Tried and True, Plus a Newer Crew

Propellers in the Sun, Tanner Porter

Tanner Porter is a singer, songwriter, cellist, and classical composer with degrees from Michigan and Yale. She received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. “Propellers in the Sun,” is, according to the composer, “loosely based on the Icarus myth; flight in the piece is represented by the coughing and hum of propellers.” The piece more or less alternates between quieter passages of short phrases (perhaps trying to get off the ground?) and fuller passages of longer phrases of varying moods, moving from serene to more agitated. The piece’s end is reminiscent of the beginning, with solo flute and violin, but the propellers are silent.

Symphony in D Major, K.385, “Haffner,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From the early nineteenth century on, and especially since Beethoven, to write a “symphony” was to write a work of large proportions and high aesthetic ambition. However, the origins of the symphony lie in the opera overture (often called “sinfonia”) and in instrumental pieces written for particular occasions and not necessarily intended to endure past those moments. Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony fits this tradition. He wrote it in 1782 after he had moved from the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg to a more freelance life in Vienna. But his father Leopold, who was still in the Salzburg musical establishment, ordered this work from his son to celebrate the ennoblement of Siegmund Haffner, the son of a prominent local businessman. Mozart wrote it within the space of 10 days, while also finishing a serenade and the arrangement for winds of his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He was not delighted to receive the commission in the midst of all this work, but took enough trouble over it that he was late sending it off, declaring to his father that he was “really unable to scribble off inferior stuff.”

The work is unusually compact and very tightly constructed. It is very much “about” contrasting musical gestures. In the first movement the loud striding fanfare of the opening is immediately answered by a quieter “tiptoe march” figure, and these two ideas never leave us (or each other) alone. In the second movement a graceful melody is set against a staccato tick-tock accompaniment, and in a couple of places the tick-tock gets confined to a single high note in the first violins and looms over the more graceful material under it. In the third movement, the more boisterous jollity of the Minuet is offset by a gentle melodic Trio. The opening of the Finale introduces perhaps Mozart’s silliest-ever tune, which is countered by ostentatiously loud and busy material. There’s a second graceful tune later, but the alternation between quiet and loud material continues throughout the movement.

Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach wrote this work in 1730–31 for the collegium musicum he directed, on top of his jobs as kantor at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig and supervisor of music in three other churches and in Leipzig’s civic life more generally. The collegium musicum was a group of professional musicians and students who gave weekly public concerts; both Bach’s solo violin concertos and this double concerto were written for this ensemble. This double concerto is one of Bach’s best-known and most beloved works, not least because it is part of the Suzuki violin method, and YouTube offers many videos of groups of kids playing the solo parts of the first movement in unison. The work is also a master class in how two solo parts can politely take turns in the spotlight (the first movement is particularly good at this), wind around each other to create a kind of musical double helix, as is the case in the slow movement, and chase each other mercilessly, as they do in the last movement.

Symphony No. 3, Florence Price

Florence Price composed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and towards the end of her life she gained considerable fame in a variety of circles: Marian Anderson sang her songs; the Marine Band played some of her music, and the Halle Orchestra in England commissioned her to write an overture. After her death in 1953, however, her music occupied only small corners of the repertory until the recent intensification of interest in making the classical music canon more fully representative.

She was educated at the New England Conservatory, paused her large-scale composing in the early days of her marriage and child-rearing, but resumed writing seriously when the family relocated to Chicago in 1927. Partly influenced by the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance, Price, like other creative artists of the time, 57 aimed to include and “elevate” African American elements within a musical style that was largely based on late Romantic music, especially that of Dvo ř ák, who also included and transformed national idioms within a largely Germanic style.

Price wrote three symphonies, her first being the first work by an African-American woman to be performed by a major orchestra (the Chicago Symphony). Her Third Symphony, her last, was written in 1938-39. In 1940, she wrote to Eric Schwass, an administrator of the Michigan WPA orchestra, in language that we would no longer use about race, “[The symphony] is intended to be Negroid in character and expression. In it no attempt, however, has been made to project Negro music solely in the purely traditional manner. None of the themes are adaptations or derivations of folk songs.”

The references to African-American music in the Third Symphony are unmistakable—the most prominent being melodies reminiscent of spirituals and rhythms born of African American dance (especially in the third movement). However, even when this material stands out from its immediate context, it always relates intimately to material elsewhere in its movement. The harmonic language is mostly reminiscent of Brahms or Dvo ř ák, and even Wagner, but there are moments when a more modern idiom—more like Debussy or Ravel—appears. Throughout the work, Price features the brass and wind instruments in important melodic roles, especially for the more lyrical material, and often writes for “choirs” of instruments, giving the work as a whole a distinctive color.

©Mary Hunter 2022

Eva Gruesser

Violin Soloist

Eva Gruesser has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Australia as solo violinist, chamber musician, and concertmaster of many orchestras. Ms. Gruesser held the Roger Sessions chair of concertmaster of the American Composers Orchestra from 2000 until 2020. Previously she was concertmaster of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra under music director Kenneth Kiesler from 2002 until 2007.

As first violinist of the Lark Quartet from 1988 to 1996, Gruesser performed on many occasions at many of the world’s most distinguished concert halls including New York’s Lincoln Center and Weill Hall, the Kennedy Center and Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Théâtre des ChampsElysées in Paris. With the Lark Quartet she won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1991, and the Gold Medal at the Shostakovich International String Quartet Competition in St. Petersburg in 1991. Following the Shostakovich Competition, the Lark Quartet was invited by Gidon Kremer to play at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. With the quartet Ms. Gruesser also performed at the Sviatoslav Richter Festival at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, and the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico. She has performed as guest concertmaster with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, and was a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players from 1997 until 2001. As a committed exponent of contemporary music, Ms. Gruesser collaborated on commissions with composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larson, Penka Kouneva, and Jon Deak. She performed with Lukas Foss at Weill Hall in his “Three American Pieces” for violin and piano, and recorded Martin Bresnick’s “Bird as Prophet” for violin and piano, and Trio for violin, clarinet, and piano.

Eva Gruesser has been a regular guest at summer chamber music festivals including the Klangfrühling Schlaining, the Moab Music Festival in Utah, the Kowmung Music Festival in Australia, and Monadnock Music in New Hampshire. She has recorded with Decca/Argo, Arabesque and New World Records. Gruesser can be heard in a recent recording of the Bach Double Concerto where she was co-soloist with distinguished violinist Elmar Oliviera and the Arco Ensemble. She played in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for two years, performed as soloist with the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and was a founding member of the Ensemble Modern in Germany. Ms. Gruesser studied violin with Wolfgang Marschner in Germany, Ilona Feher in Israel, Ramy Shevelov, Simon Goldberg, and Zinaida Gilels and graduated summa cum laude from the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik.

Eva Gruesser is also a graduate of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik and the Juilliard School.

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French Impressions

Saturday, May 20, 2023

7:00 p.m.

Franco Center, Lewiston

Sunday, May 21, 2023

2:30 p.m.

Orion Performing Arts Center, Topsham hmpayson.com

Hiroya Miura , Guest Conductor

D’un matin de printemps Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

Prologue

Air pour les esclaves Contredanse

Air pour l'adoration du soleil

Les Sauvages

Les Indes Galantes, Suite No.1 Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) Arr. Paul Dukas (1865-1935)

Air pour les sauvages Chaconne

La Valse Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Intermission

Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1981)

Promenade

The Gnomus Promenade

The Old Castle Promenade

The Tuileries Gardens

Bydlo

Promenade

Ballet of Chickens in Their Shells

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle

Promenade

The Market at Limoges (The Great News)

The Catacombs

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)

The Great Gate of Kiev

Orch. Maurice Ravel (1887-1953)

Underwriters: New England Cancer Specialists, The Highlands Season Sponsors: Bath Savings, HM Payson, OceanView at Falmouth

Concert Sponsor: Lamey Wellehan