10.16.22 GALA • with pianist Jonathan Biss
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Jonathan Biss. Photo by Benjamin Ealovega
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Viktor Ullmann at the 50th birthday celebration of Arnold Schönberg.

program

"Where the beauty of a work of art begins"
Mark Ludwig, director and producer

Jonathan Biss has selected a concert program centered around three ideas.

The first is a quote from Arnold Schönberg attesting that "the beauty of a work of art begins" when it makes us miss what we usually conceive of as beauty. Schönberg protégé Viktor Ullmann explored this potent idea in the concert critiques he wrote while imprisoned in Terezín. These critiques are newly translated in Mark Ludwig's book Our Will to Live: The Terezín Music Critiques of Viktor Ullmann.

The program also focuses on music that infused Ullmann's life and sensibility — music that also helped comfort and sustain the prisoners of Terezín. We offer tribute to Ullmann and all artists silenced by oppression, war, or genocide.

Finally, these are works that resonate deeply with Jonathan Biss and to which he has a special artistic affinity. The intellect, talent, and sensibility he brings promise a truly stellar concert.
JONATHAN BISS, piano
  • Alban Berg. Sonata for Piano, Op. 1 (1910). Berg was close with Ullmann; they were both protégés of Schönberg and classified within the Second Viennese School.
  • Arnold Schönberg. Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (1911). Schönberg composed the first five in one day and added a sixth when he learned of the death of Mahler; that last piece is dedicated to him.
  • Franz Schubert. Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 (1828). Schubert was a leading pioneer of the Romantic style and a composer of the First Viennese School.
CORO ALLEGRO, directed by David Hodgkins
  • Jeremiah Klarman, “Sketch for Terezín/Does Grace” for choir, piano, and string trio. World premiere of a TMF commission, a setting of TMF-commissioned LiberArte poems by Rita Dove and Almog Behar. Dedicated to 2021 Terezín Legacy Award recipient Rochelle Walensky in honor of her healing work as leader of the CDC.
“Alban Berg means the highest degree of responsibility toward the values of older music and the achievements of newer music, means strict self-discipline, the preservation for the soulful warmth and passion that has flowed into music since — and because of — the Romantic era, but it also means balancing that out with polyphonic-constructive work, a symmetry between musical feeling and thought.” 
—Viktor Ullmann, in Our Will to Live