Program Notes
Derek Han, piano
March 8, 2008, 8 p.m.
Southern Theatre

About the Artist

Columbus native Derek Han began his piano studies with Ohio State University master George Haddad and first performed with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra when he was still a youngster.  While going to Upper Arlington High School, Han also attended the Juilliard Precollege Division.  He has studied with other such gifted teachers as Ilona Kabos, Gina Bachauer, Lili Kraus, and Guido Agosti.  In 1977, Han won First Prize and the Gold Medal at the Athens International Piano Competition, catapulting him into an international career that has seen him dazzle audiences across five continents.  Over the years he has appeared at such venues as the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the Australian Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo in San Francisco, the Finca Festival in the Canary Islands, and the La Musica International Chamber Music Festival in Sarasota, where he currently serves as Associate Artistic Director.  A prolific recording artist, Han has released complete cycles of the piano concertos of Haydn with the English Chamber Orchestra, Mozart with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Beethoven with the Berliner Symphoniker, and Chopin with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Salzburg, January 27, 1756; died Vienna, December 5, 1791)

Sonata in A major, K. 331  (composed 1781-1783)

Exactly when and where Mozart wrote his Sonata, K. 331, are both open to dispute.  At the age of 22 and no longer the child prodigy, Mozart was touring with his mother Maria Anna, beginning in September 1777 to Munich, Augsburg, and Mannheim, then on to Paris, from March through September 1778.  Some sources suggest that he wrote K. 331 during his sojourn in Paris as a gift to his hosts.  It was in Paris on July 3, that Mozart’s mother died, leaving the young composer on his own for the first time.

Other sources say he wrote a set of three piano sonatas, K. 330-332, in Munich while his father and sister Nannerl were in town to attend the January 1781 premiere of Wolfgang’s opera Idomeneo.  Or possibly later that same year during his first few weeks in Vienna.  Yet other sources say that K. 331 and its companions were written during August 1783 around the time that he was introducing his new wife, Constanze to his father Leopold in Salzburg.  Those three sonatas ended up being published together as a set numbered Opus 6 by Artaria in Vienna in 1784.

Whatever its provenance, the Sonata in A major, K. 331, has proven to be one of Mozart’s most popular.  It is the only one of his piano sonatas to open with a set of variations and its final movement features one of Mozart’s more skillful excursions into fashionable musical exoticism, the rondo Alla Turca.  It’s also notable that not one of the three movements is actually in sonata form, meaning that there are no developments to speak of.

Opening with a slow and lyrical theme followed by six variations, the Andante grazioso features a third variation in A minor, a song-like Adagio as the fifth variation, and a triumphant Allegro as the last.  Max Reger used the theme as the basis for his own orchestral Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, op. 132.  The central A major Minuet with its D major Trio tends to get overlooked between the variations and the rondo, but note that it refers back to the crossed hand motif from the fourth variation.  The Alla Turca title that Mozart gave to the rondo finale pays tribute to the supposedly Turkish character of the music, alternating quickly between minor and major and featuring a “Turkish” drone in the second section.  This sort of stylized Turkish military music, full of march rhythms and effects, was quite the vogue in Mozart’s day.

Ludwig van Beethoven (born Bonn, December 16, 1770; died Vienna, March 26, 1827)

Sonata no. 8 in C minor, op. 13 (“Pathétique”)  (composed 1797-1798)

Unlike most of the nicknames given to his works, “Grande sonate pathétique” (in the sense of “emotional”) is thought to be the designation Beethoven himself gave as the title of the first edition of his Sonata no. 8 in C minor, op. 13.  Although it’s far from the first piece he wrote in the key of C minor, it is the earliest of those that truly manifest the sort of drama Beethoven would later invest in such other C minor works as his Symphony no. 5 or his Coriolanus Overture.

Beethoven had moved from Bonn to Vienna in 1792 in order to study with Haydn, a crucial first step in mastering his era’s classicism.  Though Beethoven was a student of Haydn for about a year thereafter, the elder master had decreasing patience for the rough-hewn youngster.  Within a few years, however, Beethoven was a celebrated pianist dominating the musical soirées of the Esterházys, Prince Lobkowitz, Count Waldstein, and Prince Lichnowsky with his improvisations and his compositions.

The “Pathétique” was surely the most popular of Beethoven’s early piano sonatas, written in 1797-1798 and published in 1799 with a dedication to Prince Karl Lichnowsky.  Its substantial slow introduction, marked Grave, gives rise to the initial passages of the Allegro di molto e con brio but also reappears to introduce its development and coda.  

The slow second movement, Adagio cantabile, has insinuated itself deeply into popular culture.  Karl Haas, the musical commentator, used it to introduce each episode of his long-running radio program “Adventures in Good Music,” and pop musicians as diverse as Kiss and Billy Joel have based songs on its main theme.  “Somewhere Out There,” the song from the animated story of immigrant mice, An American Tail, owes the essence of its melody to Beethoven.  The gentle and dignified first theme contrasts with the triplet-dominated central section.

Preliminary sketches of the Rondo finale suggest that it was conceived as part of a different work, usually identified as a violin sonata.  Its theme bears a resemblance to the second theme of the first movement.  Because of the brevity of this finale, the “Pathétique” feels front-heavy, although the sforzandos of the elongated coda try to contribute gravitas.

Ludwig van Beethoven (born Bonn, December 16, 1770; died Vienna, March 26, 1827)

Sonata no. 21 in C major, op. 53 (“Waldstein”)  (composed 1803-1804)

Born roughly six decades after the piano’s invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori, Ludwig van Beethoven was historically positioned to take full advantage of its displacement of the harpsichord as the keyboard of choice.  Being the innovator he was, Beethoven owned a succession of pianos as the instrument developed in power, range, and versatility.  One of those pianos was a gift from his friend and patron Count Ferdinand von Waldstein (1762-1823).  Ironically, it was the acquisition of a new piano in 1803, manufactured by the French firm Érard (and currently housed in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum), that inspired Beethoven to compose the sonata he would dedicate to Waldstein.  By that time, Count Waldstein. had long ago proven his own dedication to the young composer.  It had been at the urging, and with the support, of Waldstein that Beethoven traveled to Vienna to study with Haydn in 1792, to “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands,” as Waldstein said in a letter.  And it was Waldstein who introduced Beethoven to Prince Lichnowsky, who would be the composer’s greatest patron.

One of the great piano works of Beethoven’s middle period, the Sonata no. 21 in C major, op. 53, widely known as the “Waldstein,” was begun in 1803 and completed in 1804.  Originally, there had been a longer middle movement, around which several legends have arisen.  According to one story, a “friend” of Beethoven told him that the sonata was too long, sending the composer into a rage.  Later, Beethoven supposedly realized the accuracy of the criticism, excised the long middle movement, and composed the present brief Introduzione in its stead.  The discarded middle movement was published separately as Andante Favori, WoO 57, a few years later.

To some, the turbulence of the Allegro con brio anticipates the storm heard in the Pastoral Symphony, op. 68.  After the propulsive first theme, the “dolce” second theme comes as sweet, if brief, relief.  The replacement middle movement is a short and dignified introduction to the often rollicking Rondo finale, which follows without pause.  Listen especially for the brilliant Prestissimo coda.  It’s been said that, although Beethoven shortened the sonata by substituting the brief Adagio molto for the extended Andante Favori, he thereby enhanced the symphonic proportions of the resulting sonata.  In any case, he does Cristofori’s invention proud.

Frédéric Chopin (born Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, February 22, 1810; died Paris, October 17, 1849)

Nocturne in B-flat minor, op. 9, no. 1  (composed 1830-1832)

Nocturne in B major, op. 32, no. 1  (composed 1837)

Scherzo no. 1 in B minor, op. 20  (composed 1835)

Both Poland and France lay claim to the legacy of Frédéric Chopin.  He was born on February 22, 1810, in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, but left Poland in November 1830, never to return.  From September 1831 through the time of his death on October 17, 1849, he spent most of his time in France.  His father Nicolas had been born in Nancy in 1771, although he came to Warsaw as a teenager looking for work.  He quickly got involved with Tadeusz Koíciuszko’s uprising against foreign domination and found himself unable to return to France after the insurrection was crushed.  In 1806, Nicolas ended up marrying the daughter of an impoverished nobleman; Frédéric was the second of their four children.

Although the nocturne is indelibly branded with the name of Chopin, it was actually the Irish composer John Field (1782-1837) who created the genre, just a few years after Chopin was born.  Chopin can be said to have perfected it, however.  By name, the nocturne suggests night music, but Chopin made it more introspective.  He wrote his first around 1829, although it was published only posthumously, and continued writing them throughout his too-brief life.

The Nocturne in B-flat minor, op. 9, no. 1, was the first of a set of three composed 1830-1832, during his last few months in Warsaw and his first months abroad.  He dedicated the set to Marie Felicité Pleyel (née Moke; 1811-1875), who around this time had married into the prominent Parisian family of the piano builders Pleyel & Co.  They not only made the instruments Chopin favored, but his first public performance in Paris took place in their recital hall in late 1831.  The Nocturne, op. 9, no. 1, is a sad one with a long theme in the first section.  In the central section, harmonies shift constantly as the melody sounds in octaves.  After the return of the first section, there is an extended coda that ends in the tonic major.

Dedicated to Chopin’s pupil Baroness Camille de Billing, the pair of Nocturnes, op. 32 were composed in 1837.  The Nocturne in B major, op. 32, no. 1, features an unusual lack of ornamentation, prompting some to consider it among the most “classical” of Chopin’s compositions.  Its main theme is interrupted by silence each time it is heard.  The coda, switching from major and tranquil to minor and tragic, makes for a dramatic contrast.

Although “scherzo” means “jest” or “joke” in Italian, one would be hard pressed to find jocularity in Chopin’s Scherzo no. 1 in B minor, op. 20, from 1835.  He dedicated the work to the wine merchant Tomas Albrecht, a friend so close that he would be in attendance at the composer’s deathbed.  Two bold chords grab the attention, and then it’s an agitated race.  The trio section in B major features one of Chopin’s rare references to existing folk material, the Polish carol “Sleep, little Jesus.”  This calm is ended by a return to the opening chords and main theme, followed by a wild coda.  Chopin’s London publisher made the mistake of issuing the Scherzo, op. 20 under the title “The Infernal Banquet.”  Chopin despised such literal-mindedness as applied to his music, but many listeners since have considered the moniker apt.

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio, and a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Alive: Music. Art. and Culture in Columbus. (http://www.columbusalive.com)

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