Program Notes

from SummerFest 2021 Program Book

SummerFest Commission History

Alisa Weilerstein

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE JAI Interview with SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan hosted by Eric Bromberger

La Jolla Music Society’s 52nd 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, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Joy Frieman, Debra Turner, Ric and Eleanor Charlton, Jeanette Stevens, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Judith Bachner and Eric Lasley, and an anonymous donor.

SUMMERFEST OPENING NIGHT: ODE TO JOY

Friday, July 30, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL BEETHOVEN “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9 (arr. for two pianos by Liszt)

(1770-1827) MOZART Piano Sonata in C Major, K.545 (arr. for two pianos by Grieg)

(1756-1791) Allegro Andante Rondo: Allegretto Inon Barnatan, Roman Rabinovich, pianos KREISLER Londonderry Air (1875-1962) Paul Huang, violin; Roman Rabinovich, piano JOHN ADAMS 40% Swing from Road Movies (b. 1947) Blake Pouliot, violin; Roman Rabinovich, piano DE FALLA Suite Populaire Espagnole (1876-1946) El paño moruno Asturiana Jota Nana Canción Polo Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano OLA GJEILO Ubi Caritas

(b. 1978) HAWKINS Until I Found the Lord

(1949-2010) Kings Return

Vaughn Faison, J.E. McKissic, tenors;

Jamall Williams, baritone; Gabe Kunda, bass

INTERMISSION

MENDELSSOHN Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 20

(1809-1847) Allegro moderato, ma con fuoco

Andante

Scherzo: Allegro leggierissimo

Presto Paul Huang, Jun Iwasaki, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Calidore String Quartet

Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violins;

Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello

“Ode to Joy” from the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Opus 125 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Arranged for two pianos by FRANZ LISZT

Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Austria Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth Composed: 1851 Approximate Duration: 7 minutes

Liszt made transcriptions of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies for solo piano, and his motive in this mammoth undertaking was entirely generous: he knew that few people in the nineteenth century could hear an orchestra concert, he wanted this music to be widely known, and so he included these transcriptions on his recitals to bring Beethoven’s symphonies to a larger audience. The process took a number of years, however, and the Ninth Symphony— particularly the final movement with its setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”—gave him a great deal of trouble. Liszt doubted that he could do justice to a movement that featured an orchestra, four soloists, and a chorus, and he actually considered ending his transcription project at the end of the third movement of the Ninth without even attempting a transcription of the choral finale. But finally he decided to transcribe the finale, though he decided to make this arrangement for two pianos rather than one. Even this, though, involved compromise: Liszt’s arrangement is only of the orchestral part, and listeners will have to imagine the sound of the singers on their own. Still, the cumulative power of Liszt’s transcription will give some sense of his own genius as an arranger and an even greater sense of his admiration for Beethoven.

Liszt’s transcription of the “Ode to Joy” was published in 1851. There is a story that four years later Clara Schumann and the young Brahms—neither of them an admirer of Liszt—played through this transcription and approved of it highly. Piano Sonata in C Major, K.545 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

Arranged for two pianos by EDVARD GRIEG

Born June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway Died September 4, 1907, Bergen Composed: 1876-77 Approximate Duration: 12 minutes

In the 1870s, the young Edvard Grieg arranged several of Mozart’s piano sonatas for two pianos. It might seem heretical to tamper with music that many consider perfect, but Grieg made these arrangements for several reasons. The first was pedagogical: he wanted to create a version that could be played jointly by a student and a teacher, and in these arrangements he kept the “student” part exactly as Mozart wrote it, but created a part for the “teacher” that could support and embellish the student’s playing. Grieg said that his intention was to “impart to several of Mozart’s sonatas a tonal effect appealing to our modern ears,” and in that he was exactly right: as we listen to these arrangements, we hear the classical purity of Mozart’s original embellished, decorated, and enriched by the romantic musical sensibility of a century later.

This recital offers the most famous of Grieg’s arrangements, that of Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K.545, originally composed in June 1788. Mozart himself wrote this sonata specifically for students—he called it Eine kleine Klaviersonate für Anfänger: “A Little Piano Sonata for Beginners”—and all piano students play this graceful little sonata at some point during their studies. Mozart’s sonata needs no introduction, but the fun of this performance lies in hearing Grieg’s enriched accompaniment, which lets us re-experience Mozart’s music through a warmly romantic lens almost a century after it was composed.

Londonderry Air FRITZ KREISLER

Born February 2, 1875, Vienna Died January 29, 1962, New York City Composed: 1922 Approximate Duration: 4 minutes Suite Populaire Espagnole MANUEL DE FALLA

Born November 23, 1876, Cádiz, Spain Died November 14, 1946, Alta Grazia, Argentina Composed: 1914 Approximate Duration: 13 minutes

This wonderful music, known throughout the world, appears to have originated many, many years ago as an Irish folk tune. There are numerous theories about that origin, but the tune was first noted down by a folksong collector in County Londonderry in Ireland in 1851 and published four years later. Unsure what to call the melody, its early editors settled on the neutral title Londonderry Air. The song unfortunately acquired the title Danny Boy half a century later when the English lyricist Frederic Weatherly adapted his poem of that name to this music, and since then many other texts have been shaped to fit this music. The gentle, soaring, melancholy nature of this music has led to its performance on many unexpected occasions, including the funerals of both Elvis Presley and Princess Diana.

Fritz Kreisler published his arrangement of Londonderry Air for violin and piano in 1922, and it has been a favorite of violinists ever since. To complicate matters of nomenclature even more, Kreisler called his version Farewell to Cucullain, but—no matter what its name—this lovely, haunting music will charm audiences for generations to come.

40% Swing from Road Movies JOHN ADAMS

Born February 15, 1947, Worcester, MA Composed: 1995 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

The composer has furnished the following program note:

The title Road Movies is total whimsy, probably suggested by the “groove” in the piano part, all of which is required to be played in a “swing” mode (second and fourth of every group of four notes are played slightly late). Movement III is for four-wheel drives only, a big perpetual-motion machine called “40% Swing.” On modern MIDI sequencers, the desired amount of swing can be adjusted with almost ridiculous accuracy. 40% provides a giddy, bouncy ride, somewhere between an Ives ragtime and a long rideout by the Goodman Orchestra, circa 1939. It is very difficult for violin and piano to maintain over the seven-minute stretch, especially in the tricky cross-hand style of the piano part. Relax, and leave the driving to us.

Road Movies was commissioned by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Falla had moved from Madrid to Paris in 1907, but returned to Spain at the beginning of World War I. His final work before that departure was the Seven Popular Spanish Songs, completed in Paris in 1914. It comes from a period of unusual creativity: El Amor Brujo would follow in 1915 and Nights in the Gardens of Spain in 1916. In arranging that collection of songs, Falla took the unaccompanied melodic line of seven Spanish popular or folk songs and harmonized them himself, occasionally rewriting or expanding the original melodic line to suit his own purposes. Several years later the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski arranged six of the songs—with the approval of the composer—for violin and piano and published them (in a different order) as Suite Populaire Espagnole. The present arrangement for cello and piano is based on Kochanski’s version, though it presents the songs in Falla’s original sequence.

El paño moruno or “The Moorish Cloth” (Allegretto vivace) is based exactly on the famous song, and Kochanski’s arrangement makes imaginative use of harmonics and pizzicato. Asturiana (Andante tranquillo) is a tune from Asturia, a province in the northwest part of Spain. Here the cello, muted throughout, plays the melodic line above a quiet sixteenth-note accompaniment. Jota (Allegro vivo) is the best-known part of the suite. A jota is a dance in triple time from northern Spain, sometimes accompanied by castanets. Slow sections alternate with fast here and the extensive use of chorded pizzicatos may be intended to imitate the sound of castanets.

Nana (Calmo e sostenuto) is an arrangement of an old Andalusian cradlesong, and Falla said that hearing this melody sung to him by his mother was his earliest memory. The cello is muted throughout, and the accompaniment is quietly syncopated. Canción (Allegretto) repeats a dance theme continuously: the entire middle section is performed on artificial harmonics. A polo is a specific form: an Andalusian folksong or dance in 3/8 time, sometimes with coloratura outbursts. Though this particular Polo, marked Vivo, is based on Andalusian elements, it is largely Falla’s own composition.

Ubi Caritas OLA GJEILO

Born May 5, 1978, Skui, Norway Composed: 1999 Approximate Duration: 3 minutes

Ola Gjeilo studied piano and composition as a boy and began his advanced studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music, but transferred to Juilliard and earned his master’s in composition there in 2006. He has been composer-inresidence with the Phoenix Chorale but now works as a freelance composer in New York City. On his website, Gjeilo has provided a note, text, and translation for Ubi Caritas:

The first time I sang in a choir was in high school; I went to a music high school in Norway and choir was obligatory. I loved it from the very first rehearsal, and the first piece we read through was Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas. It will always be one of my favorite choral works of all time; to me, it’s the perfect a cappella piece. So when I set the same text myself a few years later, it was inevitable that the Duruflé would influence it, and it did. While Duruflé used an existing, traditional chant in his piece, I used chant more as a general inspiration, while also echoing the form and dynamic range of his incomparable setting of the text. (Ola Gjeilo)

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor. Exultemus, et in ipso iucundemur. Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum. Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.

Where charity and love are, God is there. Christ’s love has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him. Let us fear, and let us love the living God. And may we love each other with a sincere heart

Until I Found the Lord WALTER HAWKINS

Born May 18, 1949, Oakland, California Died July 11, 2010, Ripon, California Composed: 1978 Approximate Duration: 6 minutes

From a large and very musical family in Oakland, Walter Hawkins sang for some years in his brother Edwin’s chorale, then left that to form his own church—the Love Center Church—and his own chorale; he was named a bishop of that church in 2000. Walter Hawkins’ chorale participated in a number of best-selling gospel albums, and in 1981 he won a Grammy® for Best Gospel Performance; Hawkins and his brother Edwin were invited to perform at the White House during Black Music Month in 2008.

Until I Found the Lord, one of Hawkins’ greatest hits, was originally released as part of his album Love Alive II in 1978. A rousing performance by a young Walter Hawkins and his chorale can be found on YouTube.

Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 20 FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig, Germany Composed: 1825 Approximate Duration: 33 minutes

It has become a cliché with a certain kind of critic to say that Mendelssohn never fulfilled the promise of his youth. Such a charge is a pretty tough thing to say about someone who died at 38—most of us would think Mendelssohn never made it out of his youth. And such a charge overlooks the great works Mendelssohn completed in the years just before his death: the Violin Concerto, the complete incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Elijah. But there can be no gainsaying the fact that the young Mendelssohn was a composer whose gifts and promise rivaled—perhaps even surpassed—the young Mozart’s. The child of an educated family that fully supported his talent, Mendelssohn had by age nine written works that were performed by professional groups in Berlin. At 12 he became close friends with the 72-year-old Goethe, at 17 he composed the magnificent overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at 20 he led the performance of the St. Matthew Passion that was probably the key event in the revival of interest in Bach’s music.

Mendelssohn completed his Octet in October 1825, when he was 16. One of the finest of his early works, the Octet is remarkable for its polished technique, its sweep, and for its sheer exhilaration. Mendelssohn’s decision to write for a string octet is an interesting one, for such an ensemble approaches chamber-orchestra size, and a composer must steer a careful course between orchestral sonority and true chamber music. Mendelssohn handles this problem easily. At times this music can sound orchestral, as he sets different groups of instruments against each other, but the Octet remains true chamber music—each of the eight voices is distinct and important, and even at its most dazzling and extroverted the Octet preserves the equal participation of independent voices so crucial to chamber music.

Mendelssohn marked the first movement Allegro moderato

ma con fuoco, and certainly there is fire in the very beginning, where the first violin rises and falls back through a range of three octaves. Longest by far of the movements, the first is marked by energy, sweep, and an easy exchange between all eight voices before rising to a grand climax derived from the opening theme. By contrast, the Andante is based on the simple melody announced by the lower strings and quickly taken up by the four violins. This gentle melodic line becomes more animated as it develops, with accompanying voices that grow particularly restless.

The Scherzo is the most famous part of the Octet. Mendelssohn said that it was inspired by the closing lines of the Walpurgisnacht section near the end of Part I of Goethe’s Faust, where Faust and Mephistopheles descend into the underworld. He apparently had in mind the final lines of the description of the marriage of Oberon and Titania:

Clouds go by and mists recede, Bathed in the dawn and blended; Sighs the wind in leaf and reed, And all our tale is ended.

This music zips along brilliantly. Mendelssohn marked it Allegro leggierissimo—“as light as possible”—and it does seem like goblin music, sparkling, trilling, and swirling right up to the end, where it vanishes into thin air.

Featuring an eight-part fugato, the energetic Presto demonstrates the young composer’s contrapuntal skill. There are many wonderful touches here. At one point sharp-eared listeners may detect a quotation, perhaps unconscious, of “And He Shall Reign” from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, and near the end Mendelssohn skillfully brings back the main theme of the Scherzo as a countermelody to the finale’s polyphonic complexity. It is a masterstroke in a piece of music that would be a brilliant achievement by a composer of any age.

Florence Price

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE JAI Interview with Kings Return and SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan hosted by Eric Bromberger

This concert will also be live streamed

The Synergy Initiative is underwritten by:

Clara Wu Tsai

NO INTERMISSION

SYNERGY INITIATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES I: GOIN’ HOME

Produced by Inon Barnatan & Clara Wu Tsai

Saturday, July 31, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL DVO ˇRÁK Goin’ Home (arr. Barnatan)

(1841-1904) Jun Iwasaki, Ryan Meehan, Blake Pouliot, Jeffrey Myers, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, Jeremy Berry, violas; Alisa Weilerstein, Estelle Choi, cellos

WILLIS Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

(c. 1820-1880) SPIRITUAL Go Down Moses Kings Return Vaughn Faison, J.E. McKissic, tenors; Jamall Williams, baritone; Gabe Kunda, bass PRICE Swing Low, Sweet Chariot from Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint (1887-1953) Calidore String Quartet Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violins; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello TRADITIONAL Shenandoah SPIRITUAL Motherless Child Kings Return DVO ˇRÁK Lento from String Quartet in F Major, Opus 96 “American” Blake Pouliot, Jun Iwasaki violins; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

TAYLOR I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free

(1921-2010) SPIRITUAL Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho Kings Return (continued on next page)

Florence Price BURLEIGH An Ante-Bellum Sermon from “Plantation Melodies” (1866-1949) Calidore String Quartet WYNTON Many Gone from String Quartet No. 1 “At The Octoroon Balls” MARSALIS Jun Iwasaki, Blake Pouliot, violins; (b. 1961) Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Estelle Choi, cello LOWRY Shall We Gather At The River? (1826-1899) Kings Return DVO ˇRÁK Viola Quintet in E-flat Major, Opus 97 “American” Allegro non tanto Allegro vivo Larghetto Allegro giusto Paul Huang, Blake Pouliot, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, Jeremy Berry, violas; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

PAUSE

The concert continues in the Wu Tsai QRT.yrd with a performance by Kings Return

Goin’ Home

This year’s Synergy Initiative explores what makes something sound American, and how the American sound, much like America itself, draws on a mosaic of influences and continues, in turn, to inspire others. From folk songs, gospel choirs, and jazz classics to vast aural landscapes and cinematic scores, the American Perspectives series is a captivating chronicle of musical America and an important subtheme within the festival’s exploration of Self + Sound.

This evening’s concert, the first Synergy event of 2021, celebrates the influence of African-American spirituals on classical composers, culminating in one of Dvořák’s chamber masterpieces, the American String Quintet. When Dvořák discovered these spirituals, sung to him by his student—a young Black composer named Harry Burleigh—he was moved to write the New World Symphony and proclaimed that American composers should base their music on these wonderful songs. Dvořák argued, “The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States." The rich tradition of Black classical music that Dvořák envisioned might not have come fully to fruition, but Dvořák was able to make American composers think about music differently and his impact is still felt in works by classical composers today.

In the first half of the program this evening, Kings Return gospel quartet will interweave their unique arrangements of spirituals, old and new, with string pieces by composers who were inspired by these African-American spirituals, including Dvořák, Florence Price, and Wynton Marsalis. Viola Quintet in E-flat Major, Opus 97 ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904, Prague Composed: 1893 Approximate Duration: 35 minutes

Dvořák’s three years as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City form a distinct chapter in his career. From these years came several of his finest scores, including the New World Symphony, the American Quartet, and the Cello Concerto. Enthusiastic Americans claimed that Dvořák had made use of American materials and that these were examples of “American music.” But Dvořák would have none of that, denouncing “that nonsense about my having made use of original American melodies. I have only composed in the spirit of such American national melodies.” Dvořák felt that all his music was “genuine Bohemian music,” but the American Quartet incorporates a bird call Dvořák heard in America, the New World Symphony evokes spirituals, and the question of specifically American influences on this most Bohemian of composers remains tantalizing.

Dvořák was fascinated by America. A train buff, he would sneak away from the Conservatory to watch locomotives pounding along New York City’s many rail lines. But after his first year in busy Manhattan, he took his family to Spillville, Iowa—a Czech community—for the summer of 1893. There, surrounded by familiar food, language, and customs, the Dvořák family could escape bigcity life and relax. If Dvořák had been amazed by New York City, he found different kinds of surprises on the American prairie. Bands of Iroquois Indians came to Spillville, selling medicinal herbs, and in the evening they gave programs of their dances and music. Those impromptu performances in the cool Iowa twilight had an immediate impact on the composer: the beat of Iroquois drums echoes through this quintet, composed that same summer.

The opening of the Allegro non tanto is dominated by the husky sound of the violas—in fact, the prominence of the violas gives this music its characteristically dark sonority. The main theme is delayed slightly, and when it first appears—in the first violin—it grows out of the violas’ introduction; many have felt that the movement’s dancing second theme echoes the sound of Indian drums. This movement, in sonata form, moves to a quiet close on a cadence derived from the main theme.

The drums of the Iroquois, however, pound relentlessly through the Allegro vivo. Dvořák uses one of the rhythms he heard in Iowa as the driving force in this movement:

it appears immediately in the second viola and can be heard in various forms throughout the movement. The trio section, soaring and lovely, brings an interlude of calm before the opening material returns.

The Larghetto leaves the sound of Indian drums far behind. It is in theme-and-variation form, and in fact Dvořák had written the movement’s main theme before he left for America. The first viola announces this wistful little tune, and five variations follow. Even before the first variation begins, however, Dvořák takes the tune through a modification that makes the music sound as if it has come directly from a late Beethoven quartet; after the energy of Indian drums, such heartfelt and intense music comes as a surprise.

The concluding Allegro giusto is an energetic rondo that depends heavily on dotted rhythms. Dvořák interrupts the busy flow with two different theme groups, both lyric and haunting. The music rushes to its close on one of the most exuberant codas Dvořák ever wrote.

Dvořák was quite correct: he was Bohemian to the core, and so was his music. But this Quintet—and the other scores he composed in America—represent a very special kind of music. It is Bohemian music, but Bohemian music flavored sharply by the sounds Dvořák heard in America.

Calidore String Quartet

PRELUDE · 2 PM THE JAI Lecture by Eric Bromberger

Support for this program generously provided by:

The Jendy Dennis Endowment Fund

THE ARTIST AS MUSE

Sunday, August 1, 2021 · 3 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

DEBUSSY String Quartet in G Minor (1862-1918) Animé et très décidé Scherzo: Assez vif et bien rythmé Andantino doucement expressif Très modéré; Très mouvementé; Très animé Calidore String Quartet Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violins; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello BRITTEN Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, Opus 65

(1913-1976) Dialogo

Scherzo-pizzicato

Elegia

Marcia

Moto perpetuo Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano

INTERMISSION

STRAVINSKY Three Movements from Petrushka (1882-1971) Russian Dance In Petrushka’s Cell The Shrove-Tide Fair Roman Rabinovich, piano MOZART Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings, K.581

(1756-1791) Allegro

Larghetto

Menuetto

Allegretto con variazioni Anthony McGill, clarinet; Tessa Lark, Jun Iwasaki, violins; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

String Quartet in G Minor CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France Died March 25, 1918, Paris Composed: 1893 Approximate Duration: 25 minutes

Early in 1893, Debussy met the famed Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Debussy was at this time almost unknown (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was still a year in the future), but he and Ysaÿe instantly became friends—though Ysaÿe was only four years older than Debussy, he treated the diminutive Frenchman like “his little brother.” That summer, Debussy composed a string quartet for Ysaÿe’s quartet, which gave the first performance in Paris on December 29, 1893. Debussy was already notorious with his teachers for his refusal to follow musical custom, and so it comes as a surprise to find him choosing to write in this most demanding of classical forms. Early audiences were baffled. Reviewers used words like “fantastic” and “oriental,” and Debussy’s friend Ernest Chausson confessed mystification. Debussy must have felt the sting of these reactions, for he promised Chausson: “Well, I’ll write another for you . . . and I’ll try to bring more dignity to the form.”

But Debussy did not write another string quartet, and his Quartet in G Minor has become one of the cornerstones of quartet literature. The entire quartet grows directly out of its first theme, presented at the very opening, and this sharply rhythmic figure reappears in various shapes in all four movements, taking on a different character, a different color, and a different harmony on each reappearance. What struck early audiences as “fantastic” now seems an utterly original conception of what a string quartet might be. Here is a combination of energy, drama, thematic imagination, and attention to color never heard before in a string quartet. Debussy may have felt pushed to apologize for a lack of “dignity” in this music, but we value it today just for that failure.

Those who think of Debussy as the composer of misty impressionism are in for a shock with his quartet, for it has the most slashing, powerful opening Debussy ever wrote: his marking for the beginning is “Animated and very resolute.” This first theme, with its characteristic triplet spring, is the backbone of the entire quartet: the singing second theme grows directly out of this opening (though the third introduces new material). The development is marked by powerful accents, long crescendos, and shimmering colors as this movement drives to an unrelenting close in G minor.

The Scherzo may well be the quartet’s most impressive movement. Against powerful pizzicato chords, Debussy sets the viola’s bowed theme, a transformation of the quartet’s opening figure; soon this is leaping between all four voices. The recapitulation of this movement, in 15/8 and played entirely pizzicato, bristles with rhythmic energy, and the music then fades away to a beautifully understated close. Debussy marks the third movement “Gently expressive,” and this quiet music is so effective that it is sometimes used as an encore piece. It is in ABA form: the opening section is muted, while the more animated middle is played without mutes—the quartet’s opening theme reappears subtly in this middle section. Debussy marks the ending, again played with mutes, “As quiet as possible.”

The finale begins slowly but gradually accelerates to the main tempo, “Very lively and with passion.” As this music proceeds, the quartet’s opening theme begins to appear in a variety of forms: first in a misty, distant statement marked “soft and expressive,” then gradually louder and louder until it returns in all its fiery energy, stamped out in double-stops by the entire quartet. A propulsive coda drives to the close, where the first violin flashes upward across three octaves to strike the powerful G major chord that concludes this most undignified—and most wonderful—piece of music.

Sonata for Cello and Piano, Opus 65 BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Born November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, England Died December 4, 1976, Aldeburgh, England Composed: 1960-61 Approximate Duration: 21 minutes

In 1960 Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich introduced two of his close friends, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and composer Benjamin Britten. These two in turn became good friends, and theirs was a creative relationship: over the next few years the English composer wrote five works for the Russian cellist. The first of these was the Sonata for Cello and Piano, begun in December 1960 and completed the following month. It was scheduled for its première the following summer, and Britten and Rostropovich gathered to rehearse it.

As might be expected, the two new friends—both creative artists—were a little nervous about the prospect of trying it out for the first time. Rostropovich later described the scene: “Ben said, ‘Well, Slava, do you think we have time for a drink first?’ I said, ‘Yes, yes,’ so we both drank a large whisky. Then Ben said: ‘Maybe we have time for

another one?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ I said. Another large whisky. After four or five very large whiskies we finally sat down and played through the sonata. We played like pigs, but we were so happy.” The première performance—a great success— took place at the Aldeburgh Festival on July 7, 1961.

The sonata is in five movements, rather than the expected three or four, and much of its thematic material is based on the interval of a second, either rising or falling. The opening movement, Dialogo, begins with a tentative cello figure that revolves around this interval; Britten marks its first appearance lusingando (“intimate, coaxing”). The second subject, marked dolce, is a slow extension of that opening theme; the animated development leads to a close on fragments of the original theme. In the brief Scherzo, Britten has the cello play pizzicato throughout— the composer called this movement “guitar-like”—and the piano’s staccato accompaniment mirrors the cello’s pizzicatos. The piano’s introduction to the Elegia again revolves around the interval of a second; the cello’s grieving opening melody rises to a full-throated climax before falling away to end quietly.

The fourth movement, a sardonic march, whips past in barely two minutes; Britten accentuates the aggressive quality of this music by having the cello at moments play ponticello (bowing on top of the bridge to produce a grainy, disembodied sound) and giving it stinging glissandos. The finale is a perpetual motion movement based on the cello’s opening theme. Britten marks the theme saltando, which means “leaping”—that is, played with a springing bow. This opening subject will recur in a great range of moods, forms, and registers in the breathless finale.

Three Movements from Petrushka IGOR STRAVINSKY

Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia Died April 6, 1971, New York City Composed: 1921 Approximate Duration: 17 minutes

In the early 1920s, Igor Stravinsky—one of the greatest orchestrators in history and creator of some of the finest music ever written for orchestra—began to write for solo piano. There were several reasons for this. In the aftermath of World War I, Stravinsky discovered that orchestras that could play huge and complex scores were rare (and expensive). And in any case Stravinsky did not wish to go on repeating himself by writing opulent ballets. But the real factor that attracted Stravinsky to the piano was that he was a pianist and so could supplement his uncertain income as a composer by appearing before the public as both creator and performer; this was especially important during the uncertain economic situation following the war.

While not a virtuoso pianist, Stravinsky was a capable one, and over the next few years came a series of works for piano that Stravinsky introduced and then played on tour. The impetus for all this piano music may well have come from Artur Rubinstein, who asked the composer to prepare a version of the ballet Petrushka for solo piano, which Stravinsky did during the summer of 1921. Rubinstein paid Stravinsky what the composer called “the generous sum of 5,000 francs” for this music, but Stravinsky made clear that his aim was not to cash in on the popularity of the ballet: “My intention was to give virtuoso pianists a piece of a certain breadth that would permit them to enhance their modern repertory and demonstrate a brilliant technique.” Stravinsky stressed that this was not a transcription for piano, nor was he trying to make the piano sound like an orchestra; rather, he was re-writing orchestral music specifically as piano music.

The ballet Petrushka, with its haunting story of a pathetic puppet brought to life during a Russian fair, has become so popular that it easy to forget that this music had its beginning as a sort of piano concerto. Stravinsky said: “I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi.” That puppet became Petrushka, “the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries,” as the story of the ballet took shape, but the piano itself receded into the background of the ballet. Perhaps it was only natural that Stravinsky should remember the ballet’s origins when Rubinstein made his request for a piano version.

Stravinsky drew the piano score from three of the ballet’s four tableaux. The opening movement, Russian Dance, comes from the end of the first tableau: the aged magician has just touched his three puppets—Petrushka, the Ballerina, and the Moor—with his wand, and now the three leap to life and dance joyfully. Much of this music was given to the piano in the original ballet score, and here this dance makes a brilliant opening movement. The second movement, In Petrushka’s Cell, is the ballet’s second tableau, which introduces the hapless Petrushka trapped in his room and railing against fate and shows the entrance of the ballerina. The third movement, The Shrove-Tide Fair, incorporates most of the music from the ballet’s final tableau, with its genre pictures of a St. Petersburg square at carnival time: various dances, the entrance of a peasant and his bear, gypsies, and so on. Here, however, Stravinsky excises the end of the ballet (where Petrushka is murdered and the tale ends enigmatically) and replaces it with the

more abrupt ending that he wrote for concert performances of the ballet suite.

Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings, K.581 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Composed: 1789 Approximate Duration: 33 minutes

While Mozart reportedly did not care for the sound of the flute, he felt a special fondness for the clarinet, and much of Mozart’s interest in the clarinet came from his friendship with the Austrian clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler (1753-1812). Mozart apparently met Stadler soon after arriving in Vienna in 1781. Stadler was part of the ensemble that gave the first performance of Mozart’s great Serenade in D Major, K.361, in 1784, and the two soon became friends and colleagues—they were both Freemasons in the same lodge in Vienna, and Mozart is known to have lent Stadler money during these years.

Not surprisingly, Mozart began to write for Stadler and for the clarinet. In the summer of 1786, shortly after the première of Le Nozze de Figaro, Mozart wrote his Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, presumably for Stadler, and the instrument figures prominently in his Symphony No. 39, composed two years later. It is a measure of the composer’s respect for Stadler’s artistry that in the final year of his life Mozart would compose the obbligato clarinet parts in La clemenza di Tito and the Clarinet Concerto specifically for Stadler, and he revised his Symphony No. 40 to include clarinet parts, almost certainly for Stadler. Two years earlier, during the summer of 1789, Mozart composed his Clarinet Quintet, completing it on September 29. The première had to wait until December 22, when it was performed at a concert of the Tonkünstler Societät in Vienna. On that occasion Stadler was the clarinetist, and Mozart played the viola. Mozart made clear the connection between this music and the artist for whom it was written the following year when he referred to it as “Stadler’s quintet.”

Stadler played the basset clarinet, an instrument of his own invention, which could play four semitones lower than the standard clarinet of that era. This unfortunately resulted in a number of corrupt editions of Mozart’s works for Stadler, as editors re-wrote them to suit the range of the contemporary clarinet. Subsequent modifications have given the A clarinet those four low pitches, and today we hear these works in the keys for which Mozart originally wrote them.

Simple verbal description cannot begin to suggest the glories of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet—this is truly sovereign music, full of the complete technical mastery of Mozart’s final years and replete with the emotional depth that marks his music from that period. The strings present the choralelike first theme of the sonata-form opening Allegro, and the clarinet quickly enters to embellish this noble opening statement. The expressive second subject, sung by the first violin, flows with a long-breathed smoothness that itself seems shaped for the fluid sound of the clarinet.

The Larghetto, in D major, belongs very much to the clarinet, which weaves a long cantilena above the accompanying strings; new material arrives in the first violin, and the development section is Mozart at his finest. Particularly impressive here is Mozart’s careful attention to sonority, with the silky sound of muted strings set against the warm murmur of the clarinet. After the subdued conclusion of the second movement, the Menuetto bursts to life with a perky freshness—off come the strings’ mutes, and Mozart moves back to the home key of A major. This minuet is unusual in that it has two trio sections: the first— in A minor—is entirely for strings, while in the second the clarinet has a ländler-like freshness.

In place of the expected rondo-finale, Mozart offers a variation movement based on the opening theme, sung as a duet for the violins. The five variations are sharply differentiated: the first introduces an entirely new theme, full of wide skips, played by the clarinet as the quartet repeats the opening theme, several feature virtuosic parts for the clarinet and first violin, and the third opens with a plaintive episode for viola over rich accompaniment from the other voices. And now Mozart springs a surprise: the stirring conclusion of the fourth variation gives way to an expressive Adagio that is really a fifth variation. After this long and moving variation is complete, the music jumps back to its opening tempo, and the Clarinet Quintet concludes with a jaunty coda derived from the first half of the original theme.

Tessa Lark

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Balourdet String Quartet performs Brahms’ String Quartet in C Minor, Opus 51, No. 1

Support for this Prelude is provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer

NO INTERMISSION

NOTES ON FREEDOM

Wednesday, August 4, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

BRAHMS Scherzo in C Minor for Violin and Piano (Sonatensatz) (1833-1897) Paul Huang, violin; Inon Barnatan, piano ANDREW Suspend, a fantasy for piano and chamber orchestra NORMAN Inon Barnatan, piano;

(b. 1979) SummerFest Chamber Orchestra

Blake Pouliot, Paul Huang, Justin DeFilippis, Byungchan Lee,

Domenic Salerni, Tessa Lark, Angela Jiye Bae, violins;

Nathan Schram, Jonathan Vinocour, Benjamin Zannoni, violas;

Andrew Yee, Russell Houston, Eunghee Cho, cellos;

Timothy Cobb, bass; Anthony McGill, Jay Shankar, clarinets;

Dustin Donahue, percussion; Julie Smith Phillips, harp;

Eric Jacobsen, conductor

BRAHMS Piano Quartet in C Minor, Opus 60 Allegro ma non troppo Scherzo: Allegro Andante Finale: Allegro comodo Tessa Lark, violin; Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano

Scherzo in C Minor for Violin and Piano (Sonatensatz) JOHANNES BRAHMS

Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna Composed: 1853 Approximate Duration: 4 minutes

The brief Scherzo in C Minor for violin and piano is the earliest surviving piece of chamber music by Brahms—he wrote it in 1853, when he was only 20. That fall, Robert Schumann put together a collaborative sonata as a gift for the young violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, then on tour. Schumann’s student Albert Dietrich (1829-1908) contributed the first movement, Schumann himself wrote the second and fourth, and Brahms composed the third. All four movements were to be based on the sequence of three notes F-A-E, the initials of Joachim’s personal motto, “Frei aber Einsam”: “Free but lonely.” (Scholars, it must be admitted, have had a tough time locating that particular sequence of notes in Brahms’ movement.) Presented with the sonata on his arrival in Düsseldorf, Joachim was asked to play the four movements and to identify the composer of each. He is reported to have played the music easily at sight and to have guessed correctly the authorship of all four movements.

The F-A-E Sonata, as it came to be called, was not published until 1935, long after everyone involved in the project was dead. Joachim, however, had liked Brahms’ scherzo movement enough that he had it published separately in 1906, nine years after the composer’s death. It has become part of the repertory, for while it is a very early work and Brahms did not choose to publish it, this music already shows a powerful individual style and a firm command of scherzo form. It is in the expected ABA form. The outer sections are built on a pounding 6/8 meter, sounded first on the violin’s open G string and quickly answered by hammering piano chords. The brief 2/4 trio section, lyric but somber, leads quickly back to the opening material. Brahms provides a surprise at the close by building a huge cadence on a reminiscence of the trio theme.

This music has appeared under several titles. It is sometimes called Sonatensatz (“Sonata Movement”), a name that apparently originated with Joachim at the time of its publication in 1906. For his part, Brahms simply marked this powerful music Allegro. Suspend, a fantasy for piano and chamber orchestra (arr. by Norman) ANDREW NORMAN

Born October 31, 1979, Grand Rapids, Michigan Composed: 2014 Approximate Duration: 20 minutes

Andrew Norman studied composition and piano at USC and Yale, and he was briefly identified as a member of the “Brooklyn” school of composers before returning to the West Coast in 2013; he now teaches at the USC Thornton School of Music. Norman has been composerin-residence with both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and he has composed for orchestra, for chamber ensembles, and for voice. Norman—whose music has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, BBC Symphony, and many others—was named Musical America’s Composer of the Year in 2017.

Andrew Norman created a special arrangement for chamber orchestra for LJMS’ SummerFest for this performance.The composer has supplied a program note for this work:

Suspend is a 20-minute fantasy for piano and orchestra. It originally was conceived at the special request of piano legend Emanuel Ax, as an exploration of two melodic fragments that were significant to Johannes Brahms. The first is F-A-E (“Frei Aber Einsam” in German, or “free but lonely” in English) and the second is F-A-F (“Frei Aber Froh”, free but happy). From there it developed into an extended rumination on the ideas of freedom and solitude, a dream-like journey inspired by the creative, conflicted, lonely spirit of Brahms and the ever-present tensions in his (and my) life and music between spontaneity and control, sentiment and structure, indulgence and restraint.

Like many of its forebearers in the long tradition of keyboard fantasies, Suspend is intended to sound as if it is being made up on the spot, a single meandering but unbroken thread of thought spun out by the pianist from beginning to end.

The piece follows a simple scenario: the pianist—perhaps a solitary, Brahms-like figure— sits down at the keyboard and slowly begins to improvise. At first the sounds exist only in the

pianist’s own mind, but little by little they become real to the rest of us. The pianist very gradually imagines an orchestra into existence, and over the course of many minutes that imaginary orchestra assumes its own voice and identity, transforming from a shadow, a resonance, an echo of the piano into a powerful and distinct musical entity that threatens, at the work’s climax, to swallow up the pianist. The piece ends with a coda in which the pianist freely meditates on the F-A-F motive and the orchestra, player by player, is released into a world of free, uncoordinated playing.

—Andrew Norman

Piano Quartet in C Minor, Opus 60 JOHANNES BRAHMS

Composed: 1855-75 Approximate Duration: 35 minutes

While it is difficult—and dangerous!—to search for biographical significance in a piece of music, Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C Minor is one of those works that seems to cry out for such an interpretation. Brahms labored on the quartet for twenty years before it was first performed in Vienna on November 18, 1875. He had begun work on it in 1855 when as a young man of 23 he found himself part of the Schumann household during the cataclysmic period of Robert’s rapid decline in a mental institution. Torn between his friendship with the dying Robert and his hopeless love for the suffering Clara, Brahms turned inward. He began three piano quartets during the year 1855 and completed two of them. The last, the most personal and powerful of the three, he put away—this was not music he was ready to take before the public.

But by 1868 he had begun to think about revising it, a process that took several more years. To a friend he tried to describe the spirit of the music: “Imagine a man for whom nothing is left, and who wishes to put an end to himself.” When he finally completed the score in 1875, Brahms suggested to his publisher: “On the cover you must have a picture, a head with a pistol pointed towards it. Now you can form an idea of the music! For this purpose I will send you my photograph! Blue coat, yellow breeches and top-boots would do well . . . ” The blue coat and yellow breeches refer to the hero in Goethe’s The Sorrows of the Young Werther. In that novel, Werther—a young man of sensitive and artistic nature—blows his brains out when the woman he loves marries someone else, and at some level Brahms clearly identified with the romantic young hero whose love was unrequited.

Brahms revised the quartet thoroughly. He transposed it from the original (and unusual) key of C-sharp minor into C minor, and he added an extra movement, a scherzo, to the original three-movement form. He also destroyed his first finale and wrote an entirely new one, as well as completely revising the surviving movements.

If the opening movement does not strike the modern listener as music for a man on the verge of suicide, it is nevertheless somber and serious. The piano’s opening—a unison C four octaves deep—is quickly answered by the three strings, whose falling half-step will recur throughout. The piano alone has the second theme, unmistakably Brahmsian in its nobility and breadth; in an original touch, Brahms quickly presents four variations on this theme, highly unorthodox in a sonata-form movement. The development is dramatic, with the two-note figure hammering darkly into the listener’s consciousness before the movement comes to a quiet close.

The piano introduces the main idea of the Scherzo, built on a propulsive 6/8 meter. This short movement is extremely focused: a brief section for strings marked espressivo functions as a trio section before the menacing pound of the original rhythm returns to drive the movement to its close.

Some critics have regarded the Andante as a love-song, and given the mood of the music and the circumstances of its composition, such a conclusion may well be justified. It opens with a long flow of golden song from the cello. The mood of the music is intimate, and that intimacy is only a little ruffled by the extended syncopations of the development. In a wonderful touch, Brahms gives the reprise of the opening theme to the piano, which is accompanied by pizzicato strings, and on fragments of that opening melody this expressive music comes to its quiet close. By contrast, the Finale returns to the C-minor urgency of the opening. Brahms’ marking—Allegro comodo—suggests a leisurely or moderate tempo, but the mood of the music is dark and insistent throughout. The second theme is a chorale for strings, and the development has a great deal of sweep, with the main theme returning in a grand unison for the strings. Curiously, the movement stays in C minor until the very end, when Brahms wrenches it into C major with the final two chords, as if unwilling to conclude with an ending as dark as all that has gone before. But after those final two chords have faded, it is the dark, troubled urgency of this music that stays to haunt the memory.

Attacca Quartet

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Trio Syzygy performs Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 67

Support for this program generously provided by:

John Hesselink

Support for this Prelude is provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer

LIFE STORY

Thursday, August 5, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

SIBELIUS En Saga, Opus 9 (reconstructed for octet by Jaako Kuusisto) (1865-1957) Anthony McGill, clarinet; Brad Balliett, bassoon; Jennifer Montone, horn; Blake Pouliot, Benjamin Beilman, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; Efe Baltacigil, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Opus 110

(1906-1975) Largo

Allegro molto

Allegretto

Largo

Largo Attacca Quartet

Amy Schroeder, Domenic Salerni, violins;

Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello

INTERMISSION

SCHUBERT Allegro in A Minor for Piano Four-Hands, D.947 (“Lebensstürme”) (1797-1828) Roman Rabinovich, Inon Barnatan, piano SMETANA String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor “From My Life”

(1824-1884) Allegro vivo appassionato

Allegro moderato à la Polka

Largo sostenuto

Vivace Benjamin Beilman, Tessa Lark, violins; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; Efe Baltacigil, cello

En Saga, Opus 9 (reconstructed for octet by Jaako Kuusisto) JEAN SIBELIUS

Born December 8, 1865, Tavastehus, Finland Died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland Composed: 1892 Approximate Duration: 20 minutes

In 1891 the Finnish conductor Robert Kajanus commissioned a new orchestral work from the 26-year-old Sibelius. The composer titled the new work simply En Saga, and that title (which is in Swedish) translates as “A Saga” or perhaps “A Fairy Tale.” Sibelius composed En Saga across 1892 and conducted its successful première in Helsinki on February 16, 1893. The work was performed widely in this version, but Sibelius himself was not fully satisfied with it, and he came back to En Saga in 1901 and revised it completely. In its final form, En Saga was first performed in Helsinki on November 2, 1902, and it promptly became one of Sibelius’ most popular works—it is usually performed in this version today. But there is evidence that the music of En Saga is derived from a piece of chamber music that Sibelius had sketched earlier, either a septet or an octet. Finnish composer Jaako Kuusisto (born 1974) has reconstructed a version for an octet consisting of clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet, and double bass based on Sibelius’ original version of 1892. This version offers a glimpse into Sibelius’ early ideas as he set to work on En Saga.

Music this powerful—this taut, this dramatic—seems to cry out for interpretation, and it is tempting to sense some dark drama shaping En Saga. But Sibelius would have none of that. Many years later, long after he had given up composing, he looked back and said: “En Saga is an expression of a particular state of the soul . . . all literary interpretations are naturally quite alien to me.”

One of the most striking things about En Saga is Sibelius’ conception of what constitutes a theme. To be sure, this piece offers those long, flowing Sibelian melodies that build up majestically, but more often the themes are virtual fragments, just bits of rhythm or theme that repeat hypnotically. These shifting patterns of rhythm and color would become an integral part of Minimalism in the late twentieth century, but much of that conception of sound, rhythm, and development is present in this music, composed nearly a century earlier.

En Saga builds through several waves of development, finally driving to a great climax. This breaks off suddenly, the music hovers plaintively for a moment, then rushes ahead heroically. Things seem headed for a triumphant conclusion, and then comes another surprise. All this shining energy dissipates, the clarinet offers a lonely epilogue, and En Saga pulses into silence on barely-audible bits of rhythm.

Listeners are of course free to make out any drama they wish playing out beneath the surface of this “saga.” But we would do well to remember Sibelius’ admonition that En Saga is abstract music, “an expression of a particular state of the soul.”

String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Opus 110 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow Composed: 1960 Approximate Duration: 21 minutes

In the summer of 1960 Shostakovich went to Dresden, where he was to write a score for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint East German and Soviet production. The devastation of Dresden by Allied bombing in 1945—the event that drove Kurt Vonnegut to write Slaughterhouse Five— was still evident in 1960, and it stunned the composer. He interrupted his work on the film score and in the space of three days (July 12-14) wrote his String Quartet No. 8, dedicated “To the memory of the victims of fascism and war.”

The Eighth Quartet has become the most-frequently performed of Shostakovich’s fifteen quartets, but this intense music appears to have been the product of much more than an encounter with the horrors of war—it sprang straight from its creator’s soul. In it Shostakovich quotes heavily from his own works: there are quotations from the First, Fifth, Tenth, and Eleventh Symphonies, Piano Trio in E Minor, Cello Concerto No. 1, and his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, as well as from several Russian songs. The quartet also uses as its central theme Shostakovich’s musical “signature”: he took the letters DSCH (D for Dmitri and SCH from the first three letters of his last name in its German spelling) and set down their musical equivalents: D-Es (E-flat in German notation)-C-H (B in German notation). That motto—D-Eb-C-B—is the first thing one hears in this quartet, and it permeates the entire work.

Why should a quartet inspired by the destruction of a foreign city (and an “enemy” city, at that) have turned into so personal a piece of music for its composer? Vasily Shirinsky—second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, which gave the première —offered the official Soviet explanation of so dark a work: “In this music, there is a

portrait of Shostakovich, the musician, the citizen, and the protector of peaceful and progressive humanity.” But in Testimony, Shostakovich’s much-disputed memoirs, the composer strongly suggests that the quartet is not about fascism but is autobiographical and is about suffering, and he cites his quotation of the song “Languishing in Prison” and of the “Jewish theme” from the Piano Trio as pointing a way toward understanding the quartet.

In her recent biography of the composer, Laurel Fay suggests an even darker autobiographical significance. In the spring of 1960, just before his trip to Dresden, Shostakovich was named head of the Union of Composers of the Soviet Federation, and the Russian government clearly expected such a position to be held by a party member. Under pressure to join the party, the composer reluctantly agreed and then was overwhelmed by regret and guilt. There is evidence that he intended that the Eighth Quartet, a work full of autobiographical meaning, should be his final composition and that he planned to kill himself upon his return to Moscow. Five days after completing the quartet, Shostakovich wrote to a friend: “However much I tried to draft my obligations for the film, I just couldn’t do it. Instead I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs. I reflected that if I die some day then it’s hardly likely anyone will write a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could even write on the cover: ‘Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet.’”

Was the Eighth Quartet to be Shostakovich’s epitaph for himself?

The quartet is extremely compact and focused—its five interconnected movements last twenty minutes. The brooding Largo opens with the DSCH motto in the solo cello, which soon turns into the fanfare from the First Symphony, followed in turn by a quotation from the Fifth Symphony. The movement, somber and beautiful, suddenly explodes into the Allegro molto, in which the first violin’s pounding quarter-notes recall the “battle music” from the composer’s wartime Eighth Symphony. At the climax of this movement comes what Shostakovich called the “Jewish theme,” which seems to shriek out above the sounds of battle. The Allegretto is a ghostly waltz in which the first violin dances high above the other voices. Each of the final two movements is a Largo. The fourth is built on exploding chords that some have compared to gunshots, others to the fatal knock on the door in the middle of the night. At the climax of this movement come the quotations from the prison song and—in the cello’s high register—from Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth. The fifth movement returns to the mood and music of the first. The DSCH motto enters fugally and many of the quartet’s earlier themes are recalled before the music closes very quietly on a chord marked morendo.

SOME NOTES: The film for which Shostakovich was to write the score that summer was a typical product of Cold War propaganda. A joint work by Russian and East German filmmakers, Five Days, Five Nights told the politically-correct confabulation that heroic Russian troops had entered Dresden in February 1945 and helped preserve the city’s artistic treasures from Allied bombing (in fact, Russian troops were nowhere near Dresden during the bombing). Shostakovich’s score for the film is unremarkable except that it too makes use of quotations: in the course of the music, the theme from the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony gradually breaks in on Shostakovich’s own music. And for the record: on September 14, 1960—two months after composing the Eighth Quartet—Shostakovich officially became a member of the Communist Party.

Allegro in A Minor for Piano Four-Hands, D.947 (“Lebensstürme”) FRANZ SCHUBERT

Born January 31, 1797, Vienna Died November 19, 1828, Vienna Composed: 1828 Approximate Duration: 13 minutes

Schubert’s final year has become the stuff of legend. He turned 31 in January 1828, and from the next ten months came a succession of masterpieces: the premières of the Trio in E-flat Major and Fantasy for Violin and Piano, the completion of the “Great” Symphony in C Major, the String Quintet, the three final piano sonatas, the songs of the Schwanengesang cycle, and the song Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. It has become customary to refer to this music—music of an extraordinary new depth and intensity—as “late Schubert,” though Donald Francis Tovey reminds us that since we are dealing with a composer who died at 31, all Schubert is “early Schubert.” The headstone of Schubert’s grave in Vienna suggests how much we have lost: “The art of music here entombed a rich possession, but even fairer hopes.”

In the succession of masterworks from that remarkable year, it is easy to overlook the fact that Schubert spent the spring of 1828 writing for piano four-hands. From April came the Fantasy in F Minor, one of the greatest works written for this genre, from May the Allegro in A Minor, and from June the Rondo in A Major. Music for piano fourhands generally had a “social” function—it was intended

for talented amateurs to play at home. Of course it could transcend that aim—the Fantasy is a masterpiece—but it was usually music written for the enjoyment of both performer and listener. That said, it should be noted that the duo on this program demands first-rate performers.

The Allegro in A Minor (Schubert’s marking is actually Allegro ma non troppo) was not published until twelve years after his death. When Anton Diabelli published this music in Vienna in 1840, he gave it the nickname “Lebensstürme” (“The Storms of Life”), a title Schubert never heard nor imagined. While the nickname may not be authentic, it does hint at the dramatic scope of this music. Many have heard orchestral sonorities here, and in fact this music has been orchestrated and performed in that version.

The Allegro in A Minor is in sonata form, but this is the extended and subtle sonata form Schubert had evolved in his final years. His “themes” are actually groups of contrasted ideas rather than simple melodies, and his harmonic language can be daring. The opening sounds fierce, like a strident trumpet call (one understands why some hear “orchestral” sonorities here), but this sharp declaration quickly leads to a quiet, chromatic melody. The arrival of the second theme-group brings a moment of pure magic. The music slows, grows quiet, and the second piano descends to a softly-pulsing accompaniment deep in the left hand. Over this, the first piano sings the choralelike second subject in the unexpected key of A-flat minor. This is very quietly presented (the marking here is triple piano), and Schubert’s modulations even within the first statement are effortlessly expressive. And, characteristically, this second group concludes with a completely different figure, a shower of sparkling triplet runs. The development is powerful and extended, with some very complex counterpoint between the two performers, and Schubert eventually drives this Allegro to two concluding chords entirely worthy of all the energy that has preceded them.

String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor “From My Life” BEDŘICH SMETANA

Born March 2, 1824, Litomysl, Bohemia Died May 12, 1884, Prague Composed: 1876 Approximate Duration: 30 minutes

Smetana’s life is a story of triumph and tragedy. Though he is acclaimed by all as the father of Czech music, a composer whose operas and symphonic poems on Czech subjects blazed the way for Dvořák, Janáček, and generations of Czech composers to come, Smetana’s personal life was full of tragedy, and his death was appalling. He had four daughters, and three of them died in early childhood. Her health undermined by these losses, Smetana’s wife died while still a very young woman. Smetana himself became aware of frightening changes in his own health about age 50. He began to hear a piercing noise inside his head, and this was soon followed by a rushing sound—he described it as the noise of standing under a waterfall—and later the sound of breaking sticks. He went completely deaf and began to suffer hallucinations; these symptoms—the result of syphilis— eventually gave way to insanity, and Smetana died in an asylum in Prague at age 60.

Late in life, and working with great difficulty, Smetana composed two string quartets. The first of these—written in 1876, shortly after he had resigned all of his musical positions because of his deafness—is autobiographical, as its subtitle “From My Life” makes explicit. Smetana supplied an elaborate program for this music, and it is clear that he intended that this quartet should tell the story of his life.

The Allegro vivo appassionato opens with a long viola theme that Smetana identified with the “love of art in my youth, my romantic mood, the unspoken longing for something which I could not name or imagine clearly”; at another point, he called this figure “a warning as it were of my future misery.” If the first movement is “about” the composer’s love of music and art, the second, marked Allegro moderato à la Polka, tells of another of his loves— dancing. As a young man, Smetana had loved to dance (his wife-to-be had been one of his earliest partners) and for several years he wrote dance-music almost exclusively. Smetana said that the Largo sostenuto recalled “the happiness of my first love for the girl who later became my faithful wife.” A long cello solo opens this movement, and the first violin announces the second theme of this moving love song, which seems at times like an extended lullaby.

The finale, marked Vivace, is astonishing. It sounds very “Czech”—full of folk-like tunes and high spirits—and at first it seems a conventional closing movement; Smetana identified this music with “knowledge of how to make use of the element of national music, joy at the outcome of following this path.” But near the end, these high spirits come shuddering to a stop, and out of that silence comes the violin’s screaming high E, the “piercing whistle” that to Smetana signaled the beginning of his deafness and deterioration. Over the next few moments, Smetana brings back themes from the earlier movements, but these nostalgic reminiscences cannot take hold, and gradually they disintegrate, leaving the quartet to vanish on three quiet pizzicato strokes. It is a stunning conclusion to one of the most moving quartets ever written.

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE JAI Interview with Tristan Cook and Zac Nicholson hosted by Artistic Director Leah Rosenthal

This concert will be available to view on-demand starting August 14.

The Synergy Initiative is underwritten by:

Clara Wu Tsai

SYNERGY INITIATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES II: IDEALIZED LANDSCAPES

Produced by Inon Barnatan & Clara Wu Tsai

Saturday, August 7, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL IVES The Unanswered Question (1874-1954) (Film by Ethan Bensdorf) Rose Lombardo, Pamela Vliek Martchev, flutes; Mary Lynch, oboe; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Ethan Bensdorf, trumpet; Attacca Quartet Amy Schroeder, Domenic Salerni, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello CAROLINE SHAW Plan & Elevation: The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks (b. 1982) (Film by Tristan Cook) I. The Ellipse II. The Cutting Garden III. The Herbaceous Border IV. The Orangery V. The Beech Tree GABRIELA Contested Eden WORLD PREMIÈRE LENA FRANK (Film featuring Molly Katzman & Co.)

(b.1972)

Canto para California Attacca Quartet

Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Music Director Cristian Mˇacelaru, with generous support from Jerry Vurek-Martyn and Rhonda Martyn & Joseph Novello in loving memory of Lynda Vurek-Martyn with additional support from La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest.

INTERMISSION

(1900-1990) Benjamin Beilman, Byungchan Lee, Stefan Jackiw, Justin DeFilippis, violins; Masumi Per Rostad, Benjamin Zannoni, violas; Efe Baltacigil, Jay Campbell, cellos; Timothy Cobb, bass; Rose Lombardo, flute; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Brad Balliett, bassoon; Roman Rabinovich, piano; Eric Jacobsen, conductor

The Unanswered Question CHARLES IVES

Born October 20, 1874, Danbury, CT Died May 19, 1954, New York City Composed: 1906 Approximate Duration: 7 minutes

Ives led one of those double lives that seem quintessentially American. In his workday routine, he was a shrewd Yankee businessman (at the time of his retirement, Ives & Myrick was the largest insurance firm in the country), but the private Ives was a different person altogether, a visionary artist who created soundscapes never before imagined. And The Unanswered Question is one of his most original (and pleasing) creations.

In the summer of 1906, the 32-year-old Ives was living in an apartment that looked out over Central Park and working for the Mutual Insurance Company. That summer, he sketched two brief works that he at first regarded as companion-pieces, though he later separated them. One of these, scored for orchestra, would eventually become Central Park in the Dark, while the other, written for much smaller forces, would become The Unanswered Question. Ives may have sketched this music in 1906, but he was in no hurry to finish it. He set the score aside for a quarter of a century, came back to it in the 1930s, revised it slightly, and published it in 1940.

The Unanswered Question is visionary music. Ives conceived it on three separate musical planes—this music is performed by three different groups of instruments that are separated physically, play entirely different music, and seem at first to have nothing to do with each other. The first is a body of strings, whose music is floating, serene, ethereal— their music proceeds as if unaware that anything else is happening onstage. There is next a solitary trumpet, which intones the same questioning phrase six times. And finally there is a quartet of flutes, who form the one active (or reactive) part of this music. The flutes seem to mull over the trumpet’s challenge, dispute among themselves, and grow more agitated as they do. In this strange musical landscape, the quartet of flutes shows us ourselves in ways that are provocative, amusing, and sometimes uncomfortable.

The Unanswered Question has become Ives’ most frequently-performed work. Somehow this gentle music— built on the intersection of three completely different musical worlds—touches a deeply responsive chord in audiences. Ives himself gave The Unanswered Question two subtitles—“A Contemplation of a Serious Matter” and “A Cosmic Landscape”—and in a note in the score he talked about his intentions in this music:

The strings play ppp throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent “The Silences of the Druids—Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.” The trumpet intones “The Perennial Question of Existence” and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for “The Invisible Answer” undertaken by the flutes and other human beings, becomes gradually more active, faster and louder through an animando to a con fuoco. This part need not be played in the exact time position indicated. It is played in somewhat of an impromptu way; if there be no conductor, one of the flute players may direct their playing. “The Fighting Answerers,” as the time goes on, and after a “secret conference,” seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock “The Question”—the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, “The Question” is asked for the last time, and “The Silences” are heard beyond in “Undisturbed Solitude.”

Plan and Elevation: The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks CAROLINE SHAW

Born August 1, 1982, Greenville, North Carolina Composed: 2015 Approximate Duration: 15 minutes

Caroline Shaw studied violin as a child and began to compose at age 10. She received her bachelor’s degree from Rice University and her master’s from Yale, and she is now in the doctoral program at Princeton. Shaw performs as a violinist and vocalist with a number of new music ensembles, and in 2012 she became the youngest composer ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, for her Partita for Solo Voices. She has supplied an introduction to Plan and Elevation:

Commissioned by Dumbarton Oaks, and premièred by the Dover Quartet in the music room of Dumbarton Oaks on November 1, 2015.

I have always loved drawing the architecture around me when traveling, and some of my favorite lessons in musical composition have occurred by chance in my drawing practice over the years. While writing a string quartet to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Dumbarton Oaks, I returned to these essential ideas of space and proportion —to the challenges of trying to represent them on paper. The title, Plan & Elevation, refers to

two standard ways of representing architecture —essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor —often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.

I was fortunate to have been the inaugural music fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in 2014-15. Plan & Elevation examines different parts of the estate’s beautiful grounds and my personal experience in those particular spaces. Each movement is based on a simple ground bass line which supports a different musical concept or character. “The Ellipse” considers the notion of infinite repetition (I won’t deny a tiny Kierkegaard influence here). One can walk around and around the stone path, beneath the trimmed hornbeams, as I often did as a way to clear my mind while writing. The second movement, “The Cutting Garden,” is a fun fragmentation of various string quartets (primarily Ravel, Mozart K. 387, and my own Entr’acte, Valencia, and Punctum), referencing the variety of flowers grown there before they meet their inevitable end as cuttings for display. “The Herbaceous Border” is spare and strict at first, like the cold geometry of French formal gardens with their clear orthogonals (when viewed from the highest point), before building to the opposite of order: chaos. The fourth movement, “The Orangery,” is evokes the slim, fractured shadows in that room as the light tries to peek through the leaves of the aging fig vine. We end with my favorite spot in the garden, “The Beech Tree.” It is strong, simple, ancient, elegant, and quiet; it needs no introduction.

—Caroline Shaw

Canto para California GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Born September 26, 1972, Berkeley, California Composed: 2021 Approximate Duration: 12 minutes

I am a believer of human-driven climate change, reluctantly so. That is what four straight years of apocalyptic fires in your beloved home state will do. My husband and I diligently thin the forests on our property, installing water tanks and ponds, and covering edifices in fire-resistant stucco. We are regulars at classes at the fire station, and during fire season, have solar power at the ready for electrical outages, and emergency bags in the cars. And at the small music academy that I founded, my staff and I have begun leading classes for musicians about the climate crisis and talk frankly about lifestyle changes needed in our field.

Contested Eden, in two movements, was a difficult project for me. A few months before the deadline, when asked if I could consider addressing the wildfires of California in my piece for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, I was caught off guard. Then, I burst into tears and blurted out yes. What followed was a humbling period of apprehension against tackling the subject. When I did roll up my sleeves, I first wrote what could best be described as a melodramatic soundtrack for a theoretical film documentary on fire. Here’s the fire climbing up a Douglas fir: scurrying violins. There’s the ominous ascending column of smoke over hills before it sinks to the valley floor: horns in sixths to fifths to fourths to thirds to seconds, harmonized to descending bassoons. A solo flute could be the lonely bird hovering over a burned nest. Windchimes for...well, wind and maybe a charred kite. And riffing Ennio Morricone is always good for a firefighter’s vista shot surveying husks of homes against steam and ash.

This went on for a while, a couple of weeks. Ultimately, it was a useful, if mortifying, exorcism of tired clichés I’ll never show anyone, leaving behind just a couple of small usable germs: an original secular psalm, Canto para California, that forms an intimate lyrical first movement, followed by a second movement centered around the concept of in extremis, Latin for “in extreme circumstances.” in extremis...What an apt description for life in California during the past four seasons, a Herculean effort of normalcy on the part of Californians while death is constantly imminent. Something inside, deep in one’s spirit, simply perseveres even while surrounded by unimaginable chaos and loss.

After an initial slow build-up, the heart of the second movement is a slowly moving violin line that elegiacally descends, over several minutes, moving from the stratospheres down to its lowest register before handing off to the violas, who eventually hand off to the cellos, who hand off to the basses. All the while, against this almost too long falling arc, brief bits and pieces of earlier pieces I’ve authored come to life, albeit transformed, in the surrounding orchestral landscape before vanishing. Nothing coheres or makes sense, like memories that are of little help and comfort. That’s life in extremis.

Yet, the piece ends hopefully, a hint of the work’s opening and original secular psalm in tribute to the Eden that’s my beloved native state. So, while I honestly sometimes want to lie back in a comfortable bed of yesteryear, I recognize the past is going to stay there, and forward is what we’ve got. California’s never been a sleepy state, and an ultimately optimistic embrace of challenges to come is all I see for our future.

—Gabriela Lena Frank

Air and Simple Gifts JOHN WILLIAMS

Born February 8, 1932, Long Island, NY Composed: 2009 Approximate Duration: 4 minutes

John Williams composed Air and Simple Gifts for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Williams is famous for his heroic film scores like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the inauguration of an American president might seem to call for that kind of music. But Williams went in a different direction entirely: he wrote a brief, intimate, and very beautiful piece of chamber music, scored for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano. Air and Simple Gifts, as Williams titled his piece, was performed at the inauguration by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero. Or rather, they seemed to perform it—the freezing weather at the outdoor inauguration would have made it difficult to keep their instruments in tune, so the four musicians recorded the piece two days earlier and silently synced their instruments to that recording at the inauguration.

As its title suggests, Air and Simple Gifts falls into several sections. The opening Air, which Williams asks to have performed “Reverently,” is built on a simple falling melody that is passed between the instruments. The clarinet enters with the tune “Simple Gifts,” which had been composed in 1848 by the Shaker Joseph Brackett. That tune became famous when Aaron Copland used it in the closing section of his ballet Appalachian Spring, where it furnished the basis for a set of variations. Williams’ treatment of that tune is not, despite what some have claimed, an arrangement of Copland’s music, but is a series of variations of his own on that well-known melody. The variations conclude, the opening Air returns briefly, and an understated coda draws the music to its quiet close.

This is not the music we might have anticipated from this composer for such an occasion, but it set exactly the right tone for Obama’s inauguration, and it has gone on to have a life of its own—the Air and Simple Gifts has been frequently performed since then, and it has also been arranged for string orchestra.

Appalachian Spring Suite AARON COPLAND

Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn Died December 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, NY Composed: 1943-44 Approximate Duration: 25 minutes

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring has become such a classic that it is surprising to learn that this ballet took shape rather haphazardly. Copland and Martha Graham had long wanted to work together before that opportunity came in 1942 when music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned three new dance works from Graham and gave the choreographer her choice of composers. One of those Graham chose was Copland, and they set to work. But their plans were unclear. It was wartime and Graham wanted a specifically American subject, but her initial thought of something that would include spoken text, an Indian girl, and the Civil War did not appeal to Copland. The composer went ahead with only a general sense of Graham’s evolving scenarios. He began composition in June 1943 in Hollywood, where he was working on a film score, and completed the ballet the following summer in Cambridge, while teaching at Harvard; the orchestration was completed in Mexico. Graham was delighted with Copland’s music and adapted her choreography to fit his score (she in fact chose the title Appalachian Spring just weeks before the first performance, taking it from Hart Crane’s poem The Bridge). For his part, Copland conceived this music specifically for Martha Graham rather than for her constantly-evolving plot-lines. “When I wrote Appalachian Spring, I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well. Nobody else seems quite like Martha: she’s so proud, so very much herself. And she’s unquestionably very American: there something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American.” Copland’s working title for this music was simply “Ballet for Martha” (and it still says that on the score’s title page).

The première , at the Library of Congress in Washington on October 30, 1944, was a great success, and Copland’s score was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critics Circle Award the following year. Because the pit at the première was so small, Copland originally scored Appalachian Spring for an ensemble of only thirteen instruments: three woodwinds (flute, clarinet,

bassoon), double string quartet, contrabass, and piano. In the spring of 1945, he arranged a suite from the ballet for full symphony orchestra, deleting about eight minutes from the original ballet, and this has become the best-known version of this music. However, many preferred the clarity and purity of Copland’s original chamber orchestration, and so in 1958 he prepared a version of the suite for the original thirteen-instrument ensemble (specifying that the number of string players could be augmented if desired). This is the version performed at the present concert.

A note in the score outlines the subject of Appalachian Spring as Graham and Copland finally evolved it: the ballet tells of “a pioneer celebration in spring around a newlybuilt farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmerhusband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.”

This scenario is rather simple, but the story is timeless, and Copland’s wonderful music—glowing, fresh, strong— catches its mood perfectly. The action is easily followed. The opening section, which introduces the characters one by one, outlines the main theme of the ballet—a simple rising-and-falling shape—within a quiet haze of sound, and out of this bursts the general gathering: Copland portrays this with a jubilant A-major explosion that suggests country fiddling. A hopping little episode for woodwinds is the dance of the Bride and her Intended, who look forward to their life together (there is a dark interlude here—not all of life will be happy). Suddenly the revivalist and his flock appear and help celebrate the wedding with a barn dance. The Solo Dance of the Bride, marked Presto, is her attempt to convey her complex feelings on this day, and this leads to one of the most striking moments in Appalachian Spring: Copland has a solo clarinet sing the Shaker melody “Tis the Gift To Be Simple,” and there follow five variations, each a vision of the married couple’s life together. The last is stamped out triumphantly, and, then over prayer-like music from the strings, the Bride goes to take her place among her neighbors. The young couple is left together, “quiet and strong” as the ballet fades into silence on the music from the very beginning.

Benjamin Beilman

PRELUDE · 2 PM THE JAI Interview with Aaron Diehl and Inon Barnatan hosted by Robert John Hughes

This concert will also be live streamed

The Synergy Initiative is underwritten by:

Clara Wu Tsai

NO INTERMISSION

SYNERGY INITIATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES III: RHAPSODIES IN BLUES

Produced by Inon Barnatan & Clara Wu Tsai

Sunday, August 8, 2021 · 3 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL RAVEL Blues from Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano

(1875-1937) Benjamin Beilman, violin; Inon Barnatan, piano SCHULLER Suite for Wind Quintet

(1925-2015) Rose Lombardo, flute; Mary Lynch, oboe; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Brad Balliett, bassoon; Jennifer Montone, horn MILHAUD La création du monde, Opus 81b

(1892-1974) Prélude: Modéré Fugue Romance: Tendre et doux Scherzo Final: Modéré Stefan Jackiw, Benjamin Beilman, violins; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; Jay Campbell, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano WILLIAMS Selections from Zodiac Suite

(1910-1981) Leo

Virgo

Libra

Scorpio Aaron Diehl Trio

Aaron Diehl, piano; David Wong, bass; Aaron Kimmel, drums; SummerFest Chamber Orchestra; Eric Jacobsen, conductor (continued on next page)

BERNSTEIN Riffs for Clarinet, Piano, Bass, and Drums (1918-1990) Anthony McGill, clarinet; Aaron Diehl Trio GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue

(1910-1981) Aaron Diehl, Inon Barnatan, pianos; SummerFest Chamber Orchestra; Eric Jacobsen, conductor

PAUSE

The concert continues in the Wu Tsai QRT.yrd with a performance by the Aaron Diehl Trio

SummerFest Chamber Orchestra Eric Jacobsen, conductor Diana Cohen, Benjamin Beilman, Stefan Jackiw, Angela Jiye Bae, Jeanne Skrocki, Justin DeFilippis, Byungchan Lee, violins; Travis Maril, Ethan Pernela, Benjamin Zannoni, viola; Jay Campbell, Russell Houston, Eunghee Cho, cello; Timothy Cobb, David Wong, bass; Rose Lombardo, flute; Mary Lynch, oboe; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Brad Balliett, bassoon; Jennifer Montone, horn; John Reynolds, trumpet; Rachel Trumbore, trombone; Dustin Donahue, Aaron Kimmel, percussion

SYNERGY INITIATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES III: RHAPSODIES IN BLUE —PROGRAM NOTES

Program Notes by Eric Bromberger

Blues from 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: 18 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 second movement.

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.

Suite for Wind Quintet GUNTHER SCHULLER

Born November 22, 1925, New York City Died June 21, 2015, Boston Composed: 1945 Approximate Duration: 6 minutes

The son of a violinist in the New York Philharmonic, Gunther Schuller learned to play the French horn and flute as a boy. He quickly became so fine a horn-player that before his eighteenth birthday he was named principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and from 1945 until 1959 he served as principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Schuller’s talents were many. As an educator, he taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Yale, Berkshire Music Festival, and the New England Conservatory, of which he was director from 1967 until 1977. As a conductor, Schuller led all the major American orchestras, championed the music of contemporary composers, and wrote a textbook on conducting. He composed extensively for orchestra and chamber ensembles, and he had a lifelong passion for jazz, both as composer and performer—it was Schuller who coined the term “Third Stream” to refer to the effort to combine classical music and jazz.

Schuller composed his Suite for Wind Quintet in 1945, the year he turned twenty. This very concise work—it lasts just over five minutes—is in three movements and is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. It was composed the year Schuller joined the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the première was given by an ensemble composed of the principal wind players of that orchestra. As one might expect from someone who played both flute and horn, the Suite is beautifully written for wind instruments, and at moments one senses Schuller’s love for jazz.

The three movements pass by so quickly that they hardly require comment. The oboe has a leading melodic role in all three movements, and in the jaunty Prelude it sings above a broken ostinato line; a slower middle section leads to a return of the opening material and the sudden close. The Blues makes its way above a rocking accompaniment from the lower instruments; the movement rises to a climax on a bluesy rip for horn, a passage Schuller presumably wrote for himself. The concluding Toccata whips past in only ninety seconds; along the way we hear some quick but unmistakable reminiscences of The Rite of Spring. La création du monde, Opus 81b DARIUS MILHAUD

Born September 4, 1892, Aix-en-Provence, France Died June 22, 1974, Geneva Composed: 1922-23 Approximate Duration: 18 minutes

In 1922 Rolf de Maré, director of the Ballets suédois, planned a new production for his company’s season in Paris. The subject would be the creation of the world as told in African folklore, and Blaise Cendrars produced the scenario for a brief ballet. The curtain comes up on darkness, and out of the mass of dancers crowded into the center of the stage African gods of creation emerge to chant incantations. As the stage lightens, life begins. A tree grows tall, its branches fold back to touch the earth, and plants and animals come to life. A man and a woman appear, encounter each other in wonder, and begin a dance of desire. That desire satisfied, the man and woman welcome the coming of the first spring as around them birds flutter their wings and call to each other.

For the music, de Maré turned to the young French composer Darius Milhaud, and Milhaud made a daring— yet very appropriate—decision about the kind of music he would write. Because the ballet had an African setting, Milhaud turned to a type of music that was all the rage in 1920s Paris: African-American jazz. It was an easy choice, for Milhaud was strongly attracted to jazz. During a 1922 visit to the United States, he had made a point of going to Harlem to hear the music played in the clubs there, including the ensembles of Paul Whiteman and Leo Reisman, and he brought a huge collection of jazz records back with him to Paris. In the spring of 1923 Milhaud composed the music for La création du monde, scoring it for just seventeen players. But rather than writing for a small classical orchestra, Milhaud scored the ballet for what was in effect a jazz band: an ensemble of winds (including saxophone) and percussion, with just a handful of string players.

Shortly after the premiere, Milhaud arranged his jazz-inspired ballet for a very classical ensemble: a piano quintet. Milhaud marks the beginning Modéré, and over the steady accompaniment of quiet quarter-notes a wandering, haunting viola solo leads us into the primal darkness. The Chaos before Creation is portrayed by a jazzy fugue. This energy subsides, and the third section—picturing the creation of trees, insects and animals—draws upon ideas introduced in the first section. These are followed by a quiet blues theme; parts of this section may remind listeners of Gershwin, who would compose Rhapsody in

Blue the following year. The Man and the Woman make their appearance in the jazzy Scherzo, with the couple’s increasing desire depicted by an energetic dance. The final section, which brings the kiss shared by the two principal dancers, reintroduces themes heard earlier. The music here is rousing and boisterous at first, but it grows quiet as the various dancers leave the stage, and the ballet drifts beautifully into silence on an unresolved D-major chord.

La création du monde was premiered on October 25, 1923, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the same hall where—ten years before—Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring had touched off a riot. La création du monde did not touch off a riot, but it drew sniffs from the Paris critics, who felt its jazz idiom more suited to the dance hall than to ballet. In his autobiography, Milhaud took his revenge: “Ten years later the selfsame critics were discussing the philosophy of jazz and learnedly demonstrating that La création was the best of my works.”

Selections from Zodiac Suite MARY LOU WILLIAMS

Born May 8, 1910, Atlanta Died May 28, 1981, Durham, NC Composed: 1944-45 Approximate Duration: 14 minutes

Mary Lou Williams taught herself to play the piano at age 3, and she quickly developed into one of the greatest jazz musicians of the twentieth century. She made her career as a performer (she released over a hundred albums), an arranger (for Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, and many others), and as a composer. Williams was a powerful advocate for jazz and musical education, and she was tireless in her support of musicians who were recovering from addiction. She taught at Duke University in 1977, and she performed for President Carter at the White House in 1978.

One of Williams’ most famous compositions is the Zodiac Suite, and it took shape in an unusual fashion. In the early 1940s, she had a radio program on WNEW in New York called “The Mary Lou Williams Piano Workshop” (and it is a measure of her fame that—during wartime and while she was still in her early thirties—Williams had a weekly radio program of her own). In 1944 she began writing a series of short pieces for this program, each inspired by a different sign of the zodiac and each intended as a musical portrait of a friend born under that sign. Williams described how these pieces came to be written: “I read a book about astrology, and though I didn’t know much about it, I decided to do the suite as based on musicians I knew born under the various signs. I had no time to write, or go in the studio and record, so after those first three (signs), I’d just sit there and play, and the music was created as we were playing. You might call that real jazz composing.” These pieces (there are actually seventeen of them rather than just twelve because she wrote several for the same sign) were for solo piano, for piano and bass, and for piano, bass, and drums. She completed the series in 1945 and then arranged the pieces for piano and an 18-piece jazz orchestra. This version was premiered at Town Hall on December 31, 1945, and the following year she arranged three movements for full symphony orchestra; Williams was the soloist when the New York Philharmonic premiered that version in 1946—it was one of that orchestra’s first encounters with jazz.

The concert offers the Leo, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio movements from the Zodiac Suite.

Riffs for Clarinet, Piano, Bass, and Drums LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Born August 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA Died October 14, 1990, New York City Composed: 1949 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

In 1949 jazz band leader Woody Herman, who had already commissioned Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto, asked Leonard Bernstein to write a piece for his band. At that point Bernstein was a 30-year-old Wunderkind who had substituted at the last-minute for Bruno Walter with the New York Philharmonic and had made a name for himself as the composer of the ballet Fancy Free and the musical On the Town. Bernstein completed the piece for Herman— which he called Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs—on November 4, 1949, but by that time Herman’s Herd had disbanded, and Bernstein’s piece went on the shelf. Its première finally took place on October 16, 1955, as part of the Omnibus telecast of Bernstein’s program “What Is Jazz?”

Bernstein originally scored Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs for large forces: five saxophones, five trumpets, four trombones, plus piano, percussion, and string bass, as well as a solo clarinet in the final section. Bernstein scored the opening Prelude only for brass and percussion, and the Fugue only for saxes. Riffs, the final—and longest—movement, is “for Everyone,” and it features a prominent part for solo B-flat clarinet. Riffs is heard at this concert in an arrangement for clarinet and piano, with optional parts for string bass and drums. A riff is a brief repetitive phrase, and—after the piano’s introduction—the clarinet lays out the basic riff, a slinky, climbing two-measure figure. Gradually the other

instruments enter, Bernstein recalls music from the earlier movements, and Riffs drives to an spirited conclusion, with the solo clarinet sailing high above all the energy.

Rhapsody in Blue GEORGE GERSHWIN

Born September 28, 1898, Brooklyn Died July 11, 1937, Beverly Hills Composed: 1924 Approximate Duration: 18 minutes

If—as Dvořák suggested—American classical music would have to come from uniquely American roots, then Rhapsody in Blue is probably the piece of American classical music. In it, Gershwin combined the European idea of the piano concerto with American jazz and in the process created a piece of music that has become famous throughout the world—in addition to its many recordings by American orchestras, Rhapsody in Blue has been recorded by orchestras in England, Germany, Australia, and Russia. Gershwin was in fact aware that Rhapsody in Blue might become a kind of national piece; he said that during its composition he “heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”

Classical purists argue that this is not a true piano concerto, and jazz purists argue that it is not true jazz. Of course both are right, but none of that matters—Rhapsody in Blue is a smashing success on its own terms. Gershwin was right to call this one-movement work a rhapsody, with that term’s suggestion of a form freer than the concerto. Soloist and orchestra are not so tightly integrated as in a concerto, and the Rhapsody tends to be episodic: the piano plays alone much of the time and then gives way to orchestral interludes; only rarely does Gershwin combine all his forces.

Gershwin wrote the Rhapsody in the space of less than a month early in 1924, when he was only 25. Because he was uncertain about his ability to orchestrate, that job was given to Ferde Grofé, who would later compose the Grand Canyon Suite. At the premiere on February 12, 1924, Gershwin was soloist with a small jazz ensemble, but most performances today use Grofé’s version for full orchestra. The present concert, however, offers a new version of Rhapsody in Blue, arranged for two pianos accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble.

The Rhapsody has one of the most famous beginnings in all of music: the clarinet trill that suddenly spirals upward in a seductive, sleazy glissando leads directly into the main theme, which will recur throughout. The various episodes are easy to follow, though one should note Gershwin’s ability to move so smoothly from episode to episode—these changes in tempo and mood seem almost effortless. Also noteworthy is the big E-major string tune marked Andantino moderato con espressione; near the end Gershwin transforms its easy flow into a jazzy romp that ends in one of the most ear-splitting chords ever written.

Daniil Trifonov

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Balourdet String Quartet performs Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 “Dissonance”

Support for this Prelude is provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer

NO INTERMISSION

FOR A GREAT ARTIST

Tuesday, August 10, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

BERIO Folk Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1925-2003) Black is the color (USA) I wonder as I wander (USA) Loosin yelav (Armenia) Rossignolet du bois (France) A la femminisca (Sicily) La donna ideale (Italy) Ballo (Italy) Motettu de tristura (Sardinia) Malurous qu’o uno fenno (Auvergne) Lo fiolaire (Auvergne) Azerbaijan love song (Azerbaijan) Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano; Rose Lombardo, flute; David Shifrin, clarinet; Nathan Schram, viola; Jay Campbell, cello; Julie Smith Phillips, harp; Dustin Donahue, Eric Derr, percussion TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Trio in A Minor, Opus 50

(1840-1893) Pezzo élégiaco

Tema con variazioni

Variazione finale e coda: Allegro risoluto e con fuoco Daniil Trifonov, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

Folk Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Ensemble LUCIANO BERIO

Born October 24, 1925, Oneglia, Italy Died May 27, 2003, Rome Composed: 1964 Approximate Duration: 24 minutes

Luciano Berio was always part of the avant garde and wrote with such different techniques as serialism, indeterminacy, electronic music, and collage. Yet Berio also had a profound sense of the past, and he made a number of arrangements of music by earlier composers. Some of these were of composers from this distant past (Frescobaldi, Gabrieli, Purcell), some of major composers from the symphonic repertory (Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler), and some were arrangements of contemporary songs, ranging from Kurt Weill to the Beatles. Berio’s Folk Songs fall into the final category.

Berio spent the decade 1962-72 in the United States, where he taught at Mills College, Harvard, and Juilliard. In 1964, he arranged a set of eleven folk songs from eight different countries for mezzo-soprano and a chamber ensemble of flute, clarinet, viola, cello, harp, and two percussionists; this version was première d that year in Oakland by the composer’s wife, the soprano Cathy Berberian. Following his return to Europe, Berio arranged the Folk Songs for singer and small orchestra, and this version was premièred, again by Cathy Berberian, in Zurich in 1973.

These eleven songs hail originally from the United States, Armenia, France, Sicily, Italy, Sardinia, the Auvergne, and Azerbaijan. Some of the songs are well-known, some utterly obscure, and two of them Berio composed himself in the manner of national folk songs. These are fairly straightforward settings: Berio does not re-compose the songs, nor does he take unusual liberties with them. He preserves the original vocal line and creates an orchestral framework that, as he said, tries to preserve some of the national character of each song. By their nature, these songs do not require commentary, and just a few observations may be in order. Many listeners will recognize the first two, for both are by John Jacob Niles, written in the manner of Appalachian folk songs. The opening of the first is meant to invoke the sound of country fiddling, and Berio creates that sound here with two keening violas. Berio took the liberty of composing the two Italian songs, La donna ideale and Ballo, and the two songs from the Auvergne may also be familiar, for they are among the songs that Joseph Canteloube set in his Songs from the Auvergne. The concluding Azerbaijani love song is particularly interesting. It was discovered on an aged and much-scratched 78 rpm recording by Cathy Berberian, who transcribed the words from that recording; a note in the score points out that this text has “so far defied translation.”

1. Black is the color

Black is the color Of my true love’s hair, His lips are something rosy fair, The sweetest smile And the kindest hands; I love the grass whereon he stands. I love my love and well he knows, I love the grass where on he goes; If he no more on earth will be, ’Twill surely be the end of me. Black is the color, etc.

2. I wonder as I wander

I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus our Savior did come for to die For poor orn’ry people like you and like I, I wonder as I wander out under the sky. When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow stall With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all, But high from the Heavens a star’s light did fall The promise of ages it then did recall. If Jesus had wanted of any wee thing A star in the sky or a bird on the wing Or all of God’s angels in Heav’n for to sing He surely could have had it ’cause he was the king.

3. Loosin yelav

Loosin yelav ensareetz Saree partzòr gadareetz Shegleeg megleeg yeresov Pòrvetz kedneen loosni dzov. Jan a loosin Jan ko loosin Jan ko gòlor sheg yereseen Xavarn arten tchòkatzav Oo el kedneen tchògatzav Loosni loosov halatzvadz Moot amberi metch mònadz. Jan a loosin, etc.

4. Rossignolet du bois

Rossignolet du bois, Rossignolet sauvage, Apprends-moi ton langage, Apprends-moi-z à parler, Apprends-moi la manière Comment il faut aimer. Comment il faut aimer Je m’en vais vous le dire, Faut chanter des aubades Deux heures après minuit, Faut lui chanter: ‘La belle, C’est pour vous réjouir’. On m’avait dit, la belle, Que vous avez des pommes, Des pommes de renettes Qui sont dans vot’ jardin. Permettez-moi, la belle, Que j’y mette la main. Non, je ne permettrai pas Que vous touchiez mes pommes, Prenez d’abord la lune Et le soleil en main, Puis vous aurez les pommes Qui sont dans mon jardin.

The moon has risen

The moon has risen over the hill, over the top of the hill, its red rosy face casting radiant light on the ground. O dear moon with your dear light and your dear, round, rosy face! Before, the darkness lay spread upon the earth; moonlight has now chased it into the dark clouds. O dear moon, etc.

Little nightingale

Little nightingale of the woods, little wild nightingale, teach me your secret language, teach me how to speak like you, show me the way to love aright. The way to love aright I can tell you straight away, you must sing serenades two hours after midnight, you must sing to her: ‘My pretty one. This is for your delight.’ They told me, my pretty one, that you have some apples, some rennet apples, growing in your garden. Allow me, my pretty one, to touch them. No, I shall not allow you to touch my apples. First, hold the moon and the sun in your hands, then you may have the apples that grow in my garden

5. A la femminisca

E Signuruzzu miù faciti bon tempu Ha iu l’amanti miù’mmezzu lu mari L’arvuli d’oru e li ntinni d’argentu La Marunnuzza mi l’av’aiutari. Chi pozzanu arrivòri ‘nsarvamentu E comu arriva ‘na littra Ma fari ci ha mittiri du duci paroli Comu ti l’ha passatu mari, mari.

6. La donna ideale

L’omo chi mojer vor piar, De quattro cosse de’e spiar. La primiera è com’el è naa, L’altra è se l’è ben accostumaa, L’altra è como el è forma, La quarta è de quanto el è dotaa. Se queste cosse ghe comprendi A lo nome di Dio la prendi.

7. Ballo

La la la la la la … Amor fa disviare li più saggi E chi più l’ama meno ha in sé misura Più folle è quello che più s’innamura. La la la la la la… Amor non cura di fare suoi dannaggi Co li suoi raggi mette tal cafura Che non può raffreddare per freddura.

8. Motettu de tristura

Tristu passirillanti Comenti massimbillas. Tristu passirillanti E puita mi consillas A prongi po s’amanti. Tristu passirillanti Cand’ happess interrada Tristu passirillanti Faimi custa cantada Cand’ happess interrada

May the Lord send fine weather

May the Lord send fine weather, for my sweetheart is at sea; his mast is of gold, his sails of silver. May Our Lady give me her help, so that they get back safely. And if a letter arrives, may there be two sweet words written, telling me how it goes with you at sea.

The ideal woman

When a man has a mind to take a wife, there are four things he should check: the first is her family, the second is her manners, the third is her figure, the fourth is her dowry. If she passes muster on these, then, in God’s name, let him marry her!

Dance

La la la la la … Love makes even the wisest mad, and he who loves most has least judgement. The greater love is the greater fool. La la la la la … Love is careless of the harm he does. His darts cause such a fever that not even coldness can cool it.

Song of sadness

Sorrowful nightingale how like me you are! Sorrowful nightingale, console me if you can as I weep for my lover. Sorrowful nightingale, when I am buried, sorrowful nightingale, sing this song when I am buried

9. Malurous qu’o uno fenno

Malurous qu’o uno fenno, Maluros qué n’o cat! Qué n’o cat n’en bou uno Qué n’o uno n’en bou pas! Tradèra ladèrida rèro, etc. Urouzo lo fenno Qu’o l’omé qué li cau! Urouz inquéro maito O quèlo qué n’o cat! Tradèra ladèrida rèro, etc.

10. Lo fiolaire

Ton qu’èrè pitchounèlo Gordavè loui moutous, Lirou lirou lirou … Lirou la diri tou tou la lara. Obio n’o counoulhèto É n’ai près un postrou. Lirou lirou, etc. Per fa lo biroudèto Mè domond’ un poutou. Lirou lirou, etc. E ièu soui pas ingrato: En lièt d’un nin fau dous! Lirou lirou, etc.

11. Azerbaijan love song

[Transcription defies translation.]

Wretched is he

Wretched is he who has a wife, wretched is he who has not! He who hasn’t got one wants one, he who has not, doesn’t! Tralala tralala, etc. Happy the woman who has the man she wants! Happier still is she who has no man at all! Tralala tralala, etc.

The spinner

When I was a little girl I tended the sheep. Lirou lirou lirou … Lirou la diri tou tou la lara. I had a little staff and I called a shepherd to me. Lirou lirou, etc. For looking after my sheep he asked me for a kiss. Lirou lirou, etc. And I, not one to be mean, Gave him two instead of one. Lirou lirou, etc.

11. Azerbaijan love song

[Transcription defies translation.]

Piano Trio in A Minor, Opus 50 PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg Composed: 1881-82 Approximate Duration: 50 minutes

Nikolai Rubinstein, brother of the pianist Anton Rubinstein, had hired Tchaikovsky to teach composition at the Moscow Conservatory and later encouraged him as a composer, conducting and championing his music. When Nikolai died on March 23, 1881, at the age of 46, Tchaikovsky resolved to write a work in his memory, but it was difficult for him to choose the form for such a piece. Nikolai had been a pianist, but a piano concerto did not seem a proper memorial piece. Tchaikovsky disliked the combination of piano and strings in chamber music but eventually overcame this aversion to write the Trio in A Minor as the memorial to Rubinstein; it was the only time Tchaikovsky used a piano in his chamber music. He began work on the trio in December 1881 while living in Rome and completed the score on February 9, 1882. The manuscript is inscribed: “In memory of a Great Artist.”

A particular memory came back to Tchaikovsky as he worked on this music: in 1873, after the première of Tchaikovsky’s The Snow Maiden (which had been conducted by Rubinstein), faculty members from the Moscow Conservatory had gone on a picnic in the sunny, blossomcovered countryside. Here they were surrounded by curious peasants, and the gregarious Rubinstein quickly made friends and had the peasants singing and dancing. As he set to work on the trio, Tchaikovsky remembered how much Rubinstein had liked one of these songs.

The trio as completed has a very unusual form: it is in two massive movements that last a total of almost 50 minutes. The first movement in particular has proven baffling to critics, who have been unable to decide whether it is in sonata or rondo form. It is built on two sharply contrasted themes: the cello’s somber opening melody—which Tchaikovsky marks molto espressivo—and a vigorous falling theme for solo piano, marked Allegro giusto. Tchaikovsky alternates these themes through this dramatic movement, which closes with a quiet restatement of the cello’s opening theme, now played in octaves by the piano.

The second movement is a huge set of variations. The theme of these variations is the peasant melody Rubinstein had liked so much on the picnic in 1873, and Tchaikovsky puts this simple tune through eleven quite different variations. Particularly striking are the fifth, in which the piano’s high notes seem to echo the sound of sleigh bells; the sixth, a waltz introduced by the cello; the eighth, a powerful fugue; and the tenth, a mazurka introduced by the piano. So individual and dramatic are these variations that several critics instantly assumed that each must depict an incident from Rubinstein’s life and set about guessing what each variation was “about.” Tchaikovsky was dumbfounded when this was reported to him; to a friend he wrote: “How amusing! To compose music without the slightest desire to represent something and suddenly to discover that it represents this or that, it is what Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme must have felt when he learnt that he had been speaking in prose all his life.”

The trio concludes with a final variation so huge that many have considered it a separate movement. It comes to a somber end: Tchaikovsky marks the final page Lugubre (“lugubrious”), and over a funeral march in the piano come fragments of the cello’s theme from the very beginning of the first movement, now marked piangendo: “weeping.” This theme gradually dissolves, and the piano marches into silence.

Stefan Jackiw

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Trio Syzygy performs Ives’ Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano

Support for this Prelude is provided by: Gordon Brodfuehrer

NO INTERMISSION

SYMPHONIC DANCES

Wednesday, August 11, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

ENESCU Violin Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, Opus 25 (1881-1955) Moderato malinconio Andante sostenuto Allegro con brio, ma non troppo mosso Stefan Jackiw, violin; Inon Barnatan, piano RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances, Opus 45 for Two Pianos

(1873-1943) Non allegro

Andante con moto (Tempo di valse)

Lento assai; Allegro vivace; Lento assai. Come prima Daniil Trifonov, Inon Barnatan, pianos

Violin Sonata No. 3 in A Minor, Opus 25 GEORGES ENESCU

Born August 19, 1881, Liveni Virnav, Romania Died May 3/4, 1955, Paris Composed: 1926 Approximate Duration: 24 minutes

The greatest musician to come from Romania, Georges Enescu was also one of the finest violinists of the twentieth century. Enescu trained in Vienna and Paris and then had an international career, performing and conducting throughout the world; he kept Paris and Bucharest as his two homes and spent a significant amount of time in his native country, where he did much for Romanian music. As a composer, Enescu is unfortunately remembered for just one work, the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, and its overpopularity has obscured the rest of his achievement, which includes the impressive opera Oedipe, five symphonies, and a large amount of chamber music.

Enescu composed his Violin Sonata No. 3 in 1926, dedicating it to the memory of violinist Franz Kneisel— longtime concertmaster of the Boston Symphony—who had died earlier that year. The key to this striking music can be found in its subtitle: “in the popular Romanian character.” Enescu sets out here to wed Romanian folk music with the classical violin sonata: the result is a virtuoso violin sonata and a very exotic piece of music. Though the sonata contains no specific folk tunes, Enescu—like Bartók in his Violin Rhapsodies, composed at almost exactly the same time—assimilates a folk idiom so completely that it becomes the raw material for his own music. Romanian folk music inevitably suggests a gypsy character, and listeners will hear that in this sonata, as well as characteristic Romanian melodic patterns and Enescu’s attempt to mirror the sound of native instruments such as the cimbalon and lautar. He notates the score with unusual precision, specifying notes to be played slightly sharp or flat, how the piano is to be pedaled, and so on.

The Third Violin Sonata has become one of Enescu’s most popular works, recorded by such violinists as Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern. While it is much better to listen to such a work as pure music, something of its emotional character can be understood in a remark Enescu made to one of his students: he described the sonata as “a fantasy on the life and soul of the gypsy fiddler, the kind of musical vagabond who roamed about Europe in the old days, playing at campfires, imitating not only the sounds of nature but also the techniques and stunts of other gypsy players.”

The sonata is in the standard three movements but is quite free in structure and expression. The opening Moderato malinconico does indeed have a melancholy air. Its first theme-group consists of a series of brief thematic ideas, all riding along a very supple rhythmic pulse; these will be combined and developed across the span of the movement. The dancing second group quickly turns passionate and soaring; the brief development leads to a modified return of earlier material and a quiet close.

The Andante sostenuto opens with the strange sound of a one-note piano ostinato—a high B—sounding obsessively; over this constant pulse the violin sings the first idea entirely in harmonics. That opening ostinato sets a pattern that will characterize this movement: it is full of recurrent pedal sounds—some of these are like gypsy bagpipes, and at other times the piano mimics the jangling sound of the cimbalom. This movement is quite varied, with moments of calm giving way to more ebullient episodes. The finale dances to life on the piano’s sharp-edged chords, and quickly the violin leads the way through a series of varied sections. This movement is particularly sonorous: there are extended passages played in pizzicato chords, tumultuous waves of piano sound, and striking tremolo and harmonic effects from the violin. The sonata drives to a dramatic— and resounding—conclusion, marked triple forte.

Symphonic Dances, Opus 45 for Two Pianos SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born April 1, 1873, Semyonovo, Russia Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills Composed: 1940 Approximate Duration: 35 minutes

Rachmaninoff spent the summer of 1940 at Orchard Point, a seventeen-acre estate on Long Island that had groves, orchards, and a secluded studio where he could work in peace. There, very near the East and West Egg of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Rachmaninoff set to work on what would be his final complete work, a set of dances for orchestra. By August, he had the score complete in a version for two pianos, and—because he regarded this as a dance score—he consulted with choreographer Mikhail Fokine, a neighbor that summer. Rachmaninoff tentatively titled the piece Fantastic Dances and gave its three movements names— Noon, Twilight, and Midnight—that might suggest a possible scenario. Fokine liked the music when Rachmaninoff played it for him, and they began to look ahead to a ballet production, but Fokine’s death shortly thereafter ended any

thought of that. Even by the end of the summer, though, Rachmaninoff appears to have rethought the character of this music. By the time he completed the orchestration on October 29, he had changed its name to Symphonic Dances and dropped the descriptive movement titles, and when Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the première on January 3, 1941, it was as a purely orchestral composition. Rachmaninoff himself seemed surprised by what he had created, and when friends congratulated him on the energy of this music, he said, “I don’t know how it happened—it must have been my last spark.” Two years later he was dead.

The orchestral version of the Symphonic Dances has become one of the most popular of Rachmaninoff’s late works. This concert, however, offers the unusual opportunity to hear this music in the form in which Rachmaninoff originally composed it—for two pianos; this was the version Fokine heard during the summer of 1941 and planned to choreograph. The orchestral version is remarkable for the opulence of its instrumental color (it includes the rarely-heard alto saxophone) and the verve of Rachmaninoff’s writing; it is one of his most exciting scores—and one of his loudest. Two pianos cannot pretend to match the variety of color produced by symphonic instruments, nor can they match the sonic punch of a onehundred piece orchestra. But the version for two virtuoso pianists offers an appeal all its own, in the excitement of a more intimate performance and in the black-andwhite clarity it brings to Rachmaninoff’s sometimes thick orchestral textures.

The Symphonic Dances are remarkable for Rachmaninoff’s subtle compositional method. Rather than relying on the Big Tune, he evolves this music from the most economical of materials—rhythmic fragments, bits of theme, simple patterns—which are then built up into powerful movements that almost overflow with rhythmic energy. Rachmaninoff may have been 67 and in declining strength in 1940, but that summer he wrote with the hand of a master.

The music opens with some of these fragments, just bits of sound, and over them is heard the three-note pattern that will permeate the Symphonic Dances, reappearing in endless forms across the span of this score. Rachmaninoff plays it up here into a great climax, which subsides as the opening fragments lead to the wistful central episode; this slow interlude gradually makes its way back to the explosive gestures of the beginning section. In the closing moments, Rachmaninoff rounds matter off with a grand chorale (here finally is the Big Tune), and the movement winks into silence on the fragments with which it began.

The second movement is marked Tempo di valse, the only explicit dance indication in the score. Fokine himself warned Rachmaninoff not to feel bound to “dance” music (and specifically to waltz music) when writing music for dancing—if the music had vitality and character, Fokine felt that he could find a way to make it work as a ballet. Rachmaninoff may call for a waltz tempo here, but he avoids the traditional meter of 3/4, setting the music instead in 6/8 and 9/8. This waltz evolves through several episodes—some soaring, some powerful—before the movement subsides to a sudden, almost breathless close.

The slow introduction to the final movement is enlivened by interjections of the three-note pattern. Gradually these anneal into the Allegro vivace, and off the movement goes, full of rhythmic energy and the sound of ringing bells. A central episode in the tempo of the introduction sings darkly (Rachmaninoff marks it lamentoso), and finally the Allegro vivace returns to rush the Symphonic Dances to the close. Out of this rush, some unexpected features emerge: a quotation from Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony (composed nearly fifty years earlier), the liturgical chant “Blessed Be the Lord,” and— finally—that old Rachmaninoff obsession, the Dies Irae. At first this is only hinted at, but gradually it takes shape amid the blazing rush and finally is shouted out in all its glory as this music dances furiously to a close guaranteed to rip the top off a concert hall.

As he finished each of his symphonies, Joseph Haydn would write Laus Deo—“Praise God”—at the end of the manuscript. At the end of the manuscript of Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff—perhaps aware that this would be his last work—wrote (in Russian) the simple phrase: “I thank Thee, Lord.”

David Shifrin Jennifer Johnson Cano Kelly Markgraf Marc Neikrug

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE JAI Interview with Marc Neikrug hosted by Nicolas Reveles

Support for this program and the Flux Quartet is generously provided by:

Judith Lasley and Eric Bachner

Additional support is provided by: FLUX Quartet Sue and Chris Fan

NO INTERMISSION

A SONG BY MAHLER

Thursday, August 12, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

A SONG BY MAHLER

A New Opera by Marc Neikrug WEST COAST PREMIÈRE

Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano Kelly Markgraf, bass-baritone David Shifrin, clarinet FLUX Quartet Tom Chiu, Conrad Harris, violins; Max Mandel, viola; Felix Fan, cello Doug Fitch, director Nicholas Houfek, lighting design

Co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Northwest with the support of the CMNW Commissioning Fund, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest, and Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival.

A Song by Mahler MARC NEIKRUG

Born September 24, 1946, New York City Composed: 1981 Approximate Duration: 80 minutes

A Song by Mahler is the third piece I have written in a genre that I see as a combination of theater and music. I have tried to combine these two forms in a way that addresses some of the problems I find in opera, particularly the fact that singing any set of words takes approximately three times as long as speaking them. This leads to a sense of time, which is not how we experience “real time.” Another aspect, which I have always found problematic, is the setting of purely mundane, everyday words into singing.

In these works, I have written text to be performed as in a play while composing music which, as in an opera, conveys underlying and essential emotional context. In the previous two pieces, there was no singing at all. In this one, I employ both speech and singing. The speech is rhythmically controlled in order to sychronize with the music, but it is essentially “acted,” as in a play. The singing takes over when an emotional threshold is reached where speaking doesn’t suffice.

The play itself considers the situation of a concertizing singer who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She confronts the reality of this, as does her husband, who is also her accompanist. The play is not an attempt at documenting the myriad aspects of the disease. It is, rather, an attempt to address the specific emotional evolution of this couple, touching on their love and their particular relationship to music.

I have used one Mahler song, Liebst du um Schönheit (If you Love for Beauty), as a vehicle for the story. It is the song the play’s singer always performed as her last encore in concerts. I place a master class early in the play in order to explain the deep meaning of the song for her personally, and in order for our audience to understand it. Her gradual deterioration and her husband’s attempts to adjust, while also trying to keep his wife connected through music, lead to an eventual resolution and an evolved sense of their love.

—Marc Neikrug

Clive Greensmith

Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu

PRELUDE · 2 PM THE JAI Interview with Alisa Weilerstein, Inon Barnatan, and Aaron Zigman hosted by Laura Prichard

This concert will also be live streamed

AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES IV: THE SILVER SCORE

Sunday, August 15, 2021 · 3 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

Xavier Foley

HERRMANN Psycho Suite (1911-1975) Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Byers, cello Balourdet String Quartet Angela Jiye Bae, Justin DeFilippis, violins; Benjamin Zannoni, viola; Russell Houston, cello Xavier Foley, bass PHILIP GLASS The Poet Acts (b. 1937) Inon Barnatan, piano JOHN The Red Violin Caprices CORIGLIANO Augustin Hadelich, violin

(b. 1938) BARBER Adagio for Strings (1910-1981) Balourdet String Quartet NICHOLAS Forgotten Waltz No. 2 BRITELL Inon Barnatan, piano

(b. 1980) JOHN WILLIAMS Star Wars: May the Fource be with You (arr. Attacca Quartet)

(b. 1932) Augustin Hadelich, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello

INTERMISSION AARON ZIGMAN Rhapsody for Cello and Piano (2021) WORLD PREMIÈRE (b. 1963) Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano KORNGOLD Quintet for Piano and Strings in E Major, Opus 15

(1897-1957) Mässiges Zeitmass, mit schwungvoll blühenden Ausdruck

Mit grösster Ruhe, stets auserst gebundend und ausdruckvoll

Finale: Gemessen, beinahe pathetisch; Allegro giocoso Juho Pohjonen, piano; Augustin Hadelich, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, viola; Clive Greensmith, cello

Psycho Suite BERNARD HERRMANN

Born June 29, 1911, New York City Died December 24, 1975, Los Angeles Composed: 1960 Approximate Duration: 15 minutes

“Hitchcock has gone too far this time!” ranted one reviewer after the release of Psycho on June 16, 1960. Whether Hitchcock had gone too far remains a question of taste, but the film’s depiction of matricide, madness, crossdressing, and the famous shower scene certainly took the movie into entirely new territory cinematically. More than half a century later, Psycho remains one of the most famous movies ever made, and much of its continuing success is due to its score. The composer was Bernard Herrmann, who scored such films as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Taxi Driver and who was a close (if sometimes stormy) collaborator with Hitchcock—Herrman wrote the scores for The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Marnie, and other Hitchcock films.

One of the most distinctive things about Herrmann’s music for Psycho was his decision to score it only for string orchestra. Hitchcock at first objected to this, but Herrmann overcame those objections to produce one of the most famous—and effective—film scores in history: Hitchcock himself later confessed that “33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.” Certain moments in that score are etched into everyone’s memory: the driving, nervous music of the Prelude (which is even more effective when it comes back to accompany the scene where Marion Crane is driving through the rainy night searching for a place to stay) or the shrieking string glissandos that accompany the murder in the shower—each of those shrieks seems to stab into a listener in the same way that the huge knife of deranged Norman Bates stabs into the helpless Marion.

The music from Psycho has been heard in many arrangements. The present arrangement for string quartet by Richard Birchell includes music from the score’s most famous sequences: the Prelude, The City, The Madhouse, The Water, and the unsettling final moments of the film as Marion’s car is pulled from the mud. The Poet Acts PHILIP GLASS

Born January 31, 1937, Baltimore Composed: 2002 Approximate Duration:4 minutes

Stephen Daldry’s film The Hours (2002) was based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which had been published four years earlier. The Hours— which starred Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman—tells the story of three women, each of whom lives in a completely different time and place: 1940’s England, 1950’s California, and contemporary New York. Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway provided a linking metaphor for all three tales in The Hours, and Nicole Kidman won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in the film.

Philip Glass was asked to compose the music for The Hours, and he responded with what many consider his finest film score: it won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Score that year, and it was nominated for an Academy Award. For the score, Glass used a small ensemble, consisting primarily of strings and piano. The Poet Acts, the opening music in the film, is dark and subdued music that rocks gently across its brief span—it establishes perfectly the somber mood for the complex tale that will follow.

The Red Violin Caprices JOHN CORIGLIANO

Born February 10, 1938, New York City Composed: 1999 Approximate Duration: 9 minutes

American composer John Corigliano wrote the score for The Red Violin, a 1998 Canadian production that tells the story of a single Stradivarius violin. Made in 1681, that violin—with its bright red varnish—has a series of owners and adventures that take it around the world over a span of three centuries. Corigliano has drawn several concert works from his music for that film, including a Chaconne for violin and orchestra that has been frequently performed and recorded. He also drew a work for solo violin entitled The Red Violin Caprices. The composer has prepared a program note for this work:

These Caprices, composed in conjunction with the score for François Girard’s film The Red Violin, take a spacious, troubadour-inspired theme

and vary it both linearly and stylistically. These variations intentionally evoke Baroque, Gypsy, and arch-Romantic idioms as they examine the same materials (a dark, seven-chord chaconne as well as that principal theme) from differing aural viewpoints. The Caprices were created and ordered to reflect the structure of the film, in which Bussotti, a fictional 18th-century violin maker, crafts his greatest violin for his soon-to-be-born son. When tragedy claims wife and child, the grief-stricken Bussotti, in a gesture both ardent and macabre, infuses the blood of his beloved into the varnish of the instrument. Their fates thus joined, the violin travels across three centuries through Vienna, London, Shanghai and Montreal, passing through the hands of a doomed child prodigy, a flamboyant virtuoso, a haunted Maoist commissar, and at last a willful Canadian expert, whose own plans for the violin finally complete the circle of parent and child united in art.

—John Corigliano

Adagio for Strings SAMUEL BARBER

Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania Died January 23, 1981, New York City Composed: 1936 Approximate Duration: 8 minutes

Barber spent the summer and fall of 1936 in the small village of St. Wolfgang in the Tyrol. The 26-yearold composer had just completed a symphony, and now his thoughts turned to chamber music. The Curtis String Quartet, made up of friends from the Curtis Institute, was planning a European tour that fall, and they had invited Barber to compose a quartet for them to play on the tour. Barber struggled with it, however, and the Quartet in B Minor—as the three-movement quartet was called—was not ready for the Curtis to play; the Pro Arte Quartet gave the first performance in Rome on December 14, 1936. Even before the quartet had been played, though, Barber knew that there was something extraordinary about its central movement, an Adagio. On September 13, 1936, he wrote to the cellist of the Curtis Quartet: “I have just finished the slow movement of my quartet today—it is a knockout!”

During the summers of these years, Barber and his friend Gian-Carlo Menotti had been visiting Arturo Toscanini at the conductor’s summer home at a villa on Lake Maggiore. In the summer of 1937, the conductor— who had just heard Barber’s First Symphony performed at the Salzburg Festival—asked to see some of his music, and the young composer sent Toscanini the manuscript scores of an Essay for Orchestra and of an arrangement for string orchestra he had made of the quartet’s slow movement. But then Barber heard nothing, and the scores were returned by mail, without comment. Stung, Barber refused to accompany Menotti when his friend went to say goodbye to the maestro at the end of the summer. Toscanini recognized what had happened and said to Menotti: “Tell him not to be mad. I’m not going to play one of his pieces, I’m going to play them both.” The conductor had memorized both scores and—not needing them—had simply sent them back; he did not ask to see them again until rehearsals were about to begin. Toscanini led the première of what had now come to be known as the Adagio for Strings on November 5, 1938. He liked this music well enough that he took it on the NBC Symphony’s tour of South America in 1940 and recorded it shortly after the beginning of World War II. At this concert, the Adagio is performed in its original version for string quartet.

The Adagio for Strings takes the form of a long arch. It is built on only one theme, a slow and sinuous melody initially heard in the first violins. There is an “archaic” quality about this music that is easy to sense but difficult to define—Barber’s noble melody almost has something in common with medieval choral music. The theme develops with slow but inexorable power, passing from section to section and gathering force with each repetition until finally it builds to a climax of great intensity. Here the music breaks off suddenly, falls away, and concludes on nearly inaudible fragments of the original theme.

Forgotten Waltz No. 2 NICHOLAS BRITELL

Born October 17, 1980, New York City Composed: 2011 Approximate Duration: 2 minutes

A graduate of Julliard's Pre-College Division and Harvard University who started playing piano at the age of five, Britell came to the attention of the film community when he performed his own piano composition, Forgotten Waltz No. 2, in the 2008 short romantic comedy Eve (directed by Natalie Portman and starring Lauren Bavcall). His recent feature film scores and TV series soundtracks include Free State of Jones (2016), Moonlight (2016, Oscar for Best Original Score), Succession (2019, Emmy winner), and Cruella (2021). He wrote the score for the forthcoming movie musical Carmen, starring Melissa Barrera (star of In the Heights) in the title role.

Forgotten Waltz No. 2 is a lyrical set of waltz variations with touches of jazz harmony. If it reminds you of Gershwin’s Summertime, you may be picking up on the lowered leading tones (lots of F-natural resolving to G), subtle suspensions of major intervals over minor chords, and stacks of gentle fourths. Based in G minor, the right hand remains independent throughout, exploring a single octave within each variation. The left hand supports each section by alternating delicate arpeggiated and triadic waltz patterns, and ending with a gently unresolved D7#9 (D, F-sharp, A, C, F-natural).

—Laura Stanfield Prichard

Star Wars: May the Fource be with You (arr. Attacca Quartet) JOHN WILLIAMS

Born February 8, 1932, Long Island, NY Composed: 1977 Approximate Duration: 6 minutes

John Williams’ score for the original Star Wars (1977) contains some of the most thunderous music ever written for a movie, and so it seems a leap into an entirely different galaxy to think of that music performed by that most intimate and expressive of chamber ensembles, a string quartet. Yet the surprise is how good this music sounds when played by a string quartet. In fact, some of these movements have become popular when string quartets are asked to perform at weddings—everyone knows this music, and these charming arrangements make everyone smile. Still—a string quartet can generate a certain amount of power all its own, and there’s a nice punch to the Main Title. This music needs absolutely no introduction, and listeners will have their own favorites, including Imperial March, Cantina Band, and the concluding Throne Room.

Rhapsody for Cello and Piano AARON ZIGMAN

Born January 6, 1963, San Diego, CA Composed: 2021 Approximate Duration: 16 minutes

Born in San Diego, composer Aaron Zigman has created an array of works for the concert stage and composed over seventy feature film scores. The Emmyaward winner and 2021 Pulitzer Prize nominee’s newest work, Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, is a sixteen-minute virtuosic exploration of the cello, the piano, and the magnificent possibility of their combination. The work builds on Liszt’s approach to the form, as Zigman frames three increasingly rhythmic and captivating scherzos with sweeping melodies in the style of Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Shostakovich.

The introduction (in 6/4, rubato) descends through a fourth three times, supported by harmonies built of fourths. A new theme sweeps through E major, evolving into an original melody inspired by the Kaddish (“Yitgadal, v’yitkadash sh’mei raba”) in G minor, exploring the lower register of the cello. Nine rising triadic motives in G major, the lyrical heart of the work, build to a moving climax.

The first scherzo, a tribute to jazz pianist Chick Corea (one of Zigman’s earliest jazz influences after Bill Evans), features piquant staccato rhythms and more complex harmonies based on fourths. Syncopated duet work and octaves in the cello ground the rhythmic aspect of this section, flowing through asymmetrical 3/8 bars. The cello shifts gradually back to the opening 6/4 rhapsodic texture, ushering the piano into a restatement of the rising triadic motives. A beautiful jazz waltz, peppered with double-stops and arpeggios, shepherds us to the Rhapsody’s central theme. This sweeping melody, heard first in B minor and later in E minor.

The piano is allowed an extended solo to reintroduce the rising triadic theme, leading us to the second scherzo: a vivacious Balkan-flavored dance. Zigman juxtaposes measures of 10/8 or 12/8 with triple-meter phrases: it is at once toe-tapping, unique, and impossibly modern in its approach. Playful accents dislocate and fragment the beat, building to the Rhapsody’s end. The opening 6/4 melodies slowly re-emerge in the cello over the piano’s mischievous romp. Suddenly, a furious flourish of sixteenth notes interrupts the texture, and we arrive at the third and final scherzo, full of chromatic cascades, miniature cadenzas, and double stops. A saucy conversational tone develops between the players. Each races to take the reins, building to a bitonal dash for the finish line.

—Laura Stanfield Prichard

Quintet for Piano and Strings in E Major, Opus 15 ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

Born May 29, 1897, Brno, Czech Republic Died November 29, 1957, Hollywood Composed:1920-21 Approximate Duration: 31 minutes

Few child composers have been as precocious as Eric Wolfgang Korngold. His cantata Gold, composed when he was ten, amazed Mahler, who pronounced the boy a “genius.” Those impressed by his talents included Richard Strauss and Puccini, who said: “That boy’s talent is so great, he could easily give us half and still have enough left for himself!” Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt had simultaneous premières in Hamburg and Cologne on December 4, 1920, when the composer was all of 23, and in the 1920s Korngold was one of the most admired composers in Europe.

And then his career took an unexpected turn. Invited to Hollywood to help score a film, Korngold found his romantic idiom ideally suited to film music, and when Hitler came to power Korngold moved his family to Hollywood, where he achieved his greatest success with swashbuckling music for Errol Flynn movies like Captain Blood, Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. As soon as the war was over, Korngold put films behind him to return to “serious” music but could never escape his Hollywood reputation, particularly since he used themes from many of his film scores in his classical works; the most successful of these is the 1945 Violin Concerto, championed by Heifetz.

Korngold wrote his Piano Quintet in 1920-21, shortly after completing Die tote Stadt, and dedicated it to the Austrian sculptor Gustinus Ambrosi (1893-1975); the work was premièred in Hamburg in February 1923 with the composer at the piano. This was a period of tremendous ferment in Europe, both politically and musically: it saw the emergence of serial composition, dadaism, jazz, folk music as a source for classical composers, quarter-tone composition, and many other approaches. Korngold’s Piano Quintet reflects this ferment: at one moment it can sing with a creamy Viennese voluptuousness, and the next it can almost tear at itself with a sort of expressionistic intensity. This makes the Quintet a very high-energy experience, for both its performers and its audiences.

Something of the music’s intensity can be sensed from Korngold’s extremely long and detailed performance marking for each movement. He marks the first movement Mässiges Zeitmass, mit schwungvoll blühenden Ausdruck (“Moderate tempo, with energetically blossoming expression”). The music opens with a soaring unison passage for strings of a distinctly Viennese complexion, and this full-throated expression will characterize much of the work. Also typical of the Quintet are its frequent changes of tempo and mood: here a singing second theme-group gives way to a dark development marked Steigernd (“intensifying”). Much of the writing, full of glissandos and trills, verges on the violent, and if the movement drives to a huge climax, it also offers dark interludes along the way.

Korngold gives the Adagio second movement the marking Mit grösster Ruhe, stets auserst gebundend und ausdruckvoll (“With the greatest calm, always extremely legato and expressive”). This movement is a set of variations on Korngold’s song “Mond so gehst du wieder” from his just completed songcycle Abschiedslieder (“Songs of Farewell”). Some have detected secretly-coded messages of love from Korngold to his fiancée in this movement, but one need not know this to enjoy the music. Korngold offers nine variations on his fundamental theme, which concludes on a massive and very quiet chord that has all the strings playing harmonics and extends across much of the range of the keyboard.

The finale, a rondo, opens with a powerful introduction marked Gemessen, beinahe pathetisch (“Measured, almost pathetic”), before the music leaps ahead at the Allegro giocoso. The writing here is quite brilliant, with some of the instruments given what might almost be called cadenzas and with the music once again going through many tempo changes. Korngold concludes with a fast coda that includes a fleeting recall of the opening theme of the first movement.

Gabriela Lena Frank

TAKEOVER @ THE JAI I Curated by Gabriela Lena Frank

Sunday, August 15, 2021 · 7:30 PM

The JAI

CHRISTINE DELPHINE Cuimhne HEDDEN Balourdet String Quartet (b. 1990) Angela Jiye Bae, Justin DeFilippis, violins; Benjamin Zannoni, viola; Russell Houston, cello GABRIELA LENA Selections from Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea FRANK El rebelde (b. 1972) Tomasito, el cuque El niño Kelly Markgraf, bass-baritone; Chelsea De Souza, piano NICOLAS LELL Movement II from El Correcaminos BENAVIDES Calder Quartet Eufemia En la vela del angelito

(b. 1987) Benjamin Jacobson, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Byers, cello TIMOTHY PETERSON Shorelines (b. 1994) Over the Breakwater A Mist Spread Thin In a Gentle Snow Guadalupe Paz, mezzo-soprano; Byungchan Lee, violin GABRIELA LENA El Mundo from El último sueño de Frida y Diego FRANK Guadalupe Paz, mezzo-soprano; Chelsea de Souza, piano ANJNA Duplicity SWAMINATHAN Balourdet String Quartet

(b. 1992)

Cuimhne CHRISTINE DELPHINE HEDDEN

Born December 21, 1990 Hartford, Connecticut Composed: 2019 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

At the beginning of writing this piece, I was about to embark on a long-awaited journey to Ireland, to be there for a longer period of time than ever before. After returning home, I missed Ireland far more intensely than I had in the wake of my previous visits. It is one thing to go to a place, be stunned by its beauty and leave again, always a guest. It’s another to visit again and again, all the while knowing that your home lies elsewhere. On this past visit, I found that it is still yet another thing to journey to a place knowing that it is only beginning to become a part of you and that this part will continue to grow.

Cuimhne is the Irish word for memory. This piece is written from a place of recollection where, in the words of John O’Donohue, “absence is transfigured and our time in the world is secretly held for us.” Cuimhne was cocommissioned by Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. —Christine Delphine Hedden

Selections from Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Born September 26, 1972, Berkeley, California Composed: 2004 Approximate Duration: 16 minutes

Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea draws on poetry by the Nicaraguan poet, Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002). As a young man, Cuadra spent more than two decades sailing the waters of Lake Nicaragua, meeting peasants, fisherman, sailors, woodcutters, and timber merchants in his travels. From such encounters, he was inspired to construct a cycle of poems that recount the odyssey of a harp-playing mariner, Cifar, who likewise travels the waters of Lake Nicaragua. In my initial reading of the poems, I was struck by how Cuadra writes of commonplace objects and people but ties them to the undercurrents of his country’s past of indigenous folklore. Despite Cuadra’s plain vocabulary, ordinary things are thus rendered mythical, reveling Cifar’s capacity for wonder and passionate lyricism. The poems, which begin with Cifar’s birth and end with his death as an old man, still clinging to an oar, some forty-odd poems later, are rich material for a composer’s imagination, indeed. Knowing that I had a treasure trove of poetry to spark my composer’s imagination, I set out to choose a limited selection of poems to set, but it wasn’t long before I knew that I would have to set them all, making for a full evening-length program. In addition, I knew I would have to broaden my vision to include another singer – Cifar, represented by a baritone drawing on traditional Nicaraguan vocal practices, would need a female singer to carry the many women that figure in his life. And finally, while my experience accompanying singers tells me that the piano is an admirable lieder partner-in-crime, perfectly suited to evoke typical Nicaraguan marimba and guitar sounds, I also know that upon the song cycle’s completion, I will create another version scoring the piano part for full orchestra.

This is a work in progress. The following songs will be included in this evening’s performance:

XVIII. Primer parte: El rebelde (Part One: The Rebel): In this mysterious song, a scene is coolly described of preparation being made for rebellion. We do not know if Cifar is a willing participant or not.

XVIII. Segund parte: Tomasito, el cuque (Part Two: Tomasito, the Cook): A scene is described of a ship’s cook being tortured. Chillingly, it is not clear what Cifar’s role is.

XVIII. Tercer parte: El niño (Part Three: The Child): Cast in the solo style of “velorio” funeral singing from Latin American cultures, the vocal writing emphasizes a rise and fall of line, and grace note-inflected tenuto pulsations to mimic the sound of sobs. Cifar cries for the child that used to be him, for a lost innocence.

XXII. Primer parte: Eufemia (First part: Eufemia): Jumping to a point in Cifar’s life when he has already seen and experienced a lot (falling in love numerous times, engaging in drunken brawls, escaping spirits on supernatural islands, participating in revolutions, parenting children who disarm him of his machismo, etc.), Cifar now fights a storm while aboard a boat and compares the tempest to a former lover, Eufemia. Only, he can’t placate the storm with kisses like he does with Eufemia when she’s angry. In the deadly calm of the storm, he witnesses one of his comrades (who has appeared in other poems) become crazy with fear and jump overboard to his death, before the storm returns again.

XXII. Segund parte: En la vela del angelito (Second part: At the Wake of the Little Angel): As the coda to the previous song, Cifar describes in concise words the stark wreckage of another ship, “La Esperanza,” as he views a child’s coffin floating away. In the previous song, he seems to relish the

battle with the storm/Eufemia and even treats the death of his comrade with some (false?) bravado. At the realization that children have perished, however, he understands the depths of the damage left in the storm’s wake. There is perhaps even a touch of shame that he could have enjoyed the tempest at all. In the distance, the storm still brews, ominous. (Note: Eufemia and En la vela del angelito were commissioned by the Marilyn Horne Foundation.) —Gabriela Lena Frank

El rebelde

Todavía al aurora no despierta el corazón de los pájaros y ya Cifar tira la red en el agua oscura. Sabe que es la hora de la sirena y no teme el silencio.

Cifar espera la se¬ñal en la lejanas serranías. Antes del alba encenderán sus fogatas los rebeldes.

Les lleva peces Y armas

Tomasito, el cuque

“¿En qué lancha las llevaron? ¡Contesta, Tomás, contesta!

“¿Desde cuál isla zarparon? ¡Jodido, Tomás, contesta!

“¿A quiénes las entregaron? ¡Hijo de puta, Tomás!

“¿Quiénes llevaron las armas? ¡Cabrón, contesta, Tomás!”

Pero no habla Tomás. ¡Qué huevos de hombre. No habla!

¡Ya nunca hablará Tomás!

The Rebel

Dawn has still not awakened the heart of the birds, and already Cifar casts his net into the dark water. He knows it is the hour of the siren, and he is not afraid of the silence.

Cifar waits for a signal from the faraway mountains. Before daybreak the rebels will fire up their bonfires.

He takes them fish and weapons.

Thomas, the Cook

“What boar did they carry them in? Answer, Tomás, answer!

“From which island did they sail? Damn it, Tomás, answer!

“Who did they deliver them to? Son of a whore, Tomás!

“Who carried the weapons? You bastard, answer, Tomás!”

But Tomás won’t talk. What balls on this guy! He doesn’t talk!

Now Tomás will never talk again!

El niño que yo fuí

El niño que yo fuí no ha muerto queda en el pecho toma el corazón como suyo y navega dentro lo oigo cruzar mis noches o sus viejos mares de llanto remolcándome al sueño.

Eufemia

Rogando el viento… Insultando el viento… hijueputeando al viento!

Tomé el azar la lancha de Pascasio… y ahora reniego de mi suerte!

Miro las olas furiosas y los vientos negros de Octubre. ¡a qué horas prefer éste tiempo implacable A la furia de Eufemia?

¿A qué puerto voy a qué tumba me lleva este chubasco perro? Cuánto major aguantar tus gritos, Eufemia.

Rogando el viento… Insultando el viento…

Cuánto major tucólera, tu desgreñada ira en la madrugada que esta furia de las olas y estos gritos bajo los rayos y los vientos!

Ya hubiera dominado tu enojo, ya estuviéramos en los besos ya dormiría dócil después de la tempestad.

Rogando el viento… Insultando el viento… hijueputeando al viento! Arsenio, granuloso The child I was has not died he remains in my breast taking my heart as his own and sails inside me I hear him cross my nights or his old seas of tears towing me along to dreams.

Eufemia

Begging the wind… Insulting the wind… Son of a bitching the wind!

I took it upon myself to borrow Pascasio’s boat and now I curse my luck!

I’m looking at the furious waves and the black October winds. At what point did I prefer this implacable weather to Eufemia’s fury?

To what port do I go, to what tomb does this damned storm take me? How much better to withstand your screaming, Eufemia.

Begging the wind… Insulting the wind…

How much better your anger, your disheveled ire at dawn than this fury of the waves and the screams under lightning and wind!

Already, I would have tamed your wrath, already, we would be in kisses, already I would be sleeping in peace after the tempest.

Begging the wind… Insulting the wind… Son of a bitching the wind! Arsenio, pimply

(continuado)

cliente del burdel de Lalita, se tira al Lago. Y vemos la rápida aleta del tiburón.

Al grito de espanto como un eco aflora del fondo en silencio la mancha roja.

Rogando el viento… Insultando el viento… hijueputeando al viento!

¡Cuánto major aguantar tus grito, Eufemia!

Y no ahora, clamando a Dios, arrepentido, vomitando my cobardia en la borda, mientras el negro cielo solo me recuerda el curor de tus ojos.

Rogando el viento… Insultando el viento…

En la vela del angelito

Cuando se hundió “La Esperanza” todos perecieron.

Los que fuímos al rescate solo vimos —flotando— el ataúd de un niño.

(continued)

Client from Lalita’s whorehouse, throws himself into the Lake. And we see the quick fin of the shark.

At the scream of terror, like an echo there flowers from the depths, silently, a crimson stain.

Begging the wind… Insulting the wind… Son of a bitching the wind!

How much better to withstand your screams, Eufemia!

Instead of now crying to God, repentant, vomiting my cowardice over the rail while the black sky only reminds me of the fury of your eyes.

Begging the wind… Insulting the wind…

At the Wake of the Little Angel

When “The Hope” went under, all perished.

We who went to the rescue saw only —floating— a child’s coffin.

Movement II from El Correcaminos NICOLAS LELL BENAVIDES

Born 1987, Albuquerque, NM Composed: 2019 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

It's difficult to capture New Mexico in one symbol. I, like many New Mexicans, am the product of generations of love, conflict, migration, peace, war, spirituality, colonialism, and progressivism. New Mexico is the meeting place of the South, West, East, and North, much like the foursided Zia symbol on our state flag. Puebloans lived here for thousands of years, followed by the Navajo (Diné), the Spanish then Mexicans, and finally the Americans. I've found myself pondering how they all saw the same Land of Enchantment.

New Mexico's state bird is the roadrunner. Roadrunners are beautiful, athletic, fearless, and mysterious. They notably have four toes and nearly symmetrical feet, with two toes facing forward and two facing backward. The concept of symmetrical groupings of four is paramount. The triad with both a major and minor third plays an outsize role in all movements since it holds two major thirds and two minor thirds as a palindrome (C E E-flat G). The triad in inversion, as Bartók was obsessed with (one of my favorite composers), makes appearances as well for its symmetry (E G C E-flat). Augmented harmony and triad shapes (C E A-flat C) perfectly divide an octave into four units, and this material is woven throughout. The piece goes in reverse chronological order of the people who arrived.

The second movement, El Correcaminos, is primarily about the Mexicans who arrived (influenced by the Spanish) from the South (and somewhat the West) in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were looking to settle permanently, and saw el correcaminos as a fertility blessing like a stork. They were elated to see one, as it meant there was a future in this place.

—Nicolas Lell Benavides

Shorelines (Text by Catherine Pond) TIMOTHY PETERSON

Born February 9, 1994, White Plains, NY Composed: 2018 Approximate Duration: 7 minutes

When empathizing with another person, whose experience is inherently outside yet linked to our own, we often find ourselves at a shoreline, navigating a border between something fixed and familiar and something fluid and uncharted. Shorelines (2018) is a song cycle featuring three poems by Catherine Pond that explore themes of witnessing and grappling with someone else’s grief and suffering. In the first movement, “Over the Breakwater,” a woman reflects on her brother’s mental illness and her longing to understand his innermost thoughts and feelings. In the second movement, “A Mist Spread Thin,” a woman remembers the crisp mornings when she would observe her lover row down a river and ruminate in solitude. In the final movement, “In a Gentle Snow,” a woman consoles a friend who is grieving a loss.

I had the pleasure of meeting poet Catherine Pond in the spring of 2018 at the University of Southern California. We were both enrolled in a graduate seminar that paired composers with poets to collaborate on new works for voice and piano. Shorelines, composed for Duo Cortona as part of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, represents our second collaboration.

—Timothy Peterson

I. Over the Breakwater

A birch tree foams out over the breakwater. Peace was a rain thick as milk, mute colors of an endless causeway. Shut up, you used to say to the air. Shut up, shut up, shut up. But I could never hear the song inside your head. Happiness was there, though out of reach, like a river, tracing the land alongside us.

II. A Mist Spread Thin

Sometimes light washed the side of your face in a glow. There was a cathedral, I remember, and a river where you rowed, where the trees bent to touch the water and a mist spread thin across the surface. In the mornings I’d go down to the shore and watch you glide out in the chill, past the split oak, towards the grey, tremulous center.

III. In a Gentle Snow

Somewhere what you love is still alive, turning cartwheels in a gentle snow.

– Catherine Pond

Duplicity ANJNA SWAMINATHAN

Born June 25, 1992, Maryland Composed: 2019 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

This work was commissioned by The Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and premièred on March 23, 2019 at Flushing Town Hall as part of Carnegie Hall’s Migrations: The Making of America festival.

Duplicity brings various aspects of Carnatic (South Indian classical) melodic and rhythmic vocabulary into the string quartet form. It shifts between four ragas or melodic/phraseological frameworks, each in a separate tonal center—both are indicated at the start of each section. The Carnatic ornaments incorporated in the piece include spuritam and jantai both of which involve an articulation of a multi-note flourish as though it is a single note. Rhythmically, the composition centers on a larger cycle of nine, which is articulated by four different claves or syncopated percussive cycles. In combining these shifting rhythmic "signatures" and tonal "signatures," the same rhythmic cycle moves through various emotional and expressive landscapes and showcases the "duplicity" or double-edged nature of rhythm. The piece was inspired by a short story about my mother, who engaged in what I like to call "cultural duplicity" by easily shapeshifting between cultural, linguistic, and traditional spaces. The story is included below.

Perhaps one of the memories most emblematic of my mother’s penchant for the accidentally radical, the intentionally comical, and the quixotically paradoxical, was when she won a yodeling competition in Germany. She was a vocalist and dancer, trained like many of her South Indian peers in Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance), but having grown up in the cosmopolitan city of Coimbatore and having been born just as tape recordings began circling around modest homes, she had acquired a masterful skill of replicating any voice she heard—regardless of whether it matched her traditional Carnatic training. She had spent hours listening to classic Hindi film songs, duets by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar, priding herself in her ability to mimic both the male tenor and the female soprano, moving back and forth with ease and bravado. It was through these studies of Kishore Kumar’s recordings, where he famously yodeled long expressive passages of vocal melodies, that she had picked up this instinct for yodeling.

So, as one might expect, when presented with the opportunity to yodel among lederhosen-clad German choir singers, my mother hopped on stage, still adorned in her brightly colored sari and dark kohl—now accessorized with Reebok sneakers and a fanny pack. The German choir singers stood alongside her, holding in anticipatory laughs as they awaited what might be the most comical coming together of cultures their yodeling competition would see. She stepped up to the mic and out soared my mother’s perfectly timed and unwaveringly tuneful yodel, Kishore Kumar licks and all. The audience of beer-drunk tourists and natives stood up in a roar of cheer and laughter and ‘Amma’ was instantly deemed winner of that day’s yodeling competition. A choir member quickly called on a bartender to present her with a two-gallon beer stein as a prize for her efforts.

“How wonderfully you yodeled for us today! You have to drink from this beer stein in front of everyone now!” he exclaimed, clapping with the audience.

“I’ll just have a sip, I think. I don’t like the taste of beer. My husband will drink the rest of it,” she blushed in perfect English with a soft laugh.

“Well, then we must to give you a prize,” he suggested, looking knowingly at his fellow choir members. “How about we sing your country’s national anthem and you can sing with us? I’m sure you’ll sing it much better than us, so we’ll support you!” He handed her the mic, looked once again at his fellow singers and started singing the Indian national anthem, “Jana gana mana—”

“I’m from the United States,” my mother interrupted into the mic.

“But you’re wearing—”

“Yes, and I am an American.”

And so, my sari-clad mother firmly planted her right palm on her heart, rose the microphone to her lips and led the German choir in a rendition of “Oh, Say Can You See.”

Indeed, my mother’s artful—though accidental— cultural duplicity has proven to be comical, thoughtprovoking and outright confusing, and whether or not by intention, these nuggets of liminality consistently pushed those around her to question their own boundaries of culture, nation, music and costume.

—Anjna Swaminathan

Gabriela Lena Frank

TAKEOVER @ THE JAI II Curated by Gabriela Lena Frank

Tuesday, August 17, 2021 · 7:30 PM

The JAI

GABRIELA LENA Zapatos de chincha from Hilos FRANK Byungchan Lee, violin; Eunghee Cho, cello

(b. 1972)

AKSHAYA AVRIL Breathing Sunlight TUCKER Tereza Stanislav, violin; Joshua Roman, cello

(b. 1992)

IMAN HABIBI RevolutionStreet (b. 1985) Balourdet String Quartet Justin DeFilippis, Angela Jiye Bae, violins; Benjamin Zannoni, viola; Russell Houston, cello GABRIELA LENA Milagros FRANK I. Milagrito —Capilla del Camino (Shrine by the Road) II. Milagrito—Zampoñas Rotas (Broken Panpipes) III. Milagrito —Mujeres Cantando (Women Singing) IV. Milagrito —Danza de Tingo María (Dance of Tingo María) V. Milagrito —Sombras de Amantaní (Shadows of Amantaní) VI. Milagrito —Adios a Churín (Goodbye to Churín) VII. Milagrito —Danza de los Muñecos (Dance of the Dolls) VIII. Milagrito —Capilla del Camino Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Byers, cello MICHAEL-THOMAS Stellar Cartography FOUMAI Tereza Stanislav, violin; Eunghee Cho, cello

Zapatos de chincha from Hilos GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Born September 26, 1972, Berkeley, California Composed: 2017 Approximate Duration: 4 minutes

The original quartet, from which this arrangement came, Hilos, was commissioned for Alias Chamber Ensemble by Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and The Schubert Club, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The second movement, Zapatos de chincha, was for clarinet and cello. It was arranged for violin and violoncello for Johnny Gandelsman, violin, and Joshua Roman, violoncello, to premièred in Boonville, California. for the first public concert of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in September of 2017.

This light-footed movement is inspired by Chincha, a southern coastal town known for its afro-peruano music and dance (including a unique brand of tap). The cello part is especially reminiscent of the cajon, a wooden box that percussionists sit on and strike with hands and feet, extracting a remarkable array of sounds and rhythms. —Gabriela Lena Frank

Breathing Sunlight AKSHAYA AVRIL TUCKER

Born September 14, 1992, Willow, NY Composed: 2017 Approximate Duration: 9 minutes

Breathing Sunlight is inspired by a melody that started winding into my mind in 2015. When I began learning the Hindustani Raga Bhimpalasi a year later, I realized that it virtually matched the contour of this melody, in pitch as well as in mood. In this piece, finally, the melody found its place. However, I do not state the melody outright. Rather, I watched it oscillate somewhere in the background, beyond the conscious mind of the piece. It approaches the surface and recedes, in one line or through bubbling polyphony. It appears in different speeds—sometimes more like a slow alaap, at others like a fast tarana.

A common misconception about Indian Classical music is that it is a microtonal system. For this reason, I want to clarify that my use of quarter tones in Breathing Sunlight does not stem from my transcription of Raga Bhimpalasi, or any raga. Instead, quarter tones are just one timbral technique I use to create a space that is thick with the kind silence you experience when listening to (or playing) a tanpura.*

Breathing Sunlight is about moments spent with those who will leave us soon. Simple things, like lying on the grass, in the sun, breathing—these moments of conscious stillness, within a mind racked by mental and physical discomfort— are as significant as they are fleeting. The love we feel in those moments is strong, transcending our physical boundaries, and becoming memories for those left behind. —Akshaya Tucker *Tanpura: the 4-string plucked string instrument used as an overtone-rich drone in Indian Classical music.

RevolutionStreet IMAN HABIBI

Born November 10, 1985, Tehran, Iran Composed: 2018-19 Approximate Duration: 8 minutes

Revolution (Enghelab) Street is a busy central street in Tehran, located in close proximity to the University of Tehran. This street has often been the starting place for many youth-led civil protests. It was on this street that a woman, in an attempt to protest mandatory hijab (headcovering), stood on a telecom box, took off her scarf, attached it to a stick and waved it in the air in front of hundreds of spectators. Videos of her brave act went viral; she was arrested, as were many others who joined her by protesting in a similar fashion.

This piece is an attempt to amplify the voice of the many brave ones who stand up to defend their civil rights peacefully. This particular movement was frequently broadcast on social media with hashtags #GirlsofRevolutionStreet or #WhiteWednesdays. In this piece you will hear the innocence, courage, and yet fragility of these voices, and the aggression with which they are treated.

—Iman Habibi

Milagros GABRIELA LENA FRANK

Composed: 2010 Approximate Duration: 22 minutes

Milagros (Miracles) is inspired by my mother’s homeland of Perú. It has been a remarkable, often difficult, yet always joyous experience for me to visit, again and again, this small Andean nation that is home to not only foggy desert coasts but also Amazonian wetlands. Usually a religious and marvelous occurrence, milagro here refers to the sights and sounds of Perú’s daily life, both past and present, that I’ve stumbled upon in my travels. While probably ordinary to others, to me, as a gringa-latina, they are quietly miraculous, and are portrayed in eight short movements as follows:

I. Milagrito —Capilla del Camino (Shrine by the Road): A brief, earnest, and somewhat austere solo violin opening pays homage to the ubiquitous tiny Catholic shrines erected along the highways throughout the altiplano, or highlands, silently honoring those who have been killed in roadside accidents. These shrines are humble standouts against large expansive landscapes, seemingly unchanging through time.

II. Milagrito—Zampoñas Rotas (Broken Panpipes): A depiction of ceramic panpipes found at the Cahuachi Temple that were ritualistically broken by a fiery pre-Inca civilization, the Nazca (200 BC to 500 AD), this movement has a violent, jagged-edge quality, employing motifs commonly found in panpipe and other wind instrument music.

III. Milagrito —Mujeres Cantando (Women Singing): Inspired by the sound of indigenous women singing, this movement exaggerates their “clustery” pitch and how their voices separate and converge.

IV. Milagrito —Danza de Tingo María (Dance of Tingo María): As one who avoids the largely impenetrable selvas, or jungles, I did take away a strong impression of this border jungle town as lively and cacophonous. The relentless rhythm and the melodic line of pizzicatos inspired by water drums drive this movement.

V. Milagrito —Sombras de Amantaní (Shadows of Amantaní): The remarkable starry nights of this barren island in Lake Titicaca between Perú and Bolivia made for eerie shadows that I could not dodge on my nocturnal walks.

VI. Milagrito —Adios a Churín (Goodbye to Churín): Churín is a small city on the side of a mountain with seemingly little horizontal ground, famous for its healing bath waters. I visited during a time when it was on the verge of becoming a ghost town as its youth were migrating in droves to urban coastal cities. Allusions to guitar music are made against a melancholy singing cello line.

VII. Milagrito —Danza de los Muñecos (Dance of the Dolls): Playful in character, this movement is inspired by the brightly colored, almost mannequin-like dolls from the colonial era that are found in small museums and private collections.

VIII. Milagrito —Capilla del Camino: Throughout my travels over the years, these capilla sightings have been constant and unyielding, as I expect they will always be as I continue to travel in the future. Where the second violin introduced the piece with una capilla, it is the first violin who takes up the capilla theme and ends our journey for now. —Gabriela Lena Frank

Stellar Cartography MICHAEL-THOMAS FOUMAI

Born December 17, 1987, Honolulu, Hawai'i Composed: 2017 Approximate Duration: 10 minutes

Stellar Cartography takes its title from the famed Star Trek franchise, and is the name of a three-dimensional map room on board the starship, USS Starship Enterprise E (of the Next Generation fleet of vessels). While there is no connection musically to the soundtracks of the Star Trek universe, this piece takes inspiration from star maps, the art of mapping the stars, galaxies, celestial objects and of course, the three dimensional presentation of these stellar charts on deck, with intricate tangential and intersecting coordinates connecting star points, tracing an interstellar voyage. Star maps, with their multitude of dots and lines representing celestial objects and their astrological relationships look very much like notes on a page of music and the piece reflects an amazement in recognizing this relationship. The piece is in three sections and uses a recurring rhythmic pattern, a kind of musical map line that traces and outlines musical ideas. Imagine the famous scenes from the Indiana Jones franchise, as the protagonist dashes across the world, accompanied with a global map and red tracing line illustrating the journey, and the musical twists and turns, flourishes and metronomic pulses, will paint celestial pathways that crisscross, branching into universes and galaxies where no one has gone before.

—Michael-Thomas Foumai

Ori Kam

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Balourdet String Quartet performs Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 8 in E Minor, Opus 59, No. 2 “Razumovsky”

Support for this Prelude is provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer

NO INTERMISSION

INTIMATE LETTERS

Wednesday, August 18, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL JANÁˇ CEK String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters”

(1854-1928) Andante Adagio Moderato Allegro Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson, Tereza Stanislav, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Byers, cello FRANCK Piano Quintet in F Minor

(1822-1890) Molto moderato

Lento con molto sentimento

Allegro non troppo ma con fuoco Geoff Nuttall, Anthony Marwood, violins; Ori Kam, viola; Paul Watkins, cello; Juho Pohjonen, piano

String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Pages” LEOŠ JANÁČEK

Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia Died August 12, 1928, Ostravia Composed: 1928 Approximate Duration: 26 minutes

In the summer of 1917 Leoš Janáček, a 63-year-old composer little known outside his homeland, met Kamila Stösslová, a 25-year-old married woman with a small child, and fell madly in love. Over the final eleven years of his life, she was the inspiration for a volcanic outpouring of masterpieces by the aging composer: four operas, two string quartets, a mass, tremendous orchestral works, and numerous choral and chamber pieces—as well as 600 letters written to her. Janáček’s love for Kamila Stösslová was entirely platonic—and one-sided. Mystified by the composer’s passion, she responded with affectionate friendship and encouragement, content to serve as muse for a creator she did not fully understand (Kamila was lucky to have an understanding husband—Janáček had a furiously jealous wife).

Janáček said that all his late works were, at some level, an expression of his love for Kamila, and one piece made that love explicit. During the winter of 1928, he took three weeks (January 29-February 19) off from work on his opera From the House of the Dead to compose his String Quartet No. 2, which he subtitled “Intimate Pages. ” Janáček’s original nickname for the quartet had been “Love Letters,” but he decided against that, telling Kamila that he did not want “to deliver [his] feelings up to the discretion of stupid people.” To underline the latent meaning of the quartet, he at first intended to replace the viola with the viola d’amore; when the older instrument proved to have insufficient power, he returned to the modern viola, which is given a very prominent role in this quartet.

Janáček noted that each movement had a particular program. The opening movement was inspired by his first meeting Kamila at the Luhačovice Spa during the summer of 1917; the second depicts events of that summer; the third he described as “gay, but melting into a vision of you”; the last expressed Janáček’s “fear for you—however it eventually sounds not as fear, but as longing and its fulfillment.” After hearing a private performance of the first two movements, the exultant composer wrote: “Kamila, it will be beautiful, strange, unrestrained, inspired, a composition beyond all the usual conventions! Together I think that we’ll triumph! It’s my first composition that sprang from directly experienced feeling. Before then I composed only from things remembered; this piece, ‘Intimate Letters,’ was written in fire.”

This passionate, intense music is in Janáček’s extremely compressed late style. Themes tend to be short, there are countless abrupt tempo shifts, and the music is tightly unified—even accompaniment figures have thematic importance, and there is some cyclic use of themes. The full-blooded beginning of the Andante gives away suddenly to the true first theme: an eerie, unsettling melody played ponticello by the viola—Janáček said that it reflected Kamila’s disquieting arrival in his life. This theme recurs in many forms in this movement, which pitches between the lyric and harshly dramatic. By contrast, the Adagio is based largely on the viola’s opening melody; this rises to a climax marked Maestoso before closing over flautato mutterings from viola and second violin. The Moderato begins with a lilting dance in 9/8, followed by a lyric violin duet. The climax of this movement is a stunner: the music comes to a stop, then the first violin rips out a stabbing entrance on its highest E—marked appassionato, this is an explosive variation of the preceding duet tune. The concluding Allegro, a rondo, gets off to a good-natured start with a theme that sounds as if it might have folk origins (actually it was Janáček’s own). Once again, there are frequent mood and tempo changes, and—driven by furious trills and mordants—the music drives to its impassioned close.

The 74-year-old Janáček was very pleased with this music. To Kamila, he wrote that it was “like a piece of living flesh. I don’t think I ever shall be able to write anything deeper or more truthful.” Six months later, the creator of this passionate music was dead.

Piano Quintet in F Minor CÉSAR FRANCK

Born December 10, 1822, Liege Died November 8, 1890, Paris Composed: 1880 Approximate Duration: 37 minutes

Few works in the chamber music literature have produced so violent a reaction at their premières as the Piano Quintet of César Franck. Franck, then 57 and a professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory, had written no chamber music for over 25 years when the Piano Quintet burst to life before an unsuspecting audience in Paris on January 17, 1880. Few in that audience expected music so explosive from a man known as the gentle composer of church music. Franck’s students were wildly enthusiastic, and a later performance is reported to have left the audience stunned

into silence, some of them weeping openly. But the acclaim was not universal. Franck had intended to dedicate this music to Camille Saint-Saëns, the pianist at the première, but when he approached Saint-Saëns after the performance to offer him the personally-inscribed manuscript, SaintSaëns is reported to have made a face, thrown the manuscript on the piano, and walked away. Franck’s wife hated the Quintet and refused to attend performances.

There appear to have been non-musical reasons for these reactions. Four years earlier, a twenty-year-old woman named Augusta Holmès had begun to study composition with Franck. Holmès moved easily in the musical and literary circles of Paris. A striking figure, she attracted the attention and admiration of most of the leading musical figures of the late eighteenth-century, including Rossini, Wagner, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many others. SaintSaëns, whose proposal of marriage she rejected, confessed that “We were all in love with her.” Holmès (she added the accent to the family name) composed on a grand scale: among her works are four operas (she wrote the librettos for all her operas), symphonies, symphonic poems, choral music, and songs.

The details of the relationship between Holmès and her teacher remain unclear. She was strongly attracted to Franck, and he confessed that his student “arouses in me the most unspiritual desires.” The première of Franck’s Piano Quintet apparently brought matters to a head. The general feeling was that the mild-mannered Franck had made clear his love for Augusta in this music, and both his wife and Saint-Saëns knew it. For those interested, the relationship between Franck and Holmès is the subject of a 1978 novel by Ronald Harwood titled César and Augusta.

Despite the tensions at its première, Franck’s Quintet has come to be regarded as one of the great piano quintets, along with those of Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, and Shostakovich. Everyone instantly recognizes its power—this is big music, full of bold gestures, color, and sweep. Franz Liszt, one of Franck’s greatest admirers, wondered whether the Quintet was truly chamber music and suggested that it might be better heard in a version for orchestra. Franck’s first instruction, dramatico, sets the tone for the entire work, and Liszt was quite right to wonder whether this is truly chamber music: Franck asks for massed unison passages, fortississimo dynamic levels, tremolos, and a volume of sound previously unknown in chamber music. Beyond the purely emotional and sonic impact, however, this music is notable for its concentration: the Piano Quintet is one of the finest examples of Franck’s cyclic treatment of themes, an idea he had taken from Liszt—virtually the entire quintet grows out of theme-shapes presented in the first movement.

The opening of the first movement is impressive, as Franck alternates intense passages for strings with quiet, lyrical interludes for piano. Gradually these voices merge and rush ahead at the violent Allegro, which listeners will recognize as a variant of the violin’s figure at the very beginning. This and other theme-shapes will be stretched, varied, and made to yield a variety of moods. At the end of the movement, the music dies away on Franck’s marking estinto: “extinct.”

The slow movement begins with steady piano chords, and over these the first violin plays what seem at first melodic fragments. But these too have evolved from the opening of the first movement, and soon they combine to form the movement’s main theme. Again the music rises to a massive climax, then subsides to end quietly. Out of that quiet, the concluding movement springs to life. Franck specifies con fuoco—with fire—and the very beginning feels unsettled and nervous, with the violins pulsing ahead. The main theme, when it finally arrives, has grown out of material presented in the second movement; now Franck gives it to the four strings, and their repetitions grow in power until the theme is hammered out violently. An extremely dramatic coda drives to the brutally abrupt cadence.

Inon Barnatan Steven Schick

David Byrd-Marrow

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Interview with Tamar Muskal and Daniel Rozin hosted by Steven Schick

This concert will also be live streamed

NO INTERMISSION

Facing the Automaton by Tamar Muskal is part of the Synergy Initiative, produced by Inon Barnatan & Clara Wu Tsai.

The Synergy Initiative is underwritten by:

Clara Wu Tsai

GRAND DUOS

Thursday, August 19, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

MOZART Grande Sestetto Concertante in E-flat Major (after K.364) (1756-1791) Allegro maestoso Andante Presto Anthony Marwood, Geoff Nuttall, violins; Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, Ori Kam, violas; Oliver Herbert, Joshua Roman, cellos TAMAR MUSKAL Facing the Automaton (2021) WORLD PREMIÈRE

(b. 1956) Steven Schick, percussion; Joseph Morris, clarinet, Brad Balliett, bassoon; David Byrd-Marrow, horn; Tereza Stanislav, Justin DeFilippis, violin; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Joshua Roman, cello; David Grossman, double bass; Chelsea de Souza, piano

Commissioned by La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest CHAUSSON Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Opus 21

(1855-1899) Decidé; Animé

Sicilienne: Pas vite

Grave

Très animé James Ehnes, violin; Inon Barnatan, piano; Geoff Nuttall, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violins; Ori Kam, viola; Paul Watkins, cello

Grande Sestetto Concertante in E-flat Major (after K.364) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Composed: 1779 Approximate Duration: 28 minutes

Here is familiar and much-loved wine, served up in a new bottle. Mozart composed his Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E-flat Major in the autumn of 1779, when the 23-year-old composer was in his final years of service to the Archbishop of Salzburg. The music was performed and admired as one of Mozart’s finest works for solo instruments and orchestra, but he did not publish it—the score remained in manuscript at the time of his death. The Sinfonia Concertante was finally published in 1802, eleven years after Mozart’s death, and immediately it appeared in arrangements for various chamber ensembles. In 1808 someone (their identity remains unknown) arranged the Sinfonia Concertante for string sextet: two violins, two violas, and two cellos (or one cello and one double bass). Two centuries later, in 2006, Christopher Hogwood edited and published a new version of that arrangement.

The original arranger faced a particular problem: the Sinfonia Concertante features distinctive solo writing for violin and viola, but a sextet is chamber music, which implies the participation of six equal performers. This arrangement solves that problem in ingenious ways. Mozart’s solo writing is now distributed among the six performers, all of whom have a chance to shine. The solo violin part is now shared by the two violinists, the solo viola part is shared by the first violist and first cellist, and there are similar distributions of the solo parts throughout. The Grande Sestetto Concertante, as this version was called, is a pleasing piece of chamber music, and the arrangement for string sextet gives the music a nice richness of sound.

The opening Allegro maestoso is well-named, for this truly is majestic music, and it unfolds with sovereign ease. A long introduction leads to the masterful entrance of the soloists, parts that are taken here by different members of the sextet. This long opening movement is based on six different themes. There is a particular quality to this music that is almost impossible to define—the mood may be relaxed, but throughout this movement one feels the breadth, ease, and strength of Mozart’s musical imagination at its most powerful.

Great as the first movement is, it finds its equal in the Andante, which shifts to C minor. It opens with a dark, almost grieving main idea, and the development of this yearning, lamenting music is one of the glories of Mozart’s music. Among the most impressive things is this music’s rhythmic imagination: there are turns, trills, dotted rhythms, and decorations in nearly every measure.

The concluding rondo-finale, marked Presto, zips along happily, powered by the trills that decorate its main theme. This is the most brilliant of the movements, with the interplay between the instruments particularly crisp. There is no cadenza, but each instrument gets the chance to say farewell just before the close of this noble music.

Facing the Automaton TAMAR MUSKAL

Born June 20, 1965, Jerusalem Composed: 2021 Approximate Duration: 12 minutes

This is Tamar Muskal’s second collaboration with artist Daniel Rozin. In the core of their shared interest is the investigation of sound and visual. In this collaboration Muskal has composed a percussion concerto for soloist Steven Schick, a kinetic sculpture by Rozin—Wooden Mirror—and ensemble.

Harnessing the mirror’s ability to interact with the performer and produce percussive sounds while creating complex visuals, Muskal uses the sculpture as an instrument, as well as an autonomous player (hence the term automaton in the title). The piece comprises three movements: The first movement is a traditional percussion concerto utilizing a wide gamut of orchestral percussion instruments in conversation with the ensemble. The second movement introduces the Wooden Mirror, first as a kinetic interactive sculpture and progressively as a sound producing rhythmic instrument. The third movement integrates the Wooden Mirror as an autonomous instrument that joins the ensemble in complex conversations.

The first step in creating the piece involved Rozin programming the Wooden Mirror to respond interactively to a performer in different artistic ways (for the second movement). This first step informed Muskal’s experimentation with the mirror exploring different visual and rhythmical possibilities. Once ample materials were discovered, Muskal completed the first movement and started work on the third movement where the Wooden Mirror is fully composed. At times, the mirror’s part led to musical ideas and at others, the musical ideas led to the mirror’s part. Once completing this movement, Tamar

suggested guidelines for Schick’s improvised interaction with the mirror. Schick’s interaction with the mirror involves his entire body and is an intimate conversation that does not include the ensemble.

Throughout the piece, the audience’s attention drifts between concentrating on the undulating visual patterns of the Wooden Mirror and then finding themselves focused on the sounds and rhythms it produces. This duality is in the essence of the piece and is the motivator of both Muskal and Rozin’s interest in this combined media.

—Tamar Muskal

Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, Opus 21 ERNEST CHAUSSON

Born January 20, 1855, Paris Died June 10, 1899, Limay, France Composed: 1889-91 Approximate Duration: 41 minutes

Ernest Chausson is one of the most painful examples of what-might-have-been in the history of music. Born into a wealthy and educated family, Chausson came to music indirectly. He was an accomplished painter and art collector, but his parents wanted him to do something “sensible,” so he took degrees in law and was admitted to the bar in Paris at age 22. But he never practiced, choosing instead to pursue a career in music. Chausson studied with César Franck and tried to develop a personal style as a composer. This proved a difficult task, Chausson found himself caught between the chromaticism of Franck, the seductive influence of Wagner, and the radical music of his friend Debussy. He wrote a handful of pieces that have found their way into the repertory—the Poème for violin and orchestra and the Chanson perpetuelle for soprano—but the promise of these pieces was cut short. In the summer of 1899, Chausson and his family took a vacation house in Limay, about twenty miles northwest of Paris. His wife and five children were returning from a day trip to Paris, and Chausson got on a bicycle to meet them at the station. Along the way, he lost control of the bicycle, was thrown headfirst into a stone wall, and—in those days before bicycle helmets—was killed instantly. He was 44 years old.

Ten years earlier, in 1889, Chausson began work on a unique piece of chamber music, scored for violin, piano, and string quartet. The composer gave it an unusual name—Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet (that title is sometimes listed as Concert rather than Concerto). The uncertainty about its name may be a key to this music, for it sometimes seems like a hybrid composition. At moments, it is true chamber music—the six instruments play together, and their music has the intimacy and interchange we expect of the medium. There are, however, extended periods when the string quartet drops out altogether and the two “solo” instruments play by themselves. And there are also moments when the quartet makes so huge a sound, full of massed chords and tremolos, that it takes on the sonority and character of an orchestra and the music seems to become a true concerto.

But if there are confusions about its exact nature, there is no doubt about the power of this music, which is often full of those tantalizing, ineffable moments that characterize Chausson’s finest work. This is music of generous proportions—and it is grounded in the cyclic form Chausson had learned from Franck: its themes reappear in different forms in later movements.

At the beginning of the first movement, the piano announces—very firmly—the three-note cell that will shape much of that movement. This extended movement alternates interludes of melting sensuousness with fullthroated outbursts from the combined forces. A cadenzalike flourish from the solo violin leads to a dramatic recapitulation and a very quiet close on the opening three-note cell.

The wistful second movement is a Sicilienne that rocks gently along the swaying rhythm characteristic of that old Mediterranean dance; in the course of the movement, Chausson combines its two main themes. Darkest of the movements, the Grave opens with a long duet for the solo violin and piano. The violin sings its expressive song over the chromatic wandering of the piano, and it is typical of Chausson that this piano part should be marked both pianissimo and très lié: “very heavy.” The quartet enters quietly, but rising tensions drive the music to a huge climax built on great waves of sound. These furies subside, and the piano part from the very beginning, wandering disconsolately once again, draws the movement to its rapt conclusion.

Aptly marked Très animé, the finale leaps to life in a rush of rhythmic energy that will drive the entire movement. Along the way, Chausson brings back the fundamental theme-shape of the first movement as well as the main theme of the Grave, and there are once again extended passages for the two solo instruments.

Chausson worked on the Concerto for two years before completing it in 1891. The soloists on the première in 1892 were Eugène Ysaÿe and Auguste Pierret. Ysaÿe and Chausson were good friends, and it was for him that Chausson would later write his famous Poème.

Juho Pohjonen

Catherine Ransom Karoly Anthony Marwood

PRELUDE · 6:30 PM THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL Trio Syzygy performs Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E-Flat Major, Opus 70, No. 2

This concert will also be live streamed

Support for this Prelude is provided by:

Gordon Brodfuehrer

SUMMERFEST FINALE: A LOVE COMPOSED

Friday, August 20, 2021 · 7:30 PM

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

SCHUMANN Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos, and Horn (1810-1856) Juho Pohjonen, Inon Barnatan, pianos; Joshua Roman, Oliver Herbert, cellos; David Byrd-Marrow, horn WAGNER Siegfried Idyll

(1813-1883) Geoff Nuttall, Angela Jiye Bae, violins; Benjamin Zannoni, viola; Russell Houston, cello; David Grossman, bass; Catherine Ransom Karoly, flute; Nathan Hughes, oboe; Joseph Morris, Jay Shankar, clarinets; Brad Balliett, bassoon; David Byrd-Marrow, Dylan Hart, horns; Eduardo Ruiz, trumpet

INTERMISSION

SCHUMANN Elegy (arr. Britten) Livia Sohn, violin; Geoff Nuttall, Byungchan Lee, Anthony Marwood, Justin DeFilippis, violins; Ori Kam, Benjamin Zannoni, violas; Alisa Weilerstein, Eunghee Cho, cellos; La Jolla Music Society’s 52nd Season is supported by David Grossman, bass The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission BRAHMS Sextet for Strings in G Major, Opus 36 for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, (1833-1897) Allegro non troppoProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Joy Frieman, Scherzo: Allegro non troppo Adagio Debra Turner, Ric and Eleanor Charlton, Jeanette Stevens, Poco Allegro Gordon Brodfuehrer, Judith Bachner and Eric Lasley, Anthony Marwood, James Ehnes, violins; Ori Kam, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violas; FOR RESERVATIONS, PLEASE CALL 858.459.3724 EXT. 206 OR EMAIL RSOLTAN@LJMS.ORG Paul Watkins, Oliver Herbert, cellosand an anonymous donor.

Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos, and Horn ROBERT SCHUMANN

Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, Germany Composed: 1843 Approximate Duration: 19 minutes

This unusual piece is almost unknown to audiences. Schumann himself abandoned it, and the music exists today only because it had one very passionate—and famous—admirer.

In 1842 Schumann turned to chamber music. He was most naturally a composer of piano music and of songs, and he felt threatened by the whole prospect of chamber music—Schumann did not play a stringed instrument, and he knew how formidable the competition was. He spent the spring studying quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and then—in a great rush of energy—composed three string quartets that summer. The Piano Quintet quickly followed in October, and Schumann kept going: after “constant fearful sleepless nights,” he completed the Piano Quartet in November. And still he continued to write chamber music. A Piano Trio in A Minor was finished in December, and in January 1843 he wrote the Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Horn, and Two Cellos.

But now Schumann began to have doubts about his work. He was dissatisfied with the last two works and held them back. Seven years later he would recast the trio as the Phantasiestücke, Opus 88, but—on the recommendation of Felix Mendelssohn—Schumann quickly revised the Andante and Variations, recasting it for two pianos, and in this form it was published as his Opus 46 in August 1843. The manuscript of the original version went onto the shelf, and there it might remain to this day but for one man. Johannes Brahms, who as a youth of twenty had been championed by Schumann, knew and loved this music in its original form. In 1893—half a century after it was composed—Brahms convinced Schumann’s widow Clara to allow him to edit and publish the original version. Brahms particularly liked the unusual combination of colors in Schumann’s original, and it is only because of his passion for this version that we are able to hear the work on this concert. (And do we hear some of Brahms’ love for this music’s combination of string, piano, and horn sonorities in his own Horn Trio of 1865?)

The music itself consists of a gentle theme, marked Andante espressivo, and a set of variations on it. Even in Schumann’s original version, the two pianos have most of the musical interest, and the cellos and horn are used primarily for color and harmonic underpinning. When Schumann revised the work for two pianos, he shortened it considerably, cutting out some of the episodes that feature the other three instruments more prominently.

A misty introduction by the cellos and horn leads to the presentation of the theme, which the two pianos take turns introducing. As noted, the pianists have most of the responsibility for the variations, with the other three instruments contributing occasional swirls of sound and color to their texture. In the course of the variations Schumann quotes the music of the first song, “Seit ich ihn gesehen,” from his cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, which he had composed three years earlier. The song speaks of the first rush of a young woman’s love for the man she will eventually marry, and here that theme contributes to the romantic ardor of Schumann’s variations. One of the most effective variations comes near the end, when Schumann writes a brusque march-like episode (despite the triple meter) that proceeds tautly along its way; this was, unfortunately, one of the variations he would cut from the two-piano version. At the end, quiet chains of sixteenthnotes from the two pianos draw this little-known music to its subdued close.

Siegfried Idyll RICHARD WAGNER

Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig Died February 13, 1883, Venice Composed: 1870 Approximate Duration: 20 minutes

An understanding of Wagner’s lovely Siegried Idyll requires some knowledge of the details of that composer’s irregular personal life. In 1864, at the age of 51, Wagner began an affair with 27-year-old Cosima von Bülow, daughter of Franz Liszt and wife of pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow. Wagner and Cosima’s daughter Isolde was born the following April, on the same day von Bülow conducted the first rehearsal of Tristan und Isolde. All concerned agreed to keep details of the situation a secret, and the infant’s birth certificate listed von Bülow as the father, Wagner as the godfather. Cosima bore Wagner two more children, a daughter Eva in 1867 and a son Siegfried in 1869, and moved in with him in 1868. Finally, in 1870—after a six-year relationship and three children—the couple was married.

That fall, Cosima became aware that Wagner was working on a project he would not describe to her, and for good reason—it was to be one of the best surprises in the history of music. On Christmas morning, Cosima—asleep with eighteen-month-old Siegfried—awoke to the sound of

music. Her husband had secretly composed and rehearsed a piece for small orchestra, and now that orchestra— arranged on the staircase leading to Cosima’s bedroom— gave this music its most unusual première.

This music was not just a token of love and a Christmas present, but also a birthday present—Cosima had turned 33 a few weeks earlier. She treasured this music, which is full of private meanings for the couple: it is based on themes from Wagner’s (as yet unperformed) opera Siegfried, but it also uses a child’s cradlesong and other themes with personal meaning for Wagner and Cosima. Their private title for the piece was Tribschen Idyll: they were living at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland at the time, and Cosima felt that the music was an embodiment of their life and love in these years. When in 1878, pressed for cash, Wagner had the music published (under the now-familiar title Siegfried Idyll), Cosima confessed in her diary: “My secret treasure is becoming common property; may the joy it will give mankind be commensurate with the sacrifice I am making.”

As good love music should be, Siegfried Idyll is gentle, warm, and melodic. Listeners familiar with the opera Siegfried will recognize some of the themes, all associated with the young hero Siegfried: his horn call, the bird call from the Forest Murmurs sequence, and others. Wagner also quotes, in the oboe near the beginning, the old cradlesong “Sleep, Little Child, Sleep.” At its première, this music was performed on Cosima’s staircase by an orchestra of fifteen players, though the double bass was around a corner and could not see Wagner conduct.

At this concert, Siegfried Idyll is performed not in its familiar version for full orchestra but in Wagner’s original scoring for an orchestra of thirteen performers.

Elegy (arr. Britten) ROBERT SCHUMANN

Composed: 1853 Approximate Duration: 5 minutes

On September 1, 1957, the great horn-player Dennis Brain was killed in an automobile accident while driving from the Edinburgh Festival to London. His good friend Benjamin Britten, who had written his Serenade in 1943 specifically for Brain, felt the loss keenly and set out to create a memorial piece. He turned to an almost unknown work, the Violin Concerto of Robert Schumann, and made an arrangement of its slow movement for string orchestra. This was apparently performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1958, and then it vanished for half a century. Steven Isserlis discovered the manuscript among Britten’s papers, and this music–titled Elegy–is now finding an audience over sixty years after Britten made the arrangement.

Schumann composed Violin Concerto in 1853, but it was not published during his lifetime, and in fact it was not given its official public première until 1937. Schumann’s performance marking for the slow movement is ausdruckvoll (“expressive”), and this music alternates a syncopated opening idea from the cellos with the solo violin’s singing response. It was an easy enough matter for Britten to arrange the movement for string orchestra (Schumann’s original scoring was for strings, plus pairs of horns and bassoons), though Britten did have to create a new ending, for in Schumann’s concerto this movement accelerated directly into the fast finale.

This is lovely music, and in Britten’s orchestration it forms an affectionate remembrance of one great musician from another.

Sextet for Strings in G Major, Opus 36 JOHANNES BRAHMS

Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna Composed: 1864—65 Approximate Duration: 36 minutes

The Sextet in G Major is almost unique among Brahms’ works because it offers one of the most explicit emotional statements ever made by this normally-reticent composer. Brahms died a confirmed bachelor, but he fell in love with women throughout his life, and he went so far as to become engaged to one of these. She was Agathe von Siebold, the vivacious daughter of a professor at the University of Göttingen. Brahms and Agathe were engaged in 1858, when he was 25, and the couple spent several blissful months until the composer, convinced that he could never be happy if bound by marriage, broke it off, firmly and abruptly. The two never saw each other again.

The rupture was painful for both, and they responded in different ways. In her account of her life, published as a novel many years later, Agathe as an old woman finally came to terms with his decision:

[Brahms] strode by on his path to fame, and as he, like every genius, belonged to humanity, she gradually learned to appreciate his wisdom in severing the bonds which had threatened to shackle him. She saw clearly at last that she could never have filled his life with her great love.

Brahms looked back with sharply-mixed feelings—relief, regret, guilt, pain, nostalgia—and several years later he did something quite rare for him: he made an overt expression of his emotions in his own music. In the first movement of the Sextet in G Major, composed during the summers of 1864 and 1865, Brahms included a musical motif based on the letters of Agathe’s name. The sequence of notes A - G - A - H - E (H is B in German musical notation) occurs several times, and Brahms made its significance clear when he said to a friend: “Here I have freed myself from my last love.”

The Sextet should not be understood simply as a tribute to a woman the composer had loved, or (as some have suggested) as the composer’s farewell to the possibilities of love, but this warm and gentle (and sometimes complex) music is suffused with a depth of feeling. The first measures of the Allegro non troppo establish its mood of calm but unsettled beauty. The music opens with the hypnotic murmuring of the first viola, and quickly the first violin offers the main theme, a gently-singing idea that glides easily between G major and E-flat major as it rises and falls. That quietly-oscillating accompaniment and subtle handling of tonality will both be central to this music. The wonderful second subject—music full of sunlight and health—leads to the “Agathe” motif just before the start of the development. There is something plaintive about that figure here, as if it is what Brahms called (in another work) Rückblick: a “glance backward.” Brahms titles the second movement Scherzo, but this is a very unusual scherzo. It is in duple rather than the expected triple meter, and the pace is not fast—Allegro non troppo. Brahms had written its main theme—decorated continuously with mordents—as part of a piano piece a decade earlier. The measured pace of this “scherzo” is blasted aside at the trio section, which goes into 3/4 and leaps ahead at a blistering pace. Presto giocoso (“fast, merry”), says Brahms, and this unbuttoned and rollicking episode has more than a whiff of gypsy music about it.

The Adagio is in theme-and-variation form. The theme itself—marked molto espressivo—is slow, though its multilayered accompaniment is rhythmically complex and full of chromatic tension. Brahms, who was fascinated by variation form throughout his life, had just completed his Paganini Variations before writing this Sextet, and some of the complexity of that set can be felt in the five variations here, though eventually this movement reaches a conclusion full of radiant calm. By contrast, the good-natured Poco Allegro swings easily along its main theme in 9/8, heard immediately after the bustling rush of the introduction. This finale is in sonata form, and Brahms opens the development by treating that introductory material fugally. The rapid chatter of those steady sixteenths is heard throughout, and finally that energetic pulse rushes the movement to its spirited close on a coda marked Animato.

Is the Sextet in G Major an autobiographical composition, one that “tells” the story of this moment in its creator’s life? Absolutely not, and Brahms would have been the first to insist that it be heard as abstract music. But this music’s flickering between light and dark, its sharp mixture of energy and plaintiveness, and its motivic remembrance of vanished love should alert us that the Sextet in G Major had special, if very private, meaning for its young composer.

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2. I wonder as I wander

3. Loosin yelav

4. Rossignolet du bois

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6. La donna ideale

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9. Malurous qu’o uno fenno

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11. Azerbaijan love song

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021 · 7:30 PM

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