SoNA
Symphony of Northwest Arkansas
Mother and Child January 7, 2023 Walton Arts Center Paul Haas, conductor
Mother and Child (1943–1944)
including Dmitri Tiomkin for Frank Capra’s
William Grant Still
Lost Horizon. He was on the musical staff
b 11 May, 1895 in Woodville, MS
for the TV show Perry Mason. And he wrote
d 3 December, 1978 in Los Angeles, CA
prolifically for the concert hall—so much so, in fact, that much of his output awaits broader discovery.
William Grant Still’s long and varied career
Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano,
saw him active in an almost overwhelming
commissioned in 1943 by violinist Louis
variety of musical activities. He was the
Kaufman for himself and his pianist wife
first Black composer to have a symphony
Annette, consists of three miniatures
performed by a major orchestra and the
connected together by their sources in
first Black to conduct a major orchestra.
Jazz Age and Depression-era American art.
He played the oboe in theater orchestras
The second of those, Mother and Child, is
for Eubie Blake, Sophie Tucker, Artie Shaw,
based on a sculpture by Sargent Claude
and Paul Whiteman. He arranged music for
Johnson (1888–1967), who brought the
NBC radio shows. He wrote nine operas.
Harlem Renaissance to California, where he
He arranged music for film composers,
practiced a wide range of artistic pursuits,
including painting, pottery, sculpture,
on a planned musical version of Thornton
printmaking, ceramics, and wood carving.
Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth with his
His focus tended to be on African American
perennial Broadway partners Betty Comden,
women, resulting in a strong feminine
Adolph Green, and Jerome Robbins. When
sensibility in his works. His 1930 Mother
the theatrical project fizzled, Bernstein had
and Child fuses Art Deco and folk styles in a
time to accept a commission from Dr. Walter
figure of touching protectiveness, the child
Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, for a
securely wrapped not just in its mother’s
choral work that might have “a hint of ‘West
arms, but in the elegant contours of her
Side Story’ about the music.”
entire body. Still’s musical depiction is amongst his most touching inspirations, an
The Chichester Psalms represent the
extended lullaby and cradle song that weaves
mature Bernstein at his most lyrical and
hints of Fauré into its richly lyrical tapestry.
spiritually optimistic. The texts may be
Sensitive to the work’s effectiveness,
drawn from Hebrew scriptures, but the
Still soon provided several transcriptions,
music is resolutely American, assembled
including this arrangement for
partly from sketches originally intended for
string orchestra.
West Side Story as well as material from the abandoned Thornton Wilder project. Bernstein provided two different versions of the Psalms, one requiring full orchestra, the other a reduced version for harp, organ,
Chichester Psalms (1965)
and percussion. Both employ as soloist a
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)
boy soprano (or countertenor) who takes
b 25 August, 1918 in Lawrence, MA
the part of the young shepherd-and-future-
d 14 October, 1990 in New York City
king David. “Behold how good, and how pleasant it is, for brethren to dwell together in unity” states the closing text. Such a noble sentiment could well stand as Leonard
“The most accessible, B-flat majorish piece I’ve ever written.” Leonard Bernstein said this about Chichester Psalms, one of the few works written by the kaleidoscopically gifted American legend during his twelveyear tenure at the helm of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969). He took a sabbatical during the 1964–65 season in order to focus on composition, but much of the time was spent first on an abortive attempt at 12-tonal writing—it just wasn’t my music, he said—and then collaborating
Bernstein’s epitaph.
provide the textual underpinning. The first imagines the Virgin Mary speaking to her
Symphony No. 3 (1976)
son as he dies on the cross; the second is a
Henryk Górecki
serene acceptance from an eighteen-year-
b 6 December, 1933 in Silesia, Poland
old girl imprisoned in a Nazi concentration
d 12 November, 2010 in Silesia, Poland
camp; the third describes a mother grieving for a son killed in war. Each is about love, about loss, about compassion. There is angst here, but it is muted both in the text
Nobody was more surprised than Henryk
and in Górecki’s transparent, translucent
Górecki by the worldwide success of his
settings, which clothe the words in slowly
Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Symphony of
shifting harmonies and chant-like
Sorrowful Songs.” For one thing, the work
vocal lines.
became an international phenomenon only a good fifteen years after its composition;
Before the 1970s Górecki had been a
before then it was ignored or even reviled.
cerebral modernist à la Anton Webern and
For another, it’s close to an hour of slow,
Karlheinz Stockhausen. But now he wrote
meditative music—hardly the sort of thing
from the heart. “Many of my family died
to achieve hit-parade status. But it struck
in concentration camps,” he explained.
a global nerve nonetheless after the 1991
“I had a grandfather who was in Dachau,
release of a Nonesuch recording featuring
an aunt in Auschwitz. You know how it is
soprano Dawn Upshaw, with David Zinman
between Poles and Germans. But Bach was
conducting the London Sinfonietta. “The
a German too—and Schubert, and Strauss.
first royalty check [Górecki] got was in the
Everyone has his place on this little earth.
hundreds of thousands of dollars, and
That’s all behind me. So the Third Symphony
he kept it in his wallet for a long enough
is not about war; it’s not a Dies Irae; it’s
time that we had to reissue it, because he
quite simply a Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.”
wouldn’t cash it,” recalled Nonesuch CEO Robert Hurwitz. “It may just have been such a shock to all of a sudden go from someone who had struggled to find recognition, to someone who was at that moment as famous as any modern composer in the world.” Trends pass, and now that the initial hubbub has faded, Górecki’s wonderful creation can be heard for what it truly is: an extended consolation in the face of almost unimaginable suffering. Three poems
SoNA Singers Terry Hicks, Director Elizabeth Bainbridge, Chorus Manager
Soprano
Emily Sink
Dennese Adkins
Callie Skembo
Clara Augustin
Cathy Suazo
Barbara Miller
Arlene Biebesheimner
Jordan Tyler
Anne Millett
Samanthe Burrow
Laura Welkey
Sarah Nickerson
Bass
Emily Cross
Kaitlyn Wyre
Erin Novak
Henry Aggus
Sarah Matteri, section leader
Steve Strohl Ryan Widen Aaron Young
Jennifer Shaver
Josh Baxter
Rebecca Grear
Alto
Cassidy Sykes
Jerry Biebesheimner
Cheri Headrick
Ashley Adair
April Taylor
Ryan Bradburn
Michelle Higuera
Rebeca Adler
Claire Thompson
Dennis Brewer
Vickie Hilliard
Elizabeth Bainbridge
Holly White
Jordan Brown
Shiloh Jones,
Abby Barker
Claire Eugenio
Jeff Clapper
Marcie Bayles
Tenor
John Mark Curtis
Erin Jorgenson
Kaci Berry
Chris Brown,
Ken Griggs
Amy Joyce
Kristen Flesner
Amy Locke
Christina Hacala
Caity Church
Dawnelle McAlister
Megan Hefner
Nick Cross
Diane Morrison
Katie Hicks
Amy Harris
Michael Upton
Rosezita Morrison
Peggy Barr Hicks
Blaine Hill
Jeramy Upton
Lauren Moser
Cassie T Holder
Tyler Hoover
Ethan Wells
Wendy Neill
Robyn Holt
Casey Jones
Wendy Neil
Stephanie Kotouc
Becky Riggs
Becky Seidl
Savannah Krause
Benjamin Sasine
section leader
section leader
Program notes by Scott Foglesong, copyright 2022 First North American Serial Rights Only
David Hernandez Jim Bob Loyd, section leader