Program

Elizabeth Younan - Piano Sonata No. 2
Alexander Scriabin - Piano Sonata No. 3
Unsuk Chin - Etudes Nos. 5 (Toccata) and 3 (Scherzo ad libitum)
J.S. Bach - Partita No. 5 in G Major

In 1898 Scriabin musically depicted a soul's journey "[free and wild, through a whirlpool of suffering and seas of feeling]." This work was to become his Third Piano Sonata ('Gothic').

Tonight, Scriabin joins contemporary oracles Unsuk Chin and Lizzy Younan. Like Scriabin, Chin elicits in her etudes dazzling bursts of wonderment and colour, Younan delves into her own, decidedly post-millennial study of the soul, described in her Sonata No. 2 as a "malfunctioning joy machine," successively resembling a "psychotic puppet," "ecstatic joy," and finally "inward energy ready to burst." The work shatters dizzyingly into a long, frozen valediction titled, "filled with tension and painful longing." We end the program with old friend J.S. Bach. With little need for pyrotechnics or ecstatic transportation, Bach helps us to alight from our journey in the most playful of his partitas, releasing us into dance.