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presents…

BOMSORI KIM | Violin JUHO POHJONEN | Piano2019–20 Gift Concert

Wednesday, November 6, 2019 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

SCHUMANN Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 1 in A minor, Opus 105 Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck Allegretto Lebhaft

SIBELIUS Selections from 6 Pieces for Violin and Piano, Opus 79 No.1 Souvenir No.5 Tanz-Idylle No.6 Berceuse

SZYMANOWSKI Nocturne & Tarantella for Violin & Piano, Opus 28 Nocturne Tarantella

INTERMISSION

PROKOFIEV Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 2 in D Major, Opus 94bis Moderato Scherzo. Presto Andante Allegro con brio

WAXMAN Carmen Fantasy

The Gift Concert is made possible through the generous support of George and Camilla Smith

Bomsori Kim and Juho Pohjonen are represented by Kirshbaum Associates, Inc.711 West End Ave., Ste. 5KN, New York, NY 10025 kirshbaumassociates.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco

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ARTIST PROFILESSan Francisco Performances presents Bomsori Kim in her San Francisco recital debut. Juho Pohjonen returns for a third time; he made his SF Performances solo debut in March 2008.

Violinist Bomsori Kim is one of today’s most vibrant and exciting instrumental-ists. Winner of the 62nd ARD International Music Competition, Kim has been sought out by many of the world’s finest orches-tras and most eminent conductors for her exceptional talent and poise. A rising star on the international concert stage, Kim in-spires audiences across the globe with her passionate, personal, and innovative per-formances of classical violin repertoire.

In the 2019-20 season, Kim makes her Nashville Symphony debut, performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1 under the ba-ton of Giancarlo Guerrero, and her Lexing-ton Philharmonic debut with Keitaro Ha-rado in Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2. She also joins the Wrocław Philharmonic on tour as soloist in Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto. As a recitalist, Kim is presented by Rockport Music, University of Maine, National Gallery of Art, and the Carlsen Center. She collaborates with pianist Juho Pohjonen in recitals presented by the So-ciety of the Four Arts and San Francisco Performances, and joins pianist Rafał Blechacz for recitals in New York City, Cos-ta Mesa, Toronto and Waterloo. Interna-tionally, Kim gives recitals at the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany, Heidelberger Fruehling Festival in Lucerne, and Gstaad Menuhin Festival in Switzerland. She also appears with the Luzern and KBS Sympho-ny Orchestras, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Nürnberger Symphoniker, Deutsche Staats-philharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and War-

saw Philharmonic Orchestra.In addition to winning the 62nd ARD In-

ternational Music Competition, Kim has won prizes at the Tchaikovsky International Competition, Queen Elisabeth Competition, International Jean Sibelius Violin Competi-tion, Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hannover, Montreal Inter-national Musical Competition, and Sendai International Music Competition. Kim won Second Prize, Critic’s Prize, and nine addi-tional special prizes at the 15th Internation-al Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition.

Kim has appeared as soloist at numerous venues worldwide, including David Gef-fen Hall in New York, Musikverein Golden Hall in Vienna, Tchaikovsky Hall in Mos-cow, Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, Slovak Radio Concert Hall in Bratislava, Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, Berlin Konzer-thaus, Smetana Hall in Prague, and Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall. She has had the privilege of performing under the direc-tion of such renowned conductors as Jaap van Zweden, Marin Alsop, Andrey Bo-reyko, Pablo Heras Casado, Lukasz Boro-wicz, John Storgards, Yuri Simonov, and Pascal Verrot, with numerous leading orchestras, including the New York Phil-harmonic, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Munich Ra-dio Orchestra, among others.

A native of South Korea, Kim is a gradu-ate of Seoul National University, where she studied with Young Uck Kim. She earned her Master of Music at the Juilliard School as a student of Sylvia Rosenberg and Ronald Copes. With the support of Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation, she currently plays on a 1774 violin by Joannes Baptista Guadagnini.

Juho Pohjonen is regarded as one of to-day’s most exciting instrumentalists. The Finnish pianist performs widely in Europe, Asia, and North America. An ardent expo-nent of Scandinavian music, Pohjonen has a growing discography which offers a show-case of compositions by such compatriots as Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho.

In the 2019–20 season, Pohjonen makes debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Rochester Phil-harmonic and the Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec. Pohjonen makes recital debuts at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Steinway Society of the Bay Area and returns to give recitals in Howland, NY and New York City. Chamber performances in-clude San Francisco Performances and So-ciety of the Four Arts in Palm Beach with violinist Bomsori Kim, Parlance Chamber

Concerts with violinists Paul Huang and Danbi Um, and Orange County and Santa Rosa with the Sibelius Trio. Pohjonen enjoys an ongoing association with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with whom he collaborates this season in New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Chicago’s Harris Theater.

Pohjonen’s most recent recording with cellist Inbal Segev features cello sonatas by Chopin and Grieg, and Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, hallmarks of the Romantic repertoire. Plateaux, his debut recording on Dacapo Records, featured works by late Scandinavian composer Pelle Gudmund-sen-Holmgreen. Pohjonen joins violinist Petteri Iivonen and cellist Samuli Peltonen to form the Sibelius Trio, who released a re-cording of works by Sibelius and Saariaho on Yarlung Records in honor of Finland’s 1917 centennial of independence, described by Stereophile as “a gorgeous debut.”

Pohjonen began his piano studies at the Junior Academy of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and subsequently earned a master’s degree from Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu-Tawaststjerna at the Sibel-ius Academy. Pohjonen has participated in the master classes of distinguished pianists Sir András Schiff, Leon Fleisher, Jacob Lateiner, and Barry Douglas. Poh-jonen was selected by Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholar-ship, and has won prizes at international and Finnish competitions, including first prize at the 2004 Nordic Piano Competi-tion in Nyborg, Denmark; first prize at the 2000 International Young Artists Con-certo Competition in Stockholm; a prize at the 2002 Helsinki International Maj Lind Piano Competition; and the Prokofiev Prize at the 2003 AXA Dublin Internation-al Piano Competition.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 1 in A minor, Opus 105

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)

Schumann composed his Violin Sonata in A minor in September 1851 during a period of personal stress. The previous year he had become music director in Düsseldorf, and by the time he wrote this sonata his tenure there had become mired in clashes with local authorities. Schumann said that when he wrote this sonata, he was “very angry with certain people,” though the music should not be understood as a reac-tion to artistic squabbles.

The Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck (“With passionate expression”) bursts to life with the violin’s forceful, surging main idea over the piano’s shimmer of constant sixteenths. This busy motion is punctu-ated by great swooping flourishes that lead to gentle secondary material; it is the opening theme, however, that dominates the development, and Schumann rounds off the movement with a lengthy coda.

Relief arrives in the central Allegretto, which treats the violin’s innocent opening melody in rondo form. Tempos fluctuate throughout, with the music pulsing ahead, then reining back. Some of these episodes become animated before the movement winks out on two pizzicato strokes.

The concluding Lebhaft (“Lively”) returns to the impassioned mood of the opening movement. The violin’s steady rush of six-teenths makes this feel at first like a perpet-ual motion, but it is in fact another sonata-form movement, complete with a jaunty little secondary tune and exposition repeat. This movement shows subtle points of con-tact with the first movement: the rhythm of the sonata’s opening theme underlies much of the finale, and near the close that theme actually makes a fleeting appearance.

Selections from Pieces for Violin and Piano, Opus 79JEAN SIBELIUS (1865–1957)

Sibelius had planned to make his career as a violinist, and while studying in Vienna he auditioned for the Vienna Philharmonic. His failure to secure a place in that great or-chestra convinced him that his true path lay

as a composer, and he set the violin aside. But he continued to compose for it. In 1915, while World War I raged across Europe and Sibelius was composing his mighty Fifth Symphony, he turned out several sets of min-iatures for violin and piano, among them the Six Pieces. These are very short pieces in a variety of styles, as their titles—in French, Italian, and German—make clear.

This recital offers three of the Six Pieces. Souvenir opens with a florid introduction before its graceful main theme takes wing and drives to a full-throated climax. The Tanz-Idylle is another flowing dance, but the concluding Berceuse brings a surprise. A berceuse is traditionally a cradlesong in 6/8, but rather than rocking gently, this one is built on halting rhythms that block any sense of soothing motion. This is beautiful music, but it might not be a first choice to rock a baby to sleep.

Nocturne and Tarantella, Opus 28KAROL SZYMANOWSKI (1882–1937)

For Karol Szymanowski, World War I brought one of the most creative phases in his life. It also brought disaster. Szy-manowski was on one of the last trains out of Berlin before the war cut off rail service, and he spent the war years quietly on the family estate in the Ukraine. There he com-posed some of his finest works, including the Third Symphony, First Violin Concerto, and Myths for violin and piano. This fertile interlude was shattered when Bolshevik mobs invaded the estate, burned the fam-ily home, and threw Szymanowski’s piano into a lake.

Among the works composed in those years was the Nocturne and Tarantella. These two brief pieces were originally composed separately, but they have always been con-sidered one work. Szymanowski sketched both following gatherings of friends, and—as the story has it—he composed the Taran-tella after a night of drinking.

Everyone hears a Latin flavor in this mu-sic: some identify a Spanish influence on the Nocturne and an Italian character in the Tarantella. The Nocturne, which Szy-manowski marks Lento assai, alternates dark and lugubrious music with moments of a soaring, exotic character. Even at a slow tempo, Szymanowski makes tech-nical demands on his violinist, with one pizzicato passage echoing the sound of a guitar and another passage played entire-

ly in artificial harmonics. The Tarantella, marked Presto appassionato, is virtuoso music. After an opening flourish, the vio-lin sounds the main theme of this wild dance, which flies along triplet rhythms.

Sonata for Violin & Piano No. 2 in D Major, Opus 94bis SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)

This sonata was originally written for the flute, but when David Oistrakh heard its premiere in 1943, he suggested to Prokofiev that it was ideal for the violin. Composer and violinist prepared a violin version, and Oistrakh gave the first performance on June 17, 1944. The piano part is identical in both versions, but Prokofiev altered sev-eral passages to eliminate awkward string-crossings for the violinist and added cer-tain violinistic features impossible on the flute: pizzicatos, doublestops, harmonics. Ironically, the violin version has become much more popular than the original.

In contrast to the bleak First Violin Sona-ta, which the composer said should sound “like wind in a graveyard,” the Second is one of Prokofiev’s sunniest compositions. There is no hint in this music of the war raging in Russia at this time, none of the pain that runs through the earlier sonata; this sonata is generally serene, a retreat from the war rather than its mirror.

The opening Moderato, in sonata form, begins with a beautifully poised melody for the violin, a theme of classical purity. The violin also has the second subject, a singing dotted melody. Prokofiev calls for an exposition repeat, and the vigorous de-velopment leads to a quiet close on a very high restatement of the opening idea.

The Presto sounds so brilliant on the vio-lin that it is hard to imagine that it was not conceived originally for that instrument. This movement was in fact marked Alle-gretto scherzando in the flute version, but—taking advantage of the violin’s greater maneuverability—Prokofiev increased the tempo to Presto in the violin version, mak-ing it a much more brilliant movement.

The mood changes at the Andante, a con-tinuous flow of melody on its opening theme. The Allegro con brio finale is full of snap and drive, with the violin leaping throughout its range. At the center of this movement, over steady piano accompaniment, Proko-fiev gives the violin one of those bittersweet melodies so characteristic of his best music.

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Kim Notes continued from page 3

Carmen Fantasy

FRANZ WAXMAN (1906–1967)

Franz Waxman began his career as a pianist in Berlin cafés but soon gravitated to what was then a new path for music—film scores. He arranged the music for Friederich Holländer’s Der blaue Engel in 1930 but fled Germany when Hitler came to power. Waxman arrived in the United

States in 1934 and quickly established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading composers—among his many films were Magnificent Obsession, Captains Coura-geous, Rebecca, Suspicion, Sunset Boulevard, and A Place in the Sun.

Georges Bizet’s Carmen has haunted musicians ever since its 1875 premiere, and Bizet’s music has re-appeared in many forms. The most famous of these are the ar-rangements for violin by Sarasate, Hubay, Zimbalist, and others. Waxman wrote his Carmen Fantasy in 1947 for Jascha Heifetz, one of his neighbors in Hollywood. This ten-minute showpiece does not need to be

“explained” to listeners, who may simply sit back and enjoy one more evocation of Bizet’s memorable tunes, all stitched to-gether with some very fancy fiddling (the imprint of Heifetz’s virtuosity is evident throughout). Along the way, we hear such favorites as the Habanera, Seguidilla, and Intermezzo, as well as a few tunes that do not usually appear in Carmen paraphras-es, including the Card Song from Act III.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger