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Program notes
About the soloist,
Andrea Arese-Elias
2008-09 concert season
All seasons guide |
Program notes, Oct. 18 & 19, 2008
by Horace Work
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major
Beethoven is probably the most widely known composer of serious music
in the world. His works, still recognized and still relevant today after 200 years, are heard on concert programs every year in countries on all the continents. Piano Concerto No. 5 is just one of his many masterpieces that uplift us, that give us glimpses of another, sublime, perfect world.
Beethoven lived in that world every day of his life. He improvised on the keyboard, studied violin and viola, and by age 12 could play Bach’s demanding Well Tempered Clavier, a collection of preludes and fugues in two volumes, roughly four hours of music. In 1781 – he was only 11 years old – he published three piano sonatas. While not as spectacular a prodigy as Mozart, Beethoven obviously possessed great genius.
The Piano Concerto opens with a stunning orchestral chord in E-flat. It is the tonic, or home key and tonal center of the piece. Immediately after this, the piano sounds the same notes in an arpeggio, or broken chord (broken up into separate notes), elaborating that E-flat sonority up and down the entire breadth of the keyboard.
Thus Beethoven introduces the piano as a vibrant, full-sounding solo instrument, capable of standing with great eloquence as an equal against the combined forces of the orchestra. This grand opening recurs later in the first movement, following the rules of sonata form that are characteristic of the Classic Period (1750-1827). If one listens closely, it is possible to hear echoes or variations of these opening ideas in all three movements of the concerto.
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor
Franz Schubert, curiously, wrote nine symphonies, precisely the same number as did his illustrious predecessor and inspiring model, Beethoven. But if Beethoven was his model, the master was also Schubert’s despair, made clear in his comment, “Who is capable of anything after Beethoven?” While other composers of his time were writing simpler music for performances in home salons or popular operas, Schubert was striving to keep the great Beethovenian tradition alive.
Fortunately, Schubert did indeed keep the flame of his great model burning both symbolically and in actuality: “Schubert was one of those who carried a torch at his [Beethoven’s] funeral,” and later that evening drank two toasts to Beethoven, “to him we have just buried…to him who will be next.”
In 1822, Schubert completed the composition of his eighth symphony, the so-called Unfinished Symphony. The title is a misnomer, for “the symphony is ‘unfinished’ only in name. Actually, it is one of the most complete, most unified creations conceivable.” Moreover, this great work “is the best known and the most popular of all Schubert’s compositions,” and is “one of the most perfect as well as poignant and affecting masterpieces of all symphonic literature.”
As with Beethoven and the classical form, Schubert returns to the quiet, fluttering opening heard in the violins in the first measures. He makes this return to the home key following a powerful few measures of double-forte tapering down to quiet plucked strings at double-piano; Schubert then repeats, or recapitulates, the beginning. It is possible to hear the start and end of the middle section by those same quiet, pianissimo, plucked strings.
Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825 – 1899)
Emperor Waltzes, op. 437
Johann Strauss Jr., the third generation in the great waltz dynasty, was the most talented and brilliant musician among his siblings. His father, Johann, Sr., wrote waltzes and started his own touring orchestra in 1833. Johann Jr., eventually known as “King of the Waltz,” had to study violin and composition in secret because “his father wished his sons to follow other careers.”
Nevertheless, Johann Jr. started his own orchestra in 1844, and “when his father died in 1849, he united the two bands” and went on tour.
Johann’s waltz, “On the Beautiful Blue Danube,” came out in 1867 and “immediately entered the realm of folk-music.” Johannes Brahms, aware of the momentous and instantaneous fame that sprang up from this waltz, said he wished he could have written it himself.
The “Emperor Waltzes,” op. 437, are full of the beautiful melodies, the sighing ritards, the breathtaking a tempi (returns to tempo), and the pure inspiring danceable qualities that literally created a waltz mania in Vienna at the end of the 19th Century. Often, dancers at the balls in Vienna would stop dancing and just listen, in rapture on the dance floor, to Strauss’ beautiful strains of a new waltz.
(All quotations are from Thompson’s Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians.)
About the soloist, Andrea Arese-Elias
 Andrea Arese-Elías, a native of Argentina, made her recital debut at age 11, and her orchestral debut at age 14 with the Cordoba National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina.
She earned her undergraduate degree from the National University of Cordoba and completed her master and doctoral degrees in piano performance at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music.
She has also participated in workshops and master classes with pianists Rosalyn Tureck, Gerhard Oppitz, James Tocco and Alfonso Montecino.
Dr. Arese-Elías has performed extensively as a solo and chamber musician in Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Japan, and the U.S. She has won many piano competitions, prizes, and scholarships.
As a winner of the Cincinnati´s College-Conservatory of Music concerto competition, she was invited to play under the baton of Cincinnati Symphony conductor, Jesus Lopez Cobos. She was a soloist with the Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra in the 2000-01 and 2003-04 seasons, and was invited to appear as a soloist with the Pleven Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria in 2003.
Dr. Arese-Elías has previously taught for the National University of Cordoba, Cordoba Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati Preparatory Department and College-Conservatory of Music, and Mesa State College. She now has a private teaching studio in Grand Junction.
She is a founding member of the Mesa State Faculty Trio and Trio Las Americas and performs regularly with her husband as part of the Elias Duo. Their new CD, Let's Tango, was awarded Best of the Best on eMusic.com in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
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