Thursday, October 29th, 2026
KOTARO FUKUMA, piano
PROGRAM
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Sicilienne, BWV 1031 (transcription by Wilhelm Kempff)
Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, BSV 147 (transcription by Myra Hess)
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 -1791)
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K.525 (transcription by Fukuma)
- Allegro
- Romance – Andante
- Menuetto and Trio – Allegretto
- Rondo – Allegro
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Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828 )
Serenade (transcription by Liszt)
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Bedrich Smetana (1824 – 1884)
The Moldau (transcription by Fukuma)
INTERMISSION
Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886)
Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième année – Italie. S.161
- Sposalizio (Marriage of the Virgin)
- Penseroso (The Thinker)
- Sonetta 123 del Petrarch (Petrarch’s Sonnet 123)
- Fantasia quasi Sonata (After a reading of Dante)
PROGRAM NOTES
–Rosemary Waller
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sicilienne, BWV 1031 (transcription by Wilhelm Kempff)
Sicilienne is one movement of a work whose authorship appears to remain an unsettled matter. Many experts identify J.S. Bach as the composer, but others name J.S.’s son C.P.E. Bach, or perhaps even a third choice, Johann Joachim Quantz. To this writer, J.S. seems probable, since the primary manuscript source available to us is in the handwriting of C.P.E. Bach. He titles the work (in German): “E-flat Major Sonata for Obbligato Harpsichord and Flute by J.S. Bach.” If indeed the composer is J.S., the work would probably have been written between 1717 and 1723, a time when Prince Leo of Cöthen was his employer and most of J.S.’s instrumental works were written. As a teenager, C.P.E. was regularly tasked with making copies of his father’s works, for preservation or performance. Whatever the truth, according to British music historian Nicholas Anderson, “What is indisputable … is the high quality of its craftsmanship and its expressive charm.”
Johann Sebastian Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, BWV 147 (transcription by Myra Hess)
This beloved work appears in the form of two chorales in the Bach cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben [Heart and Voice and Deed and Life]. Much of this music came from Bach’s earlier years in Weimar, but the composer added the two chorales, along with recitatives, for its premiere in Leipzig on July 2, 1723, at the start of Bach’s tenure in that city. The chorale melody was composed by the German violinist and composer Johann Schop in 1641, with Bach adding orchestration and vocal parts.
BWV 147 was produced at a particularly difficult time for Bach, who was finding his new bosses in Leipzig unreasonable in their expectations, as well as “odd and little interested in music, so that I must live amid almost continual vexation, envy, and persecution.” In addition to teaching and other responsibilities they demanded 58 new cantatas each year. Bach would see only one of his 300-some cantatas published during his lifetime. The cost of that commission was paid by the town of Mühlhausen, not Leipzig’s famously penurious Town Council!
The title Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is taken from a poem by British poet Robert Bridges, published in 1908, and has no connection with the Bach cantata. Though the sentiment is similar, the English title by which we know this piece does not correspond to the texts of either of the chorales in BWV 147. These were written by Martin Janus and appear in a 1665 German hymnal. When Myra Hess introduced her 1926 transcription, the chorale became wildly popular. It was especially so during World War II, when the pianist generously continued to perform in London in spite of extraordinarily challenging conditions.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 (transcription by Kotaro Fukuma)
The 18th-century serenade (literally “evening music”) was intended as entertainment, often outdoors, perhaps to woo a lover or to please important people. This particular serenade is a celebrated gem, deservedly a favorite for its blend of lightheartedness and exuberance.
1787 was a most productive year for Mozart. In addition to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik his works included two piano concertos, the String Quintets in C Major and G Minor (often cited as two pinnacles of his chamber music output), as well as the commission, composition, and production of his opera Don Giovanni. But there were dark moments as well: in May of 1787 his father Leopold died, and just a week later Wolfgang lost his pet starling, a cherished feathered friend who had lived with the composer and his family for three years.
Much has been written about Wolfgang’s failure to make the trip from Vienna to Salzburg for Leopold’s funeral, and at almost the same moment presiding over a formal, over-the-top memorial service for the starling, complete with music, an elegiac poem, and burial with a headstone in his garden. This seeming incongruity might be explained by the ups and downs of the composer’s chronically fraught relationship with his father. The two were unusually close–his father had been Wolfgang’s principal teacher from early childhood–but Leopold had also attempted to micromanage his adult son’s career. The extremes of emotions thus engendered are perhaps mirrored in Wolfgang’s preoccupations in 1787 with Don Giovanni (with its dark ending involving the protagonist being dragged off to hell!), as well as with such lighter works as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Franz Schubert: Serenade D. 957 (transcription by Liszt S. 560, No. 7):
The Serenade is the fourth in a group of 14 songs written by Schubert in August, 1828, just months before his untimely death at age 31, in November. They were assembled in a collection published the following year as Schwanengesang [Swansong]. The songs are not thematically connected as in a song cycle–the title was chosen by the publisher, no doubt in an attempt to boost sales of the composer, whose works were little known at the time outside Vienna. Nine years later Franz Liszt wrote his famous transcription for solo piano. He included Ständchen [Serenade] frequently in his performances, establishing the popularity it enjoys to this day.
The lyrics of the song concern a lover who begs his beloved to come forward and join him. He tells her not to fear, claiming that even the nightingales are pleading with her, singing their sweet songs.
Bedřich Smetana: The Moldau (transcription by Kotaro Fukuma):
The first great 19th-century Czech composer, Smetana was a pioneer in the nationalist movement of late romanticism. The second of six tone poems he wrote, a cycle called Má Vlast [My Fatherland], The Moldau depicts scenes and activities along the route of the great Czech river. In the words of Václav Zelený, the poet who devised the “program” for the work, the Moldau River starts as “two springs rising in the Bohemian forest, then joining and passing a meadow where peasants are celebrating a wedding. In the silver moonlight river nymphs frolic and palaces float past. The river foams and surges in the Rapids of St. John and strives on majestically to Prague. Then, lost to view, it finally yields itself up to the Elbe River and the sea.”
In 1874, just before starting The Moldau, Smetana suffered severe headaches followed by a complete loss of hearing. Most of Má Vlast was written by a man who was stone deaf and remained so for the last decade of his life. Following the example of Beethoven, he soldiered on, completing The Moldau in just 19 days. Realizing there was no cure, he withdrew more and more, eventually losing his mind and dying in an asylum.
Franz Liszt: Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième année – Italie [Years of Pilgrimage – Second Year – Italy] S. 161
Surely Liszt would qualify as 19th-century prototype for the contemporary rock star/jetsetter. He was widely acclaimed by critics and audiences as the world’s finest pianist. Touring extensively, he dazzled his listeners with his incredible technique, electrifying stage presence, and movie-star good looks. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves. And he composed equally brilliantly!
In his early 20s Liszt commenced a lengthy affair with the Countess Marie d’Agoult, who had left her husband and two daughters. Années de pèlerinage grew out of the couple’s later travels in Switzerland (1835-36) and Italy (1837-38). On their way to Italy, they stopped to visit their one-year-old daughter Blandine in Switzerland, where Liszt’s mother was raising her. Then they proceeded to Lake Como, where their daughter Cosima was born in 1837. (Years later Cosima would create her own drama by leaving husband Hans von Bülow, her father’s favorite pupil, to join Richard Wagner, with whom she had three out-of-wedlock children. Later still she would abandon Liszt, her terminally ill father, to manage the Wagner Bayreuth Festival.)
After further travels and performances throughout Italy, Franz and Marie settled in Rome for the birth of their third child, Daniel, in 1839. That year there was a cooling of the couple’s relationship, which ended around 1844. Though Marie’s husband had granted her a divorce in 1835, she and Franz never married, nor did they wed anyone else. A respected writer and critic, Marie published under the pseudonym Daniel Stern.
