David Serkin Ludwig’s The Anchoress

Poetry Prelude Katie Ford

MISCHA ZUPKO (b. 1971)

Quantum Shift (2022) • (8’)

Monday, July 17

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm Sponsor:

FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)

Piano Quintet in A Minor (1936) • (28’)

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Andante con moto

III. Juba: Allegro

IV. Scherzo: Allegro

Intermission

DAVID SERKIN LUDWIG (b. 1974)

The Anchoress (2018) • (34’)

I. What Is My Life?

II. Once a Woman Went Down the Hill

III. What Are We to Make of Visions Lit?

IV. This Is the Four Burns of the Soul

V. One Night in Particular

VI. A Woman of the Village

VII. Be Not Assured

VIII. When I Woke Up Sighing

Kenari Saxophone Quartet

Bob Eason , soprano saxophone

Kyle Baldwin , alto saxophone

Corey Dundee , tenor saxophone

Gabriel Piqué, baritone saxophone

Stewart Goodyear, piano Catalyst Quartet

Karla Donehew Perez , violin

Abi Fayette, violin

Paul Laraia, viola

Karlos Rodriguez, cello

Poetry by Katie Ford

Hyunah Yu , soprano

Zitong Wang, keyboard

Kenari Saxophone Quartet

Bob Eason , soprano saxophone

Kyle Baldwin, alto saxophone

Corey Dundee , tenor saxophone

Gabriel Piqué, baritone saxophone

WindSync Wind Quintet

Garrett Hudson , flute

Emily Tsai, oboe

Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet

Remy Taghavi , bassoon

Anni Hochhalter, horn

“Quantum Shift is inspired by a component of quantum theory in physics, where electrons within an atom can quickly jump between discrete energy levels, i.e. orbits, surrounding the atom’s nucleus. While the scientific details of this phenomenon might be tough for the layman to understand, the music of Quantum Shift takes this basic concept and translates it into a high-velocity work for saxophone quartet, characterized by sprightly oscillating motifs that constantly transition between varying states of texture, dynamic, tempo, and gesture. Put simply, the piece can be thought of as a window into the sporadic lives of four electrons—in this case, the ‘Kenari Electrons’—interacting ceaselessly amongst one another in their subatomic world.” Mischa Zupko is an awardwinning Chicago-based composer, pianist, and Professor of Music at Chicago’s DePaul University.

—© Mischa Zupko

Florence Price, the first Black female American composer to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, enjoyed considerable renown during her lifetime. Her compositional skill and fame notwithstanding, the entrenched institutional racism and sexism of the white male classical music establishment effectively erased Price and her music from general awareness for decades after her death in 1953. In 2009, a large collection of scores and unpublished manuscripts by Price were discovered in a house in rural Illinois. Since then, many ensembles and individual musicians have begun including Price’s music in concerts, and audiences everywhere are discovering her distinctive, polished body of work

The daughter of a musical mother, Price was a prodigy, giving her first recital at age four and publishing her first composition at 11. At age 16, Price won admittance to New England Conservatory (she opted to “pass” as Mexican to circumvent prevailing racial bias against Black people), where she double majored in organ performance and piano pedagogy.

Price’s Quintet in A Minor for Piano & Strings was unknown until its discovery, along with other Price manuscripts, in 2009. Its date of composition is unknown, but like Price’s other piano quintet in E minor, it was probably written in the mid1930s. The A Minor Quintet’s musical language combines neo-Romantic 20th century classical music vocabulary with American vernacular idioms, rhythms, and blue-note melodies. The Allegro non troppo, the longest of the Quintet’s four movements, juxtaposes an expressionistic first theme with a lyrical counter-theme featuring bent notes (flatted thirds) often found in blues melodies. The energy of this movement comes from the creative tension generated by these two contrasting music traditions. The Andante con moto, a rondo, begins with a serene quasi-hymn theme in A major; several unsettled counter-themes suggest underlying disquiet. The A major theme recurs several times, as if to soothe anxieties generated by the contrasting episodes. The Juba, also known as the hambone, was brought to America by enslaved people; the dance generates its own rhythm with hand claps, foot stamps, and body slaps. “In all of my works which have been done in the sonata form with Negroid idiom, I have incorporated a juba as one of the several movements,” Price observed, “because it seems to me to be no more impossible to conceive of Negroid music devoid of the spiritualistic theme on the one hand than strongly syncopated rhythms of the juba on the other.”

The Quintet concludes with a brief, vivacious Scherzo.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

The Anchoress is a monodrama set to original texts by Katie Ford written originally for singer Hyunah Yu, the PRISM Quartet, and Piffaro, The

Katie, and being able to set into music both voices of poet and character has been a provocative and inspiring journey for me. My goal was to bring these words to musical life with the sounds of a single vocalist set in a sonic landscape meant to evoke both the ancient and modern.

Anchorites (from the Greek anachōréō meaning “to withdraw”) were Christians who chose a life in extreme confinement in a quest for spiritual perfection; a practice that grew in popularity in late medieval Europe—particularly among women. A church would create a small cell looking into the sanctuary, and the anchorite would enter into it with no possessions other than coarse clothing and a Bible, and perhaps a few other texts. Then a priest would administer last rites for the anchoress living inside.

Ford writes: “The anchoritic life is one of the earliest forms of Christian monastic living. However, an anchoress was not a part of a monastic community. Instead, she lived in an enclosed cell, an ‘anchorhold,’ attached to a church. She had one small window through which to speak to townspeople coming to her for guidance. She has withdrawn and chosen a form of death, which, in the eyes of the Church, transformed her into a ‘living saint.’” Many anchorites experienced otherworldly visions, and they were often consulted by visitors looking to glean guidance from their mystic spiritual reflections. The austere anchoritic lifestyle feels so extreme from our modern vantage point, yet its greater aspirations to find solace and meaning are deeply relevant to our frenetic digital lives. I wrote this piece well before the pandemic, but close enough that it felt inextricably linked to that time. In our world of quarantine and isolation many of us asked “where and what is my community” as we felt ever more intensely disconnected from society writ large.

Our Anchoress has chosen to withdraw from her world to comment as a witness. She defiantly speaks her truth—a mighty voice from within a small cell.

—© David Serkin Ludwig

Renaissance Wind Band (the version you are hearing now has been rescored for modern wind quintet with saxophones). The anchoress persona, her words, her visions, and her message—all come from

Tuesday, July 18

Lincoln Recital Hall | 12pm

SPOTLIGHT RECITAL: Très Coloré et Élégant

DAVID SERKIN LUDWIG (b. 1974)

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

Our Long War (2012) • (10’)

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Selected Songs • (9’)

I. Mandoline, Op. 58, No. 1

II. Green, Op. 58, No. 3

III. Soir, Op. 83, No. 2

IV. Notre amour, Op. 23, No. 2

Sonata for Violin & Cello, M. 73 • (20’)

I. Allegro

II. Très vif

III. Lent

IV. Vif, avec entrain

Poetry by Katie Ford

Hyunah Yu, soprano

Diana Adamyan, violin

Zitong Wang , piano

Hyunah Yu, soprano

Zitong Wang , piano

Soovin Kim, violin

Efe Baltacigil, cello

Composers keep poetry around in their brains like those important parts to appliances that you have to keep in a safe place where you won’t forget them, even though you might not use them every day. The poem has to be there waiting for just when you need it; if you’ve misplaced it in the cupboards and drawers of your mind you’ll miss out on that perfect text that speaks for your piece. So we composers scour through books and the internet and make little mental notes to ourselves...when the commission for a song comes up, we have to reach into that storage space where all of the wonderful poetry we've encountered lives, and then find what text resonates most for that moment.

Around the time I got the commission to write a song cycle for the Lake Champlain Festival, a mutual friend introduced me to the extraordinary work of Katie Ford. I knew right away the quality of her poetry embodied what I have been looking to create in my music. To me, it is elegant and clear and incredibly expressive, like so many of the best works of art that hit us in the gut and we don’t have to reason through why. I read through several of her books, but it was the poem she brought to a coffee meeting one day that focused my thoughts and feelings. Ford's “Our Long War” will bring to mind the work of other wartime poets, but it is absolutely contemporary in its call to feel the effects of our many ongoing wars where there is enormous sacrifice in the midst of our relative comfort miles away. It’s a powerful message, and one that hit me in the gut the first time I read it and every time thereafter. I want my music to be another vehicle to convey the poet's meaning; more like a frame to the poem than any interpretation of my own.

I would like to thank Katie Ford for allowing me to set her moving words to music and the Lake Champlain Festival for the opportunity to do so as the commissioner of Our Long War.

—© David Serkin Ludwig

Gabriel Fauré ’s mélodies infuse texts with rich coloristic harmonies and a seemingly effortless flow of melody. His piano accompaniments are essentially French, emphasizing color rather than the direct forward motion of a German lied.

Mandoline, and Green, from Fauré’s 1891 Cinq Mélodies de Venise, set texts of Paul Verlaine, one of France’s greatest Symbolist poets. Fauré was drawn to the inherent musicality of Verlaine’s poems, and Verlaine in turn was inspired by the paintings of Watteau. Fauré dedicated the Cinq Mélodies to Winnaretta Singer, aka the Princess de Polignac, the American heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune, who became an important patron for French musicians in late 19th-century Paris.

The gentle arpeggiated accompaniment of Mandoline suggests the sound of that instrument, while the passionate flowing accompaniment of Green enhances the ardor of the lover’s breathless declarations to his sweetheart. Soir, based on a poem by Albert Samain, and Notre amour, (Armand Silvestre) continue the lovers’ experiences from Green, as delicately buoyant piano figurations support the long soaring melodies. “[Fauré’s] music is like water flowing,” remarked soprano Barbara Hendricks. “You have to keep the flow, you have to keep going toward the end of the phrase, or you just sort of destroy the entire architecture of it.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

In 1920, Henry Prunières, a French musicologist and acquaintance of Maurice Ravel , founded a music magazine named Revue Musicale. To inaugurate it, Prunières commissioned ten well-known composers to write short works in tribute to the recently deceased Claude Debussy. For his contribution, Ravel wrote a short duo for violin and cello, which later became the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (completed in 1922).

Apparently, the first full performance of the Sonata was a “massacre,” though Ravel was not in attendance. The violinist, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, explained when she jokingly complained to Ravel that he expected the musicians “to play the flute on the violin and the drum on the cello.”

Ravel eventually came to see the sonata as a crucial turning point in his career, writing, “The music is stripped down to the bone. The allure of harmony is rejected, and increasingly the emphasis returns to the melody.” In writing such sparse, melodic music, Ravel was keeping up with the times, adapting the stripped-down style Debussy explored in his later years. The sonata’s four compact movements make the most of the atypical combination of instruments, approaching the sound of a string quartet at times and at others relishing the sparseness created by half a quartet. The music is atypically brash and dissonant for Ravel, perhaps suggesting that the trying years of World War I left him a changed person.

—© Ethan Allred

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The Armory | 6pm

NEW@NIGHT: International Voices

Third Sound

Laura Cocks,

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Karen Kim, violin

Michael Nicolas, cello

Steven Beck, piano

Diana Adamyan, violin

Zitong Wang, piano

When my dear friend Jennifer Howard asked me, in February 2020, to compose a piano trio to celebrate her forthcoming sixtieth birthday, we had only the vaguest notion of how completely our societal norms would soon be upended.

Over subsequent months, a mysterious virus escalated into a global pandemic, the murder of George Floyd prompted a national reckoning over race relations, and a presidency that had already tested the strength of democratic institutions would be punctuated by an insurrection. Yet against the backdrop of such existential uncertainty, we deepened our friendships and familial bonds—even if remotely, while sheltering in place; we trimmed the cosmetic trifles from our daily lives, retaining those virtues and practices we most valued; and we cared for and celebrated one another.

Ephemera, my birthday present to Jennifer, while toasting a dear friend, likewise ponders the ephemerality of life and the fragility of its scaffolding. Though acknowledging our mortality, the work does not mean simply to take a fatalistic view; rather, its composer modestly hopes to prompt the listener to cherish those things that hold the deepest significance—our friendships, our liberty, our habitat—and which, inevitably, are fleeting.

—© Patrick Castillo

Stories From My Grandmother is a twomovement suite excerpted from a 50-minute documentary oratorio called And Then I Remember

The oratorio weaves recorded interviews that I conducted with my grandmother with music performed by a soprano soloist, small chorus, solo double bass, and chamber ensemble. The piece follows the story of my grandmother, Taimi Lepasaar, who was born in Estonia in 1922 and survived both the Russian and German occupations of Estonia during World War II before escaping the country near the end of the war, eventually making it to the United States. The two movements of Stories

From My Grandmother are instrumental reflections on my grandmother’s stories. The first movement, It was like a, like a lightning, tries to capture the visceral energy, fear, and mournful sadness of one particular story, a portion of which I am including below:

And then, was the summer 1940 and I was in Alatskivi with my grandparents. In the evening, there was a dance. About 6’o’clock we left the farm and we went to the castle to dance together. It was about 9:30…the music stopped…and the announcement came that the Russian troops have come over Lake Peipsi; the Russian army is coming towards this castle, towards us. We ask you all to take your bicycles and go home. And then was Estonia was conquered. 1940, that summer. It was like a, like a lightning, like somebody had hit you on the back. And then we all rode quietly, it was a…June night. The moon was lighting the road, but the hearts were heavy. And we drove home and went to the farm, but the farm was far away from the highway up on the hill. Next morning we were all standing there on the fence under the big linden trees, watching how the Russian army, marched along that highway towards Tartu, towards our city, and this moment we shared together. You know, it seemed that all the dreams were broken. The second movement, Slow Memory, was not inspired by a speci fic story but is instead a meditation on memory and my grandmother’s way of storytelling. It tries to capture the mix of emotion and matter-of-factness within her voice; the moments of gentle lilt and the moments of struggle, in which a feeling of sadness seems to break through the veil of her words.

—© Lembit Beecher

Edvard Baghdasaryan (1922-88) was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, shortly after the country became a part of the Soviet Union. Baghdasaryan split his student years between Yerevan and Moscow. A pianist as well as a composer, his works for piano demonstrate particular mastery, including the 24 Preludes (1951-58) for piano and Piano Concerto (1970). Baghdasaryan’s career spanned many genres, from the classical stage to theatre, ballet, radio, pop music, and film. He even composed the score for the first movie shot in the Western Armenian language: Tjvjik , a depiction of Armenia under Ottoman rule in the 19th century.

Baghdasaryan’s 1958 Rhapsody for Violin & Piano, which also exists in an arrangement for violin and orchestra, explores Armenian musical themes in a dramatic, free-flowing fashion. Having previously spent time collecting and studying folk songs from the Sisiansky region, Baghdasaryan incorporated aspects of Armenian folk music throughout the rhapsody, particularly in its heavily ornamented melodies and use of traditional Armenian modal scales. The rhapsody unfolds in a series of clearly delineated sections, ranging from darkly expressive to pensively interior to ecstatic. A final solo cadenza erupts into a wary repeated octave in the violin, underscored by a mysterious whole tone scale in the piano for a restrained, reflective conclusion.

—© Ethan Allred

Neither Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, nor Brahms took on the challenge of writing for a single, solitary violin. Without the contribution of other instruments to provide more texture and harmony to the music, most of the greatest solo violin repertoire was written by the composers who were most familiar with the instrument in their hands—masters such as Bach, Paganini, and Ysaÿe.

Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg is not a violinist, making his brilliant Caprice an even more impressive compositional feat. He seamlessly integrates drone tones, double-stop trills, and even a particularly ghostly ponticello (played on the bridge) harmonic tremelo—as well as countless other effects. The piece is elegantly constructed upon the first five notes, a simple descending scale, which Lindberg develops wildly. There are two main sections, the first a bit freer and more rhetorical, the second more of a perpetual motion that hurtles to a climax before fading off at the end.

—© Soovin Kim

Thursday, July 20

The Reser | 8pm

Co-Sponsors: Ronnie-Gail Emden & Andrew Wilson

Joseph Anthony & Heidi Yorkshire

Prelude Performance | 7pm Bridging Voices

Viennese Revolutionaries

MOZART (1756-1791)

Violin Sonata in G Major, G. 379 • (17’)

I. Adagio

II. Andantino cantabile

III. Allegretto

JENNIFER HIGDON (b. 1962)

Saturday, July 22

Kaul Auditorium | 8pm

Prelude Performance | 7pm University of Oregon & Portland-area music students

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)

Smash (2005) • (6’)

MOZART

Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 • (22’)

Arr. Anton Webern

I. Sonata: Allegro

II. Scherzo

III. Development

IV. Adagio

V. Recapitulation & Finale

INTERMISSION

Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414 • (26’)

I. Allegro

II. Andante

III. Allegretto

Soovin Kim , violin

Zitong Wang, piano

Third Sound

Laura Cocks, flute

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Karen Kim, violin

Michael Nicolas, cello

Steven Beck, piano

Third Sound

Gloria Chien, piano

Soovin Kim, violin

Diana Adamyan, violin

Jessica Bodner, viola

Efe Baltacigil, cello

Braizahn Jones, bass

Shortly after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) moved from his hometown, Salzburg, to the much larger city of Vienna, he published a collection of violin sonatas, his Opus 2 (1781). He selected these sonatas for publication not only because of their quality but also their commercial appeal, hoping they would help spread his reputation as a composer in his new home.

Mozart described the composition of the Violin Sonata in G Major, K. 379, in a letter to his father. “I composed it yesterday night between eleven and twelve,” he wrote, “but in order to finish it, I wrote out only the accompaniment part for Brunetti [the violinist] and remembered my own part.”

Despite its hasty composition, K. 379 counts among Mozart’s finest contributions to the repertoire for violin and piano. Structured in only two movements, it begins with a lengthy, pensive Adagio introduction, followed by a peppy Allegro that fosters a sense of spontaneity with unexpected pauses and contrasting musical textures. The gentle melody that begins the second movement kicks off a theme and variations, which provides bountiful opportunities for both the violinist and pianist to explore the theme’s subtle intricacies.

—© Ethan Allred

Smash comes at the beginning of the 21st century, where speed often seems to be our goal. This image fits well the instruments in this ensemble, because these are some of the fastest-moving instruments in terms of their technical prowess. Each individual plays an equal part in the ensemble, contributing to the intensity and forward momentum, as the music dashes from beginning to end, smashing forward in momentum.

—© Jennifer Higdon

“Now I have established my style. Now I know how I have to compose,” Arnold Schoenberg declared in 1906, after completing his Kammersymphonie No. 1 . This work is a fulcrum between Schoenberg’s earlier music, reflective of post-Romantic and early Expressionist Viennese/ German trends, and the distinctive originality of his later compositions. Schoenberg was a musical autodidact, which left him free to innovate and establish a unique methodology. Op. 9 reflects one of Schoenberg’s earliest moves away from standard Western tonality based on the triad, a three-note chord comprised of two stacked thirds. Instead, Schoenberg uses the interval of the fourth (to hear what this sounds like, hum the opening notes of the original Star Trek theme).

The Kammersymphonie’s single movement has five distinct sections played without pause, Schoenberg labeled them Exposition, Scherzo, Development, Adagio, and Reprise. Some sections, like the Scherzo, are so short they fly by before we realize it. Just after Op. 9 begins, a solo horn intones a “motto” of quickly rising fourths, which recurs throughout the work. “As a clarinetist, I am struck by how extreme the emotions are in this piece,” observes Matthew Griffith. “There are luscious, resonant melodies next to march-like drives forward. No time is wasted dwelling on any one idea because another is just around the corner.”

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major in the fall of 1782, shortly after moving to Vienna. It is one of three concertos he wrote at that time to make money through a Lenten performance series, following on the heels of his success with The Abduction from the Seraglio. To make them marketable in a published form, he wrote them to be playable two ways—with strings, oboes, and horns, or with only a string quartet (or quintet), known as a quattro. He wrote to his father that these concertos are a happy medium between too easy and too difficult: “they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” Yet he noted “There are also occasional passages from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction.”

The Allegro first movement begins with a graceful first theme and a more playful second, elaborated by the piano. Mozart wrote a total of eight piano cadenzas for the concerto in its published edition, giving two options for each of four locations, though he improvised his own cadenzas in performance. The slow movement, a stately Andante, begins with a sincere solo in the first violin, setting the tone for a serene and lyrical exchange between strings and piano. Mozart quotes a theme by Johann Christian Bach, his mentor, who had recently passed away. The final Allegretto rondo uses a compact and cheerful melody to finish off his “pleasing” concerto with lighthearted ease.

—© Ethan Allred

Sunday, July 23

Lincoln Performance Hall | 4pm