CM Notes » Hai-ye Ni, violoncello and Hong Lin, piano
November 16, 2008
HAI-YE NI Violoncello
LIN HONG Piano
Cello and piano sonata no. 3 in A major, opus 69 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 – 1827
Beethoven showed his originality in many ways. One of them was to feature the cello as a serious solo instrument and not just as a figured bass. Neither Mozart not Haydn wrote such sonatas. The furthest they went was in writing string quartets with slightly more complex cello parts for the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm, nephew of Frederick the Great, and a keen amateur cellist.
An interesting question is whether a musician emerged who stimulated Beethoven’s ideas and opened his eyes to the possibilities or whether everything came from within him. Some of Mozart’s solo pieces for horn, clarinet and oboe were the direct result of his knowing outstanding performers.
Sonata no. 3 was dedicated to Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein and issued in 1808. The baron was an amateur cellist himself. He led a small group of admirers to provide enough money to keep Beethoven in Vienna. The dedication was Beethoven’s way of saying thank you, an unusually polite gesture for such a notorious ingrate.
It is the most popular and possibly the most loved cello sonata of the composer’s work. The rich melodiousness of the themes and the improvisational manner in which they are explored make it very accessible. No one could imagine it was written when Beethoven was losing his hearing and feeling extremely glum. This sonata was written in the same year as the violin concerto and the two trios opus 70. The fifth and sixth symphonies were also completed in that year.
The first performance has not been documented. In 1809 Beethoven complained it had not been well performed in public. In 1812 Carl Czerny and Josef Linke performed the sonata to the composer’s satisfaction.
It was probably played many times through the years but a signal performance was given by Alfred Cortot and Pablo Casals at the Paris Opera in 1927. This is notable because Casals radically redefined cello playing.
Before he came on the scene cellists kept their right arm tightly folded into their body, not allowing the bow to move freely with changes in the music. Stories are told of teachers forcing pupils to hold a book under their arm as they practiced to prevent unbridled bowing movement. He changed all that, lifting the bow off the string and re-applying it to give rich shading to each phrase.
Casals also released the left hand by altering fingering methods. He advocated firmly stopping the strings and put an end to the old fashioned practice of repeatedly sliding between notes (slide up, slide down, slide up, slide down). Casals developed the technique of hopping, stretching, shifting between half-steps, and anything else to avoid the distracting audible shifts.”
Until then, the cello was deemed unsuitable for sensitive displays of emotion His innovations bred interpretations having a compelling inner logic and an instinctive feeling for structure and meaning. Casals created a sense of style and transformed concert performance.
What one must do at this point is see how the received view squares with the emotional richness of Beethoven’s work. It is hard to imagine how someone how played in the wooden pre-Casals style could handle the work’s explosive phrases and deep meaning. Where do the Bach suites for unaccompanied cello belong in this trajectory? They are hardly subdued and dull. Perhaps Beethoven knew some cellists who had strong subversive qualities and chafed against the artificial restrictions imposed on them by tradition. Why else would he have written such expressive music? Who was Josef Linke?
We know very little about this man. He was an orphan from Breslau and had some slight deformity. He was 25 years old when he reached Vienna and became friends with Beethoven. Linke soon joined the Razumovsky string quartet together with the violinist Schuppanigh. This ensemble played many of Beethoven’s string quartets for the first time so it seems he had confidence in their skill.
The comments which follow are derived from notes written by several influential performers such as Stephen Isserlis. The first movement opens with the cello alone. Variations of its expansive main theme and a pair of contrasting secondary ideas lead to contrapuntal and melodic interplay between the two players. The cello introduces the first theme and rests on a bass note while the piano takes it up with a short cadenza. The two instruments then switch roles before Beethoven rushes into a startling version of the theme in a minor key. The excitement settles down as the second theme appears, almost cantabile, with the cello melody rising and the piano ‘s melody falling. The development is rich and complex. It builds to the recapitulation in which the original melody reappears in triplet form with elaborate chromatic decoration.
The scherzo, in the tonic a minor, takes us all by surprise. The joke is relentless, never letting up for a moment. Its constant propulsion has been labelled “incessant“, and “manic”. Curiously the trio comes in twice.
Some respite occurs with the Adagio movement. As this plays out the finale emerges, generating huge pressure in its climbing rhythmical phrases based on “flying scales” and pounding octaves. Eighth notes are succeeded by almost frenzied 16th notes as the music tries to return to its home key. The end is a triumphant climax.
“Couple for cello and piano” Bruce Adolphe b. 1955
Bruce Adolphe has a very distinguished career as a composer and musical educator and radio personality. His NPR program “Piano Puzzlers” is heard on more than 200 public radio stations each week. Adolphe infuses considerable comedy into his show, adapting a popular song in the style of a classical composer and having a lot of fun with the results. In addition Adolphe is founding director of PollyRhythm Productions.
At present he is the Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts for he Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has taught at The Juilliard School and at Yale. Adolphe’s music is in demand by many well known performer such as Itzhak Perlman, Sylvia McNair, the Beaux Arts Trio and Orpheus, the orchestra without a conductor.
“Couple” was commissioned for the 1999 “SummerFest” in La Jolla by Lois and James Lasry and dedicated to David Finckel and Wu Han, a prominent cello and piano duo. At the time they were the joint music directors of “SummerFest”.
When asked for some comment on this composition Mr Adolphe said it is accessible and easy to enjoy. The work is in four movements and combines Eastern with Western musical idioms. Folk dance material supplies many of the themes and Chinese instrumental music can be heard in a gamut of sounds.
Sonata in A major Cesar Franck 1822 – 1880
Cesar Franck was the only child of very serious people who felt he should pursue a musical career. Great composers seldom had that luxury, other than Mozart. All too often they struggled against philistine families who tried to prevent them from becoming a musician.
Franck did struggle against his father later on, in his middle twenties. Franck pere had visions of his son as a world famous pianist. Traveling around Europe giving recitals struck Cesar as a dull and unproductive way to live, even though he was fairly successful. He chose to leave the concert circuit and become an organist and composer. This was not well received at home in Brussels.
This choice meant he had to work very hard in obscurity and live on very little money for years. After a variety of posts he became the organist at St Clothilde in Paris and professor at the Paris Conservatoire.
Somewhere along the way, as Macauley wittily observed about the British Empire, he “acquired a wife in a fit of absentmindedness”. They had four children but evidently very little else in common. Madame Franck had no feeling for his music or the things that mattered to him most.
Most of Franck’s music was for the organ but he wrote a small number of chamber works in later life: a piano trio, a piano quintet, one string quartet and this sonata for violin and piano. Liszt and Wagner’s techniques of thematic transformation engaged him and he set out to apply the method to smaller works.
The sonata in A major which we shall hear today was written for violin and piano in 1886. Franck gave it to the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye as a wedding present. Almost immediately another Belgian musician, Jules Delsart, transcribed the work for cello and piano without transposing it into another key. Evidently the composer approved for he signed one of the copies of the transcription.
In the sonata each principal theme is found in at least two of the four movements. The themes bear considerable resemblance to each other, giving the music cohesion and great power. At the end all the strands are pulled together.
The first movement opens with upwardly rising, almost yearning phrases in sweeping arcs, followed by a slightly frenetic second theme briefly played solo by the piano. As the Allegro unfolds there are many complex and almost stormy passages in a much broader style. This pulls back before driving dramatically to a striking close. In the Recitativo-Fantasia which comes next the composer opens with a stern statement, remaining one of Bach. He then allows the music to take him where it will and faintly indicates the theme which will be so important in the finale.
When most people think of this sonata they almost unconsciously begin to hum the glorious melody of the last movement. What stops them in their tracks is its canonical treatment. It is very hard to hum more than one line at a time, as the stretto unfolds. Using this style was a masterly stroke on Franck’s part. This melody is in a minor key, giving it a yearning quality. It starts out linearly, semitone by semitone, tone by tone, and then branches out with slight arpeggiation, building tension as it goes.
One sits on a knife edge of expectation and every time it triumphantly moves enharmonically into the major key one feels like shouting “hurrah”. Its exultant mood is infectious. The effect is always the same whether the work is played on the violin, the cello or even the flute which happens occasionally. It seems as though many musicians feel the need to play this piece because of its beauty.
Grand Tango Astor Piazzola 1921 – 1992 Astor Piazzola was born in Argentina to first generation parents of Italian descent. Astor was an only child and his parents were very loving. He exhibited musical talent at a very early age. When he was eight he began to play the bandoneon, an accordion-like instrument, with a level of skill and commitment quite unusual for a child. At eleven he was performing on stage. The family moved several times between the USA and Argentina and he had a rather peripatetic childhood. He was able to hear Cab Calloway in Harlem and Duke Ellington in their heyday while he lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
It is clear he took music very seriously. He fused a love of Argentinian popular music, particularly the tango, with a desire to learn more about how music is structured and composed. Nadia Boulanger took him on as a student in Paris. With this polishing he wrote numerous fine works such as “Adios Nonino” and “Mari de Buenos Aires”. Piazzola incorporated jazz, classical music and traditional tango in all his work. This Grand Tango gives us a clear glimpse into his style and personality.
HAI-YE NI Violoncello
LIN HONG Piano
Cello and piano sonata no. 3 in A major, opus 69 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 – 1827
Beethoven showed his originality in many ways. One of them was to feature the cello as a serious solo instrument and not just as a figured bass. Neither Mozart not Haydn wrote such sonatas. The furthest they went was in writing string quartets with slightly more complex cello parts for the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm, nephew of Frederick the Great, and a keen amateur cellist.
An interesting question is whether a musician emerged who stimulated Beethoven’s ideas and opened his eyes to the possibilities or whether everything came from within him. Some of Mozart’s solo pieces for horn, clarinet and oboe were the direct result of his knowing outstanding performers.
Sonata no. 3 was dedicated to Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein and issued in 1808. The baron was an amateur cellist himself. He led a small group of admirers to provide enough money to keep Beethoven in Vienna. The dedication was Beethoven’s way of saying thank you, an unusually polite gesture for such a notorious ingrate.
It is the most popular and possibly the most loved cello sonata of the composer’s work. The rich melodiousness of the themes and the improvisational manner in which they are explored make it very accessible. No one could imagine it was written when Beethoven was losing his hearing and feeling extremely glum. This sonata was written in the same year as the violin concerto and the two trios opus 70. The fifth and sixth symphonies were also completed in that year.
The first performance has not been documented. In 1809 Beethoven complained it had not been well performed in public. In 1812 Carl Czerny and Josef Linke performed the sonata to the composer’s satisfaction.
It was probably played many times through the years but a signal performance was given by Alfred Cortot and Pablo Casals at the Paris Opera in 1927. This is notable because Casals radically redefined cello playing.
Before he came on the scene cellists kept their right arm tightly folded into their body, not allowing the bow to move freely with changes in the music. Stories are told of teachers forcing pupils to hold a book under their arm as they practiced to prevent unbridled bowing movement. He changed all that, lifting the bow off the string and re-applying it to give rich shading to each phrase.
Casals also released the left hand by altering fingering methods. He advocated firmly stopping the strings and put an end to the old fashioned practice of repeatedly sliding between notes (slide up, slide down, slide up, slide down). Casals developed the technique of hopping, stretching, shifting between half-steps, and anything else to avoid the distracting audible shifts.”
Until then, the cello was deemed unsuitable for sensitive displays of emotion His innovations bred interpretations having a compelling inner logic and an instinctive feeling for structure and meaning. Casals created a sense of style and transformed concert performance.
What one must do at this point is see how the received view squares with the emotional richness of Beethoven’s work. It is hard to imagine how someone how played in the wooden pre-Casals style could handle the work’s explosive phrases and deep meaning. Where do the Bach suites for unaccompanied cello belong in this trajectory? They are hardly subdued and dull. Perhaps Beethoven knew some cellists who had strong subversive qualities and chafed against the artificial restrictions imposed on them by tradition. Why else would he have written such expressive music? Who was Josef Linke?
We know very little about this man. He was an orphan from Breslau and had some slight deformity. He was 25 years old when he reached Vienna and became friends with Beethoven. Linke soon joined the Razumovsky string quartet together with the violinist Schuppanigh. This ensemble played many of Beethoven’s string quartets for the first time so it seems he had confidence in their skill.
The comments which follow are derived from notes written by several influential performers such as Stephen Isserlis. The first movement opens with the cello alone. Variations of its expansive main theme and a pair of contrasting secondary ideas lead to contrapuntal and melodic interplay between the two players. The cello introduces the first theme and rests on a bass note while the piano takes it up with a short cadenza. The two instruments then switch roles before Beethoven rushes into a startling version of the theme in a minor key. The excitement settles down as the second theme appears, almost cantabile, with the cello melody rising and the piano ‘s melody falling. The development is rich and complex. It builds to the recapitulation in which the original melody reappears in triplet form with elaborate chromatic decoration.
The scherzo, in the tonic a minor, takes us all by surprise. The joke is relentless, never letting up for a moment. Its constant propulsion has been labelled “incessant“, and “manic”. Curiously the trio comes in twice.
Some respite occurs with the Adagio movement. As this plays out the finale emerges, generating huge pressure in its climbing rhythmical phrases based on “flying scales” and pounding octaves. Eighth notes are succeeded by almost frenzied 16th notes as the music tries to return to its home key. The end is a triumphant climax.
“Couple for cello and piano” Bruce Adolphe b. 1955
Bruce Adolphe has a very distinguished career as a composer and musical educator and radio personality. His NPR program “Piano Puzzlers” is heard on more than 200 public radio stations each week. Adolphe infuses considerable comedy into his show, adapting a popular song in the style of a classical composer and having a lot of fun with the results. In addition Adolphe is founding director of PollyRhythm Productions.
At present he is the Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts for he Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has taught at The Juilliard School and at Yale. Adolphe’s music is in demand by many well known performer such as Itzhak Perlman, Sylvia McNair, the Beaux Arts Trio and Orpheus, the orchestra without a conductor.
“Couple” was commissioned for the 1999 “SummerFest” in La Jolla by Lois and James Lasry and dedicated to David Finckel and Wu Han, a prominent cello and piano duo. At the time they were the joint music directors of “SummerFest”.
When asked for some comment on this composition Mr Adolphe said it is accessible and easy to enjoy. The work is in four movements and combines Eastern with Western musical idioms. Folk dance material supplies many of the themes and Chinese instrumental music can be heard in a gamut of sounds.
Sonata in A major Cesar Franck 1822 – 1880
Cesar Franck was the only child of very serious people who felt he should pursue a musical career. Great composers seldom had that luxury, other than Mozart. All too often they struggled against philistine families who tried to prevent them from becoming a musician.
Franck did struggle against his father later on, in his middle twenties. Franck pere had visions of his son as a world famous pianist. Traveling around Europe giving recitals struck Cesar as a dull and unproductive way to live, even though he was fairly successful. He chose to leave the concert circuit and become an organist and composer. This was not well received at home in Brussels.
This choice meant he had to work very hard in obscurity and live on very little money for years. After a variety of posts he became the organist at St Clothilde in Paris and professor at the Paris Conservatoire.
Somewhere along the way, as Macauley wittily observed about the British Empire, he “acquired a wife in a fit of absentmindedness”. They had four children but evidently very little else in common. Madame Franck had no feeling for his music or the things that mattered to him most.
Most of Franck’s music was for the organ but he wrote a small number of chamber works in later life: a piano trio, a piano quintet, one string quartet and this sonata for violin and piano. Liszt and Wagner’s techniques of thematic transformation engaged him and he set out to apply the method to smaller works.
The sonata in A major which we shall hear today was written for violin and piano in 1886. Franck gave it to the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye as a wedding present. Almost immediately another Belgian musician, Jules Delsart, transcribed the work for cello and piano without transposing it into another key. Evidently the composer approved for he signed one of the copies of the transcription.
In the sonata each principal theme is found in at least two of the four movements. The themes bear considerable resemblance to each other, giving the music cohesion and great power. At the end all the strands are pulled together.
The first movement opens with upwardly rising, almost yearning phrases in sweeping arcs, followed by a slightly frenetic second theme briefly played solo by the piano. As the Allegro unfolds there are many complex and almost stormy passages in a much broader style. This pulls back before driving dramatically to a striking close. In the Recitativo-Fantasia which comes next the composer opens with a stern statement, remaining one of Bach. He then allows the music to take him where it will and faintly indicates the theme which will be so important in the finale.
When most people think of this sonata they almost unconsciously begin to hum the glorious melody of the last movement. What stops them in their tracks is its canonical treatment. It is very hard to hum more than one line at a time, as the stretto unfolds. Using this style was a masterly stroke on Franck’s part. This melody is in a minor key, giving it a yearning quality. It starts out linearly, semitone by semitone, tone by tone, and then branches out with slight arpeggiation, building tension as it goes.
One sits on a knife edge of expectation and every time it triumphantly moves enharmonically into the major key one feels like shouting “hurrah”. Its exultant mood is infectious. The effect is always the same whether the work is played on the violin, the cello or even the flute which happens occasionally. It seems as though many musicians feel the need to play this piece because of its beauty.
Grand Tango Astor Piazzola 1921 – 1992 Astor Piazzola was born in Argentina to first generation parents of Italian descent. Astor was an only child and his parents were very loving. He exhibited musical talent at a very early age. When he was eight he began to play the bandoneon, an accordion-like instrument, with a level of skill and commitment quite unusual for a child. At eleven he was performing on stage. The family moved several times between the USA and Argentina and he had a rather peripatetic childhood. He was able to hear Cab Calloway in Harlem and Duke Ellington in their heyday while he lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
It is clear he took music very seriously. He fused a love of Argentinian popular music, particularly the tango, with a desire to learn more about how music is structured and composed. Nadia Boulanger took him on as a student in Paris. With this polishing he wrote numerous fine works such as “Adios Nonino” and “Mari de Buenos Aires”. Piazzola incorporated jazz, classical music and traditional tango in all his work. This Grand Tango gives us a clear glimpse into his style and personality.
