American Romanian Festival 2023 • Program Book

AMERICAN ROMANIAN FESTIVAL 2 23CONCERTS

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Marian Tănău, President

Maureen D’Avanzo

Franz Herbert

Silviu Pala

Lori Runco

John Santeiu Jr.

STAFF

Marian Tănău, President & Artistic Director

Joan Olkowski, Website & Design

Lori Newman, Operations

SPONSORS.

2023 SPONSORS

The American Romanian Festival programs are supported by our generous sponsors.

GOLD LEVEL

$3000–$4999

Elizabeth Greve & Franz Herbert

Marian & Jennifer Tanau

SILVER LEVEL

$1000–$2999

Ann & James Nicholson

George Predeteanu

John Jr. & Judy Santeiu

Charles & Carol Slater

BRONZE LEVEL

$400–$999

Dragos & Roxana Galusca

Iuliana & Ovidiu Niculescu

Lori Runco

FRIENDS LEVEL

$50–$399

Ioan & Georgeta Atanasiu

Paul & Barbara Burakoff

Marcy Chanteaux

Doug & Minka Cornelson

Mircea & Daniela Cure

Maureen D'Avanzo

Doina David

Ileana Dragnea

Mioara & Sherban Dragoi

Viorica Fuchs

Adrian & Ella Gheorghiu

Terence & Linda Ocallaghan

Razvan Pala

Silviu & Gela Pala

Wiley Pickett Jr.

Dorel & Anca Sala

THANK YOU

Leah Celebi—Vice President of Community Engagement & Programming, The War Memorial

Norah Duncan—Chair, Department of Music, Wayne State University

Joan Olkowski—Website & Design

Lori Newman—Editing

Matthew Pons—Stage Department Head, Detroit Symphony Orchestra

The Santeiu Family

CONCERT

ROmerican Avant-Garde

PIANO RECITAL

Thursday, March 2, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

Cook Recital Hall

333 W Circle Dr

East Lansing, MI 48824

FREE ADMISSION

ARTIST

Dinu Mihailescu, piano

CONCERT PROGRAM

John Cage (1912–1992)

In a Landscape (1948)

Remus Georgescu (1932–2021)

Three Miniatures for Piano (2004)

I. Berceuse

II. Sicilienne

III. Marche

Jacob Druckman (1928–1996)

The Seven Deadly Sins (1955)

I. Pride

II. Envy

III. Anger

IV. Sloth

V. Avarice

VI. Gluttony

VII. Carnality

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

“For Aaron Copland” from Seven Anniversaries (1943)

Aaron Copland (1900–1990)

Four Piano Blues (1926–1948)

I. Freely Poetic

II. Soft and Languid

III. Muted and Sensuous

IV. With Bounce

George Enescu (1881–1955)

“Carillon Nocturne” from Pièces

Impromptues (1916)

Black Angels

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT

Friday, March 3, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

The War Memorial

32 Lake Shore Dr

Grosse Pointe Farms, MI 48236

ADMISSION / $10–$25

Student: $10 (ID Required) / Regular: $25

Payments Accepted: Cash, Credit Card, Check

ARTISTS

Sujin Lim, violin

Marian Tănău, violin

CONCERT PROGRAM

Constantin Silvestri (1913–1969)

Will Haapaniemi, viola Jeremy Crosmer, cello

String Quartet No. 2, Op. 27 (c. 1944)

I. Con passione—disperato; Agitato e molto espressivo

II. Brillante giocoso

III. Nostalgico

IV. Con virtuosità, ma leggiero

Sujin Lim, violin; Marian Tănău, violin; Will Haapaniemi, viola; Jeremy Crosmer, cello

– INTERMISSION –

George Crumb (b. 1929)

Black Angels for Electric String Quartet (1970)

I. Departure

1. THRENODY I: Night of the Electric Insects, 2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes

3. Lost Bells

4. Devil-music

5. Danse Macabre (Duo alternativo: Dies Irae)

II. Absence

6. Pavana Lachrymae (Der Tod und das Mädchen) (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)

7. THRENODY II: BLACK ANGELS!

8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)

9. Lost Bells (Echo) (Duo alternativo: Sounds of Bones and Flutes)

III. Return

10. [Solo: Aria accompagnata] God-music

11. Ancient Voices

12. Ancient Voices (Echo)

13. THRENODY III: Night of the Electric Insects

Marian Tănău, violin; Sujin Lim, violin; Will Haapaniemi, viola; Jeremy Crosmer, cello

CONCERT

ROmerican Avant-Garde

PIANO RECITAL

Saturday, March 4, 2023, 3:00 p.m.

Steinway Piano Gallery Detroit 2700 E West Maple Rd

Commerce Charter Twp, MI 48390

ADMISSION / $10–$20

Student: $10 (ID Required) / Regular: $20

Payments Accepted: Cash, Credit Card, Check

ARTIST

Dinu Mihailescu, piano

SPECIAL GUEST & BOOK SIGNING

Andrei S. Markovits, author

The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness

CONCERT PROGRAM

John Cage (1912–1992)

In a Landscape (1948)

Remus Georgescu (1932–2021)

Three Miniatures for Piano (2004)

I. Berceuse

II. Sicilienne

III. Marche

Jacob Druckman (1928–1996)

The Seven Deadly Sins (1955)

I. Pride

II. Envy

III. Anger

IV. Sloth

V. Avarice

VI. Gluttony

VII. Carnality

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)

“For Aaron Copland” from Seven Anniversaries (1943)

Aaron Copland (1900–1990)

Four Piano Blues (1926–1948)

I. Freely Poetic

II. Soft and Languid

III. Muted and Sensuous

IV. With Bounce

George Enescu (1881–1955)

“Carillon Nocturne” from Pièces

Impromptues (1916)

Passionate Enescu & Martin String Octets

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT

Sunday, March 5, 2023, 3:00 p.m.

The War Memorial

32 Lake Shore Dr

Grosse Pointe Farms, MI 48236

ADMISSION / $10–$25

Student: $10 (ID Required) / Regular: $25

Payments Accepted: Cash, Credit Card, Check

ARTISTS

Kimberly Kaloyanides Kennedy, violin

Heidi Han, violin

Sujin Lim, violin

Marian Tănău, violin

Michael Chen, viola

CONCERT PROGRAM

Colin Martin (b. 1993)

Amerikinetics for String Octet (2023)

I. Very fast, with country spirit

II. Slowish, jazzy

III. Fast, with big city energy

– INTERMISSION –

George Enescu (1881–1955)

Octet for Strings, Op. 7 (1899–1900)

I. Très modéré

II. Très fougueux

III. Lentement

IV. Mouvement de valse ben rythmée

Will Haapaniemi, viola

Jeremy Crosmer, cello

Cole Randolph, cello

Colin Martin, Commissioned Composer 2023

CONCERT

Schumann & Enescu

Piano Quartets— Selections

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT

Friday, April 7, 2023, 11:30 a.m.

Schaver Recital Hall, Old Main 4841 Cass, Suite 1321

Detroit, Michigan 48201

FREE ADMISSION

ARTISTS

Marian Tănău, violin

Michael Chen, viola

David LeDoux, cello

Kazmierz Brzozowski, piano

SCHUMAN N & ENESCU PIANO QUARTETS

CONCERT PROGRAM

SELECTIONS FROM:

George Enescu (1881–1955)

Piano Quartet No. 2 in d minor, Op. 30 (1944)

I. Allegro moderato

II. Andante pensieroso ed espressivo

III. Con moto moderato—Allegro agitato

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 (1842)

I. Sostenuto assai—Allegro ma non troppo

II. Scherzo: Molto vivace—Trio I—Trio II

III. Andante cantabile

IV. Finale: Vivace

CONCERT.

Schumann & Enescu

Piano Quartets

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT

Saturday, April 8, 2023, 3:00 p.m.

Steinway Piano Gallery Detroit

2700 E West Maple Rd

Commerce Charter Twp, MI 48390

ADMISSION / $10–$25

Student: $10 (ID Required) / Regular: $25

SCHUMAN N & ENESCU PIANO QUARTETS

Payments Accepted: Cash, Credit Card, Check

ARTISTS

Marian Tănău, violin

Michael Chen, viola

David LeDoux, cello

Kazimierz Brzozowski, piano

CONCERT PROGRAM

George Enescu (1881–1955)

Piano Quartet No. 2 in d minor, Op. 30 (1944)

I. Allegro moderato

II. Andante pensieroso ed espressivo

III. Con moto moderato—Allegro agitato

– INTERMISSION –

Robert Schumann (1810–1856)

Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 (1842)

I. Sostenuto assai—Allegro ma non troppo

II. Scherzo: Molto vivace—Trio I—Trio II

III. Andante cantabile

IV. Finale: Vivace

ARTISTS

of Music, Chopin Society, Warsaw Musical Society, National Philharmonic Hall, and at Zelazowa Wola—Chopin’s birthplace. He has made recordings for Polish Radio and Television and recorded compact discs with music by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Szymanowski, Liszt, and Bartók. His recordings are also included in the popular CD sets “Living With the Classics.”

Mr. Brzozowski’s performance highlights include a New York City Carnegie Hall debut; performances in Warsaw with the Polish National Radio Orchestra, recorded live for Public Radio and Television; concerts at the Mozart Festival and the Chopin Festival in Warsaw; recitals for the Chopin Foundation in Florida; and concerts in Japan.

Kazimierz Brzozowski currently resides in Michigan, where he has frequently performed in recitals and as a soloist with symphony orchestras including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He performs in his native Poland as well, in recitals and as a soloist with philharmonic orchestras.

He is a graduate of the Warsaw Chopin Academy of Music (M.M.) and the University of Michigan (DMA). He has received awards from the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, Ann Arbor Musical Society

in Michigan, the University of Michigan, and the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York. He was a prizewinner at the Polish National Piano Festival and Chopin Society Competition in Warsaw. In July 2016 at the 20th International Piano Festival in Nałęczów, he was decorated with the Medal of Merit for Polish Culture, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland in recognition of his artistic and pedagogical achievements. At the same time, he received Appreciation Awards from the Mayor of the City of Nałęczów and from the Lublin Voivodeship Marshal for his cultural contribution to the city and the region. Mr. Brzozowski is a Steinway artist.

Dr. Brzozowski is the founder and director of the International Music Festival, which is held annually in Nałęczów, Poland. This event, now in its 20th year, attracts international high school and college students for intensive study and performances, both solo and with chamber orchestra. Faculty and guest artists come from Poland, the United States, Russia, and Japan. ❖

ARTISTS.

Michael Chen

Jeremy Crosmer

to 2017. Mike was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2012, and prior to that, a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 1992 to 1995. Additionally, Mike has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony. In 2017, Mike joined the Cincinnati Symphony on its European Festivals Tour.

Mike received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Northwestern University, studying violin with Blair Milton. In 1999, he began playing the viola and studied with Li-Kuo Chang. His other teachers include Michael Strauss, Peter Slowik, Keith Conant, and Baird Dodge.

Mike received a Master’s degree in conducting at Northwestern University in 1999, studying with Victor Yampolsky and Mariusz Smolij. His other conducting teachers include Gilbert Varga, David Zinman, and Murry Sidlin. Mike was a conducting fellow at the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen, Colorado, in 2008. He has also served as assistant conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra, guest conductor of the Webster University Community Music School’s Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, and guest conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Side-by-Side Orchestra. ❖

Jeremy Crosmer is a remarkable young artist, both as a cellist and a composer. Crosmer completed multiple graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in cello, composition, and theory pedagogy, and received his DMA in 2012 at age 24. From 2012 to 2017, he served as the assistant principal cellist in the Grand Rapids Symphony, and he joined the DSO in May 2017. He is the composer and arranger for the GRS Music for Health Initiative, which pairs symphonic musicians with music therapists to bring classical music to hospitals. In March 2017, the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital launched a music channel that runs continuously, using four hours of meditative music composed by Crosmer and performed by musicians of the GRS.

Crosmer is a founding member of the modern music ensemble Latitude 49. He is also a current member of the band ESME, a duo that aims to broaden the education of classical music by bringing crossovers and mashups of pop and classical music to schools throughout Michigan. ESME released its first CD in December 2016.

In April 2013, Crosmer toured London with the Grand Valley State University Chamber Orchestra. He performed the Vivaldi Double Concerto with Alicia Eppinga and the GRS in March 2016. While still in school, Crosmer was awarded the prestigious Theodore Presser Graduate Music Award to publish, record, and perform his Crosmer-Popper duets. He recorded the duets with Julie Albers, and both sheet music and CD are available online. ❖

VIOLA

CELLO

ARTISTS

Will Haapaniemi

VIOLA

Will Haapaniemi is a violinist born in Los Angeles from Finnish ancestry. He is thrilled to have joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2014 alongside his wife, violinist Heidi Han. Will always wanted to be a violinist, from the time he saw Itzhak Perlman play on Sesame Street when he was a little over 2 years old. Many other interests competed with practice time; some of his favorites were the martial art Capoeira, dance, and training for his sailplane pilot’s license.

Much is owed to Will’s master violin teachers, Yoko Takebe and Michael Gilbert of the New York Philharmonic while Will attended Manhattan School of Music. In high school, Will was fortunate to study with Mark Kaplan, and fondly remembers lessons with Ruggiero Ricci in his home in Palm Springs. Also a great influence, Will’s cousin Paul Roby of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and his aunt, Linda Grace, whose tireless support encouraged him to be the musician he is today. And of course, without the support of Will’s parents, none of this would have been possible.

Will is active as a soloist and chamber musician and has played viola since high school. ❖

Heidi Han

VIOLIN

Korean violinist Heidi Han first picked up a violin at the age of 5. Born and raised in Korea, she began her studies with JaeKwang Song while attending Yewon School of Arts. When Heidi was 13, her family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and she continued her studies with Robert Davidovici. While in Canada, she served the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra as a concertmaster and won first prize at the Kiwanis Competition, Burnaby Clef Concerto Competition, and the Young Artists of British Columbia Competition.

Heidi received both her Bachelor’s degree and graduate performance diploma from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, earning the Peabody Merit Scholarship for both programs. During her time at Peabody, Heidi studied with Victor Danchenko and was the concertmaster for the Peabody Concert Orchestra. While pursuing her degrees, she won first prize in the Marbury Competition and was awarded the Josef Kaspar Award, and she was invited to join the Keshet Eilon International Violin Mastercourse in Israel to study with Shlomo Mintz.

Currently, Heidi plays with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as a second violinist and lives in Detroit, Michigan, where she enjoys great music-making with her colleagues and her husband, Will Haapaniemi. ❖

ARTISTS.

Kimberly Kaloyanides Kennedy

Competition, where she performed Ravel’s Tzigane; and the Harid Conservatory Concerto Competition, where she performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Kimberly was one of the few Americans invited to the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 1998. She solos regularly with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Symphony Orchestra at the age of 22. In 2003, Kennedy further realized her dream when she became associate concertmaster.

Kimberly began her study of the violin at the age of 5 in Dayton, Ohio. Being the daughter of a Minister of Music and church organist allowed her many chances to share from her heart in front of congregations. Her love of music became what undoubtedly would be her career as she pursued her studies at Brevard Music Center and Interlochen Arts Camp as the Governor’s Scholar for the state of Ohio. She continued her studies at the Sarasota Music Festival; spent four summers at the Aspen Music Festival on Fellowship, as associate concertmaster of the Chamber Orchestra; spent three years at the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida, with Sergiu Schwartz; and finally landed at the University of Michigan with Paul Kantor. It was halfway through her senior year at Michigan in 1998 that her hard work paid off, when she joined the first violin section of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Throughout her training, she won several prizes in competitions around the country, including the Grand Prize in the National MTNA competition and first prize in the Greek Women’s National Competition in Chicago; the Skokie Valley Concerto Competition, where she performed the Barber Violin Concerto; the Universtiy of Michigan Concerto

Kimberly enjoys performing chamber music regularly around Michigan with various groups, including the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, on series such as Chamber Music North, Fairlane Concert Guild, Pro Mozart, Classical Brunch in Birmingham, and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.

Kimberly and her husband, Bryan, fourth horn of the DSO, live in Plymouth with their two beautiful children, Ethan and Lauren, as well as their two dogs, cat, hamsters, fish, and bunny. ❖

ARTISTS

David LeDoux CELLO

David LeDoux has appeared as a soloist with the Syracuse Symphony, the Skaneateles Festival Chamber Orchestra, the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Oklahoma State University Symphony, the Louisiana Sinfonietta, and the Mid-Texas Symphony.

LeDoux is an active and avid chamber musician, including many years with the Syracuse Society for New Music. As a committed private teacher, he spent 2012 as a cello instructor for Imagine Syracuse, a music program in an inner-city school that was modeled after the El Sistema program in Venezuela.

Previous professional engagements for David have included serving as principal cellist with the Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Symphony, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Symphony, and the Louisiana Sinfonietta. Last summer, David returned to his faculty position with the Eastern Musical Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina.

David lives in Madison Heights and includes among his hobbies reading, running, and movies. ❖

Sujin Lim

VIOLIN

Violinist Sujin Lim was born in Seoul, South Korea, where she began her musical studies at age 5. She joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as section violinist in 2017.

Sujin is a prizewinner in numerous national and international violin competitions, including the Lodolfo Lipizer International Violin Competition (Italy), Torun International Violin Competition (Poland), Indianapolis Matinee Musical Scholarship Competition, Indiana University Sibelius Concerto Competition (United States), and the Joongang Music Competition and Ewha Kyunghyang Competition (Korea).

Sujin has appeared in recital and as a soloist throughout Korea, Europe, and the United States with the Romania Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of Bacau, Torun Symphony Orchestra, Yeonsae University, and the Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a chamber musician, she is member of the EM trio in Korea and performed in such chamber recitals as Yagi Studio, Jungdong Hall, KNUA Hall, and Kumho Art Hall. Sujin has also served as principal concertmaster in the Evansville Philharmonic, Indiana University Symphony, KNUA Symphony, and the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra. ❖

ARTISTS.

Dinu Mihailescu

PIANO

Born in Timișoara in 1988 to a family of classical musicians, Dinu Mihailescu is a Romanian pianist who studied in Romania and later at the Haute Ecole de Musique (HEM) in Geneva with Professors Dominique Weber and Cédric Pescia.

Dinu also received two special prizes for outstanding academic results and had the opportunity to study with renowned pedagogues such as Leon Fleisher, Dmitri Bashkirov, Menahem Pressler, Julian Martin, Robert McDonald, and Paul Coker.

In 2021, Dinu received the title of Doctor of Music with distinction from the Western University of Timișoara (Romania), thanks to his doctoral thesis, The Interpretation of Béla Bartók’s Musical Microcosm: Between the Elements of Musical Language and Artistic Expression.

Dinu has performed as a soloist with the main orchestras in Romania as well as with the Orchestra of the HEM of Geneva and the Orchestra of the Festival of Gijón-Candás. His musical career also includes participation in various international competitions and festivals such as the Millennium Piano Festival of Gijón (Spain), Puplinge Classique (Switzerland), Les Estivales de Megève (France), and the Geneva International Piano Competition (2012).

In Switzerland, he has performed in important venues such as the Yehudi Menuhin Forum in Bern, the Ansermet Studio of the Swiss Radio and Television (Geneva), the Franz Liszt Hall of the Conservatoire de

Musique, the Les Salons Theater, and the Cour de l’Hôtel- de-Ville in Geneva.

In 2020, he made his debut at Victoria Hall in Geneva in a concert featuring the two-piano duo OXY MORE with Swiss pianist Philippe Boaron. That project included recording a CD of innovative repertoire for two pianos in 2021 at the Rosey Concert Hall in Rolle (Switzerland).

Mr. Mihailescu received numerous awards and prizes, including second prize at the Béla Bartók International Piano Competition (Hungary, 2017), second prize at the Nice International Piano Competition (France, 2016), and the Rotary Club Award for Excellence for his participation in art and culture in Romania (Timișoara, 2018).

Since 2017, Dinu has been teaching piano at the Popular Conservatory of Music, Dance and Theater in Geneva (Switzerland) and at the Music School of Lausanne. He is increasingly dedicated to mixing classical and modern repertoire with contemporary piano repertoire. To that end, his most recent projects include audio-video recordings of Max Richter’s piano music connected with piano works from Romantic repertoire by Schubert, Chopin, and Schumann. ❖

ARTISTS

Cole Randolph

CELLO

Cole Randolph is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a Posse Foundation Leadership scholar, with degrees in mathematics, music performance, and economics. Cole was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and began playing the cello at the age of 5. He has performed in many venues including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the White House.

Cole studied cello under the tutelage of Uri Vardi and has performed in master classes for various artists including Alban Gerhardt, Clive Greensmith, Steven Doane, and Timothy Eddy. In summer 2021, Cole served as a Project Inclusion Fellow with the Grant Park Music Festival, performing orchestral and chamber concerts throughout the city of Chicago. Cole served as an African American Fellow with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 2020–2021 and joined as a full-time section member in December 2021. ❖

Marian Tănău

VIOLIN

picked up the violin at age 4 and began his musical education in his hometown of Timișoara in Romania. He graduated from Liceul de Muzica “Ion Vidu,” where he studied violin with Maria Cleşiu. He then left for the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca and the Conservatorul de Muzica “G. Dima,” where he earned an Artists Diploma. Later in the USA, he earned a graduate degree from Bowling Green State University.

Tănău joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1995. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Romania and the USA and is an active chamber musician. In 2004, Tănău joined the violin faculty at Wayne State University. In 2005, he was awarded a sabbatical year and moved temporarily to Romania where he joined the music faculty at the National College of Art “Ion Vidu” and the Music Conservatory of the West University from Timișoara.

His recording of the Violin Sonata by Paul Paray, recorded for Grotto Productions, received praise from critics in the prestigious Strad, Gramophone, and Fanfare magazines.

Marian Tănău is the founder and president of the American Romanian Festival Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote American and Romanian music and culture to audiences in the USA and Europe. ❖

Colin Martin

Andrei S. Markovits

from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2018, studying with David Garner. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in music with honors from Middlebury College in 2015, with minors in Spanish and Chinese. He has also studied composition with Su Lian Tan, piano with Diana Fanning and Maribeth Gunning, and percussion with Douglas Cardwell. His music includes symphonic works such as concerti and symphonies, as well as chamber, solo, and vocal works, and has been performed at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall, San Francisco’s Center for New Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Middlebury College’s Mahaney Center for the Arts, and premiered at the Southwest Piano Festival. His first major orchestral work, a symphony celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s centennial commissioned by the New Mexico Philharmonic, premiered in 2019. ❖

Andrei S. Markovits was born in late 1948 as the only child of a Hungarian-speaking, middle-class Jewish family in Timișoara, where he spent the first nine years of his life. He then emigrated first to Vienna, Austria, and then to New York City, where he went to Columbia University, receiving five degrees there. The first 25 years as a university professor included stints at Harvard University, Boston University, Wesleyan University, and many universities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Israel. He then joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1999, where he spent the next 25 years in his academic career. His many books, articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in 15 languages. In 2012, the Federal Republic of Germany bestowed on him the Order of Merit, First Class, which is the highest honor awarded to any civilian, German and foreign.

His most recent book is a memoir titled The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness published by the Central European University Press in Budapest and Vienna. A Romanian translation will be published by Editura Hasefer in Bucharest in April of this year.

PROGRAM NOTES

ROmerican Avant-Garde

Program Note by Dinu Mihailescu

The daring works proposed by ROmerican Avant-Garde explore emotional themes ranging from anger to dreams and rebelliousness, with a whiff of nostalgia from Eastern Europe and post-war America. Echoing our 21st-century identity crisis, this program testifies to a need for a new, avantgarde approach.

Jacob Druckman, one of the principal composers of the American musical avantgarde, is also considered one of the greatest orchestrators of his generation. The Seven Deadly Sins is his only known piece for solo piano. Composed in Europe—more specifically in Paris—this work might represent an “experimental plane” for the composer, who continued to try out new forms, techniques, and styles of composition upon his return to the United States.

Adept in the atonal style, all the while including reminiscences of tonality that are magistrally “hidden” in his musical discourse, Druckman finds his principal sources of inspiration in the music of Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland—with whom he studied composition at Tanglewood. Beginning in the 1960s, this American composer became impassioned with electronic music and by opera, two elements that will contribute to the originality of his future musical creations.

John Cage, an emblematic composer of American experimental music, adept in the dissonant style, and in particular of the prepared instrument, is represented in the program by an early work, rarely played in public and very surprising in its melodicity: In a Landscape. This piece, written in 1948, is reminiscent of a meditation; it was composed during a period of profound questioning in the composer’s life, a period during which he became involved in Zen culture and wrote another work in the same style: Dream. In this program, In a Landscape symbolizes the

opening toward an imaginary world that is sometimes burlesque—at once grotesque and sweetly nostalgic.

Remus Georgescu, renowned Romanian conductor and composer is represented in this context of musical avant-garde by Three Miniatures for Piano, compositions that are close to Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky’s music, dissonant and very rhythmically dynamic music, which expresses a great inner freedom.

Consequently, the respective atmospheres proposed by these short pieces are diverse, passing through the mystery of nocturnal life and the ambiguity of dreams/nightmares (Berceuse), postromantic nostalgia (Sicilienne) and caricature (Marche). The association with Druckman’s work is therefore obvious. These three miniatures, which follow the opening work (Cage’s In a Landscape), play the role of preparing the listener’s ear, and gradually lead them toward the fantastical reality of the post-war world (1955).

The third American composer, who completes the program, Aaron Copland, nicknamed “the Dean of American Composers,” is one of the most original and influential composers of the 20th century. Having studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris for three years, his vast musical creation is interwoven with surprising mixtures of the artistic currents of the moment (such as as jazz, Postimpressionism, and neoclassicism) as well as the new musical languages with which the most “rebellious” composers experimented at the beginning of the 20th century: serial music, atonality, new sounds and effects produced on traditional instruments, etc.

As if in an avant-garde poem, almost out of context and in a fleeting manner, Leonard Bernstein “intervenes” and pays tribute to his teacher and friend, Aaron Copland, with the miniature titled “For Aaron Copland.” This work is taken from the collection Seven

Anniversaries, which includes seven works for solo piano written between 1942 and 1943. These short pieces represent a musical gift for the birthday of each friend of the composer. The “miniature” character is again used to prepare for the entrance, this time, of Copland’s Four Piano Blues.

The last piece in this musical “collage” is “Carillon Nocturne,” by the renowned Romanian composer George Enescu. Inspired by Romanian folk music, the impressionist movement and, later, by Asian music, Enescu creates his own language by finding the perfect balance between his sources of inspiration and his own musical intuition.

Through this original representation of chimes, Enescu’s work suggests an atmosphere of tranquility and stability at the end of the program, which allows the audience to gently reconnect with itself. The dissonances are no longer the real harmonic conflicts of The Seven Deadly Sins, but rather a faithful representation of the natural resonances of the bells, at once high and at the same time deep, produced this time by the piano. ❖

COLIN MARTIN

Amerikinetics (2023)

Program Note by Colin Martin “Amerikinetics” is a portmanteau of “American” and “kinetics,” meaning the study of motion. It refers to the lively American rhythms that serve as the basis of the entire work and give it a sense of propulsive movement. The first movement, “Very fast, with country spirit,” is largely in 10/8 time and evokes fiddle/bluegrass music of the American south. The second movement, “Slowish, jazzy,” relies on a swing rhythm to produce a seductive nocturne. The third movement, “Fast, with big city energy,” features a syncopated, propulsive rhythm that evokes the energy of America’s lively major

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cities. A hectic, polytonal middle section in mixed meter evokes the sometimes-chaotic nature of city life. I’d like to extend my thanks to the American Romanian Festival for this commission and for giving me the opportunity to compose this invigorating piece. ❖

CONSTANTIN SILVESTRI

String Quartet No. 2, Op. 27 (c. 1944)

Program Note by David B. Levy

Romanian composer and conductor

Constantin-Nicolae Silvestri was born in Bucharest on May 31, 1913, and died in London on February 23, 1969. By age 6, he was already starting to play piano and organ, and he gave his first public performance at age 10. His studies led him to the Târgu Mureş and Bucharest Conservatories. Despite any formal training in conducting, he made his debut in this capacity in his teens. In 1930, he made his debut with the Bucharest Radio Symphony Orchestra, and five years later was associated with the Romanian Opera and the “George Enescu” Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1948 to 1956, Silvestri taught at the Bucharest Conservatory, where among his best-known students was Sergiu Comissiona, a conductor who enjoyed considerable success in the United States. As a composer, he produced works for piano, orchestra, and chamber music, including the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 27, composed in the 1940s.

Silvestri’s music is not well-known outside of his native Romania and Eastern Europe. His reputation was built primarily on his activities as a conductor. According to the biographical article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Silvestri’s style blended “neoclassical constructivism, with occasional shades of expressionism.” His String Quartet No. 2, Op. 27, is cast in a chromatically embellished key of a minor, and is in four movements marked “Con passione—agitato

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e molto espressivo,” “Brillante, giocoso,” “Nostalgico,” and “Con virtuosità, ma leggiero.” Despite its mild level of dissonance and thematic angularity, the work displays elements of folklorism, but without the citation of actual folk music. ❖

GEORGE ENESCU

Piano Quartet No. 2 in d minor, Op. 30 (1944)

Program Note by Marian Tănău Enescu completed his Piano Quartet No. 2 in May 1944 while he was at his villa near Sinaia, Romania. At the time, Romania was in the middle of one of the worst periods of the Second World War. In contrast with the tumultuous time, the Piano Quartet is full of tranquility and peace. The work is dedicated to Gabriel Fauré, who was Enescu’s composition teacher during his days at the Paris Conservatoire.

The composition was premiered on October 21, 1947, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., by the Albeneri Piano Trio and guest violist Milton Katimus.

The quartet is written in three movements: Allegretto moderato, Andante pensieroso ed espressivo, and Con moto moderato—Allegro agitato

The first movement is in the key of d minor and has the structure of a sonata form. The second movement is composed in E Major and has the form of a three-part song. The last movement is an agitated fast movement in free sonata form. It is composed in d minor but ends with a change to D Major in the coda.

Enescu liked to compose cyclical works, and this piece is no exception. The idea presented in the opening of the first movement gets developed in the thematic content of the entire quartet, with the initial idea recurring and incorporated in various other sections of the work. ❖

GEORGE ENESCU

Octet for Strings, Op. 7 (1899–1900)

Program Note by David B. Levy

Romanian composer, violinist, conductor, and educator George(s) Enescu was born on August 19, 1881, in Liveni-Vîrnav (later renamed “George Enescu”) in the old Kingdom of Romania and died in Paris on May 4, 1955. His first name acquired an added “s” in France. There is no disagreement that Enescu was the most gifted musician ever to emanate from his native Romania. His impact on contemporaneous Romanian musicians and subsequent generations remains strong even today, and his ability to retain a vast repertory of music in his memory was prodigious. Enescu’s influence, however, was truly international in scope, earning him praise of musicians from across the globe. As a teacher of violin, Yehudi Menuhin, Ivry Gitlis, Arthur Grumiaux, and Ida Haendel were among his most illustrious students. His activity as a conductor was widespread, having especially been active in Paris and New York, where he came under consideration as the successor to Arturo Toscanini as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1936. As a composer, Enescu is best known for his two Romanian Rhapsodies, whose popularity have overshadowed his other compositions, much to the composer’s annoyance. His Octet for Strings was composed between 1899 and 1900, and its first performance took place on December 18, 1909, in the Salle des Agriculteurs in Paris, as part of a festival concert of Enescu’s chamber works in the Soirées d’Art concert series. The performers were the combined members of the Géloso and Chailley Quartets. The Octet is dedicated to André Gedalge, a composer and educator whose students included Enescu, Charles Koechlin, and Maurice Ravel.

Enescu’s Octet for Strings proudly takes its place as one of the masterworks of the rich repertoire of string chamber music. According to the biographical article on the composer in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, “melodic line was, for Enescu, the vital principle of music: as he wrote in his autobiography, ‘I’m not a person for pretty successions of chords … a piece deserves to be called a musical composition only if it has a line, a melody, or, even better, melodies superimposed on one another.’” This principle certainly applies well to the Octet, a piece whose first movement offers the listener no fewer than six melodies, or melodic ideas, all of which inform the events of its vast four-movement canvas. Speaking of his year-and-a-half-long work on the 40-minute piece, Enescu is quoted as having said, “I wore myself out trying to make work a piece of music divided into four segments of such length that each of them was likely at any moment to break. An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper.”

The most famous string octet in the repertory, of course, is the wonderfully exuberant Op. 20, composed by the young Felix Mendelssohn when he was a mere 13 years old. Enescu was not too far behind his predecessor, having finished his Octet when he was only 19. An accomplished violinist, the Romanian master certainly knew how to exploit the full range of possibilities in writing for string instruments. The Octet certainly taxes the virtuosity of its performers. Even more, it reveals Enescu’s considerable skill as a master of color and counterpoint. Having lived in Vienna and Paris, he was also keenly attuned to the styles of his contemporaries, including Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy. While the influence of these styles is occasionally discernible by listeners familiar with those idioms, the Octet retains its own

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palpable freshness and originality. The four movements are titled (in French): Très modéré, Très fougueux (ardent), Lentement, and Mouvement de Valse bien rythmée. This final movement is, indeed, a true fin de siècle tour de force, whose wildly frantic final measures could be seen as a precursor to Ravel’s symphonic poem La valse. ❖

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)

Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47 (1842)

Program Note by Jonathan Blumhofer Schumann’s Piano Quartet dates from the “chamber music year” of 1842, which also saw the completion of the three string quartets and the Piano Quintet. If the latter is, perhaps, the more brilliant of the two works for keyboard and strings, there’s at least no faulting the sweeping lyricism, deep reservoirs of emotion, and spectacular technique to be found on nearly every page of the Quartet.

Its first movement opens with a noble, chorale-like theme in the strings punctuated by tolling octaves in the piano. This flows directly into the main body of the movement, a brisk Allegro marked by a snappy opening figure that transforms into a rather lyrical tune played by cello and violin over a chugging piano accompaniment. Its second theme falls into two parts: a rising scale, followed by a descending arpeggio. It’s often heard in canonic textures or in the vicinity of a choral-like cantus firmus

The brisk second movement channels Schumann’s friend Mendelssohn’s “elfin” style, here, though, a bit darker and dourer. It’s sprightly and whimsical, all the same, filled with impetuous energy that’s only interrupted by the two trio sections that pop up in the middle.

In the third movement, Schumann’s considerable gifts as a tunesmith are fully

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on display. The cello opens with a gorgeous, expansive melody that’s passed to each member of the quartet and heard with slightly varied accompaniments in each iteration. In the middle comes a striking, devotional passage that seems to recall late Beethoven, but does little to dispel the music’s sense of yearning.

The brilliant finale offers two contrasting ideas: a lively, extroverted fugato and a more ambiguous, songful tune. Neither really wins out—the blazing coda pays homage to both—but perhaps that’s the point. Musical complexity and contradiction are but a reflection of the same human characteristics, a fact of which Schumann was well aware. ❖

GEORGE CRUMB

Black Angels for Electric String Quartet (1970)

Program Note by David B. Levy American composer George [Henry] Crumb [Jr.] was born on October 24, 1929, in Charleston, West Virginia, and died in Media, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 2022. The son of musicians (both parents were members of the West Virginia Symphony), Crumb grew up in an environment filled with classical and romantic music, as well as music composed by early twentieth-century masters. He received training in composition at the Mason College of Music and Fine Arts (University of Charleston), the University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan. His favorite composers included Mahler, Debussy, and Bartók, but his own music frequently quoted music by Bach, Chopin, Schubert, and Richard Strauss, and others, always with a specific dramatic or programmatic goal in mind. His Black Angels for Electric String Quartet (1970, published 1971) is one such piece, quoting a part of Schubert’s lied “Tod und das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”). Schubert himself used this theme in the variation movement

of his String Quartet in d minor. Crumb was the recipient of several prestigious grants, as well as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music (1968). Black Angels is Crumb’s reaction to the horrors of the Vietnam War. It was commissioned by the University of Michigan and was first performed by the Stanley Quartet in October 1970. An inscription in the score reads “Finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 (in tempore belli).” In addition to their amplified instruments, the performers are required to play crystal glasses, maracas, suspended tam-tam, and gong, as well as using their voices to produce phonemes and reciting numbers in a variety of languages.

George Crumb was a composer who was at once conscious of the tradition of concert music to which he belonged, as well as the social issues of his day. Many of his works made use of texts by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, most notably Ancient Voices of Children (1970). This work, and many others, makes use of theatrical effects and lighting. According to Crumb’s own program notes, Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land) is a “parable on our troubled contemporary world.” The work is rife with multiple layers of symbolism, part of which is numerological (7 and 13). The interval of the tritone, known as “the devil in music” (diabolus in musica) in the Middle Ages, plays an important role throughout the piece. In addition to the Schubert quotation, Crumb also alludes to the medieval Latin chant Dies irae that is the sequence in the Catholic Mass for the Dead. This tune was also used to great effect by Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique and by Rachmaninoff in several of his works. Crumb also opens the work with a movement titled “Night of the Electric Insects”—a clear reference to a (non-electric) effect found in some music by Bartók.

While Black Angels is linked specifically to the composer’s response to the Vietnam

War, its dramatic message is timeless.

In writing the words in tempore belli (in time of war), for example, Crumb was doubtlessly aware of the title of Joseph Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War) of 1796. Crumb described the structure of Black Angels as a “huge arch-like design” portraying “a voyage of the soul [in three stages]” being “Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption).”

Even here, Crumb was surely thinking of the three movements of Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano, Op. 81a (“Lebewohl” or “Les Adieux”), whose three movements are labeled Departure, Absence, and Return. While much of Black Angels is harsh and angular, the use of tonal quotations provides a helpful anchor for the listener. ❖

The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness

Book Summary

This is the story of an illustrious Romanianborn, Hungarian-speaking, Vienna-schooled, Columbia-educated and Harvard-formed, middle-class Jewish professor of politics and other subjects. Markovits revels in a rootlessness that offers him comfort, succor, and the inspiration for his life’s work. As we follow his quest to find a home, we encounter his engagement with the important political, social, and cultural developments of five decades on two continents. We also learn about his musical preferences, from classical to rock; his love of team sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball, and American football; and his devotion to dogs and their rescue. Above all, the book analyzes the travails of emigration the author experienced twice, moving from Romania to Vienna and then from Vienna to New York.

Markovits’s Candide-like travels through the ups and downs of post-1945 Europe

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and America offer a panoramic view of key currents that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. By shedding light on the cultural similarities and differences between both continents, the book shows why America fascinated Europeans like Markovits and offered them a home that Europe never did: academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity, and religious tolerance. America for Markovits was indeed the “beacon on the hill,” despite the ugliness of its racism, the prominence of its everyday bigotry, the severity of its growing economic inequality, and the presence of other aspects that mar this worthy experiment’s daily existence. ❖

MISSION

The American Romanian Festival Inc. is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster mutual understanding and promote American and Eastern European music and culture.

A specific focus of the festival is to encourage cultural awareness and understanding between people of culture, musicians, and artists of the United States and Romania. The festival organizes educational, cultural, and artistic events that take place in Romania and the USA. Founded in 2005, the organization supports cultural exchanges with Americans participating in events in Romania and Romanians participating in events in the USA.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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