Canellakis-Brown Duo Program at ArtPower

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Chamber Music / USA

Program

ArtPower presents

Canellakis-Brown Duo April 22, 2022 at 8 pm Dept. of Music's Conrad Prebys Concert Hall

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Sonata in D Minor for Cello and Piano Prologue: Lent Sérénade:Modérément animé Finale: Animé Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Sonata in G Minor for Piano and Cello, Opus 19 Lento; Allegro moderato Allegro scherzando Andante Allegro mosso INTERMISSION Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983) Pampeana No. 2 for Cello and Piano, Opus 21 Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) Romance, Op. 69 Michael Brown (b. 1987) Prelude and Dance for Cello and Piano Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) Alborado del gracioso George Gershwin (1898–1937) 3 Preludes for cello and piano (arr. Nicholas Canellakis) Allegro ben ritmato e deciso Andante con moto e poco rubato Allegro ben ritmato e deciso Don Ellis (1934–1978) Bulgarian Bulge (arr. Nicholas Canellakis)

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About the Program Sonata in D Minor for Cello and Piano Claude Debussy Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye Died March 25, 1918, Paris Debussy’s final years were wretched. He developed colon cancer in 1909 and underwent a painful operation, radiation therapy, and drug treatment. It was all to no avail, and the disease took its steady course. The onslaught of World War I in 1914 further depressed him, but it also sparked a wave of nationalistic fervor, and he set about writing a set of six sonatas for different combinations of instruments. It may seem strange that the iconoclastic Debussy would return in his final years to so structured a form as the sonata, but he specified that his model was the French sonata of the eighteenth century and not the classical German sonata. To make his point—and his nationalistic sympathies— even more clear, Debussy signed the scores of these works “Claude Debussy, musicien français.”

Debussy lived to complete only three of the projected six sonatas: a Cello Sonata (1915); a Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1916); and the Violin Sonata (1917). The three sonatas that Debussy completed have never achieved the popularity of his earlier works, and the composer himself deprecated them with the self-irony that marked his painful final years.Of the Violin Sonata, he remarked: “This sonata will be interesting from a documentary viewpoint and as an example of what may be produced by a sick man in time of war.” But this music has a power all its own, and listeners who put aside their preconceptions about what Debussy should sound like (and about what a sonata should be) will find this spare music moving and—in its austere way—painfully beautiful One of the most impressive things about the Cello Sonata is its concentration: it lasts less than twelve minutes. Further intensifying this music’s severity is Debussy’s refusal to develop—or even to use—themes in a traditional sense: this is music not of fullydeveloped themes but of thematic fragments appearing in various forms and shapes.

The opening movement, Prologue–Lent, is only 51 measures long, but Debussy alters the tempo every few measures: the score is saturated with tempo changes and performance instructions. The piano’s opening three-measure phrase recurs throughout, contrasting with the cello’s agitato passages in the center section. At the end, the cello winds gradually into its highest register and concludes hauntingly on the interval of a perfect fifth, played in harmonics.

The second and third movements are performed without pause. The second is marked Sérénade, but this is unlike any serenade one has heard before: there is nothing lyric about this song. The cello snaps out grumbling pizzicatos (Debussy considered calling this movement Pierrot Angry at the Moon), and when the cello is finally given a bowed passage, it is marked ironique. The finale—Animé—opens with three quick pizzicatos and then races ahead. As in the first movement, there are frequent changes of tempo, a continuing refusal to announce or develop themes in traditional senses, and sudden changes of mood: at one point the performer is instructed to play a brief lyric passage con morbidezza, which means “gently,” yet another passage is marked arraché, or “ripped 4

Program

out.” The sonata concludes on an abrupt pizzicato.

Such a description makes the sonata sound fierce, abstract, even mocking. But beneath the surface austerity of this sonata lies music of haunting emotional power.

Sonata in G Minor for Piano and Cello, Opus 19 Serge Rachmaninoff Born April 1, 1873, Semyonova Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California Rachmaninoff wrote very little chamber music: two piano trios, various fragments for string quartet, and some short pieces for strings and keyboard. But for one chamber ensemble he felt a continuing affection—the combination of cello and piano. Among his earliest works were the Romance in F Minor for cello and piano and Two Pieces for Cello and Piano, Opus 2, and to that combination he returned in his final chamber work, the Sonata for Piano and Cello in G Minor.

Rachmaninoff wrote this sonata in the summer of 1901, when he was 28. Several years earlier, harsh critical attacks had so damaged his self-confidence that he stopped composing altogether. Under the care of the psychologist Dr. Nikolay Dahl, who treated him with hypnosis, Rachmaninoff regained his confidence and composed his Second Piano Concerto, which had a triumphant premiere. It was in the afterglow of this success that Rachmaninoff wrote the Cello Sonata, and perhaps it should come as no surprise that the sonata shows some of the grand, extroverted manner of the piano concerto.

Rachmaninoff and Anatoly Brandoukoff gave the premiere in Moscow on December 2 of that year. The manuscript itself is dated December 12, 1901—apparently Rachmaninoff went back and made some revisions after the first performance.

The Cello Sonata has been criticized for favoring the piano at the expense of the cello.

Rachmaninoff was one of the greatest piano virtuosos of all time, and some critics have felt that he naturally wrote best for the instrument he knew best. While the piano does have an unusually prominent role in this sonata, this was by design rather than by default.

After hearing a radio performance of the sonata in 1942, Rachmaninoff phoned the cellist to offer congratulations on her playing but also to complain about the balance of the broadcast: the engineers had set the piano well in the background and Rachmaninoff wanted to specify that this was a Sonata for Piano and Cello and not simply a Cello Sonata.

The first movement opens with a Lento introduction that contains suspended fragments of what will become the sonata’s opening theme. When this theme arrives at the Allegro moderato it gives the lie to all who claim that Rachmaninoff wrote badly for the cello–if ever there was a cello theme, this songful surge of melody is it. The second subject (which critics universally label “Schumannesque”) is for piano alone, and the development is shared equally by the two instruments, though just before the coda the piano is given a virtuosic outburst that almost becomes a small cadenza. The coda to this sonata-form movement is dramatic and declarative.

Marked Allegro scherzando, the brilliant second movement has nothing of the joke about it. Gone are the broad, romantic gestures of the first movement, and in their place comes a muttering, trembling rush of triplets in somber C minor. The movement is in ABA Chamber Music

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form, which Rachmaninoff varies by inserting a lyric episode into the fast outer sections.

The trio section itself is built on a gorgeous lyric theme for the cello, another example of Rachmaninoff’s beautiful writing for the instrument. The ghostly opening section returns to drive the movement to its sudden ending.

The brief Andante, by far the shortest of the movements, opens over an accompaniment of murmuring sixteenth-notes in the piano. First piano and then cello pick up and develop the main theme, a melody so lyric that it should remind listeners of a little-known side of Rachmaninoff: he wrote nearly seventy songs. The Allegro mosso finale contrasts its first theme, built on driving triplets, with a singing second episode. The blazing coda leads to a cadence very much in the manner of the just-completed Second Piano Concerto.

Pampeana No. 2 for Cello and Piano, Opus 21 Alberto Ginastera Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires Died June 25, 1983, Geneva Alberto Ginastera composed his Pampeana No. 2 in 1950. A “pampeana” is a brief piece intended to invoke the spirit of the Argentinian pampas, and Ginastera has described his intention in this music: “ . . . Whenever I have crossed the pampa or have lived in it for a time, my spirit felt itself inundated by changing impressions, now joyful, now melancholy, some full of euphoria and others replete with a profound tranquility, produced by its limitless immensity and by the transformation that the countryside undergoes in the course of the day . . . From my first contact with the pampa, there awakened in me the desire to write a work that would reflect these states of my spirit . . .”

The Pampeana No. 2 is in four brief sections that alternate between the declamatory and the rhythmic. Particularly striking is the final section, based on the gaucho malambo, a fast dance in a pounding 6/8 meter. The premiere of this work was given in Buenos Aires on May 8, 1950, by cellist Aurora Natola, who later became the composer’s wife.

Nocturne No. 3 in A-flat Major, Opus 33, No. 3 Gabriel Fauré Born May 13, 1845, Pamiers Died November 4, 1924, Paris A nocturne is a musical form with a dangerously imprecise meaning. That title refers to atmosphere rather than form—a nocturne is said to have some of the character of the night, and we expect such music to be lyric, quiet, reflective, dark. But it was Chopin who made the nocturne a great form, and several of his nocturnes explode with an energy and fire that remind us that night can mean quite different things to different people.

Some of this variety is evident in the nocturnes of Gabriel Fauré. He was attracted to the possibilities of the form throughout his life, and his thirteen nocturnes for solo piano span his creative career: he wrote his first in 1875, when he was 30, and his last in 1921 at the age of 76. The critic Alan Rich has noted that we suffer from a clichéd image of Fauré as “a gentle, gray man who wrote gentle, gray music sometimes streaked with lavender,” when in fact there can be a sharp range of mood and expression beneath the velvet surface of his music.

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Program

The Nocturne in A-flat Major was probably composed in 1882, and Fauré published it the following year as part of his first set of nocturnes. Fauré marks it molto espressivo, and over its brief span this music remains gentle and understated. A certain amount of energy, though, is generated by the music’s continual contrast of triplet rhythms in one hand, duple rhythms in the other, and even the second section sets a flowing melody against triplet accompaniment. At the end, the gentle spirits of the opening prevail, and the Nocturne in A-flat Major comes to a most gentle—and a most beautiful—conclusion.

This music is heard at the present concert in an arrangement for cello and piano by Nicholas Canellakis.

Prelude and Dance for Cello and Piano (2014, rev. 2017) Michael Brown Born 1987, Oceanside, NY For performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the composer provided a note for this piece: Prelude and Dance was commissioned and premiered at Bargemusic’s 2014 “Here and Now” Festival. Inspired by Baroque dance suite forms, it is the third work composed for my duo with cellist Nicholas Canellakis. Prelude presents musical material that is languorous and exploratory in character. Hushed repeated notes that gradually gain prominence throughout the movement foreshadow motivic material in the Dance. The second movement is a stark contrast from the first–strict in temperament and inspired by the spirited nature of the Baroque gigue. It is a high-octane, perpetual-motion piece that sizzles along at breakneck speed, featuring virtuosic interplay between the cello and piano. (Michael Brown) Alborada del gracioso Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrennes Died December 28, 1937, Paris In the years 1904–5, just as he was finishing his String Quartet, Maurice Ravel composed Miroirs (“Mirrors”), a set of five brief piano pieces with evocative titles like Noctuelles (“Night-Moths”), Oiseaux tristes (“Sad Birds”), and La vallée des cloches (“Valley of the Clocks”). The title Miroirs may suggest an exact reflection, but listeners had difficulty making out a visual quality or even any distinct action in these pieces, which were admired more as piano music than for their pictorial success. Ravel, however, remained very proud of Miroirs, and he immediately orchestrated the third movement, Une barque sur l’océan (“A Bark on the Ocean”), then waited twelve years to orchestrate the fourth movement, Alborada del gracioso.

Alborada del gracioso promptly became one of Ravel’s most popular orchestral works, but this recital offers the opportunity to hear it in its original form for solo piano.

Ravel’s title has proven elusive. An alborada (that word means “dawn” in Spanish) has a range of musical meanings: it can be a song sung at morning (the French title for this is aubade), it can be a song for the morning of a wedding day, or it can be a lively folk-dance in shifting meters. A gracioso was a figure from Spanish comedy—a jester or a clown.

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Ravel’s title Alborada del gracioso is so mysterious (and evocative) that its standard literal translation into English—“Morning Song of a Jester”—arrives with a prosaic thud.

Perhaps some of the charm of that title lies in the fact that it will not translate precisely.

Ravel’s mother was Basque, and he was born in Basque territory: Ciboure is a tiny fishing village on the Bay of Biscay, located exactly between Spain’s San Sebastian and France’s Bayonne. Throughout his life, Ravel was fascinated by Spanish music, as works like Bolero, Rapsodie espagnole, Habañera, and L’heure espagnole make clear, and Alborada del gracioso is one of his most characteristically “Spanish” pieces. It opens with what sounds like the strumming of a vast guitar, and hints of a theme spin out of this rush of energy. Many have commented on the “Spanish rhythms” of this opening section, and Ravel’s rhythmic sense here is quite fluid: the fundamental meter of this opening section is 6/8, but he enlivens that with occasional measures in 3/8 and 9/8. A sharp chord introduces the central episode, with its lonely song (sung memorably by the solo bassoon in the orchestral version). Ravel’s gradual return to the opening tempo is accomplished very gracefully: the 3/4 meter of the central episode is merged into the 6/8 of the opening section as the music works back to its initial pulse. The writing in this final section is brilliant, and the precipitous ending is particularly exciting.

Three Preludes for Cello and Piano George Gerswhin Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn Died July 11, 1937, Hollywood Gershwin made a fortune while still a very young man as a composer of songs and Broadway shows, but he longed to be regarded as a “serious” composer. To this end, he studied with such teachers as Rubin Goldmark (who was also teaching Aaron Copland in these years), Wallingford Riegger, and Henry Cowell, and burst to worldwide fame with two works that fused classical music and jazz: Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and the Piano Concerto in F (1925). During these same years Gershwin also was working on a series of short works for solo piano—he completed six of them, which he intended to call Novelettes. When it came time to publish them, however, Gershwin selected only three and called them Piano Preludes. Gershwin himself gave the first performance on December 4, 1926, at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York on a duo-recital with Peruvian contralto Marguerite d’Alvarez.

The three preludes are in a fast-slow-fast sequence, and both fast movements have the same marking: Allegro ben ritmato e deciso. Gershwin is reported to have written the first movement (which he referred to as “the Spanish prelude”) in one sitting. The most famous of the preludes is probably the second, in which a bluesy little tune sings languorously over an ostinato bass full of rubato. The preludes are heard on this program in an arrangement for cello and piano.

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Bulgarian Bulge Don Ellis Born July 25, 1934, Los Angeles Died December 17, 1978, Hollywood Don Ellis, who died at the age of only 44 of heart issues, was a jazz trumpeter, composer, drummer, and bandleader who for some years led The Don Ellis Orchestra. He was also a film composer, and he wrote the music for The French Connection and Kansas City Bomber. Ellis is remembered as the composer of avant garde jazz, and he was willing to re-think jazz, experiment, and have fun in the process. Jazz is perennially identified with the 4/4 meter, but Ellis was drawn to unusual rhythms, such as those of Indian and Arabian music, and one of his most famous compositions is Bulgarian Bulge, which is based on the asymmetric rhythms of that nation’s folk music. Classical music lovers will remember that the second movement of Béla Bartók’s Fifth String Quartet, subtitled “In the Bulgarian Manner,” is set in the meter 4+2+3 over 8, while its trio section is in 3+2+2+3 over 8. In Bulgarian Bulge, Ellis takes those unbalanced meters to an extreme: the piece is set in 33/16, with occasional passages in 36/16. The result is a wild, fun, and extraordinarily difficult piece for virtuoso performers, and in Ellis’ original setting for jazz band there are important solos for trombone, trumpet, piano, and others. Bulgarian Bulge is heard at this concert in an arrangement by Nicholas Canellakis.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

About the Artists Cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Brown have been hailed as “a pair of adventurous young talents” (Time Out New York) who “play with their antennae tuned to each other” (Washington Post). As a duo they perform programs that combine masterpieces from the standard literature with original compositions and arrangements.

Their 2021–22 season includes appearances at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, UC San Diego’s ArtPower, Parlance Chamber Concerts, Chamber Music Sedona, and New Orleans Friends of Music. Canellakis and Brown are both artists with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and both maintain active careers as orchestral soloists, recitalists, and chamber musicians. Canellakis made his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium debut as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra. Brown is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. He has composed works for Canellakis as well as numerous other artists and performing organizations.

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