Boston Conservatory at Berklee presents a recital by guest pianist Jihye Chang, featuring works by Marti Epstein, Dan VanHassel, Eun Young Lee, and more, to celebrate the release of her new album, Boston Etudes.
Program Information
Repertoire
YU-HUI CHANG: Mind Stretch (2021)
DAN VANHASSEL: A Bit of Noise in the System (2021)
FRANZ LISZT: Un Sospiro (Concert Etudes S. 144, no. 3) (1849)
EUN YOUNG LEE: Nam-Ok Lee (2021/rev. 2022)
HANS ABRAHAMSEN: Ende (No. 4 from 22 Studies for Piano) (1984)
HANS ABRAHAMSEN: Riviere d’oubli (No. 8 from 22 Studies for Piano) (1998)
JOHN MCDONALD: Fleetude (2021)
KETTY NEZ: belletude (2020/rev. 2021)
GYÖRGY LIGETI: Arc-en-Ciel (Étude Book 1, No. 5) (1985)
MARTI EPSTEIN: bariolage (Jihye Études, No. 2) (2021)
ADRIA STOLK: and still, it remains (2020)
WILLIAM DAVID COOPER: Idée fixe (2021/rev. 2022)
STRATIS MINAKAKIS: Lowell Études (Three Etchings in Solitude) (2021)
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Program Notes
YU-HUI CHANG: Mind Stretch (2021)A short and brisk piano étude, “Mind Stretch” is not only an exercise of the pianist’s physical virtuosity but also a test of her mental agility, with its quick changes of musical expressions and percussion music-like gestures.DAN VANHASSEL: A Bit of Noise in the System (2021)The piece is made up of two distinct layers acting in counterpoint to each other. The first layer consists of perpetual motion arpeggios; and the second, “noisy” rhythmic interjections. Each layer has its own separate trajectory, with the arpeggios remaining cool and consistent throughout, and the rhythmic interjections starting as barely perceptible blips that gradually build into smashing clusters. The material for the piece was initially written in a burst of improvisatory inspiration for two pianos over a few days. Then, over the course of several months, I attempted to solve the “puzzle” of retaining as much as possible from the original two piano parts in a version for a single pianist. This process ended up being a calming activity to focus my mind on during some of the worst months of the pandemic, as the world seemed to be falling apart around me.EUN YOUNG LEE: Nam-Ok Lee (2021/rev. 2022)The eponymous etude “Nam-Ok Lee” is titled as Eun Young Lee’s first piano teacher, who was very patient to handle a 3-year-old beginner. It explores Lee’s experience as a child, playing and making up tunes on the piano—which were unexpected gestures, and they are reformed in this etude. JOHN MCDONALD: Fleetude (2021)What do we run away from? What makes us flee? Practicing the right-hand parallel thirds at the outset of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 2, No. 3 (“gently” conjured several times in “Fleetude”)? Personal confrontation? Parenthood (sometimes)? Social media and digital technology? Corporate totalitarianism, particularly in its delusional guise as “democracy”? (The attempt to address the helpless feeling engendered by this one can be heard in a substantial central section.) This list of questions could go on for many, many pages when adding contributions to it from other friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Suffice it to say that “Fleetude” runs into and from many potentially frightening challenges, finding no safe harbor except in the continual pursuit that is the practice of learning hitherto unknown music.KETTY NEZ: belletude (2020/rev. 2021)Written December 2020 for pianist Jihye Chang’s Boston Etude Project 2021, “belletude” features rapidly shifting harmonies, set in shifting, additive rhythms. The title is a play on the words “bell,” “belle,” and “étude.” Jihye gave the online premiere September 30, 2021, and the extended version was composed soon afterwards.MARTI EPSTEIN: bariolage (Jihye Études, No. 2) (2021)It imitates the string technique of bariolage, or playing one particular pitch or set of pitches on different strings. It is the second étude of a set written with love and respect for Jihye in 2021.WILLIAM DAVID COOPER: Idée fixe (2021/rev. 2022)“Idée fixe” is both a pianistic study and a compositional study of motivic limitation. Nearly every phrase of the piece is derived in some way from its opening seven notes, and the piece then takes the shape of something like a sonata form with a slow introduction. The second theme is consciously modeled after the second theme of the first movement of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In the development section, the seven-note motif is presented in its original inverted and retrograded forms as a cantus firmus, decorated by diminutions of the motif, and culminating in a virtuosic and dramatic climax. Midway through a very difficult composition process, I suffered a debilitating concussion, which interrupted my writing and completely changed my thinking about the second half of the piece. As a result, the music written after the climax is much more spacious and emotionally expressive. Though this was not the original plan, I think this music helps to release the tension and obsessive brooding of the first half of the piece. I am so grateful to Jihye Chang for commissioning and performing this work, which gave me hope and purpose during the gloomy first year of the pandemic. STRATIS MINAKAKIS: Lowell Études (Three Etchings in Solitude) (2021)“For a good voice hearing is a torture.” This line from “Beethoven”—which I happened upon randomly when leafing through a collection of poetry at a Philadelphia bookstore —was my first introduction to the work of Robert Lowell (1917–1997). From this epigrammatic summation of Beethoven’s late style to his intimate confessions of his struggles with bipolar disorder, Lowell’s best lines strike at the center of things with an electrifying sense of precision.A quintessential Bostonian of aristocratic origin, Lowell often used New England as the setting for his works. Of all his depictions of the area, I felt a strong kinship with his portrayal of a certain Boston kind of solitude: “The loneliness inside me is a place / Harvard where no one might always be someone. / When we’re alone people we run from change / to the mysterious and beautiful / I am eating alone at a small white table, / visible, ignored.” *Lowell Études: Three Etchings on Solitude traces its origins to the aforementioned lines, interwoven with remote resonances of Debussy’s “...De pas sur la neige...” (Prèludes, Book I, No. 6), a masterful exploration of acoustic space and memory. * excerpt from “Eating Out Alone”
About the Artists
Jihye Chang, piano, enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, collaborator, educator, scholar, and advocate for new music in the United States and abroad. She is a senior lecturer at Boston University, previously serving as visiting assistant professor at Florida State University. Chang is also a faculty member at the Brevard Music Center and the director of Piano Intensive Bulgaria. Learn more about Chang. Concert Services Staff
Senior Manager of Concert Services – Luis Herrera
Coordinator, Concert Services – Matthew CareyConcert Production Manager – Kendall FloydPerformance Technology Technicians – Sara Pagiaro, Goran Daskalov
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