Imagine a 10-day Fall festival of Shakespearean plays. In the theatre and in the park. With college and local talent partnering with professional actors. Like the idea? 
Guest Pianist, Roberto Berrocal
GET READY for another virtuosic performance next week at the College of Charleston’s 2009–2010 International Piano Series. This second concert in the series will feature Roberto Berracol, another protégé of Enrique Graf.
Roberto has been a soloist with major orchestras in South Carolina, including the Greater Spartanburg Philharmonic, the Greenville Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, and the South Carolina Philharmonic. And he was twice a finalist in the Princess Cristina National Competition in Spain, as well as a semifinalist at the Hilton Head International Competition.
Roberto has performed in Europe and North and South America, and is currently pianist and coach for the Florida Grand Opera, as well as the Music Director at Saint Hugh Catholic Church in Coconut Grove. He also teaches at the New World School of the Arts in Miami.
TUESDAY • NOVEMBER 10
Works by Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and de Falla
8 PM • Sottile Theater • 44 George St
Program Notes by Lindsay Koob
Josef Haydn: Sonata No. 60 in C Major (H. XVI/50)
Haydn—unlike his successor, Beethoven—was hardly a virtuoso pianist, but he understood the instrument very well. His many piano sonatas vary considerably in their levels of sophistication and difficulty, depending on whom they were intended for.
Joseph Haydn
While many of them were written for his assorted students, the Sonata No. 60 in C Major (H. XVI/50) was composed for leading English virtuoso, Therese Jansen, during his mid-1790s visit to London—and are thus among the most technically advanced of them all.
The sprightly opening Allegro movement is one of Haydn’s most effective—especially where he restates the initial theme in double notes while adding rising left-hand scales. The development section is particularly imaginative and varied. In the highly expressive and demanding Adagio movement, the tender opening motif stands in stark contrast to the second section’s octave passages. The brief and witty concluding rondo movement teases the listener with its unexpected pauses between fragmentary reprises of the main theme.
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Moments Musicaux, Op. 16
Rachmaninoff’s six Moments Musicaux, Op. 16, make up a highly appealing cycle that begs to be performed complete. In their scope and technical difficulty, they presage the composer’s later Etudes-Tableaux.
The first piece, in B minor, is a fairly lengthy composition that begins with a lovely and sorrowful melody over restless undercurrents. Then it shifts into a more optimistic connecting passage that leads to tense and rapid elaborations on the opening theme, before ending as it began. The second is an ecstatic fantasia built on a syncopated melody in octaves, bathing the listener in a sense of excited reverie. Number three begins as a slow and tragic march, cunningly developed with staccato left-hand octaves. The fourth item is an especially intense and hard-driving bruiser, with a rising theme over descending figurations in the left hand before working its way to a massive climax.
The cycle’s only moments of emotional relaxation come with the fifth piece: a tender and flowing barcarolle (listen above). The final number is a work of massive sweep and power, with complex figurations in both hands that seem to surge and recede with tidal effect.
Franz Liszt: Spanish Rhapsody
Liszt’s formidable Spanish Rhapsody is a feast of piano pyrotechnics. The first section is a romantic treatment of the well-known “la folia” theme that inspired endless sets of instrumental variations since the early Baroque era. After stupendously virtuosic, Spanish-flavored treatments of that theme, the familiar “Jota Aragonesa” motif appears. A more pensive secondary theme surfaces before combining with the opening folia theme and driving to a spectacular finish. This jaw-dropping showpiece (listen at left) will be a partial re-arrangement by Mr. Berrocal—according to suggestions made by master Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats (who is well-known to this series’ audiences).
Manuel de Falla: Fantasia Baetica
Manuel de Falla’s wonderfully colorful Fantasia Baetica, written in 1919 and dedicated to piano legend Artur Rubinstein, takes its title from the ancient Roman name for southern Spain: the region now known as Andalusia, where Flamenco was born. Its brilliant and rhythmically vital outer sections frame a brief central interlude. Ever the impressionist, Falla deftly serves up a rich feast of Flamenco style and spirit, complete with characteristic guitar textures—plus vivid keyboard evocations of all the associated stomping, clapping, and singing. •
Read Lindsay’s introductory article to this series.
