Evren Ozel: Notes on the Program
“Daring, intimate spontaneity”
The current era forces us to think anew about the value of human thought and talent. Given that we could already have capitulated and given ChatGPT a stab at program note writing and creating editorial content, if not quite hire a bot to come play a recital, it still amazes, inspires and thrills us to dwell on the inimitable genius of timeless music and consummate musicianship. Statistics on the realities of being a concert pianist today are sobering (and take just seconds to retrieve with AI): While there are at least 74,000 “professional pianists” out there, fewer than 1% end up at the very top, making the job at least as stressful and precarious as that of a professional athlete. But this still doesn’t pierce to the heart of why we’re all sitting in this hall, eagerly awaiting the appearance of a phenomenally talented human being. We’ve watched Evren excel at The Cliburn, we’ve listened to the pieces he’s chosen to program today, and we can declare without a doubt that no machine can replicate the sheer human spirit that we’ll experience today. The thoughtful pairing of works, the meticulous combination of extreme physicality and intellect, the immediacy and singularity of this recital on this day can only be captured in our tagline for Evren’s performance: Daring, intimate spontaneity.
Thus, what does this phrase mean? A willingness to challenge conventions, to take risks and to push boundaries, both technically and conceptually. And how? By re-imagining existing forms, subverting expectations, provoking emotion.
Enjoy the program, dear listeners. It’s a one-off, unique, human endeavor of the highest caliber.
DOMENICO SCARLATTI
Sonata in G Major, K. 427
Sonata in C Minor, K. 11
Sonata in C Major, K. 159
“Scarlatti got to know the colorful, major-to-minor music of Andalusia, influenced, like that of Portugal, by the centuries-long domination of the Moors, and applied his highly inventive ear to harmonies from beyond the conventional palette of the baroque.” (Robert White, The Guardian)
Scarlatti was certainly a citizen of the world before such a term was coined. Born in Italy, the son of the most famous opera composer of the late Baroque, the young Domenico spent the first years of his professional career at the court of the Portuguese royal family as music tutor to Princess Maria Barbara. He later followed her to Spain, where he would spend the greater part of his life (first in Seville, later in Madrid) composing music for court events and private use. His estimated 555 keyboard sonatas (painstakingly chronologically catalogued in the 1960s by one Ralph Kirkpatrick, hence the “K” number) vary in length, difficulty and character, but in all of them his “cosmopolitanism” shines through in the exotic echoes of Andalucian and Iberian folk music. In plainer terms: His rhythms sound like they could also be strummed on a guitar, with a certain percussive quality, and his melodies often lean on the Phrygian mode (a scale with a lowered second note, which makes it sound just a bit more “foreign” than the natural minor).
The Sonata in G Major, K. 427, is marked “presto sia quanto possible” – literally “as fast as the performer can manage” to me says something about the composer’s nature: Just a little bit naughty! There’s something devilish and daring in a piece that sounds simple and bright yet demands agility of the first order.
Sonata in C Minor, K. 11 reels in the enthusiasm with a slower, more melancholy approach. Maybe the impish child rushing through his piano homework got a scolding, and now has to repent for his foolishness? I love the descending quarter-note pattern in the treble (G-F-E-D, G-F-E-D) that comes in in the fifth bar, with its singing, almost lamenting tone. What words can we attach to it? “I am grateful, I am grateful” comes to mind. For how quickly just a few notes can shift an atmosphere. For how miraculously just 2 minutes and 45 seconds of music can change a mood.
With the Sonata in C Major, K.159, we’re securely back in major territory, and the joyful sunshine has returned. Don’t the trills and the bouncy articulation conjure images of galloping on a pony, or skipping rocks on a pond? To my ear, there is a distincly Spanish-sounding quality, particularly in the second theme or B-section, where the accented, alternately repeating top notes (G, F, G, F, G, the fourth and fifth of the C major scale) against syncopated clusters in left have the insistence of a strumming guitar. It’s marked “Allegro” – lively or cheerful – and pianists vary in their interpretation of just how speedy that should be. Regardless of the exact tempo, I think we can agree that it’s a life-affirming, happy dance from the past.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Sonata No. 30 in E Major, op. 109
“With Beethoven we have the subterranean next to the stratospheric.” (Alfred Brendel)
Beethoven sonatas – and especially the last three of the 32 – are no foreigners to the PPI stage. The last time we heard op. 109 was when Clayton Stephenson performed it in 2024; the first time was back in the 1984/1985 season when Radu Lupu chose to include it in his program. But here’s the thing about timeless repertoire: It always sounds new. Every interpreter brings his or her own signature to the work; every moment in history brings its own backdrop to our particular hearing. It’s as if the music has always just been there, like a giant sequoia in a forest, and we just happen to walk by to take our picture with it.
With a work this famous and as widely recorded, it’s hard to bring anything “new” to the program notes. Your Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot will also be able to tell you that Beethoven started working on in 1820; that the theme-and-variations third movement is highly unusual for a sonata; that Liszt frequently featured this work in his programs.
What subjective listening will tell you, though, is that this sonata, to my ears, sounds like water: a bubbly brook in the short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long upbeat opening pattern of the first movement; stormy rapids and sharp rocks in the second movement; calm seas in the languid, lyrical last. The essence of the sonata lies in three basic chords: E major, E minor, back to E major. There’s a constant forward motion, a propelling force that drives us onwards, onwards – cyclical like vapor to rain to river.
The profundity of the ending prompted Sir Andras Schiff to say that applause would be inappropriate after this piece. We leave it to you to make that call (or not!).
BÉLA BARTÓK
Out of Doors, Sz. 81
Even though their sound worlds couldn’t be any more different – it’s quite a shift, going from the floaty ending of the previous half to the opening stomping of this one! – Bartók wouldn’t have been Bartók without Beethoven. From playing the Waldstein sonata at his first public recital in 1892 to explicitly citing the influence of Beethoven on his approach to form, it is impossible not to recognize the same boldness and striving in the two composers.
Out of Doors – 5 distinct character pieces that may or may not have been intended as a suite, although most often performed as such – was composed in 1926, in what latterly would be called Bartók’s “piano year” (his Piano Sonata and First Piano Concerto also date from that year). It came after a period of limited compositional activity, at a time when the composer (and the world) was still reeling in the aftermath of the First World War. At our present moment, where the arbitrary nature of borders are again in the spotlight, let us be reminded that, after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the Hungary of Bartók’s birth was diminished by 72% of its historical territory and 65% of its population, leading to widespread political chaos, hyperinflation and expanding bureaucracy. One of the results of this fractured landscape, which the BBC3 musicologist Tom Service calls “the violent creative tectonics of musical and political history,” was that Bartók’s fieldwork, collecting folk music outside of Hungary, was halted. But despite the frustration this surely must have caused, it also led to focused and concerted integration of those idioms into his own compositional voice. As with all of his piano compositions from this time, Out of Doors is marked by Bartók’s treatment of the piano as a percussion instrument, the depiction of nature sounds in an eerily literal, almost abrasive way and the free, almost improvisatory character of folk melody and rhythm. It’s impressive to watch as well as to listen to, which makes seeing it in live performance so doubly rewarding.
GABRIEL FAURÉ
Nocturne No. 4 in E-flat Major, op. 36
“The nocturne is not a definite musical form. It is a psychological mood, a state of mind. The nocturne is the most complete realization of man at peace with the magic of the elements.” (Émile Vuillermoz)
Where Bartók’s “Night music” is unsettling and ominous, Fauré takes us somewhere safe and warm. If before, we were exposed to the elements and the bugs, now we are being tucked into a cozy bed with warm blankets, floating away to dream sweet dreams. Not that there is anything saccharine or overly sentimental about Fauré’s “Nocturne!” It just goes to show how endlessly diverse the yearnings of the human heart can be: Where one composer hopes to convey the rough edges and biting realities of this world as accurately as can be, another strives to get us as far away from it as possible. To quote Fauré himself: “To my mind art, and above all music, consists in lifting us as far as possible above what is.”
Lifting is exactly what Nocturne No. 4 does, from the simple, sinuous opening theme to the hypnotic fantasy that develops from there. Although the nocturne is most readily associated with Chopin, there is no denying that Fauré found a uniquely personal voice in this particular genre. He wrote nocturnes throughout his career (18 in total, highly recommended as an antidote to the evening news), with the first dating from 1883 and the last from 1922, transcending the realities of his daily life one luscious melody at a time. (Today’s op. 36 was composed around 1884.) His difficult status as establishment “outsider”, an almost impossible work-life balance and, in middle age, the onset of deafness all made his compositional achievements hard won. The delightful Nocturnes are a microcosm of Fauré’s development towards what his own son described as a “poised equilibrium.”
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Carnaval, op. 9
It’s peculiar how words and their associations change over time. Say the prefix “crypto-” and 99% of you would probably mentally fill in “-currency”. Back in Robert Schumann’s day, however, the most common kind of “crypto” was the word cryptogram – referring to secret messages encoded in words or initials. Carnaval – an extended cryptogram on the letters A-S-C-H, S-C-H-A and their pitch equivalents (in the German musical system, the letter H refers to a B on the piano keyboard, while S or “Es” equals E flat) – is certainly more clearly linked to the real world than any form of virtual currency. Consisting of 21 short pieces expressing the spirit of carnival (the festival preceding Lent, or Faschung in German; Mardi Gras to Americans), Schumann brings to light not only the various opposing traits in his own character, but also playfully depicts the quirks of a number of his friends, a few celebrities, and a handful of stock characters from popular culture. Dedicated to his then-fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, Carnaval is a fun, frolicking romp filled with the imagination, energy and zest for life belonging to a brilliant composer in his early twenties, secretly engaged, busy making a name for himself as the publisher of a music magazine championing the most advanced musical thinking of the times.
It's a musicologist’s dream, diving into the world of Carnaval – so many hidden references, so many fun codes to decipher! But also, and more important, it’s a listener’s joy. A story unfolds before us of an elaborate masked ball where barely masked revelers mingle and make merry. I say “barely” because, as in the case of masquerade balls, the concealment is more about adding mystery and excitement than about truly hiding anything. Schumann’s characters are instantly recognizable and easily distinguished: His descriptive titles basically name-tag them at the outset; the music then spills the rest, from the dramatic to the whimsical, the noble to the dreamy. There is the clumsy Harlequin flip-flopping, the flirtatious girl hiccupping from one drink too many, the dancing lovers, the stomping grandpas outshone by the brazen young men. No matter which element of the festivities you most enjoy – be it the snapshots of personas (virtuosic Paganini; evocative Chopin) or the cryptographic insight that “Chiarina” refers to Clara Wieck, who was at the time of composing only 16 years old and five years away from becoming his wife – Carnaval is “daring, intimate spontaneity” made audible!