On ***SATURDAY*** December 5, 2015 an UNUSUAL salon:
An evening of music and insight…
Pianist John Sutherland Earle:
“Music that Evokes”
PROGRAM
“The Alcotts” (revised, 1947)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
From the Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860”
Sonata in F minor, Opus 57, “Appassionata” (1806)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Allegro assai – Piu allegro
Andante con moto
Allegro ma non troppo – Presto
Andante (1912)
Leos Janacek (1854-1928)
From “In the Mist”
Reflections in the Water (1905)
Claude Debussy(1862-1918)
From “Images,” Book I
St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Waves (1866)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
From “Legends”
“The music in this concert evokes nature, place, and mental states. The program begins with Ives’ nostalgic imagining of 19th century Concord, Massachusetts, in particular the home of the Alcotts, with references to Beethoven 5th symphony played by one of the sisters on a spinet piano. The pogram’s centerpiece is one of Beethoven’s most impassioned and inspired creations: the Appassionata Sonata. The pieces on the second half of the program evoke water – in one case combined with air to form mist in a piece by Janacek, in a second reflecting images of sky and nature through swirls and ripples in an impressionistic work of Debussy. The final piece describes a journey walking from land on the Italian mainland across the treacherous Strait of Messina to Sicily, a miracle by Saint Francis of Paola depicted in a Legend by Liszt.”
You might remember John accompanying Kari Paludin last May in their “Spirit of Schubert” salon.
Since moving to the DC area in 2010, John he has become a member and frequent performer with the IBIS Chamber Music Society, and he also performs regularly with the Rock Creek Chamber Players, Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association, Friday Morning Music Club, and members of the US Army Orchestra, and at the Emerson Avenue Salons. He has also performed as soloist and chamber musician in more than a dozen states of the US, several countries of Europe, and in Russia and Japan.
John studied piano, accompanying, and chamber music at the Oberlin Conservatory, Stanford University, and the Vienna Hochschule fűr Musik. His principle teachers were Peter Takacs, Adolph Baller, Haggai Niv, and Hans Petermandl and he also had coaching and master courses with John Perry, Gennady Kleyman, Alexander Lipsky, Jorge Bolet, Garrick Ohlsson, and Oleg Maisenberg. A National Merit and Fulbright Scholar as well as prizewinner at the Pacific International, Carmel Music Society, and Palo Alto Symphony Competitions, he participated twice in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and has returned to Russia for several concerts. In a parallel life, John teaches at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs.
One of John’s specialties is a “curated concert,” an informal lecture-recital including discussions of historical context and compositional style, with the goal not of teaching musicology but of helping modern listeners to hear and understand music as if they were contemporaries, even friends, of the composers. Recent examples include multi-media Schubertiades, with Lieder, chamber and solo music of Schubert, in Alexandria, Arlington, Budapest, and Moscow.
In the program for this salon, versions of which John is also performing in Bucharest, Budapest, San Francisco, Arlington, and Alexandria, the music evokes nature, place, and mental states. The program begins with Ives’ nostalgic imagining of 19th century Concord, Massachusetts, in particular the home of the Alcotts, with references to Beethoven 5th symphony played by one of the sisters on a spinet piano. The pogram’s centerpiece is one of Beethoven’s most impassioned and inspired creations: the Appassionata Sonata. The pieces on the second half of the program evoke water – in one case combined with air to form mist in a piece by Janacek, in a second reflecting images of sky and nature through swirls and ripples in an impressionistic work of Debussy. The final piece describes a journey walking from land on the Italian mainland across the treacherous Strait of Messina to Sicily, a miracle by Saint Francis of Paola depicted in a Legend by Liszt.