CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF

Violin

GREATPERFoRmERS

MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE PRESENTS

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CHRISTIAN

TETZLAFF

Violin

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall5pm

Pre-concert talk by Monica Curro 4.15pm – 4.45pm Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

_ This concert is being recorded for broadcast on ABC Classic FM on Friday 20 February

_ DURATION: One hour & 40-minutes including one 20-minute interval

SUNDAY

FEBRUARY

(THE NEW YORK TIMES)

A BoLD ARTIST

WITH AN

INSTINCTIVE

FEELING FoR

THE WILD SIDE

IN mUSIC

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ABoUT

THE mUSIC

PRoGRAm

EugènE YsaÿE (b. Liège, Belgium, 1858 – d. Brussels, Belgium, 1931)

Sonata for solo violin in G minor, Op.27, No.1 (To Josef Szigeti)

I. Grave II. Fugato III. Allegretto poco scherzoso IV. Finale con brio. Allegro fermo

Johann sEbastian bach (b. Eisenach, Germany, 1685 – d. Leipzig, Germany, 1750)

Sonata No.3 in C for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1005

I. Adagio II. Fuga III. Largo IV. Allegro assai

INTERVAL: 20 MINUTES

béla bartók (b. Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, 1881 – d. New York City, New York, U.S.A., 1945)

Sonata for solo violin Sz.117, BB 124

I. Tempo di ciaccona II. Fuga. Risoluto, non troppo vivo III. Melodia. Adagio IV. Presto

This evening’s program explores a fascinating corner of the violin repertoire – music for unaccompanied violin – in a journey that takes us from 1720 to 1944. The violin solo is a surprisingly long-lived genre, probably as old as the violin itself, and one that exposes the instrument’s innate charisma, versatility, propensity for virtuosity and perhaps a certain introspection. These solos are star turns for a performer, as profound as any Shakespearean speech. Bach turns the violin into an orchestra of one, composing intricate counterpoint to be played with just four strings. Inspired, it seems, by a colleague in his Weimar orchestra, Bach wrote three partitas and three sonatas for solo violin, but these were part of a classical tradition that stretches back to at least the iconoclastic 17th-century violinist Heinrich Biber and continues today. In the first half of the 20th century, Eugène Ysaÿe and Béla Bartók composed their solo works looking over their shoulders at Bach’s example, both writing sonatas that openly pay homage to the Baroque master. Ysaÿe, a violinist of immense skill, clearly had absorbed the lessons of Bach’s sonatas when writing his own set of six. The G minor sonata we’ll hear this evening

features a fugue. If your interest is piqued, try Ysaÿe’s darkly dazzling second sonata which is haunted by Bach’s E major partita – an obsessive idée fixe. Bartók includes a fugue and an epic ciaccona-like opening in his intense solo sonata, courting comparison with the famous chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor. This is no pastiche though – the genre, and the Baroque gestures are completely absorbed into Bartók’s unique voice, inflected by Hungarian folk-music and a distinctly modernist sensibility. Bartók here demonstrates his gift for being both uncompromising and extrovert – profound thinking, eloquent expression. This could be the mission statement of this evening’s Great Performer, Christian Tetzlaff, whose thoughtful and impassioned playing marks him out as the musician’s musician who audiences love. When we last heard Tetzlaff, he was in front of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra playing Beethoven. Now we get to hear him unaccompanied but certainly not alone; we’ve been permitted to eavesdrop on these soliloquies.

The naked Violin

Robert Murray, Director of Marketing &Customer Relations, Melbourne Recital Centre

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Eugène Ysaÿesonata for solo violin in g minor, op.27, no.1 (to Josef szigeti) Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe stands as a bridge figure between the late Romantic era of virtuoso violinists such as Henri Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski (he studied with both of them), and 20th-century composers such as Debussy, whom he championed. Much loved by violinists and composers alike, he pushed the technique of the violin to new heights, while at the same time promoting a style of playing that was perfectly idiomatic for his instrument. He was, in short, the violinist’s violinist.

Ysaÿe is said to have been inspired to write his Six Sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27, after hearing a concert by the violinist Josef Szigeti, in 1923. Each sonata in the series was written in honour of the style of contemporary violinists whom he knew. The sonata no. 1 in g minor was dedicated to Szigeti himself, a scholarly, intellectual kind of player, well known for his performances of unaccompanied Bach. And, in fact, the movement structure of this first sonata of the Op. 27 series bears much in common with that of Bach’s own solo violin sonatas.

The opening of the first movement, despite its modernist harmonic vocabulary, is texturally very reminiscent of the triple- and quadruple-stop chordal texture that Bach used in his slow movements (e.g. the opening movement of the C major sonata that follows), with imitative melodies nestled inside the chordal architecture. This Bachian imitative texture alternates in the course of the movement with more rhapsodic passages, rife with hair-raising technical difficulties. Noteworthy at the end of the movement are the tremolo double stops played sul ponticello.

Most Bachian of all in this sonata is the Fugato second movement, which features two-voice fugal-type entries in regular alternation with episodes in contrasting textures. Straining at the outer limits of violin technique are the six – (yes, you read that right, six) note chords on the final page, requiring virtuoso legerdemain to perform on an instrument with four strings.

The Allegretto poco scherzoso, marked amabile, is certainly likeable, to be sure. Its predictable, almost whistle-able tune, featuring a coy triplet figure imitated between the top and bottom layers of the texture, might even set your foot a tapping. Its contrasting sections are indeed just that: one of

them in parallel fourths and fifths is strongly reminiscent of Debussy.

If a Baroque model were to be proposed for the brashly rhythmic Allegro fermo last movement, it would have to be the equally strutting Gavotte from Bach’s French Suite No.5. Operating under the premise that one note should never be used when three would do, Ysaÿe ends his sonata with a burst of blunt rhythmic energy that pays homage to the hemiola (a clash of two beats against three) patterns of Baroque rhythm, while fully engaging the aspirations of the modern virtuoso violinist.

Johann Sebastian Bach sonata no.3 in c for unaccompanied violin, bWV 1005 If polyphonic music was not meant to be played on the violin, Johann Sebastian Bach didn’t get the memo. His Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001-1006, completed sometime before 1720, reveal clearly the scope of his ambition in this regard. The six works in the collection are admired today not just for their ingenious exploitation of the multi-voice capabilities of the instrument, but also for their skilful control of melodic lines and impressive large-scale musical architecture.

Strangely enough, these pieces, which form the bedrock of the modern violin repertoire, were virtually unknown until violinist Joseph Joachim began playing them towards the end of the 19th century. The recordings he made of some of these works in 1903, available on YouTube, make for fascinating listening.

The sonata no.3 in c, bWV 1005, stands apart from the set by its sheer scale. Written in the four-movement pattern of the sonata da chiesa or ‘church sonata’ (slow–fast–slow–fast), its first two movements are paired as a prelude and fugue while its last two present the violin in the roles of lyric singer and virtuoso performer.

The Adagio that opens the work features a pervasive dotted rhythm. This droning uniformity of this rhythmic pulse, while giving the movement an air of solemnity, also serves to throw into relief the non-rhythmic elements at play in this movement (e.g. how the amount of sound issuing from the instrument expands dramatically within a few bars from a single note to a full quadruple-stop chordal texture). With rhythmic variety largely factored out of the listening experience, the ear is all the more drawn,as well, to how the harmonic patterns of tension and release propel musical interest forward. The well-known Prelude in C

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major from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier features just this type of rhythmic uniformity, used in the same way.

The 354 bars of the mighty second movement must count as one of the longest fugues ever written for any instrument. Its fugue subject is taken from the opening phrase of the Lutheran chorale, Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott (‘Come, Holy Ghost, Lord and God’), and its countersubject is a series of evenly descending chromatic half notes – at least that’s how it starts out. About halfway through, Bach ups the intellectual ante in a passage marked al reverso, in which the fugue subject and its countersubject look in the mirror and suddenly become the inverse of what they started out to be: the countersubject now climbs by chromatic half notes,and every note of the subject is the mirror opposite of what it was before. A literal repeat of the opening fugal exposition rounds off the work, providing structural balance to its musical architecture.

Lyric relief comes in the Largo, a simple aria sung out in a two-voice texture with balanced phrases and with a clear harmonic underpinning.The last movement, Allegro assai, is a tour de force of implied part-writing, spinning its two- and three-voice textures at dazzling speed out of a single running line.

Béla Bartók sonata for solo violin, sz.117, bb 124 Bartók’s sonata for unaccompanied violin, sz.117 was commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) and premiered by him in 1944 at a concert in Carnegie Hall, attended by the composer. A ‘fiendishly difficult work’ is how the conductor Antal Dorati described it. Menuhin himself confessed that he blanched when he first saw the score: ‘it seemed to me almost unplayable,’ he wrote in his memoirs.

The chief difficulties of the piece result not just from the thickness of its multiple-stop texture and unconventional harmonic vocabulary, but also from the densely contrapuntal writing that characterises much of the score. As the writer of one doctoral dissertation on the work’s thorny technical challenges dryly observed: ‘It is not very common for violin players to practice dissonant double-stops such as major and minor seconds, tritones and ninths, in their daily practice routine.’

Given the fiercely contrapuntal nature of the texture, it should not be surprising that the shadow of Bach hovers majestically over the work as a whole. Its overall design in four

movements – with a fugal second movement, a lyrical third movement, and a fleet-paced fourth – parallels that of works such as Bach’s Sonata in C, BWV 1005. Moreover, the stately rhythm of its opening Tempo di ciaccona pays tribute to the famous chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor, BWV 1004.

The first movement is not a chaconne, however. The term merely refers to the pace of the movement, not its formal design. It is, in fact, in sonata form, with a descending melodic pattern as its second theme and a development section much obsessed with the double-dotted rhythmic figure of the opening.

The second movement has been described as a ‘fugal fantasy’ rather than a strict fugue. Characterised by Menuhin as ‘the most aggressive, even brutal music, that I play’, this movement gives the measure of how radically different Bartók’s take on fugal procedure is from the cerebral approach Baroque composers took to the genre.

The third movement, Melodia, is a lyrical modernist aria in A-B-A form that never rises above the dynamic level of mezzo piano. The opening section is monophonic – a single line, its melody is haunted by eerie echoes in harmonics. The contrasting B section

is largely written in double stops with a near-constant flutter of tremolos.

The last movement is a rondo which alternates a moto perpetuo in sixteenth-note motion with sections of a more varied rhythmic and textural character. Given the acerbic harshness of the harmonic vocabulary in this work, the question has been asked: is the pure G major chord that ends this movement ironic?

Donald G. Gíslason, Ph.D. © 2014 Notes courtesy of the Vancouver Recital Society, vanrecital.com

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An artist known for his musical integrity, technical assurance, intelligent and compelling interpretations, Christian Tetzlaff is internationally recognised as one of the most important violinists performing today.

ABoUT

THE ARTIST

Christian TetzlaffViolin

From the outset of his career, Tetzlaff has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas to 19th-century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms; and from 20th-century concertos by Bartók,Berg and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works. Also a dedicated chamber musician, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists including Leif Ove Andsnes, Lars Vogt and Alexander Lonquich and is the founder of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which he formed in 1994 with violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister and his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.

Born in Hamburg in 1966, music occupied a central place in his family and his three siblings are all professional musicians. Tetzlaff began playing the violin and piano at age six, but pursued a regular academic education while continuing his musical studies. He did not begin intensive study of the violin until making his concert debut playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the age of 14 and attributes the establishment of his musical outlook to his teacher at the conservatory in Lübeck, Uwe-Martin Haiberg, who placed equal stress on interpretation and technique.

Tetzlaff has been in demand as a soloist with most of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, establishing close artistic partnerships that are renewed season after season. He has performed with the orchestras of Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Toronto, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony and London Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.

Highlights of Tetzlaff’s 2014/2015 season include a performance in Carnegie Hall, opening New York’s 92nd St. Y’s season with the complete Bach unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas, Artist-in-Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic, an appearance with the Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony and the Vienna Symphony, and tours as the featured soloist for the Swedish Radio Orchestra in Europe and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in Asia. In addition to this evening’s recital, Tetzlaff performs Mendelssohn and Widmann at Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Tetzlaff’s highly regarded recordings reflect the breadth of his musical interests and include solo works, chamber music and concertos ranging from Haydn to Bartók. His recent recordings include the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin for the Musical Heritage and Haenssler labels; Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No.1 with the Vienna Philharmonic/Pierre Boulez for Deutsche Grammophon; the Schumann and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos with Frankfurt Radio Orchestra/Paavo Järvi for Edel Classics; Jorg Widmann’s Violin Concerto, written for Tetzlaff, with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding for Ondine; the two Shostakovich Violin Concertos with the Helsinki Philharmonic/John Storgaards for Ondine; and the Berg Lyric Suite and Mendelssohn Quartet Op.13 with the Tetzlaff Quartet for the CAvi label.

Christian Tetzlaff currently performs on a violin modelled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner.

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oUR

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THE SIXTEEN:THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN

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THURSDAY 5 MARCH 7.30PMElisabeth Murdoch Hall (One hour & 50-mins incl. interval)Works by Palestrina, MacMillan and Allegri.

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