RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
The Annual Isaac Stern Memorial Concert

Joshua Bell - Violin
Jeremy Denk - Piano


Mozart - Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454
R. Strauss -  Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18
Janáček - Violin Sonata
Schubert - Fantasy in C Major, D. 934

"Joshua Bell is “fundamentally incapable of making an unpleasant sound,” wrote The New York Times. The violinist’s silken tone has been called “a thing of beauty” (Boston Herald), but he is a player who also has remarkable rhythmic acuity and unsurpassed refinement. Jeremy Denk, “a pianist you want to hear, no matter what he performs” (The New York Times) joins Bell for an unforgettable evening of music."

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454

Written for Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi, this high-spirited work is concerto-like in the technical demands it makes of the violinist. Unlike Mozart’s earlier violin sonatas that shone the spotlight on the keyboard, K. 454 presents the two players as equal partners. According to legend, the composer performed his part from memory at the premiere.


RICHARD STRAUSS Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18

Written in 1887 when Strauss was just 23 years old, the Sonata in E-flat Major contains the seeds of the musical genius that would shortly bear fruit in his pathbreaking symphonic tone poems and operas. Op. 18 was his last piece of abstract chamber music; virtually all of his later instrumental works would be inspired by literary or philosophical programs.


LEOŠ JANÁČEK Sonata for Violin and Piano

A restless, searching spirit suffuses this powerful work, which was started before and completed after World War I. In it, we hear the profound transformation that Janáček’s musical language underwent during this period; the resulting sound world anticipates his opera The Cunning Little Vixen.


FRANZ SCHUBERT Fantasy in C Major, D. 934

Schubert’s richly melodious Fantasy is recognized as a masterpiece today, but it received mixed reviews at its premiere in 1828. One newspaper tartly observed that the lengthy piece “occupied rather too much of the time a Viennese is prepared to devote to pleasures of the mind.”