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Alexander Glazunov
"Autumn" from The Seasons
Serge Rachmaninoff
Vocalise
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov
Caucasian Sketches
Various
Variations on a Russian Theme (Variations by Articibouchef, Wihtol, Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sokolov and Glazunov)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 1
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Hailed as “one of the finest American pianists of his generation’, Stephen Prutsman is one of the most versatile and brilliant pianists of today. Active as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, composer and conductor, Mr. Prutsman's artistry has been acclaimed by critics and audiences worldwide.
Most recently, he was appointed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as one of their new Artistic Partners for the next three concert seasons, beginning in 2004-05. In this role, Prutsman's duties will include concert programming, performing and leading the SPCO from the keyboard, performing chamber music, and writing two commissions to be performed by the orchestra during the 2004-05 season.
Mr. Prutsman's solo engagements have included appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Colorado, Baltimore, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Omaha, and Seattle Symphony. Overseas, he has made numerous appearances with such orchestras as the Belgian National Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Flanders Philharmonic, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, the Bremen Chamber Orchestra, and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a recitalist, he has performed in prestigious music centers in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Brussels, Berlin, Geneva, Moscow, Mexico City, Santiago, and Tokyo, to name but a few.
Mr. Prutsman first won international recognition as a medallist at the 1990 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, where he received special awards for his performance of Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev. The following year he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and received a medal in the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium.
Committed to chamber music, Mr. Prutsman is a founding member of Nobilis and has performed with the St. Lawrence, Borromeo, and Auduban String Quartets as well as with members of the Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets. He has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, toured with “Music from Marlboro’ and appears frequently at Spoleto/USA. Other festival appearances include Tanglewood, the Vancouver, Seattle, and the Australian Chamber Festivals. In addition, Mr. Prutsman is the founder of the El Paso Chamber Music Festival, where he served as Festival Director for ten years and was also the creator of “A Festival of Music’ in Guam.
Active as a composer and arranger, several of Mr. Prutsman's arrangements have been performed and recorded by leading musicians throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Kronos Quartet, Dawn Upshaw, Leon Fleisher, and Yo-Yo Ma. His arrangements are featured on the Kronos Quartet's 2003 Grammy-nominated CD, Nuevo. Mr. Ma performed and recorded Prutsman's arrangements for The Silk Road Project, Sony Records and Japanese television. Future projects include works for Kronos' upcoming “Visual Music’ concerts and vocal/piano arrangements for Dawn Upshaw of popular music from the 1960's.
Mr. Prutsman's award-winning compositions include Dramatis Personae, for clarinet and string quartet, which won first prize at the 2001 ICA International Composition Competition. Other works have been premiered by the Sinfonia of Colorado, Todd Palmer and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and the Opus Chamber Orchestra, among others. Mr. Prutsman's recent compositions for piano and orchestra include Ocean Parables, a multi-media for solo piano, orchestra, exotic percussion and video that was premiered by the Santa Cruz Symphony, and Jazz Fantasy on the name B-A-C-H for piano and string orchestra. His trademark fantasy of jazz themes, I Got Rhythm, Not! has been performed with various ensembles a multitude of times throughout the United States.
Mr. Prutsman has received exceptional acclaim as a recording artist. His latest release of Barber's Piano Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was hailed as “breathtaking’ by Time Out New York. Other titles in his growing discography include acclaimed recordings of the MacDowell Piano Concerti with the Irish National Orchestra, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, with the National Orchestra of Belgium, music for solo piano by Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Liadov, the Prokoviev Sonatas for violin and piano with violinist, Evgueni Bushkov, works for three pianos by Bach, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff with the Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, and a collection of piano trios by Bridge. Planned for future release is a solo recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.
Mr. Prutsman is heard frequently on National Public Radio's Performance Today, and on numerous syndicated and local radio programs across the United States and abroad, including performances on the C.B.C., Berlin Radio, Radio France, and BBC London. He was also featured in the PBS documentary on the Tchaikovsky Competition. His film and video performances include Beethoven's “Kreutzer’ Sonata with violinist Pamela Frank, which was featured in the film, Immortal Beloved. Mr. Prutsman's radio and television credits also include compositions for the sports television station ESPN and arrangements for the films, The Man Who Cried and Big Bad Love.
A former student of Aube Tzerko and Leon Fleisher, Stephen Prutsman studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He has served the American Pianists Association as Fellow, Adjudicator, and as Artistic Consultant. |
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A wonderful evening of great Russian music, some familiar and some probably brand new... and a concert that proves that all Russian music does NOT sound the same! Evocative, energetic, passionate, melodic, intimate and grandioseÑa simply spectacular concert featuring music that exemplifies all these and more. Plus a dazzling piano soloist who will leave you breathless, performing the ever-popular Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto!
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Opening tonight’s all-Russian concert is the music of Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936). Along with Stravinsky, he was one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s most talented students, but where Stravinsky looked forward into the new century, Glazunov’s musical feet were firmly planted in the Romantic era. His music displays a melodic facility along with an ability to sound Russian while still retaining an international appeal. His ballet The Seasons continues to be heard regularly both with and without dancers, and Autumn is usually the section of choice, due in no small part to the exciting Bacchanal, which is heard at the piece’s opening. Without a literal storyline, we also hear autumn leaves being blown about, a lovely Adagio, and an invigorating Variation. The work climaxes with the return of the Bacchanal ultimately featuring the stars serenely twinkling in the heavens.
The famous melody of the Vocalise by Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) first appeared in a set of songs written by the composer in 1912. Unlike the other songs, this one was truly a vocalise, which is to say a song without words. As the popularity of his Vocalise grew, so did the arrangements of the short work for various instruments, and indeed there is hardly an instrument today that has not benefited from an adaptation of this beautiful, wordless song. Whether for double bass, saxophone, harmonica or in Rachmaninoff’s own 1916 orchestral arrangement which we hear tonight, there is a nostalgic wistfulness in the music that extends beyond the borders of its native Russia, and beyond whatever instrument is playing it, to touch the heart of all who come under its melancholy spell.
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935) was another pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov who, while spending much of his career at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory, made what little fame he retained through his years in the hinterlands of Georgia (not USA!). As the director of the Tblisi Conservatory the composer/conductor came to love the folk music of the Caucasus region, and incorporated it into many of his works. Virtually the only piece in his output that has continued to receive performances is his first suite of Caucasian Sketches, thanks primarily to the jaunty Procession of the Sardar, which concludes the suite. However the whole suite is a wonderful example of Ippolitov-Ivanov’s knack of combining eastern musical exoticism with lush orchestration in a way that would have made his teacher proud. From each movement’s title the listener can easily allow the evocative music to paint wonderful pictures of an exotic life worlds away from Russian city life of 1894.
The Variations on a Russian Theme first appeared in 1903 as a tribute to the Russian conductor Nicolai Galkin. Using a Russian folk song, apparently selected by Rimsky-Korsakov’s daughter from Balakirev’s collection of folk melodies, six of Galkin’s friends each contributed a short symphonic variation on the theme in his honor. Several of the composer/friends have remained well-known (Glazunov, Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov) while others (Sokolov, Artciboucheff, Wihtol) are virtually unknown beyond their borders and time. Each variation, regardless of the composer, is a fascinating miniature with a unique approach to the theme, and there can be little doubt that woven in amongst the theme and the other tunes one hears, are any number of “inside jokes” that have long since been lost on listeners outside of the composers’ inner circle. Nevertheless, the delightful set of variations serves as a lovely plate of appetizers for the meatier works so typical of Russian musical Romanticism.
Although Russian though and through, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) is not necessarily associated with the more nationalistic Russian composers that comprise most of tonight’s program. Older than all of them, and the only composer on our program not to have lived into the 20th century, Tchaikovsky was not nearly as concerned with finding a “Russian style” as much as with finding his own musical voice, which combined Russian elements along with those of the European establishment. His first Piano Concerto was written in 1874, but when heard by the famous pianist Rubenstein, to whom Tchaikovsky had dedicated the work, the undiplomatic pianist pronounced it worthless and vulgar, among other picturesque descriptions. In a somewhat uncharacteristic display of backbone, Tchaikovsky refused to change a note and dedicated the concerto instead to the famous German conductor von BŸlow, who the very next year performed it around the world, including in the United States.
The concerto found immediate favor with audiences everywhere, although as for many of Tchaikovsky’s works the music critics were slower to applaud. But in spite of those critics, the concerto has become one of the most recognizable and favorite piano works in the repertoire, aided in no small measure by Van Cliburn’s famous recording following his Tchaikovsky Competition triumph in 1957. In this work the composer pushes and pulls at the traditional structure of a concerto, as he sets the solo instrument pushing and pulling sometimes with and sometimes against its orchestra accompaniment. But ultimately it is Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody that commands our hearts and memories, as tunes both monumental and simple combine with virtuoso pianism to create one of the symphonic stage’s great musical experiences.
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