2 | For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545

presents…

LERA AUERBACH | Piano

Tuesday, March 27, 2018 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition  I. Promenade II. Gnomus (The Gnome) III. Promenade IV. Il vecchio castello  (The Old Castle) V. Promenade VI. Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux) (Dispute between Children at Play) VII. Bydlo (Cattle) VIII. Promenade IX. Балет невылупившихся птенцов  (Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks) X. Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle  (Two Jews: Rich and Poor) XI.  Promenade XII. Limoges, le marché (La grande nouvelle) (The Market at Limoges (The Great News)) XIII. Catacombae (Sepulcrum romanum) (The Catacombs (Roman sepulcher)) XIV. Избушка на курьих ножках (Баба-Яга) (The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga)) XV. Богатырские ворота (Встольном городе во Киеве) (The Bogatyr Gates (The Great Gates of Kiev))

INTERMISSION

For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545 | 3

ARTIST PROFILE

San Francisco Performances presents Lera Au­erbach for the fourth time. She first appeared in concert with cellist Alisa Weilerstein in 2010.

Poet, composer, pianist and visual art-ist Lera Auerbach is one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices. Auerbach’s intelligent and boldly imagina-tive music has connected her to audiences on every continent through performances by today’s leading performers, conductors, choreographers, choirs, chamber music ensembles and theaters, including the The-ater an der Wein, New York’s Lincoln Cen-ter, New York Philharmonic, National Sym-phony in Washington, D.C., Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow, Hamburg Ballet, Neth-erlands Dance Theater, San Francisco Bal-let, and the National Ballets of China and Canada; violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Ger-hardt, David Finckel, Clive Greensmith, Joshua Roman and Ani Aznavoorian; vio-list Kim Kashkashian; the Artemis, Bor-romeo, Tokyo, and Ying string quartets, the Raschèr Saxophone  Quartet, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Her orchestral works have been brought to life by Andrey Boreyko, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Edward Gardner, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Vladimir Spivakov, Osmo Vän-skä, and other leading conductors.

Auerbach served as Composer-in-Resi-dence of the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Trans-Siberian Art Festival, Staatskapelle

AUERBACH Labyrinth WORLD PREMIERE

Commissioned by San Francisco Performances

The Piano Series is made possible in part by a grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation.

This presentation is made possible, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Art

Lera Auerbach is represented by Joseph Joaquim Correia, Artist Development & Public Relations77 Knowles Street, Providence, RI 02906joseph@josephjoaquim.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco.

4 | For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545

Dresden, São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Marl-boro Music Festival, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, Norway’s Trondheim Festival, the Banff Centre in Canada, the Pacific Music Festival, Japan, Les Musicales Festival in France, and West Cork Festival in Ireland.

Recent premieres include 72 Angels, com-missioned by the Nederlands Kamerkoor and Raschèr Saxophone Quartet; Violin Concerto No. 4, NYx: Fractured Dreams, com-missioned for violinist Leonidas Kavakos by the New York Philharmonic; A Two­fold Dream for violin, piano and orchestra commissioned the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra; The Infant Minstrel and His Pecu­liar Menagerie, commissioned for violinist Vadim Gluzman by the Bergen Philhar-monic, the BBC Proms, and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; Violin Concerto No. 3, De Profundis, commissioned for violin-ist Vadim Repin by the Trans-Siberian Art Festival; and The Blind, an immersive multi-sensory a capella opera, premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York.

Auerbach has collaborated on three full-length ballets with acclaimed chore-ographer John Neumeier. Their second, The Little Mermaid, was given its U.S. pre-miere by the San Francisco Ballet. That production was broadcast nationwide on PBS Great Performances and the DVD from that production, recorded live at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, was the winner of a 2012 ECHO Klassik award for Best Music DVD. The work was also awarded two Golden Masks and has been performed over 250 times worldwide. Their most recent ballet together, Tatiana, was commissioned by the Hamburg State Theater and the Stanislavsky Theater. She has also collaborated with choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, Azure Barton, Goyo Montero, Tim Plegge, Terence Kohler, and Reginaldo Oliveira.

In 2017, Auerbach exhibited a collection of her recent sculptural works in bronze at the Gallery Shchukin in New York City. She has published three books of poetry in Russian and her first English-language book, Excess of Being, was published by Arch Street Press in 2015. She is a regular contributor to the Best American Poetry blog through her column, The Trouble Clef.

ECM Records recently released Arca­nam, featuring violist Kim Kashkashian and Lera Auerbach performing Auerbach’s sonata for viola and piano, Arcanum, as well as her viola and piano transcription of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes op. 34. Other recordings of her music are available on

Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, BIS, Cedille and other labels.

Auerbach was raised in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on the border of Siberia. She is an alumna of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and gradu-ated with bachelor’s and master’s degree in composition from the Juilliard School, and a post-graduate degree in piano from Ha-nover University. In 2007, Lera was select-ed as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, where she now serves as a Cultural Leader. leraauerbach.com.

PROGRAM NOTES

Pictures at an Exhibition

MODEST MUSSORGSKYBorn March 21, 1839, KarevoDied March 28, 1881, St. Petersburg

Lera Auerbach has lived with Modest Mus­sorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for nearly a lifetime. Her performance of this seminal work is a singular interpretation that is informed by her expanded perspective as an innovative composer and pianist, just as Mus­sorgsky himself was. She has provided a pro­gram note for this work.

Modest Mussorgsky’s masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition,  is a unique bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Debussy and Stravinsky, two giants of the 20th century, were influenced by this work. Pictures has in-spired an epidemic of orchestrations—from Maurice Ravel’s famous symphonic tran-scription, to the imaginative electronic ad-aptation by Isao Tomita, more than seventy versions exist to date. What is the special magnetism that attracts musicians and com-posers to this piece? Is it a secret fascination evoked by the childlike, fairy tale images hidden in the work?

I think that Mussorgsky was inspired not directly by Hartman’s artworks, but by the idea of creating a musical exhibition in itself. The connection between Mus-sorgsky’s music and Hartman’s images is tenuous at best. Mussorgsky’s music cannot be regarded as representational of Hartman’s subjects any more than Hart-man’s images can be interpreted as illus-trative of Mus sorgsky’s music.

Mussorgsky chose the form of a suite as the most natural for his musical exhibi-tion. The suite starts with the  Promenade. It is a musical self-portrait of the composer walking through the halls of the muse-um. The  Promenade  recurs seven times in

the work, (only five times under its own title), each time sounding different, thus creating a subset of variations. I believe that these promenading variations reflect the alterations in the mood of a person passing a series of paintings in a museum gallery. Thus, Mussorgsky gives us both: a series of brilliant musical sketches, and their reflections in his own soul; he is an author who creates his work and finds himself changed by it.

Unexpectedly, I found yet another hid-den form of variation in this work. It is a partita-like structure, which occurs with-in the musical architecture of the piece. Bach designed his partitas to include sev-eral common elements, which unify the widely contrasting dance movements. These elements are usually a recurring interval relationship or a melodic and/or harmonic device. This is true of  Pictures at an Exhibition. The entire work is based upon two primary intervals: a descending second and an ascending fourth. These two intervals appear within the opening three notes: G, F, B-flat. These three notes become the foundation upon which the entire work rests. Each movement is based on these intervals or their inversions.

In  Gnomus, the weeping of the dwarf is built entirely on the descending second (mm. 19, et seq.). The ascending fourth in the opening of  The Old Castle  resembles calling of a distant horn, or, perhaps, the nostalgic song of a Minnesinger recalling the days of old. By looking at the final six measures of this movement we realize that the entire movement is built on the “call-ing” fourth and the “sighing” second.

In  Tuilleries: The Children’s Quarrel,  the concealed descending second that is heard throughout the piece sounds like capri-cious children. It reminds one of Mus-sorgsky’s vocal cycle  In  the Nursery,  which so wonderfully portrays children’s psyches. Could it be that this charming childishness is the central attraction of  Pictures? We all come from the land of childhood and “blessed be they” who shall remain chil-dren forever.

In the theme of  Bydlo, the order of the two intervals is the same as in the  Prom­enade: the descending second precedes the ascending fourth. They are rhythmically displaced so that the lamenting second is emphasized and the “calling” fourth is sub-dued. What does “Bydlo” mean? The tradi-tional definition is an oxcart. The ostinato in the left hand resembles the slow rotation of heavy wheels. Yet there is another meaning for this word. My Polish nanny, when upset

For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545 | 5

or angry would say “Oh! Bydlo!”— an excla-mation meaning “this is unfair! This word can be understood in different ways, but it always stands for something heavy and unpleasant. When I hear Mussorgsky’s By­dlo, I am reminded of a painting by Ilya Repin titled  Barge Haulers on the Volga.  In this painting, a heavy barge is pulled by tired, emaciated peasants. It is a depiction of brutal, exhausting, yet meaningless la-bor. Perhaps, Mussorgsky’s Bydlo is a tragic symbol of Russia itself.

The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks  is a charming and humorous confection. A childlike, bright and touching fantasy, this piece is a joy to perform. The cackling of the chicks is represented by both: “crushed” and melodic seconds.

In  Two Polish Jews, One Rich and the Other Poor  the inverted fourth and the second are incorporated to represent a severe image of the rich man and the pitiful begging of the poor. The repeated notes, combined with weeping seconds remind us of synagogue chants. The duet of the two men toward the end of this movement is a counterpoint of misunderstanding in which neither hears the other. I recall the words of Marina Tsvetaeva, “… Nothing is sadder than the hunger of the hungry or the indolence of the satisfied.”

Limoges; the Market (“Great News”)—a noisy, sunny marketplace with its quarrel-

ing, bargaining and gossiping. The repeat-ed musical figures imitate the hubbub of too many people talking at the same time. From the outset, it is clear that this piece is built on the combination of the descend-ing second and the ascending fourth. Mus-sorgsky wrote a text for the market gossips, but later rejected it as too programmatic for inclusion in the published work.

Catacombs.  A mystery. Somber chords lead the listener to “Con mortuis in Lin­gua mortis,”—“with the dead in a dead lan­guage.” The theme of the  Promenade  is heard as chorale and as an ethereal voice from the underground, accompanied by a ghostly tremolo from another world. In the cemetery, where dead Latin words are written on the gravestones, dead men speak their eternal language.

Baba Yaga. The Hut on Hen’s Legs.  This movement opens with seconds and fourths heard in threatening unison. I love the folkloric image of Baba Yaga flying on her broom in a windstorm, with the trees bending their crowns to the ground. Baba Yaga’s hut stands on large hen’s legs, which can move on their own will. In mm. 25-30 there are cackling seconds, similar to The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, but now they sound threatening.  There is an amusing relationship between the hen’s legs of Baba Yaga’s hut and tiny chicks. Once a chicken,

always a chicken! In the middle section, while Baba Yaga

is away from her enchanted kingdom, two of her helpers, Kikimora (the hobgoblin who lives in the marshes) and Leschy (the wood goblin who lives in the forest) look at the twinkling marsh lights and listen to the owls hooting, waiting for the return of their mistress. She returns and storms right through the Great Gates of Kiev.

Kiev, the ancient heart of Russia, was once its capital city with legendary power and wealth. In  The Great Gate of Kiev, two Russian Orthodox chants are heard ap-proaching from a distance. We hear the growing sound of the bells floating above the city (remember Boris Godunov?). The theme of the  Promenade, in combinations of seconds and fourths, returns in the bells, bringing joy and solemnity.

One last thought. In spite of the Rus-sian, French, Polish, Jewish and Latin themes or, perhaps, because of them, Mus-sorgsky’s  Pictures at an Exhibition  create a quintessentially Russian atmosphere. The work projects Russia from all sides: fairy, pagan, religious, multinational, impossible and incredible!

—Program Notes by Lera Auerbach ©2012 

RAFAŁ BLECHACZPianoThu Apr 19 | 7:30pm Herbst Theatre

MOZART: Rondo in A minor, K. 511 Sonata in A minor, K. 310 BEETHOVEN: Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 SCHUMANN: Sonata in G minor, Op. 22, No. 2 CHOPIN: 4 Mazurkas, Op. 24 Polonaise No. 6 in A-flat Major, Op. 53

415.392.2545 sfperformances.org

presents…

LERA AUERBACH | PianoTuesday, March 27, 2018 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

AUERBACH Labyrinth WORLD PREMIERE for piano soloCommissioned by San Francisco Performances in honor of Ruth Felt

Inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings and other writings by Jorge Luis Borges

I. A Bao A Qu (The Tower of Chitor) Traumwanderer: First Passage

II. Simurgh (The Bird Parlament) Traumwanderer: Second Passage

III. The Norns Traumwanderer: Third Passage

IV. The Chord for Fenrir Traumwanderer: Fourth Passage

V. Swedenborg’s Angels Traumwanderer: Fifth Passage (Swedenborg’s Demons)

VI. The Kilkenny Cats Traumwanderer: Sixth Passage (The Squonk Mourns The Kilkenny Cats)

VII. Haniel, Kafziel, Azriel and Aniel Traumwanderer: Seventh Passage

VIII. An Afternoon of a Minotaur Traumwanderer: Eighth Passage

IX. La Liebre Lunar

X. El Aplanador Traumwanderer: Ninth Passage (El Golem)

XI. Bahamut

XII. The Library of Babel

2 | For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545

Labyrinth

LERA AUERBACH Born October 21, 1973, Chelyabinsk, Russia

I have been fascinated with labyrinths—real or imagi-nary—all my life. So, it is not surprising that J.L. Borges has been one of my favorite writers for a very long time.

Labyrinth  is an exploration of Time and its different prisms, mirrors, faces, games. The passages of the labyrinth are the passages of Time. Or, perhaps, Time itself takes the form of a labyrinth in which the inner and outer sides are one and the same, infinitely expanding and infinitely con-tracting.

Inspired by the hidden set of variations in Mussorgsky’s Pic-tures at an Exhibition (the series of Promenades portraying a man walking through the gallery) in Labyrinth appeared the “Traumwanderer” (Dream wanderer). I do not know where the Traumwanderer came from. I asked him, but his answers are cryptic. Perhaps, the Traumwanderer is my own double. More likely, he is a shape shifter and becomes the double of each listener who comes to a concert hall and unexpectedly finds himself in the bestiary of a labyrinth.

Together with the Traumwanderer, we discover different passages, become lost and sometimes recognize reflections of our personal memories, fears and dreams in the strange and at times disturbing shapes of the imaginary beings that the Traumwanderer meets.

These beings have encounters and relationships not only with the Traumwanderer but also between themselves. There are connections and hidden clues that allow the Traumwanderer to recognize his own features even in the most grotesque and foreign elements.

Is the Traumwanderer inside of the labyrinth, or is the labyrinth within the Traumwanderer? Is Time standing still while we are searching for our way, or is the labyrinth made of the same material as Time itself? Is the Wanderer’s prog-ress through the passages of the labyrinth illusory? Who is passing: we or our Time?

Together with the Traumwanderer, we meet the invisible A Bao A Qu, who has lived, since the beginning of Time, on the spiral staircase of the Tower of Chitor. This tower is known to have the most perfect view in the world, which—as with any perfection—can never be reached. We meet the Kilkenny Cats, who get into raging quarrels and devour each other in anger, leaving behind only their tails.  We meet the poor Squonk, who cries himself into nothingness. We encounter the magical binding of the gigantic wolf

Fenrir, who is kept on the strongest yet lightest chain ever made—a cord woven of six imaginary things. (Of course, Fenrir eventually breaks loose.) We experience the terror of the Traumwanderer as he becomes increasingly lost within the mirrors, dead-ends, and detours of the maze. We hear the calling of the mystical Simurgh, the immortal bird that nests in the Tree of Knowledge. The other birds (after a long and difficult pilgrimage to reach him) realize “that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each of them and all of them.” And, of course, what labyrinth could be complete without its Minotaur?

I remember myself as a child, aged six, reading Greek myths and wondering: What did the Minotaur do all day long, sitting at the center of a labyrinth, in the unchanging room, looking at the same inescapable walls? I imagined him being terribly bored, lonely, and malnourished. After all, the poor beast had to survive on an unhealthy diet of only seven young men and seven maidens per year. Always hun-gry, lonely, half-mad... I imagined him occasionally dancing with himself from boredom and loneliness, perhaps while thinking of some appetizing maiden. As Ovid wrote, “The man half bull, the bull half man”—not just a monster, but a sad, unloved, and somewhat comical creature at the heart of a labyrinth it will never be able to leave.

We encounter angels and demons, gods, monsters, and chimeras, while the three ancient Norns (Past, Present, and Future) weave the thread of our lives.

I built Labyrinth  in search of a form where relationships and dynamics between the Observer and the Object of observation could be explored. Or, perhaps, I built it to create a space where the inner dialogue between the Self and the Brain (also in the form of a labyrinth!) could be imagined. Sometimes I think that I am, myself, an imaginary being just as my Traumwanderer. And, perhaps, it is the Traumwanderer who composed this music, and I am the one forever lost in the labyrinth without even realizing it.

This thread brings me back to the beginnings, to a poem wrote when I was 14 years old, titled “Labyrinth.” I wrote it in Russian. Here it is in its English translation by Ronald Meyer:

Labyrinth by Lera Auerbach

In the labyrinth of words and soundsI search for the riddle of life.Whether I’ll find it or not—I do not know,But I am playing upon the strings of the soulAnd in sharing this music, I find happiness.