4/15/14 recital program

8/12/2019 4/15/14 Recital Program

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Cher Liszt, travers les brumes, par-del les fleuves, par-dessus les villes o lespianos chantent votre gloire, o limprimerie traduit votre sagesse, en quelque lieu

que vous soyez, dans les splendeurs de la ville ternelle ou dans les brumes des pays

rveurs que console Cambrinus, improvisant des chants de dlectation ou dineffable

douleur, ou confiant au papier vos mditations abstruses, chantre de la Volupt et de

lAngoisse ternelles, philosophe, pote et artiste, je vous salue en limmortalit!

Dear Liszt, through the mists, beyond the rivers, above the cities where the pianos sing your praise,where the printing-press translates your wisdom, wherever you may be, in the splendors of theEternal City or in the mists of those dreamy lands consoled by Cambrinus, improvising songs ofdelight or of ineffable sorrow, or confiding to paper your abstruse meditations, singer of eternalPleasure and eternal Anguish, philosopher, poet and artist, I salute you in immortality!

(Charles Baudelaire: Le Thyrse, 1863)

Cover: Borromean Islands, Lake Maggiore (Ferragosto 2012).


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I. Invocation

III. Canzonetta del Salvator RosaVII. Aprs une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata

IV. Les jeux deaux la Villa dEste


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Henri Lehmann, Portrait deFranz Liszt, 1839 (Muse Carnavalet, Paris).Reproduced from Histoire Image, http://www.histoire-image.org.


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Liszt, the Romantic Artist

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is one of the most celebrated masters of the nineteenthcentury, and was perhaps the greatest pianist there has ever been. He was, however, also aphilosopher, a poet, a true Romantic humanist, and a man of immense intellectual curiositywho read voraciously, from Augustine and Dante to Goethe and Lord Byron.

Liszts life was full of paradoxes. He was Hungarian, and yet knew little of his nativetongue, instead preferring French, in addition to German and Italian. He craved fame andglory, and yet he often longed for solitude and spiritual asceticism. He never married,

fathered three children, but was, by all accounts, an ardent Catholic who received the tonsureand took minor orders in the Church. Perhaps there is no keener observer to Lisztspolarities than the abb himself, who once remarked, I am half Franciscan, half Gypsy.

Tonights program reflects the evolution of Liszt as an artist, from his Wunderkindyears to his maturity.

Wunderkind The Wonder ChildLiszt was born on 22 October 1811 in Western Hungary. He exhibited an extraordinarytalent for music from a young age, brilliantly sight-reading, performing, and improvising onthe piano. In order to further his musical education, his father first took the seven-year-oldFranz to Vienna, and then to Paris. Nicknamed le petit Litz by an already adoringaudience, he became acquainted with the greatest poets, philosophers, and artists at the dawnof romanticism, including the great musicians Hector Berlioz, Niccol Paganini, and

Frdric Chopin.


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Invocation,from Harmonies potiques et religieuses

In 1833, when the young Liszt was grappling with his simultaneous love of fame andneed for contemplation, he composed one of his earliest major piano works, a solo piecetitled Harmonies potiques et religieuses, inspired by Alphonse de Lamartines set of poems by thesame name. He expanded the piece into a cycle in 1853, also entitled

. The first piece of tonights program is the opening movement fromthis cycle.

Liszt printed Lamartines own preface to his set of poems as the introduction to thecycle. He also quotes seven lines each from the thirteenth and fifteenth stanzas ofLamartines poem Invocationat the beginning of this movement.

levez-vous, voix de mon me,

Avec I'aurore, avec la nuit!lancez-vous comme la flamme,Rpandez-vous comme le bruit!Flottez sur l'aile des nuages,Mlez-vous aux vents, aux orages,

Au tonnerre, au fracas des flots;

levez-vous dans le silence l'heure o dans l'ombre du soir

La lampe des nuits se balance,Quand le prtre teint l'encensoir;Elevez-vous au bord des ondesDans ces solitudes profondesO Dieu se rvle a la foi!

Rise up, voice of my soul,

With the dawn, with the night!Leap up like the flame,Spread abroad like the noise!Float on the wing of the clouds,Mingle with the winds, with storms,With thunder, and the tumult of the waves.

Rise up in the silenceAt the hour when, in the shade of evening,

The lamp of night sways,When the priest puts out the censer;Rise up by the wavesIn these deep solitary placesWhere God reveals himself to faith!

The Invocationopens with a gentle single-note melody that seemingly floats atop theseries of repeated chords in E major, a key that Liszt often associated with music on religiousand contemplative themes. Both the shape of the melody and the dynamic start at a lowpoint, then rise higher as the piece progresses, giving this movement a sense oftranscendence.

In addition, Liszts cross motif features prominently in all the major themes of thismovement. Taken from the Gregorian chant Crux fidelis, a hymn from the mass of GoodFriday, the motif consists of a combination of the chants opening notes. Finally, the endingof the piece features repeated Amen cadences infortississimo.


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Il Pellegrino The PilgrimSwitzerland & Italy

At around the time he composed the first version of Harmonies potiques et religieuses, hemet the beautiful Countess Marie dAgoult, who became his lover and the mother of his

three children. Between 1835 and 1839, the couple traveled and lived throughout Switzerlandand Italy, and thus this period of Liszts life became known as the pilgrimage years, whichbecame the inspiration for the first two books titled (Years ofPilgrimage).

Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa,from Annes de plerinage Deuxime anne: Italie

Liszt settled in Florence for the winter of 1838. This Tuscan city was home to many

extraordinary artists and intellectuals, one of whom was the famous seventeenth centuryartist, poet, and musician Salvator Rosa (1615-1673). Alleged to have taken part in thepopular Neapolitan uprising against the Spanish, myths and legends surrounded Rosa bothduring and after his life, and he was a popular figure in French romanticism.

In the , Liszt transcribed the text and the canzonetta, melody:

Vado ben spesso cangiando locoMa non si mai cangiar desio.

Sempre listesso sar il mio fuocoE sar sempre listesso anchio.

Often I change my location,But I shall never change my desire.

The fire within me will always be the same.And I myself will always be the same.

Though Liszt had believed that this was a work by Rosa, it was revealed a half centurylater that it was Giovanni Battista Bononcini who composed it. The song itself is a simpleand cheerful march, and Liszts transcription consists of strophic variations of the melody,moving from A major to its relative key of F# minor, then returning to A major, and finallyending with a small coda.


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The Dante Sonata,from Annes de plerinage Deuxime anne: Italie

After Florence, Liszt arrived in Rome in February 1839. He had never seen a city quitelike it, and in a letter to his friend, the composer Hector Berlioz, he wrote:

The Beautiful, of which these lands have been bestowed its privileges, was revealed to me in itspurest, most Sublime forms. Before my wondering eyes, art appeared in its entire splendor; I saw it

unfold before me in all of its universality and unity Dante has found his artistic echo in Orcagnaand Michelangelo: maybe he will find his musical expression in the Beethoven of the future.

Liszt had begun composing a musical commentary on Dante Alighieris magnum opus La DivinaCommediain 1839, but it did not reach its final form until a decade later. Titled

(After Reading Dante: Fantasia in the manner of a Sonata) aftera poem of the same title by his friend, the author Victor Hugo, Liszt contrasts Hells diabolicalpain, torment, and grief with Paradises spiritual joy, purity, and triumph, and transforms them

into this masterful, single-movement sonata.Although it is much longer than a typical first movement of a classical sonata, the Dante

Sonataconforms to a version of sonata form. Its thematic material relies heavily on the tritone,known since the Middle Ages as the devil in music. The exposition begins with a series ofdescending tritones in octaves and minor seconds, followed by the chromatic lamentosofirsttheme in D minor, suggesting the motto of Dantes descent into Hell: Abandon all hope, yewho enter here.

The first theme intensifies before the second theme arrives in the form of thunderousdouble-octaves,fortississimo in F# major, which foreshadows a theme that appears later.

The development section first begins with a reiteration of the opening tritone octaves,only to move to the more serene F# major theme, which reminds me of the story of Francescada Rimini from Canto V of the Inferno. Condemned to the circle of the lustful, Francescaproclaims to Dante that, Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria(There is nogreater sorrow than thinking back upon a happy time in misery). The delicate Francesca themedevelops until it becomes engulfed by an infernal theme, and the battle between these two

dichotomous ideas continues throughout the development.

When the recapitulation arrives with the celestial upper-register tremolos, Liszt finallyseems to depict a glimpse of Paradise. Set firmly in D major, the recapitulation is full ofgrandiloquent major octaves and chords. The coda sees a return of the Francescatheme, andthen briefly invokes the opening tritones, only to be overcome by the resonant open fifths andAmen cadences that depict the final triumph of Heaven over Hell.


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Dante & Virgil: the infernal hurricane tormenting the souls of the lustful (Inf V).

Gustave Dor, Plate XIV: Inferno Canto V, 1857.Reproduced from Gustave Dor, The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy (New York: Dover, 1976), 24.


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George Peter Alexander Healy, Franz Liszt, 1887 (The Longfellow House, Cambridge).Reproduced from Edward N. Waters, Liszt and Longfellow, The Musical Quarterly, 41,1 (1955): 4-5.


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Rigoletto Paraphrase de Concert, after Giuseppe Verdi

Besides his original compositions, Liszt was also a prolific transcriber. Operaparaphrases became an important part of Liszts musical personality, and they were oftenshowpieces for his virtuosic prowess.

The was composed in 1859 in Weimar before hesettled in Rome. It depicts a single number in Act III of Giuseppe Verdis Rigoletto: Bellafiglia dell'amore (Beautiful daughter of love).

Verdis opera is set in Mantua in the sixteenth century, and tells the tragic story of thelicentious Duke of Mantua, his hunchbacked jester Rigoletto, and Rigolettos beautifuldaughter Gilda. After discovering that Gilda was seduced by the Duke, Rigoletto vowedrevenge. In this quartet scene, Rigoletto leads his daughter Gilda outside a house where theDuke can be heard flirting and attempting to seduce another woman, Maddalena; Verdis

depiction of the four different emotional worlds that collide at this moment is the mostcelebrated number of the opera.

Liszts paraphrase opens with allusions to the themes of Maddalena and Gilda. A harp-like passage ends the introduction, and leads into the entry of the Dukes tenor theme. Thencomes Maddalenas banter expressed in octaves while interrupted by Gildas impassionedsighing, culminating in thefortississimo climax of this section. A descending chromatic scale insixths leads into the next section, characterized by the graceful scales and arpeggios of the

right hand in thirty-second and sixty-forth notes that sweep across the length of thekeyboard. A new melody in octaves on the right hand follows, which is doubled andquadrupled when the material repeats. As the piece concludes, it descends into a cadenza-likesection before a triumphal end with a grand finale of octaves, so characteristic of thevirtuosity of the greatest pianist there has ever lived.

~ Allen Yu

Brunswick, Maine

Feast of Saint Isidore of Seville

4 April 2014


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GEORGE LOPEZ,pianoSaturday, 19 April at 4:00pmStudzinski Recital Hall

Bowdoin's Beckwith Artist in Residence, George Lopez, will give a performance of unique contemporary works byVin Shende and Carter Pann among others, inspired by forms and composers of the distant past and present.

Come and hear the living sounds of living composers.

MOLLY RIDLEY 14,jazz pianoSaturday, 19 April at 7:30pmStudzinski Recital Hall

BOWDOIN CHORUS

Thursday & Friday, 1-2 May at 7:30pmStudzinski Recital Hall

Anthony Antolini 63, directorBowdoin Chorus and Mozart Mentors Orchestra, under the director of Anthony Antolini '63, will present

Mendelssohn's Psalm 114 and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.

BOWDOIN CHAMBER CHOIR

Saturday & Sunday, 3-4 May at 3:00pmThe Bowdoin Chapel

Emily Isaacson, director

NICK TELENSON14, violinSaturday, 3 May at 7:30pmStudzinski Recital Hall


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Pianist llen Wong Yu, 21, is an acclaimedperformer, recognized for his mature musicianship,elegant tone, and charismatic stage presence. Born inCalifornia and a native of Beijing, Allen began studyingpiano at the age of six and won his first major competitionat ten. Since then, he has appeared many times as a solorecitalist, as a soloist with distinguished orchestras, and asa chamber musician. Allen also claimed numerous firstprize awards including the Ithaca College Piano ConcertoCompetition, the Bertha F. Lang Empire StateCompetition, the New York Music Teachers NationalAssociation Baldwin Competition, and the ManchesterYoung Artist Competition. Allen delivered his solo debutat age twelve and his critically acclaimed orchestral debuta year later.

An accomplished performer, Allen appeared as a soloist in major venues in Albany,

Schenectady, Rochester, Oneonta, Ithaca, Binghamton, Saratoga, Springfield, Portland, andBrunswick. During his time abroad in Italy, he also presented solo recitals in Milan andFerrara. Among his appearances as guest soloist, he performed with the Ithaca CollegeSymphony Orchestra under Jeffery Meyer, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra under FindlayCockrell, and the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro CharlesSchneider. In February 2012, Allen appeared on National Public Radios From the Top forthe second time; his first appearance on NPR was in 2008 when he performed as a JackKent Cooke Young Artist. Allen was also featured as a performer and host on China RadioInternational in Beijing, which was aired across China and around the world.

Allen Yu is currently a senior at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he ispursuing his AB in Government & Legal Studies and Music, studying with pianist GeorgeLopez, Bowdoins Beckwith Artist-in-Residence. Along with his studies, he is activelyperforming. Highlights from his past seasons include Mozart and Haydn Sonatas,

Photo by Michael Yang


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Schumanns Carnaval and Fantasiestcke, Mendelssohns Fantasies or Caprices, andMussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition. He is also an active chamber musician at Bowdoin,having performed the Schumann and Dvorak Piano Quintets, Brahms Variations on a Theme by

Joseph Haydn for two pianos, and Dvoraks Slavonic Dances for four hands.

At Bowdoin, he has been recognized as a Sarah & James Bowdoin Scholar, and waselected three times as Vice President of the student body on Bowdoin Student Government.He previously graduated from Shaker High School in Latham, New York and received aLiberal Arts diploma with high honors. He is a Past Distinguished Governor of New Yorkfor Key Club International, a service leadership program of Kiwanis International. Havingspent four years at Bowdoins historic campus on the beautiful coast of Maine, Allen willmove to New York City following graduation to begin the next chapter of his life.


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My senior recital would not have been possible without the many people who have supportedme along the way. To you all, I would like to express my eternal gratitude.

First, I am indebted to Mr. George Lopez, my dedicated teacher and mentor, for radiating so much passion andoptimism during every lesson that we have had, for helping me mature as a student and musician, and for always making merealize what a joy it is to have music in my life;

To ProfessorsArielle Saiber& Dallas Denery, for always inspiring me with great literature;

To my advisors, Professors Paul Franco, Jean Yarbrough, & Robert Greenlee, who have imparted tome so much great wisdom over the years;

To Professor Mary Hunter, who taught me the importance of being not just a performer, but also a scholar of music;

To Bill, for showing me the true meaning of, once a Polar Bear, always a Polar Bear;

To Iris, Zach, Megan, Paola, Marina, & all who were part of my time abroad, for making my experience inItaly so much more meaningful;

To all my Bowdoin friendswho have made a profound difference in my life, who have put up with my awful

jokes, stood by me through thick & thin, and made the last four years the best years yet;And lastly, to my loving family, for instilling in me a great love of music. Though it has certainly not always beeneasy, thank you for fifteen years of unending support in my musical endeavors. I could not have done it without you.

In consideration of the performer and those around you, please kindly switch off your cellular

phones, pagers, and watch alarms during the recital.Thank you.

Visit:www allenwyu comFollow on Twitter:@allenyu92

4/15/14 recital program

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