Recital: Hongzhen Wang '24 DMA, 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.
Hongzhen Wang '24 DMA studies Piano with Bruce Brubaker and is the recipient of the Emil Danenberg Scholarship and the Tan Family Foundation Scholarship.
This performance will be viewable in-person and via livestream.
- Hongzhen Wang '24 DMA, piano
- Bruce Brubaker, studio teacher
Johann Sebastian Bach | Overture in the French Style in B Minor, BWV 831
Overture
Courante
Gavotte I, II
Passepied I, II
Sarabande
Bourrée I, II
Gigue
EchoProgram note
The original title of this work is Ouvertüre nach Französischer Art. It is also known as the French Overture and was published as the second half of Clavier-Übung II in 1735 (paired with the Italian Concerto). It was written by J. S. Bach during his late period in Leipzig when he was the cantor of the St. Thomas Church and director of the Leipzig collegium musicum. Numerous keyboard works and sacred church music were composed during the Leipzig years. In 1733, J. S. Bach also wrote a Kyrie-Gloria Mass in B Minor (BWV 232I/232a) which he later incorporated into the well-known B Minor Mass (BWV 232), eventually completing it in 1749, one year before his death.
Also in B Minor, the French Overture is a suite, written for two-manual harpsichord. An earlier version of this work exists, in the key of C Minor (BWV 831a); the work was transposed into B Minor to complete the cycle of tonalities in Parts One and Two of the Clavier-Übung. In the 1650s, Jean-Baptiste Lully’s ballet overtures emerged and the “overture” quickly became the usual introduction for an opera, ballet, or suite. In the mid-18th century, it gradually became more flexible and dramatic in an approach, particularly with the Italian sinfonia.
J. S. Bach manifested a serious and sustained interest in the suite throughout his career. This suite has eleven movements, starting with an overture movement – a slow, grand introduction with dotted rhythms, followed by a lively fugal section and closing with a more ornate version of the opening section. In most cases, an allemande would appear here in Bach’s other keyboard suites, but not in this one. Afterwards, an energetic courante proceed the remaining dance movements: a pair of gavottes with the stylistic feature of notes inégales; a pair of passepieds in triple meter, both sets moving from minor to major and back; a gracious sarabande with melancholy emotions; two rapid bourrées; and a lively gigue, characterized by a hurried dotted figure in 6/8 time. Most listeners might expect the suite to end here.
However, Bach held back one more trick: an “echo,” featuring loud and soft dynamics. These echo effects could be achieved on a harpsichord with two manuals. Other movements also have dynamic indications, which are not often found in keyboard suites of the Baroque period. This is the longest keyboard suite composed by J.S. Bach.Modest Mussorgsky | Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)
Promenade
Gnomus (The Gnome)
– Moderato comodo assai e con delicatezza
Il Vecchio Castello (The Old Castle)
– Moderato non tanto, pesantemente
Tuileries
(Dispute between Children after Play)
Bydło (Cattle)
– Tranquillo
Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
“Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle”
Promenade
Limoges, the Market
Catacombae (Roman Tomb)
– With the Dead in a Dead Language
The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga)
The Heroic Gate (in the Old Capital of Kiev)Program note
Besides Mussorgsky’s only opera Boris Godunov (written in between 1868-1873), Pictures at an Exhibition (composed in 1874) is considered his most influential composition. It has been transcribed countless times by many musicians. Ravel’s orchestral transcription from 1922 is the most well-known one, whose masterful orchestration has become the standard nowadays, but Mussorgsky’s original piano work remains compelling and incomparable. It is a creatively energetic artwork, a memorial tribute to his close friend Viktor Hartmann, a Russian architect and painter who died at the age of thirty-nine in 1873. Motivated by Hartmann’s drawings in 1870 at the St. Petersburg industrial exhibition, this piano suite consists of a promenade and five interludes with ten additional movements.
The term “suite” describes the form and contents only insufficiently here. It is a cycle, constructed systematically on several levels, of programmatic miniatures connected by a poetic idea and musical bridges. If we consider designating a model, Robert Schumann’s Carnaval op. 9 (1834/35) is the most obvious, for the poetic images, the self-portrait, thoughts of friends, and the musical-thematic material itself. The recurrence of the promenade theme in varied interludes symbolizes the movement from place to place while walking through the exhibition; it imitates Russian folk songs with their alternation between precentor and choral answer. The “Gnomus” has long descending chromatic lines and the absence of meters, represent the gnome that Hartmann illustrated in his drawing as a nutcracker. “The Old Castle” is a melancholy medieval tune which Mussorgsky imagined the troubadour to be singing in Hartmann’s painting. “Tuileries” is based on a watercolor featuring quarreling children. “Bydło” depicts two oxen pulling a Polish cart with huge wheels, and making plodding progress. In the “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks,” Hartmann sketched costumes for a children’s ballet, alongside spirits, elves, mermaids, and dancing children who are costumed as canaries and chickens hatching out of their shells. Mussorgsky evokes the characters in “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle” with augmented, melodic intervals in high and low registers differentiating the two figures. “The Market at Limoges” depicts a group of women quarreling at the market. “Catacombs'' depicts Hartman’s watercolor sketch of his tour in the Parisian catacombs; Mussorgsky relocated the crypt scene to Roman Antiquity by using ersatz Latin titles without a command of Latin. “The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba-Yaga)” was inspired by Hartmann’s sketch of a decorative clock fashioned in the form of the Russian witch Baba-Yaga’s wooden hut on fowl's legs. The ending of this cycle, “The Heroic Gate of Kiev,” depicting a city gate in Kiev that was to be built to commemorate Tsar Alexander II’s escape in 1866 from an assassination attempt. In Hartmann’s picture, the gate is designed with sophisticated details in a traditionally Russian style, crowned by an enormous slavic helmet. It is the symbol of a warrior’s heroism that inspires the victorious character of the final piece. Mussorgsky celebrates the glorious light after the dark image of the Baba-Yaga and brings the entire cycle to a monumental ending