Conservatorium of Music
Thursday Concert Class
Thursday Concert Class
| Hungarian Pastorale Fantaisie Op.26 | Albert Franz Doppler (1821 - 1883) |
| William Rigby, Flute | |
| Coady Green, piano | |
| Doppler was a Hapsburg composer who grew up in Lviv, which is in modern day Ukraine. He was a flute virtuoso who wrote several showpieces for the flute, the most well-known being the Hungarian Pastorale Fantasise. This Fantasy takes much from the works of Liszt who Doppler was heavily influenced by. Written in three parts, it envisions a journey of The Hungarian Countryside from its idyllic beginnings climaxing in a series of Hungarian Folk dances. | |
| Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso Op. 28 | Camille Saint-Saens (1835 - 1921) |
| Arranged by Georges Bizet | |
| Tahli Elsner, Violin | |
| Coady Green, piano | |
| This piece was written in 1863 for the violinist Pablo de Sarasate for whom Saint-Saen's had previously written a violin concerto for. The piece was originally written for violin and orchestra. The introduction is marked 'melancholy' however becomes gradually more animated concluding with a mini-cadenza leading into the Rondo. The returning Rondo theme is syncopated and exudes a Spanish character. The piece ends with a fiery coda fitting with Sarasate's famed virtuosity. | |
| Aprés une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata | Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) |
| Louis Nicoll, Piano | |
| Liszt’s ‘sonata after a reading of Dante’ is based upon that author’s most celebrated work, the ‘Divine Comedy’, which depicts travels through hell, purgatory and finally paradise as an allegory for the soul’s journey toward God. The piece is full of religious imagery- it starts with descending tritones (the ‘diabolus in musica’ of medieval times), and the main theme has 9 chromatic pitch classes and 1 chromatic neighbour at the bottom, which corresponds to Dante's vision of the inferno as having 9 circles plus 1 at the bottom that contains Lucifer. That last bit isn’t in anything I’ve read, but it makes sense and it’s at least kinda neat. | |
| Étude no. 6- Automne á Varsovie | Gyorgy Ligeti (1923 - 2006) |
| Louis Nicoll, Piano | |
| This short etude has a world of similarities to the Liszt sonata. The tritone is used melodically, as in the Liszt, but also harmonically and structurally through chord voicings and modulations. The piece’s main motif is also based on a chromatic theme that seems to wind downward endlessly; this notion of ‘eternal descent’ is present in another of Ligeti’s etudes, called ‘the Devil’s Staircase’, confirming the infernal assocations. The chromatic theme winds around itself in continuing polyrhythms, until a brief moment of repose at the extreme ends of the keyboard. In the coda, the lines coalesce into one rapidly descending chromatic scale. | |
| Piano sonata op.5 no.3 | Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) |
| 2nd movement | |
| Da Young Wi, Piano | |
| This slow 2nd movement Andante starts with the quotation of a poem by Sternau: The evening dims the moonlight shines There are two hearts that join in love And embrace in rapture It is one of the great love poems in music with lyrical melody. It contains two main themes, one in A flat major and the other one in D flat major, they alternate throughout the movement. Then in the last section presents climactic passion. | |
| Piano Quartet no. 1 in C minor, opus 15 | Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924) |
| I. Allegro Molto Moderato | |
| Louis Nicoll, Piano | |
| Jin Tong- Viola, Rennata Morrison- Violin, Oscar Woinarski- Cello | |
| Faure’s first piano quartet was written in the summer of ‘76. 1876, not the other ’76. It was written after an engagement was ended between the composer and Marianne Viardot, a girl he liked. The turmoil and trouble of Faure’s personal life may have led him to write this Brahmsian quartet, in which Faure’s excellent craftsmanship is blended with a highly expressive language. He may also have written this piece because he's a composer and writing pieces of music is the kind of thing composers do. | |
| Quartet for Piano and Strings | Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990) |
| I. Adagio Sereno | |
| Louis Nicoll, Piano | |
| Jin Tong- Viola, Rennata Morrison- Violin, Oscar Woinarski- Cello | |
| Copland's first piano quartet was the first piece in which Copland (kinda) used Schoenberg's 12-tone method, by deriving all the music in this movement from an 11-note row. The use of the 11-note row allows him to, in his own words, 'hear chords that (he) wouldn't have heard otherwise', so the piece still contains vertical triads and harmonies and tonalities which is weird because why use a technique for writing atonally if you're just gonna manipulate the row to write triads anyway, whatever. | |
| Sonata No.6 Op.82 | Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) |
| finale | |
| Lefei Chang, piano | |
| Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 82 (1940) is a sonata for solo piano, the first of the Three War Sonatas. The sonata was first performed on 8 April 1940 in Moscow. | |