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Jeff Spurgeon: In New York City, there are lots of ways to get to Carnegie Hall. A subway, a taxi, a walk down 57th Street. You've just found another way to get to America's most famous home for classical music. Welcome to Carnegie Hall Live, the broadcast series that gives you a front row seat to concerts by some of the greatest artists in the world. You hear their performances exactly as they happen. You are part of the audience sharing the experience of music-making at Carnegie Hall. Backstage at Carnegie Hall, I'm Jeff Spurgeon alongside John Schaefer.
John Schaefer: It's just Jeff and I backstage here for a change. Normally, by this point in the broadcast, we'd be surrounded by dozens of musicians milling around, getting a few last-minute licks in on their instruments. No orchestra on this concert. Instead, we have a single performer, the star Italian pianist, Beatrice Rana. She's going to fill Carnegie Hall tonight with music by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy. A little bit about our pianist tonight. Beatrice Rana is 32 years old. She was born in Southern Italy. She is the daughter of two pianists, and I understand they might be listening online tonight from Italy. Ciao, hello to the Rana family.
Jeff Spurgeon: Beatrice Rana started playing at the age of three, and she made her debut with an orchestra at the age of nine. She is already quite a concert veteran. Her meteoric career began when she won the silver medal in the Van Cliburn Competition in 2013, and the following year, she began a recording contract with Warner Classics. This is Beatrice Rana's eighth time performing in Carnegie Hall and her fourth solo recital. She told us Carnegie is a venue that always brings a smile to her face.
Beatrice Rana: I am so happy to be back in this gorgeous hall. It's a great space for music. The acoustics are just magical, and somehow there is this magic on stage, but also backstage, knowing that so many incredible artists came here, are coming here, and also some personal heroes like Horowitz walking on that stage. If a human being is mortal, then music is really immortal, and these people make themselves and music immortal, and that's what I feel on stage.
John Schaefer: Pianist Beatrice Rana has four pieces for us on the program. We'll hear works by Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Bookending the evening are pieces by Prokofiev, two works that might actually have a connection. The last piece on the program is Prokofiev's Sonata No. 6, one of his so-called war sonatas, and actually was the inspiration for the whole evening. That sonata was written during World War II and depicts, in part, the violence of that time. Rana also chose another Prokofiev piece to begin, based on a different conflict, not a war. She'll play selections from Romeo and Juliet.
Beatrice Rana: This is the opening piece of the program. The Romeo and Juliet was written just few years before. In fact, there are some similarities in between the two pieces. It's made up of another contrast, smaller, but still very brutal, which was this fight between these two families that couldn't understand the love of these two young people, Romeo and Juliet. In a way, these two pieces are opening and closing the concert with similar issues on a different scale.
Jeff Spurgeon: That is the music that Beatrice Rana will begin her program tonight. Selections from the 10-piece suite drawn from the ballet score by Sergei Prokofiev, who made the piano arrangements as well. We'll hear four of those 10 pieces tonight. The Montagues and the Capulets, Friar Lawrence, Young Juliet, and Mercutio. Prokofiev wrote his Romeo and Juliet not as an opera, not as an orchestral work, but as a ballet. It was commissioned in 1935 by the Bolshoi Ballet, but the choreography was difficult, and so things were postponed. Didn't get to the stage for another five years. Then, with a different company, the Kirov Ballet in the city that was at that time known as Leningrad.
John Schaefer: That Shakespearean tale of young love has been a creative inspiration for many composers, including Tchaikovsky, another composer that we'll hear later on, but Prokofiev, his body of work around the theme of Romeo and Juliet includes three concert suites taken from the ballet score, two for orchestra, and this one for solo piano. And apparently Prokofiev and his partners at the ballet considered for a moment giving this famous Shakespearean tragedy a happy ending, since, as a ballet, "living people can dance, but the dead cannot dance lying down."
Jeff Spurgeon: It's an arguable point, you have to admit, and yet Prokofiev eventually was persuaded not to end the whole work that way. We are almost ready to begin this program. The house is dark, and the lights are up on the stage on that one giant grand piano, that Steinway concert grand. We've got 1,000 pounds of steel and wood and copper and iron, 20 tons of tension inside, and one woman walking out now to meet it. The stage door opens and out comes Beatrice Rana to begin her recital of Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Debussy.
[applause]
[MUSIC - Sergei Prokofiev: Montagues and Capulets, Friar Lawrence, Young Juliet, and Mercutio]
Jeff Spurgeon: Pianist Beatrice Rana from Carnegie Hall Live with selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Now for music of Debussy.
[MUSIC - Claude Debussy: Etudes, Book II]
John Schaefer: Beatrice Rana, the Italian pianist at center stage here at Carnegie Hall, playing music from the French composer Claude Debussy. The six etudes of Book II by Debussy. These are late works, 12 of them in all, six in Book I, and the six of Book II that you've just heard Beatrice Rana perform. Now, a bow to the audience here at Carnegie Hall, which appreciates the technical virtuosity that they have just heard. Jeff, these etudes are technically challenging studies. That is the literal definition of an etude.
Jeff Spurgeon: Right. Well, you heard, especially in the last one, she was all over the keyboard at extremes of volume and extremes of range. They are tricky works and somewhat elusive. We asked Beatrice Rana to talk to us a little bit about these works, the second book of these etudes.
Beatrice Rana: The Debussy Etudes, Book II, is another kind of music that I love very, very much, and that was written towards the end of Debussy's life. I can see that there is kind of a comeback to childhood also with these dreamy-like pieces, because the etude is just a form, but there is so much imagination, so much narration, so much symbolism. It's really like having a dream where you find so many elements, and you find, oh, that house, oh, that person, that animal. Sometimes they just appear like that. By the end of the dream, when you wake up, you try to figure out what was the meaning. I think that these etudes are a little bit like that.
Jeff Spurgeon: Beatrice Rana speaking about the work that she just played, the second work of the first half of this recital of hers that you're hearing from Carnegie Hall live. Backstage, I'm Jeff Spurgeon alongside John Schaefer. It's intermission. By the way, you're hearing a piano, but that's the tuner on stage who is just--
John Schaefer: Touching things up before the second half.
Jeff Spurgeon: That's exactly.
John Schaefer: It's ironic to hear Beatrice Rana wax poetic about these etudes when the etudes are a very different beast from the Debussy preludes.
Jeff Spurgeon: Oh, for sure.
John Schaefer: Which are very gauzy and impressionistic and have poetic titles. Debussy went out of his way in the etudes not to have poetic titles, just a description of the technical things that each etude was about.
Jeff Spurgeon: One of the things that he said about these works is they are designed to make you be sure that you really want to be a pianist. Maybe it's not such a good idea. Here is some work to test your resolve in that area.
John Schaefer: Yes. We are nearing the end of intermission of Rana's recital concert here at Carnegie Hall. Second half brings us another work by Prokofiev. Before we get to that, selections from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. These were arranged for piano by Mikhail Pletnev, the Russian pianist and conductor. Beatrice Rana is a fan of Pletnev's work.
Beatrice Rana: It's a fantastic transcription. I think that when there is such a wonderful pianist that transcribes for the piano, it is very interesting to see how an orchestral sound and also a ballet work gets conveyed on a piano keyboard. I think that shows so much imagination. In a way, it's very challenging because these pieces are full of virtuosity, but there is always this fantastic opportunity to put not just the orchestra, but the ballet movements and gestures into the piano, which is amazing.
Jeff Spurgeon: Pianist Beatrice Irana on the piano transcriptions of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker that we will hear at the beginning of the second half of her recital tonight. Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1892. It was Tchaikovsky's final ballet and the second one that he worked on with the choreographer Marius Petipa. The other was Sleeping Beauty. It took Tchaikovsky more than a year to complete The Nutcracker, in part because he was interrupted. He had to go to America for a tour, and on that tour, he came where we are now, John. He was here at the opening concert at Carnegie Hall.
John Schaefer: The opening of Carnegie Hall. Still here, still going, and still presenting his music. Beatrice Rana is going to favor us with three selections from The Nutcracker suite: the March, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the Intermezzo.
Jeff Spurgeon: Beatrice Rana backstage now at Carnegie Hall. We're waiting for the house to complete its settling down before we hear the start of the second half of this recital with these great pieces of music, which were not a hit. The ballet was not a huge success when it was first premiered, and in fact, it disappeared for a few decades before being revived. Hard to imagine that that music was not ubiquitous in the world, because it certainly is today,
John Schaefer: In many different arrangements.
Jeff Spurgeon: Oh, for sure.
John Schaefer: There is the. The original ballet score, then of course, the famous orchestral suite, and then the piano reduction. Duke Ellington famously did a version of The Nutcracker.
Jeff Spurgeon: There's a recording of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker on children's toy pianos and little percussion instruments.
John Schaefer: It's a perennial favorite now.
Jeff Spurgeon: They're sweet and delightful and melodic. Now she returns to the stage of Carnegie Hall. Beatrice Rana to bring us music of Tchaikovsky transcribed by Mikhail Pletnev from The Nutcracker from Carnegie Hall live.
MUSIC- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - March, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Intermezzo
Jeff Spurgeon: Pianist Beatrice Rana from Carnegie Hall live playing transcriptions by Mikhail Pletnev from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Now for Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 6.
[MUSIC - Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 6 in A Major, Op. 82 (1940)] [applause]
Jeff Spurgeon: Beatrice Rana performing the Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 6. As Harry Haskell writes in the notes to this Carnegie Hall program, "A work that has a sense of barely contained chaos, of a world hurtling out of control." Beatrice Rana told us about her impressions of this work.
Beatrice Rana: This sonata is the first of the three war sonatas by Prokofiev. This was written in 1940, so it's really written during the Second World War. It's a fantastic piece. There is lot of violence, there is lot of brutality, but at the same time, there is also lot of beauty and tenderness. If I think of the second or the third movement, really, there are one of those beautiful moments that only Prokofiev can give through music.
John Schaefer: Beatrice Rana talking about the piece we just heard her perform, the Sonata No. 6 by Prokofiev. The power of music at times when we really need it. Prokofiev certainly an example of that during the dark days of the Second World War. Another curtain call for Beatrice Rana at center stage.
Jeff Spurgeon: She's been out to get a couple of sips of water. We know the audience is asking her for an encore. We'll see. She's now stepped between the bench and the piano. Here it comes.
[MUSIC - Alexander Scriabin: Etude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 2, No. 1]
[applause]
John Schaefer: Once again, the Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, live on stage at Carnegie Hall and playing an encore for us by a very young Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin's Etude Op. 2, No. 1, which fits with the rest of the program if you think of it. All of the music, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Prokofiev, now Scriabin, all of that music from the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
[MUSIC - Claude Debussy: Etude 6, For Eight Fingers]
[applause]
Jeff Spurgeon: The second encore from Beatrice Rana here at Carnegie Hall, last of the etudes of the first book of Debussy's studies for the keyboard to work for just eight fingers.
John Schaefer: Eight fleet fingers. [laughter] Pretty impressive playing as it has been all night from Beatrice Rana.
Jeff Spurgeon: If she used 10, who would know? [laughter]
John Schaefer: The audience certainly appreciative and calling her back to center stage here at Carnegie Hall.
Jeff Spurgeon: Her fourth solo recital here at Carnegie Hall. Beatrice Rana, young woman born in Italy, who recently had a unique experience. American pianists have played for Italian popes in the past. She, I'm sure, was the first Italian pianist to play for the American pope, and tonight, for an audience at Carnegie Hall.
John Schaefer: A program that has included several works of Debussy sprinkled among a group of Russian composers. Scriabin, the first of the two encores, two pieces by Prokofiev that bookended a program that also included some excerpts of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker in an arrangement for solo piano from Beatrice Rana. We've been graced with a visit from our soloist here at the microphone backstage at Carnegie Hall. Beatrice Rana, welcome.
Beatrice Rana: Hi. Thanks.
John Schaefer: Congratulations.
Beatrice Rana: Thank you.
Jeff Spurgeon: I have to ask you, that Prokofiev sonata is so dark and there's so much anger in it. What happens to you? How do you control your own emotions, or how does it affect you to play that music? Boy, there's a lot of darkness in that piece.
Beatrice Rana: Oh, well, you're right. It's one of the darkest pieces ever. When there is rays of sunshine coming in, in second and third movement, I think it's the most magical thing that can happen. Personally, it's such a dark piece that there is so much sufferings and there is so much pain and fear, and somehow it gets-- there is this sense of rebellion that I get that is against this power that is so overwhelming. Somehow this is a huge climax until the end.
The last pages are liberatory of this kind of energy. I think it's really try to get out from the machine because it's like a machinery, the last movement, so it's a huge fight.
Jeff Spurgeon: You recently played for the American pope, Pope Leo. What did you play for him?
Beatrice Rana: What a honor. Well, something not so dark. [laughter] I played some extracts from Bach, Goldberg Variation, which I thought would be appropriate.
John Schaefer: Did it put him to sleep?
Beatrice Rana: I hope not. [laughter]
John Schaefer: It's a really well-constructed program. We noticed that it was all within a span of 60 years, from about 1880 to 1940. Did you intend that?
Beatrice Rana: It's funny because I never think of chronological order, but somehow-- and then I get to construct a program. Then I get that there are much more similarities than I thought. For sure, this Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet and the sixth Sonata are meant to be a frame to this program.
Jeff Spurgeon: You shared with us some wonderful works that are not so often heard of the concert hall tonight. You took us in a few places that maybe many of us have not gone.
Beatrice Rana: That's why I think people should go to concerts [laughter] to discover new pieces and to hear music that it's not chosen by an algorithm. I think that might be surprising nice.
Jeff Spurgeon: So it was. Beatrice Rana, congratulations on your performance tonight.
Beatrice Rana: Thank you.
Jeff Spurgeon: Thanks for giving us a couple of minutes of your time.
Beatrice Rana: Thank you so much. Bless you.
Jeff Spurgeon: You have people who want to talk to you, so go see them. They're upstairs waiting to--
Beatrice Rana: Thank you for being with me.
Jeff Spurgeon: Oh, it was a great pleasure.
Beatrice Rana: Thank you.
Jeff Spurgeon: Beatrice Rana at our Carnegie Hall Live Microphones tonight. That will wrap up this broadcast of Carnegie Hall Live with our thanks to Clive Gillinson and the staff of Carnegie Hall.
John Schaefer: WQXR's team includes engineers George Wellington, Chase Culpon, Duke Markos, Neal Shaw, and Noriko Okabe. Our production team, Eileen Delahunty, Laura Boyman, and Christine Herskovits. I'm John Schaefer.
Jeff Spurgeon: I'm Jeff Spurgeon. Carnegie Hall Live is a co-production of Carnegie Hall and WQXR in New York.
[01:38:16] [END OF AUDIO]
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