On Tuesday, October 16, at 7:30 p.m., Murray Perahia will perform a program that spans the rich piano repertoire of Western classical music, from Bach and Beethoven to Brahms and Chopin. This performance will kick-off Seattle Symphony Orchestra's 2007–2008 Distinguished Artists Recital series which also includes Yefim Bronfman on November 28, 2007; Gil Shaham on January 22, 2008; and Lang Lang on March 26, 2008.
American pianist Murray Perahia was awarded an honorary KBE by Her Majesty The Queen of England in 2004. Perahia is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, with whom he has toured as conductor and pianist throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia. His illustrious recording career has garnered him a Grammy for his recording of Bach's English Suites (Nos. 1, 3 and 6), as well as two Grammy nominations for his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Born in New York, Perahia started playing piano at age 4 and later attended Mannes College, where he majored in conducting and composition. In 1972, he won the Leeds International Piano Competition. He collaborated with Rudolf Serkin, Pablo Casals and the members of the Budapest String Quartet and developed a close friendship with Vladimir Horowitz. He worked closely with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, accompanying the latter in many lieder recitals. Perahia served as Co-Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival (1981–89) and is an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. He holds an honorary doctorate from Leeds University.
The program begins with Johann Sebastian Bach's fourth Partita, announcing itself with a two-part movement that opens with an imposing and essentially homophonic grave. Of the many Allemandes that appear in Bach's music, the one inhabiting the D-major Partita conveys an unparalleled depth of emotion. Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D major, as a whole, eschews the intense drama we associate with the composer. The publisher-added title, "Pastoral," likely derived from the bucolic nature of the first and fourth movements, especially the latter's dance-inspired rhythms. Whether taken singly or as a whole, Johannes Brahms' Six Piano Pieces provide both contrast and continuity. Clara Schumann wrote, "It is wonderful how he combines passion and tenderness in the smallest of spaces…these new things absorb me completely."
The second half of the program includes two Études and a Ballade by Frédéric Chopin. Fellow composer Robert Schumann likened the first Op. 25 Étude in A-flat to an "Aeolian harp," writing, "throughout all the harmonies, one always heard in great tones a wondrous melody…a feeling came over one as of having seen in a dream a beatific picture which, when half awake, one would gladly recall." Chopin's gift for unexpected, modern-sounding harmonic progressions is evidenced in the C-sharp minor Étude, Op. 10, No. 4. This energetic study challenges and rewards the pianist capable of plunging through its myriad difficulties. Chopin based his Ballade No. 3 on a poem, "Ondine," in which a maiden is transformed into a water sprite. Franz Liszt claimed that Chopin improvised it on the spot. -- www.seattlesymphony.org
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