Robert Blocker, dean
yale in new york • David Shifrin, artistic director March 28 • Wednesday, 8 pm • Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall
De Profundis Heinrich Schütz 1585–1672
Absalon, fili mi
Preview Concert · Yale in New York · David Shifrin, Artistic Director Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Anton Bruckner 1824–1896
Taylor Ward ’12MM, bass-baritone Jeffrey Arredondo ’13MM, Hana Beloglavec ’13MM, Scott Hartman*, Timothy Hilgert ’13MM, sackbuts Esther Park ’12ad, continuo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756–1791
Duo for bassoon and cello in B-flat major, K. 292 Allegro Andante Rondo allegro
march 28, 2011 wed · 8:00 pm
Two Aequale No. 1 No. 2 Brittany Lasch ’12MM, Benjamin Firer ’12MM, Matthew Russo ’12MM, trombones
Krzysztof Penderecki b. 1933
Serenata for three cellos Ole Akahoshi*, Arnold Choi ’11MM, Sungchan David Chang ’13MM, cellos
Frank Morelli*, bassoon Ole Akahoshi*, cello
Capriccio for solo tuba Jerome Stover ’11mm, tuba
Jacob Druckman 1928–1996
Valentine Donald Palma*, double bass
Sergei Prokofiev 1891–1953
Scherzo Humoristique, Op. 12b
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750 arr. John Iskra
Prelude and Fugue in D minor Samona Bryant ’11MM, Yuki Katayama ’13MM, Helena Kranjc ’12MM, Gabriel Levine ’14BA, Frank Morelli*, Elizabeth Meryl Summers ’12MM, Scott Switzer ’12MMA, Lauren Yu ’13MM, bassoons Scott Switzer ’12MMA, contrabassoon
Sofia Gubaidulina b. 1931
Concerto for bassoon and low strings I. II. III. IV. V. Frank Morelli*, bassoon Ransom Wilson*, conductor Arnold Choi ’11MM, Sungchan David Chang ’13MM, Alvin Wong ’11MMa, Mo Mo ’11cert, cellos Mike Levin ’11MM, Nahee Song ’13MM, Nick Jones ’13ad, double bass
intermission
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
* Yale School of Music faculty
Notes on the Program
Notes on the Program
Tonight’s concert, De Profundis: The Deep End, offers music written and arranged for instruments with low pitch ranges. Latin for “out of the depths,” de profundis is the first verse of Psalm 130, and a litany for relief in a time of despondency. Although some of the music on tonight’s program exploits the religious and melancholic connotations of this theme, much of the music is light and entertaining, and all of the works call attention to the numerous musical resources such instruments afford both composer and performer.
heinrich schütz Absalon, fili mi Heinrich Schütz explores the Biblical themes of “de profundis” in his Absalon, fili mi, SWV 269. Schütz, arguably the most important German composer prior to J.S. Bach, studied music in Venice with Giovanni Gabrielli and worked as the court composer for the Elector of Saxony. Part of Schütz’s Sinfoniae Sacrae II of 1629, Absalon, fili mi recounts King David’s lament at the death of his beloved son Absalon. The third son of David, Absalon rebelled against his father, gathering support from the tribes of Israel and Judah in order to proclaim himself king. This political success was short-lived: after a battle in which Absalon’s forces were obliterated, Absalon was murdered with a spear. David, despite his son’s insubordination, is devastated. The tragedy has engendered a plethora of musical settings, becoming almost a genre of its own, with notable examples by Josquin Deprez and Thomas Tomkins.
Schütz’s poignant setting of David’s lament, with its unique instrumentation of four sackbuts, bass voice, and continuo, well captures the emotions of the despondent king. Particularly poignant are the successive cries of the name Absalon: the descending figure increases in interval width, creating contrapuntal and emotional tension to bring the listener insight into the king’s emotional state. Text and Translation From II Samuel 18:33 Fili mi, Absalon Fili mi, Absalon Quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te Absalon fili mi, fili mi O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom. Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!
wolfgang amadeus mozart Duo for Bassoon and Cello, K. 292 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Duo, K. 292, utilizes the intriguing instrumentation of bassoon and cello with both grace and humor. Charming melodies with clear harmonic and formal structures, all hallmarks of Mozart’s compositional style, make for a delightful dialogue. The piece’s dignified style highlights the subtlety of which these instruments are capable.
jacob druckman Valentine
johann sebastian bach Toccata and Fugue
Similar to Penderecki’s Capriccio, Jacob Druckman’s Valentine (1969) for solo double bass shows the creative results of the constraints of writing for an individual instrument. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Yale School of Music faculty member, and the composer laureate of Connecticut, Druckman studied with Copland and Persichetti, although his interest included extensive work in electronic music and large-scale composition. His affinity for experimental music and extended instrumental techniques comes to the fore in his Valentine. The piece begins frantically and builds in intensity to a state of frenetic ecstasy. Demanding from the performer’s point of view, the piece explores the percussive possibilities of the instrument, with the aid of the bow, hands, and timpani mallet.
Concluding the first half of tonight’s program is a transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685–1750) Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, originally composed for organ. A perennial favorite, this work begins with an improvisatory toccata punctuated by jarring harmonic progressions and virtuosic melodic figurations. Immediately following is a masterful fugue, whose punctilious counterpoint is hidden by Bach’s brilliant use of rapid motion and registral shift. Bach cleverly melds elements of an Italianate concerto with both the improvisational bravura of the north-German stylus fantasticus tradition and the contrapuntal rigor the works of composers like Samuel Scheidt. Such fusion of style must have been akin to what the eighteenth-century flutist Johann Joachim Quantz had in mind when he stated in his 1752 treatise On Flute Playing that “...if one has the necessary discernment to choose the best from the styles of different countries, a mixed style without overstepping the bounds of modesty, [it] could well be called the German style.” The Toccata and Fugue seamlessly combines these discordant styles, all the while introducing an emotional urgency that only relents in the heart-wrenching resolution of the suspension into the fugue’s final D major chord, perhaps expressing that even in the darkest depths, light is but a Picardy third away.
sergei prokofiev Humorous Scherzo Drawing on the same instrumental tradition as Heinrich Schütz, Sergei Prokofiev’s Humorous Scherzo gives a glimpse of the youthful Prokofiev’s infamous sense of humor. Beyond its inherent comic qualities, the scherzo manifests other compositional characteristics of the Russian composer. Its clear contrapuntal structure and conservative harmonic idiom all reflect the composer’s neoclassical tendencies, calling to mind the works of Haydn and Mozart with a harmonic language and sense of humor that is distinctive to Prokofiev.
anton bruckner Aequalae
Notes on the Program
Nineteenth-century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, notably characterized by his contemporary Gustav Mahler as “half-simpleton, half-God,” wrote his Aequalae in 1847 during his tenure as an organist in Sankt Florian, in north central Austria. In the eighteenth century, an aequale, technically a musical composition composed for equal voices or instruments, became a term for pieces of modest length and homophonic texture, for trombone ensembles of varying numbers. The genre, often associated with funerals or processions on the eve of All Soul’s Day, was particularly prevalent in Linz, a city not far from Sankt Florian. These simple and sonorous selections reveal both a dignity and depth of feeling often associated with Bruckner’s larger works. Their simplicity, however, reveals a mastery of a mellifluous harmonic language, and create for the listener an intensely emotive, if perhaps slightly stoic, sonic world.
krzysztof penderecki Serenata for three cellos Capriccio for solo tuba Krzysztof Penderecki earned international acclaim with his 1960 avant-garde composition Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Since then, his compositional style has evolved, incorporating more Romantic and post-Romantic techniques. Penderecki composed the Serenata (2007) for three cellos for his wife’s birthday. In spite of the rigorous technical demands upon the players, it is quite entertaining.
Similarly ambrosial is the Capriccio (1980) for solo tuba, which through its necessarily monophonic writing reveals hints of polyphony and dialogue, and explores the musical possibilities of composing a single line.
sofia gubaidulina Concerto for bassoon and low strings The sense of experimentalism found in Druckman’s Valentine continues in Sofia Gubaidulina’s Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings (1975), which similarly to Valentine makes use of atonality, extended techniques, indeterminacy, and innovative notation. Less than four decades after its publication, it has become a staple of the bassoon repertoire, although it is performed infrequently due to its uncommon instrumentation. Gubaidulina studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and from the outset of her career exhibited a strong strand of independence, resisting the prescribed “Socialist Realism” style of the Communist Party. This independence is evinced in her study of Russian and Asian folk instruments, as well as a singularly mystical view of music. Since the fall of the U.S.S.R., she has received several important commissions, and her music wider audiences and acclaim.
Program notes by Ian Tomesch
About the Artists
Introduced to the bassoon in the Massapequa, Long Island public schools, Frank Morelli studied with Stephen Maxym at the Manhattan School of Music and later became the first bassoonist to be awarded a doctorate by the Juilliard School. He has made nine appearances as soloist in New York’s Carnegie Hall playing concertos, sinfonias concertantes, and even a solo ballad with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. He joined the Yale faculty in 1994. Morelli’s recent CD, Romance and Caprice, with pianist Gilbert Kalish, follows two previous solo CDs on MSR Classics: Bassoon Brasileiro with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Yale faculty guitarist Benjamin Verdery, and Baroque Fireworks, featuring harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper and Yale faculty oboist Stephen Taylor. The magazine Gramophone proclaimed, “Morelli’s playing is a joy to behold.” The American Record Guide stated: “The bassoon playing on this recording is as good as it gets.” Of his DG recording of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with Orpheus, Fanfare Magazine added that this recording “reset a reviewer’s standards at too high a level for comfort in a world more productive of ordinary music making.” The Orpheus CD Shadow Dances, which features Frank Morelli, won a 2001 Grammy Award.
A prolific chamber musician, Frank Morelli has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on numerous occasions, including at the White House for the final State Dinner of the Clinton presidency. He has participated in major music festivals including the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Marlboro, Banff, and Music @Menlo. He is a member of Festival Chamber Music and the woodwind quintet Windscape, in residence at the Manhattan School of Music, with whom he has recorded two recent CDs. Chosen to succeed Stephen Maxym, Mr. Morelli also serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the Manhattan Schools of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook. Morelli’s students are active in major orchestras and on important faculties throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia, and Europe. He is editor of Stravinsky: Difficult Passages for Bassoon, a landmark excerpt book published by Boosey & Hawkes, and has several transcriptions for bassoon and woodwind quintet to his credit published by Trevco Music.
About the Artists
Long recognized as one of the world’s leading flutists, Ransom Wilson has in recent years become equally esteemed as an outstanding conductor of orchestral and operatic repertoire. He is the music director and principal conductor of Solisti New York, a chamber orchestra he founded in 1981 with the aim of programming contemporary music alongside the classical repertoire. Mr. Wilson was founder and artistic director of the OK Mozart Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He also served as music director of the Tuscaloosa Symphony from 1985 to 1992, and as music director of Opera/Omaha and the San Francisco Chamber Symphony. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Denver Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Strings, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, Toledo Symphony, England’s Halle Orchestra, New World Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Tulsa Philharmonic, and the Bach Camerata of Santa Barbara. An esteemed operatic conductor as well, Mr. Wilson has in recent seasons worked as a conductor at both the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera. He conducted new productions of Mozart’s Magic Flute with the Tulsa and Omaha Operas and the American stage premiere of Il Re Pastore, also by Mozart, with Glimmerglass Opera. Other operatic appearances have included appearances with the Minnesota and Portland Operas. Mr. Wilson conducted performances of La
Bohéme at the International Opera Center in Amsterdam and the concert version of Amy Beach’s rarely performed one-act opera Cabildo at the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center.
About the Artists
Scott Hartman, trombone, joined the Yale faculty in 2001. Mr. Hartman received his B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Eastman School of Music and began his career by joining the Empire Brass Quintet and the Boston University faculty in 1984. As a trombone soloist and with his various chamber groups, Mr. Hartman has taught and played concerts throughout the world and in all fifty states. He regularly performs and records with the Yale Brass Trio, Proteus 7, the Millennium Brass, the Brass Band of Battle Creek, and the trombone quartet Four of a Kind. Mr. Hartman spends several weeks each summer in residence at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Donald Palma, double bass, is a graduate of the Juilliard School. His teachers were Frederick Zimmermann, Robert Brennand, Orin O’Brien, and Homer Mensch. A former member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he has also been principal bass of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the American Composers Orchestra. He is currently solo bassist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with which he has toured Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States, and recorded over fifty compact discs for Deutsche Grammophon. Mr. Palma has performed with the Juilliard Quartet, the Nash Ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Da Camera Society of Houston, and in recital with Dietrich FischerDieskau, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Jan DeGaetani. He was music director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and is currently bassist and conductor of Speculum Musicae. Mr. Palma records extensively for CRI, Bridge, New World, Nonesuch, Sony, and Koch International. He has given master classes at the Toho School, the Juilliard School, Rice University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and the Manhattan School of Music. Mr. Palma joined the Yale faculty in 1992.
About the Artists
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times for his “technical solidity, perfect intonation, and large edgeless tone of buttered-rum quality,” German cellist Ole Akahoshi has concertized on four continents in recitals as well as soloist with orchestras, such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin, Symphonisches Orchester Berlin, and the Czechoslovakian Radio Orchestra. Winner of numerous competitions including the Concertino Praga and Jugend Musiziert, Mr. Akahoshi’s performances have been featured on CNN, NPR, Sender-Freies-Berlin, RIAS-Berlin, Hessischer Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Korean Broadcasting Station, and WQXR. He is a recipient of the fellowship award from Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi and has made recordings for the Albany, New World Records, Composers Recording Inc., Calliope, Bridge, and Naxos labels. Mr. Akahoshi has collaborated with the Tokyo String Quartet, Sarah Chang, Erick Friedman, Syoko Aki, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Gil Shaham, Joel Smirnoff, Chee-Yun, Toby Appel, Jesse Levine, Edgar Meyer, Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot, Boris Berman, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Garrick Ohlsson, David Shifrin, Myung Wha Chung, Aldo Parisot, and Janos Starker, among others. He has served as faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Camp Encore/Coda, the Norfolk Chamber Music
Festival, Festival des Artes de Itu Brazil, and at the Great Mountains Music Festival in Korea, and he has served as a judge of numerous competitions. Mr. Akahoshi received his bachelor’s degree from Juilliard and his master’s degree from Yale, where he studied with Aldo Parisot. He also received an artist diploma from Indiana University, where he studied with Janos Starker. He is the principal cellist of the Sejong Soloists in New York. Mr. Akahoshi is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and has been on the faculty of the Yale School of Music since 1997.
About the Artists
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, tubist Jerome Stover holds degrees in music from Indiana, DePaul, and Yale Universities. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Boston University School of Music. He has performed with many of the finest ensembles throughout North America, Europe, Japan, and South Africa. He has played with the Chicago, Boston, Oregon, Alabama, New Mexico, and New World Symphonies and was the principal tubist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 1999 to 2000. From 2001 to 2003, Stover also held the post of principal tubist of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, where he appeared as soloist of the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto. He can be heard on recordings with the Chicago and Honolulu Symphonies as well as the DePaul Wind Ensemble. He has served on the faculties of the University of Hawaii and Rochester College of Michigan. He is currently an adjunct professor of tuba and euphonium at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Stover has been a principal musician of the Tanglewood Music Center, Cascades Music Festival, and the Sun River Music Festival. From 2005 to 2008, he was a Senior Banker at Quicken Loans Inc., one of the nation’s largest mortgage firms.
Baritone John Taylor Ward, from Boone, NC, has performed in opera, oratorio, musical theatre, and recital since the age of five. Singing music from the traditional and ancient repertoire to the present day, he has appeared as Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (with Masaaki Suzuki, Yale Schola Cantorum, and Juilliard 415), Ercole in Ercole Amante (Paul O’Dette, Eastman Collegium Musicum), Il Re in Ariodante (American Bach Soloists Academy), the Emcee in Cabaret, and Arkêl in Pelléas et Mélisande (both with Eastman Opera Theatre). After attending the North Carolina Governor’s School and UNCArts, he received a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music in 2010, where he won the Vocal Concerto Competition, and is in his second year of study with James Taylor at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Pursuing his love of community engagement, Taylor co-founded the Lakes Area Music Festival (www.lakesareamusic.org) in 2009, where he serves as assistant director.
Upcoming Events
New Music New Haven
St. Lawrence String Quartet
march 29
april 3
Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 8 pm Featuring guest composer Steve Reich’s Proverb (1995), with members of the Yale Camerata and Yale Schola Cantorum, and Vermont Counterpoint (1982), with flutist Ransom Wilson conducting his current and former flute students. Free Admission
Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 8 pm Oneppo Chamber Music Series Mozart: Quartet in D minor, K. 421; Korngold: String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 34; John Adams: String Quartet (2008). Tickets $20–30, Students $10
Yale Cellos Beethoven Symphonies
april 11
march 30 Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 5 pm Yale Philharmonia The Yale School of Music’s conducting fellows lead the Yale Philharmonia in Beethoven’s Sympony No. 4 in B-flat major and No. 7 in A major. Free Admission
Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 8 pm Yale School of Music Ensembles The Yale Cellos, directed by Aldo Parisot, give their annual performance. Featuring music by Albinoni, Schumann, Villa-Lobos, Scott Joplin, Ginastera, Davidoff, and more. Tickets $10–20, Students $5
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Robert Blocker, Dean
music.yale.edu