Yale Baroque Ensemble Nuove musiche
Seventeeth-century masterpieces from Italy and Germany robert mealy Director november 9, 2010 Sprague Memorial Hall Tuesday at 8 pm
Robert Blocker, Dean
Yale Baroque Ensemble Jae-Won Bang, Johanna Novom, Jessica Park, baroque violins Jacques Wood, baroque cello Avi Stein, harpsichord baroque violins and cello by Jason Viseltear, from the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments
Agostino Guerrieri fl. mid-17c
La Ravarina from Sonate di violino, Op. 1 (1673) tutti ensemble
Giovanni Paolo Cima 1570–1630
Sonata a tre from Concerti ecclesiastici (1610) Ms. Novom, Ms. Park, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Giovanni Gabrieli c. 1554–1612
Sonata XXI a tre violini from Canzoni e sonate (1615) tutti ensemble
Dario Castello fl. early 17c
Sonata 4 a doi soprani from Sonate Concertate in stil moderno, libro secondo (1629) Ms. Bang, Ms. Novom, Mr. Stein
Riccardo Rognoni c. 1550–1620 after Cipriano de Rore 1515–1565
Diminutions on Ancor che col partire from Passaggi… con ogni sorte di instromenti (1592) Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Giovanni Battista Fontana d. 1630
Sonata 16 a tre violini from Sonate per il violino (1641) tutti ensemble
Castello
Sonata 10 a tre Ms. Park, Ms. Bang, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Nuove musiche Seventeenth-century masterpieces from Italy and Germany Robert Mealy, director November 9, 2010 · 8 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
intermission Giovanni Battista Buonamente d. 1642
Sonata a tre violini from Sonate e canzoni… libro sesto (1636) tutti ensemble
Marco Uccellini c. 1603–1680
Sonata 2 detta la Luciminia contenta from Sonate, correnti, e arie, Op. 4 (1645) Ms. Bang, Mr. Wood
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber 1644–1704
The Annunciation from Mystery Sonatas (c. 1674) Ms. Park, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Antonio Bertali 1605–1669
Sonata à 3 in A minor from Prothimia suavissima (1672) Ms. Park, Ms. Bang, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Biber
The Crucifixion Ms. Novom, Mr. Wood, Mr. Stein
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer c. 1620–1680
Sonata a tre violini (c. 1660) tutti ensemble
Johann Pachelbel 1653–1706
Canon & Gigue (c. 1680) tutti ensemble
As a courtesy to the performers and audience members, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not leave the theater during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is not permitted.
program notes
Tonight’s concert is a celebration of new music, but not the kind you’re thinking of. Composers during the seventeenth century were fascinated by the dramatic and virtuosic possibilities of a new kind of composition for instruments, one that was not based on any pre-existing dance form or vocal text. This abstract instrumental form was simply called “sonata”— literally, something to be played. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, there was an explosion of publications in Venice celebrating the possibilities that this new art form offered for virtuoso instrumentalists. Later in the century, Italian violinists brought the sonata from Venice to Vienna, where a new school of brilliant Austrian composers expanded the technique of the violin in strikingly unexpected ways.
Other composers from later in the century add different elements to the mix: Guerrieri opens his sonata with the kind of heartfelt lament that was a classic feature of Venetian opera, while Buonamente uses the combination of three violins to explore the lyricism of the violin, extending its range to fourth position (high E). Uccellini’s charged solo sonata is an excellent example of how these sonatas could become a kind of dramatic, untexted recitative. Here it is heard in one typical seventeenth-century combination of instruments, with the bass line taken only by cello. With Bertali, an Italian who became imperial Kapellmeister in Vienna, we have one of the missing links between the experimental early Italian sonata writers and the later Austrian virtuosi. His A minor sonata moves from a soulful opening adagio into a truly rocking ciaconna. The celebrated virtuoso Biber expanded the technical range of the violin with strikingly dramatic figuration. The Annunciation, the first of his Mystery, or Rosary Sonatas, is in normal violin tuning, but the rest (like his Crucifixion sonata) are in scordatura, with the violin in unusual tunings. The music is written as if one is playing a normally-tuned instrument, a fascinating disjunction between notation and sound. After the great sonata for three violins by the “celebrated virtuoso” Schmelzer, we hear one last tune that (we hope) is made refreshingly unfamiliar by putting it next to other contemporary seventeenth-century works; we close our program with the Canon’s rarely-heard companion, a high-spirited Gigue.
The first half of tonight’s program explores the birth of this nuove musiche or new music, including some of the earliest works written specifically for violin by masters like Gabrieli and Cima. These composers found a wide range of rhetorical gestures and sonorities in works that are essentially one long movement. Other composers, like the mysteriously undocumented Castello, developed dramatic conversations between the instruments, with theatrical, radically disjunct contrasts between the various sections of the sonata. The sonate concertate of Castello and Fontana also include brilliant solo episodes for players to display their virtuosity. Another kind of virtuosity is represented by the earlier tradition of diminutions, in which a famous madrigal (in this case one by Cipriano de Rore) becomes the basis for elaborate ornamentation. Rognoni’s example of how to improvise such ornaments is one of the most spectacular —Robert Mealy works for bass instrument from the turn of the seventeenth century.
yale baroque ensemble Robert Mealy, director
The Yale Baroque Ensemble, directed by the distinguished baroque violinist Robert Mealy, is a postgraduate ensemble at the School of Music dedicated to the highest level of study and performance of the Baroque repertoire. Using Yale’s collection of baroque instruments, members of the Ensemble go through an intensive one-year program of study, immersing themselves in the chamber and solo repertoire from 1600 to 1785. The Yale Baroque Ensemble is presented in a series of concerts each year, including a special appearance this spring at Carnegie’s Weill Hall as part of the Yale in New York series.
Violinist Robert Mealy is one of America’s leading historical string players. He has been praised by the Boston Globe for his “imagination, taste, subtlety, and daring,” and the New Yorker called him “a world-class early music violinist.” He has recorded over 50 CDs on most major labels, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen with Sequentia and Renaissance consorts with the Boston Camerata to Rameau operas with Les Arts Florissants. In New York he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, ARTEK, Early Music New York, and the Clarion Society. He also leads the distinguished Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and has appeared as guest concertmaster and director with the Phoenix Symphony. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the medieval ensemble Fortune’s Wheel, the Renaissance violin band The King’s Noyse, and the seventeenth-century ensemble Quicksilver. Since 2002, he has performed frequently at Yale as director of the Yale Collegium Musicum players, and received Early Music America’s Binkley Award for outstanding teaching at Yale and Harvard in 2004. He joined the School of Music faculty in 2008.
artist profiles
Violinist Jae-Won Bang has been performing as a soloist with ensembles and orchestras in Canada and in California since her orchestral debut at age thirteen. She has participated in numerous festivals and programs such as Domaine Forget Chamber Music Session, Banff Centre, Morningside Music Bridge, Mozarteum Sommerakademie, the Encore School for Strings, Sarasota Music Festival, Kneisel Hall Festival, Maestro Chamber Music Foundation and the New York Strings Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall. As a chamber musician she has collaborated with renowned musicians such as Martin Chalifour, Ronald Leonard, Clive Greensmith and Arnold Steinhardt and has also performed in renowned concert halls such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Her previous teachers include Toni and Gerald Stanick and in 2008, she obtained her Bachelor of Music degree from the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, CA under the tutelage of Robert Lipsett. She has also studied with Ani Kavafian at the Yale School of Music where she received her Master of Music degree. Currently she is a Visiting Fellow at the Yale School of Music as a member of the Yale Baroque Ensemble.
Johanna Novom, violin, is associate concertmaster of Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. A first prize winner of the American Bach Soloists’ Young Artists competition in 2008, Johanna appears as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player with ensembles throughout the country, such as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, the Dallas Bach Society, New York State Baroque, and the Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra, and is a
core member of the newer ensembles Flying Forms, the Sebastian Chamber Players, and the American Baroque Orchestra. She has performed at festivals internationally, including the Carmel Bach Festival, Moscow’s Golden Mask Festival, the Magnolia Baroque Festival, and Le Festival de Sedières. Johanna completed her master’s degree in historical performance in 2007 at the Oberlin Conservatory, where she studied on both historical and modern instruments with Marilyn McDonald. Currently based out of New Haven, Conn., Johanna is a fellowship member of the Yale Baroque Ensemble under the direction of Robert Mealy.
Violinist Jessica Park has been commended as a “sweet-toned soloist” by the Cincinnati Enquirer and has been called an “exceptional talent” by the Frankfurter Neue Presse. Miss Park debuted as the youngest soloist to perform with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, at the age of nine in 1993. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist on the international stage at prestigious venues such as the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center, Cologne Philharmonie, Shanghai Grand Theatre, Alice Tully Hall, and others. A passionate chamber musician, Miss Park has performed in various ensembles at such concert spaces as the New York Historical Society, Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum, and other venues in the tri-state area. Recently, she was featured performing the Mozart String Quartet in G Major, K. 387 on WMHT FM Radio WQXR “Young Artists’ Showcase” presented by Bob Sherman. She received her bachelor and master of music degrees from the Juilliard School, and recently
obtained a professional studies diploma from Mannes College of Music. Miss Park has studied with such inspirational musicians as Mark Steinberg, Ronald Copes, and Hyo Kang, among others.
Avi Stein teaches harpsichord, vocal repertoire, and chamber music at Yale University and is the music director at St. Matthew & St. Timothy Episcopal Church in Manhattan. The New York Times described him as “a brilliant organ soloist” in his Carnegie Hall debut. Avi has performed throughout the United States and in Europe, Canada, and Central America. He is an active continuo accompanist who plays regularly with the Boston Early Music Festival, the Clarion Music Society, and Bach Vespers NYC. This past summer, Avi directed the young artists’ program at the Carmel Bach Festival. He has also conducted a variety of ensembles, including a the recent debut of the OperaOmnia company in a production of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea and an annual series called the 4x4 Festival. Avi is currently finishing his doctoral studies in organ and harpsichord at Indiana University and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California. He was a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship for study in Toulouse.
Cellist Jacques Lee Wood is currently a doctoral candidate at Yale University and a 2010-2011 visiting fellow at the Yale School of Music, where he works with renowned baroque violinist and specialist Robert Mealy. Mr. Wood has received top prizes at the ARTS Competition and the Fischoff Chamber Music Competiton and has
been the recipient of many awards including, most recently, a grant from the Yale Council for East Asian Studies for study at Sogang University in Seoul. Other awards include the Aldo Parisot Prize, George W. Miles Fellowship, Francis Kellogg Scholarship, and the Luther Noss Scholarship, to name a few. Notable upcoming concerts include an appearance with the Ureuk Symphony at Merkin Hall, where he will perform the Schumann cello concerto; lecturerecitals at the University of Connecticut and Auburn University, discussing issues of performance practice in the Beethoven cello sonatas; and a residency at Ulsan University in South Korea. Mr. Wood received his Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music under Laurence Lesser and his Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music under Aldo Parisot. Mr. Wood is an artist with the Swiss Global Artistic Foundation.
upcoming
http://music.yale.edu box office 203 432-4158 concerts & media Vincent Oneppo Dana Astmann Monica Ong Reed Danielle Heller Richard Henebry operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo piano curators Brian Daley William Harold
November 10 wei-yi yang, piano Sprague Hall | Wed | 8 pm Schubert: Drei Klavierstücke, d. 946; SchubertLiszt Lieder transcriptions; Chopin: 24 Préludes. Presented by the Horowitz Piano Series. Tickets $12-22 / Students $6
November 12 on common ground ii Sprague Hall | Fri | 8 pm The Ellington Jazz Series features bassist and composer Ben Allison; the St. Luke’s and Yale Steel Bands, directed by Deborah Teason; and the Common Ground Ensemble, playing music by steel pan virtuoso Andy Akiho and others. Tickets $12-20 / Students $7
a vision for the future of music recording studio Eugene Kimball Jason Robins
Sprague Hall | Sat, Nov. 13 | 10 am | Free A panel discussion led by Willie Ruff, with Nick Lloyd, Ben Allison, Andy Akiho, Samuel Adams, and Deborah Teason.
November 18 yale philharmonia Woolsey Hall | Thu | 8 pm An evening of Strauss and Brahms. Shinik Hahm, conductor. Strauss: Don Juan; Oboe Concerto in D major, with soloist Carl Oswald; Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor.
Robert Blocker, Dean