NEW@NIGHT: McGill, Goodyear & Catalyst

I premiered my piano sonata, composed when I was 18, at my graduation piano recital at the Curtis Institute of Music. As my Callaloo suite for piano and orchestra was composed in response to my first Carnival, the piano sonata was inspired by my high school prom and the music of my age group. As this was a teenage work, my youthful exuberance also wanted to pull out all the stops and create the most difficult piano work ever composed. This sonata is therefore a combination of piano virtuosity, a paean to the sonata form, and the popular music I heard in 1996. The first movement, sonata-allegro, combines tonality and atonality, 12-tone techniques, and techno music. The slow second movement is another ballad, this time inspired by the smooth pop music I heard while slow-dancing with my date. The third movement, Rondo, is a celebration of Toronto, and incorporates rock, Canadian folk song, Indian singing, and Latin-infused music.

James Lee III was born in Michigan in 1975. His major composition teachers include William Bolcom, Susan Botti, and James Aikman. He was a composition fellow at Tanglewood Music Center in the summer of 2002, where he studied with Osvaldo Golijov and Kaija Saariaho. Mr. Lee’s works have been performed by orchestras including The National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Lee, who earned a DMA in composition at the University of Michigan in 2005, is a Professor of Music at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

This beautiful composition, Ad Anah? means “How Long?” It is based on a Hebrew prayer, and in the words of Anthony McGill before a recent performance, this short song reflects “... what we’re going through in this time... the struggle.”

—© Friends of Chamber Music, Denver

A recent work from 2011, The Blue Bag was composed for no less a light in the clarinet world than Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinet of the New York Philharmonic. Says Hailstork, "In the back of my mind, I carried the images and musicmaking of four classysassy ladies of song: Nancy Wilson, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin."

The Catalyst Quartet believes that art can thrive in the digital age, and be a continued source of inspiration and innovation. In commemoration of our 10th anniversary we commissioned nine diverse composers and held a national competition focused on promoting new and emerging talent. The submissions were so good that we picked two winners, in the spirit of looking ahead. These pieces exist both as stand-alone compositions and as a collective, and will be featured as 10 individually unique music videos comprising one video album—better representing the way most people experience music today. The CQ Minute collection is presented in a full-length program that celebrates the String Quartet and the journey of our first decade together, and features the works of Papa Haydn, Terry Riley, Anton Webern, and John Cage.

—© Catalyst Quartet

Thursday, July 13

The Reser | 8pm Sponsor: Anonymous Friends of CMNW

Prelude Performance | 7pm Cognizart’s Young Artist Debut! Winners

UNCOVERED Voices

BRAHMS (1833-1897)

Saturday, July 15

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Sponsor: Karen & Cliff Deveney

Prelude Performance | 7pm Music for piano four hands with Alexis Zou & Hansen Berrett

STEWART GOODYEAR (b. 1978)

Clarinet Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 • (24’)

I. Allegro appassionato

II. Andante un poco adagio

III. Allegretto grazioso

IV. Vivace

The Torment of Marsyas (2023) • (20’) CMNW COMMISSION • WORLD PREMIERE

Intermission

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)

Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 • (34’)

I. Allegro energico

II. Larghetto affettuoso

III. Scherzo: Allegro leggiero

IV. Finale: Allegro agitato

Anthony McGill, clarinet

Gloria Chien, piano

Amelia Lukas, flute Stewart Goodyear, piano

Anthony McGill , clarinet Catalyst Quartet

Karla Donehew Perez , violin

Abi Fayette, violin

Paul Laraia, viola

Karlos Rodriguez, cello

Stewart Goodyear’s The Torment of Marsyas was commissioned with the generous support of the Chamber Music Northwest Commissioning Fund.

In the winter of 1891, Johannes Brahms was on the verge of retiring from composition. He was unwell, depressed, and suffering from writer’s block. A visit to the court of Meiningen a few months later changed everything; there Brahms met virtuoso clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, who played in the court orchestra. Mühlfeld’s artistry, and the rich expressive sound of the clarinet itself, reanimated Brahms, who went on to compose several significant chamber works, all featuring the clarinet.

In 1894, Brahms once again reached a low creative point, and once again Mühlfeld and his clarinet came to Brahms’s rescue. While vacationing in Bad Ischl that summer, Brahms composed the two clarinet sonatas of Op. 120. Biographer Karl Geiringer wrote of the “wonderful exploitation of the possibilities of the clarinet, especially in the effective change from the higher to the lower registers…a tender melancholy…and a splendid perfection of form in all the movements.”

The Clarinet Sonata in F Minor’s four movements contrast the introspection and wistfulness of the first two movements with exuberance and lighthearted whimsy in the final two; by the closing Vivace the mood is so transformed as to end in a sunny F major rather than the brooding echoes of the original F minor tonality.

Brahms recognized Mühlfeld’s central role when he included the following dedication in the published score of Op. 120: “To Richard Mühlfeld, the master of his beautiful instrument, in sincerely grateful remembrance.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

This work plays out like a virtuosic symphonic poem for flute and piano, a battle of wits, musicianship, and virtuosity. I was intrigued by the musical competition that the satyr Marsyas had with Apollo, and how Apollo triumphed over him. Duels of Liszt and Moscheles came to mind, as well as Mozart and Clementi, and I began writing furiously. Instead of parts, or movements, I thought of the individual sections within the work as “rounds.” Writing most of this work has been one of the most pleasurable experiences ever...but I must admit, writing the ending gave me goosebumps. I have never written a work with such a vivid, stark, and harrowing ending, and, admittedly, this ending took the longest to write.

—© Stewart Goodyear

British composer Samuel ColeridgeTaylor, son of a medical student from Sierra Leone and a white English woman, revealed his prodigious musical talent early. He began playing violin at five and entered London’s Royal College of Music at 15; his classmates included Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. ColeridgeTaylor quickly attracted favorable attention from his teachers, including his composition teacher, Sir Charles Stanford. When a racist fellow student insulted Coleridge-Taylor, Stanford retorted that Coleridge-Taylor had “more music in his little finger than [the abuser] did in the whole of his body.” Edward Elgar concurred, saying Coleridge-Taylor was “far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men.”

The Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 emerged as the result of a challenge from Charles Stanford to his students in 1895. After attending a performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, Stanford reportedly claimed no subsequent clarinet quintets could be written without reflecting Brahms’s influence. Two months later, the 20-yearold Samuel Coleridge-Taylor presented

Stanford with his own clarinet quintet, which not only fully refuted Stanford’s assertion, but stands as a monumental achievement on its own terms.

The Allegro energico opens with the clarinet singing in its chalumeau register, emphasizing the sunlight-andshadow quality of the F-sharp minor tonality. Howsoever Coleridge-Taylor presents his musical ideas, he never lets us lose track of the basic motifs that anchor this movement. The exquisite languor of the opening theme of the Larghetto affettuoso recalls momentarily the composer’s setting of “Deep River.” The strings assume the central thematic role, while the clarinet serves in a supportive capacity until more than halfway through the movement, when the instruments reverse their roles. In the sunny Scherzo, playful rhythmic ideas abound. Coleridge-Taylor’s love for Dvořák shows itself most clearly in this delightful mercurial music. The closing Allegro agitato features a bracing thematic idea, first sounded by the clarinet, then strings. The constant interplay between F-sharp minor and A major (the related major key) keeps both musicians and listeners alert to sudden changes of mood, key, and tempo.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Sunday, July 16

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm Sponsor: Ellen Macke & Howard Pifer