pieces to play; he completed the work in 1791 after he was presented with a concerto opportunity on a program given by clarinetist Joseph Bahr. Despite his declining popularity, he was still revered by many, as was reported in the Wiener Zeitung: “Herr Kapellmeister Mozart played a concerto on the fortepiano, and everyone admired his art, in composition as well as performance …”

ピアノ協奏曲第 27 番は、第 25 番の後に作曲された 2 つのピアノ協奏曲のうちの 1 つであり、1784 年から 1786 年の間にウィーンで書かれた 12 曲の最後のものです。 「Jupiter」交響曲、E-フラット弦楽五重奏曲、クラリネット協奏曲、魔笛。 繰り返しになりますが、実用的な考慮事項がインスピレーションでした。 借金に悩まされ、独立して組織したコンサートの崩壊に落ち込んでいたモーツァルトは、もっと多くの曲を演奏する必要がありました。 彼は、クラリネット奏者ジョセフ・バールのプログラムで協奏曲を演奏する機会を与えられた後、1791 年に作品を完成させました。 人気の衰えにもかかわらず、ウィーン・ツァイトゥング紙に次のように報じられたように、彼は依然として多くの人々から尊敬されていました。

Despite its lack of overt drama—it omits the trumpets and drums of Piano Concerto No. 25—this concerto offers considerable harmonic experimentation, with intriguing modulations throughout the first movement, especially in the unpredictable development section where soloist and orchestra seem to be talking to each other from different harmonic worlds. The intimate slow movement, with its supple main tune, communicates the tenderness we find in so much late Mozart. The rondo finale dances in with a children’s song, “Longing for Spring,” one of a series Mozart wrote for publication in Vienna. Many scholars view this choice not only as hope for better weather in the chill of winter but optimism about a brighter future. It ends the concerto, like all three pieces on this concert, with joyful affirmation.

Program note from Carnegie Hall

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/03/09/Mahler-Chamber-Orchestra-Mitsuko-Uchida-Piano-and-Director-0800PM

Since 2016, Ms. Uchida has been an artistic partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which she is currently engaged on a multi-season touring project in Europe, Japan, and North America. She also appears regularly in recital in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York, and Tokyo, and is a frequent guest at the Salzburg Mozart Week and Festival.

Born in 1985, Mr. Blumenschein received his first violin lesson at the age of four in Freiburg, Germany, at the Pflüger Institute for Highly Gifted Children. In 1990, he began studies with Vera Kramarowa in Mannheim. In 2001, Mr. Blumenschein was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with conductor and violinist Joseph Silverstein and served as concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra.

With the 2022–2023 season, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) celebrates its 25th birthday.

The MCO was founded in 1997 based on the shared vision of being a free and international ensemble, dedicated to creating and sharing exceptional experiences in classical music. With 45 members spanning 20 different countries at its core, the MCO works as a nomadic collective, uniting for specific tours in Europe and across the world. It is governed collectively by its management team and orchestra board.

The 25th season kicked off with the finale of the Mozart Momentum 1785/1786 project, with Leif Ove Andsnes taking the stage at the BBC Proms. Traveling extensively through Europe and the US, the MCO reunites with Mitsuko Uchida. Innovation through exploring new concert formats and rethinking tradition will be a focal point in the orchestra’s meeting with Pekka Kuusisto, resulting in an event at the Radialsystem in Berlin where the audience can experience the orchestra both live and in virtual reality. The orchestra returns to the Festival of Aix-en-Provence in July for the creation of George Benjamin’s newest opera, Picture a Day like this. Before that, the orchestra embarks on a tour across some of the most prestigious venues in Europe with Andris Nelsons, Lang Lang, and Christiane Karg. A new horizon appears in the 2024 season, when the MCO becomes artistic director of the Musikwoche Hitzacker for a period of five years.

https://mahlerchamber.com/

Arms outstretched before their first chords, she seemed about to give her colleagues a whopping hug. Given their staggering musicianship during this concert, I’d have happily hugged them myself.”

https://imgartists.com/news/alls-right-with-the-world-mitsuko-uchida-and-mahler-chamber-orchestra-magnificent-at-royal-festival-hall/

https://seenandheard-international.com/2023/02/uchida-and-the-mco-mellifluous-mozart-and-searing-schoenberg-combine-to-lift-the-heart/

Vienna Philharmonic, Christian Thielemann at Carnegie Hall 3.3-5

Carnegie Hall Presents

Vienna Philharmonic

Christian Thielemann, Conductor

Program

Friday, March 3, 2023 8 PM

SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht

Verklärte Nacht was originally written for chamber ensemble and expanded for string orchestra in 1917. The narrative behind the notes, based on a poem from Richard Dehmel’s Weib und Welt (Woman and World), depicts two lovers in a moonlit forest. In anxiety and remorse, the woman confesses that she is pregnant by a previous lover; though she fears her current lover’s reaction, she hopes that motherhood will at least instill a purpose in life. The man’s reaction is unexpected: The beauty of the forest inspires him to rise to the occasion and proclaim that love will unite them and make the child genuinely their own. At the end, he embraces her and they continue their nocturnal walk.

The music paints a dark, ominous forest, then proceeds with two sonata structures: the first depicting the anxious, confessing woman, the second her warm, emphatic lover. The delicate coda shimmering over pizzicato notes provides a magical rejoinder to anyone who thinks Schoenberg was incapable of writing beautiful music. Like the abstract modern painter whose early works show that he certainly could paint representational pictures, Schoenberg demonstrates here that before he ventured into new worlds of sound, he could compose lush, Romantic melodies with the best of them.

R. STRAUSS Eine Alpensinfonie

https://open.qobuz.com/album/4035719001242

Eine Alpensinfonie had a dark genesis for such a brilliantly affirmative work. Strauss began sketches in 1900 under the title Tragedy of an Artist, a memorial to painter Karl Stauffer-Bern, who had committed suicide. Another death—that of Gustav Mahler, Strauss’s friend and colleague—was the catalyst for taking up the project again in 1911. Yet there was nothing Mahlerian about the odd new title, The Antichrist, after Nietzsche’s work of the same name; the piece was now, Strauss wrote in 1911, meant to represent “moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, [and] worship of eternal, magnificent nature.” Strauss finally decided to use only the nature theme, changing the title to An Alpine Symphony.

Strauss eventually became a Wagnerian himself, but was overtaken by a sudden turn in musical history—one foreseen by Debussy, who declared that Wagner was a “beautiful sunset who has been taken for a sunrise.” The truth of this striking assessment is tellingly apparent in Strauss’s Wagnerian tone poems, which were considered modern when they first appeared at the end of the 19th century, but became old-fashioned soon after in the face of newer revolutions wrought by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Debussy himself. By 1915, when Eine Alpensinfonie was completed, this type of piece was considered deeply reactionary.

Strauss also revered Beethoven, a revolutionary who, “for a new content,” had to “devise a new form.” Strauss’s own goal was also, he wrote, “to create a correspondingly new form for every new subject.” In Eine Alpensinfonie, he created an epic depiction of a mountain climber in the Alps gradually reaching the peak and descending during a terrifying storm—a vast arc that begins in the primordial darkness of “Night,” rises to the heights, and sinks back into blackness at the end. Like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Liszt’s Faust Symphony, Strauss called the piece a “symphony” even though it behaves like a tone poem.

Saturday, March 4, 2023 8 PM

At a Glance

This concert presents three masterpieces of 19th-century Romanticism, two by Felix Mendelssohn, an early master of the aesthetic, and one by Brahms, one of its last standard-bearers. Mendelssohn wrote both the Hebrides Overture and the “Scottish” Symphony following an inspirational trip to Scotland in 1829 when he was only 20, though he put off completing the symphony until 1842. Both works have an aura of mystery, and both have Mendelssohn’s signature refinement. Brahms was a huge admirer of Mendelssohn, going so far as to say, “I would gladly give all I have written to have composed something like the Hebrides Overture.” Like Mendelssohn, he was a Romantic who stuck with Classical structures, including sonata form. The Second is the most mellow and spontaneous of his four symphonies, yet written with his characteristic formal rigor. The orchestration has a crystalline transparency, and the brassy fourth movement is the composer’s most viscerally exciting finale, rivalling the thrilling coda at the end of the “Scottish” Symphony.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Hebrides Overture, Op. 26

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, "Scottish"

In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my "Scottish" Symphony.

In the deep twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved...The chapel below is now roofless. Grass and ivy thrive there and at the broken altar where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is ruined, decayed, and the clear heavens pour in. I think I have found there the beginning of my "Scottish" Symphony.

1. Andante con moto — Allegro un poco agitato (in A minor and in sonata form with introduction)

2. Vivace non troppo (in F major and in sonata form)

3. Adagio (in A major and in abridged sonata form)

4. Allegro vivacissimo — Allegro maestoso assai (in A minor → A major and in sonata form)

BRAHMS Symphony No. 2

he did write it in four months on a summer vacation in the town of Pörtschach in southern Austria, obviously an inspiring location: Brahms quickly wrote his Violin Concerto there the next year, describing Pörtschach as “a place with so many melodies flying around.

1. Allegro non troppo (D major)

2. Adagio non troppo (B major)

3. Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino) (G major)

4. Allegro con spirito (D major)

Sunday, March 5, 2023 2 PM

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 8

https://open.qobuz.com/album/aulh5souuabha

Score

https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/d/d8/IMSLP562832-PMLP16220-Bruckner_-_Symphonies_-_8_-_1887-90_version_(ed._Haas_1935).pdf

“This art has no tricks.”- Donald Francis Tovey

“Broadly and freely in a state of bliss, released from earthly cares, fulfillment without sentimentality, without calculation.” -Wilhelm Furtwängler

1. Allegro moderato (C minor)

2. Scherzo: Allegro moderato — Trio: Langsam (C minor → C major, Trio in A♭ major)

3. Adagio: Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend (D♭ major)

4. Finale: Feierlich, nicht schnell (C minor → C major)

All of Bruckner’s signatures are here, in their most uncompromising manifestations: massive brass sonorities, Gothic spires of sound, organ-like pedal points and chorales, sudden climaxes in the midst of Olympian calm, fearsome chromatic complexities alternating with primitive octaves and unisons. Bruckner is famous for transporting the listener into a so-called cathedral of sound; nowhere is this mystical sense of space more vast than in the Eighth.

The tension between a starkness reminiscent of ancient church music and a staggeringly complex motivic network is explained by Bruckner’s protégé Franz Schalk: “Bruckner’s forms were so simple, so direct that at first people overlooked them, as if they were not there. People wailed about chaotic incoherence, about pointless climaxes … As people finally began to comprehend Bruckner’s works as wholes, suddenly they stood clear in their primitive symmetry … in dimensions no one could grasp up close.”

Thielemann makes you a believer.

Thielemann is one of the few contemporary conductors to use the Haas edition of Bruckner’s 1890 revision of the Eighth (like Karajan and Furtwängler before him), rather than the later Nowak. The Haas incorporates some passages from the original 1887 version.

Program note form Carnegie Hall

3.3.2023

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/03/03/Vienna-Philharmonic-0800PM

3.4.2023

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/03/04/Vienna-Philharmonic-0800PM

3.5.2023

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/03/05/Vienna-Philharmonic-0200PM

Mitsuko Uchida, Piano Recital at Carnegie Hall 2.24.2023

“Music is the essence of humanlife and it becomes more beautifu all the time” Mitsuko Uchida

Her recording of Beethoven’s last 3 sonata was released on 2006

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0002894756935

“So—if we want to improvise in the best, truest manner in public—we should give ourselves over freely to what comes to mind.” Beethoven

By the time Beethoven wrote the last of his 32 piano sonatas in the early 1820s, he was an aging warrior battered by illness and emotional trauma. Finding social intercourse arduous, Beethoven turned increasingly inward in the works of his late period; his last three piano sonatas—opp. 109, 110, and 111—are characterized by intense soul searching.

All article from Program Notes

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2023/02/24/Mitsuko-Uchida-Piano-0800PM

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109

A battle-scarred warrior whose indomitable spirit shines through in the incandescent slow movement of the E-Major Sonata.

Moderato cantabile molto espressivo

Allegro molto

Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro ma non troppo

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110

One often has the sense that the composer is feeling his way from one idea to the next, the notes forming themselves soundlessly under his fingers, detached from their auditory moorings.

There is no overlooking the inwardness of his extraordinary late works, with their radical discontinuities, far-flung tonal relationships, and bold reconfigurations of musical time and space.

Moderato cantabile molto espressivo

Allegro molto

Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro ma non troppo

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111

The music teacher in Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus describes the closing passage as “the most moving, consolatory, pathetically reconciling thing in the world. It is like having one’s hair or cheek stroked, lovingly, understandingly, like a deep and silent farewell look.”

In his last sonata, Beethoven painted on a more monumental scale than in its two predecessors. Yet in its way, Op. 111 is also a marvel of compression. Its two-movement format was sufficiently unorthodox that the son of Beethoven’s publisher wrote to inquire if the copyist had inadvertently overlooked the finale.

Maestoso – Allegro con brio ed appassionato

Arietta: Adagio molto semplice e cantabile

Listening

Artur Schnabel

https://open.qobuz.com/album/g7qreg18yi7uc

You don’t listen for machinelike piano technique when Mitsuko Uchida plays, nor will you find a musical personality that blazes wide, new paths.

And yet, surprises pop up in the pianist’s interpretations — revelations that change your musty old notion of how a certain phase should go. There’s considerable charisma in both her playing and her stage presence.