Season 9: 2012-2013
October 12 (Fri, 7pm): Beethoven & Hanging Gardens
This special concert features beautiful Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin & Piano Sonata No. 6 by Amy Appold and Natalia Bolshakova, exotic works by Saint-Saëns and Ravel with countertenor Chad Payton, flutist Alice K. Dade and pianist Peter Miyamoto, lush and exciting Liebermann Sonata for Flute and Piano, and Schoenberg’s stunning The Book of Hanging Gardens featuring soprano Christine Seitz and pianist Peter Miyamoto. Join us for the reception after the concert! READ ABOUT THIS CONCERT IN COLUMBIA TRIBUNE - CLICK HERE.
December 7 (Fri, 7pm): Holiday Bells & Drums
…and Saxophones, too!! Featured are our favorite percussionists Julia Gaines, Brian Tate and their friends featuring colorful works and wide ranging repertoire that will include an arrangement of “12 Days of Christmas.” Also featured are Trio Chymera (saxophonists Neil Ostercamp and Leo Saguiguit and pianist Rachel AuBuchon) in Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and Piazzolla's "Invierno porteño" (Buenos Aires), as well as Columbia Handbell Ensemble lead by Edward S. Rollins. Come and enjoy a delightful, festive musical treat!
February 1 (Fri, 7pm): Baroque Flamenco
This Baroque concert is the largest ensemble we have ever put together, to perform the popular Orchestral Suite No. 3 (tunes that everyone recognizes), coupled with glorious Cantata BWV 119 that calls for four trumpets, three oboes, flutes, etc., and a virtuosic choir, too - All lead by conductor R. Paul Crabb. Between the two orchestral works, Maria Duhova Trevor will perform truly a fantastic piece written for harp, “Baroque Flamenco” by Deborah Henson Conant.
April 4-8: The 6th Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival
April 4 (Thur at 7pm, Missouri Theatre):
Plowman Commencement & Solo Recital by Frederic Chiu, piano
One of the three Plowman judges this year is pianist Frederic Chiu, who was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Petscheck Award of the Juilliard School, and was a fellow of the American Pianist Association. He was also the "non-winner" of the 1993 Van Cliburn Competition, where his elimination from the finals caused an uproar in the press. With over 20 CDs on the market, his repertoire includes the complete work of Prokofiev as well as popular classics of Chopin, Liszt and others, and lesser known masterpieces of Mendelssohn and Rossini, with a special place for the piano transcription. Many have been singled out, such as "Record of the Year" by Stereo Review, "Top 10 recordings" by the New Yorker, with raves from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. This recital is generously sponsored by MU Chancellor's Distinguished Visitors Grant, Mid-Missouri Area Music Teachers Association, and by the presenters of the 2013 Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival.
April 5 (Fri at 7pm, First Baptist Church): Verdehr Trio
co-presented by the Mizzou New Music Initiative
An acknowledged leader in the field of new music, the Verdehr Trio for 40 years (!) has concentrated on molding and defining the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. The trio has over the years created a larger repertoire by commissioning over 200 new works from some of the world’s prominent and exciting composers – known and unknown, young and old, from this country and abroad. The Verdehr Trio has performed throughout the world: in seventeen European countries, the former Soviet Union, in South and Central America as well as in Asia, Australia and in almost all of the United States. Among major concert halls where the Trio has appeared are Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Librayr of Congress, Vienna’s Brahmssael, Sydney Opera House, London’s Wigmore Hall, Auditorio de Madrid, Dvorak Hall in Prague, IRCAM Centre in Paris and Leningrad’s Philharmonic Chamber Hall, The Trio has also played at various international festivals – the Spoleto Festival, Prague Spring Festival, the Vienna Spring Festival, Warsaw Autumn, the Grand Teton Music Festival and at numerous international clarinet festivals, Recently the Trio received a Creative Programming Award from Chamber Music America. This concert is generously sponsored by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation through MU School of Music's Mizzou New Music Initiative.
April 6 (Sat, 9:30am-5:30pm, First Baptist Church): Plowman Competition: Semi-Finals
This year, 15 ensembles will be selected through the Preliminary Auditions CD process to participate in the prestigious Plowman Semi-Finals. Each ensemble will have 20 minutes to set-up and perform their audition in front of the panel of three judges. What makes Plowman so unique is that instead of writing an adjudication, the judges are asked to discuss the audition with the semi-finalist ensembles directly with each ensemble the following day in a friendly setting of Sunday Brunch. The 5 Finalist ensembles are announced later Saturday evening at the Whitmore Recital Hall in the MU School of Music.
April 7 (Sun, 1:30pm, Missouri Theatre): Plowman Finals Concert & Awards Ceremony
Perhaps one of the most exciting circumstances both competing ensembles and audience members will ever experience, The Finals Concert is performed by the five Finalist ensembles which will compete for Cash Awards of $10,000 in total. Audience is asked to vote for their favorite ensemble, while Judges determine which ensemble deserves the honor of carrying Plowman's name and national recognition.
April 8 (Mon, 7pm, First Baptist Church): Recital by Peter Wiley, cello & Anna Polonsky, piano
Peter Wiley needs no introduction to those who love chamber music; it is almost impossible to listen to a recording of a piano trio or string quartet without Peter Wiley in Beaux Arts Trio or Guarneri String Quartet, both of which he was a member of for many, many years. A faculty member of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, he is joined by pianist Anna Polonsky for this very special FREE recital. YES, that's right - Admission is FREE (!). This recital is generously sponsored by MU Chancellor's Distinguished Visitors Grant, University of Missouri Lectures Committee, and by the presenters of the 2013 Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival.
May 3 (Fri, 7pm): Missouriana
This year's season finale is dedicated to composers who are currently living in Missouri. Hear new sounds of William J. Lackey’s "screaming electric whispers" for alto saxophone and electronics (Missouri Premiere, 2013) with saxophonist Leo Saguiguit; Paul Seitz’s “…and that the moon survives” (1994) with violinist Amy Appold and pianist Ayako Tsuruta; Stefan Freund's new work for oboe and piano (2012) with Dan Willett and Natalia Bolshakova; Patrick Dell's new work for trumpet and piano (2012-13) with Iskander Akhmadullin and composer at the keyboard, and Anthony Glise’s The Missouri Fables, Op. 26 (2005). Join us to celebrate the Season 9 – and onward to Season 10!
This special concert features beautiful Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin & Piano Sonata No. 6 by Amy Appold and Natalia Bolshakova, exotic works by Saint-Saëns and Ravel with countertenor Chad Payton, flutist Alice K. Dade and pianist Peter Miyamoto, lush and exciting Liebermann Sonata for Flute and Piano, and Schoenberg’s stunning The Book of Hanging Gardens featuring soprano Christine Seitz and pianist Peter Miyamoto. Join us for the reception after the concert! READ ABOUT THIS CONCERT IN COLUMBIA TRIBUNE - CLICK HERE.
December 7 (Fri, 7pm): Holiday Bells & Drums
…and Saxophones, too!! Featured are our favorite percussionists Julia Gaines, Brian Tate and their friends featuring colorful works and wide ranging repertoire that will include an arrangement of “12 Days of Christmas.” Also featured are Trio Chymera (saxophonists Neil Ostercamp and Leo Saguiguit and pianist Rachel AuBuchon) in Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and Piazzolla's "Invierno porteño" (Buenos Aires), as well as Columbia Handbell Ensemble lead by Edward S. Rollins. Come and enjoy a delightful, festive musical treat!
February 1 (Fri, 7pm): Baroque Flamenco
This Baroque concert is the largest ensemble we have ever put together, to perform the popular Orchestral Suite No. 3 (tunes that everyone recognizes), coupled with glorious Cantata BWV 119 that calls for four trumpets, three oboes, flutes, etc., and a virtuosic choir, too - All lead by conductor R. Paul Crabb. Between the two orchestral works, Maria Duhova Trevor will perform truly a fantastic piece written for harp, “Baroque Flamenco” by Deborah Henson Conant.
April 4-8: The 6th Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival
April 4 (Thur at 7pm, Missouri Theatre):
Plowman Commencement & Solo Recital by Frederic Chiu, piano
One of the three Plowman judges this year is pianist Frederic Chiu, who was the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Petscheck Award of the Juilliard School, and was a fellow of the American Pianist Association. He was also the "non-winner" of the 1993 Van Cliburn Competition, where his elimination from the finals caused an uproar in the press. With over 20 CDs on the market, his repertoire includes the complete work of Prokofiev as well as popular classics of Chopin, Liszt and others, and lesser known masterpieces of Mendelssohn and Rossini, with a special place for the piano transcription. Many have been singled out, such as "Record of the Year" by Stereo Review, "Top 10 recordings" by the New Yorker, with raves from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. This recital is generously sponsored by MU Chancellor's Distinguished Visitors Grant, Mid-Missouri Area Music Teachers Association, and by the presenters of the 2013 Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival.
April 5 (Fri at 7pm, First Baptist Church): Verdehr Trio
co-presented by the Mizzou New Music Initiative
An acknowledged leader in the field of new music, the Verdehr Trio for 40 years (!) has concentrated on molding and defining the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. The trio has over the years created a larger repertoire by commissioning over 200 new works from some of the world’s prominent and exciting composers – known and unknown, young and old, from this country and abroad. The Verdehr Trio has performed throughout the world: in seventeen European countries, the former Soviet Union, in South and Central America as well as in Asia, Australia and in almost all of the United States. Among major concert halls where the Trio has appeared are Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Librayr of Congress, Vienna’s Brahmssael, Sydney Opera House, London’s Wigmore Hall, Auditorio de Madrid, Dvorak Hall in Prague, IRCAM Centre in Paris and Leningrad’s Philharmonic Chamber Hall, The Trio has also played at various international festivals – the Spoleto Festival, Prague Spring Festival, the Vienna Spring Festival, Warsaw Autumn, the Grand Teton Music Festival and at numerous international clarinet festivals, Recently the Trio received a Creative Programming Award from Chamber Music America. This concert is generously sponsored by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation through MU School of Music's Mizzou New Music Initiative.
April 6 (Sat, 9:30am-5:30pm, First Baptist Church): Plowman Competition: Semi-Finals
This year, 15 ensembles will be selected through the Preliminary Auditions CD process to participate in the prestigious Plowman Semi-Finals. Each ensemble will have 20 minutes to set-up and perform their audition in front of the panel of three judges. What makes Plowman so unique is that instead of writing an adjudication, the judges are asked to discuss the audition with the semi-finalist ensembles directly with each ensemble the following day in a friendly setting of Sunday Brunch. The 5 Finalist ensembles are announced later Saturday evening at the Whitmore Recital Hall in the MU School of Music.
April 7 (Sun, 1:30pm, Missouri Theatre): Plowman Finals Concert & Awards Ceremony
Perhaps one of the most exciting circumstances both competing ensembles and audience members will ever experience, The Finals Concert is performed by the five Finalist ensembles which will compete for Cash Awards of $10,000 in total. Audience is asked to vote for their favorite ensemble, while Judges determine which ensemble deserves the honor of carrying Plowman's name and national recognition.
April 8 (Mon, 7pm, First Baptist Church): Recital by Peter Wiley, cello & Anna Polonsky, piano
Peter Wiley needs no introduction to those who love chamber music; it is almost impossible to listen to a recording of a piano trio or string quartet without Peter Wiley in Beaux Arts Trio or Guarneri String Quartet, both of which he was a member of for many, many years. A faculty member of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, he is joined by pianist Anna Polonsky for this very special FREE recital. YES, that's right - Admission is FREE (!). This recital is generously sponsored by MU Chancellor's Distinguished Visitors Grant, University of Missouri Lectures Committee, and by the presenters of the 2013 Plowman Chamber Music Competition & Festival.
May 3 (Fri, 7pm): Missouriana
This year's season finale is dedicated to composers who are currently living in Missouri. Hear new sounds of William J. Lackey’s "screaming electric whispers" for alto saxophone and electronics (Missouri Premiere, 2013) with saxophonist Leo Saguiguit; Paul Seitz’s “…and that the moon survives” (1994) with violinist Amy Appold and pianist Ayako Tsuruta; Stefan Freund's new work for oboe and piano (2012) with Dan Willett and Natalia Bolshakova; Patrick Dell's new work for trumpet and piano (2012-13) with Iskander Akhmadullin and composer at the keyboard, and Anthony Glise’s The Missouri Fables, Op. 26 (2005). Join us to celebrate the Season 9 – and onward to Season 10!
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OCMS Season 8 financial assistance was provided by First Baptist Church of Columbia, Office of Cultural Affairs and Columbia Tribune. |
Season 8
September 11* Remembrance: Tenth Anniversary of 9/11
Sunday, 7pm
*Missouri Theatre co-presented by the First Baptist Church
Time may heal the sorrow but the shocking day of unspeakable sadness that engulfed the world only ten years ago has not been forgotten. This special concert presentation, including Wiberg's Requiem, will honor those who rebuilt their lives since the great tragedy.
October 14 Fête Locale!
Friday, 7pm
Take a journey around the globe: Beethoven’s 25 Scottish Songs with tenor Nollie Moore, Henry Cowell’s Homage to Iran featuring flutist Alice Dade del Campo, Paul Seitz’s new commissioned work featuring saxophonist Leo Saguiguit and others, Graham Fitkin’s Hard Fairy for two pianos and saxophone, and Greg Anderson’s Fantasy for two pianos based on themes by Bizet’s Carmen, played by pianists Peter Miyamoto and Ayako Tsuruta. Come join us for the post-concert reception, and celebrate our musicians from Columbia!
December 2 Roe-mantic Holidays
Friday, 7pm
There is nothing like listening to a Viennese waltz around New Years! Enjoy the Anderson-Roe rendition of Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz and Rachmaninoff's Vocalise for piano four hands, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, works for guitar featuring Anthony Glise, and Wagner's dedication to his wife in Siegfried Idyll for 13 instruments lead by maestro Edward Dolbashian.
February 3 Baroque Virtuosi
Friday, 7pm
Director R. Paul Crabb leads our ever popular Baroque concert this season with Cantata BWV 106 by Johann Sebastian Bach. Also featured are the virtuosic Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 with Iskander Akhmadullin on trumpet, Concerto for Oboe d'amore with Dan Willett as the soloist, and Tomás Albinoni’s famous Adagio in G minor. Read about this concert in the Columbia Tribune's Art Axis by Aarik Danielsen.
March 9 eighth blackbird
Friday, 7pm co-presented by
the Mizzou New Music Initiative
World-renowned and Grammy-winning eighth blackbird is known for its creative and unique presentations, making it the nation’s most exciting chamber ensemble today. eighth blackbird will be in residency with MU for the week before the concert, giving classes and lectures. See their week-long schedule HERE. Read all about their upcoming concert in "Ovation" of Columbia Tribune. Also visit their web site www.eighthblackbird.org and check them out on Youtube. You will NOT be disappointed by this rare live performance in Columbia! *BREAKING NEWS* Congratulations to eighth blackbird for winning their second Grammy. The Grammy was awarded for Best Small Ensemble Performance, for their recording; “Lonely Motel: Music from Slide”. This latest Grammy was presented to the group at the Staples Center, Los Angeles on February 12 as part of the Grammy Awards Ceremony. Hear "Lonely Motel" HERE. *ANOTHER BREAKING NEWS* Mellon Funds 3-Year, $450K eighth blackbird Residency at Curtis Institute!
May 4 Tzigane Unleashed
Friday, 7pm
Virtuoso violinist David Colwell is featured with pianists Peter Miyamoto and Ayako Tsuruta in a true, tour-de-force program of Bartok Sonata No. 2 and Ravel Tzigane for violin and piano, and Chausson Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet featuring pianist Peter Miyamoto and members of the Esterhazy Quartet. Read all about us in pre-concert article in the Columbia Tribune, HERE. Join us for the post-concert reception and meet the artists in the foyer!
Sunday, 7pm
*Missouri Theatre co-presented by the First Baptist Church
Time may heal the sorrow but the shocking day of unspeakable sadness that engulfed the world only ten years ago has not been forgotten. This special concert presentation, including Wiberg's Requiem, will honor those who rebuilt their lives since the great tragedy.
October 14 Fête Locale!
Friday, 7pm
Take a journey around the globe: Beethoven’s 25 Scottish Songs with tenor Nollie Moore, Henry Cowell’s Homage to Iran featuring flutist Alice Dade del Campo, Paul Seitz’s new commissioned work featuring saxophonist Leo Saguiguit and others, Graham Fitkin’s Hard Fairy for two pianos and saxophone, and Greg Anderson’s Fantasy for two pianos based on themes by Bizet’s Carmen, played by pianists Peter Miyamoto and Ayako Tsuruta. Come join us for the post-concert reception, and celebrate our musicians from Columbia!
December 2 Roe-mantic Holidays
Friday, 7pm
There is nothing like listening to a Viennese waltz around New Years! Enjoy the Anderson-Roe rendition of Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz and Rachmaninoff's Vocalise for piano four hands, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, works for guitar featuring Anthony Glise, and Wagner's dedication to his wife in Siegfried Idyll for 13 instruments lead by maestro Edward Dolbashian.
February 3 Baroque Virtuosi
Friday, 7pm
Director R. Paul Crabb leads our ever popular Baroque concert this season with Cantata BWV 106 by Johann Sebastian Bach. Also featured are the virtuosic Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 with Iskander Akhmadullin on trumpet, Concerto for Oboe d'amore with Dan Willett as the soloist, and Tomás Albinoni’s famous Adagio in G minor. Read about this concert in the Columbia Tribune's Art Axis by Aarik Danielsen.
March 9 eighth blackbird
Friday, 7pm co-presented by
the Mizzou New Music Initiative
World-renowned and Grammy-winning eighth blackbird is known for its creative and unique presentations, making it the nation’s most exciting chamber ensemble today. eighth blackbird will be in residency with MU for the week before the concert, giving classes and lectures. See their week-long schedule HERE. Read all about their upcoming concert in "Ovation" of Columbia Tribune. Also visit their web site www.eighthblackbird.org and check them out on Youtube. You will NOT be disappointed by this rare live performance in Columbia! *BREAKING NEWS* Congratulations to eighth blackbird for winning their second Grammy. The Grammy was awarded for Best Small Ensemble Performance, for their recording; “Lonely Motel: Music from Slide”. This latest Grammy was presented to the group at the Staples Center, Los Angeles on February 12 as part of the Grammy Awards Ceremony. Hear "Lonely Motel" HERE. *ANOTHER BREAKING NEWS* Mellon Funds 3-Year, $450K eighth blackbird Residency at Curtis Institute!
May 4 Tzigane Unleashed
Friday, 7pm
Virtuoso violinist David Colwell is featured with pianists Peter Miyamoto and Ayako Tsuruta in a true, tour-de-force program of Bartok Sonata No. 2 and Ravel Tzigane for violin and piano, and Chausson Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet featuring pianist Peter Miyamoto and members of the Esterhazy Quartet. Read all about us in pre-concert article in the Columbia Tribune, HERE. Join us for the post-concert reception and meet the artists in the foyer!
Season 8: 2011-2012
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October 14, 2011 Fête Locale!
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): from Twenty-five Scottish Songs, Op. 108 (1815-1818) [15'00]
Nollie Moore, tenor - Susan Jensen, violin - Matthew Pierce, violoncello - Peter Miyamoto, piano
Between 1809 and 1818 Beethoven composed over 170 arrangements of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and assorted Continental songs for one or more voice with piano, violin and cello accompaniment. It might surprise some classical music lovers to learn that folksong arrangements form the largest body of work produced by the composer. Most of these are from this late period of Beethoven’s output and were commissioned by the Scotsman George Thomson, a publisher in Edinburgh. Biographers of Beethoven tell us that Thomson “distinguished himself by tastes and acquirements that led to an appointment to the ‘Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufacture in Scotland’ - an office from which he retired upon a full pension after a service of fifty years. He was, especially, a promoter of all good music and an earnest reviver of ancient Scottish melody.” (Thayer) It is to this end that Thomson payed over 700 gold ducats (fees from Continental publishers included) to Beethoven for 126 his folk-settings and commissioned similar work from Pleyel, Haydn, Hummel, and Weber. (Solomon)
In his late period, a growing interest in folksong and their arranging marks characteristic elements of Beethoven’s compositional work-- the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (1816) was also completed--yet their artistic value often debated. Often, Beethoven was not provided with the texts of titles of the songs and despite reception of some of the titles, scant descriptions, or expressive markings, he was encouraged (but did not yield) to keep the keyboard parts as simple as possible. Additionally, partly because he was catering to conventional taste, Thomson modified the texts and tunes of some of the songs. As a result, Beethoven set the songs, what with their modal language and irregular rhythmic structure, to Classical-style harmonies with symmetrical rhythm patterns. The Twenty-five Scottish songs of reflect this blending of the folk tradition with the Classical in a way that neither undermines the expressive quality of the songs nor compromises Beethoven’s unique musical voice.
-notes partially informed by Nicolas Miecowski. © J. Scott Clemens
Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran (1963) [15'00]
Alice Dade Del Campo, flute - Julia Gaines, drum - Ayako Tsuruta, piano
Homage to Iran was originally written for violin and piano and was performed by violinist Leopold Avakian, to whom it is dedicated, for the Shah of Iran in a 1959 concert in Tehran. Performance practice often substitutes the role of the violin, passing the material to wind instruments (the flute, in tonight’s performance), and replaces piano textures with a Middle Eastern drum in three of the movements. This piece, from 1957, demonstrates Cowell’s interest in the music of other cultures. He had long been aware of the world’s musical offerings. Both instruments (for example, gongs from China and Japan and porcelain bowls from India) and techniques derived from various cultures’ musical traditions were used as elements in his work. He was one of the pioneers in teaching about the music of other cultures and laid much groundwork for the young field of ethnomusicology.
This influence was felt by many of Cowell’s students, including Cage, and, most noticeably, Lou Harrison. Both at different times had taken Cowell’s course titled Music of the Peoples of the World, which was taught at San Francisco State College and at the New School in New York as well as through a radio series on WBAI in New York. Harrison often spoke of Cowell opening up the world for him, and remembered his first hearing of many traditions in Cowell’s class. As a result, Harrison felt that a musician who did not know at least one tradition other than his own was not really whole.
After the 1940s, the pioneering experimentalism in Cowell’s music lessened, or rather became a synthesis and digestion of all that he had done and experienced before. He had married Sidney Robertson, an ethnomusicologist, in 1941, and her work influenced his own. In 1956, with the aid of a Rockefeller Foundation grant, they visited a wide number of countries, and Cowell began compositions influenced by the various traditions they visited. In addition to Ireland, where Cowell had family roots, they visited Turkey, Japan, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Resulting compositions include his Madras Symphony, the orchestral work Ongaku, and from Iran the chamber orchestra works Teheran Movement and Persian Set, and the work performed tonight, Homage to Iran. © J. Scott Clemens
Paul Seitz (b.1951): Some place where your spirit sounds... (2011 Odyssey Commission) [12'00]
Leo Saguiguit, tenor saxophone - Chris Baumgartner, conductor
with Sarah Lucas, oboe - Stephanie Berg, clarinet - Andrew Bell, bassoon - Michael Hill, horn -
Erik Hassell, violin - Matthew Pierce, violoncello - Rachel AuBuchon, piano
The idea of composing a chamber work featuring tenor saxophone came first from my love of the incredible range of colors and the inherent human vulnerability of the saxophone and also from the past collaborations with inspiring saxophonists, including my colleague at MU, Leo Saguiguit, from whom I always learn much -- about craft, surely, but also about the kinds of motivations and questions that elevate music making from craft to art. (It was important to the process that Leo agreed to perform in this premiere before I began work on the composition.)
Perhaps it was through thinking about such things, that the idea of a solo concerto as a kind of instrumental opera emerged. But soon, my object became the creation of a recognizable personality, in the musical material of the soloist, that one can follow through its interactions with a variety of contrasting musical environments – distinct musical communities – portrayed by the ensemble. That ensemble was chosen to include instruments that are in some way related to the saxophone (oboe & clarinet) or to each other (oboe & bassoon; violin & cello; clarinet & horn) or quite distinct from one another (strings, winds, piano) but also are capable of combining to create additional colors and textures.
The title, “Some place where your spirit sounds...” is a translation of a line from a Rilke poem written in response to the death of his friend, the proto-Modernist portrait artist Paula Modersohn Becker, at age 31. This artist continues to be highly esteemed for her combination of important technical innovations with a deep empathy for her human subjects. Because Paula’s life was filled with travel to study and create in a variety of artistic communities and because her own work was always immediately recognizable even as it grew in both craft and art, it is possible to think of this music as associated with her story, specifically. But it is also, by design, instrumental music. And, if there is any narrative here at all, it is surely a more universal one, perhaps related to the determined and unsteady search we all make for whatever it is that can sometimes transform experience into art. © Paul Seitz
See also www.paulseitz.net
Camille Saint-Saens, trans. Greg Anderson: The Swan (2007) [3'00]
Peter Miyamoto, piano I - Ayako Tsuruta, piano II
(Notes below)
Graham Fitkin (b.1963): Hard Fairy for two pianos and saxophone (1994) [17'00]
Leo Saguiguit, soprano saxophone - Ayako Tsuruta, piano I - Peter Miyamoto, piano II
Graham Fitkin is a UK composer and has worked with orchestras such as RLPO, Halle, BBC Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and London Chamber Orchestra. He has composed for dance companies such as Shobana Jeyasingh, Random Dance, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Bi-Ma and many instrumental ensembles. Performing has always been an important aspect of Graham’s work. In two recent projects, KAPLAN for keyboards and live visuals, and STILL WARM for electronically manipulated harps and sampler, he collaborated with his partner Ruth Wall. There have been recent collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Powerplant, and Royal Ballet choreographer Jonathan Watkins. Graham’s work has been released on CD by Decca’s Argo label, Factory, Sanctuary’s Black Box, and many others. About his piece Hard Fairy the composer says: “A lot of the material used in the piece is a complete reworking and restructuring without the visual and narrative elements. It is non-programmatic, works by juxtaposition of blocks of material, and, I like to think, is propelled by rhythmic momentum until the final coda, when everything sits back and the whole business can be viewed from a different angle.” Graham Fitkin – May 1994
Greg Anderson (b.1981): Carmen Fantasy: Fantasy for two pianos based on themes by Georges Bizet [14'00] Ayako Tsuruta, piano I - Peter Miyamoto, piano II
The Anderson and Roe Piano Duo (comprised of Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe) met in 2000 as freshmen at The Juilliard School and formed their dynamic musical partnership shortly thereafter. Their wildly creative original compositions push the boundaries of the collaborative piano experience. Like the performing artists of tonight’s duos, Anderson & Roe believe strongly in the communicative potential of music, and they aim to make classical piano music a relevant and powerful force in society.
The selections tonight draw from famous themes of Romantic music. The Swan, comes from the thirteenth movement of The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and features a solo cello and two pianos. By way of frequent legato articulation and slurring the music evokes the scene of a swan gliding through the water. Anderson offers this about the piece: “In this arrangement, I honored the spirit of the original composition but recreated the music according to the strengths of our instrumentation, immersing the melody in pianistic ripples of sound. Imagine a swan drifting in a pond and the water rippling in its wake. Try listening similarly: drift; allow yourself to explore aimlessly. We are surrounded by beauty; it's just that we sometimes forget to acknowledge it.”
Because of its overall charm, slow tempo, and performance indications, the movement a source for many other arrangements. Tonight’s performance aligns itself with the rich history of other transcriptions of the work including Louis van Waefelghem’s adaptation for viola or viola d'amore and piano (1895), an arrangement central to the theremin repertoire, Leonard Bernstein’s famous recording of the piece with the New York Philharmonic performed on double bass, and a version by Monserrat Caballe in which she vocalizes sections of the melody accompanied by a piano.
The Carmen Fantasy creates a mosaic of sound as notable passages and tunes from the opera of the same name. Included in this brilliant arranging is music of the Habanera aria, which is known for its graceful dotted rhythm and teasing chromatic melodies. In a blog update from January 2011, Anderson’s duo partner, Elizabeth Joy Roe, announced the publication of the music and wrote: “Carmen. The very name immediately conjures up the irresistible melodies of Bizet’s beloved opera as well as the dramatic story of its tempestuous heroine. As for the Fantasy itself, it is a kaleidoscopic mishmash of our favorite themes from the opera. With this composition, we aimed to push the virtuosic possibilities of two pianos to the hilt.”
I’m sure you’ll agree. © J. Scott Clemens
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December 2, 2011 Roe-mantic Holidays
Francesco Petrarca, Italian humanist and writer in the 14th century, is credited for the eponymous Petrarchan sonnet: a verse form usually regarding unattainable love for an idealized woman. Sonnetto 104 is no exception, with its opening line: “Warefare I cannot wage, yet know not peace.” The speaker equally despises death and life, for he lives with the pain of unreturned love, and the poem is a series of contradictions: “by grief I’m nurtured; and, though tearful, gay.” Franz Liszt was in no such situation at the age of 26, though, when he was quoting Petrarch in letters to Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for him three years prior.
The two lived together in Switzerland and Italy from 1835-39, and as Liszt’s composing matured under her influence, he wrote the Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The second book, titled “Italy,” includes his setting of Sonnetto 104, in addition to two other Petrarch sonnets. The Petrarch sonnets have been set to music by noteworthy composers, including Franz Schubert and Arnold Schoenberg, since the 16th century, but Liszt’s settings have had the greatest vitality. Though originally conceived for tenor voice, they were first published for piano solo in 1846. Liszt then revised them multiple times before they reached definitive form in 1858.
Between the desperate introduction and just barely stable close, this is primarily a simple song—probably simple enough to include in a basic sight-singing course, as long as the singer ignored the occasional virtuosic runs over the length of the piano. Yet amidst the songlike nature, which would only get at the “peace” mentioned in Petrarch’s work, Liszt calls upon the performer to swiftly change from dolce to appassionato to even agitato, mimicking the confused and tormented narrator of the sonnet. The restatements of the theme get increasingly tempestuous, and it is clear that this is the “war.” The juxtaposition and swift changes between peace and war are almost schizophrenic, and the piece actually slows to a calm end. With one final tension to remind us of the Petrarch narrator’s “wretched state,” the last chord can only be described as peace.
As mentioned, Liszt worked with his music of the Sonneto over a period of several years transcribing it from a previous composition for voice and piano. Like Liszt with his Sonnotto discussed above, transcription is also informs the compositional practice of Greg Anderson and his duet partner Elizabeth Rose. Their wildly creative and unique works push the boundaries of the collaborative piano experience. On the topic of the history of their transcriptions they offer that "transcriptions are simultaneously retrospective and forward-looking, as the transcriber takes a work of the past and re-imagines in into an entity that resonates with the present. The art of transcription used to flourish as an essential element on the pianist's prowess, whether for purposes of modernization, virtuosic display, or as a conduit for large-scale ensembles works before the age of recording."
Further demonstration on the transcription process (with just as much pianistic prowess, virtuosic display, and sensitive performanceship as that in the Liszt piece) show up in the Rachmaninoff Vocalise and the Strauss Blue Danube Waltz. In arranging Vocalise for piano duet, the Anderson/Roe duo paid homage to Rachmaninoff’s indelible piano writing and to the song’s emotional intimacy and passion. Rachmaninoff composed his Vocalise to be sung without any words, yet somehow the song still manages to communicate a heart-rending story. Words are certainly unneeded in the Vocalise (originally for voice and piano containing no words, but rather sung using a single vowel of the singer’s choosing) and the song, with its glorious melody and lack of text, has proven to be an ideal piece for transcription: there are numerous arrangements for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and solo instruments, including solo piano. The kaleidoscopic Blue Danube Fantasy takes the elegance of the Viennese waltz as a point of departure and plunges headlong into the passions that undulate beneath the dance's restrained façade. The choreography of the four hands brings up the striking resemblance of a couple dancing and two pianists nestled at one piano. A rather masterful handling of the themes occurs throughout this work, most notably when seven of the motives are played in tandem towards the end of the Waltz.
- Notes for Sonnetto 104 provided by Grace Lyden ©2011
- Additional commentary informed by notes from www.andersonroe.com (composer's website)
Luis de Narváez (ca.1500-1555): Guárdame las Vacas [5'00]
Luis Narvarez was a Spanish composer and vihuelist, which is the name (etymologically related to the viola) given to the guitar-like string instrument popular in sixteenth-century Spain. Many books of tablature and notation exist—an indication of its prominence during the Spanish Renaissance—and chief among these scores is Los seys libros del Delphin, a six-volume collection of music for viheula by Narvarez. The entire set is dedicated to a patron of the composer, Francisco de los Cobos, and contains repertoire characterized by polyphony, transcription, and variation.
Guardame las vacas, from the last volume, is a romanesca, which refers to a piece with a repeating chord sequence that yields the groundwork for variation or improvisation. The practice of improvising variations over a pre-existing harmonic pattern was central to most musical traditions in the sixteenth century and Spain was no exception, though the culture and its composers had their own popular tunes to use as the basis for such pieces. The Guardame las vacas mentioned above was among the most frequently used to the point that it became synonymous with "variation technique" or, to use the Spanish term, "diferencias." The piece begins with the unaffected and straightforward presentation of the theme before taking it through seven variations. Scholars cite the importance of Guardame las vacas due to the fact that it is regarded as the first printed version of a variation form in music history. Prof. Anthony Glise, tonight's performer of the work, offers the following, which nicely ties the piece into tonight's romantic era programming: "The title for the theme and variations on Guardame las Vacas translates loosely as 'Guard my Cows.' This may not seem a particularly romantic venture until we look at the words from the original song: 'Guard the cows for me, Juan, and I will kiss you. Or 'I'll guard the cows, and you can kiss me!' If not slightly tongue-in-cheek, one can't deny the romantic 'win-win' of Renaissance husbandry.
Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909): Capriccio Arabe [8'00]
A capriccio is a piece of music that has improvisational characteristics and many were improvised and not always notated. Capriccios are written with a variety of moods and contain virtuosic characteristics. Capriccio Arabe is one of the most important works written by the premenant Spanish guitarist/composer Francisco Tarrega during the romantic/classical era. This piece demonstrates his interest in Romantic trends in music with elements of Spanish folk music. The music cries out romantic melodies with call and response phrases of contrasting characters. “Capriccio” was arranged by the German composer and lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss. Weiss is an important prolific composer of Baroque Lute music and was a technically accomplished lute player in his day. Weiss was said to have challenged J.S. Bach to an improvisation competition and won. Capriccio Arabe is unpredictable, it breathes full of life, with thick harmony and the melodies are not always apparent. Romantic music made use of the extremes of form expressing emotion above all other values. The turn of the 19th century and the rise of Romanticism reflected the values and belief systems of the culture. Spanish romantic guitarist Fransico Tarrega was an emotional composer and arranged his music with these characteristics.
- Notes informed by Charles Clark of Central Washington University
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), transcribed by Fabrizio Ferrari: Canon & Gigue in D Major, arr. for string quartet [7'00]
A canon can mean two things in music: a set of core works that become the mainstays of the repertory, and a compositional procedure that involves a single line being strictly woven into dialogue with itself by each voice starting one after the other. Pachelbel's Canon is an example of the latter type that became the baroque member of the former type: a most recognizable piece due to its pleasing bass-line (as instantly memorable as a twelve-bar blues) and the fantasies and flourishes of the violin lines above it.
Although Pachelbel was renowned in his lifetime for his chamber works (most of them were lost. Only Musikalische Ergötzung, a collection of partitas published during Pachelbel's lifetime, is known, and a few isolated pieces in manuscripts. Canon and Gigue in D Major is one of such pieces. A single manuscript copy of it survives in the Berlin State Library. The circumstances of the piece's composition are wholly unknown. One writer hypothesized that the Canon may have been composed for J. C. Bach's wedding, on 23 October 1694, which Pachelbel attended. The canon (without the accompanying gigue) was first published in 1919 by scholar Gustav Beckmann, who included the score in his article on Pachelbel's chamber music. His research was inspired and supported by renowned early music scholar and editor Max Seiffert, who in 1929 published his arrangement of Canon and Gigue in his Organum series. The canon was first recorded in 1940 by Arthur Fiedler, and the first famous recording of the piece was made by the Jean-François Paillard chamber orchestra. Over the years, the canon has been arranged numerous times for a wide variety of ensembles. The canon's chord progression is used in many pop and rock songs, but it is debatable whether it was deliberately used, because the progression is a very common. The gigue that originally accompanied the canon never received the same amount of popularity, even though it is a lively and energetic dance.
- Notes informed by Grove Music Online
Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Siegfried Idyll, original version for 13 instrumentalists [19'00]
Although Cosima Wagner was born on December 24, she chose to celebrate her birthday on the twenty-fifth. Her diary entry for Sunday, December 25, 1870, reads:
When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R. came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his "symphonic birthday greeting." I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R. had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever! The Tribschen Idyll—so the work is called…
R. is her beloved Richard, and two of the five children are Cosima's from her previous marriage to Hans von Bülow, whom she abruptly left for the man that even Hans, a talented pianist and conductor, admitted to be his superior in the world of music. The other three are five-year-old Isolde; Eva, three; and Siegfried, eighteen months—Cosima and Richard Wagner's children, all born before their marriage on August 25, 1870. Tribschen is the name of the house on a Lake Lucerne, where Cosima and Richard made their home. Tribschen Idyll is, of course, the Siegfried Idyll—though it wasn't given that name for many years, after the Wagner's elected to publish their private musical communication in exchange for a nice sum of money. ("The secret treasure is to become public property," Cosima wrote in her diary.)
he Siegfried Idyll—this title apparently dates from a performance in Meiningen in 1877—remains Wagner's only instrumental work that is regularly played. The main theme is a generous and lilting melody sung by Brünnhilde in act 3 of Siegfried to the words beginning "Ewig war ich" (I always was, I always am, always in sweet yearning bliss). Wagner claimed that this music came to him during the summer of 1864 at the Villa Pellet, overlooking Lake Starnberg, where he and Cosima consummated their union. (He is contradicted, however, by his own obsessive record keeping: the melody was composed that November 14, when he was alone in Munich.) A second theme, introduced by the oboe, is a lullaby Wagner jotted down on New Year's Eve 1868. The music is unusually intimate and restrained for a composer who lived a life of excess. More than any other of Wagner's scores, the Siegfried Idyll marries the private and public sides of the most famous composer of the nineteenth century.
- Excerpts and notes informed by Grove Music Online and Phillip Huscher of the CSO
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February 3, 2012 Baroque Virtuosi
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Concerto in A Major for oboe d'amore, strings and basso continuo, BWV1055 (1741) [15'00]
Dan Willett, oboe d'amore - R. Paul Crabb, conductor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
Like the musical talent of the Bach family, many of Johann Sebastian's compositions went through several generations. It was a common eighteenth-century practice for composers to rework their own music to add to a social or religious engagement. Among the best-known of such pieces in the Bach canon are the concertos for harpsichord, all of which seem to be arrangements of some of his earlier music. The harpsichord concertos were based on works Bach wrote for his duties at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen between 1717 and 1723, where he was responsible for the instrumental rather than the sacred music. Most of the model works were originally for solo violin, but the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey showed that the Concerto in A major was written originally for oboe d'amore, an ancestor of the modern English horn.
The opening movement of the Oboe d'amore Concerto begins with a orchestral ritornello whose “returns” (“ritornelli ” in Italian) give the form both its structure and its name. Between the music of the ritornelli , the solo instrument develops a complementary motive. The regular phrases, disposed in eight-measure blocks, give this movement a dance-like quality. The following Larghetto offers a stark contrast in mood from the jolly opening movement. Above a chromatically descending, passacaglia-like bass, the soloist intones a mournful song-like melody full of rich emotion. (Such music is a reminder that the Baroque era was essentially a romantic age in the deeply expressive nature of its art.) The jubilant finale, modeled perhaps on the gigue, returns the dancing motion and high spirits of the first movement.
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047 (1717-18) [12'00]
Iskander Akhmadullin, piccolo trumpet - Steve Geibel, flute - Dan Willett, oboe - Siri Geenen, violin
R. Paul Crabb conductor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
Brandenburg, in Bach’s day, was a political and military powerhouse. It had been part of the Holy Roman Empire since the mid-12th century, and its ruler — the Margrave — was charged with defending and extending the northern imperial border in return for which he was allowed to be an Elector of the Emperor. The house of Hohenzollern acquired the margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415, and the family embraced the Reformation a century later with such authority that they came to be regarded as the leaders of German Protestantism; Potsdam, near Berlin, was chosen as the site of the electoral court in the 17th century.
Johann Sebastian Bach met Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1719, during his tenure as music director at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Bach worked at Cöthen from 1717 to 1723, and early in 1719, he was sent by Leopold to Berlin to finalize arrangements for the purchase of a new harpsichord, a large, two-manual model made by Michael Mietke, instrument-builder to the royal court. While in Berlin, Bach played for Christian Ludwig, who was so taken with his music that he asked him to send some of his compositions for his library. He picked six of the finest concertos he had written at Cöthen and sent them to Christian Ludwig in March 1721.
Trumpet, flute, oboe and violin are on equal terms as solo instruments in the Brandenburg No. 2. An orchestral tutti begins the opening movement, after which each of the soloists are thinned out in turn for a brief statement of greeting. The remainder of the movement is given over to musical conversations of the themes among the soloists and the orchestra. The second movement is a quiet but impassioned trio for flute, oboe and violin supported only by the bass and keyboard. The solo trumpet returns in the finale to begin one of Bach’s most joyous flights of contrapuntal ingenuity and rhythmic vivacity.
Remo Giazotto (1910-1998): Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, on Two Thematic Ideas and on a Figured Bass by Tomaso Albinoni (ca. 1708/1958) [10'00]
Siri Geenen, violin - Colleen Ostercamp, organ - R. Paul Crabb, condcutor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
By a coincidence, Tomaso Albinoni remains most popular today for a piece he never wrote. His Adagio in G Minor is a reconstruction (actually, an entirely new composition) by the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, based on a six-bar fragment found in one of Albinoni’s manuscripts. Giazotto’s arrangement, published in 1958, helped contribute to the booming interest in baroque music in the years after World War II, and it has become one of the most popular of classical pieces–the current catalog lists over 35 different recordings.
Albinoni himself was a contemporary of Bach, who admired his music (and who paid Albinoni the subtle compliment of borrowing some of his themes to use as fugue subjects). The son of a wealthy family, Albinoni never had to take a court or church position to support himself as a musician, but he was far from being a dilettante, as he is sometimes characterized: he wrote over fifty operas, forty cantatas, and a vast amount of instrumental music that was widely published, and his name was–at the time of his death–known throughout Europe.
The Adagio in G Minor opens with the organ outlining a series of chords over a very slow moving bass line. The strings enter and bring forth a rich and contrapuntal melody which floats over the undulating bass line and organ chords. There are moments of cadenza for a solo violin before the whole group reasserts the melodic momentum and after a dramatic final exposition of the chords the work fades into its conclusion.
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 106, 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit' [Actus tragicus] (1707/8) [22'40]
R. Paul Crabb, conductor/director - Bach Collegium Choir - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
We know of no definite date for the “Actus tragicus,” but its style seems to suggest the very beginning of Bach’s career as a composer of vocal music, the time when he was organist of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen 1707-8. Here he did not compose vocal music as a regular weekly or monthly cycle; rather the works were necessitated by specific occasions (in this case, almost certainly a funeral). The text is an amalgam of free poetry, much biblical verse (notably from the Psalms, Isaiah, Luke and Revelation) and two Lutheran chorales. Despite the early date, the work is a masterpiece of the seventeenth century style of text-setting; the music is intimately crafted to the succession of the words without a hint of the newer Italian styles of recitative and da capo aria.
The first half of the cantata is concerned with the inevitability of death while the latter section shows that the “new” Christian message cancels the old covenant: death leads to union with Jesus and eternal life. Incidentally, it is only in the second part that we hear chorales, symbolic as they are of the new, Christian, covenant and of the new Lutheran confession superseding the older Catholic order. The final chorus manages both heightened spirituality and grandeur. In the instrumental prelude, the motive that has until now been marked by downward wavering steps is now inverted, the upward intervals suggesting a sense of ascension and triumph. The chorus enters accompanied by instrumental emphasis on off-beats. A light, brilliant choral fugue ends the piece, with the final "Amen" echoed by the instruments very softly-a sublime finish.
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March 9, 2012 "Fractured Jams" by eighth blackbird
David Lang: these broken wings (2007)
Bruno Mantovani: Chamber Concerto No. 2 (2011)
Andy Akiho: ErAsE (2011)
Intermission
Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion (1969)
Stephen Hartke: Meanwhile: Incidental music to imaginary puppet plays (2007)
DESCRIPTION:
Join Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird for a dangerous musical high wire act. This sextet combines the finesse of a finely-honed string quartet with the energy of a rock band, and Fractured Jams presents an absorbing, provocative and motley program. Swedish composer Fabian Svensson enacts a thrilling, virtuosic face-off between the "two sides" of the group, while American Dan Visconti's Fractured Jams feeds pop music through a musical shredder to generate an over-caffeinated jam session. Philip Glass's mesmerizing Music in Similar Motion contrasts with renowned French composer Bruno Mantovani's colorful new work for eighth blackbird, and Derek Bermel's Tied Shifts is a wild Balkan romp.
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May 4, 2012 TZIGANE UNLEASHED
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano, BB85/Sz. 76 (1922) [21'00]
Although Béla Bartók’s conservatory education was in German, he was not pleased with just studying German or French composers. Despite feeling disconnected with the conservatory’s Western European focus, he did absorb the musical techniques and trends of turn-of-the-century Europe. It was only after hearing a concert of Hungarian folk tunes in 1903 that the young composer began to seek inspiration and enlightenment in his native music. Generally, Hungarian folk music is zesty rhythmically, simple yet often quite quirky melodically, with relatively austere accompaniment. The composer’s Violin Sonata No. 2, however, is not an arrangement of a naïve folk song or a gypsy violin tune disguised as a classical concert work. The continuos, two-movement Sonata is intricate and complex, far removed from the Hungarian peasant tunes and Turkish wedding songs that Bartók had begun to study and chronicle.It is also a very difficult work, written for a violin virtuoso of the highest caliber. Bartók described it to his concert agent in a 1924 letter: “The violin part of the two violin sonatas… is extraordinarily difficult, and it is only a violinist of the top class who has any chance of learning them…“ The Sonata was written in 1922 and premiered the next year in Berlin. It was dedicated to violinist Jelly d’Arányi, niece of famous violinist Joseph Joachim. Together, they gave the work its first performance in England.
© J. Scott Clemens
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)Tzigane ("Gypsy," 1922-24) [10'00]
Tzigane was originally written for violin and piano, and once again, Jelly d’Arányi, to whom it is dedicated, gave the first performance with pianist Henri Gil-Marchex in London on April 26, 1924.
Like the Bartok Sonata, Tzigane celebrates the artistry and temperament of a particular performer. Fire and dash irradiate the famous pieces written for her—Tzigane. The adventurous Ms. d’Arányi was quick to take several of Ravel’s exceedingly difficult pieces into her repertory, and the gestation for Tzigane came about after much collaborative work. According to an account gave to Ravel’s biographer Arbie Orenstein, “late in the evening Ravel asked the Hungarian violinist to play some Gypsy melodies. After Mlle. d’Arányi obliged, the composer asked for one more melody, and then another. The Gypsy melodies continued until about 5 a.m., with everyone exhausted except the violinist and the composer. That evening,” adds Orenstein, “was to mark the initial gestation of Tzigane.” Gestation took almost two years, quiet years in which Ravel finished his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Ms. d’Arányi introduced Tzigane at the Aeolian Hall in London, she created a sensation with it. The way Tzigane begins is a distillation of what happened at that party in London in the summer of 1922—recollection, improvisation, explosions of exuberant virtuosity, all for violin alone. The piano, egged on by the violin’s sliding harmonies, tries a cadenza, too, and that opens the door for the whirlwind of peppery, seductive dance-tunes in the second part of Ravel’s rhapsody. Almost needless to say, the presentation of these tunes is a feast of sounds and melody to the audience.
© J. Scott Clemens
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Concerto for piano, violin, and string quartet, Op. 21 in D Major (1899-91) [40'16]
Chausson was a late starter musically, and it was only in 1879 that he began his formal musical education, when he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at the age of twenty-nine. He quickly came under the influence of César Franck and the circle who gathered round him, though he was never officially one of Franck’s students. His first mature compositions are full of Franck’s influence, but his music began to be enriched by a more classical eighteenth-century outlook. He took to consciously using older musical forms, even adopting French baroque tempo markings. It is in this light that this unique work must be considered. To 18th-century French composers such as François Couperin and Rameau the term concert indicated simply an instrumental work in several movements. In no sense of the word is Chausson’s work a concerto – neither a violin concerto nor a double concerto for violin and piano - but a piece of true chamber music.
Chausson dedicated it to the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who took part in the first performance in Brussels in 1892. The première gave him his first taste of real success. As he wrote in his diary: “Never have I had such a success! I can’t get over it. Everyone seems to love the Concert. Very well played, with wonderful moments, and so artistically executed! I feel light and joyful, something I haven’t been for a long time. It’s done me good and has given me courage. I believe I’ll work with more confidence in the future.” The turbulent first movement is dominated by the three-note figure hammered out, twice, at the start, and the point of departure for both the tranquil passage that follows and the vigorous opening theme of the main body of the movement. Though the work as a whole is far from being baroque pastiche, the second movement does share the graceful lilting rhythm of the eighteenth-century dance from which it takes its title. There is no contrasting central section. Instead the music moves in a single arc to its forceful climax, before sinking back to its graceful conclusion .Just as the first movement is dominated by its three-note figure, so the third is underpinned by various forms of the chromatic figure heard low on the piano at the start. The passionate central climax begins more abruptly than that of the Sicilienne, returning eventually to the quiet in which the movement began.The finale’s vigor and drive comes as the perfect counterbalance, full of springy rhythms, and moments when the mood becomes lighter, even playful. Particularly impressive is the final section, marked ‘très vif’ (very lively) in which Chausson sustains the growing excitement without resorting to empty rhetoric. No wonder he was pleased with his achievement.
© J. Scott Clemens
October 14, 2011 Fête Locale!
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): from Twenty-five Scottish Songs, Op. 108 (1815-1818) [15'00]
Nollie Moore, tenor - Susan Jensen, violin - Matthew Pierce, violoncello - Peter Miyamoto, piano
Between 1809 and 1818 Beethoven composed over 170 arrangements of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and assorted Continental songs for one or more voice with piano, violin and cello accompaniment. It might surprise some classical music lovers to learn that folksong arrangements form the largest body of work produced by the composer. Most of these are from this late period of Beethoven’s output and were commissioned by the Scotsman George Thomson, a publisher in Edinburgh. Biographers of Beethoven tell us that Thomson “distinguished himself by tastes and acquirements that led to an appointment to the ‘Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufacture in Scotland’ - an office from which he retired upon a full pension after a service of fifty years. He was, especially, a promoter of all good music and an earnest reviver of ancient Scottish melody.” (Thayer) It is to this end that Thomson payed over 700 gold ducats (fees from Continental publishers included) to Beethoven for 126 his folk-settings and commissioned similar work from Pleyel, Haydn, Hummel, and Weber. (Solomon)
In his late period, a growing interest in folksong and their arranging marks characteristic elements of Beethoven’s compositional work-- the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98 (1816) was also completed--yet their artistic value often debated. Often, Beethoven was not provided with the texts of titles of the songs and despite reception of some of the titles, scant descriptions, or expressive markings, he was encouraged (but did not yield) to keep the keyboard parts as simple as possible. Additionally, partly because he was catering to conventional taste, Thomson modified the texts and tunes of some of the songs. As a result, Beethoven set the songs, what with their modal language and irregular rhythmic structure, to Classical-style harmonies with symmetrical rhythm patterns. The Twenty-five Scottish songs of reflect this blending of the folk tradition with the Classical in a way that neither undermines the expressive quality of the songs nor compromises Beethoven’s unique musical voice.
-notes partially informed by Nicolas Miecowski. © J. Scott Clemens
Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran (1963) [15'00]
Alice Dade Del Campo, flute - Julia Gaines, drum - Ayako Tsuruta, piano
Homage to Iran was originally written for violin and piano and was performed by violinist Leopold Avakian, to whom it is dedicated, for the Shah of Iran in a 1959 concert in Tehran. Performance practice often substitutes the role of the violin, passing the material to wind instruments (the flute, in tonight’s performance), and replaces piano textures with a Middle Eastern drum in three of the movements. This piece, from 1957, demonstrates Cowell’s interest in the music of other cultures. He had long been aware of the world’s musical offerings. Both instruments (for example, gongs from China and Japan and porcelain bowls from India) and techniques derived from various cultures’ musical traditions were used as elements in his work. He was one of the pioneers in teaching about the music of other cultures and laid much groundwork for the young field of ethnomusicology.
This influence was felt by many of Cowell’s students, including Cage, and, most noticeably, Lou Harrison. Both at different times had taken Cowell’s course titled Music of the Peoples of the World, which was taught at San Francisco State College and at the New School in New York as well as through a radio series on WBAI in New York. Harrison often spoke of Cowell opening up the world for him, and remembered his first hearing of many traditions in Cowell’s class. As a result, Harrison felt that a musician who did not know at least one tradition other than his own was not really whole.
After the 1940s, the pioneering experimentalism in Cowell’s music lessened, or rather became a synthesis and digestion of all that he had done and experienced before. He had married Sidney Robertson, an ethnomusicologist, in 1941, and her work influenced his own. In 1956, with the aid of a Rockefeller Foundation grant, they visited a wide number of countries, and Cowell began compositions influenced by the various traditions they visited. In addition to Ireland, where Cowell had family roots, they visited Turkey, Japan, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Resulting compositions include his Madras Symphony, the orchestral work Ongaku, and from Iran the chamber orchestra works Teheran Movement and Persian Set, and the work performed tonight, Homage to Iran. © J. Scott Clemens
Paul Seitz (b.1951): Some place where your spirit sounds... (2011 Odyssey Commission) [12'00]
Leo Saguiguit, tenor saxophone - Chris Baumgartner, conductor
with Sarah Lucas, oboe - Stephanie Berg, clarinet - Andrew Bell, bassoon - Michael Hill, horn -
Erik Hassell, violin - Matthew Pierce, violoncello - Rachel AuBuchon, piano
The idea of composing a chamber work featuring tenor saxophone came first from my love of the incredible range of colors and the inherent human vulnerability of the saxophone and also from the past collaborations with inspiring saxophonists, including my colleague at MU, Leo Saguiguit, from whom I always learn much -- about craft, surely, but also about the kinds of motivations and questions that elevate music making from craft to art. (It was important to the process that Leo agreed to perform in this premiere before I began work on the composition.)
Perhaps it was through thinking about such things, that the idea of a solo concerto as a kind of instrumental opera emerged. But soon, my object became the creation of a recognizable personality, in the musical material of the soloist, that one can follow through its interactions with a variety of contrasting musical environments – distinct musical communities – portrayed by the ensemble. That ensemble was chosen to include instruments that are in some way related to the saxophone (oboe & clarinet) or to each other (oboe & bassoon; violin & cello; clarinet & horn) or quite distinct from one another (strings, winds, piano) but also are capable of combining to create additional colors and textures.
The title, “Some place where your spirit sounds...” is a translation of a line from a Rilke poem written in response to the death of his friend, the proto-Modernist portrait artist Paula Modersohn Becker, at age 31. This artist continues to be highly esteemed for her combination of important technical innovations with a deep empathy for her human subjects. Because Paula’s life was filled with travel to study and create in a variety of artistic communities and because her own work was always immediately recognizable even as it grew in both craft and art, it is possible to think of this music as associated with her story, specifically. But it is also, by design, instrumental music. And, if there is any narrative here at all, it is surely a more universal one, perhaps related to the determined and unsteady search we all make for whatever it is that can sometimes transform experience into art. © Paul Seitz
See also www.paulseitz.net
Camille Saint-Saens, trans. Greg Anderson: The Swan (2007) [3'00]
Peter Miyamoto, piano I - Ayako Tsuruta, piano II
(Notes below)
Graham Fitkin (b.1963): Hard Fairy for two pianos and saxophone (1994) [17'00]
Leo Saguiguit, soprano saxophone - Ayako Tsuruta, piano I - Peter Miyamoto, piano II
Graham Fitkin is a UK composer and has worked with orchestras such as RLPO, Halle, BBC Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and London Chamber Orchestra. He has composed for dance companies such as Shobana Jeyasingh, Random Dance, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Bi-Ma and many instrumental ensembles. Performing has always been an important aspect of Graham’s work. In two recent projects, KAPLAN for keyboards and live visuals, and STILL WARM for electronically manipulated harps and sampler, he collaborated with his partner Ruth Wall. There have been recent collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Powerplant, and Royal Ballet choreographer Jonathan Watkins. Graham’s work has been released on CD by Decca’s Argo label, Factory, Sanctuary’s Black Box, and many others. About his piece Hard Fairy the composer says: “A lot of the material used in the piece is a complete reworking and restructuring without the visual and narrative elements. It is non-programmatic, works by juxtaposition of blocks of material, and, I like to think, is propelled by rhythmic momentum until the final coda, when everything sits back and the whole business can be viewed from a different angle.” Graham Fitkin – May 1994
Greg Anderson (b.1981): Carmen Fantasy: Fantasy for two pianos based on themes by Georges Bizet [14'00] Ayako Tsuruta, piano I - Peter Miyamoto, piano II
The Anderson and Roe Piano Duo (comprised of Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe) met in 2000 as freshmen at The Juilliard School and formed their dynamic musical partnership shortly thereafter. Their wildly creative original compositions push the boundaries of the collaborative piano experience. Like the performing artists of tonight’s duos, Anderson & Roe believe strongly in the communicative potential of music, and they aim to make classical piano music a relevant and powerful force in society.
The selections tonight draw from famous themes of Romantic music. The Swan, comes from the thirteenth movement of The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and features a solo cello and two pianos. By way of frequent legato articulation and slurring the music evokes the scene of a swan gliding through the water. Anderson offers this about the piece: “In this arrangement, I honored the spirit of the original composition but recreated the music according to the strengths of our instrumentation, immersing the melody in pianistic ripples of sound. Imagine a swan drifting in a pond and the water rippling in its wake. Try listening similarly: drift; allow yourself to explore aimlessly. We are surrounded by beauty; it's just that we sometimes forget to acknowledge it.”
Because of its overall charm, slow tempo, and performance indications, the movement a source for many other arrangements. Tonight’s performance aligns itself with the rich history of other transcriptions of the work including Louis van Waefelghem’s adaptation for viola or viola d'amore and piano (1895), an arrangement central to the theremin repertoire, Leonard Bernstein’s famous recording of the piece with the New York Philharmonic performed on double bass, and a version by Monserrat Caballe in which she vocalizes sections of the melody accompanied by a piano.
The Carmen Fantasy creates a mosaic of sound as notable passages and tunes from the opera of the same name. Included in this brilliant arranging is music of the Habanera aria, which is known for its graceful dotted rhythm and teasing chromatic melodies. In a blog update from January 2011, Anderson’s duo partner, Elizabeth Joy Roe, announced the publication of the music and wrote: “Carmen. The very name immediately conjures up the irresistible melodies of Bizet’s beloved opera as well as the dramatic story of its tempestuous heroine. As for the Fantasy itself, it is a kaleidoscopic mishmash of our favorite themes from the opera. With this composition, we aimed to push the virtuosic possibilities of two pianos to the hilt.”
I’m sure you’ll agree. © J. Scott Clemens
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December 2, 2011 Roe-mantic Holidays
- Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Sonnetto 104 del Petrarca from Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage): Deuxième année: Italie, S. 161 No. 5 [7’00]
- Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), arr. Greg Anderson: Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14 (1912), arr. for piano four hands [4'30]
- Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), arr. Greg Anderson: Blue Danube Waltz (1866), arr. for piano four hands [11'00]
Francesco Petrarca, Italian humanist and writer in the 14th century, is credited for the eponymous Petrarchan sonnet: a verse form usually regarding unattainable love for an idealized woman. Sonnetto 104 is no exception, with its opening line: “Warefare I cannot wage, yet know not peace.” The speaker equally despises death and life, for he lives with the pain of unreturned love, and the poem is a series of contradictions: “by grief I’m nurtured; and, though tearful, gay.” Franz Liszt was in no such situation at the age of 26, though, when he was quoting Petrarch in letters to Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for him three years prior.
The two lived together in Switzerland and Italy from 1835-39, and as Liszt’s composing matured under her influence, he wrote the Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The second book, titled “Italy,” includes his setting of Sonnetto 104, in addition to two other Petrarch sonnets. The Petrarch sonnets have been set to music by noteworthy composers, including Franz Schubert and Arnold Schoenberg, since the 16th century, but Liszt’s settings have had the greatest vitality. Though originally conceived for tenor voice, they were first published for piano solo in 1846. Liszt then revised them multiple times before they reached definitive form in 1858.
Between the desperate introduction and just barely stable close, this is primarily a simple song—probably simple enough to include in a basic sight-singing course, as long as the singer ignored the occasional virtuosic runs over the length of the piano. Yet amidst the songlike nature, which would only get at the “peace” mentioned in Petrarch’s work, Liszt calls upon the performer to swiftly change from dolce to appassionato to even agitato, mimicking the confused and tormented narrator of the sonnet. The restatements of the theme get increasingly tempestuous, and it is clear that this is the “war.” The juxtaposition and swift changes between peace and war are almost schizophrenic, and the piece actually slows to a calm end. With one final tension to remind us of the Petrarch narrator’s “wretched state,” the last chord can only be described as peace.
As mentioned, Liszt worked with his music of the Sonneto over a period of several years transcribing it from a previous composition for voice and piano. Like Liszt with his Sonnotto discussed above, transcription is also informs the compositional practice of Greg Anderson and his duet partner Elizabeth Rose. Their wildly creative and unique works push the boundaries of the collaborative piano experience. On the topic of the history of their transcriptions they offer that "transcriptions are simultaneously retrospective and forward-looking, as the transcriber takes a work of the past and re-imagines in into an entity that resonates with the present. The art of transcription used to flourish as an essential element on the pianist's prowess, whether for purposes of modernization, virtuosic display, or as a conduit for large-scale ensembles works before the age of recording."
Further demonstration on the transcription process (with just as much pianistic prowess, virtuosic display, and sensitive performanceship as that in the Liszt piece) show up in the Rachmaninoff Vocalise and the Strauss Blue Danube Waltz. In arranging Vocalise for piano duet, the Anderson/Roe duo paid homage to Rachmaninoff’s indelible piano writing and to the song’s emotional intimacy and passion. Rachmaninoff composed his Vocalise to be sung without any words, yet somehow the song still manages to communicate a heart-rending story. Words are certainly unneeded in the Vocalise (originally for voice and piano containing no words, but rather sung using a single vowel of the singer’s choosing) and the song, with its glorious melody and lack of text, has proven to be an ideal piece for transcription: there are numerous arrangements for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, and solo instruments, including solo piano. The kaleidoscopic Blue Danube Fantasy takes the elegance of the Viennese waltz as a point of departure and plunges headlong into the passions that undulate beneath the dance's restrained façade. The choreography of the four hands brings up the striking resemblance of a couple dancing and two pianists nestled at one piano. A rather masterful handling of the themes occurs throughout this work, most notably when seven of the motives are played in tandem towards the end of the Waltz.
- Notes for Sonnetto 104 provided by Grace Lyden ©2011
- Additional commentary informed by notes from www.andersonroe.com (composer's website)
Luis de Narváez (ca.1500-1555): Guárdame las Vacas [5'00]
Luis Narvarez was a Spanish composer and vihuelist, which is the name (etymologically related to the viola) given to the guitar-like string instrument popular in sixteenth-century Spain. Many books of tablature and notation exist—an indication of its prominence during the Spanish Renaissance—and chief among these scores is Los seys libros del Delphin, a six-volume collection of music for viheula by Narvarez. The entire set is dedicated to a patron of the composer, Francisco de los Cobos, and contains repertoire characterized by polyphony, transcription, and variation.
Guardame las vacas, from the last volume, is a romanesca, which refers to a piece with a repeating chord sequence that yields the groundwork for variation or improvisation. The practice of improvising variations over a pre-existing harmonic pattern was central to most musical traditions in the sixteenth century and Spain was no exception, though the culture and its composers had their own popular tunes to use as the basis for such pieces. The Guardame las vacas mentioned above was among the most frequently used to the point that it became synonymous with "variation technique" or, to use the Spanish term, "diferencias." The piece begins with the unaffected and straightforward presentation of the theme before taking it through seven variations. Scholars cite the importance of Guardame las vacas due to the fact that it is regarded as the first printed version of a variation form in music history. Prof. Anthony Glise, tonight's performer of the work, offers the following, which nicely ties the piece into tonight's romantic era programming: "The title for the theme and variations on Guardame las Vacas translates loosely as 'Guard my Cows.' This may not seem a particularly romantic venture until we look at the words from the original song: 'Guard the cows for me, Juan, and I will kiss you. Or 'I'll guard the cows, and you can kiss me!' If not slightly tongue-in-cheek, one can't deny the romantic 'win-win' of Renaissance husbandry.
Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909): Capriccio Arabe [8'00]
A capriccio is a piece of music that has improvisational characteristics and many were improvised and not always notated. Capriccios are written with a variety of moods and contain virtuosic characteristics. Capriccio Arabe is one of the most important works written by the premenant Spanish guitarist/composer Francisco Tarrega during the romantic/classical era. This piece demonstrates his interest in Romantic trends in music with elements of Spanish folk music. The music cries out romantic melodies with call and response phrases of contrasting characters. “Capriccio” was arranged by the German composer and lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss. Weiss is an important prolific composer of Baroque Lute music and was a technically accomplished lute player in his day. Weiss was said to have challenged J.S. Bach to an improvisation competition and won. Capriccio Arabe is unpredictable, it breathes full of life, with thick harmony and the melodies are not always apparent. Romantic music made use of the extremes of form expressing emotion above all other values. The turn of the 19th century and the rise of Romanticism reflected the values and belief systems of the culture. Spanish romantic guitarist Fransico Tarrega was an emotional composer and arranged his music with these characteristics.
- Notes informed by Charles Clark of Central Washington University
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), transcribed by Fabrizio Ferrari: Canon & Gigue in D Major, arr. for string quartet [7'00]
A canon can mean two things in music: a set of core works that become the mainstays of the repertory, and a compositional procedure that involves a single line being strictly woven into dialogue with itself by each voice starting one after the other. Pachelbel's Canon is an example of the latter type that became the baroque member of the former type: a most recognizable piece due to its pleasing bass-line (as instantly memorable as a twelve-bar blues) and the fantasies and flourishes of the violin lines above it.
Although Pachelbel was renowned in his lifetime for his chamber works (most of them were lost. Only Musikalische Ergötzung, a collection of partitas published during Pachelbel's lifetime, is known, and a few isolated pieces in manuscripts. Canon and Gigue in D Major is one of such pieces. A single manuscript copy of it survives in the Berlin State Library. The circumstances of the piece's composition are wholly unknown. One writer hypothesized that the Canon may have been composed for J. C. Bach's wedding, on 23 October 1694, which Pachelbel attended. The canon (without the accompanying gigue) was first published in 1919 by scholar Gustav Beckmann, who included the score in his article on Pachelbel's chamber music. His research was inspired and supported by renowned early music scholar and editor Max Seiffert, who in 1929 published his arrangement of Canon and Gigue in his Organum series. The canon was first recorded in 1940 by Arthur Fiedler, and the first famous recording of the piece was made by the Jean-François Paillard chamber orchestra. Over the years, the canon has been arranged numerous times for a wide variety of ensembles. The canon's chord progression is used in many pop and rock songs, but it is debatable whether it was deliberately used, because the progression is a very common. The gigue that originally accompanied the canon never received the same amount of popularity, even though it is a lively and energetic dance.
- Notes informed by Grove Music Online
Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Siegfried Idyll, original version for 13 instrumentalists [19'00]
Although Cosima Wagner was born on December 24, she chose to celebrate her birthday on the twenty-fifth. Her diary entry for Sunday, December 25, 1870, reads:
When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R. came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his "symphonic birthday greeting." I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R. had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever! The Tribschen Idyll—so the work is called…
R. is her beloved Richard, and two of the five children are Cosima's from her previous marriage to Hans von Bülow, whom she abruptly left for the man that even Hans, a talented pianist and conductor, admitted to be his superior in the world of music. The other three are five-year-old Isolde; Eva, three; and Siegfried, eighteen months—Cosima and Richard Wagner's children, all born before their marriage on August 25, 1870. Tribschen is the name of the house on a Lake Lucerne, where Cosima and Richard made their home. Tribschen Idyll is, of course, the Siegfried Idyll—though it wasn't given that name for many years, after the Wagner's elected to publish their private musical communication in exchange for a nice sum of money. ("The secret treasure is to become public property," Cosima wrote in her diary.)
he Siegfried Idyll—this title apparently dates from a performance in Meiningen in 1877—remains Wagner's only instrumental work that is regularly played. The main theme is a generous and lilting melody sung by Brünnhilde in act 3 of Siegfried to the words beginning "Ewig war ich" (I always was, I always am, always in sweet yearning bliss). Wagner claimed that this music came to him during the summer of 1864 at the Villa Pellet, overlooking Lake Starnberg, where he and Cosima consummated their union. (He is contradicted, however, by his own obsessive record keeping: the melody was composed that November 14, when he was alone in Munich.) A second theme, introduced by the oboe, is a lullaby Wagner jotted down on New Year's Eve 1868. The music is unusually intimate and restrained for a composer who lived a life of excess. More than any other of Wagner's scores, the Siegfried Idyll marries the private and public sides of the most famous composer of the nineteenth century.
- Excerpts and notes informed by Grove Music Online and Phillip Huscher of the CSO
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February 3, 2012 Baroque Virtuosi
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Concerto in A Major for oboe d'amore, strings and basso continuo, BWV1055 (1741) [15'00]
Dan Willett, oboe d'amore - R. Paul Crabb, conductor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
Like the musical talent of the Bach family, many of Johann Sebastian's compositions went through several generations. It was a common eighteenth-century practice for composers to rework their own music to add to a social or religious engagement. Among the best-known of such pieces in the Bach canon are the concertos for harpsichord, all of which seem to be arrangements of some of his earlier music. The harpsichord concertos were based on works Bach wrote for his duties at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen between 1717 and 1723, where he was responsible for the instrumental rather than the sacred music. Most of the model works were originally for solo violin, but the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey showed that the Concerto in A major was written originally for oboe d'amore, an ancestor of the modern English horn.
The opening movement of the Oboe d'amore Concerto begins with a orchestral ritornello whose “returns” (“ritornelli ” in Italian) give the form both its structure and its name. Between the music of the ritornelli , the solo instrument develops a complementary motive. The regular phrases, disposed in eight-measure blocks, give this movement a dance-like quality. The following Larghetto offers a stark contrast in mood from the jolly opening movement. Above a chromatically descending, passacaglia-like bass, the soloist intones a mournful song-like melody full of rich emotion. (Such music is a reminder that the Baroque era was essentially a romantic age in the deeply expressive nature of its art.) The jubilant finale, modeled perhaps on the gigue, returns the dancing motion and high spirits of the first movement.
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047 (1717-18) [12'00]
Iskander Akhmadullin, piccolo trumpet - Steve Geibel, flute - Dan Willett, oboe - Siri Geenen, violin
R. Paul Crabb conductor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
Brandenburg, in Bach’s day, was a political and military powerhouse. It had been part of the Holy Roman Empire since the mid-12th century, and its ruler — the Margrave — was charged with defending and extending the northern imperial border in return for which he was allowed to be an Elector of the Emperor. The house of Hohenzollern acquired the margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415, and the family embraced the Reformation a century later with such authority that they came to be regarded as the leaders of German Protestantism; Potsdam, near Berlin, was chosen as the site of the electoral court in the 17th century.
Johann Sebastian Bach met Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1719, during his tenure as music director at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Bach worked at Cöthen from 1717 to 1723, and early in 1719, he was sent by Leopold to Berlin to finalize arrangements for the purchase of a new harpsichord, a large, two-manual model made by Michael Mietke, instrument-builder to the royal court. While in Berlin, Bach played for Christian Ludwig, who was so taken with his music that he asked him to send some of his compositions for his library. He picked six of the finest concertos he had written at Cöthen and sent them to Christian Ludwig in March 1721.
Trumpet, flute, oboe and violin are on equal terms as solo instruments in the Brandenburg No. 2. An orchestral tutti begins the opening movement, after which each of the soloists are thinned out in turn for a brief statement of greeting. The remainder of the movement is given over to musical conversations of the themes among the soloists and the orchestra. The second movement is a quiet but impassioned trio for flute, oboe and violin supported only by the bass and keyboard. The solo trumpet returns in the finale to begin one of Bach’s most joyous flights of contrapuntal ingenuity and rhythmic vivacity.
Remo Giazotto (1910-1998): Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, on Two Thematic Ideas and on a Figured Bass by Tomaso Albinoni (ca. 1708/1958) [10'00]
Siri Geenen, violin - Colleen Ostercamp, organ - R. Paul Crabb, condcutor - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
By a coincidence, Tomaso Albinoni remains most popular today for a piece he never wrote. His Adagio in G Minor is a reconstruction (actually, an entirely new composition) by the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, based on a six-bar fragment found in one of Albinoni’s manuscripts. Giazotto’s arrangement, published in 1958, helped contribute to the booming interest in baroque music in the years after World War II, and it has become one of the most popular of classical pieces–the current catalog lists over 35 different recordings.
Albinoni himself was a contemporary of Bach, who admired his music (and who paid Albinoni the subtle compliment of borrowing some of his themes to use as fugue subjects). The son of a wealthy family, Albinoni never had to take a court or church position to support himself as a musician, but he was far from being a dilettante, as he is sometimes characterized: he wrote over fifty operas, forty cantatas, and a vast amount of instrumental music that was widely published, and his name was–at the time of his death–known throughout Europe.
The Adagio in G Minor opens with the organ outlining a series of chords over a very slow moving bass line. The strings enter and bring forth a rich and contrapuntal melody which floats over the undulating bass line and organ chords. There are moments of cadenza for a solo violin before the whole group reasserts the melodic momentum and after a dramatic final exposition of the chords the work fades into its conclusion.
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 106, 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit' [Actus tragicus] (1707/8) [22'40]
R. Paul Crabb, conductor/director - Bach Collegium Choir - Odyssey Chamber Ensemble
We know of no definite date for the “Actus tragicus,” but its style seems to suggest the very beginning of Bach’s career as a composer of vocal music, the time when he was organist of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen 1707-8. Here he did not compose vocal music as a regular weekly or monthly cycle; rather the works were necessitated by specific occasions (in this case, almost certainly a funeral). The text is an amalgam of free poetry, much biblical verse (notably from the Psalms, Isaiah, Luke and Revelation) and two Lutheran chorales. Despite the early date, the work is a masterpiece of the seventeenth century style of text-setting; the music is intimately crafted to the succession of the words without a hint of the newer Italian styles of recitative and da capo aria.
The first half of the cantata is concerned with the inevitability of death while the latter section shows that the “new” Christian message cancels the old covenant: death leads to union with Jesus and eternal life. Incidentally, it is only in the second part that we hear chorales, symbolic as they are of the new, Christian, covenant and of the new Lutheran confession superseding the older Catholic order. The final chorus manages both heightened spirituality and grandeur. In the instrumental prelude, the motive that has until now been marked by downward wavering steps is now inverted, the upward intervals suggesting a sense of ascension and triumph. The chorus enters accompanied by instrumental emphasis on off-beats. A light, brilliant choral fugue ends the piece, with the final "Amen" echoed by the instruments very softly-a sublime finish.
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March 9, 2012 "Fractured Jams" by eighth blackbird
David Lang: these broken wings (2007)
Bruno Mantovani: Chamber Concerto No. 2 (2011)
Andy Akiho: ErAsE (2011)
Intermission
Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion (1969)
Stephen Hartke: Meanwhile: Incidental music to imaginary puppet plays (2007)
DESCRIPTION:
Join Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird for a dangerous musical high wire act. This sextet combines the finesse of a finely-honed string quartet with the energy of a rock band, and Fractured Jams presents an absorbing, provocative and motley program. Swedish composer Fabian Svensson enacts a thrilling, virtuosic face-off between the "two sides" of the group, while American Dan Visconti's Fractured Jams feeds pop music through a musical shredder to generate an over-caffeinated jam session. Philip Glass's mesmerizing Music in Similar Motion contrasts with renowned French composer Bruno Mantovani's colorful new work for eighth blackbird, and Derek Bermel's Tied Shifts is a wild Balkan romp.
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May 4, 2012 TZIGANE UNLEASHED
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano, BB85/Sz. 76 (1922) [21'00]
Although Béla Bartók’s conservatory education was in German, he was not pleased with just studying German or French composers. Despite feeling disconnected with the conservatory’s Western European focus, he did absorb the musical techniques and trends of turn-of-the-century Europe. It was only after hearing a concert of Hungarian folk tunes in 1903 that the young composer began to seek inspiration and enlightenment in his native music. Generally, Hungarian folk music is zesty rhythmically, simple yet often quite quirky melodically, with relatively austere accompaniment. The composer’s Violin Sonata No. 2, however, is not an arrangement of a naïve folk song or a gypsy violin tune disguised as a classical concert work. The continuos, two-movement Sonata is intricate and complex, far removed from the Hungarian peasant tunes and Turkish wedding songs that Bartók had begun to study and chronicle.It is also a very difficult work, written for a violin virtuoso of the highest caliber. Bartók described it to his concert agent in a 1924 letter: “The violin part of the two violin sonatas… is extraordinarily difficult, and it is only a violinist of the top class who has any chance of learning them…“ The Sonata was written in 1922 and premiered the next year in Berlin. It was dedicated to violinist Jelly d’Arányi, niece of famous violinist Joseph Joachim. Together, they gave the work its first performance in England.
© J. Scott Clemens
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)Tzigane ("Gypsy," 1922-24) [10'00]
Tzigane was originally written for violin and piano, and once again, Jelly d’Arányi, to whom it is dedicated, gave the first performance with pianist Henri Gil-Marchex in London on April 26, 1924.
Like the Bartok Sonata, Tzigane celebrates the artistry and temperament of a particular performer. Fire and dash irradiate the famous pieces written for her—Tzigane. The adventurous Ms. d’Arányi was quick to take several of Ravel’s exceedingly difficult pieces into her repertory, and the gestation for Tzigane came about after much collaborative work. According to an account gave to Ravel’s biographer Arbie Orenstein, “late in the evening Ravel asked the Hungarian violinist to play some Gypsy melodies. After Mlle. d’Arányi obliged, the composer asked for one more melody, and then another. The Gypsy melodies continued until about 5 a.m., with everyone exhausted except the violinist and the composer. That evening,” adds Orenstein, “was to mark the initial gestation of Tzigane.” Gestation took almost two years, quiet years in which Ravel finished his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Ms. d’Arányi introduced Tzigane at the Aeolian Hall in London, she created a sensation with it. The way Tzigane begins is a distillation of what happened at that party in London in the summer of 1922—recollection, improvisation, explosions of exuberant virtuosity, all for violin alone. The piano, egged on by the violin’s sliding harmonies, tries a cadenza, too, and that opens the door for the whirlwind of peppery, seductive dance-tunes in the second part of Ravel’s rhapsody. Almost needless to say, the presentation of these tunes is a feast of sounds and melody to the audience.
© J. Scott Clemens
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Concerto for piano, violin, and string quartet, Op. 21 in D Major (1899-91) [40'16]
Chausson was a late starter musically, and it was only in 1879 that he began his formal musical education, when he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at the age of twenty-nine. He quickly came under the influence of César Franck and the circle who gathered round him, though he was never officially one of Franck’s students. His first mature compositions are full of Franck’s influence, but his music began to be enriched by a more classical eighteenth-century outlook. He took to consciously using older musical forms, even adopting French baroque tempo markings. It is in this light that this unique work must be considered. To 18th-century French composers such as François Couperin and Rameau the term concert indicated simply an instrumental work in several movements. In no sense of the word is Chausson’s work a concerto – neither a violin concerto nor a double concerto for violin and piano - but a piece of true chamber music.
Chausson dedicated it to the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who took part in the first performance in Brussels in 1892. The première gave him his first taste of real success. As he wrote in his diary: “Never have I had such a success! I can’t get over it. Everyone seems to love the Concert. Very well played, with wonderful moments, and so artistically executed! I feel light and joyful, something I haven’t been for a long time. It’s done me good and has given me courage. I believe I’ll work with more confidence in the future.” The turbulent first movement is dominated by the three-note figure hammered out, twice, at the start, and the point of departure for both the tranquil passage that follows and the vigorous opening theme of the main body of the movement. Though the work as a whole is far from being baroque pastiche, the second movement does share the graceful lilting rhythm of the eighteenth-century dance from which it takes its title. There is no contrasting central section. Instead the music moves in a single arc to its forceful climax, before sinking back to its graceful conclusion .Just as the first movement is dominated by its three-note figure, so the third is underpinned by various forms of the chromatic figure heard low on the piano at the start. The passionate central climax begins more abruptly than that of the Sicilienne, returning eventually to the quiet in which the movement began.The finale’s vigor and drive comes as the perfect counterbalance, full of springy rhythms, and moments when the mood becomes lighter, even playful. Particularly impressive is the final section, marked ‘très vif’ (very lively) in which Chausson sustains the growing excitement without resorting to empty rhetoric. No wonder he was pleased with his achievement.
© J. Scott Clemens
