COMMENTS
by Richard E. Rodda
ZOLTÁN KODÁLY
Born December 16, 1882; Kecskemét, Hungary Died March 6, 1967; Budapest, Hungary
Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 12
COMPOSED 1920
It took a world war to destroy the millennium-old Habsburg Empire, but when the Viennese government was finally dissolved in 1918, political changes in Eastern Europe came quickly. Despite strong challenges over the years to their authority, the Habsburg emperors had ruled Hungary since the early sixteenth century, and the Hungarians gladly threw off the ancient yoke at the end of the First World War—the Hungarian Republic was declared on November 16, 1918. However, the communist fervor that had erupted into revolution in Russia the year before quickly spread to Hungary, and Béla Kun attempted to found a Hungarian Soviet Republic the following March. That effort also failed, and Admiral Horthy brought back a form of monarchy under his own totalitarian rule in 1920.
During the short-lived 1918 republic, Zoltán Kodály was appointed deputy director of the National Academy of Music in Budapest, and he set about instituting major reforms in the school’s
curriculum based on the integration of native folk music and culture into the course of study. Amid the turbulent political maneuvering, violinist Jenö Hubay was passed over for a substantial position, and he retreated to Switzerland. When the republic collapsed, Hubay was recalled and named director of the academy. Kodály became his target as a symbol of those who had held office under the brief revolutionary regime, and he was charged with a variety of anti-Hungarian offenses, stripped of his administrative post, barred from teaching, and subjected to no fewer than twelve hearings in the space of six months to determine the nature of his patriotism.
Kodály’s international reputation, just then beginning to flourish, was stymied. It was not until 1922 that his teaching post at the academy was restored. Understandably, creative work was extremely difficult for him under the circumstances, and the Serenade for Two Violins and Viola is one of his few important works from 1919–20.
For the serenade, Kodály borrowed his inspiration and models from the inexhaustible treasury of Hungarian folk music that he had collected with Béla Bartók during the previous two decades, both to
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above: Zoltán Kodály, ca. 1928
acknowledge the fundamental indebtedness of his original compositions to this indigenous music and to demonstrate his continuing allegiance to the study that had become his life’s work. Formally, the first movement is a traditional sonata, the second a ternary structure (A–B–A, with a reference to the first movement before the return of the main theme), and the finale a sectional form in the manner of a vivacious dance. The composer’s biographer László Eösze wove a charming folk tale around the emotional progression of the serenade:
At the start, we hear three musicians playing a serenade beneath a woman’s window. Then comes a song from the lover (its exceptionally expressive melody fulfilling all the requirements of the contrasting theme of a sonata) while the alternation between the voices of
the musicians and the lover complies strictly with the rules of the development and the reprise. The second movement opens with a dialogue between the lover (viola) and his mistress (first violin) while the tremolos of the second violin suggest the atmosphere of night. To the lover’s pleading, the woman replies with laughter, coyness gradually turning into passionate rejection. At this point, the lover dismisses the musicians (this is where the principal theme of the first movement, the serenade motif, is repeated), whereupon the woman relents, and it is now the man who laughs. . . . Lastly, the third movement confirms the understanding between lover and mistress, the lighthearted banter between viola and violin developing into a song of satisfied love, and the tale is brought to an end with an invigorating dance.
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BÉLA BARTÓK
Born March 25, 1881; Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary
Died September 26, 1945; New York City
String Quartet No. 5
COMPOSED 1934
Bartók devoted much of his early career to researching the indigenous music of his native Hungary and neighboring lands: the elusive, nontraditional scale patterns; the tiny, florid ornaments that enliven many phrases; the variety of distinctive rhythms— propulsive, irregular, improvisatory; the fragmentary nature of the themes. For all of its primitive influences, however, the work rivals Bach, Beethoven, and the greatest masters of Western music in its thematic development, contrapuntal ingenuity, and formal sophistication. The Fifth Quartet marked a new expressive direction for Bartók since it moved away from the challenging astringencies that had reached their zenith in his Third Quartet of 1927 toward the more lyrical, harmonically consonant mode of expression that characterized his final creative period.
Bartók wrote the Fifth Quartet on a commission from the noted American patron of the arts Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague-Coolidge between August 6 and September 6, 1934. During that
period, he was working on classifying several years of folk-music research following his release (at his own request) from his faculty job at the Budapest Academy of Music and assignment to a salaried post at the city’s Academy of Sciences. His teaching, concertizing, and assimilation of his folk-song studies into his compositional idiom had limited his output for several years—his only important works since the Fourth Quartet of 1928 had been the Cantata profana (1930) and Piano Concerto no. 2 (1931)—and the Quartet no. 5 signaled a renewed creativity that resulted in the production of the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Second Violin Concerto, Contrasts, Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Divertimento, Quartet no. 6, Concerto for Orchestra, and Piano Concerto no. 3 during his last decade. The Fifth Quartet also marked a new expressive direction for Bartók, since it moved away from the challenging astringencies that had reached their zenith in his Third Quartet of 1927 toward the more lyrical, harmonically consonant mode of expression that characterized his final creative period.
The movements of the Quartet no. 5, like those comprising the Fourth Quartet, the Second Piano Concerto, and the Concerto for
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above: Béla Bartók, The Budapest Bartók Archives
Orchestra, are arranged according to a broad, symmetrical plan, a so-called arch form, in which the central movement is flanked, mirror-fashion, by parallel balancing movements: fast–slow–scherzo–slow–fast. The integrity of this structure is enhanced by having a theme from the first movement reappear in the finale and by making the fourth movement a free variation of the second. Symmetrical procedures extend as well to the internal working-out of individual movements.
The opening sonata-form movement is based on three themes: a motif of hammered repeated notes, a brusque rhythmic figure upon which are superimposed short, winding melodic phrases, and a smoothly flowing strain in triplet rhythms. Following the development section, the three motifs are recapitulated in reverse order and in inversion, and the movement is capped by a vigorous coda: A–B–C–development–C–B–A–coda.
The Adagio, a fine example of the rustling “night music” that Bartók favored for many of his slow movements, follows a similar plan, though with different proportions and expressive effect: A (trills and two-note atoms)–B (chorale)–C (pizzicato glissandos, tremolos, and evanescent scale fragments)–B (abbreviated)–A (abbreviated).
The conventional form of the scherzo and trio is already symmetrical (A–B–A),
and Bartók drew the symmetry into the smallest levels of the movement by echoing the upward-arching, onemeasure theme with its descending inversion. The central trio is distinguished by its quicker tempo, incessant ribbon of violin notes, and rustic folk dance in limping rhythms.
The Andante posits three thematic ideas that transform motifs from the Adagio (repeated pizzicato, bouncing bows, murmured scales, and canonic treatment of the Adagio’s third theme) and their truncated returns to round out the movement. At the center stands a new snapping theme that is developed and woven with the movement’s other ideas.
The finale is a free rondo with sonata elements based on a fiery dance melody constructed from small, twisting intervals. Just as the movement reaches its climax (in a passage whose ferocious rhythms recall Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony), the music stops for a grotesque, barrel-organ transformation of the first episode’s theme before a blazing epilogue closes the quartet.
Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
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PROFILES
Cornelius Chiu Violin
Cornelius Chiu joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1996. Born to Chinese parents in Ithaca, New York, he began violin lessons at age six. His older brother, Frederic, is a successful concert pianist and Yamaha recording artist with whom Chiu collaborates regularly.
A Starling Foundation full-scholarship recipient, Chiu received bachelor’s and master’s degrees with high distinction, a performer’s certificate, and a coveted fellowship from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where his primary teachers were Josef Gingold, Franco Gulli, Nelli Shkolnikova, and Yuval Yaron. He studied chamber music with Rostislav Dubinsky of the Borodin Quartet and baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie. The many acclaimed artists with whom Chiu has worked include Joseph Silverstein, Miriam Fried, János Starker, and Menahem Pressler. He received special recognition from Isaac Stern after a performance in his honor.
A winner in the Irving M. Klein International String Competition and the National Arts and Letters Competition, Chiu has performed as a soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Washington Chamber Orchestra and at the Kennedy Center in Washington (D.C.). Recent solo performances include appearances with the Sinfonietta DuPage orchestra and the Drake University Symphony Orchestra.
An avid chamber musician, he appears frequently with his colleagues on the CSO Chamber Music series. He has performed at the Sarasota and Aspen music festivals, the Rencontres Musicales Festival, Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute for Young Artists, and with the Ensemble Villa Musica in France and Germany.
Cornelius Chiu is a dedicated teacher who has maintained a private studio for over thirty-five years. A former faculty member at Wheaton College, he currently teaches at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. Chiu and his wife, Inah, a pianist on the faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago, have performed together as the Corinah Duo on many Chicago concert series. He is especially proud of his three musician children: Krystian (Indiana University/Rice University), Karisa (the Curtis Institute of Music and substitute violinist at the CSO), and Cameron (Carnegie Mellon University).
Kozue Funakoshi Violin
Kozue Funakoshi joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2000 after three years with the Cleveland Orchestra. A former concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, she studied with Hideyuki Nimura, Joseph Genualdi, and Sando Shia. A native of Yokohama, Japan, Funakoshi grew up in Kamakura.
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BY TODD ROSENBERG
PHOTOS
Her father was a rock musician who played guitar and piano, and her mother was a kindergarten teacher. In 1987 Funakoshi received first prize at the All Japan Young Musicians Competition and was awarded a full scholarship to the Tokyo College of Music, where she received a bachelor’s degree.
Funakoshi has appeared on the Cleveland Orchestra’s chamber music series, at the Kurashiki Music Festival directed by conductor Takashi Asahina, and as a soloist on the Thüringer Philharmonic Orchestra’s 1993 German concert tour. She also served as concertmaster for the Tokyo College of Music Symphony Orchestra’s 1993 U.S. concert tour, which included performances at the Symphony Center in Chicago, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington (D.C.). In 2008 Funakoshi performed with the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung.
Youming Chen Viola
Taiwanese-born violist Youming Chen (pronounced YO-ming) was appointed by Riccardo Muti to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during its 125th season. Chen served as associate principal viola of the Kansas City Symphony and was a member of the Grant Park Music Festival. He also performs with International Chamber
Artists in the Chicago area. Chen has participated in the Pacific Music, Aspen Music, Prussia Cove, and Music@Menlo festivals. Chen received his bachelor of music degree from the University of Michigan, master of music degree from Juilliard School, and a doctor of musical arts from the University of MissouriKansas City.
Daniel Katz Cello
A Chicago native, Daniel Katz was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2011 by Riccardo Muti. Prior to joining the Orchestra, he was a regular substitute with the CSO and the Cleveland Orchestra and a member of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra. He received a doctor of musical arts degree with honors from Northwestern University under Hans Jensen, a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory under Laurence Lesser, and a bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University with Marc Johnson. Other teachers include Paul Katz, Richard Hirschl, and Gilda Barston.
A dedicated teacher, Katz serves on the faculty at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts and maintains a private studio. Previously, he was an adjunct assistant professor and artist-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame. Katz has participated in a number of major music
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PHOTOS BY TODD ROSENBERG
festivals, including Tanglewood, Verbier, Sarasota, and Norfolk. He has performed for live solo and chamber music broadcasts on WFMT-FM Chicago. Recently, Katz recorded an album of
works by Victoria Bond (Naxos) and a disc of James Stephenson’s works (Liquid Melancholy: Clarinet Music of James M. Stephenson, Cedille), both with the ensemble Chicago Pro Musica.
