BIG ARTS Classical Series 2025 - Young Concert Artists Program

Proudly Presents

Young Concert Artists on Tour Christensen Performance Hall on The Madeline Janis Courter Stage Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Graciously Sponsored by BIG ARTS Classical Series Circle: Nancy Dehmlow, David Huggin & Ken Nees

Y O U N G C O N C E R T A R T I STS YCA on Tour is a dynamic chamber ensemble made up of the classical stars of the future, who combine world-class talent with creative vision to bring new reach and relevance to the art form. For more than 60 years, YCA has invested in extraordinarily gifted young musicians by providing them with the tools and opportunities to take their careers to the highest level. This season’s tour offers a special program of chamber music performed by impressive, highly trained musicians.

JAMES BAIK, CELLO First Prize Winner of the 2023 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions and recipient of the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Prize, James Baik is a YCA Jacobs Fellow and is managed worldwide by Young Concert Artists.

RISA HOKAMURA, VIOLIN Risa Hokamura began studying the violin at the age of three, and by the age of ten captured top prizes in competitions throughout her home country of Japan.

She first came to international attention upon winning First Prize in the 2018 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions at the age of seventeen.

CHAEYOUNG PARK, PIANO Winner of the 2022 YCA Susan Wadsworth International Auditions and Finalist in the 2023 Rubinstein Piano Competition, Chaeyoung Park has been praised as a passionate pianist who “does not play a single note without thought or feeling.” (New York Concert Review).

ANTHONY TRIONFO, FLUTE Anthony Trionfo is the First Prize Winner of the 2016 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. The New York Times has lauded his playing as “breezily virtuosic” and he is actively building one of today’s most exciting musical careers.

PROGRAM Sonata No. 6 for Unaccompanied Violin in E major, Op. 27, No. 6 (1924)

Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931)

Duration: 7 minutes

Sicilienne for Cello and Piano, Op. 78 (1893 and 1898)

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Duration: 4 minutes

Romance for Cello and Piano, Op. 69 (1894)

Gabriel Fauré

Duration: 4 minutes

Trois Aquarelles for Flute, Cello and Piano (1915) I. Par un clair matin II. Soir d’automne III. Sérénade

Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941)

Duration: 15 minutes

Intermission

Syrinx for Unaccompanied Flute (1913)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Duration: 3 minutes

Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in A minor (1914) I. Modéré II. Pantoum: Assez vif III. Passacaille: Très large — IV. Final: Animé Duration: 30 minutes

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Notes on the Program by Dr. Richard E. Rodda Sonata No. 6 for Unaccompanied Violin in E major, Op. 27, No. 6 Eugène Ysaÿe Born July 16, 1858 in Liège, Belgium.

Died May 12, 1931 in Brussels.

Composed in 1924.

Eugène Ysaÿe (ee-sy-uh) was one of the most beloved musicians in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, a violinist revered by his peers and lionized by audiences, a teacher of immense influence, a conductor of international repute, and a composer of excellent skill. Ysaÿe began studying violin when he was four, and three years later was admitted to the Liège Conservatory, where he won a prize for his playing and a scholarship for study with Henryk Wieniawski at the Brussels Conservatory from 1874 to 1876. Ysaÿe learned in 1876 that Henri Vieuxtemps had recovered sufficiently from a recent stroke to accept a few students, so he moved to Paris to receive that virtuoso’s instruction for the next three years. After serving as concertmaster of Benjamin Bilse’s orchestra (the predecessor of the Berlin Philharmonic) and touring Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, Ysaÿe settled from 1883 to 1886 in Paris, where he formed close ties with many of the city’s leading musicians: Franck, Chausson, Debussy, and others composed works for him. From 1886 to 1898, Ysaÿe was professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatory, where he also established the Ysaÿe String Quartet (for which ensemble Saint-Saëns wrote his Quartet No. 1) and founded the orchestral Concerts Ysaÿe, both of which were principally dedicated to promoting new French and Belgian music. Increasing commitments for tours as violinist and conductor required him to leave the Conservatory in 1898, though he continued to live in Brussels until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Following his debut in the United States in 1894, Ysaÿe’s American prestige equaled that which he enjoyed in Europe, and he was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1918. He returned to Europe in 1922 to revive the Concerts Ysaÿe and resume his tours.

Declining health caused by diabetes and an affliction of his bowing arm began to limit his activities in his later years, however, and in 1929 he was forced to have a foot amputated. He died in Brussels in May 1931. In 1937, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, a long-time violin student of his, inaugurated an annual violin competition in Brussels — the Prix International Eugène Ysaÿe (rechristened the Queen Elisabeth Competition after World War II) — in his honor.

The one-movement Sonata No. 6 was dedicated to the Spanish violinist Manuel Quiroga, who toured Europe and America with great success until a street accident in New York in 1937 ended his performing career. Ysaÿe’s flamboyant work, almost constantly in double-stops, evokes the rhapsodic Gypsy style of Quiroga’s homeland.

Sicilienne for Cello and Piano, Op. 78 Gabriel Fauré Born May 12, 1845 in Pamiers, Ariège, France.

Died November 14, 1924 in Paris.

Composed 1894.

Premiered on November 14, 1894 in Geneva by cellist Adolf Rehberg with the composer as pianist.

Fauré first sketched the theme for what became the Romance for Cello and Piano around 1870, when he titled it Andante and provided it with a simple block-chord organ accompaniment. He never published the piece, but he thought enough of it to re-work it for his incidental music to Shylock, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by the French journalist, poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist and

Jan. 21, 2025 (YCA), page 2 composer Edmond Haraucourt that opened at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris on December 14, 1889.

Fauré used the melody in that production to accompany the love scene between Jessica and Lorenzo in Portia’s garden: The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,/When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees/Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,/And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents,/Where Cressid lay that night. Fauré retained both the melody and the mood in arranging the music for cello and piano in 1894 as the Romance, Op. 69, which he premiered with cellist Adolf Rehberg at a festival of his music at the Geneva Conservatory on November 14, 1894. The Romance opens with a thoughtful phrase that wends upward through the cello’s compass to introduce the lovely theme, which embodies Fauré’s rare ability to create music that is at once elegant, poignant and restless. A lyrical complementary passage in the cello’s tenor register follows, after which the thoughtful introductory music and the principal theme return. A final reminiscence of the opening measures closes this beautiful expression of Fauré’s intimate art.

Romance for Cello and Piano, Op. 69 Gabriel Fauré Composed in 1893 and 1898.

Fauré’s creative gifts lent themselves naturally to the small and the exquisite, and so he chose as his first theatrical endeavor not an opera or a ballet but some incidental music for a production of Alexandre Dumas père’s Caligula staged in November 1888 at the Paris Odéon. Paul Porel, the Odéon’s director, was pleased enough with Fauré’s work that he commissioned him to write the music for his production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice the following season. (Fauré extracted a suite from the score that he titled Shylock.) In 1892, Porel took over the direction of the Eden-Théâtre, and he considered mounting an adaptation by Georges de Porto-Riche of Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel Manon Lescaut, with music by Fauré.

That project came to nothing, however, so Porel next proposed a production of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme for April 1893. Fauré started sketching the music, but Porel’s venture collapsed completely and all plans were cancelled. Five years later Fauré rescued a wistful number from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme music, perhaps originally intended to accompany a dance sequence, arranged it for cello and piano, and published the score in both London and Paris as the Sicilienne, Op. 78. That summer, pressed for time, he borrowed it for the incidental music that he was writing for a production of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, where it provided the perfect bittersweet accompaniment for the touching but enigmatic love scene of the title characters.

Trois Aquarelles (“Three Watercolors”) for Flute, Cello and Piano Philippe Gaubert Born July 5, 1879 in Cahors, France.

Died July 8, 1941 in Paris.

Composed in 1915.

Philippe Gaubert was among the leading French musicians of the early 20th century. Renowned as a conductor, composer and master flutist, Gaubert received his instrumental training from Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire, where he won a First Prize for performance when he was only fifteen; he also studied harmony and composition at the school with Xavier Leroux, receiving Second Prize in the 1905 Prix de Rome competition. In 1919, Gaubert succeeded Taffanel as professor of flute at the Conservatoire, and the same year was appointed conductor of that institution’s concerts, a position he held until 1938.

He was named to the conducting staff of the Paris Opéra in 1920 and became principal conductor there in 1931; he also directed the programs of the Société des Concerts and guest conducted throughout Europe and England. In addition, he taught orchestration at the Conservatoire, was a member of the school’s

Jan. 21, 2025 (YCA), page 3 governing Conseil supérieur, and served as composer for the Société des Concerts. Gaubert was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1938.

Though he composed two operas, three ballets, an oratorio, many ambitious works for orchestra (notably a symphony and a violin concerto), vocal pieces and chamber music, Gaubert is best remembered for his contributions to the flute repertory. His lovely Trois Aquarelles (“Three Watercolors”) for Flute, Cello and Piano, date, most improbably, from 1915, when he was on active duty in the French military, and may have provided him (as did the nearly contemporary Le Tombeau de Couperin for Maurice Ravel) with a creative and emotional antidote to the stresses and uncertainties of those anxious times. Par un clair matin (“On a Clear Morning”) opens with a sweeping unison melody for flute and cello buoyed upon dawn-bright arpeggios in the piano. The center of this exquisite musical sketch is occupied by a sensuous, almost operatic duet between the flute’s soprano and the cello’s tenor before the opening music returns to round out the movement. Soir d’automne (“Autumn Evening”) is lyrical, serene and introspective. The outer sections of the closing Sérénade, which suggest the winding melodic lines and rhythmic vivacity of a Spanish dance, are nicely balanced by the movement’s thoughtful central episode.

Syrinx for Unaccompanied Flute Claude Debussy Born August 2, 1862 in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris.

Died March 25, 1918 in Paris.

Composed in 1913.

Premiered on December 1, 1913 in Paris by Louis Fleury.

In July 1907, the French writer and translator of Poe and Swinburne Gabriel Mourey offered Debussy an opera libretto based on the familiar story of Tristan and Isolde. The two considered the project for years, but by the fall of 1913, it was clear that it would come to nothing, so Mourey suggested that Debussy instead compose some incidental music to his new three-act dramatic poem on the ancient tale of Psyche. Debussy, pressed with finishing his “children’s ballet” La boîte à joujoux and obligated to conduct some concerts in Switzerland, was able to oblige Mourey’s request with but a single page of music, an atmospheric soliloquy for solo flute representing, according to the playwright, “the last melody that Pan plays before his death.” The piece, originally titled La flûte de Pan, was written in a few days at the end of November 1913, and first performed in the wings by flutist Louis Fleury during a staging of Psyché at the Parisian home of Louis Mors on December 1st. Debussy dedicated the score to Fleury, who seems to have taken the honor quite literally, and kept the manuscript to himself for years, playing it on his concerts in France and abroad with great success. To avoid confusion with the eponymous opening song of the Chansons de Bilitis, the title of the work was changed upon its publication by Jobert in 1927 to Syrinx, the nymph who was transformed into a reed by her sisters to save her from the lustful pursuit of Pan, who then made a flute from that selfsame reed upon which to pipe away his longing. Mourey told Debussy that Syrinx was “a real jewel of restrained emotion, of sadness, of plastic beauty, of discreet tenderness and poetry.”

Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in A minor Maurice Ravel Born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France.

Died December 28, 1937 in Paris.

Composed in 1914.

Premiered on January 28, 1915 in Paris by pianist Alfredo Casella, violinist Gabriele Willaume and cellist Louis Teuillard.

Ravel first mentioned that he was planning a trio for piano, violin and cello in a letter of 1908, but he only got around to sketching ideas for the piece in 1913 at his summer retreat in the seaside town of St. Jean-de-Luz in the southern Basque region (and just across a small river from his birthplace); he did not begin serious work on the score until the following April at St. Jean. He spent the next three months dabbling leisurely with the score, balancing his labors with long explorations of the surrounding countryside and abundant socializing, but this pleasant schedule was ruined when the Guns of August unleashed their fearsome roar across the Continent to start World War I in 1914. Ravel pledged to aid France’s war effort, but first he determined to finish the Trio. He applied himself unsparingly to the work at the beginning of August, and then reported to the garrison at Bayonne to apply for military service.

His constitution was frail, however, and his height and weight below the minimum standard, so he was refused entry into the army and instead worked as an orderly in a military hospital, an exercise in patriotism that impaired his health for the rest of his life.

The Trio’s first movement, written in an irregular but easily flowing meter (8/8) derived from the folk music of Ravel’s native Basque region, follows traditional sonata form. The main theme is a closeinterval melody in sensuous, tightly packed parallel harmonies; the subsidiary subject arches through much of the violin’s compass. The second movement, titled Pantoum, serves as the Trio’s scherzo. The pantun is a Malaysian poetic form in which the second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third of the next. Ravel here made an ingenious musical analogue of the technique by inserting music from the scherzo into the central trio. The third movement is a passacaglia, the old Baroque form in which a melody is repeated intact several times (eight in this Trio) and glossed on each recurrence by different counterpoint and harmonies. The finale is music of enormous strength whose feverish, pent-up emotion is held precisely in check by the clarity of its melodic and contrapuntal lines and the integrity of its sonata-rondo form. ©2024 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

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