Abstracts:

Abstract Lecture-Recital by Dr. Michael Tsalka:

Not Only Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven:
Unknown Masters of the Classical and Early Romantic Period

A prejudice against obscure or unknown repertoire persists among a significant amount of piano performers and instructors. Many believe that if a composition is not performed, there must be a plethora of valid reasons for its exclusion from the standard repertoire. More often than not, it is assumed that unknown compositions are simply too mediocre or outmoded. While occasionally these assumptions turn out to be true, our duty as performers and pedagogues is to investigate prior to making up our minds about unknown works. The value of a composition should be determined by its musical interest and not by its lack of inclusion within the modern textbooks of Music History.

In this lecture-recital, I intend to demonstrate how working on unknown keyboard repertoire from the Classical and Early Romantic periods can serve the modern performer and student to deepen his or her understanding of the stylistic conventions and musical language of the era, and how, in turn, this new perspective can assist in creating more informed and more personal interpretations of better known keyboard works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

I will focus on compositions by Josef Antonín Štěpán (1726-1797), Johann Baptist Wanhal (1739-1813), Daniel Gottlob Türk (1750-1813), and Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838). These four figures were admired and respected during their lifetimes. Their significant contribution to the repertoire and stylistic development of the Classical and Early Romantic periods, however, was forgotten in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Consequently, a majority of their keyboard compositions were not re edited or recorded during the twentieth century. In the past decade I have studied, taught and recorded many of their works for NAXOS and the Grand Piano labels.

Abstract Lecture-recital by Prof. David Chung / Hong Kong Baptist University:

Interpreting BWV 903:
A Case Study in Creativity and Composer-Performer Co-creation

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia (BWV 903) is an ideal work to explore how the performer can maintain the essence of improvisation in a work that was composed, for three main reasons. First, there exists no definite text. Secondly, the notation, especially in the arpeggio passages, is manifestly incomplete. Thirdly, the scope for the performer’s discretion in matters such as flexible timing and melodic embellishments is plentiful. In this paper, I would like to substantiate how an awareness of the structure and a study of music sources and stylistic issues could illuminate both technical and musical considerations leading to performances that are creative and spontaneous, yet scrupulous to the notational detail. On a deeper level, understanding the music as language is crucial for making sense of the chromatic, dissonant and sometimes atonal harmonies, for organizing notes into coherent and meaningful groups, and for crafting rhetorical gestures in the recitative section.

Abstract Lecture-recital by Tom Bouwman:
the final notes of Mozart’s Menuet KV 355

To the present day there are more than a 140 fragmentary works by Mozart that have come down to us. This largely unknown portion of his oeuvre is compiled out of the most diverse musical torso’s, greatly varying in their state of completion. We find notated themes that last mere seconds in juxtaposition to fragments revealing 45 minutes of the most breathtaking music. More than anything else these fragments form a silent promise of what might have been had Mozart lived beyond 1791. In this talk, forte-pianist and Mozart-scholar Tom Bouwman will explain one of his completions of these fragments, and show how one might go about reconstructing the work of a composer whose working methods, through the popularized ”Amadeus-myth”, have been greatly misunderstood in recent ages. The piece under discussion will be the Minuet and trio in D, K.355/576b of which a completed/reconstructed version by Bouwman will appear in print in 2018.”