Music filled Leffler Chapel and Performance Center on Saturday, March 15. Pianist Gilles Vonsattel performed as part of Gretna’s “Monsters of the Steinway” Series in the Chapel that evening. Prior to the performance, Fine and Performing Arts Department Chair and Professor of Music Dr. Douglas Bomberger hosted a classical conversation with the artist on Saturday afternoon. Vonsattel also was a guest in a master class in Zug Hall on Friday.
Vonsattel is a prominent pianist among his peers. The Swiss-born American artist, a member of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center, earned his B.A. in political science and economics from Columbia University and his M.M. from the Juilliard School. He began touring after winning the top prize at the 2002 Naumburg International Piano Competition. Additionally, he has performed with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Warsaw’s Chopin Festival, Tokyo’s Opera City Hall, the Utah, Santa Fe, Nashville and Grand Rapids symphonies and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Vonsattel is also the winner of the 2006 Geneva International Music Competition, a laureate of the 2009 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary and a laureate of the Cleveland and Dublin piano competitions.
Vonsattel opened the concert with Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No. 14 in c-sharp minor” and “Op. 27, No. 2 ‘Moonlight.’”He also performed Fredric Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.” After the intermission, Vonsattel concluded the concert with Charles Ives’ “Piano Sonata No. 2, ‘Concord, Mass. 1840-60.’” The movement included “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts” and “Thoreau.” Sophomore Elizabeth Martin accompanied Vonsattel on the flute.
Beethoven’s “Moonlight” was written to imagine a sense of improvisation to the piece. In this manner, the piece borrows styles from other composers, such as Mozart and Haydn. In addition, the sections are played without pauses in between. The three movements, “Adagio sostenuto,” “Allegretto” and “Presto agitato,” were written to move directly into one another and to give the impression that the pieces blur together. In this style, the piece progresses from the slow first movement into the dreamlike second movement and, finally, into the energetic crescendoing end movement.
Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” was an inspiration from the Freedom Riders. In the 1960s, the Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the segregated South. As a result, they were beaten and arrested in Winnsboro, S.C. This traditional blues song was a working-class American ballad written about working in a cotton mill in the town of Winnsboro. The song was originally sung but was reworked by Rzewski into a piano composition.
The final piece, Ives’ “Concord, Mass. 1840-60” is another multiple-movement piece that Vonsattel performed at Etown. “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts” and “Thoreau” were written as a tribute to the transcendentalists in the Concord, Mass. area over half a century ago, giving impressions of the writers through the music. Ives was famous for writing nontraditional music in order to “stretch ears.”
Vonsattel will continue his tour with a concert in Virginia before moving on to Germany. Gretna Music’s “Monsters of the Steinway” Series will continue on April 5, when Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Shai Wosner will perform Schubert’s two piano sonatas in B-flat major and A Major.
