D A Belfast Music Society Celebrity Recitals Programme

PROGRAMME MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN piano Apparition No.1 in F sharp major Un Sospiro Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 in E major Hungarian Rhapsody No.13 in A minor Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 in C sharp minor (with cadenza by Marc-André Hamelin) Concerto for Solo Piano (from 12 Etudes dans les tons mineurs, Op.39 Nos.8,9,10) Saturday, 4th October 1997 BT Studio, Waterfront Hall at 7.30pm LISZT ALKAN This concert is the closing event of the Québécois Festival, co-ordinated by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Marc-André Hamelin's performances with the Ulster Orchestra in Derry and Belfast on Thursday and Friday were also part of the Festival. The Festival of Québec arts from Canada has featured performances and exhibi- tions of early music, traditional music, puppetry, dance, visual art, installation, woodblock printmaking, history, film and contemporary theatre, and is the largest representation of Québec arts and artists to have been organised outside Canada..

Apparition No. 1 in F sharp Un Sospiro Hungarian Rhapsodies: No. 10 in E No. 13 in A No. 2 (cadenza by M. Hamelin) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) The development of the piano in the early years of the 19th century was marked by the rise of the piano virtuosi, who often composed pieces of their own to show off their own individual pianistic specialities. Feted in their lifetimes, most of these are today little more than footnotes in history books. But among them was the young Liszt; unlike many of his lesser contemporaries, he grew out of his vir- tuoso stage and, indeed, went on to become one of the most important composers of the century. The earliest of the pieces in this programme is the first of the three Apparitions, dating from 1834; the title may, it has been suggested, relate to a poem by Lamartine. The third of the set is a virtuoso fantasy on a theme by Schubert, but the other two are poetic in nature - Busoni, composer / pianist of the next genera- tion, remarked that the first piece was "romantic, emotional, philosophical, and possessing that breath of Nature which in art is achieved so rarely and with such difficulty". Un Sospiro was the name given, in one early edition, to the third of the three Etudes de Concert of 1848. The first 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies reached their final versions between 1846 and 1853, though some of them are based on music from the early 1840s. (The final four Rhapsodies come from the end of his life). In form they reflect the char- acteristic two part slow-fast structure of the Verbunkos (Recruiting Dance) on which they are modelled. In the early 20th century, Bartok and Kodaly criticised them for making use of urban folksong and gypsy idioms, rather than those of the older, more 'authentic' folksongs that they were researching. However, the Rhapsodies are an important landmark in the development of a Hungarian nation- al style.

Concerto for solo piano (Studies in the minor keys, Op. 39: No. 8 in G sharp minor No. 9 in C sharp minor No. 10 in F sharp minor) Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) If Liszt is the best known of the 19th century composer-pianists, Alkan is one of the most shadowy. Charles-Valentin Morhange - he subsequently adopted his father's first name, Alkan - was the second of the seven children, all musical, of a Parisian Jewish schoolteacher. He showed great talent from an early age, enter- ing the Conservatoire at the age of six. He submerged himself fully in Parisian musical life, being a friend and colleague of Chopin and Georges Sand, and a reg- ular attender at their soirées. He took over many of Chopin's pupils after the Polish composer's tragically early death. But Alkan did not play many of his own pieces in his recitals - perhaps he felt they were not superficial enough for popular tastes - nor did he do much to encourage their performance by others. Indeed, for much of his later life he became a virtual recluse, so he was largely forgotten even before his death (crushed, tradition has it, under a fallen bookcase, a copy of the Talmud in his hand). Thus his compositions have remained - until recently at least - in semi-oblivion, kept alive merely thanks to the championing zeal of a few pianists, including Busoni (who considered him the greatest composer for the piano after Beethoven), Petri, and, more recently, Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith, who between them have helped to set off a much needed rediscovery and re-eval- uation of this remarkable music. The problem with many of Alkan's piano works is the almost superhuman demands they make - it isn't just that they are technically demanding, but physi- cally so too. It has been said that he was a frustrated symphonist, and indeed there is an orchestral feel to much of his piano writing (that is not to say that his piano pieces would benefit from being rewritten for orchestra; on the contrary, they can only work on the keyboard, but they need a great deal of study on the part of the performer to reveal that). Stylistically too, his music must have been a problem to his contemporaries, with passages that would be perfectly at home in the works of Chopin or Schumann, juxtaposed with harmonies and textures that must have greatly puzzled them.

By the time Alkan came to publish his twelve minor key studies in 1857, ten years after their major key companions, he had retreated into his psychological shell. Nothing further from Chopin's (or indeed, Debussy's) studies could be imagined. Alkan's extraordinary conception includes, within its pages, a brilliant set of vari- ations, Le Festin d'Esope (study 12), a Symphony (studies 4-7), and, not quite as unique an idea, though still very unusual, the present Concerto (studies 8 - 10). The score is labelled throughout either tutti or solo, and the performer is thus required, in Ronald Smith's words, to 'project, sometimes simultaneously, two personalities' - ie he must be now pianist, now orchestra. The first movement is constructed on a huge scale (half an hour or so in duration, if the composer's sanctioned - but structurally damaging -.cuts are ignored). It begins with an 'orchestral' ritornello, in which the material is presented, before the pianist, now as soloist, re-presents and embroiders it. The development section begins with a strange, bleak, hypnotic passage over a constantly repeated G sharp which finally erupts into an outburst of awesome power. The movement is round- ed off with the expected return to the music of the ope and a final, 'diabol- ical' coda, marked quasi tamburo. The other two movements are built on a much more modest scale. The slow move- ment is an adagio, that in its funeral mood (complete with drum beats) at times suggests Mahler, while the final allegretto alla barbaresca, after an opening that recalls the familiar Rakoczy march, develops into a wild dance that has been described both as a polonaise and a bolero. Alec Macdonald 1997 Ⓒ

TONIGHT'S ARTIST Born in Montreal in 1961, MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN studied at the Vincent- d'Indy School of Music, then moved to the United States and received Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Temple University in Philadelphia. His principal teach- ers were Yvonne Hubert, Harvey Wedeen and Russell Sherman. Now well established in both America and Europe, he has given recitals in London, Luxembourg, Milan, Montreal, Munich, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Stockholm, Toronto and Vienna. Following the success of his June 1994 Wigmore Hall series "Virtuoso Romantics", Marc-André Hamelin was invited to give recitals in the Wigmore Hall Masterconcert Series and the International Piano Series at the South Bank. Recent concerto performances have included appearances with the orchestras of Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Montreal, Philadelphia, Royal Concertgebouw, BBC Scottish, Toronto and Vancouver. His active interest in little-known repertoire is reflected in recordings of Alkan, Bolcom, Godowsky, Eckhardt-Gramatté, Ives, Sorabji and Wolpe. In June 1999 he will record the Busoni Concerto for piano, male voice chorus and orchestra with the CBSO conducted by Mark Elder. "Hamelin's wizardry defies the laws of nature, but it is a mark of his seriousness that he used it only to illuminate the composer's musical intentions." Financial Times. NEXT CONCERT Saturday, 22nd November 1997 I FAGIOLINI BT Studio, Waterfront Hall - 7.30 pm

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