Université de Montréal

Faculté de musique

Program Notes
Final Master Recital

Dao Pham

Work submitted as part of the Final Master’s Recital

8 March 2019
 The repertoire I am presenting for my Final Recital has been my most challenging and
diverse one by far. Besides the Chopin, all the composers were a new experience for me. Each
piece had their own individual sound and range of emotions. I will open the first half of the
concert with a dark but charming Barcarolle by Faure and the very operatic and lyrical Piano
Sonata by Mozart. The second half will consist of a classical-jazz Impromptu by Kapustin and two
romantic works by Liszt and Chopin: Funerailles and Scherzo No. 3.

Barcarolle No. 1, Opus 26 – Gabriel Faure

“An evocation of the rhythmic rocking and lapping of water around appropriately lyrical
melodies” is Faure biographer Jessica Duchen’s description of the genre. This Barcarolle was
written by French composer Gabriel Faure in 1880. This piece is dedicated to pianist Caroline de
Serres, a virtuoso pianist and a student of Franz Liszt. The premiere of this piece was performed
by Saint-Saens at Societe Nationale de Musique in 1882.
The piece begins in a dark A minor with a tenor melody accompanied with textures from
above and below. The main melody is in period form, lasting 8 bars. The next section is more
anxious and the melody now switches to a soprano register with more rhythmic accompaniment
textures. After this we return to the original melody in a different variation and this ends the first
paragraph of the piece. The next part opens brightly in C major with a lullaby-like melody,
accompanied with ostinato rhythm and charming dissonances. The piece then returns to the A
minor section and ends in A major.
Most of the challenge of this piece is controlling all the textures. On top of the
busy accompaniment played by the two hands individually, the shaping and presence of the
melody must be brought out by the two hands as if it was one. For a genre that is light, this piece
covers a wide range on the piano and has many moments of dynamic contrast and flashes of
virtuosity.
Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-flat Major, K. 333 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and is one of todays most well-known
composer. In a life span only 35 years, he has produced enormous amounts of works. Among
these works is the light-hearted K. 333, Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-flat Major. Among the 19 piano
sonatas, this one stands out as being highly operatic, playful and lyrical.
The work consists of 3 movements: Sonata form allegro, a slow movement, and a rondo
form. The first movement is lively with full of sweet aria-like melodies and genius melodic
fragments of charm. The piece has full of expressive appoggiaturas and is a pure delight to
perform. The second movement is in the subdominant key, E flat major. The piece is very
intimate, melodies that are well-balanced and moments of ambiguity and mystery. Every time
there is a cadence, a new idea is invoked immediately. The last movement is extremely playful
and has many operatic and concerto moments.
For me, a big difficulty of the piece is to produce a lyrical sound that is clean and clear,
without being artificial. The phrases and special moments have to be exaggerated in the
framework of a clear pulse. The style of the classical era is a concept of balance, not too much
and not too little. Finding this perfect balance is the most difficult challenge about this piano
sonata.

Impromptu No. 2, Opus 66 – Nikolai Kapustin

Born in 1937 in Ukrainian SSR, Kapustin is a living composer and pianist. He studied at the
Moscow Conservatory with Alexander Godlenweiser. Kapustin is known introducing jazz and
improvisational pianism in his music. Opus 66 is a set of impromptus written in 1991.
The second Impromptu is the most contrasting one of the set. The sections of this piece
are extremely contrasting. The first part is extremely mechanical, dry, and rhythmical. The
second, however, then moves into a romantic melody with lush and dissonant textural arpeggios
accompaniment. The third section is a written improvisation in the jazz style. It has a high range
of rhythmic variety and ideas. The piece then repeats the second section in a new key and ends
abruptly with fragments of the first section.
The challenge of this piece is to really make it feel like a jazz piece, rather than a classical
piece. There are spontaneous and swing like quality in this piece that must be prioritized over
playing mathematically and correctly by the standards of classical conventions.

Funerailles – Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher,
arranger, and organist who was born in 1811. Funerailles was written in 1849, and is part of a
piano cycle known as Poetic and Religious Harmonies. It was written as a response to the crushing
of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by the Habsburgs. Liszt lost three of his friends in this event,
Prince Felix Lichnowsky, Count Laszlo Teleki and the Prime Minister Lajos Batthyany.
The piece has four individual sections, with three main themes. The beginning is a stormy
adagio that is very program music like. The image is hearing bells and battle trumpets in a
battlefield. The second section is a dark and gloomy funeral march in F minor. The piece than
modulates to the relative major, A-flat major that one can view as a sense of hope. This third
section has a Chopin nocturne like melody that develops anxiously with the use of augmented
harmonies in distant keys. The Nocturne section then ends into a heroic warrior march with
triumphant chords. The left has ostinato octaves in the bass that is reminiscent of Chopin’s Heroic
Polonaise. After the march, the piece then returns with the funeral march theme, but on a much
bigger and powerful scale.
It then drops quiet in a short memory of the nocturne melody, and then concludes with the
warrior march into an unexpected ending of three soft staccato chords.
A big challenge of this piece is to bring out all the emotions and impact of each section.
The dynamic ranges from sorrow, mournful, rage, heroic, being full of desire, and more. A
different mentality is needed for each section. On top of requiring a high amount of mental
endurance, this piece also requires physical endurance for the heroic section regarding the
ostinato octaves.
Scherzo No. 3, Opus 39 – Frederic Chopin

Frederic Chopin was born in 1810. He was a polish virtuoso pianist and composer who
wrote solely for the piano. His innovations for the piano has made him one of the most influential
composers for the instrument. Among these innovations is his Scherzo No. 3. A piece that is so
fierce, tense, and ironic that is regarded to be a very unusual for Chopin. The Scherzo was written
in 1839 in Spain.
The piece opens very mysteriously with fragmented calls and response. After the
introduction, the piece then moves fiercely with octaves on both hand playing the theme. This
section is similar to a mischievous tarantella. The next section is a calm D flat major chorale that
is played in the lower register in the piano and is constantly being interrupted by runs and flashes
up in the higher register. There is a lush display of arpeggios connecting the two chorale passages.
The piece then returns to the tarantella section and modulates to the relative E major for the
recapitulation of the chorale. The piece then ends with a stormy and diabolical virtuoso coda and
ends with triumphant chords in C sharp major.
A main challenge of this piece is the execution of the falling and flashy passages that are
being juxtaposed by the low and solemn chorale. The contrast from light swift fingers into firm
resonant chords is hard to do under such a short period of time. Another huge challenge is the
rapid octaves which require a lot of endurance. The coda is particularly difficult for combining
large octave leaps with scales at a very fast tempo.