Santa Barbara Music Club

Berkowitz Plays the Diabelli

Saturday, October 10, 2015 3:00 pm

Faulkner Gallery

40 E Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101

Image: Paul Berkowitz, pianist

On SATURDAY, October 10 the SANTA BARBARA MUSIC CLUB will present another program in its popular series of concerts of beautiful Classical music at Faulkner Gallery in the downtown Public Library.

One of the highlights of Santa Barbara Music Club’s concerts is the opportunity for audiences to hear great music from a variety of historical periods, with a diversity of musical forms, performed by excellent artists. This concert features pianist Paul Berkowitz, UCSB Professor and Head of the Keyboard Program, in a concert featuring a seldom-performed masterpiece, the Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz of Diabelli, Op. 120, by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Program Details

PAUL BERKOWITZ, PIANO
Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by A. Diabelli, Op. 120
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Thema:
Vivace 3/4
Var. I:
Alla Marcia maestoso 4/4
Var. II:
Poco allegro 3/4
Var. III:
L’istesso tempo 3/4
Var. IV:
Un poco più vivace 3/4
Var. V:
Allegro vivace 3/4
Var. VI:
Allegro ma non troppo e serioso 3/4
Var. VII:
Un poco più allegro 3/4
Var. VIII:
Poco vivace 3/4
Var. IX:
Allegro pesante e risoluto (minore) 4/4
Var. X:
Presto 3/4
Var. XI:
Allegretto 3/4
Var. XII:
Un poco più moto 3/4
Var. XIII:
Vivace 3/4
Var. IV:
Grave e maestoso 4/4
Var. XV:
Presto scherzando 2/4
Var. XVI:
Allegro 4/4
Var. XVII:
Allegro 4/4
Var. XVIII:
Poco moderato 3/4
Var. XIX:
Presto 3/4
Var. XX:
Andante 6/4
Var. XXI:
Allegro con brio 4/4 – Meno allegro 3/4
Var. XXII:
Allegro molto. alla ‘Notte e giorno faticar’ di Mozart 4/4
Var. XXIII:
Allegro assai 4/4
Var. XXIV:
Fughetta: Andante 3/4
Var. XXV:
Allegro 3/8
Var. XXVI:
Piacevole 3/8
Var. XXVII:
Vivace 3/8
Var. XXVIII:
Allegro 2/4
Var. XXIX:
Adagio ma non troppo (minore) 3/4
Var. XXX:
Andante, sempre cantabile (minore) 4/4
Var. XXXI:
Largo molto espressive (minore) 9/8
Var. XXXII:
Fuga: Allegro 2/2
Var. XXXIII:
Tempo di Menuetto moderato 3/4

Notes on the Program

by Betty Oberacker

One of the highlights of Santa Barbara Music Club’s concerts is the opportunity for audiences to hear great music from a variety of historical periods, with a diversity of musical forms, performed by excellent artists. This concert features pianist Paul Berkowitz, UCSB Professor and Head of the Keyboard Program, in a concert featuring a seldom-performed masterpiece, the Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120, by Ludwig van Beethoven.

The piano works of Beethoven’s Late Period include six Piano Sonatas and the so-called “Diabelli Variations.” These variations were the composer’s entry in a competition sponsored by the publisher Anton Diabelli: it seems that Diabelli circulated his waltz to 50 composers of the time, each of whom was requested to compose one variation – the project of course being designed to generate publicity for Diabelli’s publishing company. And it is typical of Beethoven, then in his last decade, to have submitted not one, but a tour de force of 33 magnificent variations on Diabelli’s silly little waltz theme – thus conceiving a veritable microcosm of the art of improvisation.

Considered one of the greatest sets of variations for the keyboard, along with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the work has inspired effusive praise from noted musical authorities: critic Martin Cooper has written, “The variety of treatment is almost without parallel, so that the work represents a book of advanced studies in Beethoven’s manner of expression and his use of the keyboard, as well as a monumental work in its own right;” composer Arnold Schönberg termed the Diabelli “in respect of their harmony, deserve to be called the most adventurous work by Beethoven;” and pianist Alfred Brendel commented, “The theme has ceased to reign over its unruly offspring. Rather, the variations decide what the theme may have to offer them. Instead of being confirmed, adorned and glorified, it is improved, parodied, ridiculed, disclaimed, transfigured, mourned, stamped out, and finally uplifted.”

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The Performer

Paul Berkowitz has recorded the complete Piano Sonatas of Schubert for Meridian Records to worldwide acclaim. He was described by the London Sunday Times as being “in the royal class of Schubert interpreters” and his CD recordings of the Last Three Schubert Piano Sonatas were included among the same newspaper’s Records of the Year. His recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana was selected by BBC Radio Record Review as the best of all available recordings. He also released a series of three CD recordings of Brahms Piano Music. BBC Music Magazine reviewed Vol. II commenting, “…praise to Meridian, which has in the Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz an artist who isn’t shy of taking on the kind of repertoire traditionally the preserve of more internationally high-profile artists. Rightly so, for he has a voice, a musicality, a bigness of pianism distinctively his own…his integrity is commanding, his stylistic authority convincing and his refusal merely to play the notes impressive.”

Mr. Berkowitz more recently recorded the Schubert Impromptus, Moments Musicaux, and other repertoire as the final two volumes of his 9-CD cycle of major works for piano by Schubert for Meridian, which he began in 1984. The Guardian of London noted: “A sparkling technique allied to a clear sense of line make these recordings particularly special.” All earlier volumes have been re-issued along with the two new recordings as Schubert Piano Works, in nine volumes. More recently he has taken an interest in the piano works of the French composer Francis Poulenc, several of which he will be recording for Meridian in the next year.

Mr. Berkowitz, a native of Montreal, Canada, is a graduate of McGill University and of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Rudolf Serkin. He lived in Britain for 20 years appearing frequently at the Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls and on the BBC, as a soloist with major orchestras in Britain and Canada and at music festivals in Belgium, Denmark, England, Scotland, France, Italy and Spain. Mr. Berkowitz left the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he had been a professor since 1975, to join the music faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993, where he is Professor of Piano and served as Chair of the Department of Music 2007-12. He has been invited to present master classes at major conservatories, universities and festivals, and his students have won prizes in numerous competitions, including the BBC Young Musician of the Year (Thomas Adès), the International Piano Competition Palma d’Oro in Italy, the Bradshaw and Buono International Competition in New York, and the Los Angeles Liszt Competition and have gone on to have concert and academic careers of their own in Europe, North America and Asia.


This project is funded in part by the Henry W. Bull Foundation and by the Community Arts Grant Program using funds provided by the City of Santa Barbara in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission