The Yale School of Music’s Horowitz Piano Series presents the pianist Boris Berman in recital on Wednesday, November 12 at 7:30pm. Berman, hailed as “a Beethoven interpreter on the highest level of achievement” by the Daily Telegraph, will play music by Beethoven as well as by Stravinsky and Prokofiev.
The first half of the program focuses on Beethoven, opening with the Variations in F major, Op. 34, followed by the Variations and Fugue in E-flat major, Op. 35. The latter set is often called the “Eroica” Variations, since Beethoven wrote variations on the same theme for the finale of his Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” the following year.
After intermission, the Russian-born pianist will play pieces by Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Stravinky’s Serenade in A, written in 1925, plays with 18th-century conventions in its neo-Classical style.
The concert concludes with two virtuosic Prokofiev pieces: the Sonata No. 5 in C major, written in 1923 and later revised; and the masterful Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83. Written in 1942, in the middle of World War II, the Seventh Sonata is viewed by some as an outlet for Prokofiev’s bitterness toward Stalin’s reign.