Piano Sonata (1987)
for solo piano [10 mins.]
Commissioned by Viennese pianist Charlotte Zelka
Premiered 18 November 1987 by Charlotte Zelka at Klaviersalon Englemier, Vienna, Austria.
13 additional performances in Austria, Holland, Germany, Romania, and the United States.
Recorded by Junghwa Lee on Albany Records (TROY)
Opus 19 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 462144232
SCORE
Premiered 18 November 1987 by Charlotte Zelka at Klaviersalon Englemier, Vienna, Austria.
13 additional performances in Austria, Holland, Germany, Romania, and the United States.
Recorded by Junghwa Lee on Albany Records (TROY)
Opus 19 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 462144232
SCORE
NOTES
Piano Sonata (1987)
My first sonata was premiered in 1988 by the late Charlotte Zelka in Vienna (Austria). Charlotte was a champion for both modern piano music and young composers. Although she was quite small in stature, she was a dynamo as both a pianist and a person. She was originally from Vienna, but lived the second half of her life in Los Angeles.
This sonata is somehow about Los Angeles, because the spark that brought about this work came from a dream I had the night before I began writing it. It was about Los Angeles in the 1920’s, and how beautiful it must have been. It isn’t anymore – it’s just too big, sprawling endlessly, with way too many people and of course the famous smog, which not only stinks, but covers up its magnificence. But in my dream, I roamed around the small city of Los Angeles, which was bordered on the west by no less than the Pacific Ocean and protected on the east by the San Bernardino Mountains, which almost never are seen, because of the smog.
Interestingly, Ms. Zelka gave the USA premiere of my first piano sonata a couple of years later – in Los Angeles. I traveled to California for the performance, and spent the hours before the concert walking the Santa Monica beach. It was great because it was an extremely windy day, warm but windy, and the surf looked and sounded great. I was mesmerized, as I usually am by the sea, and kept my eyes to the west for several hours as I walked. In the late afternoon, I decided it was time to head for the concert hall, but when I turned to leave the surf, I saw what those early Los Angeles residents probably saw every day: the wind had blown the LA smog completely out of the valley, and there were the magnificent snow covered San Bernardino mountains!
Piano Sonata (1987)
My first sonata was premiered in 1988 by the late Charlotte Zelka in Vienna (Austria). Charlotte was a champion for both modern piano music and young composers. Although she was quite small in stature, she was a dynamo as both a pianist and a person. She was originally from Vienna, but lived the second half of her life in Los Angeles.
This sonata is somehow about Los Angeles, because the spark that brought about this work came from a dream I had the night before I began writing it. It was about Los Angeles in the 1920’s, and how beautiful it must have been. It isn’t anymore – it’s just too big, sprawling endlessly, with way too many people and of course the famous smog, which not only stinks, but covers up its magnificence. But in my dream, I roamed around the small city of Los Angeles, which was bordered on the west by no less than the Pacific Ocean and protected on the east by the San Bernardino Mountains, which almost never are seen, because of the smog.
Interestingly, Ms. Zelka gave the USA premiere of my first piano sonata a couple of years later – in Los Angeles. I traveled to California for the performance, and spent the hours before the concert walking the Santa Monica beach. It was great because it was an extremely windy day, warm but windy, and the surf looked and sounded great. I was mesmerized, as I usually am by the sea, and kept my eyes to the west for several hours as I walked. In the late afternoon, I decided it was time to head for the concert hall, but when I turned to leave the surf, I saw what those early Los Angeles residents probably saw every day: the wind had blown the LA smog completely out of the valley, and there were the magnificent snow covered San Bernardino mountains!
Ms. Zelka founded the Los Angeles based new music quintet, THE ALMONT ENSEMBLE, who premiered and recorded (Opus One, Inc.) my quintet, CHAMELEON. A few years later, Charlotte gave the World Premiere of PIANO SONATA in 1987 in her 'home town' of Vienna (Austria). I remember her calling me in the middle of the night, Southern Illinois time - lunch time in Vienna. she laughed when I answered the phone, because she obviously woke me up in the middle of the night - she thought that was great fun! She called to tell me that the performance was well received, etc.
Below is a review of a recital the Charlotte did in Los Angeles, which included another performance of my PIANO SONATA.
(Below that is some info about Charlotte's remarkable career.)
Below is a review of a recital the Charlotte did in Los Angeles, which included another performance of my PIANO SONATA.
(Below that is some info about Charlotte's remarkable career.)
PRESS NOTICE
Los Angeles Times
MUSIC REVIEW :
Pianist Zelka Proves the Master of a Difficult Program
April 26, 1989 | KENNETH HERMAN
LA JOLLA — When pianist Charlotte Zelka sat down at Mandeville Auditorium's mighty Bosendorfer on Sunday afternoon, her demure appearance gave not the slightest hint of the rigorous, abstract program she was about to undertake. In her long print dress and close-cropped white hair, she looked like everyone's favorite piano teacher about to demonstrate a few Chopin nocturnes and Brahms intermezzi.
Instead, the Pasadena pianist performed four formidable 20th-Century works, the esoteric fare usually offered by disheveled, slightly misanthropic graduate students. If Zelka's collection of atonal essays by Artur Schnabel, Frank Stemper, Frank LaRocca and Ernst Krenek strained the attention of even the most stalwart admirers of the genre, she nevertheless proved her ability to translate the most prolix scores with disarming dispatch and apparent ease.
Nothing on Zelka's program came close to the scope or profundity of Krenek's Fifth Piano Sonata, written for the performer in 1950. Her assurance in traversing the three-movement sonata's craggy landscape, the work's wealth of musical ideas, and the dark, resonant sound of the Bosendorfer combined to make a rewarding music journey. The composer was on hand to lend his approval to Zelka's keyboard wizardry.
Schnabel's "Piece in Seven Movements" was disappointing in every respect. These rhapsodic meanderings exuded a surface complexity, but lacked substance. With no center of gravity, no clear organizing principle, these movements were as enervating as they were unrelenting.
Though Zelka ably coped with the set's digital requirements, it was difficult to imagine why anyone would devote the effort to bring this work to life. If it is true that the intrepid and masterful keyboard interpreter of Beethoven and Brahms really wanted to compose rather than perform, we can only be happy that fate pushed Schnabel onto the concert stage and into the recording booth.
Los Angeles Times
MUSIC REVIEW :
Pianist Zelka Proves the Master of a Difficult Program
April 26, 1989 | KENNETH HERMAN
LA JOLLA — When pianist Charlotte Zelka sat down at Mandeville Auditorium's mighty Bosendorfer on Sunday afternoon, her demure appearance gave not the slightest hint of the rigorous, abstract program she was about to undertake. In her long print dress and close-cropped white hair, she looked like everyone's favorite piano teacher about to demonstrate a few Chopin nocturnes and Brahms intermezzi.
Instead, the Pasadena pianist performed four formidable 20th-Century works, the esoteric fare usually offered by disheveled, slightly misanthropic graduate students. If Zelka's collection of atonal essays by Artur Schnabel, Frank Stemper, Frank LaRocca and Ernst Krenek strained the attention of even the most stalwart admirers of the genre, she nevertheless proved her ability to translate the most prolix scores with disarming dispatch and apparent ease.
Nothing on Zelka's program came close to the scope or profundity of Krenek's Fifth Piano Sonata, written for the performer in 1950. Her assurance in traversing the three-movement sonata's craggy landscape, the work's wealth of musical ideas, and the dark, resonant sound of the Bosendorfer combined to make a rewarding music journey. The composer was on hand to lend his approval to Zelka's keyboard wizardry.
Schnabel's "Piece in Seven Movements" was disappointing in every respect. These rhapsodic meanderings exuded a surface complexity, but lacked substance. With no center of gravity, no clear organizing principle, these movements were as enervating as they were unrelenting.
Though Zelka ably coped with the set's digital requirements, it was difficult to imagine why anyone would devote the effort to bring this work to life. If it is true that the intrepid and masterful keyboard interpreter of Beethoven and Brahms really wanted to compose rather than perform, we can only be happy that fate pushed Schnabel onto the concert stage and into the recording booth.
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Charlotte Zelkowitz, child prodigy and concert pianist who studied at Julliard at 16 years old with renowned musician Artur Schnabel and working with the Vienna Boys Choir. She was the daughter of Jack and Marion Zelkowitz and the sister of Betty Zelkowitz Sandford. Among other modern works, Ms. Zelka gave the world premiere of Pierre Boulez’s Structures Book II. Boulez was a tremendous influence on my music, and Charlotte knew it. When she told me that she premiered Book II, my mouth dropped open and she laughed. She loved to laugh. Then she told me that for the premiere, she and the other pianist needed to play from score, and so each had a page turner to assist them. During the performance, Charlotte said she became very animated and accidentally smacked her page turner in the groin. He was incapacitated and could barely continue for the next few minutes.
What a wonderful career and life Charlotte had. Not too many dedicated musicians like her.
Bio
Obit
What a wonderful career and life Charlotte had. Not too many dedicated musicians like her.
Bio
Obit
PRESS NOTICE
PIANO SONATA
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Stemper’s mathematical bent is on display in his almost 10-minute First Piano Sonata. His desire in the work was to push the boundaries of musical discourse, and he sought to do that through a sort of decon- struction of the Fibonacci series by building to a climax towards the beginning of this one-movement work rather than the usual positioning at the end. As it turned out, though, his “anti-climax” at the end stole the thunder from the more vigorous early climax. In a case like this, descriptive words by a reviewer can only go so far. This piece—and all of Stemper’s music—must simply be heard. The opening of the piece lies mostly in the piano’s lower register, and the initial slow pitches pick up considerably in the first couple minutes to extremely fast washes of notes. Heard herein are a number of contrasting ideas, one of the most ear-catching of which were the playful, almost jazzy gestures that appeared at about the four-minute mark that serve to give this section a rather puckish quality. Another device effectively used by the composer in this work is Pointillism, where a series of isolated notes or chords interrupts the general note-rich atmos- phere, allowing the ear of the listener to cleanse itself, as it were."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015
PIANO SONATA
—performed by Junghwa Lee
"Stemper’s mathematical bent is on display in his almost 10-minute First Piano Sonata. His desire in the work was to push the boundaries of musical discourse, and he sought to do that through a sort of decon- struction of the Fibonacci series by building to a climax towards the beginning of this one-movement work rather than the usual positioning at the end. As it turned out, though, his “anti-climax” at the end stole the thunder from the more vigorous early climax. In a case like this, descriptive words by a reviewer can only go so far. This piece—and all of Stemper’s music—must simply be heard. The opening of the piece lies mostly in the piano’s lower register, and the initial slow pitches pick up considerably in the first couple minutes to extremely fast washes of notes. Heard herein are a number of contrasting ideas, one of the most ear-catching of which were the playful, almost jazzy gestures that appeared at about the four-minute mark that serve to give this section a rather puckish quality. Another device effectively used by the composer in this work is Pointillism, where a series of isolated notes or chords interrupts the general note-rich atmos- phere, allowing the ear of the listener to cleanse itself, as it were."
David DeBoor Canfield
Fanfare vol. 39, No. 1 2015