Date/Time
Date(s) - 12/18/2020
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Location
Old First Presbyterian Church
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Honoring Beethoven’s 250th Birthday!
Daniel Glover will perform rare solo piano works which also exist(ed) as orchestral works. Since we currently have no chance to attend live orchestra concerts, this recital will remind us of what we have been missing. Performed in honor of Beethoven’s 250th birthday (December 16) the program features works with a connection to Beethoven, including a newly discovered work by the master, only just found and published in Vienna this year! This is most likely an unverified West Coast premiere!
Muzio Clementi’s Sonata in G minor, Opus 34, No. 2 was alleged to have been a symphony, prior to this alternate version for piano solo. The original symphony has been lost. It obsessively uses the same rhythm as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and many scholars speculate that it was Beethoven’s inspiration. It was composed in 1795 prior to Beethoven’s first three piano sonatas, Opus 2, and his Symphony No. 1.
Charles-Valentin Alkan’s masterly solo transcription of the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 seamlessly combines the orchestral and piano parts into an impressive whole. Although his hyper-virtuosic and inordinately lengthy original cadenza is a primary reason to hear the work, Daniel will instead play the neglected cadenza by the late Romantic American composer Amy Beach.
John Corigilano’s Fantasy on an Ostinato (1985) was commissioned as a competition piece for the seventh Van Cliburn Competition. It uses the obsessive rhythm and simple harmony of Beethoven’s iconic slow movement from his Seventh Symphony. The performer decides on the duration and number of repetitions of patterns played in this quasi-minimalistic/improvisatory work.
The concert will conclude with Liszt’s Fantasy on themes from Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens.” The piece was first composed by Liszt as a work for piano and orchestra in 1852, and later as a piano solo, and also for two pianos. It utilizes three prominent themes from Beethoven’s incidental music to The Ruins of Athens, for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra: the march, Chorus of Dervishes, and the much beloved Turkish March.
Concert Program
- Muzio Clementi – Sonata in G minor, Op. 34, No. 2
- Beethoven–Alkan – Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, I. Allegro con brio (cadenza by Amy Beach)
- John Corigliano – Fantasy on an Ostinato
- Franz Liszt – Fantasy on themes from Beethoven’s ‘The Ruins of Athens’
Presented by Old First Concerts