Photo: J. Katz, EMI Classics
JONATHAN BISS, Piano
Paderewski Memorial Concert
Thursday, April 5, 2012
8:00 p.m.
Pre-Concert Talk by Professor Scott Burnham,
joined by composer David Ludwig at 7:00 p.m.
Richardson Auditorium
in Alexander Hall
Program
BEETHOVEN Sonata in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 1
JANACEK "In the Mists"
BEETHOVEN Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 "Moonlight"
DAVID LUDWIG Lunaire Variations
BEETHOVEN Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 81a, "Les Adieux"
About Jonathan Biss
Jonathan Biss says he must love a piece in order to play it – and he especially enjoys coupling composers to create a dialogue between the two. Terrific intensity characterizes the music of Beethoven and Janacek, he tells us. “Beethoven’s sonatas give you the feeling that from the first note, you’re being inexorably led towards the last. Janacek, by contrast, is perhaps the greatest master of the apparent musical non-sequitur. Their building blocks could not be more different, making the similarities in their temperament all the more fascinating.
“The deep nostalgia in Janacek’s In the Mists, I feel sure, is a longing for a lost musical world, the very world that Beethoven inhabited. But when I play Beethoven’s Opus 109 after the Janacek Sonata – a gut-wrenching lament for a murdered Czech worker – it carries the feeling of consolation to a far greater extent. Beethoven could not have predicted the events that inspired Janacek to compose his Sonata, but his music addresses every aspect of the human experience, and therefore is moving in any context. I become the conduit through which a conversation between two great masters takes place.”
And now you know why Jonathan Biss is considered a musician’s musician.