Chiu, Frederic

English

Ithaca College

Ithaca CollegeDigital Commons @ ICAll Concert & Recital Programs Concert & Recital Programs3-17-1998Guest Artist Recital: Frederic Chiu, pianoFrederic ChiuFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programsPart of the Music CommonsThis Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Concert & Recital Programs at Digital Commons @ IC. It has been accepted forinclusion in All Concert & Recital Programs by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ IC.Recommended CitationChiu, Frederic, "Guest Artist Recital: Frederic Chiu, piano" (1998). All Concert & Recital Programs. 5225.https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programs/5225ITHACA COLLEGE CONCERTS 1997-98 FREDERIC CHIU, piano Music for Children, op. 65 Morning Promenade Fairy Tale Tarantella Regrets Waltz Parade of the Grasshoppers Rain and the Rainbow Tag March Evening Moonlit Meadows Children's Corner Suite Doctor Gradus ad Pamassum Jimbo' s Lullaby Serenade for the Doll The Snow is Dancing The Little Shepherd Golliwog's Cakewalk Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Claude Debussy (1862-1918) c Kinderscenen, op. 15 (Scenes from Childhood) Strange Lands and People Curious Story Blind Man's Buff Pleading Child Perfectly Contented An Important Event Reverie By the Fireside The Knight of the Rocking-Horse Almost too Serious Frightening Child Falling Asleep The Poet Speaks Twelve Eludes, op. 10 No. 1 in C Major No. 2 in A minor No. 3 in E Major No. 4 in C-sharp minor No. 5 in G-flat Major No. 6 in E-flat minor No. 7 in C Major No. 8 in F Major No. 9 in F minor No. JO in A-flat Major No. 11 in E-flat Major No. 12 in C minor INTERMISSION Ford Hall Auditorium Tuesday, March 17, 1998 8:15 p.m. Harmonia Mundi Exclusive Management: Arts Management Group, Inc. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) 150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 845, New York, NY 10011-4311 THE ARTIST Currently residing in France, Frederic Chiu was born in Ithaca, New York and raised by Chinese immigrant parents. Frederic Chiu's cosmopolitan background brings a unique approach to his music-making. "He has reinvented virtuosity ... a phenomenon that must be heard," stated Le Monde. As adept in the recording studio as on the stage, Frederic Chiu has released nine compact discs, including music of Mendelssohn, Rossini, and Ravel. Currently available are six volumes of the complete piano works of Prokofiev, a recording project that has elicited enthusiasm from Fanfare to the Wall Street Journal to France's Le Figaro and Elle magazine. His release of three rarely-played sonatas of Mendelssohn was chosen as "Record of the Year" by Stereo Review. In the 1996-97 season he recorded the Chopin Etudes. Since the release of his first compact disc, which was devoted to piano transcriptions, Chiu has been cited as a champion of this under-explored repertoire. In this respect Chiu is following the example of his former teacher at the Juilliard School, Abbey Simon. Not only do his programs often include transcriptions, he has also written his own arrangements, including pieces from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite, which have met with rousing success in concert and on record, and are currently being prepared for publication. After finishing his studies at Indiana University, in piano with Karen Shaw and also in computer science, Frederic Chiu continued his studies at the Juilliard School; he decided to begin his career in Paris. He has since toured extensively in France, becoming one of the most well-known American pianists playing there. His concerts have taken him to most of the major European cities: Rome, Milan, Brussels, Antwerp, Berlin, Frankfurt, the Hague, Warsaw, Prague, London. In the United States, Mr. Chiu has played in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and the Ambassador Theatre in Pasadena, and has travelled across the United States on extended recital tours with Community Concerts. Last season he returned to Lincoln Center for a recital, and he made his Washington debut at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including a 1996 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Petscheck Award, and the American Pianists Association Fellowship. But it was the lack of an award in 1993 that first brought him international attention: a rare foray into the competition circuit took Frederic Chiu to Fort Worth, Texas, where his elimination before the final round of the Ninth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition roused enormous protest. Prominent stories in the New York Times referred to him as the "Maverick American Pianist." Besides solo work, his concert act1v1t1es also include a large amount of chamber music. He participates regularly in the festival "Consonance" in Saint Nazaire, France, which he co-founded in 1991 with violinist Philippe Graffin. His collaborations with invited artists include Gary Hoffman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Jeremy Menuhin, St. Lawrence Quartet and Christian Ivaldi. Growing up with a violinist brother and having worked closely with Josef Gingold at Indiana University, Frederic Chiu reserves a special place for the violin/piano repertoire and plays often with Pierre Amoyal and Joshua Bell. PROGRAM NOTES Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953 ). Music for Children, op. 65 Born in the Ukrainain village of Sontzovka, Prokofiev received his first piano lessons from his mother, an amateur pianist, who, he wrote, "had little musical talent; she acquired technique with difficulty. . . . She had three virtues: stubbornness, passion, and good taste." When he was five he composed his first work, which his mother notated. "I wrote three pieces in the sping and summer of 1897: a 'Waltz,' a 'March,' and a 'Rondo.' When he was thirteen, Sergei entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied piano (Mme. Essipova), composition (Rimsky-Korsakov, Wihtov, and Liadov), and conducting (Nicolas Tcherepnin). When he graduated in 1914, he received the Anton Rubenstein prize (a grand piano) for his performance of his first piano concerto. After conducting the first performance of his Classical Symphony in 1918, Prokofiev left Russia. By 1932 he had a decision to make: remain in the West as an emigre like Stravinsky, or return to the USSR and become a Soviet citizen . He chose the latter, and settled in Moscow in December 1935. For Prokofrev, writing for children came naturally, because of his love of fairy tales and his "unique understanding of the way children viewed the world": simple, unexpected, and pictorial. Music for Children: Twelve Easy Pieces was written during the summer of 1935 in Polenovo and premiered in Moscow in 1936. These tonal pieces, which are less dissonant and textually simpler than his other piano music, were an instant success. In 1941 Prokofiev orchestrated numbers I, 5, 6, and 9-12 in a suite for small orchestra entitled Summer's Day; he used "Waltz" and "Evening" in his last ballet, The Stone Flower in 1950. Claude Debussy ( 1862-1918). Children's Corner Suite In 1933 Alfredo Casella recalled: To the end [Debussy] remained what the French call grand enfant. That same wonderful innocence and limpidity of feeling which is the fundamental characteristic of his art transpired in all his deeds and words. At fifty he amused himself more than did his little daughter Chouchou with the toys brought home for her by her mother. The suite, which was published in 1908 and dedicated to "My dear little Chouchou, with fond memories from her father for what follows," is not a story about Chouchou and her toys; the suite is about Chouchou viewing her toys with the simple, unaffected faith of a child. The English titles are in mock deference to Chouchou's English nanny. "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" is a respectful but playful parody of Clementi's famous 1807 keyboard studies, Gradus ad Pamassum. "limbo's Lullaby," which is subtitled Berceuse des etephants (the elephant's lullaby), has an allusion to the children's song "Dodo, l'enfant, do," and it expresses the elephant's comicality with its use of the keyboard's lower register and the direction doux et un peu gauche (gentle and a little clumsey). "The Serenade of the Doll" was published in 1906 as "Serenade a la poupee." Much ink has been spilled discussing Debussy's mistranslation. What is significant is that the doll is being serenaded, perhaps by another doll in the toy box or a child. With its ostinatos and defined textures, "The Snow is Dancing" is an estampe with a delicate melancholy. The monophonic phrases divide "The Little Shepherd" into three sections, each of which closes with a conventional ii7 V7 I cadence. Golliwogg was the name of a black doll which was popularized in an 1895 picture book entitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. Chouchou had a Golliwogg, as did most children. In 1903 Debussy heard Sousa play a cake-walk in Paris and proclaimed him "its king." The cake-walk is normally danced to a ragtime, which is characterized by a syncopated melody against a march-like beat. The slower middle section contains a parody of Wagner's Tristan that is marked avec une grande emotion. The Children's Corner Suite clearly illustrates Debussy's empathy with Chouchou and her dolls. As Paul Roberts has written, "part of the power of Children's Corner lies in the impression it conveys of simplicity in which profundity lies, the simplicity that we strive to recapture in the adult world, having lost what as children we had so naturally." Robert Schumann (1810-56). Kinderszenen, op. 15 In 1837, after Schumann became engaged to Clara Wieck, her father, Friedrich, who was determined to break them up, took Clara on a concert tour to Vienna. In March 1838 Schumann wrote to her that he had just composed some thirty droll little things, from which I have selected a dozen or so and called them Kinderszenen. You will enjoy them - though you will have to forget you are a virtuoso. They have titles like ' By the Fireside,' 'Catch-as-catch-can,' 'Pleading Child,' 'Ride a Hobbyhorse,' 'From Distant Lands,' and so forth . You can sec what they are like - and they are easy to carry off. The titles, which were added as guides for the performer, reflect the Romantic belief that inspiration can be drawn from one world and transmuted into the values of the other. Kinderszenen are not pieces for children; they are addressed to adults. These vignettes, cast in either binary or ternary form, are, as Schumann wrote, "reminiscences of a grownup for grownups;" "Der Dichter spricht" serves as an epilogue. Each of these miniatures, which had wide and instant appeal, is a cameo with its own istinctive qualities. The challenge for the performer is to unite them into a whole. Frederic Chopin (1810-49). Twelve Eludes, op. 10 After Chopin played his first public concert in Paris on 26 February 1832, Frarn;ois-Joseph Fetis wrote in the Revue musicale: Beethoven has composed pianoforte music, but I speak here of pianists' music, and it is by comparison with the latter that I find in M. Chopin's inspirations an indication of a renewal of forms which in time may exercise much influence over this department of the art. Fetis's words were prophetic. Chopin's music led composers to a new direction in piano music, and Schumann's advocacy in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (6 February 1836) was a significant factor in its growing popularity and acceptance. The etudes, which are dedicated to Liszt, were probably written between 1829-32; only a few have been dated precisely. In them, as James Sampson maintains, Chopin "addressed himself systematically to the world of pianistic technique which had spawned the virtuoso style." But these technical studies rise above the dry exercises of Carl Czerny (1791-1857), J. B. Cramer (1771-1858), Friedrich Kalbrenner (1785-1849), or Sigismond Thal berg (1812-71 ): Chopin gave them poetry. Like Czerny, Chopin remained true to the didactic idea of addressing one principal technical problem in each exercise. The first etude is designed for the contraction and extension of the right hand. The a minor etude, with its emphasis on finger crossings and melodic figuration, is a virtuoso piece. Abandoning the monothematic idea for the third etude, Chopin focuses on the control of the legato melodic line. The fifth and sixth etudes date from 1830. The so-called "Black-Key" etude in G~ major is a bravura exercise with a toccata-like motive. With its expressive use of appoggiaturas and chromatic harmonies, the e~ minor etude has a brooding intensity. It is a contrapuntal study that requires careful control of the various layers. The seventh and eighth etudes, in C and F, respectively, break the pattern established in the first six of tonal pairings (the major key and its relative minor). The f minor etude is unique because it is directed towards the control of the wide-spread, left-hand accompaniment. All of the previous etudes focused on right-hand technique. The A~ major etude, an exercise in cross rhythms and shifting accents, demands technical dexterity from both hands. The B major etude, with its extended arpeggio chords in both hands in I: 1 writing, requires tremendous control to allow the melody and countermelody to emerge from the textural fabric. Written in 1831 at the time of the final suppression of the Polish uprising against the Russians, "The Revolutionary Etude" in c minor is the most famous of the op. 10 eludes. Here Chopin has turned attention to a legatissimo control of the left-hand, figurated arpeggios. These op. 10 etudes, begun when Chopin was only eighteen, are a compendium of keyboard resources. As Fetis predicted and Arthur Hedley noted, the op. 10 eludes are a remarkable contribution to the literature of the piano . . . . These pieces ar extraordinarily mature: no trace of stumbling. The lad of eighteen set out to write technical exercises and ended creating a new genre, the etude as we know it, wherein material for technical study is made the vehicle for the expression of a deeper musical conception. Mary I. Arlin 

Guest Artist Recital: Frederic Chiu, piano

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6216&context=music_programs

Guest Artist Recital: Frederic Chiu, piano

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Ithaca College