Janina Fialkowska, piano| January 21, 2024 | House Program

PROGRAM NOTES
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was a prolific
composer who lived his entire short life in Vienna.
While he appeared to write songs with great ease
and imagination, he seems to have laboured more
when composing piano sonatas than almost any
other genre, completing only eleven of the almost
two dozen he started. Still, the completed works
are richly rewarding, often displaying an emphasis
on lyrical melodic writing as can be heard in
the E-Flat Major Sonata that opens this concert.
Curiously, this work began with three movements
of sketches from 1817 for a D-Flat Major Sonata
but, with the prospect of publication a decade
later, these movements were transposed to E-Flat
Major, extensively rewritten, and increased to four
movements with the addition of a minuet. The lilt
of this minuet’s graceful triple meter displays a
genteel charm more akin to an Austrian Ländler
than usually heard in the more classical minuets
of Mozart or Haydn. This dance flavour continues
to resonate in some of the 6/8 metered passages
of the final movement which, in understated
fashion, ends softly as the main theme’s final
appearance drifts gently away.
From 1869 until his death, Johannes Brahms
(1833 – 1897) also called Vienna home. Being
blessed with a lifespan twice as long as
Schubert’s, Brahms lived long enough to occupy
the same exalted position Beethoven had held
as one of the city’s preeminent living composers.
In his short piano pieces, Brahms uses the
title, “Capriccio,” for compositions built from
rhythmically exciting musical material, while
“Intermezzo” is used to convey a somewhat
emotionally introspective piece. The central
A-Major Intermezzo heard in today’s group of
five pieces, is one of his most popular works
of this kind and has a motivic ingenuity that is
remarkably integrated in the way the opening
pitches (C#-B-D, C#-B-A) are continually reused,
including being turned upside down. The B-Minor
Rhapsodie is an expansive work that uses a
rather systematic rondo design of ABACABA
instead of a free, episodic structure often found
in rhapsodies. What is perhaps rhapsodic is the
way the chiselled profile of the opening theme
is continually adapted to generate transitions
between passages of remarkable dramatic
intensity, and how the central section
is so contrastingly slow and expressive.
Recognizing Vienna’s musical and cultural
importance, Frédéric Chopin (1810 –1849) left
Poland in 1830 to establish a pianist/composer
career in Vienna. Within a year he moved to
Paris, finding the more openly supportive and
progressive salon scene in that city to be a better
fit for his music and temperament. Throughout
his career, Chopin’s Polish roots are often on
display in his music, particularly in his original
compositions based on the character of Polish
folk dances, such as widely varied mazurkas and
the more regal polonaises. Chopin wrote a total
of four Ballades and four Scherzos during his
lifetime, and all these works are highly virtuosic
and display an original approach to integrated
musical form.
©2024 by John Burge for the Isabel
ABOUT JANINA FIALKWOSKA
For 50 years, concert pianist Janina Fialkowska
has enchanted audiences and critics around
the world. She has been praised for her musical
integrity, her refreshing natural approach and her
unique piano sound thus becoming “one of the
Grandes Dames of piano playing” (Frankfurter
Allgemeine).
Born in Canada, she began her piano studies
with her mother at age 4 continuing on in her
native Montreal with Yvonne Hubert. In Paris she
studied with Yvonne Lefébure and in New York
at the Juilliard School with Sascha Gorodnitzki,
experiencing the best of both French and Russian
piano traditions. Her career was launched in 1974,
when the legendary Arthur Rubinstein became
her mentor after her prize-winning performance
at his inaugural Master Piano Competition,
calling her a “born Chopin interpreter” laying
the foundation for her lifelong identification
with this composer.
Since then she has performed with the foremost
orchestras worldwide under the baton of such
conductors as Zubin Mehta, Bernard Haitink,
Lorin Maazel, Sir Georg Solti, Sir Roger Norrington