Recital: Ga-Young Park '25 DMA, Collaborative Piano
In the course of completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at New England Conservatory, performance majors present not just one, but three full-length recitals, for which they also write program notes. It's an opportunity to observe multiple facets of an emerging artist.
Ga-Young Park ‘25 DMA studies Collaborative Piano with Cameron Stowe and Jonathan Feldman.
This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live
- Ga-Young Park '25 DMA, piano
- Heechan Ku, cello
- Jimin Park and Mara Riley, soprano
- Cameron Stowe, studio teacher
- Jonathan Feldman, studio teacher
Johannes Brahms | Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, op. 38 (1865)
Allegro non troppo
Allegretto quasi Menuetto
AllegroProgram note
Johannes Brahms played a crucial role in German Romanticism, revitalizing the genre of chamber music. In contrast to many 19th century composers who were more interested in combining music with texts, Brahms focused more on instrumental music. In the early 1860s, Brahms wrote a String Sextet, two Piano Quartets, and a Piano Quintet in F minor. After completing these chamber pieces, Brahms composed his first duo piece for cello, the Cello Sonata in E minor, op.38, in 1862. In this piece, Brahms intersperses the musical elements from the Baroque and Classical periods with his new musical identity. Brahms uses a conventional structure: the first movement is sonata Allegro form in E minor; the second movement is minuet-trio, which recalls baroque dances; and the last movement is the combination of the fugue with sonata form. Especially in the last movement, Brahms uses melodical ideas from Bach’s The Art of Fugue, Contrapunctus 13. However, in the Cello Sonata Brahms also applies his own rhythmical concepts, such as multiple layers, hemiola, and polyrhythms, creating ambiguity by breaking the expected pulse. As a result, unlike other 19th and 20th century composers and critics who considered Brahms “old-fashioned,” the modernist Arnold Schoenberg regarded Brahms as a progressive composer who actually freed the conventional musical elements by using irregular and asymmetrical musical elements.
Artists- Heechan Ku, cello
Alban Berg | Sieben frühe Lieder (1907)
Nacht
Schilflied
Die Nachtigall
Traumgekrönt
Im Zimmer
Liebesode
SommertageProgram note
Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg are representatives of late Romantic and German Expressionism in the 20th century. As both lived in fin-de-siècle Vienna, they felt the increasing anxiety of the Viennese society due to the approaching doom of the Habsburg Empire. Their music expresses the emotions of fear, isolation, and anxiety which are at the core of the artistic language of many modernists. Even though the Berg pieces I chose for today's recital are all about love, beneath the surface they express an underlying anxiety and insecurity.
Among Second Viennese School composers, Berg shows the most expressive lyricism in his music, especially in his nearly 150 art songs. Berg composed Sieben frühe lieder (1907)from 1905 to 1908. 1907 was an important year for Berg in that he met Helene Nahowski, who would later become his wife. They truly loved each other and remained married for the rest of their lives, 28 years. Berg considered her the archetype of perfect humanity; she was his shelter, support and security. Helene felt the same depth of feeling for Berg, writing in her memoir, “For twenty-eight years I lived in the paradise of his love.”
Throughout his life, Berg expressed his love for her in his music and letters. Berg dedicated most of the pieces to Helene as gifts around 1907, including Sieben frühe lieder and the first setting of Schließe mir die Augen beide. In Berg’s letters to her, he quoted poems, including Traumgekrönt and Liebesode. In a letter to her written on August 3rd, 1909, Berg described the perfect day he wanted to spend with her and referenced part of Traumgekrönt: “We should blissfully fall asleep in the arms of love….. Such a day would be worth the most miserable, tormented life; worth death itself.”
Although the seven songs were written in his early period, they not only show his rich Romanticism, but also anticipate his late atonal style. Berg uses several conventional musical elements, such as settled tonality and simple ternary form, as well as contrapuntal texture with many voices which creates rich sounds. However, Berg also makes bold experiments through ambiguous chromaticism and whole tone sonorities.Artists- Jimin Park, soprano
Alban Berg | Schließe mir die Augen beide (1907 and 1925)
Schließe mir die Augen beide (1907)
Jimin Park, soprano
Schließe mir die Augen beide (1925)
Mara Riley, sopranoProgram note
Berg composed two songs based on the same poem, Schließe mir die Augen beide by Theodor Storm, in 1907 and 1925. Berg’s music style can be divided into three periods according to his varying compositional techniques: tonal (late Romanticism), atonal, and twelve-tone technique (dodecaphony). The two settings show how his musical style shifted. The first version exhibits Berg’s late Romantic lyricism in tonal language with a simple chordal texture, while the second version is his first experiment using a twelve-tone technique.
While the first setting of Schließe mir die Augen beide is dedicated to Helene, the second setting is for another woman, Hanna Fuchs. Berg met Hanna in 1925, and she was a major part of the transformation of his life and music. In a letter to her on July 23rd, 1925, Berg wrote “For you must know: I am no longer myself since this greatest of events…… One thought alone animates me, one desire, one longing: you!” Their love story was discovered posthumously around fifty years after he died. Many scholars agree that most of the pieces written after 1925—including Schließe mir die Augen beide, Lyric Suite, and Lulu—were secretly dedicated to Hanna Fuchs. While after 1925 Berg’s life revolved around Hanna, he also suffered from the guilt of this love affair. This insecure emotional turmoil affected his music a great deal.
In the second setting written in 1925, Berg experimented for the first time with the twelve-tone technique. The prime row is (F-E-C-A-G-D-Ab-Db-Eb-Gb-Bb-B), which recalls Hanna Fuchs’s name: the first note (F) and the last note (B natural is H in German) are her initials.Arnold Schoenberg | from Brettl Lieder
Der genügsame Liebhaber
Gigerlette
Galathea
Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien (1901)Program note
One of the fun parts of being a musician is learning something new about a composer which changes the way I perceive their work. Schoenberg is one who has surprised me a lot. My first impression of Schoenberg was that he was a serious person who composed dark, difficult, and complicated music and painted self-portraits with dark and gloomy colors. I was glad to realize I had misunderstood him. By chance I discovered his Brettl-Lieder cabaret music score, which featured his colorful and unique paintings of playing cards. I also learned that he designed many crafts, including his own unique chess game, tape dispensers, and various useful tools.
His cabaret music itself was not dark and gloomy, but rather sexual, fun, and light. Eroticism was important for Viennese artists, including Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Frank Wedekind, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. Even though their ideas about women were not enlightened, they used sexual frankness, as well as their artistic language, to attack the conventional, repressive, and hypocritical fin-de-siecle Viennese culture.
Schoenberg wrote his Brettl-Lieder over six months in 1901, in his early period. Schoenberg was hired as kapellmeister by Überbrettl, which was the first German cabaret inspired by Le Chat, the French cabaret. This cabaret music presents Schoenberg’s humor, simplicity, and sexuality in the tonal world. The poems of the Brettl-Lieder are bold, direct, and open about sexuality, and the music reflects this through detailed word painting and diverse piano articulation, such as trills and slurs that represent tickling and heavy breathing.Artists- Mara Riley, soprano