Aaron Wunsch, Artistic Director The Piano in Wartime: 1914 ...

The Juilliard School, Joseph W. Polisi, President
Juilliard Piano Department, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Chair

 
Aaron Wunsch, Artistic Director

The Piano in Wartime: 1914-1918
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 | 7:30pm
Gilder Lehrman Hall at the Morgan Library & Museum
Featuring 15 Juilliard Pianists & Juilliard Actors Therese Barbato and Max Woertendyke

Part I | Before the War
Guillaume Apollinaire | Hunting Horns (1912)

Sergei Rachmaninoff | From Études-Tableaux, op. 33, no. 2 and no. 6 (1911)
Mackenzie Melemed

Rabindranath Tagore | 21., from Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”) (1912)
 

Leos Janáček | From In the Mists, I. Andante (1912)
Jiaying Ding

Velimir Khlebnikov | Incantation of Laughter (1910)
Sergei Prokofiev | From Sarcasms, op. 17, no. 1 and no. 3 (1912-14)
Ming Xie

Leo Tolstoy | Letter to Mohandes K. Ghandi, September 7, 1910
Gabriel Fauré | Barcarolle in A Minor, op. 104, no. 2 (1913)
Joey Chang

Osip Mandelstam | A Flame is in My Blood (1914)
Alexander Scriabin | Vers la Flamme (“Toward the Flame”) (1914)
Leann Osterkamp

Part II | During the War
Anton Webern | Letter to Arnold Schoenberg, September 8, 1914
Claude Debussy | Letter to Igor Stravinsky, October 24, 1915

Max Reger | Fugue from Variations on a Theme by Telemann, op. 134 (1914)
Robin Giesbrecht

Anonymous | “Shattered Illusions” from The BEF [British Expeditionary Force] Times, Monday, December
25, 1916

Igor Stravinsky | Souvenir d'une marche boche (“Souvenir of a German march”) (1915)
Joseph Mohan

Claude Debussy | Article for nationalist newspaper L’Intransigeant, March 11, 1915

Claude Debussy | From Études, XI. Pour les arpèges composés (1915)
Chi Wei Lo

William Butler Yeats | “A Reason for Keeping Silent” (1915)

Karol Szymanowski | Don Juan’s Serenade from Masques, op. 34 (1915-16)
Yilan Zhao

Edith Wharton | Excerpt from Fighting France (1915)

Bela Bartók | Suite, op. 14 (1916)
Juliann Ma

Maurice Ravel |Journal entry, Verdun, 1916

Maurice Ravel | From Le tombeau de Couperin, VI. Toccata (1914-17)
Angie Zhang

-INTERMISSION-

Wilfred Owen | “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (1917)

Frank Bridge | Lament for Catherine [drowned with the Lusitania] (1915/18)
Matthew Maimone

Paul Hindemith, Letter to Emmy Ronnefeldt, September 28, 1918

Carl Nielsen | Chaconne (1917)
Shengliang Zhang

Part III | After the War

Colonel Thomas Gowenlock | Recollection, November 11, 1918

Camille Saint-Saëns | Marche Interalliée, op. 155 (1918)
Gabrielle Chou and Joey Chang

Rudyard Kipling | Common Form (1918)

Stravinsky | Piano-Rag-Music (1919)
Joseph Mohan

William Butler Yeats | Second Coming (1919)

Maurice Ravel | La Valse (1919-20)
Yunqing Zhou

Program Overview

Tonight’s program brings together a diverse selection of music, poetry, and letters from the era of
World War I (1910-1920), presented roughly in chronological order. While the program displays
the astonishing range of creativity during the period, it might also tempt us to see a gradual
aesthetic change caused by the Great War itself. The momentous and inescapable events
certainly affected the lives of many an artist, whether directly or indirectly. The extreme fates of
Spanish composer Enrique Granados (drowned by a U-Boat torpedo) and English poet Wilfred
Owen (killed in battle) were fortunately avoided by many enlisted artists, nearly all of whom were
eager to fight. Thus Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams faced off, so to speak, against
Fritz Kreisler and Paul Hindemith; many others, like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg
(fortunately, for our sake) received posts far from battle.

Today, it seems strange that such sophisticated intellectuals and sensitive artists longed to
participate in the arena of war, but we see these events from the other side of time. The war’s
outbreak coincided with the apex of 100 years of rising nationalistic fervor, which proved
positively contagious, and the results of newly mechanized warfare were foreseen by few. Those
who could not directly participate for reasons of health or age (such as Claude Debussy and Sir
Edward Elgar) felt ashamed at their inaction, and such artists pondered—often with great anxiety--
the age-old question of what role art could or should play in wartime. While in 1914 Debussy
wrote that “Never, in any epoch, have art and war made for a good marriage,” just a few months
later Edith Wharton convinced him to compose a Berceuse Héroïque (1915) to help raise money
for war refugees.

Regardless of one’s degree of proximity to actual battle, virtually everyone pondered or discussed
the war on a daily basis and knew someone who had perished in its wake. That Ravel easily found
seven slain friends to whose memory he could dedicate the movements of Le tombeau de
Couperin (1917) eloquently illustrates this sad reality. Grief and anger often mixed to yield
sarcasm, disillusionment, and the disavowal of past attitudes. Few, if any, felt the same optimism
about the world after the Great War. Nevertheless, the byways of creativity remained mysterious,
and, in the end, the sheer multiplicity of artistic perspectives leaves a stronger impression than
any broader perceived shift in aesthetics over the war years. After all, Prokofiev’s Sarcasms
(1912-14) predate World War I, and Fauré’s sincere late-Romantic works postdate it. In the
artistic struggle to come to terms with war, the victors are inevitably those who remain truest to
themselves.

--Aaron Wunsch

About Juilliard PianoScope

Juilliard PianoScope features Juilliard pianists in innovative performances and related events
based around a theme or composer within the vast piano repertoire. The program is overseen by
the Piano Department and directed by pianist and Juilliard faculty member Aaron Wunsch.
Participating pianists learn their repertoire under the guidance of their major teacher, complete a
classroom course at Juilliard on the current topic, and receive further instruction in master classes
(in this case, from pianist Stephen Hough). The performers are accomplished young artists who
have received numerous awards and honors.

Juilliard PianoScope is honored to partner with the Morgan Library and would like to thank
Morgan Director of Education Linden Chubin as well as Leah Marangos for invaluable assistance
in the coordination and presentation of this program. Special thanks also go to Kathy Hood and
Jennifer Lord of the Juilliard Drama Division for their assistance with the dramatic readings.