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presents…

SIMONE PORTER | ViolinHSIN-I HUANG | Piano

Friday, March 16, 2018 | 7:30pmSan Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall

MOZART Sonata in F Major for Piano and Violin, K.376 Allegro Andante Rondo: Allegretto grazioso

SALONEN Lachen Verlernt

PROKOFIEV Three Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, Opus 64arr. D. Gruness Montagues and Capulets Dance of the Antilles Girls Masques

INTERMISSION

JANÁČEK Violin Sonata JW VII/7 Con moto Ballada Allegretto Adagio

BLOCH Nigun from Baal Shem Suite

RAVEL Tzigane

This performance is supported in part by a generous gift from the Estate of Maxine D. Wallace.

Simone Porter is represented by Opus 3 Artists5670 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1790, Los Angeles, CA 90036opus3artists.com

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ARTIST PROFILES

San Francisco Performances presents Simone Porter and Hsin-I Huang in their San Fran-cisco debuts.

Violinist Simone Porter has been rec-ognized as an emerging artist of impas-sioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. After performing last season with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Times declared Simone “on the cusp of a major career.” In the past few years she has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Ange-les Philharmonic; and with a number of renowned conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Mor-lot, and Donald Runnicles. Born in 1996, Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a re-cipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Simone’s 2016–17 season marked her Carnegie Hall Debut with the New York Youth Symphony, followed by debuts with the Pittsburgh, Minnesota, San Diego, Indianapolis, Vancouver and Edmonton symphonies, and return engagements with the Seattle, Nashville, and Utah Sym-phonies. She also made recital debuts with Armen Guzelimian at the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City and in Harris Hall at the Aspen Winter Music Festival, as well as programs in South Carolina, Texas,

and Florida. In summer 2017 she returned to the Hollywood Bowl with Nicholas Mc-Gegan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to the Aspen Music Festival with Ludovic Morlot, and performed with Carlos Kalmar at the Interlochen Arts Festival.

Simone’s emergence on the international concert circuit has occurred simultane-ously with her studies at the Colburn Con-servatory of Music in Los Angeles. During this time she met Gustavo Dudamel and performed with him for her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2015. Other debuts dur-ing this time include subscription perfor-mances with the Detroit, Cincinnati, Hous-ton, Berkeley and Des Moines Symphonies; Baltimore and Hartford Symphony Or-chestras; Rochester Philharmonic; and the Florida Orchestra. She also made her Ravinia Festival recital debut, her debut at the Grand Teton Music Festival, and mul-tiple solo performances as a guest artist at the Aspen Music Festival. Having spent her formative years in Seattle, Simone made a rousing homecoming return engagement with the Seattle Symphony in 2016.

Internationally, Simone has performed with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orches-tra in Bogota, Colombia with conductor Gustavo Dudamel; the Orquestra Sinfôni-ca Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro; the Costa Rica Youth Symphony; and the City Cham-ber Orchestra of Hong Kong. She has also performed with the Royal Northern Sinfo-nia and the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in the United Kingdom.

Simone is a devoted chamber musician, and performed in the Seattle Chamber Music Society series with James Ehnes in January 2018. She has appeared in multi-ple Colburn Chamber Music Society Series concerts with artists such as violinists Ar-nold Steinhardt and Scott St. John; on the South Bay Chamber Music Society series with violist Paul Coletti; and at the Miami International Piano Festival. Internation-ally, she has participated in the Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music Sessions and the Koblenz International Music Festival in Germany.

A 2015–16 Performance Today Young-Artist-in-Residence, Simone’s performanc-es and interviews have been broadcast na-tionally on the APM syndicated network on several different occasions. She has also been featured on the renowned syndicated NPR radio program From the Top, hosted by Christopher O’Riley and featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Her performance in July 2012 marked her

third appearance on the program; her first was in 2007 at the age of 11. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the Ameri-can Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.

Raised in Seattle, Simone studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she presently studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Sum-mer studies have included the Aspen Music Festival for seven years, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy, and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.

Simone Porter plays on a 1745 J.B. Gua-dagnini violin on generous loan from The Mandell Collection of Southern California.

Quickly becoming recognized as today’s most sought after collaborative pianist, Hsin-I Huang has been praised on concert stages in Germany, Russia, Japan,  Korea and Taiwan.  In the US, Hsin-I has played in esteemed venues such as Disney Hall and Zipper Hall. She has collaborated with many artists such as Margaret Batjer, An-drew Shulman, Sheryl Staples, Chee-Yun Kim, Simone Porter, William Hagen, Blake Pouliot, Jacob Braun,  LA Philharmon-ic  principal horn Andrew Bain, associate principal violist Dale Hikawa Silverman and cellist Tao Ni. Passionate about con-stantly growing as an artist and helping

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others grow, she regularly collaborates with students in master classes of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School of Music.

Hsin-I has made guest appearances at such venues as LA Philharmonic Chamber Music, Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia BGH Classics series, NPR’s Performance Today, Sundays Live at LACMA, South Bay Cham-ber Music Society, and Innsbrook Institute.  

  Hsin-I is also an accomplished cellist, winning many National competitions in Taiwan before completely focusing on col-laborative piano.

PROGRAM NOTES

Sonata in F Major for Piano and Violin, K.376

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTBorn January 27, 1756, SalzburgDied December 5, 1791, Vienna

In June 1781, at the age of 25, Mozart broke away from the two authority figures in his life—his father and Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg—and set out to establish him-self in Vienna. His first task was to make himself financially independent, and to that end he took students and performed widely in Vienna. But Mozart wished to succeed as a composer, and the sources of income for a composer were more complex. A composer could make significant income from an opera commission, but Mozart was also aware of a quite different market: the increasing number of amateur musicians in Vienna who needed music to perform. His first publication in Vienna was written not on commission from a member of the nobility but for talented amateur perform-ers. During the summer of 1781, while he was at work on The Abduction from the Se-

raglio, Mozart wrote four sonatas for key-board and violin, combined them with two sonatas written earlier, and published the set that November as his Opus 2.

These six sonatas attracted immediate at-tention, and one early reviewer wrote about them at length: “These sonatas are the only ones of this kind. Rich in new ideas and in evidences of the great musical genius of their author. Very brilliant and suited to the instrument. At the same time the accompa-niment of the violin is so artfully combined with the clavier part that both instruments are kept constantly on the alert; so that these sonatas require just as skillful a player on the violin as on the clavier.” This review-er makes at an important point. Earlier so-natas for this combination of instruments had essentially been keyboard sonatas with the accompaniment of violin, and in fact Mozart’s description on the title page of the new set seems to preserve that identity: “Six Sonatas for Clavier or Pianoforte, with the Accompaniment of a Violin.” The reviewer, however, notes that these are in fact duo-so-natas (“the only ones of this kind”) and that the musical duties are divided evenly here (“require just as skillful a player on the vio-lin as on the clavier”). The piano may retain a measure of primacy in these sonatas, but Mozart is well on his ways to redefining the violin sonata and giving the violin a much more important role.

The Allegro opens with three bright chords, and the whole movement is char-acterized by energy and thrust. The piano introduces the more restrained second idea, and all seems set for a standard sona-ta-form movement, but Mozart springs a surprise at the development. Rather than developing these themes, he instead seizes on a brief turn-figure from the end of the exposition and builds the development on this. He brings back his principal themes in the recapitulation and closes the move-

ment out quietly on the turn-figure. The ternary-form Andante is remarkable for the range of its sounds, for it seems in con-stant, murmuring motion. Some of this is the sound of quietly pulsing sixteenths that runs through the accompaniment, but Mozart also has both instruments trilling at length here. The concluding Rondo gets off to an elegant start. Mozart’s marking grazioso is exactly right here, for this little tune has a music-box delicacy. All the more surprising, then, that the epi-sodes that punctuate this rondo should be so wildly different, full of massive chords, cascading runs of sixteenth, and sudden excursions into moments of subdued ex-pressiveness. At the end, Mozart winds down all this energy, and the sonata van-ishes like a puff of smoke.

Lachen Verlernt

ESA-PEKKA SALONENBorn June 30, 1958, Helsinki

The composer has supplied a program note for Lachen Verlernt:

The title Lachen Verlernt (“Laughing Un-learnt”) is a quotation from the ninth move-ment of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Gebet an Pierrot (“Prayer to Pierrot”). The narra-tor declares that she has unlearnt the skill of laughing and begs Pierrot, the “Horse-doctor to the soul,” to give it back to her. I felt that this is a very moving metaphor of a performer: a serious clown trying to help the audience to connect with emotions they have lost, or believe they have lost.

Lachen Verlernt is essentially a chaconne, which in this case means that there is a har-monic progression that repeats itself sev-eral times. The harmony remains the same throughout the whole piece; only the surface, the top layer of the music changes. Lachen Verlernt starts with a lyrical, expressive mel-ody (the same melody has an important role in my orchestral work Insomnia, which I was writing at the same time, in the summer of 2002). Gradually the music becomes faster and more frenzied until it develops an almost frantic character, as if the imaginary narra-tor had reached a state of utter despair. A very short coda closes this mini-drama peacefully.

I wrote Lachen Verlernt in 2002 for Cho-Liang Lin, to whom it is also dedicated. Lachen Verlernt was commissioned by the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s Summer-Fest La Jolla with the generous support of Joan and Irwin Jacobs.

—Esa-Pekka Salonen

NICHOLAS PHAN Tenor

MYRA HUANG Piano

Thu Apr 12 | 7:30pm Herbst Theatre

La Bonne Chanson—Songs of the Parisian Belle Epoque

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Three Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, Opus 64 Arranged by D. Gruness

SERGEI PROKOFIEVBorn April 23, 1891, SontsovkaDied March 5, 1953, Moscow

Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, com-posed in 1935, has always been one of his most popular scores. The music for that ball—full of sharply etched characters, exciting action, and emotional power—inevitably attracted performers outside of ballet. Prokofiev and many other con-ductors have assembled orchestral suites of movements from Romeo and Juliet, and Prokofiev also arranged a suite of piano pieces from it. Violinists (including Jas-cha Heifetz) have been drawn to this mu-sic as well, and on this recital Ms. Porter plays violin arrangements of three of the most famous excerpts from Romeo and Ju-liet. The Montagues and the Capulets forges ahead brutally on the swagger of the rival families. Juliet’s attendants dance the lilt-ing Dance of the Antilles Girls as she falls asleep from Friar Laurence’s potion. The witty Masques comes from the end of Act I, when Mercutio and Benvolio talk Ro-meo into crashing the ball at the Capulets, where he will meet Juliet.

Sonata for Violin and Piano

LEOS JANÁČEKBorn July 3, 1854, HukvaldyDied August 12, 1928, Moravská Ostrava

Over the last several decades, Czech com-poser Leos Janáček has escaped his reputa-tion as an interesting minor composer and been recognized for what he was: one of the great composers of the first part of the 20th century. Born only 13 years after Dvořák, Janáček might seem to belong more proper-ly to the 19th century than the 20th, but his reputation rests largely on the extraordinary body of work he created after his sixtieth birthday. Over the final fourteen years of his life, Janáček wrote the operas Katya Kabano-va, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Affair, and The House of the Dead; orchestral works like the Sinfonietta and Taras Bulba; the Glagolitic Mass; and an array of chamber works, including two string quartets and the Violin Sonata.

The Violin Sonata is unfamiliar to most audiences today, but here is an instance where familiarity breeds respect, for this is

original and moving music. Janáček origi-nally wrote the sonata in 1914 but could find no violinist interested in performing it; after complete revision, it was first per-formed in 1922, when the composer was 68. Listeners unfamiliar with Janáček’s music will need to adjust to the distinctive sound of this sonata: Janáček generates a shimmering, rippling sonority in the ac-companiment, and over this the violin has jagged melodic lines, some sustained, but some very brief, and in fact these some-times harsh interjections are one of the most characteristic aspects of this music. Janáček also shows here his fondness for unusual key signatures: the four move-ments are in D-flat minor, E Major, E-flat minor, and G-sharp minor.

The opening movement, marked simply Con moto, begins with a jagged recitative for violin, which immediately plays the move-ment’s main subject over a jangling piano accompaniment reminiscent of the cim-balon of Eastern Europe. Despite Janáček’s professed dislike of German forms, this movement shows some relation to sonata form: there is a more flowing second subject and an exposition repeat, followed by a brief development full of sudden tempo changes and themes treated as fragments. A short recapitulation leads to the quiet close.

The Ballada was originally written as a separate piece and published in 1915, but as Janáček revised the sonata he decided to use the Ballada as its slow movement. This is long-lined music, gorgeous in its sustained lyricism as the violin sails high above the rippling piano; it has a broad sec-ond subject. At the climax, Janáček marks both parts ad lib, giving the performers a wide freedom of tempo before the music falls away to its shimmering close.

The Allegretto sounds folk-inspired, particularly in its short, repeated phrases (Janáček interjects individual measures in the unusual meters of 1/8 and 1/4). The pi-ano has the dancing main subject, accom-panied by vigorous swirls from the violin; the trio section leads to an abbreviated re-turn of the opening material and a cadence on harshly clipped chords.

The sonata concludes, surprisingly, with a slow movement, and this Adagio is in many ways the most impressive move-ment of the sonata. It shows some ele-ments of the dumka form: the rapid alter-nation of bright and dark music. The piano opens with a quiet chordal melody marked dolce, but the violin breaks in roughly with interjections that Janáček marks feroce: “wild, fierce.” A flowing second theme in E

Major offers a glimpse of quiet beauty, but the movement drives to an unexpected cli-max on the violin’s Maestoso declarations over tremolandi piano. And then the sonata comes to an eerie conclusion: the declama-tory climax falls away to an enigmatic close, and matters end ambiguously on the violin’s fierce interjections.

Janáček’s Violin Sonata is extraordinary music, original in conception and sonority and finally very moving, despite its refusal ever to do quite what we expect it to. For those unfamiliar with Janáček’s late mu-sic, this sonata offers a glimpse of the rich achievement of his remarkable final four-teen years.

Nigun from Baal Shem Suite

ERNEST BLOCHBorn July 24, 1880, GenevaDied July 15, 1959, Portland, OR

From about 1915 to 1926, Bloch was swept up in a musical exploration of his Jewish heritage, and from these years come many of his finest works: Schelomo (which he subtitled A Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra); the symphony Israel, the setting of the sacred service Avodath Hakadesh; a suite of pieces for cello and piano called From Jewish Life; and many more. Of his urge to write music on Jewish subject, Bloch wrote in 1917: “It is not my purpose, not my desire, to attempt a ‘reconstitution’ of Jew-ish music or to base my works on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archae-ologist. I hold it of first importance to write good, genuine music, my music. It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul, that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naiveté of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of the Preacher of Jerusalem; the sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensual-ity of the Song of Songs. All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music; the venerable emotion of the race that slum-bers way down in our soul.”

Though these remarks were made about Schelomo, this same impulse brought Ni-gun to life.

In 1923, Bloch composed a suite of three pieces for violin and piano that he called Baal Shem and subtitled Three Pictures from Chassidic Life. The first and third of these—Vidui and Simchas Torah—are not so well

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known, but the second—Nigun—has be-come one of Bloch’s most famous works. This is big, soaring music, beautifully writ-ten for the violin (as a young man, Bloch had studied violin with Eugene Ysaÿe). It opens with a declamatory introduction for the piano before the violin makes its own entrance on the passionate theme that will form the backbone of Nigun; there is a good deal of secondary material, much of it of an exotic character. Bloch gives Nigun the subtitle Improvisation, suggesting that a performance should have a spontaneous character, as if the music is being created at the moment it is performed. With its great leaps, complex multiple-stops, and exciting runs, Nigun is a virtuoso piece for the violinist, and it finally subsides to a somber and subdued close.

Tzigane

MAURICE RAVELBorn March 7, 1875, Ciboure,Basses-PyrennesDied December 28, 1937, Paris

In the summer of 1922, just as he began his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravel visited England for several concerts of his music, and in Lon-

For information and an application, contact:Apollo Academy for Health and Humanism

apolloacademy.org

September 6 –9, 2018Ratna Ling Retreat Center S O N O M A C O U N T Y, C A L I F O R N I A

As explored by the Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg After this September’s very successful workshop/festival/retreat (examining the genius of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven), we are announcing another 3-day residential event exploring the string quartet masterpieces of these three great German romantic composers and the significance of their time.

Designed for both playing and non-playing chamber music enthusiasts, this event will offer all participants a chance to under-stand the artistic and historical significance of this string quartet literature. Playing participants will have an oppor tunity to receive coaching on and perform selected works from these composers.

A rich program of yoga, meditation, healthy food preparation and preventive medicine, designed to increase body awareness and enhance overall health, will compliment the cultural activities.

A P O L L O A C A D E M Y F O R H E A L T H A N D H U M A N I S M P R E S E N T S

A H E A L T H A N D C H A M B E R M U S I C W O R K S H O P • F E S T I V A L • R E T R E A T

String QuartetMasterpiecesof Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms

don he heard a performance of his brand-new Sonata for Violin and Cello by Jelly d’Aranyi and Hans Kindler. Jelly d’Aranyi must have been a very impressive violin-ist, for every composer who heard her was swept away by her playing—and by her personality (Bartók was one of the many who fell in love with her). Ravel was so impressed that he stayed after the concert and talked her into playing gypsy tunes from her native Hungary for him—and he kept her there until 5 o’clock the next morning, playing for him.

Tzigane probably got its start that night. Inspired by both d’Aranyi’s playing and the fiery gypsy tunes, Ravel set out to write a virtuoso showpiece for the violin based on gypsy-like melodies (the title Tzigane means simply “gypsy”). Its com-position was much delayed, however, and Ravel did not complete Tzigane for another two years. Trying to preserve a distinctly Hungarian flavor, he wrote Tzigane for vio-lin with the accompaniment of luthéal, a device that—when attached to a piano—gave the piano a jangling sound typical of the Hungarian cimbalon. The first performance, by Jelly d’Aranyi with piano accompaniment, took place in London on April 26, 1924, and later that year Ravel

prepared an orchestral accompaniment. In whatever form it is heard, Tzigane re-mains an audience favorite.

It is unusual for a French composer to be so drawn to gypsy music. Usually it was the composer from central Europe—Liszt, Brahms, Joachim, Hubay—who felt the charm of this music, but Ravel enters fully into the spirit and creates a virtuoso showpiece redolent of gypsy campfires and smoldering dance tunes. Tzigane opens with a long cadenza (nearly half the length of the entire piece) that keeps the violinist solely on the G-string across the span of the entire first page. While Tzigane seems drenched in an authentic gypsy spirit, all of its themes are Ravel’s own, composed in the spirit of the tunes he heard d’Aranyi play late that night. Gradually the accom-paniment enters, and the piece takes off. Tzigane is quite episodic, and across its blazing second half Ravel demands such techniques from the violinist as artificial harmonics, left-hand pizzicatos, complex multiple-stops, and sustained octave pas-sages. Over the final pages the tempo grad-ually accelerates until Tzigane rushes to its scorching close, marked Presto.

—Program notes by Eric Bromberger