Denis Kozhukhin

Program

Denis Kozhukhin is a Russian pianist with an unusually international background. After childhood lessons in Russia, he studied at the Queen Sofia Conservatory in Madrid and subsequently at the International Piano Academy at Lake Como, where his teachers included Menahem Pressler, Charles Rosen, Andreas Staier, Peter Frankl, and Boris Berman. He was a prizewinner at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, and in 2010 he won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. He has given recitals and concerto performances all over Europe and the Americas, and his solo recordings include music by Prokofiev and Haydn.

PROGRAM:

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759)
Suite No. 7 in G minor, HWV 432 (1720)
     Ouverture: Largo - presto - largo
     Andante
     Allegro
     Sarabande
     Gigue
     Passacaille

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
3 Intermezzi, Op. 117 (1892)
     Andante moderato
     Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
     Andante con moto

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB. 89 (1926)
     With Drums and Pipes
     Barcarolla
     Musettes
     The Night’s Music
     The Chase

Intermission

CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786-1826)
Piano Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 49; J. 206 (1816)
     Allegro feroce
     Andante con molto
     Rondo: Presto con molto vivacita

ISAAC ALBÉNIZ (1860-1909)
Selections from Iberia  (1905)
     El Corpus en Sevilla (Book 1)
     Triana (Book 2)
     Eritaña (Book 4)

About the Artist

Denis Kozhukhin’s playing is characterised by an extraordinary technical mastery balanced by a sharp intelligence, calm maturity and wisdom. Kozhukhin has that rare and special gift of creating an immediate and compelling emotional connection with his audience.

Since winning First Prize at the 2010 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Kozhukhin has quickly established a formidable reputation and has already appeared at many of the world’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls including the Verbier Festival, where he won the Prix d’Honneur in 2003, Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, Berliner Philharmonie, Kölner Philharmonie, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Rheingau Music Festival, Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Herkulessaal, Rotterdam De Doelen, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Auditorio Nacional Madrid, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Milan, Théâtre du Châtelet and Auditorium du Louvre Paris.

In the 2015/16 season and beyond, Kozhukhin performs with orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia, DSO Berlin, Frankfurt Radio, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR and Brussels Philharmonic.

The 2014/15 season included performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Morlot, Philadelphia Orchestra/Denève, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oramo, Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev, Houston Symphony Orchestra/Hrusa, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic/Gimeno and Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo/Alsop. Kozhukhin also toured to China with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and made his debut with an ensemble comprising soloists from the West Eastern Divan Orchestra under Barenboim at the Salzburg Festival and at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

As a recitalist, highlights of this season and beyond include returns to the Concertgebouw’s Master Pianists Series, Cologne Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris and London’s International Piano Series, as well as debuts at the Lucerne Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus and the Boston Celebrity Series.

In September 2015 Denis Kozhukhin signed an exclusive recording contract with Pentatone. His first CD recording for Pentatone of Tchaikovsky Concerto No 1 and the Grieg Concerto with RSB Berlin and Vassily Sinaisky will be released in April 2016. His first solo recital disc under this contract will be of Brahms. Kozhukhin’s debut recording in 2013 was of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonatas Nos 6, 7 and 8 and he subsequently released a CD of Haydn Sonatas in September 2014 (both for Onyx Classics).

Born in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, in 1986 into a family of musicians, Denis Kozhukhin began his piano studies at the age of four with his mother. As a boy, he attended the Balakirev School of Music where he studied under Natalia Fish. From 2000 to 2007, Kozhukhin was a pupil at the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid learning with Dimitri Bashkirov and Claudio Martinez-Mehner.

Upon graduating, he received his diploma personally from the Queen of Spain and was named best student in his year and twice best chamber group with his own Cervantes Trio. After his studies in Madrid, Kozhukhin was invited to study at the Piano Academy at Lake Como where he received tuition from amongst others Fou Ts’ong, Stanislav Yudenitch, Peter Frankl, Boris Berman, Charles Rosen and Andreas Staier. He completed his studies with Kirill Gerstein in Stuttgart.

Kozhukhin is a committed chamber musician and has worked with amongst others, Leonidas Kavakos, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Janine Jansen, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin, the Jerusalem Quartet, the Pavel Haas Quartet, Radovan Vlatkovic, Jörg Widmann and Alisa Weilerstein.

Notes

Notes by Nigel Simeone

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759)
Suite No. 7 in G minor, HWV 432 (before 1720)
     Ouverture: Largo – Presto – Largo
     Andante
     Allegro
     Sarabande
     Gigue
     Passacaille

The first edition of Handel’s Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin was published in 1720 by the composer himself (the imprint reads “London, printed for Author”). In the preface to this edition, Handel wrote: “I have been obliged to publish some of the following Lessons, because surrepticious and incorrect Copies of them had got Abroad. I have added several new ones to make the Work more useful, which if it meets with a favourable Reception; I will still proceed to publish more, reckoning it my duty, with my Small Talent, to serve a Nation from which I have receiv’d so Generous a protection.” The concept of copyright was very new at the time – the first Copyright Act (the “Statute of [Queen] Anne”) was enacted by Parliament in 1710 – and piracy was rife among music publishers. Handel was right to be worried: a selection of movements from these Suites appeared in Amsterdam, derived from the “surrepticious and incorrect” copies that he mentioned. Handel probably wrote the Suites in 1717–18, when he was working as composer-in-residence to James Brydges (later the Duke of Chandos) at Cannons, a handsome stately home that was demolished in 1747 after the family became mired in debt. The Suite No. 7 opens with an overture in the French style – a stately slow section contrasting with a lively fugue. The Andante and Allegro movements that follow are based on dance forms familiar from many suites of the Baroque period: the Allemande and Courante. The Sarabande is a movement of spacious nobility. This was a form that Handel used for poignant expressive effect in his operas (most famously in “Lascia ch’io pianga” which he recycled several times, notably for Rinaldo), as well as in instrumental works. The Suite concludes with a lively Gigue, followed by the impressive “Passacaille”, a set of variations on a ground bass.  

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Three Intermezzi, Op. 117 (1892)
     Andante moderato
     Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
     Andante con moto

Brahms composed four miraculous sets of piano pieces (Op. 116–Op.119) in the last few years of his life, autumnal and nostalgic in mood, but often extremely daring in terms of their harmonies and piano textures. The Three Intermezzi Op. 117 were written in the summer of 1892, while Brahms staying in Bad Ischl in Upper Austria – a favourite holiday retreat for the composer. The first performance was given in Berlin on January 6, 1893, by Heinrich Barth, though in all these late pieces, the pianist Brahms had in mind was Clara Schumann, his dearest friend over more than four decades. The Op. 117 Intermezzi resemble lullabies in character, and the first of them has a superscription taken from an old Scottish verse, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament: “Sleep softly, my child, sleep softly and well! / It breaks my heart to see you weep.” The main theme has a gentle, rocking feeling, darkened only by the central section (in the minor), before the tranquillity of the opening is regained. The second Intermezzo is in B flat minor and the main idea is made up of arpeggio-like figures within which Brahms embeds a tune. The eloquent second theme is quite different, its texture rich and chordal, in D flat major.  The final Intermezzo is in C sharp minor. It begins in mysterious octaves (marked molto p e sotto voce sempre), and the same idea later reappears surrounded by warm harmonies. There’s great beauty but also inner torment here. It is likely that Brahms had another old Scottish poem in mind as the inspiration for this piece (he wrote it on the same sheet as Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament): “O woe! O woe, deep in the valley.” The secrets of these intensely private pieces were ones Brahms usually kept to himself, but he told his friend Rudolf von der Leyen that the Intermezzi Op. 117 were “three lullabies for my sorrows.”

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89 (1926)
     With Drums and Pipes
     Barcarolla
     Musettes
     The Night’s Music
     The Chase

Out of Doors was one of the results of Bartók’s ‘piano year’ of 1926. Within a few months he composed his Piano Sonata, the set of Nine Little Pieces, and Out of Doors. All three works were introduced by the composer in a broadcast concert in Budapest on December 8, 1926 (though on that occasion Bartók played only three of the pieces from Out of Doors). Sometimes described as a suite, Out of Doors is a collection from which Bartók himself often chose one or two pieces for his own recitals. Programmatic titles are relatively unusual in Bartók’s major concert works , though they are often found in his shorter pieces, especially those for young players. Out of Doors is one of Bartók’s most technically demanding solo piano works, and – along with the First Piano Concerto – it is among the outstanding examples of his belief at the time that “the inherent nature of piano tone becomes really expressive only by means of the present tendency to use the piano as a percussion instrument.” The first piece, “With Drums and Pipes” quotes from a well-known Hungarian folk song, and is marked by gawky syncopations. “Barcarolla” has some of the undulating figurations familiar from earlier Barcarolles (with their origins in Venetian gondola songs), but Bartók takes an idiosyncratic approach, with many changes of time signature and a texture that is often reduced to two intertwined musical lines. “Musettes” is an evocation in firmly twentieth-century terms of the small bagpipes common in seventeenth-century France, and of the French Baroque clavecinistes. Bartók greatly admired these composers, especially François Couperin, who also wrote pieces imitating the musette. “The Night’s Music” is the first of Bartók’s many evocations of the natural world at night (the last of these came in the slow movement of the Third Piano Concerto). A kind of free rondo, the piece imitates the sounds of a summer evening in Hungary, including birds, cicadas and, most memorably, the call of the “unka frog” (strictly speaking, the European fire-bellied toad) which reappears throughout the piece. These sounds of nature are contrasted with a chorale-like theme, and snatches of folksong. Out of Doors ends with “The Chase,” based on a spiky and angular idea in the right hand is presented over obsessive and driving sixteenth-notes in the left hand.

CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786-1826)
Piano Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 49, J. 206 (1816)
     Allegro feroce
     Andante con molto
     Rondo: Presto con molto vivacità

Weber was a brilliant pianist who would often improvise at the keyboard during concerts. Compared with his contemporaries, however, his original compositions for the piano are a relatively small part of his output. Along with some shorter pieces (the most famous being Invitation to the Dance from 1819), he wrote four piano sonatas – many fewer than contemporaries such as Clementi, Hummel  or Beethoven. The Piano Sonata in D minor dates from a very productive spell in Weber’s career. It was composed just after the Grand Duo concertant for clarinet and piano and shortly before work started on Weber’s most enduring operatic masterpiece, Der Freischütz. Written in a concentrated spell of three weeks in it was completed in Berlin on 29 November 1816. Weber noted in his diary that he started the first movement on November 9, finishing it a few days later, on November 13. Next, he tackled the Rondo finale, and last the Andante. His diary suggests that he gave the first performance of the Sonata to a group of friends in Berlin a few days after it was completed. It was published by the Berlin firm of Schlesinger in September 1817. Friedrich Jähns, who compiled the thematic catalogue of Weber’s works, described the Sonata as having “a special character” in which “the demonic element” is unusually important. This is certainly the case at the start: marked Allegro feroce, the first movement begins in a mood of dark foreboding, full of jagged surprises that suggest the influence of Beethoven (whose Sonata Op. 101 also dates from 1816). A second idea, in the upper register of the piano, is lyrical and consoling contrast. This long movement ends in hard-won triumph. The second movement Andante con moto is an alluring set of variations interrupted by episodes, the first of them dream-like and rhythmically free, and the second a passionate outburst. The Rondo finale is a dazzling movement in D major, dominated by the cascading idea in sixteenth-notes heard at the start, to which two other ideas provide a contrast. The composer’s friend Johann Friedrich Rochlitz – one of the leading critics of the day – wrote that “The Rondo presto is truly great and quite original. It bubbles with wild humor.”

ISAAC ALBÉNIZ (1860-1909)
Selections from Iberia  (1905-1908)
     El Corpus en Sevilla (Book 1)
     Triana (Book 2)
     Eritaña (Book 4)

It was Olivier Messiaen who described Albéniz’s Iberia as “a marvel of the piano, the masterpiece of Spanish music which takes the highest place among the most brilliant pieces for the king of instruments.” Composed between 1905 and 1908, Iberia brings together three distinct elements: the harmonies of Impressionist music, the dazzling virtuosity of Liszt, and the distinctive rhythms and dance-forms of his native Spain. “El Corpus en Sevilla” (often called “Fête-Dieu à Séville”) is a musical portrait of the Feast of Corpus Christi in Seville, in which a statue of he Virgin Mary is paraded through the streets of the city, accompanied by marching bands. “Triana” is the district of Seville that was one of the crucibles of flamenco. Albéniz recreates all the excitement of flamenco in this piece: after an introduction, “Triana” is alive with pianistic recreations of castanets, strumming guitars and stamping feet. The last piece in the set is “Eritaña”, a well-known inn just outside Seville that was famous for its flamenco parties. An exhilarating dance, “Eritaña” was the piece that Debussy singled out as the finest in the whole of Iberia. 

Watch & Listen