Xak Bjerken, piano

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Programme

Chorales and Bells

Christopher Stark (b. 1980): In Memory

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): From Preludes, Book II (1913)

Feuilles mortes

La Puerta del Vino

La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

General Lavine, eccentric

Elizabeth Ogonek (b. 1989): Preludes (2024)
freely, gently
peppy, cheerful
majestic
sweetly, with affection
quasi-improvisatory

György Kurtág (b. 1926): Chorale from Jatékok, book V/11 (1981)

Steven Stucky (1949-2016):  Chorale from Album Leaves (2002)

Joseph Phibbs (b. 1974): Elegy (2016)

Steven Stucky; from Sonata for Piano (2014)
Chorale and Coda

St James’s is grateful for the generous support of Rolex for this music programme.

Artist bio

Xak Bjerken was for many years a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, and has held chamber music residencies at Tanglewood, the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and the Spoleto Festival, and has taught and performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, Icicle Creek, and the Kfar Blum festival in Israel. Bjerken performs regularly with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestras, and for over twenty years he has directed Ensemble X, the new music group founded by Steven Stucky. Xak has worked closely with composers Győrgy Kurtag, Sofia Gubaidulina, and George Benjamin, and recently recorded two albums of original compositions with the Bluegrass ensemble EZRA. He is professor of music at Cornell University where he co-directs the international chamber music festival Mayfest with his wife, pianist Miri Yampolsky. He studied with Aube Tzerko at the UCLA and received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Peabody Conservatory as a student of and teaching assistant to Leon Fleisher.

Programme Notes:

“One kind of artist is always striving to annihilate the past, to make the world anew in each new work, and so to triumph over the dead weight of routine. I am the other kind. I am the kind who only sees his way forward by standing on the shoulders of those who have cleared the path ahead.” — Steven Stucky

Today’s program is a celebration of the music and musical friendships of the late American composer Steven Stucky.  I surround Steve’s music with tributes from two students (Joseph Phibbs, Christopher Stark), music by Debussy, which was such a strong influence, and a premiere by Elizabeth Ogonek, a composer whom Steve championed.

Clanging bells announce Chris Starkʼs In Memory, as he memorializes his teacher by converting S(teven) E(dward) S(tucky) into the pitches E-flat–E–E-flat, which sound, first hammered in the lowest register of the piano, and then, after a restless, harmonically cyclical interlude, high up in the register of the workʼs opening bells. The bell chords themselves come from the end of Les noces, and Stark notes that his last correspondence with Stucky included “us sharing our admiration for that ending.”

Stucky, like his mentor Lutosławski, openly acknowledged his debt to Debussy. This selection from the second book of Preludes, composed in 1913, makes clear why: the masterful mixing of tonalities, their stream-of-consciousness narratives, and the post-functional harmonically organize forms are all elements Stucky exploits in his own music.

I am delighted to present a UK premiere of a new set of preludes (to be continued) by my friend Elizabeth Ogonek, which appeared at my doorstep in December.  Challenging and wonderful, these are coloristic marvels in conversation with the Debussy that precede them, with their contrasting characters and warm intimacy.

The chorale, marked “Sereno, luminoso” from Stuckyʼs Album Leaves, written for me in 2002, is a masterful miniature: seven phrases pulling expressively against the only dynamic indication: piano sempre ed intimo. Throughout the texture is homophonic but densely chromatic, mixing the texture of a chorale and the resonance of distant bells.  Steve had heard me performed a selection of the Jatékok (Games) by György Kurtág, and marveled at this Chorale from book V, with its intense voice-leading and phrasal structure.   Stucky’s chorale was his tip of the hat to the Hungarian master, hence the pairing of the two chorales here.

Joseph Phibbs’ Elegy for Stucky floats in heartful simplicity until frustration and even rage appears, capturing both the understated and passionate aspect of his teacher.

Stuckyʼs Sonata for Piano is his only subsequent foray into writing for solo piano after the Album Leaves, and he has fashioned here a monumental structure, the centerpiece of which is an imposing chorale whose slow progression through tertian harmonies and dense lyricism builds to an ecstatic climax. Stucky describes the coda with its tolling bells (the same B-flat as Ravel’s Le Gibet), here:

“One might interpret the close as a somber outcome. But I prefer to think of it as what Wordsworth called “emotion recollected in tranquility. Thus for me, despite the substantial quantity of dark music, the light carries the day.”

–       Xak Bjerken, Jeremy Gil