Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023 • 8 p.m.
Timashev Recital Hall • 1900 College Rd
Columbus, OH
GUEST ARTIST
Ryan Behan, piano
PROGRAM
Années de Pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”):
Suisse ("Switzerland")
Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Chapelle de Guillaume Tell (The Chapel of William Tell)
Au lac de Wallenstadt (On Lake Wallenstadt)
Pastorale
Au bord d’une source (Beside a Spring)
Orage (Storm)
Vallée d'Obermann (Obermann's Valley)
Eglogue (Eclogue)
Le mal du pays (Homesickness)
Les cloches de Genève: Nocturne (The Bells of Geneva: Nocturne)
NOTES
Franz Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage,” widely considered one of his greatest works, was composed and reworked over the course of his life, and combines the freshness of the young composer with the clarity and meticulous fine-tuning of his Weimar period, unfolding into the mysterious and fragmentary brevity of his late style. Alfred Brendel writes of these suites that they “draw for their inspiration on a reservoir of diverse impressions — nature and musical folklore, art and religion, craving for freedom; above all, on poetry and literature…The First Year of Pilgrimage: Switzerland — deals with nature in a twofold sense: as nature around us, and as nature within.”
The nine pieces that comprise this first suite find their origin in a collection of works Liszt composed entitled Album d’un voyageur, which were inspired by his travels in Switzerland between 1835–36. About these works, Liszt wrote: “Having in recent times travelled in many new countries, through different landscapes and places consecrated by history and poetry, having felt that the varied phenomena of nature, the processes taking place in nature, did not pass before my eyes as empty images but produced deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but irrefutable communication — I have tried to present in music some of my strongest sensations and my most lively impressions.” Liszt later revised these works between 1848 and 1854, publishing it in 1855 as Années de Pélerinage, Première Années, Suisse.
Liszt included captions before these works (with the exception of both Pastorale and Le mal du pays) which provide the listener with his direct source of inspiration:
Chapelle de Giullaume Tell (The Chapel of William Tell)
“All for one — one for all.” — Friedrich Schiller
Au Lac de Wallenstadt (On Lake Wallenstadt)
“…thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth’s troubled waters for purer spring.” — Lord Byron
Pastorale
This piece is a spirited arrangement of an Appenzell Kuhreihen (a Swiss Alpine horn melody played by herdsmen as they drove their cattle in the pastures).
Au bord d’un source (Beside a spring)
“In the whispering coolness
begins the play
of young nature.” — Schiller
Orage (Storm)
“But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, sone high nest?” — Byron
Vallée d’Obermann (Obermann’s Valley)
“Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me — could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe — into one word,
And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.” — Byron
Eglogue (Eclogue)
“The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contain’d no tomb …” — Byron
Le mal du pays (Homesickness)
In contrast to Pastorale, this second Appenzell Kuhreihen evokes the Swiss nostalgia (also known as the “Swiss illness” or Schweizerheimweh (Swiss homesickness).
Les cloches de Genève: Nocturne (The Bells of Geneva: Nocturne)
“I live not in myself, but I become,
Portion of that around me.” — Byron
About the Artist
Ryan Behan, assistant professor of piano and director of Keyboard Studies at the University of Indianapolis, has performed throughout the United States, in Europe and China, with radio broadcasts on ORF (Austria), BBC and NPR. Recent performance highlights include appearing as concerto soloist with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra; Franz Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage; recital appearances with the Indianapolis Quartet; and with sopranos Sumi Jo at the Mozarteum, and Jolana Slavíková at the Salzburg Festival.
Behan is co-director of the Franz Liszt International Piano Festival and Competition (Ohio), president of the Indianapolis Chapter of the American Liszt Society, and with a strong profile throughout the Midwest he has concertized with members of the Indianapolis Symphony, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Columbus Symphony, and Dayton Philharmonic. Behan is an active competition adjudicator, and continues to present master classes throughout the US and abroad. Since 2012 he has served on the collaborative faculty of the Mozarteum International Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria where he has taught piano students participating in the Lied classes of Wolfgang Holzmair, and worked alongside many of the great artists and teachers, including opera singers Grace Bumbry, Wolfgang Brendel and Hedwig Fassbender; violinists Zakhar Bron and Michael Frischenschlager; cellists Umberto Clerici and the late Heinrich Schiff at Attersee.
Ryan Behan (DMA 2009) holds degrees from Bowling Green State University, the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, and The Ohio State University. He was a student of Jerome Rose, Imre Rohmann, Vedrana Subotic and Caroline Hong; he also studied with Leslie Howard at the International Keyboard Institute in New York City, and with James Tocco in Cincinnati.
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