It stands to reason that the first live performance in a year and a half from the UCSB Music Department should be a solo piano recital by the indefatigable maestro, Paul Berkowitz, virtuoso pianist and notable scholar in the field known in the USA as “musicology,” and in the rest of the Western World as “Music History.”
The recital will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on the UCSB campus.
The program will consist of Wolfgang Mozart’s “Rondo in D-Major, K.485 (1786): Allegro” and “Rondo in a-minor, K.511 (1787): Andante”; François Poulenc’s “Fifteen Improvisations for piano (1932-1958)”; and Franz Schubert’s “Piano Sonata in G-Major, D.894/Opus 78 (1826).”
While no work on this program — not even the Poulenc — needs an introduction to be appreciated, Berkowitz’s thoughts about what he plays are always illuminating. About the Mozart, he observes: “The D-Major Rondo K.485 is a quick bright, classical movement with the peculiarity that every appearance of a theme, in every key—expected and unexpected—is the same theme heard at the very beginning of the piece or, occasionally, a variant of it,. The a-minor Rondo K.511 is a very different matter: while not long either, it is one of the more profound of Mozart’s works for piano, its main theme of a reflective and melancholy nature in a rare (for Mozart) minor key, and which develops through chromatic counterpoint to an intense and elaborate coda to conclude.”
The professor has made the Poulenc th focal point of the recital. “These works are virtually unknown and unplayed outside France,” he observes. “They are a major personal discovery for me, not dissimilar to when I discovered the sonatas of Schubert when I was a teenager.
“The collection as a whole, which Poulenc encouraged to be seen as a set by his cumulative numbering, was one of the few works for piano he remained happy with in later life, and represents a significant contribution to the literature for piano. In years to come, when asked what I managed to do over the Covid shutdown, my reply will be ‘I learned the Poulenc Improvisations.’”
{The Rosetta Stone for my own appreciation of Poulenc, especially his piano music, was a Columbia recording of Poulenc performing several of his own compositions on one side, and several by his mentor, Erik Satie, on the other. You can hear the influence of the older man, in the form and overall attitude, but Satie is more sardonic, even satirical, while Poulenc is more gentle and lyrical.}
Having devoted much of his professional career, both as a performer and as a scholar, to the solo piano works of Franz Schubert, Berkowitz’s thoughts on the concluding work, the last of Schubert’s sonatas to be published during his tragically brief life, have an almost biblical authority:
“The first movement is unusually broad, contemplative, meditative even, marked ‘Molto moderato e cantabile’ (Very moderate and singing),. There follows nevertheless an Andante slow movement, then a minuet rather than scherzo, with a music-box landler for a Trio, and a bubbling Allegretto rondo to conclude. Although every movement contains a dramatic, stormy section, generally somewhere in the middle, the work as a whole seems a study in all the forms of happiness: serenity in the first movement, warmth in the second, a precious delicacy in the Trio of the third, and a vivacious, playful contentment and delight in the fourth. It feels like a good piece to go out on after the difficult period we’re just coming through now.”
Tickets to this recital are $15 general admission; $13 for seniors and military; $13 for non-UCSB students with ID; and free for UCSB students with ID and for children under 12. Tickets can be purchased by calling 805-893-2064, or on line at www.music.ucsb.edu/news/purchase-tickets.
Youth and UCSB student tickets may be reserved in advance by contacting the UCSB Associated Students Ticket Office at 805-893-2064 or ticketoffice@as.ucsb.edu
Notice: COVID-19 PROTOCOLS—The Department of Music is committed to the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff, and community members as we return to live, in-person events. Please review the department’s COVID-19 Health and Safety protocols at www.music.ucsb.edu/news/covid-19-information prior to attending this in-person event.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.