Thursday, May 28th, 2026     

HANS BOEPPLE, piano

PLEASE NOTE:   In lieu of an intermission, there will be short break between each work on the program.

PROGRAM

                                                                                                

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) 

Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828                      

• Ouverture
• Allemande
• Courante
• Aria
• Sarabande
• Menuet
• Gigue

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)  

Sonata in D major, Op. 10, no.3

• Presto
• Largo e mesto
• Menuetto – Allegro
• Rondo – Allegro

Johannes Brahms (1833 -1897)

Four Piano Pieces, Op.119

• Intermezzo in B minor – Adagio
• Intermezzo in E minor – Andantino e poco agitato
• Intermezzo in C major – Grazioso e giocoso
• Rhapsodie in Eb major – Allegro risoluto

PROGRAM NOTES  

–Rosemary Waller

Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita No. 4 in D Major BWV 828
The Six Partitas, of which this is the fourth, appeared between 1725 and 1731, one each year, starting shortly after the composer’s arrival in Leipzig, where he would remain for the rest of his life. The position had been open for some time. The Leipzig Town Council had first invited Telemann, who declined when his employers in Hamburg countered with a sizable raise. Bach had been approached only after the town’s second choice withdrew, one Council member commenting, on record, that “since the best could not be obtained, mediocre [candidates] would have to be considered.”

Bach’s post as choirmaster required both teaching and providing the music for the four main churches in the Leipzig. The students at the St. Thomas School were boarders, boys age 11 to early 20s. In addition to singing and Latin, Bach had to teach them to play instruments, to save the penny-pinching Council from hiring professionals for performances. The situation was a far cry from Bach’s previous employment in Cöthen, a time the composer himself described as his happiest, when he had access to the outstanding group of instrumentalists assembled by the music-loving Prince Leopold. But when Leopold married Princess Henrietta, who did not care for music, Bach’s position became superfluous. He needed a job and thus wound up in Leipzig.

The St. Thomas School had been suffering a long decline. The rapidly growing Bach family was installed in an apartment that was part of the dilapidated school. In one of his very few personal letters that survive, Bach explained his plight to an old friend: “1) I find that the post is by no means so lucrative as it was described to me; 2) I have failed to obtain many of the fees pertaining to the office; 3) this place is very expensive; and 4) the authorities are odd and little interested in music, so that I must live amid almost continual vexation, envy, and persecution.”

But then, something of a miracle occurred: a new headmaster arrived at the St. Thomas School. Johann Matthias Gesner was an enlightened scholar, and also an admirer of Bach. He modernized and expanded the school curriculum. He also managed to obtain funding from the Council to renovate the school building, where for 200 years only the most urgent repairs had been made. The Bach apartment was completely gutted and rehabbed. Alas, Gesner remained only for four years. His successor would have different ideas: in his opinion, music was a non-essential, time-wasting frill, and he did everything possible to undermine Bach’s authority.

In 1731 all Six Partitas appeared in print as a set, one of the very few Bach works published during his lifetime. They bore the label “Clavier-Übung” [Keyboard Practice], a term implying that the composer thought of them as teaching aids, or exercises. However, their technical difficulties (note especially the Gigue in Partita No. 4!) would surely indicate that the works were intended for very advanced players.

“Partita” is the Italian equivalent of “Suite,” a Baroque-era form starting with an introductory movement, followed by a set of stylized dances. In this set of partitas there are no loud/soft indications. Bach had written for the 18th-century harpsichord, which could not produce the dynamic contrast readily available on the modern piano. One might easily imagine Bach’s delight in hearing Partita No. 4 as you will hear it today, played on the piano. Much later in life, the composer would work with Gottfried Silbermann, a pioneering builder of the fortepiano, a predecessor of the piano. Silbermann was indignant when Bach complained of a difficult action and weak upper register in the first fortepianos. But several years later he enthusiastically endorsed the maker’s improvements, even acting as dealer for Silbermann’s subsequent instruments. Frederick the Great, a fine musician, purchased six fortepianos. Bach paid the King a visit, at his request performing on each of the six, in six different rooms at the king’s palace in Potsdam.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3
Not yet 22 years old, Beethoven had moved in 1792 from Bonn to Vienna, the musical capital of Europe. There he found an intensely competitive milieu and soon discovered the necessity of cultivating wealthy patronage. In return for financial support, composers routinely offered dedications. Beethoven’s three Op. 10 sonatas, written in 1798, were dedicated to the Countess Anna Margarete von Browne. Her husband, Count Johann Georg von Browne, was an officer in the Russian Army, as had been his father, an Irish soldier of fortune. The Countess was the daughter of the Russian Minister of Health. (An amusing sidebar: earlier, the Count had given Beethoven a horse, in thanks for a previous dedication. It was a seemingly odd gift, since the city-dwelling composer owned neither house nor stable. He did ride the animal a few times before apparently forgetting about it. His manservant then reportedly developed a side hustle of renting out the horse and pocketing the intake.)

By his late 20s, when he wrote the Op. 10 sonatas, Beethoven was at the height of his powers as a keyboard virtuoso. Yet he realized that his dual dreams of success both as pianist and a composer would have to be limited to composing, because of his encroaching deafness. In 1802 he would lament, in his famous Heiligenstadt Testament (an unsent letter to his brothers Carl and Johann, meant to be read after his death):
“ … for six years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady … I was soon compelled to isolate myself, to live life alone.” A devastating blow for Beethoven, but his resulting focus
on writing was surely an immeasurable blessing for humankind.

Johannes Brahms: Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119
In 1853 a slight 20-year-old with long blond hair and blue eyes arrived unknown and unannounced on the doorstep of Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf. Johannes Brahms was clad in hiking gear and bore a backpack full of his youthful piano compositions. He was welcomed in, played his works for the Schumanns, was invited to stay for lunch, and ended up a houseguest for a month. Robert and Clara were quite blown away. Clara wrote in her journal “A great future lies [ahead], for when he comes to writing for orchestra, then he will have found the true medium for his imagination.” Robert noted simply “Visit from Brahms (a genius).”

Four months after Brahms’ visit, disaster struck the Schumanns. In February Robert attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge into the frigid waters of the Rhine. He entered a private psychiatric facility where he would be a patient for three years, until his death at 46. Clara was five months pregnant, and after the birth of her eighth child she found herself in desperate need of income. Leaving the children in the care of her housekeeper, and Johannes in charge of managing the household, Clara resumed her trail-blazing career as a touring piano virtuoso. She was 34, he was 21. A deep friendship developed, and possibly a love affair. They were both to remain single, but the relationship would be lifelong, and profoundly emotional.

Clara devoted the rest of her life to promoting and performing the works of both her husband and Johannes. In 1893 he sent her the first of the Op. 119 Piano Pieces. His enclosed note and Clara’s reply, which follow, are among the few messages that survived their decision to return all personal correspondence to each other. Both then destroyed most of what they had written.

“Dear Clara, I’d like to know how you get along with this [Op. 119, first piece]. It is crawling with dissonances. Every bar and every note must sound as though one wishes to suck melancholy from each and every one … and voluptuous joy and comfort out of the discords … This comes absolutely for your fingers alone and mustn’t get into anyone else’ s …. My God, how this description will whet your appetite!” Clara responded “… one actually revels in the discords,” and she likened the work to “… a grey pearl. Do you know them? They look as if they were veiled and are very precious.” She asked to see the remaining three Op. 119 pieces. Three years later Clara passed away, and Johannes would follow in a matter of months. She was 76, he was 63.