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NOTES FROM LOUIS LORTIE

Anniversaries in recent years have given pianistsan “excuse” to revisit geniuses such as Chopin,Schumann, and Liszt. As I was looking into the2013 anniversary year, I noted that the two maincomposers were Wagner and Verdi, certainly notfamous for their piano compositions.

Having been immersed in Liszt’s works for thepast couple of seasons, I thought it would be fas-cinating to look at the opera world of the 19thcentury distilled for the concert hall, mostly bythat supreme master of transcriptions.

Although there is an occasional recording featur-ing such works, it is still rare to hear a wholeevening of orchestral paraphrases in recital. Thegenre has often been regarded as a shallow dis-play of keyboard pyrotechnics for young virtu-osos seeking instant fame.

I decided that it would be a nice challenge to as-semble a collection of works that would givesome “lettres de noblesse” to music that has greatdepth and survives the absence of argument andtext very well, with the bare bones of the musicitself gaining a totally different layer. I think thisis well in line with the meaning of the experienceof a recital today, with that je-ne-sais-quoi thatcannot be accessed through the internet or theexperience of recorded music. –Louis Lortie

Louis Lortie

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Saturday, January 26, 2013, 8pmSoka Performing Arts Center

LOUIS LORTIE GOES TO THE OPERA

Louis Lortie, piano

Prelude (trans. Lortie) and Richard WAGNERLiebestod (trans. Liszt) from (1813-1883)Tristan und Isolde

Fire music from Die Walküre(trans. Hugo Wolf )

Réminiscences de Don Juan, MOZART/LISZTA Concert Paraphrase (1756 -1791)

I NT ERM I S S I ON

Siegfried Idyll Richard WAGNER(trans. Josef Rubinstein)

Overture to Tannhäuser WAGNER/LISZT

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Richard Wagner

so profound that with his passing, she too mustdie, here with music of extraordinary beauty.Liszt’s transcription dates from 1867, only twoyears after the opera’s premiere.

WAGNER: “MAGIC FIRE MUSIC” FROMdie Walküre (TRANSCRIBED BY HUGOWOLF)

It is the closing scene of the second of the four op-eras that make up Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle. TheValkyrie Brünnhilde, having broken the laws ofthe gods, is to be punished by Wotan, king of thegods, who is her father. He would rather forgiveher, but the laws forbid it. She will be placed in amagic sleep and left on a rock, protected by a ringof fire, and there she shall remain until the great-est of all heroes comes to awaken her.

Wagner’s music for the scene blends melodic frag-ments that represent sleep (a drowsy, fallingphrase), fire (a lively, nervously dancing phrase),and the hero himself (bold and declamatory).Austrian composer/pianist Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), a great admirer of Wagner’s works, wasmoved to transcribe it for solo piano.

Tonight’s Louis Lortie recital is an evening at theopera. One would not generally find pianos onstage at the opera, but piano transcriptions ofscenes from operas have long been popular. Noless a master than Franz Liszt (1811-1886) wasaccustomed to performing such creations on hisown recitals, and crafted dozens of such tran-scriptions himself, focusing the grandeur of operainto a single pair of hands at the keyboard. Sev-eral of Liszt’s transcriptions are featured tonight,along with some by other artists, including Lortiehimself. No orchestra, no singers, and yet plentyof fine opera music: that’s our menu for theevening.

WAGNER: TrisTan und isolde –PRELUDE (TRANSCRIBED BY LOUISLORTIE) AND LIEBESTOD (TRAN-SCRIBED BY LISzT)

Of all the many composers whose works Liszttranscribed, the most frequent name is that ofRichard Wagner (1813-1883); the two men werecolleagues, close in age, and more briefly in-laws.They already knew each other well at the timethat Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde premieredJune 10, 1865. At that time, its opening preludewas already familiar to many, as it had been per-formed separately from the opera as early as1857. That prelude became infamous for its un-usual harmonies, and its melodies derived fromtaking those harmonies and playing their individ-ual notes sequentially. It was a radically new wayof working with harmony, and at the time, it wassolely Wagner’s.

Liszt never found the time to transcribe the prel-ude for piano, so Mr. Lortie has crafted his ownversion. However, Liszt did turn his attention tothe opposite end of the opera, the famed“Liebestod,” or “love-death.” In the original ver-sion, it is an extended closing scene for the fea-tured soprano. After much turmoil, Isolde hasseen her beloved Tristan die and now faces herown death: not from a weapon’s blow or from ill-ness, but from love. Her feelings for Tristan are

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other and also for their children. The youngest ofthose children, Siegfried, was then a toddler,though his parents had been married for only afew months. Originally intended for chamber en-semble, it was transcribed for piano by Josef Ru-binstein, a close friend of the Wagners.

LISzT: OvERTURE TO Tannhäuser

Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser premiered in Dresdenon October 19, 1845. Four years later, with itscomposer in political exile in Switzerland, Liszttranscribed several sections of the work for soloperformance in his recitals. In so doing, he wasable to remind listeners what they were missingwith Wagner being forcibly away.

Like many an opera overture, this one draws uponsome of the big musical moments from the operaitself, most prominently the title character’s pas-sionate love song and a chorus of pilgrims passingby the Wartburg Castle in central Germany. It is,by turns, ecstatic or reverent, and makes the mostof the varied sound colors that an extraordinarilygifted pianist, such as Liszt, could draw forth fromthe instrument.

© Program notes by Betsy Schwarm, author of “Classical Music Insights” and “Operatic Insights”

LISzT: REMINISCENCES OF don Juan

Not a transcription of a single scene fromMozart’s powerful opera Don Giovanni, this is in-stead a new composition in which Liszt blendsvarious themes from different scenes of the opera,each given his own personal interpretation. Hencethe title, for here he is reminiscing about theopera, and the feelings it provoked in him.

The work begins with the intimidating statuemusic of the Commendatore, which in the operaappears in the overture, though also in the penul-timate scene when the Commendatore’s statue hascome to take Giovanni off to hell. Then he treatsthe duet “La ci darem la mano” from Act I, whenGiovanni is doing his best to seduce a not-en-tirely-reluctant bride. Lastly, he moves on to Gio-vanni’s effervescent Champagne Aria, from Act I,its nimble figurations ideally suited to Liszt’s ex-travagant technique.

Dating from 1841, the score proves Liszt’s aware-ness of how positively his audiences receivedvividly colored interpretations of familiar operathemes. It is as though Liszt were declaring, “Re-member how it used to sound? Here’s how I’dhave done it if it were mine.”

WAGNER: siegfried idyll (TRANSCRIBED BY JOSEF RUBINSTEIN)

Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, written in 1870 as a birth-day gift for his second wife Cosima, derived itsthemes from earlier compositions. One is the1876 opera Siegfried, from which he borrowed thehorn call and the melody of the forest bird, as wellas the major love theme, a theme that is sung withgreat force and exuberance on stage, but heretakes on a far more gentle character. Wagner alsoquoted melodies from an uncompleted stringquartet he had sketched some years before and alullaby that he had composed in 1868. Combined,the two themes comprise a domestic portrait, lyri-cally depicting the love of the parents for each

LOUIS LORTIE, PIANO

French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has attractedcritical acclaim throughout Europe, Asia, and theUnited States, not least for extending his interpretativevoice across a broad repertoire range rather than choos-ing to specialise in one particular style. The LondonTimes, describing his playing as “ever immaculate, everimaginative,” has identified the artist’s “combination oftotal spontaneity and meditated ripeness that onlygreat pianists have.”

Celebrated for his interpretation of Beethoven, Mr.Lortie has performed complete sonata cycles at Lon-don’s Wigmore Hall, Toronto’s Ford Center, Berlin’sPhilharmonie, and the Sala Grande del ConservatorioGiuseppe Verdi in Milan. Die Welt described his Berlinperformances as “possibly the finest Beethoven sincethe time of Wilhelm Kempff.” With the Montréal Sym-phony, as both pianist and conductor, he has performedall five Beethoven Concertos and all of the Mozart Con-certos.

Mr. Lortie has also won widespread acclaim for his interpretations of Ravel and Chopin. He performedthe complete works of Ravel in London and Montréal for the BBC and CBC, and is renowned all over theworld for his recitals of Chopin’s complete Etudes. Of his Queen Elizabeth Hall recital, the FinancialTimes wrote: “Better Chopin playing than this is not to be heard, not anywhere.”

In 2011 Louis Lortie celebrated the bicentenary of Liszt’s birth by performing the complete Années de Pè-lerinage at Germany’s Liszt Kunstfest Weimar, Berlin’s Radialsystem, the Bayreuth Festival and RheingauMusik Festival, the Aldeburgh Music–Snape Proms, Brussels Radio 3 Festival, Lisbon’s Centro de Belem,New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, in Portland, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Orange County,Toronto, Ottawa and Washington D.C., at the Savannah Festival and opened the 2011-12 Cliburn Con-certs Series.

Other 2011-12 engagements included playing with and conducting the Kremerata Baltica at La Scala diMilano, Slovenian Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony and the Quebec Symphony, concerts with the TorontoSymphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Sydney, Bournemouth, Saint Louis,Calgary, North Carolina, San Diego and Oklahoma City, and a performance of the Brahms Piano ConcertoNo. 2 at the Brussels Brahms Festival.

Louis Lortie has performed with, among other conductors, Riccardo Chailly, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur,Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Sanderling, Neeme Järvi, Sir Andrew Davis, Wolfgang Sawallisch, SirMark Elder and Osmo Vänskä. He has also been involved in many chamber music projects, with musicianssuch as Frank Peter Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Jan Vogler, AugustinDumay, and the Takács and Tokyo Quartets. His regular piano-duo partner is fellow Canadian HélèneMercier, with whom he has made successful recordings on the Chandos label.

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Louis Lortie (Photo: Elias)