Concerts @ First presents
The Atlanta Chamber Players
Atlanta Chamber Players 45th Season Opening Concert October 23rd , 2020 8:00 P.M. Featuring Alcides Rodriguez, clarinet Helen Hwaya Kim, violin Brad Ritchie, cello Susan Welty, horn Andrew Brady, bassoon Julie Coucheron, piano CROW
David Kirkland GARNER (b. 1982) Alcides Rodriguez, Helen Hwaya Kim, Brad Ritchie Susan Welty, Andrew Brady, Julie Coucheron
Piano Trio Op.1 No. 3 in C minor I. Allegro con brio II. Andante cantabile con Variazioni III. Minuetto. Quasi allegro IV. Finale: Prestissimo
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Helen Hwaya Kim, Brad Ritchie, Julie Coucheron
Duo for Clarinet and Bassoon No. 1 in C major I. Allegro commodo II. Larghetto sostenuto III. Rondo IV. Finale: Prestissimo
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Alcides Rodriguez, Andrew Brady
MELT
David Kirkland GARNER (b. 1982) Alcides Rodriguez, Helen Hwaya Kim, Brad Ritchie, Susan Welty, Andrew Brady, Julie Coucheron
About the Artists ANDREW BRADY (bassoon) joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in January 2016 as Principal Bassoon. Brady was formerly Principal Bassoonist with the Louisiana Philharmonic, a position he held since 2013. Brady is from Johnson City, TN, where he began his musical studies on saxophone but was drawn to switch to bassoon at age 14, after seeing the quirky instrument at a band clinic. Four years later he performed on NPR’s From the Top; and in 2010 he received the Grand Prize in the Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts Competition, adjudicated by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In January 2011, Brady performed Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with the Seattle Symphony under invitation from then Music Director Gerard Schwarz. While in Seattle, he gave free public concerts as well as interactive demonstrations in area schools. An active soloist, Brady has performed concertos by Mozart, Weber, and Zwilich with the Southeast Symphony, the Los Angeles Doctor’s Symphony, and The Colburn Orchestra, respectively. Enthusiastically involved in music education, he has worked as a teaching artist with the Harmony Project’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program, where he assisted underserved teens in learning to play bassoon. Brady has appeared with the Los Angeles Opera Company orchestra, and recently with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra of New York in Carnegie Hall and abroad on European tours. He has attended many music festivals including Sunflower Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Brady received his Bachelor of Music degree from The Colburn School Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Richard Beene. Other teachers include Anthony Parnther, Rick Ranti and Suzanne Nelsen. JULIE COUCHERON (piano) has an established international career, winning prizes in Italy, Germany and in the United States. Ms. Coucheron has worked with musicians such as Lazar Berman, Claude Frank, Emanuel Ax, John O' Connor and Chistopher O'Riley and has toured Europe, America, South America and Asia, playing in great halls like Verizon Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. Born in Oslo, Norway, Ms. Coucheron started playing the piano at the age of four. She earned her Bachelors and Master's Degree with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in London studying with Christopher Elton and Michael Dussek while also gaining her LRAM teaching diploma at the same institution. Ms. Coucheron has performed at festivals such as the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, Bergen International Music Festival and at La Jolla Summer fest. She is artistic director for the Fjord Cadenza Festival in Norway and a founding member of the Kon Tiki Classical music Fest in Oslo, Norway. In September 2002 she released her first recording, 'Debut' on the Naxos label, together with her brother David containing lyrical and virtuoso music from the classical repertoire. The response was excellent and it sold more than 40.000 copies in Norway alone. Ms. Coucheron and her brother David released their second recording 'David and Julie' on the Mudi/Naxos label in September 2008. This recording contains sonatas by Grieg and Brahms and received brilliant reviews worldwide. In 2009, she won first prize at the Pinerelo International Chamber music Competition in Italy together with her brother. Ms. Coucheron enjoys a close collaboration with the Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony, David Coucheron and the principal Cellist, Chris Rex and together they have formed a trio that performs regularly in various concert halls around the world. Ms. Coucheron is also a member of the Georgian Chamber Players and recently performed the Brahms piano quartet with the ensemble in Spivey Hall in Atlanta. Ms. Coucheron enjoys a various and wide range of styles and repertoire emerging from her highly trained classical background to the more contemporary and popular music. Recent collaborations include performances with artists such as the Steve Miller Band and Elton John.
About the Artists HELEN HWAYA KIM (violin) made her orchestral debut with the Calgary Philharmonic at the age of six, and has gone on to become a respected and sought-after artist. She has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops at Boston's Symphony Hall, as well as with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Ms. Kim earned her Bachelor and Master's Degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Cho-Liang Lin and Dorothy DeLay. While at Juilliard, she served as Concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra and was the winner of the Juilliard Concerto Competition at both the pre–college and college levels. She is the recipient of more than one hundred national and international awards. She won the prestigious Artists International Competition in New York and, as a result, gave debut recitals at Carnegie Weill Hall and the Aspen Summer Music Festival. A native of Canada, Ms. Kim has been engaged by many of Canada's leading orchestras, including the National Arts Center Orchestra, Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, and the Windsor, Regina, Victoria and Prince George Symphonies. She has also appeared with the DeKalb, New Orleans, Aspen and Banff Festival Orchestras, and with orchestras in the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. Ms. Kim has toured throughout Canada and the United States, including performances at Alice Tully Hall and the Santa Fe and La Jolla International Music Festivals, where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin, Gary Hoffman, and the Orion String Quartet. She performed Bach’s Double violin concerto with Hilary Hahn at the Amelia Island Chamber music festival. She most recently made her debut performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Other festival highlights include performances at the Highlands-Cashiers, Banff, Zenith and Sitka International Chamber Music Festivals. BRAD RITCHIE (cello), originally from Portland, Oregon, is currently in his 20th season as cellist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Chamber Players. He earned his Bachelor of Music at Indiana University where he studied with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Janos Starker. In his senior year, his string quartet won the school's Kuttner Quartet Competition, which provided them with a year of recitals and trips to a number of chamber music competitions from Osaka, Japan to Evian, France. Following a summer of quartet concerts in Europe, Brad enrolled in the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany and earned his graduate degree studying with Adriana Contino. Afterwards, Mr. Ritchie played for two years in the New World Symphony in Miami under Michael Tilson Thomas. During his 20 years with the ACP, he has made recordings on the CRI, ACA Digital, and MSR labels, and toured extensively, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, the American Cathedral in Paris, France, and in the International Chamber Music Festival in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In addition to his commitments to the ASO and ACP, Brad has played with many other chamber music and new music ensembles in and around Atlanta including Riverside Chamber Players, Thamyris, Emory Chamber Players, Franklin Pond Quartet, GLO-ATL, and Bent Frequency, as well as annual concerts with faculty at Kennesaw State University and recitals with Robert Henry in Highlands, NC. He is a founding member of the contemporary music ensemble Sonic Generator, currently in its 10th season in residence at Georgia Tech University. A highlight of his past summer was to play for a wedding reception at which Clark Howard was in attendance. In his spare time, Brad likes traveling to distant lands, running through the woods, and finding new places to eat.
About the Artists ALCIDES RODRIGUEZ (clarinet) joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2005 as clarinet and bass clarinet. A versatile musician, Rodriguez can be heard in chamber, orchestral and concerto performances on clarinet and bass clarinet. He is a member of the Atlanta Chamber Players. A dedicated educator, he is on the faculty of the Atlanta Symphony's Talent Development Program and maintains a private studio at home. He is an Artist and Clinician for the Buffet Group and Vandoren, and plays Buffet clarinets and Vandoren reeds exclusively. A native of Venezuela, Rodriguez obtained his musical training through the System of Youth Orchestras of Venezuela before moving to the United States. He obtained a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Baylor University. His main teachers were Russell Dagon, Richard Shanley and J. Lawrie Bloom. Rodriguez has participated in various summer music festivals, including the New Hampshire Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra and the National Orchestral Institute. Internationally, he has performed at the San Miguel de Allende Chamber Music Festival (Mexico), the Pacific Music Festival (Japan) and the Campos do Jordao International Winter Festival (Brazil). An avid advocate of Venezuelan music, Rodriguez also plays maracas and cuatro. He has been featured as a maracas soloist, performing the Concerto for Maracas and Orchestra by Ricardo Lorenz. He has also played maracas in the percussion section of the Atlanta Symphony. His album The Venezuelan Clarinet (2010) is a tribute to the music of his native country, and a showcase of Rodriguez' versatility. Throughout his career, Rodriguez has earned prizes in clarinet competitions such as the Young Texas Artist Music Competition, the Kingsville Competition and the Orchestral Excerpts Competition of the International Clarinet Association. While in Venezuela he often performed as a soloist with various youth orchestras, playing some of the most important works in the clarinet repertoire. In 1997, he gave the first performance in Venezuela of Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto. SUSAN WELTY (horn) joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal Horn in 1988. The Illinois native received her Bachelor of Music in Music Performance from Northwestern University, where she studied with Dale Clevenger, Norman Schweikert and Richard Oldberg. Welty was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago while studying there. In addition to being a featured artist at the 1999 International Horn Workshop, she also served as a guest artist at the 2011 and 2012 National Brass Symposiums. Welty has been a member of the Bellingham Music Festival Orchestra since 2009, and she has performed at the Grand Tetons, Highland Cashiers, Astoria and Amelia Island Music Festivals.
Program notes for CROW by David Kirkland Garner
CROW is 13-minute dance that leans forward and grooves. It accumulates and transforms. New ideas emerge organically through repetition then transform again. But also sometimes the dance doubles back on old ideas. Eventually time is compressed and, just before the end, the listener finds themselves back home again. And now for a somewhat related programmatic tangent: The initial themes for CROW began in an unlike place—in a transcription of the earliest commercial country recording made by Fiddlin’ John Carson in Atlanta, GA back in 1923. I transcribed a slowed-down version of one of the two tunes he recorded for Okeh Music called “The Old Hen Cackled and Roosters Going to Crow.” It is a strange song, with an odd tuning for the fiddle, which you can hear in the opening themes of my piece CROW. I picked this tune (out of many thousands of amazing early roots recordings) because at the time I started the piece, the building he recorded the tunes on Nassau street in downtown Atlanta was being demolished to make way for a Jimmy Buffet-themed hotel. My immediate reaction to these plans was disgust and I hoped that create new music out of his recording would be a way to carry on that bit of history. However, the more I research Carson, the more I learned about his racist past, which includes participation in the KKK. I decided I didn’t need to memorialize this tune. Rather, I would take some initial ideas from my transcription then let my imagination go wild, as if demolishing, transforming, and rebuilding in sound. CROW is written for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, cello, and piano and it is commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players.
Program commentary by Edmund Trafford
Ludwig van Beethoven Bonn, 16 December 1770-Vienna, 26 March 1827 In June 1792, the famous Franz Josef Haydn passed through Bonn on his way back to Vienna following an immensely successful tour to London. Haydn was introduced to the 22-year-old Beethoven and both agreed that Beethoven should move to Vienna to study with the master. Accordingly, Beethoven moved to Vienna from his native Bonn in November 1792 to begin lessons. At the completion of the first year’s study, in November of 1793, Haydn wrote to Beethoven’s patron the Elector of Cologne, “Expert and amateur alike must perceive that as time progresses, Beethoven will take his place with the greatest composers of Europe. I shall be proud to be known as his teacher . . .” Haydn left Vienna again in 1794 for a return visit to London, and during Haydn’s absence 17941795, Beethoven continued his studies with Johann Albrechtsberger. Piano Trio No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 1, No. 3
The three piano trios of Beethoven’s official Opus 1 may have been started before Beethoven left Bonn, but were probably completed in 1793, while Beethoven was studying with Haydn. Haydn is supposed to have been against publication of the third trio of this set—naturally the one which to our ears sounds the most characteristically “Beethovenian” but which Haydn feared would offend the public. Needless to say, Haydn’s opinion did not sit well with Beethoven, but he nonetheless revised the trios of Opus 1 for eventual publication in 1795. The set was issued by Artaria and dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. The title in the first publication was “Three Trios for the Piano-Forte” (in bold type) followed by “Violin and Violoncello” (in smaller, more florid type). That is to say, the participation of the piano in these early trios got top billing: these trios were not mere lightweight entertainment, they were serious works in which the piano had an equal footing with the strings, which previously was not always the case. Beethoven was, after all, a virtuoso pianist intent on using his growing reputation as a performer to launch his career as a composer. (con’t)
The Piano Trio in C Minor consists of four movements: The first is a standard sonata-form essay in the minor key. The second movement is in major and consists of a set of five variations, a beautiful contrast to the energy and passion of the first movement. The separate minuet follows. Here Beethoven is already at work enlarging the proportions of the standard three-movement (fast-slow-fast) format by including a separate minuet as the third movement (or a slightly uptempo “minuetto” here), a practice which would evolve into the more boisterous scherzo in Beethoven’s later works. The finale is once again dramatic, but the close contains a “surprise” which may indicate the influence of Beethoven’s teacher, Haydn. Instead of a turn to major and a blazing, triumphant coda, the turbulence of the music begins to dissipate, and then quietly ends with the simplest of major cadences. Duet for Clarinet and Bassoon in C Major, WoO27, No. 1 The term “WoO” may be unfamiliar to many concertgoers. Most often, it stands for “without opus” and usually refers to a composer’s early work issued after an official “Opus 1” has been published and is already in the catalogue. However, early, or uncompleted, or undiscovered works might be issued after a composer’s death, but these works are sometimes numbered “opus posthumous.” The issue here is that there has been some concern in scholarly circles over whether these three duets for clarinet and bassoon can be confidently attributed to Beethoven or whether they are spurious. It appears that the parts to these duets were published in Paris about 1810 or so, with Beethoven’s name on them—and no opus number. This date would seem to indicate that Beethoven was still alive (he died in 1827), and if so, why would they not have been assigned an opus number? On the other hand, it seems that Beethoven himself never referred to the existence of these duets in all his letters and conversation books. Possibly an inauthentic Paris issuance went unnoticed at the time and was unquestioned afterward. As far as is known, the printed edition is the only available source for these three duets; there is no manuscript or sketchbook entry in Beethoven’s own hand for them. At any rate, they were still accepted as genuine as late as 1955, but research by 1983 brought their provenance into dispute. Stylistically, they are quite early and appear to belong to the Bonn period, perhaps about 1790, before Beethoven moved to Vienna. The first of the three duets of WoO27, in C major, is uncomplicated, technically undemanding, and delightful to perform. The opening movement is an energetic essay in sonata form. The original score, as printed, indicates that the movement falls neatly into two parts—the opening, and the development and recapitulation—and both halves are supposed to be repeated, which is standard Classical procedure. The brief larghetto, in minor, really serves as an extended introduction to the jolly rondo finale.
Program notes for MELT by David Kirkland Garner
MELT is a 17-minute dance that spins and dips in perpetual motion without really going anywhere. Occasionally, moments of rest materialize only to get swept back up in the cyclone. It is a dance of change without change—of a mobile spinning in the wind. It sounds a bit like the opening bars of Copland’s Appalachian Spring caught in a John Adams loop. And now for a somewhat related programmatic tangent: The initial themes for MELT come from a recording called “Candy Man Blues” made by legendary finger-picking guitarist and singer ‘Mississippi’ John Hurt. MELT is a piece that honors this important recording and artist by using a transcription of Hurt’s guitar part as the skeleton for my piece. The original tune, which lasts about 3 minutes, is time-stretched to the max to 17 minutes for MELT. Then I filled in and filled out this skeletal structure with fast notes, activity, and the occasional side-step. I am fascinated with the immense archive of historical American roots music recordings. I am also fascinated by the process of slowing music down to enhance our ability to hear detail and the way that the process of slowing transforms the character of the music. While this process is quite easy using computers, I thought it would be interesting to orchestrate and transform the time-stretched music as a way to build something new on top of an important piece of American history. CROW is written for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, cello, and piano and it is commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players. Both of these works were written simultaneously for the Atlanta Chamber Players. They are different pieces, but linked together through commission, instrumentation, and inspiration. In both works I am exploring how we choose to honor or ignore parts of American history, specifically around the South’s racist legacy. MELT takes inspiration from “Fiddlin” John Carson’s earliest recordings from 1923, which have been lauded as important first recordings in commercial country music. Carson is held up as a founding performer in country music, but he was also publicly racist, participating in KKK activities and singing outright racist lyrics. Carson should, I believe, be pulled down from his pedestal. MELT has a structure built on the playing of African American guitarist and songster “Mississippi” John Hurt, who also recorded in the 1920s. However, after Okeh records went out of business in the Great Depression, Hurt went back to working as a sharecropper in Mississippi until he was “re-discovered” by white producers in 1963, after which he performed and recorded for a mere 3 years until his death in 1966. Hurt, I believe, should be placed on a pedestal to be recognized as the influential performer he was and to draw attention to the systemic erasure of Black artists that has been practiced since the beginning.
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Friday, March 26, 2021 12:00 P.M. Bach’s Lunch Co-presented with the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta David Coucheron, violin; William Ransom, piano
Sunday, May 16, 2021 3:00 P.M. Atlanta Chamber Players Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
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