STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Members of The University Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor Sebastian Jiménez, Graduate Associate Conductor
with special guest Pamela Ryan, Viola
Friday, November 4, 2022 7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
THE FLORIDA
PROGRAM
Elegía Andina Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972)
Sebastian Jiménez, graduate associate conductor
Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra
Ralph Vaughan Williams Group 1 (1872–1958)
I. Prelude
II. Carol
III. Christmas Dance Group 2
I. Ballad
II. Moto perpetuo
Pamela Ryan, viola
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D. 485
Franz Schubert
I. Allegro (1797–1828)
II. Andante con moto
III. Menuetto
IV. Allegro vivace
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Health Reminder: The Florida Board of Governors and Florida State University expect masks to be worn by all individuals in all FSU facilities.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
GUEST ARTIST
Pamela Ryan, Professor of Viola at the Florida State University College of Music, performed as soloist with the Aspen Philharmonia as winner of the Aspen Music Festival Young Artist Concerto Competition playing Alan Shulman’s Theme and Variations, working with the composer. In 2014, she was soloist in the Bartok Concerto with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and returned there as a soloist in 2018. Ryan has performed dozens of concertos and orchestral solos under the baton of Robert Spano, Peter Bay, Darius Mikulski, David Hoose, Alexander Jiménez, and many others.
Active in the new music scene, she has recorded 20th century chamber music for labels Naxos, Col Legno and the Canadian Broadcasting Company (Gold Label). Her new music solo performance was praised by the American Record Guide for “superb technique and musicianship.” She was violist of the Bowling Green String Quartet, touring Mexico City and Carnegie Hall, working with George Crumb on his Black Angels for electric string quartet, and performed in duo regularly with Robert Spano who wrote Quaderno for viola and piano for her.
In addition to new music activities, she has performed chamber music as faculty artist for summer festivals at Aspen (CO), Brevard (NC), Yellow Barn (VT), Schlern (Italy), Green Mountain (VT), Idyllwild (CA) and Bowdoin (ME), as a faculty member at FSU, and as a returning guest at Seventh Species (OR), and Amelia Island Festival (FL). As orchestral musician, she was principal violist of the Southwest Florida Symphony and Chamber Orchestra on Sanibel Island for three years, and principal violist of the Tallahassee Symphony for 28 years.
Beyond traditional viola activities she has performed on rebab in Bali and in San Francisco with Balinese musicians, performed on historic period viola with Jaap Schroder, and performs regularly as a local jazz violist in Tallahassee with the band JazzEtcetera. Her live video performances of rarely played historic viola caprices have many unsolicited subscribers on YouTube. Ryan received the MM from the Conservatory of Brooklyn College (CUNY) and the DMA from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory (UC).
A dedicated teacher, Ryan won the FSU University Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching, nominated by students. She was honored to give the national collegiate viola master class at the ASTA 2008 National Conference in Albuquerque, and has given many national conference presentations, as well as serving on national boards. She is proud that her former students hold viola positions in professional orchestras and universities on 5 continents.
ABOUT THE FACULTY
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Frank – Elegia Andina
Possessed of a remarkably reflective, practical, and articulate persona, Gabriela Lena Frank is one of America’s most praised and respected young composers. Born forty-six years ago in Berkeley, California to a Lithuanian-Jewish father and a Peruvian-Spanish mother, (her grandfather was Chinese) she enjoys and thrives upon her multicultural heritage. She recounts that her early days were “filled with Oriental stir-fry cuisine, Andean nursery songs, and frequent visits from our New York -bred Jewish cousins.” Her musical training was diverse, enjoying and mastering Mozart, Beethoven–and Scott Joplin. Visits to her mother’s large family in Peru were crucial to her musical development, but she takes pains to not be categorized too narrowly. She points to compositions that seem likely to reflect her “latina” side, as well as those that reflect what she cheerfully calls her “gringa” self. She is equally inspired by the works of both the Hungarian Béla Bartók and the Argentine Alberto Ginastera. Deeply interested in literature, she studies Latin American poetry, mythology, and folklore. In a time when multiculturalism is often an assumed political construct for some artists, it is refreshing to see one whose vision and voice is a joyful amalgam of deep personal experience and natural affinities.
Her almost four dozen acclaimed compositions have brought her near the top of the “young American composers’ heap.” She is represented exclusively by the prestigious music publisher, G. Schirmer, works with the top orchestras of the world, and is the recipient of numerous important awards for music composition.
Written in 2000, Elegía Andina (Andean Elegy) is a modest tone poem that evokes the majesty and strength of the towering Andes Mountains. Native Peruvian sounds are alluded to in the wood blocks, as well as sonic imagery of the traditional zampoña panpipes—and so, the flute plays an important part. Frank has dedicated the work to her older brother, Marcos Gabriel Frank.
The powerful opening begins with stentorian, ascending clusters that aptly conjure the eponymous craggy mountains. They are soon joined by aphoristic interjections from the woodblocks, clarinets, and flutes. Gradually, after ominous low moans in the strings, a steady pulse is established, driven by rhythmic woodblocks. During this throbbing allegro a variety of gestures are contributed from every section of the orchestra. It doesn’t last long, leading to silence and a lengthy, cadenza-like passage for the two flutes. The virtuosic interchange between them contrasts significantly with the muscular beginning, but gradually leads back to the abbreviated intimation of the opening craggy, dissonant landscape. Finally, two solo clarinets eerily take us to the quiet conclusion. It’s clearly program music, but the details are for the listener to provide—artfully suggested by the composer’s masterful orchestration and stimulating, but abstract, ideas.
© 2018 William E. RunyanVaughan Williams - Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra
Vaughan Williams’s Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra was written for Lionel Tertis, who gave the first performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent at the Queen’s Hall on 12 November 1934. This work consists of three ‘groups’ of pieces—respectively of three, of two and again of three movements. Individual numbers have been widely played with piano accompaniment, but the complete Suite is a rarity, which is a pity because it contains some of the composer’s most mellifluous invention.
The chief characteristic of Vaughan Williams’s Suite is the varied colour and lightness of the orchestration. The first movement is a Prelude in C major, the arpeggiated opening solo viola line surely a tribute to Bach (the opening C major Prelude of the ‘48’). It expands with a typical soaring lyrical treatment. A counter-melody first heard on the tutti violas leads to a pastoral middle section characterized by the opposition of the soloist in 9/8 and the orchestral accompaniment in 3/4. The arpeggiated music returns with a brief reminiscence of the pastoral theme serving as coda.
The simple carol tune of the second movement is reminiscent of both the ‘Land of our birth’ tune from Vaughan Williams’s A Song of Thanksgiving of 1945 and the Woodcutter’s song from The Pilgrim’s Progress. The last movement of Group 1 is the robust ‘Christmas Dance’, alternating 3/4 and 6/8. The beefy chordal treatment of the soloist and the stamping rhythms make clear this is a rural celebration, the viola taking the place of the village fiddler.
The second Group consists of only two numbers. We return to the opening tonality of C major for the ‘Ballad’, which is followed by a headlong ‘Moto perpetuo’ in C minor. The ‘Ballad’ begins in quiet mystery, with a long-spanning tune accompanied by muted strings. The intense feeling is maintained until the second half of the piece, a dancing 6/8 Allegro non troppo. The ‘Moto perpetuo’ has a galumphing country dance feel to it, the viola’s register, especially when double stopping, having a roughness that is emphasized by the changes from double to triple time. The soloist has no rest from the insistent semiquavers, and the tempo is too fast for an actual dance, the whole virtuosic invention being remarkably invigorating.
Lewis Foreman © 2011Schubert – Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major
The epitaph on Schubert’s tombstone reads: “The art of music has entombed here a rich treasure but even fairer hopes.” We all lament the “loss” of treasure that we never possessed, none perhaps more than great art that we presume may have come to pass but not for lives cut short in youth. But not all composers can live long productive lives like those enjoyed by Verdi and Strauss, for example. Often those who die young are nevertheless privileged to accomplish much, and Schubert, like Mozart, is exemplary. He left behind him a legacy of over six hundred art songs; no other composer’s contribution to the genre is as significant in scope and number. And, of course, while he did compose marvelous chamber works, symphonies, and music for piano, it is his inimitable gift for melody–the essence of his Lieder–that equally informs and carries his instrumental works.
His short life was generally uneventful, and his personality still is somewhat lacking in vivid details for us today, but we do know that he lived and worked within a small circle of artists in various fields in Vienna. His was contemporaneous with Beethoven, but that master’s music exerted little influence upon Schubert; Haydn and Mozart were his models. His teenage years yielded much more profound results than did those of Beethoven, Schubert having composed over one hundred and fifty songs in his eighteenth year (almost one every three days)! The next year (1816) was almost as productive, with over one hundred songs and two symphonies—including the Symphony in B-flat Major.
Schubert’s fifth symphony is almost as well known as the two late, mature ones, so popular with today’s audiences, the so-called “Unfinished” and the “Great” C Major. But this early work is a different take on the genre. It certainly calls to mind the early symphonies of Mozart—and even alludes to portions of that composer’s early G minor symphony. It is modest in length, light in orchestration (no clarinets, trumpets, or drums), and terse in development. What is noteworthy are its melodious themes and interesting harmonies—all lifelong characteristics of Schubert’s works. The first movement gets right to the point with two attractive melodies heard almost immediately, but what is of equal interest are the arresting and unusual key areas heard later: D-flat major and E-flat minor. While the typical concertgoer may not recognize these keys by name, he will sense the richness of harmony, just as almost anyone can hear the same in a Gershwin song. So listen for it! The slow, second movement exhibits the same melodic inventiveness and harmonic adventures—even modulating to the rare key of C-flat major. The third movement really does sound like a rough, vigorous minuet by Haydn (rather old fashioned by then), but Schubert’s elegant melodic gift surfaces in the contrasting middle section. The last movement is a cheerful romp that sounds like it could have been composed some forty years earlier. So, we have a youthful work here, one that takes Haydn and Mozart as points of departure, and blends in delightful touches of Romantic melody and harmony, all so different from that of Schubert’s stormy contemporary, Beethoven.
© 2015 William E. RunyanViolin I
Gabriela Fogo, Concertmaster
Angel Andres
Darrian Lee Barbara Santiago Erika Sciascia
Mackenzie Nies
Violin II
Thomas Roggio*
Rebecca Masalles
Alessandro Capitano
Alyssa Orantes
Viola
Luiz Barrionuevo* Hunter Sanchez
Marina Akamatsu
Francesca Tavano Margot Elder
Jacob Grice
Members of the University Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Sebastian Jiménez, Graduate Associate Conductor
Cello
Aric Lee*
Angelese Pepper
Jenna Bachmann
Katie Jo Gelasco
Bass
Gene Waldron III*
Alejandro Bermudez
Chase Row
Megan Baker Harp Isabelle Scott Flute
Freddie Powell*
Rachael Lawson
Oboe
Noel Prokop-Seaton* Luis Gallo*
Clarinet Trey Burke* Renzo DeCarlo* Alex Vaquerizo Bassoon Robert Alexander* Josie Whiteis Horn Leslie Bell* Brianna Nay* Cory Kirby*
Trumpet Sawyer Prichard* Jeremy Perkins*
Percussion Zach Harris Darci Wright Equipment Manager Alejandro Bermudez
Orchestra Manager
Madeline Hoth
Administrative Assistant Amanda Frampton
Librarians
Nathan Haines
Sebastian Jiménez