Thursday, August 14
A Recital by Yefim Bronfman piano

Robert Schumann

Arabeske in C major, op. 18

It is easy to forget, more than a century and a half after the fact, how essentially radical Robert Schumann’s early piano music seemed to both performers and audiences in the 1830s and 1840s. Many of his pieces, like Carnaval or Kreisleriana, consisted of a string of miniatures of wildly varying styles and disconcertingly sudden changes of mood, often conceived with a literary program indicated by means of a quotation that many listeners did not even comprehend, or labeled with names like Florestan and Eusebius, representing aspects of Schumann’s own personality. Even Liszt was hesitant to perform Kreisleriana, which Schumann had dedicated to him, because it was “too difficult for the public to digest.” By now Schumann is a favorite Romantic composer for the piano. Yet his widow, Clara, always his most devoted supporter, played his Opus 17 Fantasie in public just once, in 1867, thirty years after it had been composed and a decade after Robert’s death—and then dropped it from her repertoire because it still seemed too modern.

When she was still his fiancée, Clara regularly tried to persuade Robert to write something in a more accessible style. She hoped that her father, who objected to their planned marriage, might realize that he could write something that would sell well enough to provide a stable income. And, of course, she also hoped that she could perform his music in public concerts that would arouse enthusiasm for the composer and his work. In a letter of April 4, 1839, she implored him to try “just once” to write a piece that audiences could understand, “something brilliant, completely understandable, and without inscriptions—a completely coherent piece not too long and not too short. I’d so much like to have something of yours to play that’s specifically intended for the public. Obviously a genius will find this degrading, but politics demands it every now and then.”

Even as Clara wrote this letter, Robert was beginning to write pieces that were less bizarre, less idiosyncratic, one of which is his Arabeske (often published as Arabesque), which he composed between October 1838 and January 1839. The word “arabesque” refers to decorative linear patterns made of scrolling foliage. Schumann’s work does not exactly intertwine decorative patterns, but it does emphasize the linearity of its melodies over constant chordal arpeggios in its principal section; here the second meaning of “arabesque,” a ballet dance position, illuminates the curves and trajectories of its melodies.

Schumann may have referred to his Arabeske as a “rondelette” in a letter to Clara; no work with that title is known, but the Arabeske is cast in the shape of a “little rondo”: A-B-A-C-A, with a coda. The A section shares an opening figure with the C section, but C contrasts with A by virtue of its minor mode, brisk dotted rhythms, and more agitated mood. The B section represents the dreamy, poetic, Eusebius side of Schumann, and it becomes the basis for the evocative coda.

— © Steven Ledbetter

Johannes Brahms

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, op. 5

Aficionados of Brahms’s piano writing might turn instinctively to later works, like the rhapsodies, intermezzos, and the Second Piano Concerto. But Brahms’s early piano sonatas—including his Third Sonata in F minor—are dramatic, elegant compositions in their own right and well-deserving of attention.

The Third Sonata was composed in 1853, when a not-yet-twenty-year-old Brahms was beginning to make a splash on the German musical scene. His early compositions showcased an astonishing maturity and confident command of melody, harmony, and counterpoint. When he made the acquaintance of Robert and Clara Schumann in the fall of that year, he rather sheepishly presented a few of his most recent works, including the Andante from the Third Sonata. The Schumanns were floored, leading Robert to write his famous article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in which he called Brahms a “young blood at whose cradle graces and heroes mounted guard.” This undoubtedly provided a confidence boost, and Brahms finished the Sonata that October. He soon after traveled to Leipzig, where the work—along with several others—was published by the esteemed Breitkopf und Härtel firm. The final published score included a dedication to Countess Ida von Hohenthal, who had hosted Brahms during his visit to Leipzig.

Brahms’s simultaneous love for and intimidation of Beethoven has been written about at great length, but in earlier works such as this, we hear glimpses of a young Brahms eagerly aspiring to the heights set forth by his hero. This is most apparent in the structure of the Third Sonata; the work is set across a monumental five movements instead of the traditional three, a decision that likely would have made the form-breaking Beethoven proud. Brahms also incorporates an obvious musical homage to Beethoven in the Sonata. In the first and third movements, the famous “fate” motive from the Fifth Symphony is lovingly interpolated within Brahms’s musical material. Oddly, this Sonata would be his final statement in the form, and the young Brahms soon moved onto even more ambitious projects after its completion.

After a stormy opening, the clouds clear for just a moment to allow the iconic short-short-short-long rhythm from Beethoven’s Fifth to rumble deep in the bass of the piano. This rhythm returns in the movement’s development section, and features prominently (in inverted form) at the return of the opening material toward the movement’s end. The movement is not all tempest, though—at various points we are treated to some lovely reveries before an ending in sunny F major.

The tender second movement matches an inscription printed above the movement in the score, a brief poetic passage by Otto Inckermann, writing under his pseudonym C. O. Sternau: on the subject of love, which reads as follows:

Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint,

a sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint

Und halten sich selig umfangen.

In the evening twilight, moonlight shines,

There two hearts are joined in love

And blessedly embrace each other.

Expansive melodic ideas and gentle rocking again recall Beethoven, this time the slow movement of the Pathétique Sonata in C minor. Unlike the first movement, though, there is relatively little that conflicts with the peaceful proceedings, and the gentle close arrives with little effort.

In the third movement, a prickly Scherzo leads to a hymn-like trio that includes—subtly—Beethoven’s short-short-short-long rhythm from the first movement. After this brief aside, the Scherzo gathers steam once again. Flickers of the slower trio poke through on occasion, but the trickster mood prevails and the movement is capped with a hearty laugh.

The fourth movement presents a dreamy Intermezzo. Subtitled “Rückblick” (A Look Back), it begins almost as a postscript to the previous movement, as if Brahms hadn’t finished his train of thought in the Scherzo and decided to continue his musings in a new movement. The same “fate” rhythm takes center stage here as well, alongside an ominous transformation of the second movement’s main theme. The Intermezzo closes with a somber tone, but this mood doesn’t last for long. Suddenly, a jaunty theme launches the Sonata into its final movement. This lighthearted Rondo is full of Brahmsian qualities—lush harmonic development, contrapuntal interplay, and fluid rhythmic motion. There are occasional dark moments along the way, but they always open onto sunnier pathways, and the work ultimately ends with a triumphant outburst in F major. — © Matthew Mugmon

Claude Debussy

Images, Series 2

The early 1900s were mostly happy years for Debussy. He called it his “time of spring,” just before artistic success tipped over into full-blown fame. It was during this period, in 1905, that he published a series of three short piano pieces gathered under the title of Images. The explicit reference to a pictorial stimulus (implied in so much of Debussy’s music) gives an indication of his aesthetic leanings. He once proclaimed, “I love pictures almost as much as music,” and a close friend remarked, “It is his delight to paint in music.”

Two years after the first set of Images was published, Debussy wrote a second set with similarly evocative titles and equally vivid pianism. This second set of Images opens with Cloches à travers les feuilles (Bells Through the Leaves), a reflection inspired by the Javanese gamelan Debussy heard at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889. But a second possible inspiration is a passage from a letter Debussy received from his friend and biographer Louis Laloy describing the sound of a church bell “crossing, from village to village, through the golden forests in the silence of the evening.” Debussy wrote this movement on three lines of score instead of the traditional two, keeping the layers of texture, rhythm, and harmony visually distinct while they blend acoustically in a complex counterpoint.

Laloy’s presence is more overt in the second piece, Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (And the Moon Sets over the Temple That Was), which Debussy dedicated to him. This work evokes the poetics, nostalgia, and mystery of an ancient and exotic ruin bathed in moonlight. Through fragmentary melodies and floating, ambiguous harmonies, Debussy creates a dreamscape redolent of the Symbolists’ fascination with “the inexpressible.”

The imagery is more tangible in Poissons d’or (Goldfish), the concluding work in the set. It is said to have been inspired by a painting of two goldfish on a Japanese lacquer panel that hung in Debussy’s office. Darting fins, bright colors, and flashes of reflected sunlight blend in a bravura finale that matches pure, extroverted pianism with the similes of Impressionism. — © Luke Howard

Sergei Prokofiev

Piano Sonata No. 7, op. 83

Prokofiev’s sixth, seventh, and eighth piano sonatas are collectively known as the “War Sonatas” because they were composed and premiered in the midst of World War II. The Seventh Sonata, composed between 1939 and 1942, confronts the experience of war through its expression of chaos, confusion, and the reserves of hope and resilience that enable the human spirit to survive even through such troubled times.

The first movement has traditionally been interpreted as a corrupted expression of sonata form, the Classical model for an opening movement in which contrasting keys compete for dominance. But the tonality in Prokofiev’s “unquiet allegro” is so strained that the tonal coherence implied by this label is nowhere to be found. There are no cadences here—there are scarcely even any triads—and the supposed main key of the movement, B-flat major, is barely recognizable even in the opening theme, which is punctuated by the recurring rhythmic motive of three short notes followed by a long one. The contrasting theme, marked andantino, begins with this same motive before building a sinuous melodic line. Marked “expressive and sorrowful,” this passage gives way to a gradual accelerando perforated by a sudden forte. The accelerando culminates in the return to the opening allegro inquieto for a tumultuous passage referencing the movement’s themes. Near the end of this passage, the andantino theme appears in the bass, having been transformed into a violent gesture. A brief return of the andantino cannot hold back the chaos for long; the movement ends with a final allegro that fades into growling discontent.

After the tumult and uncertainty of the first movement, the warm-hearted E-major sonorities of the second movement are shocking, even eerie. A syncopated triadic accompaniment in the right hand supports a song-like melody in the piano’s middle register. A chromatic transition leads to a broad, expressive passage that climaxes in a sudden fortissimo reaffirmation of the E-major triad. There follows a syncopated passage evoking Russian cathedral bells. The music grows increasingly agitated, quieting into the muted return of the bell sonority. Here the middle voice repeats and accents a rotating, syncopated semitone—between G and A-flat—in a striking passage that the Russian pianist Boris Berman has described as evoking “a lone belfry in a burned-out village.” The A-flat enables a seamless transition back to the opening melody, where its enharmonic twin, G-sharp, resumes its place in the syncopated E-major triad. This echo of the bell offers the final word on the movement.

The third movement is a rash toccata in   ,

a meter Prokofiev associated with Russian folk songs. Here the B-flat major of the piece’s title is finally affirmed. Throughout the movement, which is structured in a palindromic A-B-C-B-A form, Prokofiev repeatedly increases tension by emphasizing the note A, the leading tone, before resolving it upwards, to B-flat. With each repetition of this gesture, the passages lingering on A grow longer and more virtuosic. In its final version, massive chords containing as many as eight notes challenge the pianist’s skill. The movement (and the whole Sonata) ends with a whole measure of B-flat major triads; compared to how the piece began, this affirmation of the key feels almost Beethovenian.

— © Erin Pratt

One of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors, and recital series. His commanding technique, power, and exceptional lyrical gifts are internationally recognized by critics and audiences alike. Following festival appearances in Vail, Tanglewood, and Aspen, Bronfman’s 2025–26 season begins with an extensive recital and orchestral tour in Asia. In Europe Bronfman can be heard with orchestras in London, Kristiansand, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dresden, and on tour with the Israel Philharmonic. A special trio project with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrandez will continue with performances in Switzerland, Spain, Germany, and France in the fall of 2025. With orchestras in North America he returns to New York, Rochester, Miami (with the Cleveland Orchestra), Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Montreal. In recital, Bronfman can be heard in Prague, Milan, New York, Newport, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Charlottesville, and Toronto. Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music under Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, in 2010 he was further honored to receive the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University and a 2015 honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.