McGill.McHale program 2019

Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad

CHRIS ROGERSON Born in Amherst, MA in 1988 A FISH WILL RISE Composed in 2016; 9 minutes

Like the 2017 debut recording of the McGill/McHale Trio, Portraits, this program begins with the alluring music of rising star Chris Rogerson, whom The Washington Post hails as a “fully grown composing talent.” After Anthony McGill premiered Rogerson’s Clarinet Concerto, he commissioned this transcription of music that began as the first movement of River Songs, Rogerson’s 2014 trio for violin, cello and piano. The work takes both its bubbling sense of wonder and its evocative title, A Fish Will Rise, from Norman Maclean, the author of A River Runs Through It. In that semiautobiographical story that became a hit film, Maclean wrote, “Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.”

FRANCIS POULENC Born in Paris, January 7, 1899 Died in Paris, January 30, 1963

SONATA FOR FLUTE AND PIANO, FP 164 Composed in 1957; 13 minutes

Francis Poulenc was only 21 when he emerged among a crop of young French composers dubbed “Les Six,” yet he was well on his way to developing the musical personality that one critic would famously describe as “part monk, part rascal.” That dual nature of Poulenc’s voice comes through in the Flute Sonata that he completed in 1957 to fulfill a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. He dedicated the score to the foundation’s late patron, an ardent supporter of chamber music who funded an ideal venue for it at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and who commissioned Stravinsky, Bartók and Copland, among other legends of 20th-century composition.

The melodic kernel heard at the outset of the sonata, a quick descending figure outlining a minor triad, establishes the wistful and knowing tone of the “fast and melancholy” first movement. The central Cantilena fulfills that heading’s promise of a smooth and simple song, and then the “quick and jocular” finale brings a fresh blast of neoclassical brightness, including a sly quotation of Bach’s Badinerie from the Second Orchestral Suite, one of the most famous flute solos in the repertoire.

TYSHAWN SOREY Born in Newark, NJ, July 8, 1980

It is too limiting to describe Tyshawn Sorey as a composer of contemporary classical music, or as a jazz drummer and bandleader, so we can take a cue from his 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and simply call him a genius. For this 92nd Street Y commission (with support from the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program), the McGill/McHale Trio identified Sorey as an ideal

composer to add to the relatively small body of music that has been written for flute, clarinet and piano. “Every work that I’ve heard of his is boiling over with freshness and innovation,” says flutist Demarre McGill. “For an instrumental combination that is not very common and whose repertoire we hope to expand, freshness and innovation were exactly what we were looking for in a composer.” With the new score still in progress in the months leading up to the premiere, pianist Michael McHale added, “As fans of his music, we are really curious to see in what direction this trio instrumentation will lead him, and we hope to do full justice to his new creation in the world premiere concert at 92Y.”

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK Born in Nelahozeves, Czechia, September 8, 1841 Died in Prague, May 1, 1904 SLAVONIC DANCE, OP. 46, NO. 8 Composed in 1878; arranged by Michael Webster for trio; 4 minutes

Antonín Dvořák was scraping by as a freelancer in Prague when he got his big break: an introduction to a major publisher arranged by Johannes Brahms, who had discovered Dvořák when judging a competition. The publisher Simrock commissioned Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, a set of eight miniatures that Dvořák composed in 1878 in two versions, one for piano four hands and the other for orchestra. Within months of its release, ensembles as far away as London and New York offered performances, turning the obscure Czech composer into an overnight star. The dances mimic authentic folk traditions found in Dvořák’s native Bohemia, including the energetic Furiant that shifts between units of two beats and three beats, as heard in the Slavonic Dance No. 8 in G Minor, transcribed for this instrumentation by clarinetist Michael Webster.

GUILLAUME CONNESSON Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, May 5, 1970 TECHNO-PARADE Composed in 2002; 5 minutes

Guillaume Connesson composed Techno-Parade in 2002 for Musique à l’Empéri, a French chamber music festival, and he dedicated the brief but outrageously virtuosic score to the three musicians who premiered it. According to Connesson’s description of the work, “Two incisive motifs swirl and clink together, giving the piece a festive but also disturbing character. The wails of the clarinet and the obsessive patterns of the piano try to replicate the raw energy of techno music. In the middle of the piece, the pianist and his page-turner chase after the piano rhythms with a brush and sheets of paper (placed on the strings inside the piano), accompanied by the distorted sounds of the flute (rather like the tone of a side drum) and the glissandi of the clarinet. After this percussive ‘pause,’ the three instruments are pulled into a rhythmic trance and the piece ends in a frenzied tempo.”

CLAUDE DEBUSSY Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862 Died in Paris, March 25, 1918 JARDINS SOUS LA PLUIE from ESTAMPES, L. 100 Composed in 1904; 4 minutes

For the piano collection Estampes (Prints), composed in 1903 and dedicated to an artist friend, Claude Debussy painted three vivid scenes from different parts of the globe. (As he wrote while he was working on the score, “If one cannot afford to travel, one substitutes the imagination.”) After visits to Asia and Spain in the first two movements, the finale, Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain), returns to Debussy’s native France, with relentless piano figurations representing a drenching rainstorm. Noting that Debussy quoted two French nursery rhymes, pianist Michael McHale writes, “I like to imagine that towards the end of the piece, where the flowing raindrop 16ths and triplets are replaced by expectant trills, that the rain finally stops, the sun bursts forth and the children run back out into the gardens!”

FRANCIS POULENC SONATA FOR CLARINET AND PIANO, FP 184 Composed in 1962; 13 minutes

Having already completed the Flute Sonata in 1957, Francis Poulenc added sonatas for clarinet and oboe in 1962, as part of a plan to feature each member of the woodwind family. He dedicated the Clarinet Sonata to the memory of Arthur Honegger, his old “Les Six” colleague who died in 1955.

Felled by a heart attack in 1963, Poulenc did not live to complete his woodwind sonata set, nor did he get to witness the Clarinet Sonata’s splashy premiere later that year, played at Carnegie Hall by the jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, accompanied by Leonard Bernstein.

The first movement’s perky opening is full of the “rascal” aspect of Poulenc’s personality, while the more subdued passages seem to channel Prokofiev rather than Honegger, including a thinly veiled quotation from Prokofiev’s Flute Sonata. (Poulenc went on to dedicate the Oboe Sonata to Prokofiev’s memory.) The mournful Romanze is closer in spirit to Honegger, who gravitated toward profound and spiritual musical outlets; Poulenc once summed up their relationship by writing, “Arthur found my music too light, and I found his too heavy!” The final movement returns to an animated demeanor, with the humor offset by a lush countermelody and rich piano figurations.

PAUL SCHOENFELD Born in Detroit, MI in 1947 SONATINA FOR FLUTE, CLARINET AND PIANO Composed in 1994; 14 minutes

Using classical instruments and techniques, the American composer Paul Schoenfeld creates music that often seems just as well-suited to a lively cafe or a tipsy wedding reception as a quiet concert hall. This Sonatina from 1994 was commissioned in honor of the 50th wedding anniversary of Sam and Thelma Hunter, a couple who contributed enormously to the musical life of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it celebrates the occasion with three dances. After a slow introduction, the first movement’s syncopated rhythms conjure the Charleston, that boisterous dance craze from the Roaring Twenties. The “Hunter Rag” honors the work’s patrons with a slower dance that channels the ragtime of Scott Joplin, and then an angular Jig incorporates the barreling rhythms of that dance staple from the British Isles.