Program Notes: Mahani Teave Plays Mozart

By A. Kori Hill

Though widely known as Easter Island, the people who live there, miles off the coast of Chile, call it Rapa Nui. Here, Mahani Teave developed her pianist skills and artistic philosophy: music is a method of recovery, connection and maturation. This Playlist Series program not only showcases her stylistic dexterity and gossamer technique — it showcases music’s unique power to communicate the inexpressible; to weave together history and myth; to hold one’s creative vision; and to connect listeners through a shared experience.  

I hē a Hotumatu’a does all of that as a cultural and spiritual anthem of Rapa Nui, relating the story of the nation’s founder, King Hotumatu’a, who left his home of Hiva (likely the Marquesa Islands), settled with his followers on the island now known as Rapa Nui and later passed away there. This is the song chanted at his death, to ensure his soul returned to Hiva. Set for piano by Chilean composer José Miguel Tobar, I hē a Hotumatu’a is chordal and stoic, suggesting influences of Christian hymnody.  After the opening lines of the vocal chant melody, focus turns to the "voice" of the piano, which moves through rhapsodic and reflective variations of the main theme.  

Suite Rapa Nui by Alejandro Arévalo also engages with the island’s history. The two movements, “E te’ua Matavai” and “Mai Hiva te’Ariki,” are roughly translated by this author as “Flowing Source of Water” and “Prior to the Leaving of the King from Hiva.” “E te’ua Matavai” centers the literal, spiritual and cosmological power of water to Rapa Nui: as an element that sustains life and guided their ancestors to the island. “Prior to the Leaving of the King from Hiva” again looks to the history-legend of King Hotumatu’a, but this time reaching back to the period before he makes the bold journey across the Pacific. It is no small thing that Teave is performing two works that center Rapa Nui history, arranged and composed by Chilean composers, respectively, as the island remains an annexed Chilean territory.  

Songs from the Deep by Juhi Bansal continues exploring the symbolism of water and aquatic life. Commissioned by the Oregon Mozart Players in 2022, this work for chamber orchestra considers the literal shift in feeling that occurs when sound moves from air to water. As she shared on her YouTube channel: " Sounds underwater become physical — vibrations felt as much as heard — and as in the lapping of waves, gentle chatter from reefs and sounds of wildlife, the lines between movement, noise, sound and music start to blur. Inspired by an experience hearing humpback whale songs while diving, Songs from the Deep pays homage to an immersive soundscape of water, movement, current and flow; of changing colors and shifting light; of wild voices emerging out of chaos." 

Songs is more sound collage than musical narrative, incorporating Hindustani ornamentation with minimalist motives that morph and travel through the ensemble. For Bansal, the goal is immersion into a mass of sound, like dipping yourself into an ocean full of whale calls, schools of fish and other vibrations that continue even though we are incapable of hearing them.   

Aaron Jay Kernis was one of several Yale-affiliated faculty, alumni and students commissioned to write a work dedicated to those impacted by COVID-19, a project called Postcards from Confinement. His own run-in with the virus was a mild case, nevertheless connecting him to one of the worst pandemics in human history. Kernis’ contribution was Elegy (for those we lost), dedicated “to the families of loved ones who passed away from the coronavirus and the doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals who worked so tirelessly to save those loved ones.”  

But he didn’t stop there; Kernis commissioned filmmaker Esther Shubinski to create a companion film, “to show a side of loss that, up to that point, I hadn’t yet seen in the media,” he explained in an interview with Yale School of Music. Originally scored for piano, and since arranged for string orchestra and again for solo trumpet, Elegy is achingly hopeful, paying as much homage to his subjects’ lives as to their deaths.  

There was nothing tragic or despairing happening to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he wrote his Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466. If anything, he was enjoying major career success in Vienna. Mozart debuted the work as pianist-conductor, but not all of it. Ever the procrastinator, he hadn’t delivered the manuscript in time for the third movement to be copied out. As his sister, Nannerl, learned in a letter from their father, Leopold: “… an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got here, and your brother didn’t even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation.” 

Despite its critical success, it would languish for several decades. The advocacy of pianist-composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann led to its incorporation into the canon of piano repertoire.  

What makes this piano concerto unique is its tonality and character. It’s set in D-minor, one of two minor concertos Mozart composed (he wrote 27) and featuring an overtly brooding character. Allegro opens with an orchestral introduction that shifts from dark and mysterious murmurs to sudden dramatic intensity, reflecting Mozart’s indebtedness to the Mannheim Orchestra, who popularized this interpretive technique that would become not Mozart’s but Beethoven’s stylistic signature. Romanze moves from D-minor to B-flat major, a key area relationship that would be utilized by another composer, Florence Price, more than a century later (though D-major plays a bigger role in her Piano Concerto). In this movement, the soloist is more leader than team player, stating the melody and inviting the orchestra in to repeat and build on what came before. Rondo is the most popular movement from this work. The melody is immediately identifiable, carried forward on Mannheim-esque drama and Mozartian confidence and nonchalance. But he must end in triumph, moving from the D-minor of the movement to a D-major coda that brings the piece to a comforting, satisfied conclusion.