Program Notes:

Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann
Born in Hamburg, Germany, February 3, 1809; died in Leipzig,Germany, November 4, 1847
Born in Zwickau, Germany, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, Germany, July 29, 1856

This evening's program offers a fascinating look at the music of two composers who were friends, rivals, and admirers of each other's works. Both composers championed the talents of piano virtuoso Clara Wieck, who became Schumann's wife after a long and tempestuous courtship. Mendelssohn was arranging concerts for her, engaging her as soloist with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and joining her in piano recitals, and Schumann was writing piece after piece either for her to play or based on some aspect of his love for her.

Though musical disagreements sometimes flared up between Mendelssohn and Schumann, their friendship endured until Mendelssohn's death in 1847. Mendelssohn often performed Schumann's works, and Schumann took very much to heart his friend's suggestions on what and how to write.

The Variations sérieuses and the Fantasie that frame the program show how the same stimulus-a Beethoven memorial-differently affected the two composers. Yet hearing them together with the F-sharp Minor Fantasy and the F-sharp Minor Sonata provides a wonderful opportunity to contemplate the connections between these two geniuses whose paths intersected in Leipzig for just over a decade.

Felix Mendelssohn
Variations sérieuses, Op. 54

The Variations sérieuses hold an honoured place alongside the important piano variations of Beethoven and Brahms, a remarkable achievement for Mendelssohn's first essay in the genre

The Variations immediately impart a serious aspect with the sixteen-measure D minor theme, which exudes pathos with its many chromaticisms (inflected notes outside the standard scale) and suspensions (harmonic tensions and relaxations). The first nine variations form a group of increasing intensity; the third is notable for its staccato dialogue between the left and right hands, the fourth for its canonic treatment (exact imitation), and the sixth for its sudden leaps from one range to another. Mendelssohn restrains the momentum with the tenth variation, whose imitative independent lines originally resembled the fugue subject of the slow movement of Beethoven's Serioso Quartet, and the contemplative mood continues in Variation 11. Intensity returns with the twelfth variation's staccato repeated notes alternating between hands; in the thirteenth variation the theme is ingeniously incorporated in the middle voice. Variation 14 is a lovely Adagio, the only major-key variation. Piquant dissonances mark the fifteenth variation, which becomes gradually more agitated as it leads to the virtuoso sixteenth and seventeenth variations. Variation 17 culminates with a grand reintroduction of the theme over an insistent bass tremolo (quickly reiterated repeated notes). The Presto coda presents the theme in persistent syncopation, driving to a dramatic flourish and subsiding in solemn home-key chords.

Robert Schumann
Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Op. 11
From the time he first kissed Clara Wieck, Schumann poured his constant thoughts of her into his piano compositions. He completed the F-sharp Minor Sonata in 1835, saying it was "dedicated to Clara by Florestan and Eusebius." As only his closest friends knew at the time, these were the imaginary characters he had invented to represent the two sides of his personality, the extroverted and the introverted.

The exuberant Florestan dominates the Sonata, brooding passionately in the first movement's introduction and turning ebullient in the fast main section. Florestan leaps impishly in the high-spirited Scherzo and more pompously in its central Intermezzo section, and he shows off in the virtuosic Finale. The dreamy Eusebius comes to the fore in the lyrical secondary themes of the outer movements, closes the first movement, and holds sway over the slow movement, Aria, which Schumann had based on his poignant 1828 song setting of Justinus Kerner's An Anna.

As Schumann contrasts his Florestan and Eusebius characters, he also strives to unify his piece by making connections across movements. The Eusebian Aria opens with a transformation of the soft-voiced melody in octaves that had appeared halfway through the first movement's more Florestanian introduction. Schumann also seems to bring back the first movement's "drum beats" as slow, low asides to the poetic Aria. Schumann's episodic form in the Finale has sometimes been criticized, but if one takes it as a study in alternating characters rather than as a sonata or sonata-rondo form, and if one luxuriates in its orchestral qualities, summed up in a grandiose coda, then the rewards are great.

Felix Mendelssohn
Fantasy in F-sharp Minor, Op. 28
The Fantasy in F-sharp Minor displays Mendelssohn's virtuosic, dramatic side and his concern for larger forms. Composed under the working title Sonate écossaise (Scottish Sonata), "Scottish" referred to stylistic features such as the "harp-strumming" of the opening, washes of pedal, turbulence, open-fifth sonorities-all features meant to evoke Scotland. His use of "Sonate" points to the Fantasy's closeness to that genre-the piece's substantial proportions encompass three movements played without pause.

Mendelssohn follows his mist-enshrouded introductory measures with a sorrowful, descending main theme that is perhaps the most familiar feature of the piece. The idea returns in full force after the climax of the extremely agitated central section. The eerie pedal effect in the coda reminds one of a similar effect in Beethoven's Tempest Sonata and foreshadows Mendelssohn's own Hebrides Overture. The Allegro con moto, a light movement in the relative major, provides a short breathing space before the fiery finale. The Presto contains all manner of virtuoso demands, including dazzling fast passage work, pounding octaves, and almost perpetual motion. Its full-fledged sonata form, complete with double bar at the close of the exposition, shifts the weight to the end of the composition.

Robert Schumann
Fantasie, Op. 17

Rarely does a work so thoroughly combine life and art. Schumann composed the first movement of his Fantasy in June 1836 during the depths of despair at being separated from his beloved Clara Wieck.

The first movement relies in part on sonata form but brings other elements into play. Most listeners hear three basic sections in the first movement, of which the second is an introspective character piece. It bears remembering that this movement was originally conceived as a one-movement fantasy, which in historic terms meant a piece with a number of connected sections that exhibited novel features. By adding two more movements, with various hidden connections among them, Schumann also incorporates the idea of a multi-movement fantasy as in Beethoven's Opus 27 Piano Sonatas, which are both labelled "Quasi una fantasia." Thus with Schumann we have a fantasy within a fantasy.

Clara particularly liked the second movement's march theme, saying she revelled in it and that "it makes me hot and cold all over." This movement presents an original march-trio-march form in which the frequent returns of the march theme also lend the suggestion of a rondo. The thrilling coda strikes terror even into a virtuoso's heart-each hand must execute extremely wide leaps simultaneously in opposite directions at full speed.

The most striking thing about the last movement is its poetic, improvisatory atmosphere-highly unusual in a closing movement. Thus Schumann boldly reversed the typical sequence of events by placing his virtuoso showpiece as the work's centerpiece and a spacious, radiant meditation as its conclusion.
- Adapted from notes by Jane Vial Jaffe


András Schiff
Piano
András Schiff was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1953. He started piano lessons at the age of five and later continued his studies at the Ferenc Liszt Academy. Recitals and special cycles - the major keyboard works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, and Bartók form an important part of his activities. Since 2004, he has performed complete cycles of the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas in 20 cities, and the cycle in the Zurich Tonhalle was recorded live.

Andras Schiff has worked with most of the major international orchestras and conductors, but now performs mainly as a conductor and soloist. In 1999, he created his own chamber orchestra, the Cappella Andrea Barca, and, in addition to working annually with this orchestra, he also works every year with the Philharmonia Orchestra London and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Since childhood, he has enjoyed playing chamber music and, from 1989 until 1998, was Artistic Director of the internationally highly praised Musiktage Mondsee chamber music festival near Salzburg. In 1995, with Heinz Holliger, he founded Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte in Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland. In 1998 Mr. Schiff started a similar series, Hommage to Palladio, at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. From 2004 to 2007 he was artist in residence of the Kunstfest Weimar, and during the 2007/8 season he was pianist in residence of the Berlin Philharmonic.
András Schiff has been awarded numerous international prizes, the most recent being the Klavier-Festival Ruhr Prize (for outstanding pianistic achievements and to honour a lifetime's work as a pianist) in June 2009. In 2006, he became an Honorary Member of the Beethoven House in Bonn in recognition of his interpretations of Beethoven's works; in 2007 he received the renowned Italian prize, the Premio della critica musicale Franco Abbiati, awarded for his Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle; in 2007 he was presented with The Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize, sponsored by the Kohn Foundation - an annual award for someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the performance and/or scholarly study of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach; in 2008 he was given the Wigmore Hall Medal in appreciation of 30 years of music making at Wigmore Hall.

In 2006, András Schiff and the music publisher G Henle began an important Mozart edition project. In the course of the next few years, there will be a joint edition of Mozart's Piano Concertos in their original version to which Mr. Schiff is contributing to the piano parts, the fingerings, and the cadenzas where the original cadenzas are missing. In addition, in 2007 both volumes of Bach's Well Tempered Klavier were edited in the Henle original text with fingerings by Mr. Schiff.

András Schiff has been made an Honorary Professor by the Music Schools in Budapest, Detmold, and Munich, and a Special Supernumerary Fellow of Balliol College (Oxford, UK).

Mr. Schiff is making his Royal Conservatory debut tonight.