RANDALL GOOSBY & ZHU WANG

PRELUDE 2 PM

Musical Prelude by young local artists

RANDALL GOOSBY, violin ZHU WANG, piano

Support for this program generously provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer Jeanette Stevens

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2022 · 3 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL L. BOULANGER Two Pieces for Violin and Piano

(1893–1918) Nocturne Cortège

RAVEL The Unseen Way

(1875–1937) Allegretto Blues: Moderato Perpetuum mobile

STILL Suite for Violin and Piano (1895–1978) African Dancer Mother and Child Gamin

La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.

INTERMISSION

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata in A Major, Opus 47 “Kreutzer” (1770–1827) Adagio sostenuto; Presto Andante con Variazioni Finale: Presto Randall Goosby, violin; Zhu Wang, piano

Mr. Goosby records exclusively for Decca. More information on Randall Goosby can be found at www.randallgoosby.com Management for Randall Goosby: Primo Artists, New York, NY www.primoartists.com

Two Pieces for Violin and Piano LILI BOULANGER

Born August 21, 1893, Paris Died March 15, 1918, Mézy, France Composed: 1911; 1914 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

The younger sister of the great teacher Nadia Boulanger, Lili Boulanger was a musician of extraordinary talent. Lili was the first woman ever to win the Prix de Rome, but that promise was cut short by perpetually poor health and by an early death: she was only 24 when she died, ten days before the death of Debussy. So short a life inevitably means that one’s output is small, and today is Lili is remembered for her vocal settings and a small amount of instrumental music. As might be expected from the sister of Nadia Boulanger, Lili’s music is beautifully crafted. She has been described as an impressionist, but more striking are her instinctive sense of form and an expressive control of what is at times a surprisingly chromatic harmonic language.

This recital offers two brief works for violin and piano by Lili Boulanger: Nocturne (composed in 1911, when she was 18) and Cortège (1914). Nocturne begins quietly as the pianist rocks softly across three octaves of repeated C’s and the violin sings its gentle song. But soon the quiet mood of the beginning (marked doux: “soft, gentle”) is penetrated by unexpected harmonies, the violin line grows more animated, and the music rises to a climax. Matters calm, the rocking accompaniment of the opening reasserts itself, and Nocturne concludes in the home key of F major, with the violin high above, the piano in its deepest register. The title Cortège might seem to suggest something funereal, or at least ceremonial, but Boulanger’s Cortège is sprightly music, spirited and fun. Over an extremely active piano accompaniment, the violin has its own energetic line. This music concludes all too quickly, leaving behind its high spirits—and a sense of what might have been.

Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano MAURICE RAVEL

Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France Died December 28, 1937, Paris Composed: 1923–27 Approximate Duration: 17 minutes

Ravel began making sketches for his Violin Sonata in 1923, the year after he completed his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He was composing a number of works for violin during these years, including Tzigane, but the Violin Sonata proved extremely difficult for him, and he did not complete it until 1927. The first performance, by violinist Georges Enesco and the composer, took place on May 30, 1927, in Paris while that city was still in a dither over the landing of Charles Lindbergh the week before.

In the Violin Sonata, Ravel wrestled with a problem that has plagued all who compose violin sonatas—the clash between the resonant, sustained sound of the violin and the percussive sound of the piano—and he chose to accentuate these differences: “It was this independence I was aiming at when I wrote a Sonata for violin and piano, two incompatible instruments whose incompatibility is emphasized here, without any attempt being made to reconcile their contrasted characters.” The most distinctive feature of the sonata, however, is Ravel’s use of jazz elements in the slow movement.

The opening Allegretto is marked by emotional restraint. The piano alone announces the cool first theme, which is quickly picked up by the violin. A sharply rhythmic figure, much like a drum tattoo, contrasts with the rocking, flowing character of the rest of this movement, which closes on a quietly soaring restatement of the main theme.

Ravel called the second movement Blues, but he insisted that this is jazz as seen by a Frenchman. In a lecture during his American tour of 1928, he said of this movement: “while I adopted this popular form of your music, I venture to say that nevertheless it is French music, Ravel’s music, that I have written.” He sets out to make violin and piano sound like a saxophone and guitar, specifying that the steady accompanying chords must be played strictly in time so that the melodic line can sound “bluesy” in contrast. The “twang” of this movement is accentuated by Ravel’s setting the violin in G major and the piano in A-flat major at the opening.

Thematic fragments at the very beginning of the finale slowly accelerate to become a virtuoso perpetual motion. Ravel brings back themes from the first two movements before the music rushes to its brilliant close, which features complex string-crossings for the violinist.

Suite for Violin and Piano WILLIAM GRANT STILL

Born May 11, 1895, Woodville, Mississippi Died December 3, 1978, Los Angeles Composed: 1943 Approximate Duration: 14 minutes

William Grant Still grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his mother was a schoolteacher. Still left college to pursue a career in music, and—after service in the Navy during World War I—moved to New York, where he worked with W.C. Handy, Paul Whiteman, and Artie Shaw. He also studied composition with two teachers who could not have been more unlike each other: the conservative Boston composer George Chadwick and the visionary Edgard Varèse. In New York Still played the oboe in theater orchestras and

was attracted to the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance, but in 1930 he moved to Los Angeles, which would be his home for the rest of his life. In Los Angeles he worked first as an arranger of film scores but later devoted himself entirely to composition and conducting. Still was a trailblazer in many ways. He was the first African American to conduct a major orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1936) and the first to have an opera produced by a major opera company (Troubled Island, by the New York City Opera in 1949). His catalog of works includes nine operas, five symphonies, numerous other orchestral works, and music for chamber ensembles and for voice.

Still was passionately committed to African American causes throughout his life, and his Suite for Violin and Piano, composed in 1943, celebrates the work of three African American artists. The Suite was—like Pictures at an Exhibition—inspired by art in other forms, but where Mussorgsky was inspired by paintings and sketches, Still was inspired by the work of three African American sculptors. The first movement, African Dancer, is Still’s response to a work of the same name by Richmond Barthé (1901–1989). Barthé made the early part of his career in New York City, where he was associated with the Harlem Renaissance. His African Dancer depicts a nude female frozen in motion as she dances, and Still’s music captures the energy of her dance. After a declarative opening statement by the piano, the violin sails in energetically; a bluesy middle section, full of slides, leads to a return of the opening material and a euphoric, full-throated climax.

Sargent Johnson (1887–1967) overcame a difficult childhood—he was sent to several orphanages, and he and his brothers were separated from their sisters when they were all very young. Johnson eventually made his home in San Francisco, where he worked as both sculptor and painter. He created a number of works titled Mother and Child, so the exact inspiration for this movement is uncertain. Still’s movement has invariably been compared to a lullaby, but this lullaby does not remain soothing and quickly grows to an animated passage full of double-stops before winding down to its quiet conclusion.

Augusta Savage (1892–1962) also had a difficult childhood, and like Barthé she was associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Her Gamin, of painted plaster, depicts the head and shoulders of a boy of about twelve. He wears a cap and loose clothing and seems to stare out at the viewer with a slightly defiant air. Still’s Gamin is a character study of the that boy, full of blues and sharply syncopated rhythms. This movement—very short—has a particularly effective ending. Violin Sonata in A Major, Opus 47 “Kreutzer” LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna Composed: 1803 Approximate Duration: 34 minutes

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Beethoven was beginning to get restless. The young man who had arrived in Vienna in 1792 was a tremendous pianist, but as a composer still had much to learn, and he spent the next decade slowly mastering the High Classical form of Haydn and Mozart. By 1802 he had composed two symphonies, three piano concertos, a set of six string quartets, and numerous sonatas for piano, for violin, and for cello. These had all been acclaimed in Vienna, but in in that same year Beethoven wrote to his friend Werner Krumpholz: “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve composed up to now. From now on I intend to embark on a new path.” That “new path” would become clear late in 1803 with the composition of the Eroica. That symphony revolutionized music—it engaged the most serious issues, and in music of unparalleled drama and scope it resolved them.

But even before Eroica, there were indications of Beethoven’s “new path.” Early in 1803 the composer met the violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower (1778¬¬–1860). Bridgetower, then 25, was the son of a West Indian father and European mother; he had played in the orchestra for Haydn’s concerts in London a decade earlier and was now establishing himself as a touring virtuoso on the continent. Bridgetower and Beethoven quickly became friends, and when the violinist proposed a joint concert at which they would perform a new sonata, the composer agreed. But, as was often the case, Beethoven found himself pressed for time. He made the process easier by retrieving a final movement that he had written for a violin sonata the previous year and then discarded. Now, in effect working backwards, he rushed to get the first two movements done in time for the scheduled concert on May 22. He didn’t make it. The concert had to be postponed two days, and even then Beethoven barely got it done: he called his copyist at 4:30 that morning to begin copying a part for him, and at the concert he and Bridgetower had to perform some of the music from Beethoven’s manuscript; the piano part for the first movement was still in such fragmentary form that Beethoven was probably playing some of it just from sketches.

As soon as he completed this sonata, Beethoven set to work on the Eroica, which would occupy him for the next six months. While the sonata does not engage the heroic issues of the first movement of that symphony, it has something of the Eroica’s slashing power and vast scope.

Beethoven was well aware of this and warned performers that the sonata was “written in a very concertante style, quasi-concerto-like.” From the first instant, one senses that this is music conceived on a grand scale. The sonata opens with a slow introduction (the only one in Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas), a cadenza-like entrance for the violin alone. The piano makes a similarly dramatic entrance, and gradually the two instruments outline the interval of a rising second (E to F#). At the Presto, that interval collapses into a half-step, the movement jumps into A minor, and the music whips ahead. Beethoven provides a chorale-like second subject marked dolce, but this island of calm makes only the briefest of returns in the course of this furious movement. The burning energy of that Presto opening is never far off: the music rips along an almost machine-gun-like patter of eight-notes, and after a hyperactive development, the movement drives to its abrupt cadence.

Relief comes in the Andante con Variazioni. The piano introduces the melody, amiable but already fairly complex, the violin repeats it, and the two instruments briefly extend it. There follow four lengthy and highly elaborated variations, and while the gentle mood of the fundamental theme is never violated, these variations demand some complex and demanding playing. For all its complexities, this is a lovely movement, and Beethoven and Bridgetower had to repeat it at the premiere.

The final movement opens with a bang—a stark A-major chord—and off the music goes. Beethoven had composed this movement, a tarantella, a year earlier, intending that it should be the finale of his Violin Sonata in A Major, Opus 30, No. 1. But he pulled it out and wrote a new finale for the earlier sonata, and that was a wise decision: this fiery finale would have overpowered that gentle sonata. Here, it dances with a furious energy that makes it a worthy counterpart to the first movement. At several points, Beethoven moves out of the driving 6/8 tarantella meter and offers brief interludes in 2/4. These stately, reserved moments bring the only relief in a movement that overflows with seething energy, a movement that here becomes the perfect conclusion to one of the most powerful pieces of chamber music ever written.

Beethoven was so taken with Bridgetower’s playing that he intended to dedicate the sonata to him, and it is a measure of the playful relations between the two that Beethoven inscribed the manuscript to the violinist: “Mulattic sonata written for the mulatto Brischdauer, a complete lunatic and mulattic composer.” And so we might know this music today as the “Bridgetower” Sonata but for the fact that the composer and the violinist quarreled, apparently over a remark that Bridgetower made about a woman Beethoven knew. The two eventually made up, but in the meantime Beethoven had dedicated the sonata to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, and so we know it today as the “Kreutzer” Sonata. Ironically, Kreutzer did not like this music—Berlioz reported that “the celebrated violinist could never bring himself to play this outrageously incomprehensible composition.”