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presents…

JAN LISIECKI | PianoWednesday, October 27, 2021 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

Poems of the Night

CHOPIN Étude in C Major, Opus 10, No. 1 Nocturne in C Minor, Opus Posth. Étude in A Minor, Opus 10, No. 2 Nocturne in E Major, Opus 62, No. 2 Étude in E Major, Opus 10, No. 3 Étude in C-sharp Minor, Opus 10, No. 4 Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 1 Nocturne in D-flat Major, Opus 27, No. 2 Étude in G-flat Major, Opus 10, No. 5 Étude in E-flat Minor, Opus 10, No. 6 Nocturne in E-flat Major, Opus 9, No. 2 Nocturne in C Minor, Opus 48, No. 1

INTERMISSION

Nocturne in G Minor, Opus 15, No. 3 Étude in C Major, Opus 10, No. 7 Nocturne in F Major, Opus 15, No. 1 Étude in F Major, Opus 10, No. 8 Étude in F Minor, Opus 10, No. 9 Nocturne in B-flat Minor, Opus 9, No. 1 Étude in A-flat Major, Opus 10, No. 10 Nocturne in A-flat Major, Opus 32, No. 2 Étude in E-flat Major, Opus 10, No. 11 Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Opus Posth. Étude in C Minor, Opus 10, No. 12

This program is made possible in part by the generous support of Dr. Daniel J. Fourrier Jr.

Jan Lisiecki is represented by Dorn Music GmbH & Co KGScheidestrasse 9, 30625 Hannover, Germany dornmusic.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco

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ARTIST PROFILESSan Francisco Performances presents Jan Lisiecki for the second time. He first appeared in October 2013.

Jan Lisiecki’s interpretations and tech-nique speak to a maturity beyond his age. At 26, the Canadian performs over 100 yearly concerts worldwide, and has worked closely with conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Daniel Harding, Manfred Honeck, and Claudio Abbado (†).

Following his acclaimed Night Mu-sic recitals, Lisiecki recently presented both a new solo recital program and a Beethoven Lieder cycle with baritone Matthias Goerne, among others at the Salzburg Festival. Recent return invita-tions include Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orches-tra, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for per-formances at Carnegie Hall and Elbphil-

harmonie Hamburg. Lisiecki has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orches-tre de Paris, Bavarian Radio Symphony and London Symphony Orchestra.

At the age of 15, Lisiecki signed an exclu-sive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. The label launched its celebrations of the Beethoven Year 2020 with the release of a live recording of all five Beethoven con-certos from Konzerthaus Berlin, with Jan Lisiecki leading the Academy of St Mar-tin in the Fields from the piano. In March 2020, a Beethoven Lieder cycle with Mat-thias Goerne followed, which was awarded the Diapason d’Or. Earlier recordings have been awarded with the JUNO and ECHO Klassik. In August 2021, Deutsche Gram-mophon released Frédéric Chopin’s com-plete Nocturnes, marking Jan Lisiecki’s eighth album for the prestigious label.

At 18, Lisiecki became both the young-est ever recipient of Gramophone’s Young Artist Award and received the Leonard Bernstein Award. He was named UNICEF Ambassador to Canada in 2012.

PROGRAM NOTES

This recital offers 23 short pieces by Cho-pin, drawn from his nocturnes and études. Mr. Lisiecki will perform all 12 of Chopin’s Études, Opus 10, which will be played in numerical order. Around and between these he will perform 11 of Chopin’s noc-turnes, and he has titled the program “Po-ems of the Night.”

It was the Irish pianist John Field (1782–1837) who “invented” the nocturne. Or in any case, he was the first to use that title for a piece of music said to be inspired by the night. The title “nocturne” does not denote a specific musical form but instead is a general name for a piece that seems to express something nocturnal. Inevita-bly, we think that a nocturne must bring

dreamy and gentle music, but that is far from the truth. Night may be a time of calm and sleep, but it can also be a time of terror, of mystery, of love and intimacy, of confusion, of dreams, of nightmares, of meaninglessness. And so music titled “Nocturne” can have many different faces, as this recital will make clear.

The title “étude” is a little more precise. It means, literally, a “study,” and most études pose a specific technical problem for the performer. But in the hands of a great composer, an étude can be both a teaching piece and great music all at once. Chopin left Poland—never to return—in 1830 and settled the following year in Paris. Even before leaving Warsaw, he had begun work on a series of études for the piano, and he completed the 12 études of his Opus 10 in Paris in 1833. He dedicated them to the other phenomenally talented pianist of the era, Franz Liszt (Chopin was only 23 at that time; Liszt was 22). Several of the études of Opus 10 have nicknames—No. 5 in G-flat Major is sometimes known as the “Black Key” because it is played only on those keys, and the famous No. 12 in C Minor is known as the “Revolutionary” be-cause it is thought to reflect Chopin’s furi-ous reaction when he learned that Warsaw had fallen to the Russians.

Individual program notes for all 23 piec-es on this program would be overkill, and listeners are encouraged to engage each piece as it comes and to sense and enjoy the contrast Lisiecki achieves with this selection and ordering of pieces. Some of this music is quite familiar, and some of it is almost unknown to general audiences. All these pieces will speak, either directly or obliquely, of the night. They will be-come, in the words of Lisiecki, “Poems of the Night.”

—Notes by Eric Bromberger