Jean Davidson wanted to be executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) through 2031, the year of the orchestra’s centennial. But now Jessica Gelt is reporting in the Los Angeles Times that Davidson has stepped down from her position at the NSO “to become executive director and chief executive of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts [in Beverly Hills]. Davidson will assume her new position May 4, the Wallis announced Friday.”
Davidson’s husband is a university professor in California, so being closer to him more of the year is a benefit of her new position. Davidson started at the NSO during President Biden’s presidency. Davidson told Gelt that “the politicization of the Kennedy Center was a factor in her decision-making.”
The Kennedy Center has been illegally renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center. That illegal act caused several prominent musicians to cancel performances at the venue, including concerts as soloists with the NSO.
Renowned composer Philip Glass canceled the premiere of his Fifteenth Symphony, but up-and-coming composer Carlos Simon is still on track to premiere a new piece for violin, cello and orchestra this weekend, though of course the soloists are drawn from the NSO. Maybe later on Simon could get musicians like Grammy Award winners Hilary Hahn and Yo-Yo Ma for soloists.
Simon’s premiere is slated for a Thursday night concert that will also include Brahms’s Third Symphony. The concert will be repeated Friday and Saturday nights. Russian exile Alexandra Dovgan is also still on track for her solo piano recital Saturday afternoon. Dovgan hopes to return to Russia one day, so she’s not keen to irk Dictator Putin, nor Putin’s American puppet.
I included Dovgan’s performance of Beethoven’s Farewell Sonata in an open thread about that sonata last month. And in the open thread before that one, I included a short video in which Andras Schiff talks about a couple of Beethoven sonatas. I embed that video again now.
The similarity between the finale of the earlier sonata
and the beginning of this sonata, No. 30 in E major, Opus 109,
is more obvious to the ear than to the eye. By the way, this sonata, unlike the earlier one, is designated as “Sonate für das Hammerklavier.”
Not even a full nine measures in, the music changes over to 3 / 4 time and the tempo slows down to Adagio for some very dramatic flurries of notes for the right hand.
I find myself learning a lot about Finale 2010, the music notation software I’ve been using since 2009, as I type these sonatas into it. In the measure right before the Adagio, I thought I’d have to use two different tools to get a couple of notes and a sharp sign properly separated, but it turned out one tool did the job.
The earlier music resumes almost as if nothing had happened. The measure numbers in my copy will probably be off because Beethoven deliberately omitted one barline and I have chosen to resolve the ambiguity in a way that’s different than what most editors choose to do.
The Adagio soon interrupts again.
Those who say late Beethoven is always contemplative have not listened to all of late Beethoven, such as the Prestissimo of this sonata, which they might incorrectly guess is middle period Beethoven.
The finale is a theme and variations.
Or more precisely two themes with alternating variations on those two themes.
For the modern piano performance, I’m going with Anastasia Huppmann. Like Dovgan, she was also born in Russia. I don’t think she has recorded all the Beethoven sonatas, but she has recorded at least two of the most famous, along with less famous ones like No. 30.
Maybe I should just go with Eric Zivian on fortepiano for the final sonatas.
The open thread question: Thinking back to the first time you heard this sonata, what surprised you the most?
