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Music Theory Indiana University Bloomington

Brahms Concert and Symposium

A scan of Brahms hand-written score with the title of the event superimposed: The Violin Sonatas of Brahms, Concert and Symposium.

The Violin Sonatas of Johannes Brahms

 

September 10, 2022

Symposium: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Concert: 8:00 pm | Auer Hall

Click to download the PDF program.

Both the symposium and concert were livestreamed. Recordings are available in the “Video on Demand” section of the IU Music Live website as well as via the links below.

SYMPOSIUM & PANEL DISCUSSION
https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/v83801wk2m

CONCERT
https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/q87b791d9s

 

Morning Presentations | Ford-Crawford Hall

Opening remarks by Abra Bush, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean

  • 10:00 am – 10:45 am    Heather Platt, “Brahms’s Op. 78 and the Op. 59 Regenlieder: A Fantasy in Context” (download PDF handout)
  • 10:45 am – 11:30 am    Ryan McClelland, “Metric Dissonance and Flow in Brahms’s Violin Sonatas”
  • 11:30 am – 12:15 pm    Frank Samarotto, “The Sonic Landscapes of Brahms’s Op. 108, i” (download PDF handout, download PDF of Brahms Op. 108, i)

[Lunch break]

Keynote Lecture | Ford-Crawford Hall

  • 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm    Keynote Lecture: Joel Lester, “Thoughts about Brahms’s Violin Sonatas and a Lot More…” (download PDF handout)
  • 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm    Round Table: Scholars and Performers; chaired by Frank Samarotto

Concert | Auer Hall

  • 8:00 pm    Mark Kaplan, Émile Naoumoff, David Kaplan, Norman Krieger

Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100
Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108

Performer Bios

Mark Kaplan has established himself as one of the leading violinists of his generation. His consummate artistry has resulted in engagements with nearly every major orchestra in America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Chicago and National Symphony Orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic and London’s LSO, RPO and Philharmonia Orchestras. He has collaborated with many of the world’s foremost conductors, among them Ormandy, Tennstedt, Maazel, Masur, Dutoit, Ashkenazi, Bychkov, Conlon, Foster, Gatti, Rattle, Robertson, Salonen, Slatkin and Zinman.

Among Mr. Kaplan’s most memorable musical experiences: several performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with conductor Klaus Tennstedt, appearances as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and numerous projects involving the solo works of Bach.

Mr. Kaplan’s extensive discography includes solo and chamber works ranging from Bach, Brahms and Sarasate to Bartok, Berg and Nono.  In 2016 he released his second recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, while other recent CDs feature concertos of Berg and Stravinsky, the Symphonie Espagnole of Lalo, and works for violin and orchestra by Joan Manen, Max d’Ollone and Lewis Spratlan.

Since 2005, Mr. Kaplan has served as Professor of Violin at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music

Émile Naoumoff has been likened to both Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein as a pianist, displaying the fire of the former and the poetry of the latter. He was also signed as a composer at age 18—the youngest on their roster—with the music publisher Schott, Mainz. At the age of seven, after a fateful meeting in Paris, Emile became the last disciple of Nadia Boulanger, who referred to him as “The gift of my old age.” During this auspicious apprenticeship, Mlle. Boulanger gave him the opportunity to work with Clifford Curzon, Igor Markevitch, Robert and Gaby Casadesus, Nikita Magaloff, Jean Francaix, Leonard Bernstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Soulima Stravinsky, Aram Khachaturian Henri Dutilleux and Yehudi Menhuin. Lord Menhuin conducted the premiere of Emile’s first piano concerto, with the composer as a soloist when he was ten years old. At the same time, he pursued studies at the Paris Conservatory with Lelia Gousseau, Pierre Sancan, Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux, as well as at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Pierre Dervaux (conducting).

Since 1998 he teaches at Bloomington’s Jacobs school of music while maintaining a video journal of daily improvisations on his YouTube channel.

David Kaplan, pianist, has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. He has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Britten Sinfonia and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin. Known for diverse and creative recital programs, he has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Washington’s National Gallery, Strathmore, and Bargemusic. Kaplan’s New Dances of the League of David, mixing Schumann with 16 new works, was cited in the “Best Classical Music of 2015” by The New York Times.

Kaplan has collaborated with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets, and is a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. He has appeared at the Bard, Seattle Chamber Music, Mostly Mozart, and Chamber Music Northwest festivals, and is an alumnus of Tanglewood, Ravinia-Steans Institute, and the Perlman Music Program. Kaplan has recorded for Naxos and Marquis Records, as well for Nonesuch with his longtime piano duo partner, Timo Andres.

Kaplan was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in 2020. His mentors over the years include the late Claude Frank, Walter Ponce, Miyoko Lotto, and Richard Goode. With a Fulbright Fellowship, he studied conducting at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Lutz Köhler, and received his DMA from Yale University in 2014. David is proud to be a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist, and away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning, cooking, and all things related to old cars.

Norman Krieger is professor of piano and chair of the Piano Department at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Krieger is the founding artistic director of The Prince Albert Music Festival in Hawaii. Since 2008, he has served on the summer faculty at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina. From 1997 to 2016 he was a professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Myung -Whun Chung, Donald Runnicles, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jaap van Zweden and Zubin Mehta are just a few of the conductors with whom Krieger has collaborated. Krieger has performed with the major orchestras of North America, among them the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and the National Symphony. He has performed throughout Europe, Asia and South America including tours of Germany, France, Poland, Holland Scandinavia, Korea, China, New Zealand and Israel. He recently performed at the PyeongChang Music festival in Korea. In September 2014, he recorded the Brahms Sonata Op. 1 and the Piano Concerto No. 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Philip Ryan Mann, which was released on Decca.

In August 2016 he was appointed Professor and Chair of Piano at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Keynote Speaker

Joel Lester’s most recent book is Brahms’s Works for Solo Violin (Oxford University Press, 2020).  Scholar, professor emeritus at CCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center, former violinist and administrator, Joel was Dean of Mannes College of Music from 1996–2011, and then Distinguished Professor there from 2011–14.  Before that, from 1969–95, he was Professor of Music at CCNY and, beginning in 1978, a member of the doctoral faculty in music of the CUNY Graduate Center, where he directed the D.M.A. Program in Performance from 1986–95 (as Deputy Executive Officer at CUNY).  He was violinist from 1970–91 in The Da Capo Chamber Players (winners of the 1973 Walter Naumburg Foundation Chamber Music Award).  Among his books are Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1992; winner of the Wallace Berry Publication Award of the Society for Music Theory), Bach’s Works for Solo Violin (Oxford University Press, 1999; winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award), and the textbook Analytic Approaches to 20th-Century Music (W. W. Norton, 1989).  He was President of the Society for Music Theory from 2003–05, and editor of the Society’s journal, Music Theory Spectrum, from 1995–97.  He earned his Ph.D. in Music from Princeton University in 1970.

Symposium Presenters

Heather Platt, Sursa Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Ball State University, is the author of Johannes Brahms A Research and Information Guide, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2011), and co-editor, with Peter H. Smith, of Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays In Meaning and Analysis (Indiana University Press, 2012).  Platt’s publications on the reception history, societal context, and tonal structures of Brahms’s lieder have appeared in such publications as Brahms and the Shaping of Time, Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall, The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, The Journal of Musicology and Integral. Her explorations of the performance of lieder on nineteenth-century American stages appear in articles in American Music and German Song Onstage, and in her forthcoming University of Illinois Press book Lieder in America: On Stages and In Parlors. Platt has served as President of the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society and Co-Editor of Book Reviews for Music Theory Online; she is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Music Theory Spectrum and Digital Reviews Editor for Nineteenth Century Music.

Ryan McClelland is Professor of Music Theory at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, where he has also served as Associate Dean, Academic & Student Affairs since 2013. His research interests include rhythmic-metric theory, tonal analysis, and performance studies. McClelland’s first book, Brahms and the Scherzo, was published in 2010. Essays on Brahms’s music have appeared in the collections Expressive Intersections in Brahms (2012), Explorations in Schenkerian Analysis (2017), and Brahms and the Shaping of Time (2018) as well as in journals including Music Analysis, Theory & Practice, and Intégral. Most recently, he co-edited with Russell Hartenberger the Cambridge Companion to Rhythm (2020). Current projects include a book on motional qualities in the music of Brahms, an article on performance timing in Brahms’s late piano music, and a study of the scherzo across the nineteenth century. McClelland has served as President of the Board of Directors of the American Brahms Society, as well as on editorial boards and numerous committees of the Society for Music Theory.

Frank Samarotto is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Indiana University Bloomington. He was a workshop leader at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory Summer Institute in Schenkerian Theory and Analysis in 2002, a workshop leader and invited presenter at the first conferences in Germany devoted to Schenkerian theory and analysis held in Berlin, Sauen, and Mannheim in June of 2004, has lectured on voice-leading and musical time at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 2007, and he spoke as Endowed Chair at the University of Alabama. His publications have appeared in Schenker Studies II, the Beethoven Forum, Theory and Practice, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, Integral, as well as several recent book chapters. He has recently contributed to the fourth edition of Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach by Allen Cadwallader and David Gagné.

 

Location & Parking

Ford-Crawford Hall is housed between the 1st and 2nd floors of the Simon Music Center. When entering Simon Music Center from Eagleson Avenue, enter through the southeast entrance, proceed up the stairs one and a half levels, and enter the door directly ahead. For elevator access from Eagleson Avenue, enter through the southeast entrance and take the elevator to 2R. This will take you to the lobby of the hall.

Auer Hall is housed on the second floor of the Simon Music Center. When entering Simon Music Center from Eagleson Avenue, proceed up the stairs and follow the hallway to your right. For elevator access from Eagleson Avenue, enter through the southeast entrance and take the elevator to 2F. Proceed down the hall to your right.

FREE parking is available in the East Garage.

See the map here.

The concert and symposium are presented by the IU Jacobs School of Music Departments of Piano, Strings, Music Theory, and Musicology, with support from a Distinguished Lecturer Award from the Jacobs Lecture Committee.