Ching-chu Hu, composer

Ching-chu Hu (born Iowa City, Iowa, 1969)

An Eternal Hope: a fanfare to celebrate the 75th season of Chamber Music Columbus (composed 2022)

Born in 1969 in Iowa City, Iowa, Ching-chu Hu brings his first-generation Chinese American identity to conducting, playing piano, and composing. As he told interviewer Sam Jacobson, “I grew up in the United States, but in a Chinese household where I was speaking Chinese. And the music that was around me that my parents would play was a combination of Chinese folk song, Chinese opera, and Western symphonies. Some of those influences come through, depending on the piece and depending on what the piece is for.”

Hu is the Richard Lucier Endowed Professor of Music at Denison University, director of its music theatre, and director of its famed Vail Series. He has studied at Yale University, Freiburg Musikhochschule in Germany, and University of Iowa, receiving his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at University of Michigan. Among his numerous honors, Hu was an Aaron Copland Fellow at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, composer-in-residence at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, guest composer at the American Music Week Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, and winner of the 2018 American Prize for Chamber Music.

Commissioned by Chamber Music Columbus to compose the unifying musical theme for its 75th anniversary season, Hu composed “A Distant Hope.” As Hu described in his notes, the work “honors the role of music and hope in our lives. While celebratory as a fanfare, it also deconstructs the various aspects of a fanfare in today’s uncertain world –its excitement, its anticipation, balanced with its repose.”

Hu writes the following about “An Eternal Hope,” the fifth and final piece of the puzzle that is the full two-movement “A Distant Hope:”

“An Eternal Hope” is composed for the Merz Trio in celebration of Chamber Music Columbus’ 75th season. With the Merz Trio’s vibrant colors and textures, the fanfare celebrates the eternal optimism for the future and our duty to bring forth a more positive world. “An Eternal Hope” is inspired by the fanfare, “A Distant Hope,” that opened this concert season, with funding provided by Dr. Richard and Yvonne Heather Burry.

“A Distant Hope” received its world premiere by the American Brass Quintet on October 8, 2022. This is the world premiere performance of “An Eternal Hope.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (born Oneg, Russia, April 1, 1873; died Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943)

Trio Élégiaque in G minor (composed 1892)

Had his early domestic life been more peaceful or secure, Sergei Rachmaninoff might never have become one of late Russian romanticism’s most renowned pianists, composers, and conductors. Family financial misfortunes and the separation of his parents contributed to young Sergei’s poor performance in both musical and general studies at the conservatory in St. Petersburg. After failing most of his exams in 1885, he was sent to the Moscow Conservatory to live and study with Nikolai Zvereff, who had a reputation as both teacher and disciplinarian. In four years at Zvereff’s, Rachmaninoff honed his skills as a pianist and encountered many of the most important composers of the time, among them Anton Arensky, Anton Rubinstein, Sergei Taneev, and especially Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.

Composed in a single movement marked “Lento lugubre,” the first of two “Trios Élégiaque” that Rachmaninoff would write offers only circumstantial evidence for its title characterization. Rachmaninoff’s second such trio was a clear response to the unexpected death of Tchaikovsky in November 1893, but at the time of the first trio in January 1892, Tchaikovsky was still healthy. The repeated ascending four note theme that opens the “Trio Élégiaque in G minor” is a retrograde rhythmic echo of the opening of Tchaikovsky’s “Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 23,” and the concluding funeral march recalls the march in Tchaikovsky’s own “Trio in A minor, op. 50” in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein. In sonata form, the “Trio Élégiaque in G minor” breaks into twelve episodes, four each forming the exposition, the development, and the recap, progressing through a series of emotions culminating in the mournful march.

The premiere performance in Moscow took place on January 30, 1892 (in the old Russian calendar), with the composer at the piano, David Kreyn on violin, and Anatoly Brandukov on cello. This was Rachmaninoff’s first public performance since graduating from the conservatory with its highest honor, the Great Gold Medal, so he was intending to impress. Not until four years after Rachmaninoff’s death did the trio see publication, in 1947.