Wednesday, July 28, 1999, 8.00 pm

John Kameel Farah, pianist
The Chapel, Victoria College, 91 Charles St. West

Dmitri Shostakovich
from “Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues” Op. 87
Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major (1950)
Prelude and Fugue No. 19 in E-flat major (1951)

Wolfgang Rihm - Ländler (1979)

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - Fantasiettina sul nome iIlustre dell'egregio poeta Christopher Grieve ossia Hugh M'Diarmid (1961)

Olivier Messiaen - from "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jèsus" (1944)
I. Regard du Père
II. Regard de l'étoile
XIII. Noël
XVI. Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages

-intermission-

Improvisations


Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75)
Prelude and Fugue in C major - The first prelude of Shostakovich’s answer to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is hymn-like in character, and almost immediately it is clear that in these pieces he was developing a new harmonic language, akin to Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis. Curiously the four-voice fugue is composed completely out of the seven-note scale of C major, with not one accidental. (This could perhaps remind one of the modes of the Renaissance.)
Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major - This prelude is formed of grave chordal sections contrasted with quiet staccato phrases. The three-voice fugue is in 5/4 time and in contrast to the calm order of the C major fugue, this one is robust, chromatic and almost Eastern in its atmosphere.

Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952)
Ländler - Rihm dedicated this slow, sentimental dance piece to another composer, Wilhelm Killmayer. In some ways the writing resembles Killmayer's style very much. Rihm was a student of Karheinz Stockhausen, who was a student of Messiaen.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)
Fantasiettina - Sorabji is a legendary composer of Parsi and Spanish-Sicilian parentage, long domiciled in the United Kingdom. He has written a vast amount fo music and has published two volumes of essays. In 1930 he premièred his mammoth piano solo Opus Clavicembalisticum in Glasgow. Opus Clavicembalisticum was dedicated to the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher M. Grieve), for whose seventieth birthday in 1962 Sorabji composed this Little Fantasy. It frames a slow central episode with two lively outer sections. Its sonorities are by turns bell-like, velvety and volcanic. It juxtaposes Occidental kinetic drive with Oriental stasis and ecstacy. [Paraphrased from the notes to the score by Ronald Stevenson.]

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Regard du Père (Vision of the Father)The complete phrase of the Theme of God. And god said: This is my beloved some in whom I am well pleased...
Regard de l'étoile (Vision of the star)Theme of the star and of the cross. The shock of grace... The star shines innocently, surmounted by a cross...
Noël The christmas bells say with us the sweet names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph....
Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages (Vision of the prophets, the shepherds and the Magi) Exotic music - Gongs and oboes, a concert enormous and nasal...

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