Santa Barbara Music Club

Constantine Finehouse Recital

Saturday, September 26, 2015 3:00 pm

Faulkner Gallery

40 E Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101

Image: Constantine Finehouse

On Saturday, September 12 the SANTA BARBARA MUSIC CLUB will present the first 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 opening concert features internationally renowned pianist Robert Cassidy in a program highlighting beloved masterworks as well as new and exciting compositions.

Program Details

CONSTANTINE FINEHOUSE, PIANO
Twelve Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman,”
K. 265/300e
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
Deux poèmes, Op. 32
Alexander Scriabin
(1872-1914)
  • Andante cantabile
  • Allegro, con eleganza, con fiducia
Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (“Pathétique”)
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
  • Grave-Allegro di molto e con brio
  • Adagio cantabile
  • Rondo: Allegro
Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61
Frédéric Chopin
(1810-1849)

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 opening concert features internationally renowned pianist Constantine Finehouse in a program highlighting beloved masterworks of the Classical and Romantic periods.

The concert opens with Mozart’s charming Twelve Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman,” K. 265/300e. The melody of this popular French children’s song has had numerous lyrics written to it, including the familiar “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” “The Alphabet Song,” and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and in this composition, Mozart’s best known set of variations, the composer displays – indeed, revels in – his virtuosic ability to build a substantial structure from the simplest of materials.

In complete contrast, Alexander Scriabin’s Deux Poèmes, Op. 32 follows, offering in the “Andante cantabile” an introverted, dreamily passionate utterance, and in the “Allegro, con eleganza, confiducia” an assertively outgoing proclamation. Interestingly, Scriabin had envisioned writing an opera, and these two works were originally conceived as arias in it, but the plan never came to fruition; the fanciful, imaginative characters of the two poems, however, stand alone as eloquent testimony to the composer’s dramatic creativity nonetheless.

Concluding the program will be the magnificent Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58 of Fréderic Chopin. The first large-scale, multi-movement piano work written in the key of B minor, it demonstrates convincingly the extraordinary maturity Chopin had attained during his last years of life.

The first movement unfolds with such logic and developmental instinct that it inexorably defines its own structure: though critics have viewed the absence of the first theme’s return following the development as an apparent weakness in Chopin’s mastery of sonata form, the opening theme is in fact manipulated so definitively and comprehensively prior to the recapitulation that its further statement would seem redundant. The Scherzo, as if to balance the exceptionally emotional content of the surrounding movements, is a surprisingly lighthearted caprice. The Largo exhibits a fascinating dichotomy: the A section offers the broadly poetic bel canto lines of a nocturne, while the B section reveals an hypnotically-extended otherworldliness. The sonata-rondo Finale utilizes an increasingly animated accompaniment to underscore the uninterrupted momentum which defines this brilliant movement of formal clarity and harmonic inventiveness.

The Performer

Constantine Finehouse was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and attended New England Conservatory, Juilliard and Yale. His principal teachers included Fredrik Wanger, Natalia Harlap, Herbert Stessin, Jerome Lowenthal, Boris Berman and Bruce Brubaker. Praised by Rhein Main Presse Allgemeine Zeitung for his “interpretations of depth and maturity,” Finehouse has performed extensively in the US (including in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Washington) and abroad (including in Lausanne, London, Odessa, St. Petersburg and Trieste). Recent recordings include Backwards Glance [Spice Rack Records 101-01], which interweaves music of Johannes Brahms and Richard Beaudoin. The Bolcom Project, made in collaboration with his American Double partner, violinist Philip Ficsor, included double-CD [Albany Troy 959/960] and a national tour. Fanfare praised the recording as “indispensable to any serious collector with an interest in later 20th century duo repertoire for violin and piano.” As part of American Double, Finehouse also toured Hungary, performing sonatas by Brahms, Bolcom and Ravel. More recently, he collaborated with violinist Olga Caceànova at Lausanne Conservatoire and with cellist Sebastian Bäverstam at Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall) and Merkin Recital Hall (Kauffman Center). Finehouse is currently recording Bolcom’s complete piano solo works for Naxos Records.


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