St. Lawrence and Friends - March 28, 2024

Owen Dalby, violin; Lesley Robertson, viola; Nina Lee, cello;

Joel Quarrington, bass; Stephen Prutsman, piano

Program

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493 (1786)

Allegro

Larghetto

Allegretto        

VALENTIN VASILIEVICH SILVESTROV (b. 1937), arr. Joel Quarrington

Postludium III (1982)
Wiegenlied/Lullaby

INTERMISSION

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958) 

Piano Quintet in C minor (1903, rev. 1904-5)

Allegro con fuoco

Andante

Fantasia (quasi variazioni)

Program Notes

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December 5, 1791

Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493 (1786)

Mozart wrote two piano quartets, today cornerstones of the chamber music repertoire, both written towards the end of a short life.  By 1785 he was at the height of his popularity with the Viennese music-lover, already well into a remarkable sequence of 17 piano concertos, bringing to the medium, for the first time, both the weight of symphonic thinking and something of the drama of opera.  By adding a viola to the favoured Viennese medium of the piano trio, Mozart may have calculated that his first Piano Quartet, K. 478 (written one year before tonight’s Piano Quartet) should find a ready market for a then new and original form of domestic music making.  Mozart was already renowned as a pianist in Vienna and a violinist of considerable skill.  Now he could introduce the viola, his personal instrument of choice when playing chamber music, to the medium of the piano trio – a medium already keenly adopted by the middle- and upper-class families, with both time and the money to enjoy their music-making. 

Evidence was brought forward, a little over ten years ago, proposing that Mozart’s new piano quartet was well received upon publication in a subscription volume of works by several composers in a wide range of genres.  The work was singled out for praise in Cramer’s December 1786 Magazin der Musik and its publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister clearly saw a ready market for Mozart’s magnificent work.  “In truth, one can hardly bear listening to this product of Mozart’s when it falls into mediocre, amateurish hands and is negligently played,” wrote the Weimar Journal des Luxus und der Moden, reviewing the 1785 season in Vienna.   “What a difference when this much discussed work of art is performed in a quiet room by four skilled musicians who have studied it well.”  

Mozart began tonight’s piano quartet, the E-flat masterpiece, K. 493 less than a year later, one month after completing The Marriage of Figaro.  Purely musical reasons may have led Mozart to write a second piano quartet, or it may have originated as a contrasting companion piece to K. 478 for performance in the same concert.  In 1787, he gave (or sold) the work to the publishers Artaria in Vienna and Storace in London for publication.  In feeling, the first movement is upbeat and optimistic throughout.  The challenging piano writing is first cousin to that of the great piano concertos, while the ensemble writing balances intimacy with outward display.  The tender slow movement is the centrepiece of the quartet.  It’s a gentle, wistful movement whose mood matches that of the Countess's Porgi amor in Act 2 of Figaro.  Alfred Einstein called the theme of the finale "the purest, most childlike and godlike melody ever sung."  With his two piano quartets, Mozart virtually invented the medium; there are no real precedents.  Writing just a few days before Mozart’s death, November 30, 1791, one critic appreciated what Vienna was slow to recognise – stating that the E-flat Quartet was written with “that fire of the imagination and that correctness, which long since won for Herr Mozart the reputation as one of the finest composers in Germany.”

VALENTIN VASILIEVICH SILVESTROV, arr. Joel Quarrington

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 30, 1937

Postludium III (1982)
Wiegenlied/Lullaby

Exiled since March 8, 2022, after 84 years living in Kyiv, to Berlin, “a refugee from bombs and missiles,“ Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov continues to fight for his country with blunt words and “quiet, cautious music.“  “Cherish this quiet, cherish this peace,” he says.  His Majdan cycle of hymns, elegies and prayers dates back to the initially peaceful 2013-14 Kyiv street protests which led to the Revolution of Dignity and the ousting of President Yanukovich.  Recently, he has written more Elegies.  Now 86 and a winner of the Shevchenko National Prize, his country’s highest award for an artist, Silvestrov has distilled a creative dialogue with the past into a reported 200 cycles of bagatelles, comprising some 30 hours of music.  The Bagatelles are aphoristic, introspective, spontaneous, even improvisatory-sounding miniatures, in which Silvestrov painstakingly notates every nuance with the utmost precision. 

The same is true for the much earlier chamber triptych Three Postludes (1981/2), where the title is used in much the same way that Chopin would write Preludes – Chopin’s preludes do not lead anywhere, Silvestrov’s postludes are not a sequel to anything specific.  Joel Quarrington has posted his breathtaking arrangement and performance of Postludium III (1982) on YouTube HERE as ‘A Prayer for Peace in Ukraine.’  It is followed by his arrangement of a Silvestrov Lullaby. 

Joel Quarrington writes:  “I first encountered the music of Valentin Silvestrov when I was with the Toronto Symphony and conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste programmed his Symphony No. 5.  This incredibly moving piece had a huge effect on me, and I started to search out more of his music.  Besides his nine symphonies, and exquisite chamber music and songs, he has composed and recorded the most beautiful liturgical settings in choral music.  In my arrangement of the cello Postlude I moved everything down a fourth from the original, (D to A), but kept all the octave relationships and harmonics as intended.”

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Born in Down Ampney, England, October 12, 1872; died in London, August 26, 1958

Piano Quintet in C minor (1903, rev. 1904-5)

Like Elgar, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams took time to find his voice as a composer.  There was a long period after the end of his formal studies in Cambridge, then at London’s Royal College of Music, before he was to write the landmark song cycle for tenor, piano and string quartet On Wenlock Edge (1908-9) and the Tallis Fantasia (1910) for double string orchestra.  For Vaughan Williams, it was a time of uncertainty and doubt, years spent searching for a direction that English music might take, away from the shadow of German romanticism.  But it was also a period of experimentation and discovery, with a series of large-scale chamber works, including a string quartet and tonight’s piano quintet – all of which the composer subsequently withdrew.  The C minor Piano Quintet was completed in 1903 but then extensively revised over the next two years, before its première in London’s Aeolian Hall.  The last documented performance took place in 1918, by which time, on returning from the First World War, the English composer had built a growing reputation for independence of thought and for his probing symphonic writing.  Vaughan Williams wished to purge his catalogue of several earlier transitional works.  Only in 1999, as the 50th anniversary of his death was approaching, did his widow Ursula give permission for a performance of the quintet at a conference titled ‘Vaughan Williams in a New Century,’ followed by its publication.

1903 was the year that Vaughan Williams collected the first of the 800 English folksongs that he would document, then quickly absorb into his own distinctive musical language.  There are a few tantalizing glimpses of this in the full-blooded late romantic musical landscape that the Piano Quintet’s three movements inhabit.  The piece is scored for piano with a quartet of violin, viola, cello and double bass – the same infrequently heard combination found in the Schubert Trout Quintet.  The four, fiery falling chords heard at the very beginning are immediately inverted and expanded into a flowing melody for viola.  Violin and then the full ensemble develop the idea into a mighty statement over a sustained pedal note low in the double bass.  The four-note motif then evolves into a quiet, wistfully lyrical theme which is prophetic of the mature Vaughan Williams.  Each of these musical ideas is vigorously worked through a restless, forward surging development reminiscent of the idiom of Brahms and other late 19th century composers. 

The modal, hymn-like slow movement melody over which the piano lingers long and lovingly, is also prophetic of the mature composer.  It draws from the song Silent Noon which Vaughan Williams also composed in 1903.  Echoes of the four-note motif from the opening movement colour and bring unity to both the slow movement and the Fantasia finale.  This has something of the character of an Elizabethan fantasy for viols, though its structure is essentially that of a theme with five variations.  Although he was to consign the Piano Quintet to oblivion for the best part of a century, Vaughan Williams did not forget the work.  Shortly before his death, 50 years after he first wrote the piece, he again wrote variations on the theme of its Fantasia in the finale of his Violin Sonata (1954).

— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner.  Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca

David Fung, piano - March 5, 2024

Program

THE WANDERER

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Three Moments musicaux, Op. 94 (Book 1), D. 780 (1823-8)

Moderato

Andantino

Allegro moderato

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Fantasie in C, Op. 15, D. 760, ‘Wandererfantasie’ (1822)

INTERMISSION

SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)

Moment musical No. 4, in E minor (Presto), Op. 16 (1896)

R. NATHANIEL DETT (1882-1943)

Incantation, from the Suite Enchantment (1922)

FRANZ LISZT (1811-86)

Vallée d’Obermann (Années de pèlerinage, première année, Suisse), S160 (1848-53)

R. NATHANIEL DETT (1882-1943)

Beyond the Dream, from the Suite Enchantment (1922)

EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)

Notturno, from the Lyric Pieces, Vol. 5, Op. 54 No. 4 (1889-91)

SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)

Moment musical No. 6, in C (Maestoso), Op. 16 (1896)

Program Notes

FRANZ SCHUBERT

Born in Vienna, Austria, January 31, 1797; died in Vienna, November 19, 1828

Three Moments musicaux, Op. 94 (Book 1), D. 780 (1823-8)

Schubert had a gift for expressing profound thoughts in a beguiling, often disarmingly simple manner. All the things that made him a great song-writer – his genius for melodic writing, for painting the dramatic on a small canvas, his highly idiosyncratic harmonic shifts – are present in the piano music, as we will hear in the juxtaposition of a trio of Moments musicaux and the Wanderer Fantasy. Where the imposing Wanderer, together with the two dozen sonatas, crown his keyboard output and contribute significantly to the Viennese sonata tradition, Schubert also devoted his creativity to a considerable quantity of smaller pieces. These include more than 400 dances which frequently had their origin in spontaneously improvised music-making among friends, in a society that welcomed accomplished amateur performers alongside the professionals and attended concerts in both semi-public and private settings. Schubert certainly catered to this tradition of Viennese music-making with his eight published collections of dances, from 1821 until his death. Yet with the six Moments musicaux, written over the last five years of his life, Schubert consciously extended the scope of the short character piece. In their clear directness of musical style, absence of virtuoso posturing or rhetorical extravagance, and underlying consistency of mood throughout, these six ‘Musical Moments’ set a yardstick by which the later romantic short pieces of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms and others have come to be measured. Away from the conventions of the sonata structure, Schubert typically adopts the ternary form of the minuet and trio, as in the first Moment musical with its underlying feeling of introspection and nostalgia. This carries over to No. 2, where a serene reflection on its own harmonic potential leads to music that can be both melancholy and dramatic, even explosive. No. 3 is among the best-known of Schubert’s piano pieces. Compactly written, with a smile emerging from behind its F minor tonality, the spirit of the piece (though originally published as Air russe) is unmistakably Viennese.

Fantasie in C, Op. 15, D. 760, ‘Wandererfantasie’ (1822)

As titles go, the Wanderer Fantasy is poetic, but misleading. Its origins start with Der Wanderer, a song that Schubert wrote at the age of 19, which quickly became one of his most performed songs. The innovative piano work followed six years later. Its recurring musical theme comes from the song where the lines read: "Here the sun seems so cold to me, the blossom faded, life old; and what they say has an empty ring. I am a stranger everywhere." But even in the slow movement, where the quotation is the most direct, the sentiments do not carry over from song to piano work. Schubert had nothing to do with the nickname; it only became attached to the piano work after his death. The term ‘Fantasy’ similarly does little to help us grasp Schubert’s sophisticated structure, although the later F minor Fantasy, one of the masterpieces of the four-hand medium, shares some of its structural innovations. The Wanderer plays continuously, with no break between movements, and the four movements of a sonata form structure are clearly audible. But the structure is condensed, with each movement adding to the cumulative impact of the whole.

Binding the entire work together is the musical theme from Schubert's song, a fragment of which is heard at the outset. Nothing could be more strikingly uncomplicated: a series of C major chords, followed by an arpeggio based on the same notes. Yet the entire work grows from this fundamental idea, representing a formidable act of creativity which was to profoundly influence generations to come. Each movement is based on either a melodic transformation of the theme or on a transformation of its dactylic rhythm, harmony and even texture. The recurring ‘hammering’ rhythm can be heard in all four movements, above all in the finale, a monumental fugal structure that demands the utmost brilliance from the performer.

Both the pianistic virtuosity and the notion of thematic metamorphosis to provide unity throughout a four-movement piece of music were reasons why Franz Liszt was drawn to the Wanderer Fantasy. Its influence lies at the heart of his own B minor Sonata and symphonic poems. Liszt even produced three versions of Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasie, the third giving us the closest thing we have to a Schubert piano concerto. In all versions, Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy remains a supreme example of romantic piano writing at its best and the first of his large-scale compositions to be published.

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born in Semyonovo, Russia, March 20 / April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943

Moment musical No. 4, in E minor (Presto), Op. 16 (1896)

Moment musical No. 6, in C (Maestoso), Op. 16 (1896)

“This perpetual financial pressure is, on the one hand, quite beneficial . . . by the 20th of this month I have to write six piano pieces,” Rachmaninoff wrote to Aleksandr Zatayevich, fellow composer and eventual dedicatee of the six Moments musicaux, early in December 1896. He was 23, with a newly composed First Symphony (not yet premièred) already under his belt and the six piano pieces exploring new levels of virtuosity and personal expression already underway. In the finished set, Rachmaninoff alternates inward looking pieces with those presenting outward keyboard virtuosity – further extending the yardstick that Schubert set with his more intimate Moments musicaux, written seven decades earlier. Nos. 4 and 6 are both unashamedly virtuoso. The restless E minor fourth Moment musical pays homage to Chopin, notably his Revolutionary Étude, Op. 10 No. 12. The C major sixth Moment musical concludes the collection with confidence and majesty. The assurance with which the 23-year-old Rachmaninoff handles its intricate, four-part texture offers a preview of the later piano cycles and concertos. With never a note out of place, this ‘Musical Moment’ hides the perspiration that lies behind its inspiration. “In my concertos and symphonies there are many places which were written in a single breath,” Rachmaninoff was to write later, in 1910, “whereas each of my small pieces requires meticulousness and hard work.”

R. NATHANIEL DETT

Born in Drummondville, then known as the Village of Niagara Falls, ON, October 11, 1882; died in Battle Creek, MI, October 2, 1943

Incantation, from the Suite Enchantment (1922)

Beyond the Dream, from the Suite Enchantment (1922)

Nathaniel Dett was Ontario-born, in Drummondville, known from the year of his birth as the Village of Niagara Falls. He was also Ontario-buried, in Niagara Falls. But he spent most of his life south of the border, growing up from 1893 in Niagara Falls, NY. It was while studying piano and composition at Oberlin Conservatory that a performance of Dvořák's American quartet triggered memories of spirituals sung by his grandmother in Canada. Dett’s compositions and arrangements soon began to reflect a desire to preserve and draw inspiration from the spirituals and religious folksongs. He founded an acclaimed choir while directing the music program at Hampton Institute (1913-32) and began to publish his catalogue of over 200 choral, vocal and piano works. He also published prize winning essays on African American music and furthered his studies, in his summer breaks, at American universities and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. With Honorary Doctorates from Howard and Oberlin in the 1920s, Dett, nevertheless, pursued an MM in composition from the Eastman School in 1932.

Dett’s four-movement piano suite Enchantment was dedicated to his friend and supporter Australian composer Percy Grainger. Of Dett’s six piano suites, composed throughout his composing career, Enchantment is the least influenced by spirituals or other African American song. It centres on a narrative program of Dett’s own creation, written under the influence of Rosicrucian beliefs. The printed score bears an image of a temple and Egyptian winged solar disk on its front cover. Incantation, with its solemn, motto-like, four-note rising first theme and more fluid, sweeping second, has a call and response effect as the movement evokes an initiation:

“ . . A soul obsessed by a desire for the unattainable, journeying on an endless quest, wanders into a pagan temple, and there yields to an overpowering impulse of the moment to utter an Incantation before the shrine of an unknown goddess.”

In Beyond the Dream, Dett again develops two themes, with unresolved harmonies and the outer reaches of the keyboard illustrating an endless quest for the unattainable:

“ . . As in a vision, the soul sees itself transfigured, appearing unto itself as an ever-shifting shoal of pale, opalescent fire, from which there rises in a visible exhalation, like smoke from smouldering incense, the still unsatisfied longing for the unattainable.”

This movement, marked “quasi notturno,” pays homage to the Grieg Notturno which follows, with its descending harmonic sequences and shifts, and the play of two against three beats and with other references.

FRANZ LISZT

Born in Raiding / Doborján, Hungary (today Austria), October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, Germany, July 31, 1886

Vallée d’Obermann (Années de pèlerinage, première année, Suisse), S160 (1848-53)

Liszt worked on the three volumes of his Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), which contain some 26 pieces, throughout his life. The collection is marked by a unity of purpose in the single-minded exploration of the nature and beauty of Switzerland, then the art and literature of Italy and, finally, a lifetime's ‘Impressions et poésies,’ as he wrote on the title page. The Années de pèlerinage evokes a remarkable picture of Liszt the man, probably the most complete portrait we have of any 19th century musician. The collection epitomises the romantic desire to wander and draws deeply from both romantic literature and nature.

Liszt organized the first volume, Switzerland, into its final shape 1848-53, and published it two years later. The sixth piece, Vallée d’Obermann, is its focal point and the most ambitious and highly structured of the nine pieces. In it, Liszt transforms a dark, descending theme heard at the outset from an oppressive and resigned mood, through a stormy central section to a concluding joyful statement. It is as though the wanderer is entering a spiritual as well as a physical journey through a landscape. The music is prefaced by quotations from two sources: Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a recurring inspiration throughout the Années, and the highly influential romantic novel Obermann by French writer Étienne Pivert de Senancour, which appealed to Liszt’s romantic and visionary nature.

EDVARD GRIEG

Born in Bergen, Norway, June 15, 1843; died in Bergen, September 4, 1907

Notturno, from the Lyric Pieces, Vol. 5, Op. 54 No. 4 (1889-91)

Both Nathaniel Dett and Percy Grainger had Grieg’s Notturno in their repertoire, Dett performing it in a recital in 1935. It comes from the Fifth and finest of the ten volumes of Lyric Pieces. These 66 pieces formed the basis of Grieg's commercial success as a composer. This was music for the home, written during an era when most parlours contained a piano and most families contained at least one pianist. Thousands and thousands of copies of the Lyric Pieces were sold; few homes were without them. Grieg's German publisher clamoured for more. Every time a new batch arrived, Grieg said that the company hoisted the flag in anticipation of still more sales. In the wistful, beautiful Notturno, Grieg captures the magic and mystery of night and its restless central section arrives there with a striking similarity to the harmonies and aura of Debussy’s Clair de lune, composed in the same year.

— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca

Ying Quartet - February 22, 2024

Program

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

Selections from Cypresses (Cypřiše), for string quartet, B. 152 (1865/1887)

CARTER PANN (b. 1972)

Love Letters (2000)

Prayer –

Serenade: Heartwarming – Blooming – Rocking –

                            Intense, Nightmarish – Buoyant, Joyous

            (pause)

Limbo –

Passions:  Maniacal; Driving Forward – Torrential – Coy –

   Tragic – Passacaglia – Dream Rounds – Mercurial

PAUL MORAVEC (b. 1957)

Anniversary Dances (2007)

INTERMISSION

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)                       

String Quartet No. 13, in G, B.192, Op. 106 (1895)

Allegro moderato

Adagio ma non troppo

Molto vivace

Finale: Andante sostenuto - Allegro con fuoco

Program Notes

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904

Selections from Cypresses (Cypřiše), for string quartet, B. 152 (1865/1887)

Dvořák originally wrote his collection of Cypřiše (Cypresses) as songs when he was 23 and head over heels in love with one of his students, 16-year-old Josefa (Josefina) Čermáková, the daughter of a goldsmith.  Dvořák’s 18 love songs, to intimate and somewhat sentimental texts by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský, took him a little over two weeks to compose.  Josefa did not return Dvořák’s attention, and the cycle remained unpublished – though eight years later, Dvořák again fell in love, this time with Josefa’s younger sister Anna, with whom he was to share a long and comfortable marriage.  He turned to the songs several times throughout his career.  “Think about a young man in love – this is what they are about”, he wrote when publishing eight of them as his Love Songs, Op. 83.  Then, in the spring of 1887, Dvořák made a version of a dozen of these gentle, lyrical songs for string quartet.  He called them Cypresses, changing the original songs little to best preserve their freshness and directness.  Not published until 1921, the pieces are attractive and immediately appealing and full of the musical hallmarks of the Dvořák we know from the works of his maturity. 

CARTER PANN

Born in La Grange, Illinois, February 21, 1972

Love Letters (2000)

LifeMusic is the title of an innovative commissioning project that the Ying Quartet pursued for almost two decades, working with both established and emerging composers.  With the support of the Institute of American Music, the series relates the music the quartet plays with life lived by its composers, reflecting a wide spectrum of the American experience.  Love Letters was composed in 2000 for the second season of LifeMusic.  Carter Pann is currently Professor and Chair, Composition at the University of Colorado Boulder, and has worked closely with leading American and worldwide chamber and symphonic ensembles.  

In Love Letters, two shorter movements are each followed closely by a longer movement, within a 19-minute framework.  Throughout, Pann expresses eloquently in music what only a poet can put into words.  Opening with a Prayer, the music is tentative and exploratory, contemplating the mystery of love, perhaps.  Its language is romantic, marked ‘yearning’ in places, subsequently ‘Soulful’, ‘Sacred.’  A brief pause, and the composer’s description is ‘Heartwarming’ as the Serenade begins.  Built around a folksong-like fragment, the mood is now upbeat as the theme is shared from one instrument to another, and the performing indications begin to proliferate.  From here on in, the writer leaves the interpretation of Pann’s expressive music to the listener, following, perhaps, the descriptive performance sub-headings provided, together with the following background from the composer:

“My quartet touches on an experience most of us have had at one time or another: the loss of love.  The work is not a memorial for the death of a loved one, but a pouring out of several different thoughts and reactions as a result of losing one of my very true loves—a relationship ended after four years.  I had never written a piece for a girl before.  It poured out in five weeks.  I was also on a schedule different from any before, writing from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. daily.  There is something so peaceful and conducive for working just as the day begins yet before the world wakes up.“                                      . . . . (Carter Pann)

PAUL MORAVEC

Born in Buffalo, NY on November 2, 1957

Anniversary Dances (2007)

American composer Paul Moravec’s fifth opera, Sanctuary Road, had its première performances earlier this month.  It follows an oratorio of the same title in Moravec’s large-scale “American historical oratorios” series, both opera and oratorio being based on the remarkable writings of William Still – abolitionist, historian, and conductor of the Underground Railroad, who helped nearly 800 enslaved African Americans escape to freedom.  Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his chamber work Tempest Fantasy, Moravec’s catalogue now includes over two hundred orchestral, opera, chamber, choral, and lyric compositions.

Anniversary Dances draws its title and was commissioned for the Ying Quartet in 2006, in part by friends of the composer celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary (an anniversary recently shared by the Ying Quartet).  The carefully crafted score progresses without break through six dances, each drawing on material and motifs heard in a mysterious, somewhat enigmatic introduction.  The dances move through contrasting textures suggesting, in the composer’s words, “as much motions of the soul as physical movement.”  The overall trajectory of the Anniversary Dances, Moravec continues, covers “a wide variety of contrasting musical, emotional, and spiritual characteristics, [while] the work is unified by repeated motivic and harmonic elements initially laid out in the first two dances.”

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK 

Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904

String Quartet No. 13, in G, B.192, Op. 106 (1895)

Dvořák spent Christmas 1895 at his country home at Vysoká, just outside Prague.  He was working fluently and had already completed tonight’s quartet, the String Quartet in G, Op. 106, his thirteenth, over a four-week period in November and early December.  Then, he spent Christmas Day putting the final touches to another quartet and, just five days later, this quartet (Op. 105), was also finished.  Dvořák had composed two of his finest quartets in less than two months.  But the ease and pleasure with which he created them came after a period when the ink ran dry. 

Behind him was a second visit to the United States.  Artistically, it had been a success.  He could look back with pride at the new Cello Concerto, the New World Symphony, the American String Quartet and more.  But Dvořák had felt cut off from his friends and relatives.  He had been isolated from the Bohemian countryside and from a life that provided inspiration for his creativity.  “Oh, if only I were home again!” the homesick Dvořák had written from New York.  Here, he was disappointed that his lifelong fascination with the steam locomotive was thwarted, since a train ticket was needed for even an avid trainspotter to enter the platforms of Grand Central Station.  Instead, he would map out the arrivals and departures of every ocean liner bound for Europe.  He toured them from bow to stern, making friends with their captains. 

Dvořák and his wife returned to Bohemia for good in the spring of 1895.  Once back in familiar surroundings, he resumed his former routine.  He started the day with an early morning stroll in the Karlsplatz Park and taught at the Prague Conservatory.  He checked on the comings and goings of the locomotives he loved to watch.  He had regular evening meetings with younger musicians and actors in Mahulik's restaurant and with leading Prague artists at Friday soirées at the home of his friend, the architect Josef Hlávka.  Work on tonight’s G major quartet freed a creative block that had lasted for nine months, the longest fallow period in Dvořák’s life.  Now he could say: "I work so easily and everything goes ahead so well that I could not wish it better."  The two String Quartets, Opp. 106 and 105 (written in this order) can be viewed as a summing up of all that he found good in the world.  They are an affirmation of life and nature and, as his last chamber works, reveal total mastery of the medium. 

The G major Quartet opens in a positive, assertive way.  Its first theme is joyous and forward-driving.  It contrasts with a lyrical, folksong-like second theme that is passed around among the instruments.  Dvořák's craft is superb and carries over to the slow movement, the centrepiece of the quartet.  The Adagio is eloquent and elegantly written, lofty in ambition, and one of the composer's finest string quartet movements.  A busy and vigorous Scherzo follows.  It is Mendelssohn-like at times, but with a touch of country earthiness.  The finale begins exuberantly but includes wistful, somewhat nostalgic music in its pages.  It also brings in echoes of the opening movement before being swept along to an affirmative, joyful conclusion.

— Program notes copyright © 2024 Keith Horner.  Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca

Maria Thompson Corley - February 13, 2024

Program

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata No. 8, in C-minor, Op. 13, (‘Pathétique’) (1798-9)

Grave – Allegro di molto e con brio
Adagio cantabile
Rondo: Allegro

H. LESLIE ADAMS (b. 1932)
Étude in G minor (1997)
Étude in G major (1998)
Étude in A minor (1998)

INTERMISSION

ELEANOR ALBERGA (b. 1949)
Jamaican Medley (1983)

EMAHOY TSEGUÉ-MARYAM GUÈBROU (1923-2023)
Mother’s Love (1963)

NKEIRU OKOYE (b. 1972)
Dusk, from African Sketches (2004)

ERROLLYN WALLEN (b. 1958)
I Wouldn’t Normally Say (2004)

MARIA THOMPSON CORLEY (b. 1966)
Sanctuary (1999, rev. 2019; 2003, tr. 2021)

Naughtycal Glimpses: Tales of a Kindergarten Class (1980)

The Early Morning March
Recess
Teacher Tells a Mythical Tale
Skipping Home

Lucid Dreaming (2020)

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Scherzo No. 1, in B minor, Op. 20 (1831-4)

Program Notes

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
Sonata No. 8, in C-minor, Op. 13, (‘Pathétique’) (1798-9)

As the 18th century turned to the 19th , the idea of grouping sonatas into sets of three or six was long-established. Beethoven was to contribute more than anyone to the decline of the practice by developing the sonata from its relatively easy-going origins to a single statement of mighty weight. The Pathétique is the earliest of his sonatas to do so. The nickname, unusually, has its origins with Beethoven himself, since Viennese publisher Franz Hoffmeister issued the work December 18, 1799, as Grande Sonate pathétique / pour le clavecin ou piano-forte. The young Beethoven’s reputation as a firebrand would surely have warned the unwary clavecin (harpsichord) player that this turbulent score was really designed for the more powerful pianoforte. It is one of the earliest examples of Beethoven’s dramatic C minor mood that, within the decade, would lead to the Fifth Symphony.

The imposing sequence of chords with which the sonata begins herald great drama and will function as weighty rhetorical building blocks. Before they do, the first theme bursts on the scene with furious energy and a timpani-roll to accompany, as it rockets up the C minor scale. A second theme is denied its customary access to the major key and it too is designed to propel the music forward.

The turbulence that these two themes generate is broken only by more drama, as the rhetorical opening chords return. They appear a third time before a brief coda drives the movement to a decisive close. The elegance and directness of the beautiful Adagio cantabile come as a surprise. Its noble melody became tremendously popular throughout the 19 th century and was arranged for many combinations of instruments. The song-like melody of the Adagio cantabile is twice interrupted by episodes in the minor key which, nevertheless, sustain an underlying feeling of pathos in the sonata. The finale returns to the fiery world of C minor and draws its themes from music already heard. The dramatic weight of the sonata remains in the first movement rather than in this considerably shorter, less turbulent finale.

H. LESLIE ADAMS
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, December 30, 1932
Three Études from Part One of 26 Études

Cleveland born and based Leslie Adams has been a full-time composer since 1979. He has also taught and lectured across a wide range of schools and universities and served as choral conductor and music director. Vocal music forms a significant part of Adams’ catalogue. “I learned that what I wanted to express was beauty,” he says. “Beauty is paramount, so the music’s got to be melodious and pretty, and not many composers can say that today.” His music drama Blake (1985) is about the human quest for freedom from bondage and domination, drawn from a drama of young lovers in the Antebellum South. His 26 piano Études were composed over a ten-year period, 1997 to 2007 and are, in the composer’s words, “essentially studies of varying styles, moods, tonalities, and thematic natures - each providing different technical challenges, while expressing my personal sense of beauty.”

The first Étude explores a gently nostalgic, at times aspirational G minor theme through rhapsodic variations, supported by an increasingly busy accompaniment. In the third of three sections, the music carefully builds to a grandly satisfying climax. Adams makes use of the full keyboard and its varying textures in the G major Étude, essentially a study in syncopated rhythms. Unison scale patterns and broken chords built on fourths drive the third Étude, in A minor, culminating in a brilliant conclusion.

ELEANOR ALBERGA
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, September 30, 1949
Jamaican Medley (1983)

Winning the Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies at the age of 19 took Eleanor Alberga from Jamaica to London. At the Royal Academy of Music, she studied piano and singing. Rising from rehearsal pianist to musical director of The London Contemporary Dance Theatre, launched a major career as both composer and pianist. This was acknowledged in 2012 with an OBE for services to British music. A few years earlier, Alberga’s commissioned work Arise, Athena! opened the Last Night of the BBC Proms. “Classical music is just as much a part of me as the Jamaican folk and pop I grew up hearing around me,” Alberga says – and her Jamaican Medley, one of her earliest published works, encompasses it all.

EMAHOY TSEGUÉ-MARYAM GUÈBROU
Born in Adis Ababa, Ethiopia, December 12, 1923; died in Jerusalem, Israel, March 31, 2023
Mother’s Love (1963)

Born in a country with a rich musical history, Ethiopian composer and pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou led an extraordinary life and produced extraordinary music. It was known only to a relatively small handful of followers until the early years of the present century, when Emahoy (as she is widely known) was well into her 80s. Her music is rooted in Western classical music learned during an early Swiss education, via violin lessons in Cairo, up to the point of a scholarship to the Royal Academy in London. But then an apparent spiritual crisis interrupted things and Yewubdar Guèbrou, as she was born, became Sister Guèbrou, taking the honorific ‘Emahoy.’ “I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years,” the nun said. “No shoes, no music, just prayer.” Returning to her family, she made a few recordings, donating the proceeds to the poor. Then, in the mid-1980s, she moved to an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, where she lived for the rest of her life, dying less than a year ago, aged 99.

Mother’s Love is distinctively ‘Emahoy‘ – gentle, modal, with characteristically Ethiopian arpeggio flourishes, improvisatory, with a touch of the blues and a nod to Satie. Emahoy writes: “Dedicated to my dear late mother-memory, Emahoy Kassaye Yelemtou, and her beloved son, Lieutenant Meshesha Guèbrou, fallen as a victim of the Italian War. Everyone knows how Mother’s love is sacrificing itself for the welfare and happiness of the children. Indeed! Mother’s heart is a fortress of love.”

NKEIRU OKOYE (b. 1972)
Born in New York, July 18, 1972
Dusk, from African Sketches (2004)

Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021, American composer Nkeiru Okoye says she is, perhaps, best known for her opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom (2014), her orchestral work Voices Shouting Out (2002), which she composed as an artistic response to 9/11, and the piano suite, African Sketches (2004). This four-movement suite is “inspired by the composer’s childhood years in Nigeria, her father’s homeland.” The brief, calming second movement, Dusk, is a beautifully gentle memorial to Okoye’s first musical mentor, composer Noel DaCosta.

ERROLLYN WALLEN
Born in Belize City, Belize, April 10, 1958
I Wouldn’t Normally Say (2004)

“The tradition of the composer’s calling is to write the music that you just have to write – I’ve always done that. I want to make a difference,” says Belize-born composer and pianist Errollyn Wallen. Drawing inspiration from a wide range of today’s music, from contemporary classical to singer-songwriter, the London based composer has had a percussion concerto played at the BBC Proms, a choral symphony performed by Welsh National Opera, a chamber opera (one of 14) by the Garden Venture of Covent Garden, and written music for film and television. Wallen also trained as a dancer in both London and New York, and the rhythmic drive of dance underlines much of her music, including the short salsa for piano titled I Wouldn’t Normally Say.

MARIA THOMPSON CORLEY
Born in Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica on February 16, 1966
Sanctuary (1999, rev. 2019; 2003, tr. 2021)
Naughtycal Glimpses: Tales of a Kindergarten Class (1980)
Lucid Dreaming (2020)

Maria Thompson Corley writes:

“Sanctuary is a medley of two of my arrangements of spirituals, transcribed for piano from their original piano and voice versions. I had already transcribed Motherless Child when Katlyn Addison, a prima ballerina with Utah’s Ballet West, reached out to ask if I had music for piano that could be used for choreography. The length of the proposed piece and my limited time led to the decision to add I want Jesus to walk with me to my existing piece, joining the two with a short interlude.” “I wrote Naughtycal Glimpses when I was 14, during my only year of composition lessons. My teacher was Lydia Pals, a proud Estonian (I’d never heard of Estonia before then). I came across my handwritten score and decided to create a computer version, since I don’t tend to write relatively easy piano music (these are intermediate). My mom always enjoyed Recess, so since I’d decided to include it in a musical birthday gift, I added the other three.”

“Lucid Dreaming was the first piece I wrote for solo piano as an adult. I used to have lucid dreams as a child. In each case, I would fly, usually to escape danger, sometimes with difficulty, sometimes barely above the ground. The opening depicts falling asleep (my favourite part of the day), and then the chase is on, with harmonies that feel a bit off-kilter. The middle section is about soaring, for a brief moment. At the end, the situation has gotten intense enough to wake the dreamer, who sinks back into the pillow, relieved that the dream is over.”

FRYDERYK CHOPIN

Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, France, Oct 17, 1849

Scherzo No. 1, in B minor, Op. 20 (1831-4)

Chopin was exploring new territory when he wrote single virtuoso scherzo movements outside the context of the symphony and piano sonata.  Without the framework of contrasting sonata movements, he made a point of providing contrast within the scherzo itself.  The principle behind the four Scherzos is that of alternating dramatic and lyrical ideas.  A lively outer section often encompasses a more lyrical middle episode, though the shape of each Scherzo does vary.  The heroic opening chords of the Scherzo No. 1, in B minor, Op. 20 and its subsequent dynamic, scampering passagework seem to throw a challenge to Chopin’s Parisian piano rivals.  The turbulence of the work is relieved by a contrasting central episode where the young Chopin recalls his homeland in a melody from a Christmas folk-song Lulajze Jezuniu (Sleep, Little Jesus).  “How will gravity array itself, if wit is already cloaked so darkly?” asked Robert Schumann when reviewing the piece.

— Program notes (except Maria Corley) copyright © 2024 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed:

khnotes@sympatico.ca