Dear All, If you are near the Finger Lakes region of New York, I would like to the following concert this week. Concert is free and open to the public. Cornell Chamber Orchestra Stefania Neonato, fortepiano Tatiana Vessilieva, fortepiano Chris Younghoon Kim, conductor 8 PM, Saturday, November 11, 2006 Barnes Hall, Cornell University Program W.A. Mozart =09=09Piano Concerto No. 9 in Eb major, K. 271 I. Allegro II. Andantino III. Rondeau (Presto - Menuetto - Tempo Primo) With Tatiana Vessilieva, fortepiano Intermission W.A. Mozart =09=09Piano Concerto No. 18 in Bb major, K. 456 I. Allegro Vivace II. Andante un poco sostenuto III. Allegro Vivace With Stefania Neonato, fortepiano In February of this year three current students of Malcolm Bilson, Frederic Lacroix, Stefania Neonato and myself, played the Triple Concerto in F Major, K. 242 with Chris Kim and the Cornell Chamber Orchestra in the Annual Mozart's Birthday Concert. This event inspired us to devote the entire Fall semester to Mozart piano concertos. Today's concert is the second in this series. Our aim is to experience these works in a somewhat different way than is usually done with a modern piano and large orchestra. The biggest difference is of course the five-octave Viennese piano but it is not the only difference. For example, we play continuo during the orchestral ritornelli as was the custom at the time; this gives a quite different picture of the 'action' of these works. We have also worked together with Profs. Chris= Kim and Malcolm Bilson on articulation, bowing and other performance practice matters. It is our wish to share the knowledge we accumulate during our doctoral studies here with the students in the chamber orchestra, and learn together from mutual experience. - Sezi Seskir Tatiana Vassilieva, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, is a dual Master's degree candidate at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, studying piano performance with Nelita True and collaborative piano with Jean Barr. She has recently completed her Bachelor's degree in piano performance at Eastman with Nelita True and Fernando Laires. As a soloist, Ms. Vassilieva has appeared with the Rochester Philharmonic, Eastern Festival, and the Greece Symphony orchestras. Other performance highlights include a 'Rising Stars Recital' at the Eastman Young Artist International Piano Competition and the Eastern Music Festival concert at the Kennedy Center. In addition to being an active solo pianist, Ms. Vassilieva is also a skilled accompanist and collaborates frequently with numerous instrumentalists and vocalists at Eastman. In the summer of 2006, Ms. Vassilieva attended the Collaborative Piano Program at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA, where she studied with Anne Epperson and Jonathan Feldman. Born in Trento, Italy, Stefania Neonato graduated at her home town Conservatory and earned a Master in Fortepiano Performance Practice at the International Piano Academy (Imola, Bologna). After a BA degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Trento, she's currently a doctoral candidate at Cornell University in the Historical Performance Practice program under Malcolm Bilson. Winner of many National Piano Competitions, she collected gratifying awards at International Contests; she played in the most important Italian cities (Milan, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Brescia, Venice, Padua, Bolzano, Cremona) and in several foreign centres (Paris, Salzburg, Miami, Miskolc, Dortmund), both as a soloist and with orchestras. She attended many master-classes around the world (among them at the Mozarteum in Salzburg) and was recipient of scholarships from the Interlochen Arts Camp (Michigan) and from the School of Music of Miami University. She studied with Riccardo Zadra, Leonid Margarius and Aldo Ciccolini but her interest in historical instruments has been arisen by the meeting with the pianist Alexander Lonquich whom she followed in many seminars on the collections of the Accademia Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence, Fondazione Giulini in Briosco-Milan, Accademia in Imola-Bologna). In 2004 she was invited to give a seminar on historical performance practice at Trento Conservatory and in 2005 her first recording was released: it features Mozart, Beethoven and Dussek on a 1780 Viennese fortepiano. =09=09=09=09=09=09|:| 'Bravo Mozart!' - called out the emperor at the end of Mozart's performance of this Concerto on the 13th of February 1785 at the Burgtheater. Leopold Mozart, who went to visit his son in Vienna for six weeks, and was attending the academy that night, depicted this music as 'a masterful concerto' in which he 'had the great pleasure of hearing all the interplay of the instruments so clearly that for sheer delight tears came to his eyes'. He must have been very pleased and proud of the success and the 'great deal of clapping' that the audience reserved to his son in that occasion and in many other concerts and private performances. Mozart was at the height of his career and was accepted and invited by the Viennese high society and by the Masonic 'Beneficence' Lodge. In 1784 he wrote eight Concertos (K. 449, 450, 451, 453, 456, 459, 466, 467), some of them meant to be played by himself, and some others dedicated to the piano virtuosos of the time (often the piano virtuoso was one of his students, mostly women). Mozart conceived them to present himself in public not only as a performer but, especially as a composer. Through these pieces, Mozart shows a dramatic development of his taste in orchestration; the treatment of the wind section is particularly striking in its variety and tone colour. The Concerto K.456 starts with Mozart's favourite martial rhythm, the one he exploits also in K.451, 453, 459. The extrovert gesture of the theme's beginning is smothered by the gracious character of its conclusion, from which the second theme draws inspiration. Playful and witty phrases and dialogues are all softened by intimate and lyrical episodes. The Andante un poco sostenuto in G minor is written in variation form; theme and five variations are followed by a coda which functions as a sixth. On a relatively simple harmonic sequence, which brings the melody to its major relative and back, Mozart displays a richness in counterpoint and ornamentation, treating the orchestra as a chamber music ensemble. The chromatic implication of such an harmonic frame is outlined in the bassoon part at the second variation and sharpened dramatically in the coda. The last measures of the theme are painfully split in sighs between the piano and the winds, and nothing makes us imagine the following cheerful sonata-rondo Allegro vivace after all this desolation. This athletic and energetic explosion of joy is briefly darkened by a central minor episode, probably the most interesting peculiarity of this Concerto; here the winds play in 2/4 against the 6/8 of the rest of the orchestra. The piano can't decide between the two groups and join first the strings and then the winds in two contrasting sections. Cadenzas are almost original with some insertions by the performer. - Notes by Stefania Neonato Mozart composed the Concerto in E flat Major, K. 271, in January of 1777, when he turned 21. It is considered his first mature keyboard concerto, and combines within itself incredible emotional depth and dazzling virtuosity. Mozart wrote the concerto for a young French pianist Mlle Jeunehomme, who visited Salzburg in the winter of 1776-1777. Although little is known about her abilities as a performer, the concerto that she inspired suggests that they were considerable. Even though the concerto features the traditional three-movement form (Allegro, Andantino, Rondeau: Presto), the work has many unconventional qualities, which become apparent in the opening bars of the piece. First movement begins with a declamatory orchestral fanfare, which the piano immediately interrupts, asserting its superiority over the orchestra with confidence and flair. After two such interruptions, the opening tutti continues to unfold in its usual way. The piano enters again with a trill at the conclusion for the tutti and dominates throughout the rest of the movement to the final notes of the closing ritornello. The second is movement is a dramatic lament in the relative minor key. It has a character of an operatic recitative and aria. Through numerous expressive leaps and appoggiaturas, poignant Neopolitan harmonies, and striking juxtapositions of major and minor modes, the piano sings its soul out to a tragic conclusion. The return of the E flat Major key in the brilliant and energetic finale dissolves the somber atmosphere of the second movement. The piano sets the pace with a virtuosic rondeau theme and in a quasi-perpetual motion carries the movement to its exciting conclusion, pausing only for occasional brief cadenzas and a delicate French minuet. The trill from the beginning of the first movement returns at the end of the rondeau, unifying the entire work. - Notes by Tatiana Vassilieva Chris Younghoon Kim Director of Orchestras at Cornell University www.arts.cornell.edu/orchestra