International Classical Artists presents...

Complete Sonatas & Partitas

For unaccompanied violin

“Simply, relentlessly magnificent”The Sunday Times

J.S. BACHKYUNG WHA CHUNG

7:00 PM10 MAY

2017

“A miracle of momentum and humanity”

The Herald, Scotland

£2

RECORDING AVAILABLE ON WARNER CLASSICS

For her long-awaited return to the studio after 15 years, Kyung Wha Chung has made her

first ever recording of Bach’s complete works for unaccompanied violin.

KYUNG WHA CHUNG

WWW.KYUNGWHACHUNG.COM

Violin virtuoso Kyung Wha Chung returns to the London stage with a recital of Bach’s complete violin sonatas and partitas. For Chung, recording Bach’s complete violin sonatas and partitas has been a lifelong dream. Now, after

her acclaimed return to the concert stage in December 2014, she has achieved this, with a new recording of the complete works on Warner Classics (released October 2016). And tonight she showcases the music live, bringing all her passion and intense musicality to the stage. The collection is rarely played in one performance, so to hear each sonata played together will be something of a treat for London audiences, particularly in the hands of Chung. London has been a home to her over the years, and this return promises an evening of drama and charged emotion.

Barbican Centre, Silk St, London, EC2Y 8DSAdministration: 020 7638 4141Box Office Telephone bookings: 020 7638 8891 (9am ‑ 8pm daily: booking fee)Advance Box Office (Ground floor) Mon ‑ Sat: 10am‑9pm Sun, Bank Holidays: 12 noon ‑ 9pm www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)

Kyung Wha Chung’s dress is designed by NOHKE www.nohke.com

Alexandra KnightArtist Manager, Project Manager,Executive Assistant to Stephen Wrightaknight@icartists.co.uk

Stephen WrightChairman,

Head of Artist Managementswright@icartists.co.uk

Tonight’s concert is presented by International Classical Artists Ltd.

www.icartists.co.uk

@KyungWhaChung #BachKWC

facebook.com/officialKyungWhaChung

Please make sure that digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance.

Please try not to cough until the normal breaks in the performance.

In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, it is not permitted to stand or sit in any gangway.

No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium.

No cameras or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall.

www.nickythomasmedia.com

Rebecca JohnsAccount Managerrebecca@nickythomasmedia.com

Nicky ThomasDirectornicky@nickythomasmedia.com

PROGRAMME

Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, BWV 1001

Violin Partita No 1 in B minor, BWV 1002

Interval

Violin Sonata No 2 in A minor, BWV 1003

Violin Partita No 2 in D minor, BWV 1004

Interval

Violin Sonata No 3 in C major, BWV 1005

Violin Partita No 3 in E major, BWV 1006

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

•

BIOGRAPHYHer chamber music partnerships have

included high calibre pianists such as Peter Frankl, Kevin Kenner, Stephen

Kovacevich, Radu Lupu, and Krystian Zimerman.Kyung Wha Chung has recorded

numerous award-winning albums, and her extensive discography reflects the impressive breadth of her repertoire. Following her recording contract with Decca/London, in 1988 Chung subsequently signed for a period with EMI Classics, and also released recordings with RCA and Deutsche Grammophon. Winner of two Gramophone Awards (the first, for her Deutsche Grammophon album of Strauss and Respighi sonatas with Krystian Zimerman; the second, for her EMI recording of Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto with Sir Simon Rattle), Chung has also received many prizes and top honours – including the Medal of Civil Merit from the South Korean government, and the Ho Am Prize for the Arts in 2011.

Following an injury to her hand, Chung stopped performing in 2005. During this time away from the stage, she found a new calling as a teacher, joining the faculty of her alma mater, The Juilliard School. In addition to this, Kyung Wha Chung is Chair Professor for Music at Ewha University in Seoul, and Charity Ambassador for Better World (an active patron for their Child Rescue Project in Africa). She is also the Artistic Director of the Great Mountains Music Festival & School, based in South Korea.

Five years after her retirement, 2010 marked Chung’s triumphant return to the Asian stage. Greeted by enthusiastic audiences and the highest critical acclaim, in 2013 she embarked on an extensive Asian tour of fifteen cities, including Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing. Kyung Wha Chung made her much anticipated return to the European concert platform in December 2014, with a national UK tour culminating in a sensational sell-out recital at the Royal Festival Hall, London. In July 2016 she opened the prestigious Verbier Festival, performing the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Verbier Festival Orchestra and Charles Dutoit. Kyung Wha Chung has signed an exclusive international record contract with Warner Classics, the first release of which – Solo Bach Sonatas & Partitas – was released in October 2016. This season sees Chung performing works from the CD at Suntory Hall (January 2017), The Barbican (May 2017) and Carnegie Hall (May 2017).

Kyung Wha Chung is recognised throughout the world as one of the finest violinists of

her generation. A prolific recording artist, her dazzling and probing artistry has made her a much-acclaimed performer throughout her forty-year career. Lauded for her passion, her musicality, and the intense excitement that she brings to her performances, Chung’s uniquely expressive interpretations of the violin literature have established her as an artist of the very highest stature. Born in South Korea, Chung first heard the violin at the age of six. Instantly mesmerised by its tone, she was swiftly recognised as a child prodigy, making her concert debut aged nine with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. At thirteen, Chung enrolled at The Juilliard School, New York, and began studying with renowned pedagogue Ivan Galamian, and later with Joseph Szigeti.

Upon winning the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Competition in 1967, Chung was immediately engaged by major American orchestras – including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic – and also performed at the exclusive White House Gala. She made her sensational European debut in 1970, performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Sir André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra, at London’s Royal Festival Hall. This concert was met with great critical acclaim and public attention, and – as a result – Chung received offers of concerts throughout the United Kingdom. Subsequently obtaining an exclusive recording contract with Decca/London, Chung’s debut album – of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos with Sir André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra – brought her to international attention, and she continued to perform with the world’s greatest orchestras (including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others). Throughout her career, Kyung Wha Chung has enjoyed working alongside the world’s finest conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Sir André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Georg Solti and Klaus Tennstedt.

which takes the solo violin to the outer limits of its contrapuntal resources. The sonata culminates in a dazzling moto perpetuo finale of uncontainable brio.

The three partitas are more varied in content and mood, with opportunities freely taken for enhanced expressive flexibility within the various dance genres. The B minor Partita is particularly distinctive in immediately submitting each of its four movements to a contrasting variation or “double”. The opening Allemanda, for example, exchanges stately dotted rhythms for an uninterrupted flow of meditative semiquavers, whereas the Corrente becomes more animated and swifter in its “double” form. The Sarabande moves effortlessly from multiple-stopped harmonies to gentle compound-time musings, mirroring a Bourrée finale in which the harmonic patterning segues from being sounded to merely implied.

Most celebrated of the six works is the D minor Partita, due to the towering presence — preceded by an allemanda, corrente, sarabande and giga — of an epic chaconne finale. This nobly inventive series of 64 variations on the indomitable opening theme possesses a symphonic gravitas and powerful emotional narrative made exquisite when the music transforms (tantalisingly briefly) from deep minor-key introspection to radiant major-key contentment. Bach concludes the set with one of his most buoyant and carefree works: the E major Partita, a suite of six enchanting dance movements in the French style, including a rarely encountered loure — a “slow gigue” originating most probably from Normandy.ww

The following year, celebrated Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate recorded the Preludio from the E major Partita. Yet it was not until Yehudi Menuhin went into the studios with the first complete set, recorded variously between 1934 and 1936 (more than 200 years after its conception), that these groundbreaking works might be said to have finally entered the musical mainstream.

The three sonatas are constructed along similar lines, each with four movements (alternating slow and fast), with a fugue placed second, followed by a contrasting slower movement. The latter possesses its own special sense of tonal identity as it is the only one not cast in the home key. The G minor Sonata opens with a meditative Adagio that unfurls gracefully before giving way to a dramatic fugue, whose indelible repeated-note subject proved irresistible to Bach — he later transcribed it for both solo lute and organ. The gently swaying, warmly reflective Siciliana moves us to the relative major (B flat), making the hurtling forward momentum of the Presto finale feel all the more startlingly intense by comparison.

The A minor Sonata is dominated by a fugue of bracing structural breadth and emotional power that builds inexorably towards a climactic blending of the main subject with its inverted form. Warm Italian breezes — Bach was an ardent admirer of both Vivaldi and Albinoni — are experienced in the gentle pulsing of the Andante’s repeated-note accompaniment and the Allegro finale’s sudden dynamic contrasts, clearly annotated by the composer in the autograph score. Combining the spontaneous zeal of the G minor Sonata with the A minor’s cerebral indomitability, the C major Sonata focuses on a monumental fugue,

© JULIAN HAYLOCK, BY KIND PERMISSION OF WARNER CLASSICS

PROGRAMME NOTESthe impression of sustaining three- and even four-part counterpoint. However, due to the convex shape of the violin’s bridge and the gently concave sweep of the modern bow, it is impossible to sustain more than two strings simultaneously. This has inspired all manner of ingenious solutions, including a violin with a flat bridge and a convex “Bach” bow capable of playing “around corners”. However, no firm evidence has so far come to light that such an instrument ever existed, nor has a convincing explanation been offered as to why, if Bach had such a remarkable violin at his disposal, he pointedly failed to exploit its potential elsewhere.

Following the sonatas and partitas’ first publication in 1802, the first Romantic generation of performers and composers were initially at a loss to know what to make of them. Mendelssohn composed a piano “accompaniment” to the mighty Chaconne from the Second Partita and Schumann for the entire set, both intended to fill out “missing” textures and harmonies. Meanwhile, the majority of violinists viewed them as little more than useful pedagogical aids for the conservatoire. Ferdinand David (1810–1873), dedicatee of Mendelssohn’s E minor Violin Concerto, produced the first revised edition in 1843, which includes all manner of “improvements” designed to make the music conform to contemporary standards of technical grace and fluency.

The first notable player to take the sonatas and partitas into his regular performing repertoire was Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), who also became the first person to record any of this music when in 1903 in Berlin he set down the opening Adagio of the G minor Sonata and the Bourrée finale of the B minor Sonata on wax cylinders.

Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas sit at the pinnacle of the violin

repertoire, yet exactly for whom they were originally composed and for what special occasion (if any) remains a matter for conjecture. The autograph manuscript is dated 1720, exactly halfway through his six-year period as music director to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, when he was at his most professionally and personally contented. Working with some of the finest instrumentalists in Europe, Bach produced a series of suites, concertos and sonatas of supreme distinction that demonstrate his increasing awareness of prevailing Italian and French styles. Yet, if the dance movements of the three partitas are unmistakably more cosmopolitan in outlook, the pseudo-contrapuntal intricacies of the sonatas are grounded more firmly in the German tradition.

Bach was not the first German composer to compose music for unaccompanied violin — that distinction is shared by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644–1704), Johann Jakob Walther (c.1650–1717), Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705) and Johann Georg Pisendel (1688–1755), whose work was almost certainly known to Bach. What sets Bach’s collection apart is not so much its idiomatic violin writing as the peerless quality of the music enshrined therein and its visionary scope.

Although he was a gifted string player, Bach’s creative thinking — the intrinsic shape of his musical ideas and their contrapuntal potential — was governed by his prowess as the foremost organist–harpsichordist of his day. As a result, there are passages (most notably in the three fugues) in which the violin, by means of spread chords and assorted multiple stoppings, is required to create

CHRISTOPHER RAEBURN (1928-2009)I would like to dedicate tonight’s performance to the memory of Christopher Raeburn, scholar and legendary record producer at Decca for over five decades from the mid 1950’s.

The first time we met was during the recording of my first studio album of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concerti in June 1970 at Kingsway Hall. During those sessions, a friendship was born, and he subsequently became my favourite and most trusted producer, as well as a wonderful mentor.

His warmth and wisdom was and still is a constant source of inspiration for me. But most importantly, Christopher Raeburn was my friend, someone whom I truly adored and whose memory I cherish.

IN MEMORIAM

KYUNG WHA CHUNG

The record producer Christopher Raeburn, who has died aged 80, was a titan of the industry’s golden age. In the late 1950s and 60s, the great names on the technical side of the Decca Record Company included John Culshaw, Erik Smith, Ray Minshull, James Lock and Raeburn. The last two have died within a week of each other, at the same time as what seems to be the virtual disintegration of the Decca label.

One of the supreme record producers of his or any generation, Raeburn brought scholarly credentials and an all-consuming passion to the job, working with such artists as Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Whatever the latest “realignment” at Universal (owners of Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips) may mean - and no one seems prepared to say - it is safe to predict that it will satisfy the company’s accountants rather than those who revere the achievement of Raeburn and his colleagues.

Raeburn was born into a musical family - his father was Walter Raeburn QC and his mother Dora (née Williams) - and although his intention had been to follow a career in the theatre, it was no surprise that he soon gravitated towards the musical world. He was educated at Charterhouse school, Surrey, and read history at Worcester College, Oxford (1948-51), where his university contemporaries included the critics Robert Layton, Peter Branscombe and Andrew Porter. Layton recalls Raeburn’s tremendous enthusiasm in those days for all manner of musical figures, not least Wilhelm Furtwängler, a cultural hunger he continued to satisfy when he went to Vienna on a Leverhulme scholarship, gorging himself nightly on opera while broadening his circle of musical friends. There, too, he established himself as a Mozart scholar of considerable distinction.

He verified the original cast for Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario) in February 1786, discovered a revised, virtuoso second half to the Count’s aria Vedrò Mentr’io Sospiro from Le Nozze di Figaro, and collated important documentary material relating to the first performance of La Clemenza di Tito. It was during his research in Vienna and Prague that Raeburn became close friends with the Haydn scholar HC Robbins Landon, even courting the same woman, the historian Else Radant, as Raeburn told me. Landon’s success in that amatory contest did nothing to extinguish a lifelong friendship.

Raeburn had joined Decca in 1954, the year he left for Vienna, and rejoined it in 1958 as a producer, becoming the manager of opera productions in 1968, and director of opera productions in 1975. He remained with the company until 1991, but continued to work for it as a freelance producer until shortly before his death. In 2008 he thus celebrated his 50th year as a Decca producer and his 80th birthday.

The first opera production for which he was responsible was Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, in 1959. Another early assignment, as part of Culshaw’s team, was the first studio recording of Wagner’s Ring, conducted by Solti. He went on to supervise some of Decca’s most prestigious recordings, including the Sutherland/Pavarotti/Caballé Turandot, Karajan’s Madama Butterfly, with Pavarotti and Mirella Freni, Sutherland’s second Lucia di Lammermoor, and an award-winning Die Frau Ohne Schatten that completed Solti’s acclaimed Strauss opera recording series.

Opera provided the centre of gravity for Raeburn’s emotional and intellectual existence and, in addition to the above names, he made good friends with many other leading singers, including Plácido Domingo, Teresa Berganza, Renata Tebaldi, Birgit Nilsson and Kiri te Kanawa. So closely were his professional obligations and private life intertwined that his daughters, Alexandra, Belinda and Olivia, found themselves with godparents as celebrated as Leontyne Price, Tom Krause and Marilyn Horne.

Other musical genres were not neglected, however, and Raeburn also worked closely with Andras Schiff, Zubin Mehta, Ashkenazy (producing for him the complete piano concertos of Beethoven and Mozart), Kyung-Wha Chung and many others. What these artists valued in particular about Raeburn was not only his technical accomplishment but also the profound knowledge and humanity that underpinned it. The search for perfection was never-ending, and his endeavour to create the right environment in which performers could give of their best was the key to his success. “I doubt there has been anyone”, said Freni, “with a better set of ears, a more total dedication to music and the gift to speak so constructively and honestly with artists.” For Horne he was “the best producer anyone could have, steady and helpful all the way”.

Raeburn’s greatest discovery was the soprano Cecilia Bartoli, whom he brought to Decca in 1986, nurturing her talent and guiding her through her career. The esteem in which the Vienna Philharmonic held him was reflected in the award of the Franz Schalk medal, an honour usually reserved for conductors. In 2002 he was the recipient of the Midem lifetime achievement award.

The creation of the “Decca sound”, for which Raeburn was in large part responsible, is now history. Nonetheless, many will remember him as the man who epitomised the art of recording music at its finest.

His marriages, first to Pamela St Clair, and then to the Norwegian pianist Lilli Skauge, ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughters from his first marriage.

Kyung Wha Chung, André Previn and Christopher Raeburn, during the recording of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Violin Concertos.

Kingsway Hall, London, June 1970 BARRY MILLINGTON, THE GUARDIAN, 25TH FEBRUARY 2009

EVOLUTION OF A MYTH NO. 6

VENUS SERENADES JONAH’S DREAM, 2016

MICHAEL PRICE

Of course, the music of Bach needs no marketing strategy. Violinists often begin their musical lives learning the solo pieces as part of their repertoire. By the age of eighteen, Kyung Wha had studied all the six unaccompanied works for violin. To enter into a dialogue with a composer of such greatness is not something that just happens overnight. Bach was a man of unquestioned faith and his Passions are an unsurpassed expression of that faith. Kyung Wha experiences that faith quite intensely in the Bach solo works. Each piece expresses her insight into the myriad challenges of life, from desolation to absolute joy. Thus, the musician moves from being an interpreter to entering into a dialogue with the eternal, the divine. There are those moments when she would love to run away from the challenge of playing all six pieces, but just as Jonah tried to run from his destiny in life, his subconscious (symbolized as a whale) reminded him that there is no escape from fulfilling one’s potential in life.

Finally, and perhaps to state the obvious - one cannot show off with the Bach solo works as with Paganini or Tartini. The special quality that one has to bring to a Bach recital is humility. One cannot learn this quality. It is woven into life’s rich tapestry with all its moth holes! The only thing the musician can do is stand before her maker in all humility and offer the sound of her soul - an exquisite sound - and hope it will be received in the spirit in which it is offered. For the audience: just allow yourself to be transported by the beauty and magic of Kyung Wha’s sound which brings new and personal insight to the dialogue with the eternal.

Sitting in a restaurant in Manhattan, an unusual conversation is taking

place between two people who come from different worlds, but have discovered something they have in common. It was there all the time, but veiled. The veil disappeared through the growing recognition of our mortality, experienced through quite different life changing events. We had both been transported to a world where the arts revealed our destiny, but which was completely free from concerns of artistic legacy.

Back in the early 1970’s, as an art student in London, I first heard Kyung Wha Chung as a young rising star on the world stage. Kyung Wha was already a household name in England. My mother even had a poster of the young violinist over the mantlepiece at home in Stoke-on-Trent. However, it was not until about ten years ago that our paths crossed and we got to know each other through my wife, who is a pianist. Now after some time being on the road performing, Kyung Wha was back in New York for a few days and we all met for lunch. However, this became no ordinary light-hearted reunion. Kyung Wha talked of her deep concern about the modern challenge between “vocation and aesthetics” and how building a career had now usurped the quest for beauty and magic, not only in music, but in the arts in general.

She had always approached her music making and concerts with the idea that each performance was like an audition. If she gave everything, this would assure another invitation. This meant untold hours alone not just practising, but searching for that magic of sound, her special sound, that frees the soul and allows us to transcend the constraints of time. She had been shocked when she returned to the stage in 2010 to hear the term “marketing” as the prerequisite for a musician’s success.

MICHAEL PRICE

A DIALOGUE WITH THE ETERNAL

Michael Price is an internationally exhibited artist and author.

He lives and works in New York City.

RECORDING AVAILABLE ON WARNER CLASSICS

For her long-awaited return to the studio after 15 years, Kyung Wha Chung has made her first ever recording of Bach’s complete works for unaccompanied violin.

COMPLETE BACH SONATAS & PARTITAS

FOR UNACCOMPANIED VIOLIN

WWW.WARNERCLASSICS.COM