Patrick Jankowski Program Note Portfolio

Patrick Campbell Jankowski, MM’13, MMA’15 30 Mansfield Dr 103 Northford, CT 06472 (321) 704-9532 patrick.jankowski@yale.edu

Yale School of Music, 2012-present J.S. Bach, trans. Johannes Brahms Chaconne in d minor for the left hand BWV1004, from Funf studien, Anh. 1a/1 There is a sense of profundity inherent to the Chaconne from Bach's D minor violin partita that sets it apart even from its composer's other masterworks for the solo instrument. From the chords of the opening four bars – which form the basic harmonic structure underpinning the 64 consecutive variations that unfold over more than fifteen minutes of music– there is a feeling of gravity and significance. Unlike in a variation on a melody, in a chaconne it is the harmony which is retained throughout, leading to great melodic flexibility. There is always a sense of the music being grounded in a single idea, yet the composer takes the performer and listener through a full spectrum of moods, styles, ranges, colors, and dynamics, like the kaleidoscope of a jewel viewed from several angles. This sheer variety is one of the reasons for the chaconne's ascent to becoming a pinnacle of the repertoire. To sustain both technical dexterity and emotional engagement throughout the entire dance movement – which requires the performer to run the gamut of technical possibilities for the instrument – demands skill, maturity, and devotion. The size of this dance alone, longer than the combined length previous four movements in the partita, speaks to its depth and breadth. Violinist Arnold Steinhardt acknowledges the grandness of the chaconne, noting that "the sum total of all these parts is - if you were to make a visual comparison - to be inside a cathedral. It has detail. It has grandness of design. It has a kind of religious fervor to it, you might say."

Since its rediscovery in the 19th century, the chaconne has both captivated and eluded musicians and audiences, and has, as a result, been adapted for numerous instruments and contexts. One of the most famous of such adaptions comes from Johannes Brahms, who in 1877 transcribed it for the left hand of the piano, and dedicated it to Clara Schumann; he later would later include the movement as the last of his Five Studies for the left hand. Brahms's admiration for Bach's music and this work in particular, is summarized in a letter to Clara, in which he writes: The Chaconne is in my opinion one of the most wonderful and incomprehensible pieces of music. Using the technique adapted to a small instrument the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful

feelings. If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad.

The violin is, by nature, more limited than the piano in creating the sense of vastness that the chaconne seems to demand, and Brahms recognized this dichotomy between intimacy and grandness. By restricting the performer to the use of the five fingers of the left hand, the composer retains the same feeling of a single individual, inherently limited, attempting to scale the heights of something much larger and more profound than itself.

J.S. Bach "Schafe kÜnnen sicher weiden� from Cantata No. 208, BWV 208 Bach wrote over two hundred cantatas during his career, and of those, around three dozen that are known today were based upon non-religious subjects. These secular cantatas were written in commemoration of special occasions, most often as birthday tributes to the composer's patrons.

Bach's Cantata No. 208, written in Weimar by a then 28 year old church organist, has come to be called the Hunt Cantata, and is one of the most well-known of these secular choral works. It was written for the birthday of a duke of Saxony and premiered after a hunting party. The hunting tradition was quite common among nobility, and was a central social function. The texts frequently reference mythological figures such as Pan, Diana, and the shepherds who came to represent the pastoral style in baroque music.

By far the most enduring excerpt of the Hunt Cantata, the aria "Schafe kĂśnnen sicher weiden" is a solo movement for soprano with the accompaniment of two recorders and basso continuo. The text "Sheep may safely graze when a good shepherd is near" rather obliquely refers to the new presence of Duke Christian in his Duchy, equating his benevolent presence over the townspeople to that of a shepherd tending his flock. The music is in the typical pastoral style, with a gently rocking meter and a simple melodic contour. The simplicity of the shepherds themselves are reflected in the theme opening the movement, before the introduction of the aria melody. This theme repeats throughout, hardly ever altering in form or harmony except by musical necessity, no matter what has changed in the aria theme. Their theme, then, becomes a place setting rather than a reactionary participant in the music, and as such evokes a quaint, charming country locale. The version of the aria heard today was transcribed by the Dutch-German pianist and Bach scholar Egon Petri, who became fascinated by Bach's music during his studies with Ferruccio Busoni. Petri was among the most important pianists and pedagogues of the twentieth century, and his students included, among others, the musician and entertainer Victor Borge, the "Clown Prince of Denmark."

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15

The first three piano concertos – often collectively referred to as the “early period” concertos – are the products of an ambitious young composer seeking to establish himself across a wide European audience. At the time of the first concerto’s composition, around 1796, Beethoven was traveling frequently among the cultural centers of Vienna, Prague, and Bonn, making a living through private music instruction, public performances, and commissioned compositions.

Writing to his brother while touring, Beethoven enthusiastically proclaimed “I am well, very well.

My art is winning me friends and respect, and what more do I want? And this time I shall make a good deal of money.” While from today’s perspective the “art” to which the composer refers primarily calls to mind his musical compositions, Beethoven was, at the time, renowned as much for the art of his piano playing, renowned less for its precision than for its liveliness – the composer was known to break strings with the force of his impassioned, as some put it, “impetuous” playing. It is no surprise that the vast majority of his compositions from his early career were either for, or involved his instrument, as this provided both the obvious vehicle for his creativity, as well as a means of gaining success and recognition, as both performer and composer. Beethoven’s performances of his own music would become the greatest contributions to his rising celebrity, and his ability as a pianist enabled him to conjure novel, groundbreaking music from his mind through the keyboard. The piano concertos perhaps provide the most fascinating glimpse into Beethoven’s artistic mind at the time, as they combine both a medium for his inventive orchestral writing, as well as the vibrant, virtuosic piano writing that he would perform himself.

The sonata form first movement of the C major concerto begins with a playful march subject, in a subdued pianissimo context, before bursting forth in fortissimo. Indeed, this dynamic interplay proves to be a source of great excitement throughout the movement, and Beethoven’s maintenance of the pianissimo dynamic throughout great stretches of music adds great tension that sets his music apart from that of Mozart and Haydn, whose influence can certainly be felt in Beethoven’s work. The dynamic contrast of the movement is matched by the abruptly shifting, often surprising, harmonic structure. For a movement rooted in C Major, the extended ventures into the minor mode and its relative keys, including a secondary theme that begins in a distant Eflat major, add to the sense of unpredictability and dynamism that would put the composer’s music, and his performing style, on the map.

The lyrical second movement, the longest of any of the composer’s piano concerto middle movements, is impassioned and introspective. The fact that the largo opening theme begins with a reincarnation of the march motto from the first movement’s opening, in a new guise, is an early manifestation of the motivic unity across movements that would become a hallmark of Beethoven’s later works, notably the Fifth Symphony. The coda ends with a lovely duet between the piano and solo clarinet.

The finale, a playful rondo, proves just as surprising as the first movement. With the recurring ritornello theme alone, through clever metric manipulation, the composer defies the listener to discern a downbeat. The harmonic play of the previous movements, with their frequent ventures

into “wrong” key areas, is taken to its extreme in this finale, when the final statement of the rondo begins in B major, as harmonically distant from C major as one could go, before being pushed back into its expected home territory. The great filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock claimed to “play his audience’s emotions like a piano.” The young Beethoven, through his own keyboard, seems keenly aware of how to do just that.

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19 Though the second to be published, Beethoven’s B-flat major Piano Concerto, Op. 19, was actually written before the C major Concerto No. 1. The young Beethoven was quick to move to new projects, seemingly very eager to both express his creativity, and to make a name for himself in Europe along with its ensuing financial stability. His prolific nature at this youthful period is quite different from the obsessive perfectionism of his later life, when he would revisit and refine his compositions multiple times. Beethoven seems, at this point in his life, content to “let things go,” so to speak. When the composer submitted this concerto to his publisher, he admitted, “I do not claim it to be one of my best.” However, Beethoven’s own self deprecation is interesting at this point in his life, when the young composer was transitioning from a student in Bonn to a star soloist and composer in the Viennese musical scene. The first movement of this concerto originated in sketches from Beethoven’s days in Bonn, and viewing the entire work as a manifestation of his growing maturity at this crucial point in his artistic life shows a composer both indebted to his training in the “Classical style” and eager to insert his own unique voice.

The concerto’s first movement, in a typical sonata-allegro form with an added orchestral exposition common to concertante works of this period, begins with an attention-grabbing fanfare motive, followed in close proximity by a more lyrical gesture. This duality of themes, that of the extroverted and introverted, or masculine and feminine, is at play through much of the rest of the movement, and provides the composer with two distinct “characters” who engage in a sort of musical dialogue throughout. Though largely composed in the Classical tradition, at times, Beethoven does venture to some harmonically forward-looking areas, including a striking excursion to the key of G-flat major.

The second movement is a poignant Adagio in the warm key of E-flat major. This tonality was particularly well-suited to tuning of wind and brass instruments of the period, and one can certainly hear their rich, resonant presence throughout, gently cushioning the soloist’s lyrical melodic lines. Evocative of a highly ornamented operatic solo over an accompaniment that, for the most part, stays out of the way of the coloratura soloist, invited by Beethoven to perform, at the end of the movement “con gran espressione,” or “with great expression.”

The finale, a rondo with recurring refrains separating excursions into a variety of unique episodes, is humorous and jesting. As in the finale of the first concerto, Beethoven provides some rhythmic trickery, deliberately placing accents in his primary theme on the “wrong” beat, thereby

throwing off the audience’s perception of the meter. A spicy minor central episode, in the “Turkish” style very much in vogue with Beethoven’s Viennese audience, adds a playful divergence. In one final comical gesture, the composer transforms his playful dance theme into a lyrical and expressive theme in a much slower tempo, before simply casting off this sentimentality with a final shrug.

Ludwig van Beethoven Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, transcribed for piano, Op. 61a Though it is one of the most often performed and universally beloved works in the concert repertoire today, Beethoven’s D major Violin Concerto was not met with such universal acclaim at its Viennese premiere in 1806. The story goes that the composer was so late in completing the work before the premiere that the violin soloist Franz Clement, for who’s benefit concert the work was written, had to essentially sight-read it. As may be expected, the premiere was all but disastrous, and Clement allegedly resorted to playing his violin upside-down to keep the audience amused. As if that were not enough, popular audiences at the time complained of its great, unprecedented length, and violinists complained of its technical difficulty. The silver lining in all of this, as it turns out, is that Beethoven was encouraged to create a version of the concerto for piano, first published in 1808, as a means of somehow salvaging some success from this brilliant, if hastily composed, work. The piano version was seldom performed during the composer’s lifetime, and has only recently re-entered the standard repertoire as an alternate interpretation of this masterpiece.

In one of the most recognizable opening gestures in all of music, Beethoven begins his concerto with four subdued pulsations in, of all instruments, the timpani. This four beat motive can be traced as it is transformed and manipulated throughout the entirety of the lengthy and complex first movement. Immediately apparent after this opening gesture is the movement’s lyricism, as made evident in the calm wind chorale that introduces the first theme of the movement. Indeed, though it is technically demanding, the concerto does not rely on flashy pyrotechnics for effect.

Rather, it is the soloist’s expressive talents that are called for throughout. Beethoven greatly enlarges the role of the orchestra in this concerto, in contrast to the typically solo-centric conception of many other works in the genre. Often, the soloist comments upon and occasionally even accompanies the action that is taking place in the orchestra, rather than always exerting its presence over the orchestra, with the latter obediently accompanying. It is a novel conception that truly challenges the conception of a concerto’s focus.

The second movement is a lyrical theme and variations on a theme that has is not unlike the primary theme of the first movement in its hymnal style. The theme and variations genre would become one of Beethoven’s most favored and often-used genres, as it allows the composer to demonstrate his clever mastery of a number of styles, and of melodic and motivic transformation. In a way, the theme and variation genre is like a challenge to the composer, to

write music that is unique and interesting, yet always constrained by the presence of a repeating melody or theme. In this example, Beethoven meets this challenge in an astute way, by having the original chorale theme always be present in its original form throughout. No matter where the soloist ventures, the theme is always somehow present, like a fond reminiscence echoing in the back of one’s mind. This memory remains in the background as the music escalates in energy through a brilliant connective passage that links the contemplative middle movement to the exuberant finale, which follows without pause.

The finale, a jaunty and jovial Rondo in a galloping dance meter, provides some of the technical ostentatiousness that one might expect in a solo concerto. The playful movement departs into some very surprising musical territory, including a poignant g minor dialogue with the solo bassoon. As in the Second Piano Concerto’s finale, Beethoven gets the last laugh in this work as well, taking the soloist to the very quietest dynamic as it is left alone in the final few bars to ruminate on the opening theme, as though temporarily lost in a pleasant, nostalgic, daydream, before being abruptly shocked back into the present once more by the closing fortissimo orchestral punctuation.

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 Between the confident opening hammer blows of the Eroica symphony, and the dramatic, insistent – and now almost cliché – gesture that open’s the fifth, that hollow, sparse, pianissimo Bflat that begins Beethoven’s fourth symphony sounds more like a mysterious, unidentifiable ringing in the ears than the start of a symphony. It seizes one’s attention and focus as surely, but in its quietness and minimalism more so than in its Beethoven was a master of subversion, and a particular hallmark of his heroic style is an acute awareness of the psychological effects of musical expectation, fulfillment, and defiance. When something seems abnormal, or even disturbing, in a Beethoven work, one can be sure that it was intended that way. In toying with our own sets of presumptions and templates of “conventional” music, Beethoven likewise toys with our emotions.

For the fourth symphony, the composer returns to the classical model of the slow introduction, but imbues it with ambiguity and misleading chromaticism. We have very little sense of where any of the delicate, detached pitches that meander through the strings might take us, for Beethoven gives us no conventional “chords” to help us find our footing, nor any sense of metrical grounding apart from a pulse not much quicker than a heartbeat. Beethoven suddenly settles on a new unison – now a B-natural, suspended uncomfortably above the tonic so as to elevate our tension – before the orchestra seems to test a variety of other keys, changing its mind every measure. By the time the proper sonata-allegro form begins, with an upbeat call to B-flat, it seems almost accidental, or at least reluctant, as if to say “alright, now I will give you what you have wanted all along.” Can we really settle into an ebullient, joyous B-flat major after spending so much time in the mysterious darkness of B-flat minor? In reality, not necessarily. Throughout the opening movement, there are sudden, brief glimpses of the minor mode that emerge with no foreshadowing, and no follow-through, as though the composer refuses to part with it, but

ultimately casts it away, moving on for at least a little while. In the development, Beethoven reworks the gesture that begins the allegro section into a variety of tonalities, before the melodious second theme, with its descending scale gesture, has suddenly, unexpectedly, brought us back to the discomforting B-natural/C-flat that hovered above the tonic in the introduction.

Then, almost as quickly, Beethoven leads us once more into B-flat major, but first, he has the strings “test the waters,” trading off little wisps of the key, before gaining confidence, and at last moving together as one, bringing the full orchestra back to “home” for the recapitulation.

However, Beethoven seldom leaves well enough alone, and the “return” of the opening material is as filled with surprise and ambiguity as ever before.

The trend of subversion and perhaps even sarcasm, continues through the ensuing movements.

In the cantabile slow movement, a beautiful song-like theme is suspended a nervously pulsating accompaniment that seems somehow to not fit in with the ease of the melody. It is frequently interrupted by jarring trumpet signals, sudden dilations into forte, and, of course, brief glimpses of the minor mode. At times, the “melody,” that part that we would leave singing, is completely submerged by the awkward rhythmic gestures of the accompaniment. Beethoven is surely aware of the convention at which he thumbs his nose.

In the scherzo, Beethoven’s playfulness carries over into his manipulation of formal convention.

Rather than a typical Scherzo structure in three parts, the composer expands his form, bringing back the first section twice rather than only once, and having the “trio” section come back a second time. The famous horn swells that draw the movement to the close likewise interrupt the flow of expectation and fulfillment, and only a composer of considerable wit and confidence would hush the entire orchestra at the climactic moment of closure, drawing our ears to the two devious “devil’s horns” that round out the scherzo.

The shotgun finale is an exciting, endlessly dynamic movement filled with the shrewdness of Haydn, Beethoven’s teacher. The composer wrote the symphony while summering at the country estate of his patron, Prince Carl von Lichnowsky. One cannot help but imagine the composer in a playful spirit in writing this music. His keen awareness of what we expect as listeners, and his willingness to dispense with it, are fully on display. It makes this symphony, though perhaps less heavy than those which bookend it, certainly no less exciting.

Johannes Brahms Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9 The ties between Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms run deep, and their relationship spanned perhaps the most difficult and tragic period of both composers’ lives. Brahms met Robert and his wife, Clara, when he was just twenty years old. Schumann, fifteen years Brahms’s senior, was impressed by the younger composer’s immense talents, and had praised Brahms’s music in his critical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, proclaiming that he was “destined to give ideal expression to the times.” He invited Brahms to visit his home in Düsseldorf, where the

young composer learned from his elder, becoming his protégé and, many postulate – though with little certitude – grew romantically attached to his wife, herself fourteen years older than Brahms.

In 1854, following Schumann’s suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalization, Brahms lived in an upstairs apartment in the Schumann home, helping Clara to raise her seven living children – one of whom had been born after Robert’s confinement. He was able to visit Robert in the sanatorium, where Clara was forbidden, and relayed messages between the steadily declining composer and his devoted, mournful wife.

Schumann’s death in 1856 allowed for Brahms to return more routine composition, from which he had been largely distracted in the preceding years. Clara and Johannes would remain close companions for life, with Clara promoting and performing her friend’s music quite regularly, just as she promoted her husband’s. Brahms treated Clara as something between a mentor and a muse, always seeking her advice and approval, and dedicating a number of works to her. His undying loyalty can be traced in the correspondence between the two, much of which has now been published, though, it must be admitted, with Clara’s approval; any overt evidence of romance was therefore likely suppressed.

Brahms wrote the Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann for four hand piano in 1861, with the memory of Schumann's final years still fresh in the mind of the composer. Its theme is known as Schumann's "Letzter Gedanke" or "Final Thought." It is the very theme that Robert had claimed was given to him by the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn, and upon which he based his own Geistervariationen for solo piano. This theme, the last thing Schumann had written down before his suicide attempt, provides the subject for a poignant tribute to a friend and mentor. Just as the theme had haunted Schumann in his fragile state, it seems to have haunted Brahms as well, and perhaps his completion of these variations provided a cathartic means of coping with the grief of the loss of Schumann. That he conceived of the work for four hands on one instrument is fitting, as one might imagine that it provided a medium through which both Clara and Brahms could somehow share in this tribute together. In fact, Brahms dedicated this first foray into four-hand works to Julie Schumann, the couple's daughter, to whom the composer was very attached. In another sense, it is as though Brahms is completing Schumann's final thought. Though he likely intended to write more, Schumann only completed five brief variations on his theme before his suicide attempt. Brahms expands these poignant twenty-eight bars across ten re-imaginings. In this way, the composer is providing some completion and closure to Schumann's artistic life, letting his spirits rest at last in peace. To hear both Schumann's and Brahms's variations in proximity allows us to note the deep musical ties between these two artists Brahms preserves the structure and melodic contour of the theme for most of the set. However, unlike Schumann's somewhat conservative, almost classicist embellishments in his own variations, Brahms is decidedly more adventurous in his, straying noticeably farther from the confines of the theme throughout. In this way, Brahms's compositional style is more like that of the youthful, experimental Schumann, rather than the more traditional style that he adopted later in life; Brahms himself was quite eager to experiment in his younger days. At the opening statement of

the theme, the composer simply divides its components between the two players, choosing not to embellish or fortify it in any way. The result is a sound as close to Schumann's original theme as possible: a careful and delicate expansion of the theme across two sets of hands, and a duly preserved tribute. With eyes closed, one might never know there were four hands playing. Brahms ventures into a wide range of styles and key areas throughout the subsequent variations, and divides the focus and melodic interest evenly between the two instrument. The variations reach their triumphant climax in the ninth, wherein rapid runs and energetic dotted rhythms embellish the first part of Schumann's theme with bright swaths of filigree. The tenth and final variation, however, is a suitably melancholic close to the set, a transfiguration of Schumann's theme in the guise of a funeral march. Here is the last artistic expression of mourning from a protégé to his mentor, advocate, and friend.

Johannes Brahms Variations on a theme by Haydn, Op. 56 In 1870, a librarian for the Society of Friends of the Music in Vienna was researching a biography on the life of Franz Joseph Haydn. While doing so, he happened upon a number of Feldpartiten, or small suites for wind instruments meant to be played as outdoor entertainment music at garden or hunting parties. With little evidence supporting this theory, he assumed these anonymous, unpublished manuscripts to be in Haydn's hand. The librarian, Karl Ferdinand Pohl – who eventually published this first comprehensive biography on Haydn – immediately sent for his friend Johannes Brahms, whose ties to the Society, a guild of wealthy men whose association's purpose was to "promote music in all facets," were deep, and who would become its director in the following year. The composer was particularly taken with one melody in the B-flat Feldpartita, a simple yet lovely tune labeled "Choral St. Antoni," and he jotted it down for potential later use. Brahms was a lifelong student of the old masters, and known as a traditionalist, respectfully continuing in the lineage of the great German musical tradition as the "third B" following Bach and Beethoven. Against the rising tide of radical new German Romanticism, Brahms stuck to his guns, so to speak, preferring to compose in more classical forms – though with a modern sense of harmony and thematic development – instead of the more avant-garde musical forms of his time: Liszt's symphonic poems and, the most distant of all, Wagner's music-dramas.

One of these traditional forms that continued to fascinate Brahms throughout his life was the theme and variations. Many of his earliest piano works were in this form, popular since the Baroque, and later championed by Beethoven in his tremendous Eroica and Diabelli sets.

Studying older music was Brahms's way of carefully honing his craft, and sets of variations – which challenge a composer to both deliberately stay bound and true to a theme while carefully and creatively manipulating it over a large scale of multiple re-imaginings – provided a suitable form through which the relatively young composer could flex his creative and technical muscle.

Brahms does indeed stay true to the theme, which itself strikes the listener with its surprising irregularity. Most themes of this type from the Classical period were written in eight bars, separated into two halves of four bars each, the first of which ends inconclusively (the antecedent) and the latter ending conclusively (the consequent). This particular theme, however, is not quite so regular, which may explain why Brahms thought to write it down in the first place.

Each half consists of five bars, adding to a total of ten. There is something somehow off-kilter about this construction, and it challenges even our modern ears to come to peace with its assymetry. Brahms preserves this ten bar structure throughout each of his subsequent variations, even adhering for the most part to its harmonic structure. This formal constraint that Brahms places on his variations likens it more to a Baroque set, in the vein of Bach’s Goldberg – in which each variation changes mood character and style – as opposed to the more contemporary model of Beethoven's Diabelli variations, during which the composer departs far, straying wildly and unbound, from his opening theme. The variations are incredibly diverse in their texture, dynamic, and style, with many displaying intricate contrapuntal complexity seldom prioritized by other mid-nineteenth century Romantic composers. Particularly effective are Brahms’s metrical manipulation, in which he regroups the theme in bars of three beats each rather than two.

Examples include the graceful third and rapid-fire eighth variation, and are obvious in their waltz-like rhythmic feel, as opposed to the march-like feel of the theme. The finale is Brahms’s creative piece-de-resistance, and yet in some ways the most “traditional” of the set. It is a passacaglia, or continuing variations over ground bass, a form that was popular even in the early seventeenth century. Brahms has saved the best for last, spinning out a constantly varying transformation of the first five bars, heard in its entirety first in the left hand of the second piano.

Over the course of the preceding variations, the pace was constant, though the style frequently shifted. Here, in the passacaglia, Brahms has truncated his form, shifted into a higher gear, and created an accelerating drive to an exciting conclusion.

Many will recognize this great work in its later form, an orchestral reworking, which proved to be one of the composers most popular works during his lifetime, as well as in ours. However, this first incarnation of the Haydn Variations, for two pianos, matches the orchestrated version’s brilliance, and deserves to be heard and preserved, just as Brahms felt Haydn’s theme deserved the same. We can thankfully keep secret from Brahms, and from his friend Pohl, the fact that most scholars have long doubted the theme was in fact written by Haydn. Few today would agree with Pohl’s flimsy assumption. The title may be inaccurate, but it makes for a nice story.

Johannes Brahms Sonata for Two Pianos in f minor, Op. 34b To many connoisseurs of chamber music, Johannes Brahms's F minor sonata for two pianos will sound recognizable after just a few bars, if not after two or three notes. The work it so strongly resembles is the composer's famed F minor quintet for piano and strings, which has become a staple of the Romantic chamber music repertoire, and one of the most beloved works from Brahms's early to middle years. In fact, this sonata is a fascinating intermediary work, and its very

existence is a result of its composer's obsessive perfectionism and careful, dilligent craftsmanship.

This is, after all, the man who claimed to have spent twenty-one years writing his first symphony, from its first sketches to its final form, which he only would reveal to the public after he had enough confidence in the work to shake his anxieties over inadequacy. One major source of this anxiety was Beethoven, long dead by the time of Brahms's formative years yet still a looming figure, somehow challenging any composer, even in death, to match his greatness. Of this ghost, Brahms once said "you have no idea how the likes of me feels with the tramp of a giant like him behind me."

Even this sonata began as a very different work, one which might, had it survived in that form, illicit comparison to another phantom's music – that of Vienna's native son, Franz Schubert, tragically young at his death, yet astoundingly prolific in life. The first incarnation of the two piano sonata took the form of a string quintet with two cellos, the same instrumentation as Schubert's lovely and autumnal C Major quintet. Ever one to seek the approval of others, Brahms sent sketches of his work to his close friend Clara Schumann, and to the illustrious violinist Joseph Joachim, who opined that the quintet "is lacking, to give me pure pleasure, in a word, charm." Brahms reworked the quintet into the sonata for two pianos, and burned the germinal string version, as he did with many unsatisfactory works from his early days. However, Brahms was still unsatisfied with the two piano sonata, as was Clara Schumann, who remarked that it "cannot be called a Sonata. The first time I tried the work I had the feeling that it was an arrangement." However, there is something incredibly powerful and alluring about Brahms's themes, and the brilliant way in which he develops them throughout the work, something which both Schumann and Joachim recognized. There was so much worth salvaging, and Clara begged the composer to "please remodel it once more!"

The resulting piano quintet is something of a synthesis between the original form of the piece and this intermediate sonata, presumably combining the strengths of both versions. We are fortunate that either Brahms's artistic or financial conscience permitted this sonata to be published, as it provides a rare glimpse into the working mind of a genius. Even more fortunately, we can view the sketches of this version, dating from around 1864, at the Morgan Library in New York City. In comparing this version to the renowned piano quintet, one can speculate on how the composer got from point A to point B. In many ways, this sonata actually allows us to hear the composer's craftsmanship more clearly, as the interweaving of themes throughout each movement somehow stand out more strongly in contrast, like a black and white sketch of a kaleidoscopic painting.

Over the four movements of the sonata, this black and white contrast is matched by the duality of darkness and lightness, both on a large scale – over the course of all movements – and on the more intimate level, within each movement. In the first, cast in sonata form, Brahms juxtaposes an ominous opening theme with brighter complementary music, creating a particularly stormy embroilment in the development, which surges to a powerful climax when the opening material returns to mark the recapitulation. The second movement's placid lyricism provides a welcome

respite from the tragic quality of its predecessor. The following scherzo defies the typically light and playful nature of this form, and Brahms instead provides a nervous rhythmic drive that drives us once more into a state of anxiousness. The trio bookended by the scherzo material, however, triumphs over this anxiety, as Brahms reworks the theme into an exultant guise. The finale begins with arguably the very darkest music of the entire sonata, an introduction of a brooding quality, saturating the lowest, murkiest range of the pianos with serpentine chromaticism. From this dark place, the composer launches into an allegro with a vaguely gypsylike style, bringing the sonata to an exuberant close, though never too far removed from the melancholic. This sonata for two pianos so moved a German princess when she heard it performed, that she presented Brahms with a gift: the manuscript of Mozart's great G minor 40th Symphony. This symphony, one of only two that the composer wrote in the minor mode, similarly ebbs and flows from dark to light, and tragic and comic. In this way, the princess could not have given Brahms a more appropriate gift.

Johannes Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24 The Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel is one of Brahms's earliest successes, and a worthy addition to the pantheon of masterful keyboard variation sets, alongside those of the other "two B's": Bach's Goldberg, and Beethoven's Eroica and Diabelli variations. This piece, presented in its solo piano version as a birthday present to Clara Schumann in 1862, uses as its theme, in fact, a portion of yet another great composer's variation sets, that of the Baroque composer George Frederic Handel's B-flat major Harpsichord Suite. Brahms was a lifelong student of the early masters, and studied the intricate contrapuntal writing of Baroque composers. Many of his early keyboard works, in fact, are modeled on Baroque forms, such as canons and fugues, and the dance forms of that time: sarabandes, gigues, and others. This fascination and respect lingered with composer always, and he would come to base the finale of his last symphony, written two decades later, on one of the most quintessentially Baroque of forms: the passacaglia. This studiousness was Brahms's way of carefully honing his craft, and sets of variations – which challenge a composer to both deliberately stay bound and true to a theme while carefully and creatively manipulating it over a large scale of multiple re-imaginings – provided a suitable form through which the relatively young composer could flex his creative and logical muscle.

Brahms respectfully leaves Handel's theme intact at the opening. We hear it presented in an unadulterated form, so that we might trace with utmost clarity the composer's treatment of this stately aria. The theme consists of eight bars total, divided into two halves of four bars, each of which repeats. This structure will remain intact throughout all twenty-five subsequent variations, with the exception of the much lengthier concluding fugue. This formal constraint that Brahms places on his variations is more akin to Handel's own sets, in which each variation changes character and style, as opposed to the more contemporary model of Beethoven's Diabelli variations, in which the composer brilliantly departs, wildly and unbound, from his opening

theme. Another limitation that Brahms places on himself is that of tonality: with the exception of a few variations in the parallel minor mode, all variations are in the original key of B-flat major, further contributing to an overall sense of unity.

With these limits, how then does Brahms craft such a captivating work? The key is in the emotional trajectory of the set. Rather than compare each variation to the original theme, it is important to view them in the context of what came before and what came after. Brahms's careful ordering of these variations creates a large scale dynamic of peaks and valleys, an undulating wave of intensity that ebbs and flows building to a climax in the middle, and then dropping back once again before slowly rising once more to the thrilling conclusion. When the wave finally breaks, it is made more effective by the steadily building energy that precedes it.

Furthermore, the composer creates smaller waves over the course of the set, contrasting textural density with clarity, staccato with legato, and forte with piano. That Brahms is able to imbue such diversity into a work without straying too far from his inspiration is a testament to his brilliance.

The culminating fugue is likewise brilliant. Brahms derives his theme from just the first few pitches of Handel's melody, and manipulates it throughout, weaving a dense contrapuntal texture that recalls Bach's great fugal writing, and which once again demonstrates Brahms's careful study of earlier masters. Though incredibly complex, the composer is careful in his piano writing to leave room for clarity. Though dense, we do not strain to hear the interweaving and manipulation of his fugal subject, for the composer, a great pianist in his own right, knew well how to handle the conceivable textures of his instrument.

Sometimes the most worthy of compliments can come from the most unlikely of sources.

Richard Wagner is often considered the polar opposite of Brahms, in both compositional style and in personality; the two would come to be the figureheads of the two, arguably noncommunicable "streams" of Romantic music, Brahms's "conservative" allegiance to the tradition of classic form, and Wagner's "new craft" of composition, which sought to do away with the trappings of these traditions. Despite this, when Brahms played the solo piano version of the Handel variations for Wagner in 1863, in what was likely their first encounter, the latter complimented the work strongly, and perhaps surprisingly, admitting that "one sees what still may be done in the old forms when someone comes along who knows how to use them.�

Johannes Brahms Late Piano Works 7 Fantasien, Op. 116; 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117; 6 KlavierstĂźcke, Op. 118; 4 KlavierstĂźcke, Op. 119 In the last decade of his life, just before the turn of the twentieth century, Johannes Brahms twice proclaimed that he was retiring from composition, though neither proclamation obviously held for long. The recent deaths of his friends had worn on him, and though he was relatively healthy

and physically robust, he had begun to feel his own age. Despite these expressions of desire for complete retirement, it seems that deprivation from composition for Brahms is tantamount to deprivation from oxygen. Whenever he would become lethargic, something inevitably inspired him to take up writing again, and the few compositions that were published in his last decade – all of them intimate in scale, either for solo instrument, small chamber ensemble, or voice – display no decline in intellectual or creative faculties. Rather, they are among his very greatest works, and both poignantly recall his earlier composition style, while showcasing bold experimentation with form and harmony. In these pieces, Brahms looks simultaneously to the past and to the future, bringing closure to his life as a composer while sealing his fate as a true “progressive,” for which he would come to be recognized decades after his death – most famously

by Arnold Schoenberg, in a 1947 article.

Among the most important compositions from Brahms’s final years are his sets of character pieces for solo piano, published as Opp. 116, 117, 118, and 119. The piano was the composer’s primary instrument, and his most natural musical voice, and as a result, these works are very much “at home” for him. Generally, these pieces are more introspective in mood than many of his earlier compositions, and favor the development of motivic content above any “flash” or showy virtuosity. In these works, Brahms writes It is difficult to say whether the complete sets of pieces as they stand were intended by their composer to be performed as such. Although there are certain similarities between the respective pieces in each collection, Brahms most likely never expected for them to be performed as total works, as in the case of a sonata or a suite, wherein a large scale uniformity is expected across multiple movements. Rather, in the case of these sets, each piece is unique and individual. The solo character piece for piano is a genre all its own, and at the same time follows no guidelines apart from length, and so encompasses many other genres.

These miniatures are in a wide variety of forms, moods, and styles, and defy any homogeneous characterization. That being said, to hear them assembled in their respective groups, and especially to hear all of the sets together, one cannot help but trace musical elements across them.

Regardless of intention, these sets of miniatures somehow simply “work” as whole, large scale pieces. Brahms wrote only three piano sonatas, and all of them were from his very earliest days of composition. That genre was declining over the course of the 19th century, in favor of more novel forms. In lieu of the sonata, then, Brahms gives us these remarkable late collections.

The Seven Fantasies in the Op. 116 set are titled either “Intermezzo” or “Capriccio.” These titles tell very little about the pieces themselves, although generally speaking, the “Intermezzi” are more reflective in mood and restrained in tempo, while the “Capriccios” are more extroverted, impassioned, and in a livelier tempo. The tonality of D minor is shared by the first and last Capriccios, giving an overall unity to the set. These bookends frame another Capriccio, as well as the four intermezzi, in a variety of related keys. All of the pieces are in ternary form, meaning that there is an opening statement of musical material, a contrasting central section, followed by an abridged and developed restatement of the opening material. Among any of the late piano works of Brahms, the Op. 116 set provides the most convincing argument for multi-movement

solidarity, and can almost be appraised as sonata-like in construction, with each movement recalling elements of former ones.

The Op. 117 set of Three Intermezzi is the smallest of the late sets, a triptych of pieces that are quietly introspective and gentle in mood. Each of the three pieces shares the character of a lullaby, and in fact the first piece, in E-flat major, expressly invokes a Scottish lullaby, an excerpt of which Brahms provides at the heading of the piece. The excerpt from the poem “Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament” is translated as “Sleep softly, my child, sleep softly and well! – It breaks my heart to see you weep.” In German, the text almost perfectly synchronizes with the simple opening lullaby theme. The central section, darker in tone and more stirring in rhythmic activity, may point to the “weeping” of the child in question. The subsequent two intermezzi are equally evocative, although they share no poetic references. Though all three pieces are in ternary form – the same A-B-A form seen in the Op. 116 pieces – the second intermezzo, in B-flat minor, comes tantalizingly close to sonata form in its construction. It is important to remember that there are no rules or guidelines for the genres of these pieces, and Brahms’s experimentation with form, and with the mixing of forms, is partly what makes these miniatures so fascinating.

The Sechs Klavierstücke of Op. 118 display a remarkable multi-movement structure, particularly in regards to key. It is interesting to hear the six pieces in two groups of three, with each group following a similar relationship both in terms of character as well as tonality. The first three pieces progress from A minor to its parallel major key, and then step down to G minor. The whole tonal landscape then shifts down one step, and the next three pieces begin in F minor, move to the parallel major, and step down to E-flat minor. There is a symmetry to the construction of this collection that goes unnoticed if the works are played independently. Once again, Brahms is experimenting with form, and seems deliberately ambiguous with his composition; precisely how we are to interpret the organization of these pieces is like a puzzle to be solved, yet unlike with a conventional puzzle, we can never know if our solution is correct.

The first and fourth intermezzi are brief and introductory in nature, and are energetic in mood; the second and fifth pieces, an intermezzo and romanze, respectively, are more lyrical and reflective; the third and sixth miniatures, a ballade and intermezzo, are the most grave and passionate of the sets.

The final set of piano miniatures, the Op. 119 Klavierstucke, is made up of three Intermezzi, and a final, powerful Rhapsody in E-flat major, the only piece among Brahms’s late piano works to be given this title. The first three pieces are lively and graceful, and are almost preludes to the final rhapsody. This piece, given the tempo indication allegro risoluto, embodies a resolute determination. The insistent, powerful opening chords infiltrate even the grazioso middle section.

The work ends with a surprising modulation to E-flat minor, as though a dark cloud has begun to blanket the bright sun, casting a shadow over the music. Though his late piano pieces are often energetic and imbued with life, there is a melancholic hue that seems to shade them all. The composer once referred to these late piano pieces as “lullabies of my pain.” One can only hope that in writing them, Brahms found some cathartic relief.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No. 3 for piano and violin, Op. 12, No. 3 Most early classical “violin sonatas”, including many of Haydn’s more than 100 such works, were actually trio sonatas, with roots in the Baroque period. They were solo works for the keyboard, with the violin occasionally doubling the right hand, and a bass instrument occasionally reinforcing the left hand. Mozart began to change this with his Paris violin sonatas, giving the stringed instrument a more independent and prominent role, and transforming the genre into a truly conversational, duet-like form. Beethoven picked up where his esteemed predecessor left off, further developing the function of the violin in the sonatas, coinciding historically with newer developments in the instruments themselves, which could play higher, lower, louder, and softer than ever before. The expressive possibilities for this instrument were growing exponentially, and Beethoven – who studied the violin as a supplement to his keyboard playing – fully exploited its potential.

This third sonata of the composer’s first set was indeed published as “Sonata for piano with the accompaniment of a violin,” although the motivations for this were practical and perhaps commercially driven, implying that a keyboardist could enjoy the work as much without a musical companion. Undeniably, the piano writing in this grand sonata is both central and quintessentially marked with Beethoven’s style: technically virtuosic, intense, and often heroic.

One senses that the pianist drives the work – Beethoven, not coincidentally, probably played these keyboard parts himself, and therefore imbued the piano line with the valiant image he had of himself. The violin, however, is decidedly more involved than in the typical “classical” violin sonatas that precede the work, introducing the lyrical second theme in the first movement, standing in for the human voice in the song-like Adagio, and intrepidly holding its own with technical flourishes to match the keyboard’s in the finale. Even from the opening, with its brief exchanges of musical turns between the two instruments, there is a sense of exchanging dialogue.

The sonata is not unlike a marriage. There are quarrelsome moments, and occasions in which one partner seems to “take charge,” though ultimately, the relationship is harmonious, and one partner cannot really thrive without the other. The writer will leave it to the listener to decide which role the piano or violin plays in the musical reenactment of their own relationship.

Though many of Beethoven’s great later works are filled with a sense of struggle and bipolarity, this very early work seems to lack any projection of doubt. Here, Beethoven’s composition manifests confidence, boldness, and even unbridled joy. The composer would learn definitively of his auditory disorder in 1798, and the awareness of this impending loss of hearing would completely alter his disposition and the character of his music for the remainder of his life.

However, the third violin sonata comes from a young man with little doubt in his abilities as a

musician, and in his capacity to overcome any physical limitations. Beethoven presaged the following in his diary in 1797, shortly before this sonata was written, on the occasion his birthday: “Courage! My mind shall triumph over all weaknesses of the body. Twenty-five years are here; this year must determine the whole man. Leave nothing undone.” Indeed, Beethoven leaves very little undone in this spirited and exuberant work.

Gyorgi Kurtàg Hommage à R. Sch. The Hungarian composer Gyorgi Kurtàg played “hommage” to a variety of musical figures in a number of his works, from Tchaikovsky, to Luigi Nono, and even Nancy Sinatra. His musical tribute to the character of Robert Schumann, for clarinet, viola, and piano – written in 1990 – is imbued with Schumann’s spirit, and his propensity for writing evocative and often somewhat programmatic “fantasy pieces,” which Kurtág’s six movements certainly reflect. Even before the whimsical flourish that opens the piece, Schumann is present onstage, as the instrumentation – unique to say the least – is identical to that of the earlier composer’s Märchenerzählungen, or “Fairy Tale Pieces.” Each movement also reflects the multiple facets and characters of Schumann’s personality. Schumann was a brilliant man, but wracked with mental instability and manic depression. He created fictitious personas that reflected his own multiple personalities, and fabricated musical worlds for these personas in his “fantasy” compositions. Among Schumann and Kurtág’s cast of characters you will meet Johannes Kreisler, the Romantic writer Hoffman’s alter ego, who represents a brilliantly creative voice sadly misunderstood by the public as merely a clown. The introverted Eusebius, Schumann’s “id,” is encountered in the next movement, which then bleeds into the third, a depiction of Florestan, the temperamental and extroverted “ego” of Robert Schumann, given to sudden emotional outbursts, which Kurtàg effectively evokes. The fourth and fifth movements are also a pair, with the fourth, titled, in Hungarian, “I was a cloud, now the sun is shining…” serving as a prelude to the latter, translated as “In the night.” Like many of Schumann’s fantasy pieces, Kurtàg uses musical sketches of nature – birds, crickets, the fog of clouds and the brightness of the sun’s rays – to reflect the internal emotional state of man. The first five movements are concise and economical. Like Anton Webern, Kurtàg rarely dwells on a musical thought for long, and expresses a great deal of emotion and idea in a brief time span, and with few instruments. The final movements, however, is longer than all of the previous pieces combined, and is the most profound “goodbye” to Schumann. Titled “Farewell,” and evoking Master Raro, who was the balanced mediator between the two extremes of Schumann’s personality, Kurtàg brilliantly settles the polarity all of the prior music, drawing it to a close, channeling it through the voice of Guillaume de Machaut, the late-medieval French composer, and arguably the father of the complete musical setting of the Catholic mass ordinary.

The slow-moving movement processes, religiously, like a funeral dirge, and grows in intensity before quietly subsiding into the distance, as though the procession were literally passing before us and then moving away. Schumann himself lived in the same way, sneaking up on the music world, profoundly changing it, and then quietly fading into the fog of his own creation.

César Franck Piano Quintet in F minor During the twentieth century, with its global wars, mass migrations, and technological advancements in communication, perspectives on music became quite blurry. Outright hatred between France and Germany motivated each nation’s artists to seek the utter expungement of the other’s influence from its own culture, leading to the construction of divisive philosophical and aesthetic barriers. In France, the ultimate persona non grata was Richard Wagner, who embodied the hyper-romantic aesthetic that the avant-garde in Paris would come to dismiss as maudlin and over-sentimental. Any of the “conservative” French composers whose music reflected the German’s penchant for dense chromaticism, endless melodies, and vaguely shifting harmonies were dismissed right alongside Wagner. Ironically, Debussy, universally recognized today for his groundbreaking inventiveness, was considered decidedly “un-French,” Cocteau once writing that the composer "missed his way because he fell from the German frying pan into the Russian fire.” César Franck – coincidentally Belgian by birth – was cast into the fire along with the other French cultural “traitors”, as his Franck’s music demonstrates a Wagnerian and Lisztian influence. However, far from “conservative”, the composer-organist forever changed the scope of chamber music with his F minor piano quintet.

The Wagnerian influence is most evident first in the composer’s endlessly shifting key areas.

Franck always told his students that the key to composition was to “modulate, modulate.” Like Wagner and Liszt, Franck establishes motives – similar Wagner’s leitmotivs – which transform and repeat throughout the work, though always sounding distinguishable. The second theme introduced in the first movement, a meandering line over an unchanging bass note, will reappear numerous times, in a number of guises, in subsequent movements. For Franck, all three movements sprouted from the same few musical seeds present in the first, lending the work a “cyclical” quality, in which recognizable motives are constantly reappearing, occasionally in unexpected places and in new keys. It is an innovative idea, and the technique is no more obvious in the finale, in which a motive from the the end of the middle movement returns as the primary theme, as though an idea came to mind in the dream-like state reflected in the lyrical Lento, becoming transfigured into an almost obsessive thought in the nervous and explosive finale.

Indeed, volatility may well be the most appropriate characterization of the Quintet, and the famous composer-cellist Édouard Lalo in fact called it an “explosion.” Franck imbues the work with incredible emotion, never shying away from extremes, both in tonality and in dynamics. It has been said that no chamber work contains as many dynamic markings of ppp and fff – the lower and upper limits of volume – as this one. Camille Saint-Säens, to whom the work is dedicated, infamously walked off stage in preparation for its premiere, unwilling to perform the complex piano part (Franck left the dedication, but removed the note “to my good friend.”) The

French avant-garde camp, who later dismissed César Franck as antiquated or old-fashioned, seems to have missed something.

Aaron Copland Music for the Theatre American art music is a tapestry woven of many threads, most of which are imports from Europe. One need only glance at a concert or recital program to see the breadth of the continent's impact on our conception of the art form. Western music as we know it today was born of the Italians, Germans, French, and English, all of whom have migrated across the Atlantic, bringing their music traditions with them. From Dvorak to Schoenberg, Mahler to Toscanini, Rachmaninoff to Heifitz, and Milhaud to Yale's own Paul Hindemith: so many of the notable musicians and teachers who gained celebrity status in the American music world were actually European born. The founders of major conservatories in the United States were immigrants from the continent, as were the founders of orchestras and opera houses. For American born composers and musicians, it was for a long period a rite of passage to study in the conservatories of Europe for a time. What the continent did not bring to us, we went there to retrieve. The rate of this exchange grew exponentially around the turn of the twentieth century, when developments in travel, and an increasingly unstable sociopolitical climate in Europe created a surge in immigration, and the Great War would send Americans to Europe in droves When one thinks of quintessentially "American" composers, Aaron Copland – born in Brooklyn, New York right at the turn of the century to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants – is often the first name that comes to mind; though Charles Ives, a Connecticut-born Yalie, we would like to point out, did precede him. Even Copland, however, went to Europe to study composition along with droves of his peers, spending time in Paris and Fontainebleau with the influential mentorcomposer Nadia Boulanger, whose open-mindedness to "avant-garde" and modern music appealed to the young Brooklynite. Copland was in Paris in the early 1920's, alongside Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Ezra Pound, those disillusioned American ex-pats known as the "lost Generation." Copland was decidedly more optimistic than these figures about the potential of American art, and decided to return to the United States in 1925, bringing with him all that he had learned, but determined to create a distinctly American sounding music. For Copland, besides the folk music that would eventually make its way into his compositions, the first place to look for this American sound was in jazz. To Copland, only jazz music could be called truly American in its genetic make-up, and born of musicians and creative minds who were not subjected to the training and formalities of the European "classical music" tradition.

In 1925, when Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor of the Boston Symphony – and a Russian immigrant – commissioned more music of the 25 year old composer after the success of his previous submission the Organ Symphony, Copland provided a five-movement suite for an intimate

ensemble of around 18 musicians, and titled it Music for the Theatre. Its working title, Incidental Music for an Imagined Drama, reveals that there was no actual theatrical work meant to go with this music. Rather, Copland noticed that "the music seemed to suggest a certain theatrical atmosphere, so after developing the idea into five short movements, I chose the title." Even the choice of instrumentation, streamlined and minimal, is rather theatrical in nature, reflecting the configuration of pit orchestras in American music halls, vaudeville theaters, and the night clubs of the "Roaring Twenties."

The jazz influence in the piece is unmistakable, as the composer incorporates those distinctive syncopated rhythms and "blue notes" that give jazz music its own unique identity and flavor.

From the laid back trumpet solo in the Prologue to the white-hot energy of the Dance, and the cabaret act humor and grotesqueness of the Burlesque, these movements bring together the sophisticated language of jazz with the formality and modernist experimentation of Copland's compositional style. One can still hear the irregularity of meter and rhythmic configuration, splashes of dissonance, and brightness of sound that is expected of Copland's music – much of it brought back from Paris – yet with a distinctly "American" flavor. Jazz has always been a classy and intelligent lady, but Copland has dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her to the concert hall.

Maurice Ravel Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No. 1 The music of Ravel’s Daphnis and chloe is by many accounts his very greatest. Igor Stravinsky, reluctant to lavish praise on any living composer’s music besides his own, called it “not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of all French music.” The full ballet is rarely performed today, possibly owing to the sheer vastness of Ravel’s fresco, including its large orchestra and a wordless choir. The two concert suites derived from the ballet were born in different ways. The second suite was derived from the ballet suite in 1912, after the premiere of the ballet, and is essentially the music of the final act in the three part ballet extracted verbatim. The music from the first suite was, in fact, premiered before Ravel had completed the entire ballet, in 1911.

After a few introductory, improvisatory solos over hushed, muted strings, the music of the Nocturne settles into undulating waves. Ravel utilizes modal scales and hexachords that sound archaic and otherworldly, taking us from the present and transporting us to the isle of Lesbos, millennia ago.

The music in the opening movement swells and relaxes like the breath filling the mythical statues that come to life at the ballet’s outset. Ravel brilliantly fades the orchestra into the wordless choir, which absorbs the rising and falling gestures of the Nocturne, transfiguring them into a chorale in the brief Interlude. Here is the composer’s nod to the Hellenic chorus, commenting on the action that takes place within the scene from a position beyond it. The absence of words adds to the mystery of the ballet. We are bearing witness to something that we, from the perspective of modernity, cannot entirely grasp. While the chorus continues, distant fanfares foreshadow the

final movement, calling us from afar back to the stage, where the orchestra sets the scene for a raucous pirate’s dance. The composer surrounds the audience, just as the group of marauders entrap the mythical nymph Chloe in the ballet. Ravel marks the music très rude, and the music has a certain “live and let die” spirit and crudity that sets it apart from the sublime, refined beauty of the opening. This is the music not of nymphs and gods, but of men. This is the point in the ballet in which Chloe, captured by the pirates, is taken to their encampment on the craggy Aegean coast. At the climax of the ballet, the gods intervene, and the stage is suddenly overtaken by an army of satyrs – half man and half beast – led by the god Pan. To match the excitement of this scene, the music continues to build in speed and intensity through to its thrilling conclusion. The second suite picks up immediately where the action left off, in the quiet morning following the battle.

Franz Schubert Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946 Were it not for the intervention of a certain admirer of Schubert’s piano music, it is difficult to say whether “Three Piano Pieces,” a significant contribution to the canon from the final few months of their composer’s life, would have ever entered the repertoire. That admirer was Johannes Brahms. Like much of Schubert’s music, these works were unknown for many years after the composer’s death. Though written in 1828, these pieces were not published until four decades later, in 1868, with Brahms as the anonymous editor.

Because of their enigmatic history, far less is known about these pieces than, for instance, the familiar D. 899 and D. 935 sets of Impromptus, and the Moments musicaux, all stylistically similar to the Klavierstücke. In all likelihood, these pieces were not conceived as a unified set of merely three, and were probably intended to be part of a larger collection. The three were assembled as such by Brahms, and in this way, the later composer has left his own mark on Schubert’s opus. Both composers were among the most important composers of “piano miniatures,” or character pieces for the solo instrument. These pieces create, in a brief temporal span, a unique world, and offer the composer a great deal of compositional freedom. The inherent flexibility of the brief piano miniature, of which Schubert was among the first composers, provided room for experimentation, and the Klavierstücke come from the laboratory of a brilliant alchemist.

The first piano piece, a five part rondo in e-flat minor, moves fluidly from minor to major tonal areas, creating an unsettled sense of ambiguity, and the gentle quality of the slower episode contrasts with the nervous refrain, with its pulsating undercurrent of running eighth notes. The contrast is further amplified by the remoteness of its key area, which may surprise the listener.

One of music’s great puzzless involves the second contrasting episode in the piece – heard after the first return of the opening refrain – that was completely crossed out in Schubert’s manuscript of this movement. This a-flat major section was restored by Brahms in his published edition, and was accepted as fact for much of the work’s performance history. Indeed, we may never know

Schubert’s true intention, or why this section was seemingly erased. Perhaps Brahms, that great admirer, thought so highly of Schubert’s music that he sought to preserve even that which was meant to be discarded.

The second piece is in many ways a fitting foil to the first. Gentle and berceuse-like, the three occurrences of its e-flat major refrain are perforated by two darker and more volatile episodes, always returning to its tranquil refrain theme.

A fittingly exuberant close to the set, the third piece is a dance with the exotic traces of the Hungarian and Bohemian styles in its syncopated rhythmic gestures and capricious nature that were in vogue in Schubert’s day. The extroverted dance bookends a far more introspective trio, and, like the previous pieces in the Drei Klavierstücke, is a study in contrast, and in this sense a fitting reflection of its composer.

Although Schubert never lived to see the admiration and full recognition of genius that his compositions warrant, we can be grateful to those great admirers of his music for allowing them to be heard today.

Leon Kirchner For the Left Hand Leon Kirchner, born in Brooklyn and a longtime professor at Harvard University, was one of the most impactful American composers of the 20th century. The Pulitzer Prize winning composer can count John Adams and Yo-Yo Ma among those who he guided in their formative years.

Among the many fruitful relationships that the composer cultivated over his life, his friendship with Leon Fleisher was one of the closest and most enduring. The two met in New York, and became very close in the early 1950s, when both were living in Rome with their families. These Americans abroad, whose children grew up together, would often pass the time playing four-hand piano. Fleisher became a champion of Kirchner's music, as much as Kircher championed Fleisher's piano playing, and the composer would come to dedicate a number of works to the pianist. Fitting for a friend next to whom he would sit at the piano, For The Left Hand was written in 1995 as a gift to Fleisher, who had, due to injury, lost the use of his right hand. Kirchner remarked that "Fleisher is an old friend. He needed music for the left hand. I stopped whatever I was doing at the time to write a piece for him.” In the music, one might hear traces of the composition style of Kirchner's teacher, Arnold Shoenberg, particularly in the economy by which the composer covers much ground over a rather brief temporal span. Though the work of a precise, exacting, and diligent composer, For The Left Hand still has a quality of freedom to match its precision “Music is a science,” Kirchner once said, “but a science that must make people laugh and dance and sing.”

Igor Stravinsky L’histoire du soldat

Five years separate the premieres of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris, 1913 and L'histoire du soldat in Lausanne, Switzerland, 1918. Those intervening years saw the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, and the Russian Revolution in 1917. Europe had been upended, and artists, Stravinsky included, were in flight from their homes. Stravinsky fled Russia, and would not return until nearly fifty years later. He and his family took refuge in Switzerland, with little connection to all that they had known before. In Paris, where the Rite had been written and premiered, Stravinsky had an abundance fame, funds, forces, and friends at his disposal. His working relationship with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballet Russes allowed for nearly any artistic inclination that emerged from Stravinsky's creative mind to be realized. That ballet company was an enormous blank canvas, and with its orchestra, Stravinsky had a full spectrum of paints at hand with which to color that canvas. The ballets written during that period – were largely in the tradition of the great romantic orchestral works of Tchaikovsky and RimskyKorsakov, the latter of whom was Stravinsky's teacher in Saint Petersburg. Even the Rite, with its jarring rhythmic drive, dissonant clusters of sounds, and timbral extremes, was an outgrowth of that tradition, rather than an abandonment of it.

As revolutionary as the Rite of Spring had been with its primitive style and the imposing immensity of its scoring, L’histoire du soldat is equally revolutionary in its clever synthesis of neoclassical structure with a cosmopolitan melange of stylistic influences, and the sparseness of its instrumentation and leanness of sound. The state of exile in which Stravinsky found himself in Switzerland was another situation entirely from his pre-war comforts. The rise of the Bolsheviks led to an interruption of the functioning of the Ballet Russes, and with it, Stravinsky's royalties. With few financial resources, and no orchestral forces at his disposal for large scale compositions, the composer had to do what he did best: get creative, and make something from nothing. Since the beginning of the war, as Stravinsky put it, he had "envisioned a work that would be small enough to allow for performances on a circuit of Swiss villages, and simple enough in the outlines of its story to be easily understood." L'Histoire du soldat was that work: a portable theatre piece, almost a cabaret act, with dramatic action and dance accompanied by – and interacting with – music. In his collaboration with the poet C.F. Ramuz, who wrote the narrative to the piece, the composer wanted to ensure that the music, conceived for an unconventional septet – violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, and percussion – could be separated from the drama and stand alone, making possible even more performances in a variety of situations. The music for this traveling theater has had a life of its own in a popular suite, which saw its first performance in 1919.

L'histoire is as revolutionary in its musical parameters as it was in its bohemian conception. With stripped-down forces, the composer treats each instrument as a soloist, and fully exploits their distinctive characters and extramusical associations. The violin is the central protagonist of the work, representing the soldier and his fiddle; the percussionist takes on a central soloistic role – largely unprecedented in music history – as the musical embodiment of the devil. With the remaining instrumentation, Stravinsky provides a jazz band of sorts, complete with a brass

section of high and low timbres, the clarinet (a central solo instrument in traditional early jazz), and a rhythm section. The bassoon is a the composer’s stand-in for the saxophone, and its wide range of pitches from bass register to falsetto provides the composer with a very economical.

Right around the time of the war, American jazz music made its way to Europe along with American troops. Though he never heard any of it performed, Stravinsky had accessed some jazz scores through a friend, and studied them with great fascination. The composer noted that he "borrowed its rhythmic style not as played, but as written. Jazz meant a wholly new sound in my music, and Histoire marks my final break with the Russian orchestral school in which I had been fostered.”

The sheer diversity of other influences throughout L’histoire point to a cosmopolitanism that befits its time and place. It was written by a composer swallowed up in a great exodus, wherein the movement of people across borders and oceans mixed language, culture, and art with rapidity and vigor. Music was more portable than ever before, and its mobility is embodied in the genres and styles that make their way into L’histoire: Viennese waltz, gypsy violin music, Argentinian tango, the military brass band, the Spanish pasodoble, and even a chorale that appropriates the style of Lutheran hymn settings. All of these influences come together in the central Petit concert in the piece, wherein the composer brings together musical motives from earlier in the narrative, and layers them on top of one another, even mixing their metrical groupings. The result is like walking through a village and hearing strains of different music coming from each house.

Depending on where the ear drifts, any number of these can be heard. The spareness of Stravinsky’s orchestration actually makes this clever layering even more obviously discernible.

Here is perhaps Stravinsky’s most bold and modern statement in L’histoire du soldat: the simplicity of the stripped-down instrumentation – with its bright colors and the timbral distinctiveness of each instrument – paradoxically enhances the complexity of the music. However, this complexity never muddles the sinister fun of the score.

Stravinsky's harmonic language in L'histoire, if one hears it in comparison to earlier works, strikes the ear with its appropriation of traditional tonality in a very new way. After hearing some of his earlier works, our ears are conditioned to find Stravinsky "dissonant" and more preoccupied with clashing sonorities than with the resolution of harmonies (although our ears do mislead us). In L'histoire, Stravinsky incorporates traditional triadic harmonies, and diatonic voice-leading, yet does so in a loose, playful, and occasionally grotesque way. We are shocked first by hearing the familiar, and we are shocked a second time by hearing the manipulation, fragmentation, and distortion of the familiar. Elements of unexpected assymetry and polytonality – the use of multiple diatonic keys simultaneously – throw our expectations off-kilter. As in much of traditional diatonic music, much of the harmonic underpinning involves chains of fifths (or movement through the "circle of fifths"). This open, hollow interval, as well as its inversion the perfect fourth, permeate the work, and may be born of the sonorities of the open strings of the Soldier's violin, or the harmonic series intervals of the trombone and cornet. The open fifth and harmonic series are the most basic building blocks of harmony, and are the very origin of tonality as we know it. In this sense, the language of L'histoire is quite primitive, and it creates a

bright and open sound through this harmonic. In another way, the tongue-in-cheek appropriation of "traditional" diatonic composition in a manner that sounds somewhat incorrect in its defiance of that tradition, reflects a sense of surrealism, in that it appropriates the familiar into an unexpected and irrational way. Just as Dalí shows us images that we see every day through a distorted lens of dream-like hallucination, Stravinsky incorporates elements of the music that we hear every day, but blurs them. It might prove stimulating to hear L'histoire as though one were dreaming, and to abandon all sense of expectation. This is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally arousing music that can be enjoyed and appreciated by all audiences, regardless of their background, in equal measure. This above all makes L’histoire a truly revolutionary work of art.

L'Histoire du Soldat marks a pivotal moment in the development, or evolution, of Stravinsky's style in that it shares much in common both with what came before and what came after. Though it is difficult to say precisely when the composer became a "neo-classicist" – and Stravinsky himself dismissed the term – one can sense a shift in his compositional style from L'Histoire onward, from a Dionysian sensuality to an Apollonian orderliness and clarity. Stravinsky's neoclassical period is often said to begin with his ballet Pulcinella from 1920, which incorporates themes taken from the early eighteenth century manuscripts. Music historians are often eager to divide Stravinsky's compositional output into "periods," just as art historians have done with Picasso, whose career runs parallel to the composer's, and intersected, for example, when he designed the costumes and sets for Pulcinella. However, the convenience of periodic stratification may betray the truth: that the composer's evolution was more of a continuum than a series of deliberate philosophical shifts. The historian Theodor Adorno wrote that "Parallel to Picasso, Stravinsky had launched neoclassicism in the early 1920's. But unlike Picasso he practiced the style for more than three decades." In L'histoire, we can find traces of surrealism, primitivism, and neoclassicism. The work provides a snapshot of a composer trying holding on to his roots while exploring new, futuristic possibilities. For this reason, it embodies both revolution and evolution.

Krzysztof Penderecki Symphony No. 2 - “Christmas” Krzysztof Penderecki has a habit of composing on Christmas Eve. For him, it is a time for both reflection and anticipation, when he contemplates the past year’s work, and looks ahead to the future. What has become “a kind of superstitious habit” for the composer yielded – on that late December night in 1979 – his Second Symphony, fittingly subtitled Christmas, and dedicated to the conductor Zubin Mehta, who led its premiere with the New York Philharmonic. The retrospective aspect of the composer’s superstitious practice reveals itself in the style of the work.

Absent here are the avant-garde coloristic elements of some earlier compositions, including dense chord clusters and unconventional instrumental techniques. Instead, Penderecki looks even further back in music history, adopting a more “Neo-Romantic” tone, in the vein of the lateRomantic symphonic tradition.

This is not to say that the symphony is conventional by any means. The form, which crystallized in Penderecki’s mind on Christmas Eve, is unique. The work is in one continuous movement, unlike the traditional four. It is written in an overarching sonata-allegro form, in which the themes from the opening of the work are developed in its contrapuntal middle section, and return at the end, in a recapitulation. This return seems unmistakable in hearing the piece, “heralded,” in the composer’s words “fortissimo, by a minor-third motif in the timpani.” However, Penderecki has here created a false recapitulation lasting only seventeen bars, subversively defying expectations. When the timpani motive returns again after this deception, the recognizable, grave music from the very opening of the symphony will be heard.

The symphony, though its title evokes the festive holiday season, is actually quite sombre and solemn in mood. Perhaps an image of a solitary journey across a bleak snow-filled landscape might fit the listener’s impressions more than would a gathering around a warm hearth with friends and family. In fact, the only transparent yuletide reference in the work is in the lyrical second subject of the work, first heard, in a singing style, by the horn and strings. This subject is based upon the Christmas carol “Silent Night, Holy Night,” which had been hinted at earlier in the movement in the low woodwinds. The doleful quality of the symphony derives in large part from the aforementioned interval of the minor-third, the seed from which the themes of the entire work are grown. It can be found, for instance, as the descending interval between the words “Silent” and “Night” in the melody of the carol. The listener should make an effort to trace the mutation of this seed interval, and its more optimistic major-third sibling, throughout the entirety of the symphony, while also following the appearance, development, and return of the subjects from the beginning. The organic quality of this “musical horticulture” method ties the symphony together through fascinating means, and simultaneously ties Penderecki to his predecessors – Nielsen, Sibelius, Brahms, Schumann, and Beethoven, among others known for using this technique, as another master of the symphonic tradition.

Murray Schafer Harp Concerto Murray Schafer is a true Renaissance man. Perhaps Canada’s most renowned living composer, the eighty year old Ontario native – in addition to writing music – has written plays, novels, and poetry. He is a visual artist, journalist, music and literary scholar and educator, having contributed numerous musicological and pedagogical texts to the field. He is as brilliant in his musical scholarship as he is creative in his composition. In the late 1960’s, Schafer founded the World Soundscape Project, which focused on a new concept of “Acoustic Ecology,” which investigates the relationship between living beings and their environment through sound.

“Soundscapes” are the summation of all of the collected sound in that we experience around us.

Just as a landscape painting captures the visual immersive visual experience of a place in time, soundscapes likewise encapsulate the whole of an acoustic environment. At an orchestral performance in Woolsey Hall, for instance, the soundscape includes the music played onstage, the

rustling, murmurs, sniffles and coughs of the audience, the quiet sound of one’s own inhalation and exhalation, and the inevitable police siren from the street. Schafer’s ultimate goal with the project was "to find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment is in harmony.

Schafer’s Harp Concerto, written in 1987, is a perfect example of Schafer’s unconventional, otherworldly, and transportive writing. The soloist, Antoine Malette-Chenier, finds that the middle movement for instance, divided into seventeen independent sections, “relates to the natural concept of soundscape, where events happen one after another, sometimes overlapping, and sometimes echoing – either right away of much later.” In other words, there is something inherently natural about this work. Rather than try to fit his music into any pre-conceived form, he simply “lets it be,” reflecting and radiating from nature. There is a sense of organicism that emerges, for instance, in the first movement, a Nocturne, which seems to passively stroll through a series of vignettes. The relaxed, demure harp is surrounded by a variety of sound environments emanating from the orchestra, whether the chatter of insects and birds in the woodwinds, a wafting breeze in the strings, or passing automobiles in the brass. Observing and reacting to its environment, the harp is the conduit through which we are transported to this nocturnal, mysterious world. Adding to the mystery is Schafer’s wide spectrum of orchestral colors. The composer utilizes both traditional and non-traditional instruments – including friction drums, wooden spoons, and the west African agogo and mbira in the percussion section – in various combinations and techniques so as to create completely new sounds. The harp itself – amplified over the occasionally chaotic din of the orchestra – is often treated as a percussion instrument in the work. Schafer is known to compose his music completely internally, writing it out before checking any notes on the piano, meaning that his music is as much based upon recollection and pure creativity than through traditional musical “guidelines”. The concerto encourages us to perk up our ears and listen to all music – and the sound world around us – with a fresh perspective.

Giachino Rossini Overture to La scale di seta The music of Giaochino Rossini is charming, infectious, and addictive. Like a drug, his sublime melodies weave their way into our minds. If a look at the calendar of any season at most opera houses is any indication, we are, as a culture, quite addicted to Rossini’s drug. Even Richard Wagner, who seldom spoke admiringly of any musician besides himself, once conceded his amazement at Rossini’s “narcotising melodic invention.” His popularity as an opera composer in the early part of his life cannot be underestimated. Rossini was to Naples, Milan, and (eventually) Paris in the early nineteenth century what the Beatles were to the United States in the 1960's: a celebrity beyond rival. Until that point in history, no composer's music had been so frequently performed, demanded, and praised by the masses. Rossini-mania ushered in the “golden age” of bel canto Italian opera, and his music, though never considered “high art,” survives today, everywhere from the opera house to saturday morning cartoons, ringtones on cellular phones, Stanley Kubrick’s film scores, and everywhere in between.

Rossini succeeded in adapting every imaginable type of subject with his usual flair. His 39 operas ranged in topics from historical epics to fairy tales, and from the dramatic opera seria to the comedic opera buffa. He wrote them all in the span of about twenty years, and spent the last forty years of his life as a wealthy, content, and by all accounts an exceedingly well fed man, never bothering to compose another opera. Frequently recycling material and borrowing from himself and others, the composer’s efficiency in writing music was almost formulaic, yet somehow still successful. He once claimed to write arias in the amount of time it took to boil rice. No matter the subject, the music in his operas inevitably combined lightness and drama. Drawing from Mozart’s style as much as from his Italian predecessors, Rossini came to be known as “The Italian Mozart,” and was called “The Little German,” by his classmates in school. He absorbed their music with the regularity of a daily vitamin, professing to “take Beethoven twice a week, Haydn four times, but Mozart every day… Mozart is always adorable.” That composer’s gift for melody, Haydn’s penchant for wit and surprise, and Beethoven’s mastery of the dramatic, all find their way into Rossini’s scores.

One of his very earliest works, La scala di seta, or “the silken staircase,” was called a “farsa comica” by the composer. He coined this term to describe brief one-act comedies of a small cast of characters. The simple plot of the opera could suit an episode of a modern-day television sitcom. Set in Paris, the farsa revolves around a complicated romantic situation. A woman, lives in the home of her guardian, who is unaware of her secret marriage to another man. Every night, she lowers a silken ladder from her window so that her lover can climb up to her bedroom, leaving by morning. Her guardian attempts to marry the young lady to another man, which she attempts to avoid by directly pawning this man off onto her sister. In typical fashion, all confusion ultimately subsides, and everyone accepts the young couple’s secret marriage.

The opera is seldom performed today, but its overture lives on in the concert repertoire. Rossini’s overtures had absolutely nothing in common with the operas that followed them, with the exception of his last opera, Guillaume Tell. They had but one purpose: to keep the audience entertained while everyone made their way to their seats in preparation for the performance.

These curtain-raisers grab the attention of the audience with an opening of great excitement, and then keep them entranced with captivating melodies, as the solo oboe provides at the outset of this overture. The classical “Mozartian” heritage is clear in the composer’s adaptation of sonata form, with an exposition, developing central section, and the inevitable return to the opening material. Rossini’s famous orchestral crescendos are on display even in this very early overture. Rather than simply having everyone in the orchestra simply play louder, the composer carefully crafts a slow and steady build. These points in the music are impossible to miss. Rossini begins with a simple musical phrase in just a few instruments or instrumental groups, and then gradually adds instruments to the mix, while shortening the length of the phrase, giving the effect of the music speeding up, though in reality the tempo is unaltered. It is the musical equivalent of a snowball rolling down a hill, and by the time it bowls the audience over, no one can deny why the music of “Signor Crescendo” has us all hooked.

Late Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 30, Op. 109 In 1824, a Berlin music critic wrote that Beethoven’s Op. 109 sonata “will not become familiar until one has repeated it often out of some inner impulse. It begins in the manner of a prelude, as if one were testing a harp to see if it were in tune.” As is often the case with Beethoven, what was seen as peculiar, radical, and without precedent later seems almost inevitable and, as the critic put it “familiar.” He begins with a fantasia-like first movement which, while in sonata form, seems improvised, floating freely between sections lively vivace and dramatic adagio seemingly at whim. The introductory movement sets a scene, with its rolling arpeggios that evoke the accompaniment to a recitative preceding an aria. One might expect a movement of a very grand scale to follow this prelude, but Beethoven instead launches into a brisk and stormy prestissimo in E minor, a grounded and heavy weight to counterbalance the buoyant reverie of the introduction. Just as the composer allows time to absorb this dramatic shift, the movement swiftly comes to a close. As the final movement begins, the fragmentary, introductory nature of the preceding movements becomes more clear. In the finale, Beethoven finally completes his idea.

The theme and variations had become one of Beethoven’s most favored forms, and this songful theme with six re-imaginings, all of which amount to twice the length of the first two movements combined, demonstrates the composer’s mastery of transformation.

Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110 In Beethoven’s late works, one must look at the whole picture as much as each individual component. As in Op. 109, there is an arc and trajectory in the Op. 110 sonata that links its movements, and the weight of the larger form is placed not at the opening but at the allimportant conclusion. For pianist Richard Goode, the sonata represents a “poetic narrative of coming from suffering into the light.” A pleasant, rhapsodic opening movement, in its innocence and placidity, is of a mood unencumbered by burden, as though from the mind of a child. In the baudy, comical scherzo that follows, Beethoven playfully toys with accent patterns in jest. For Goode, the raucous music sets a scene that “seems to take place in a tavern.” The composer brilliantly links the third and fourth movements of the sonata, constructing a grand structure in which a dramatic lyrical passage – reminiscent of a recitative and aria without words – alternates with a complex three-voiced fugal passage. If the arioso section is a testament to suffering, and indeed the composer signifies sorrow with the designation “dolente,” then Beethoven finds catharsis in the fugal section. When the contrapuntal music winds down, the doleful aria returns once more, now lowered by a half-step, as though exhausted and downtrodden. However, Beethoven transports the listener, as Goode puts it, from “suffering into the light,” for when the fugue returns once more, the composer has literally turned the pitches of its subject upside down, signifying a complete transformation. As the music, as indicated in the score, “gains new life,”

one might sense that the protagonist in Beethoven’s multi-part musical bildungsroman has done the same.

Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111 Beethoven claimed that he simply did not have time to write a third movement to Op. 111, but its two movements are so balanced in drama and lyricism, struggle and transcendence, that once the second concludes, it seems that anything more would disturb the delicately proportioned bipolarity of the work. This sonata is a study in microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes, from the dramatic seventh descent that opens the first movement, to the sudden relaxations of tempo, to the massive extremities of range, where voices in the very depths of the bass in the piano are in dialogue with pitches in the altissimo upper reaches of the keyboard. The tempestuous first movement, with its dramatic introduction leading to an impassioned allegro that restlessly propels forward with its churning motor of sixteenth notes, seems as unstable as it is defiant and sure.

The movement pacifies, perfectly setting up the introduction to its foil, the sublime arietta with variations. A simple, almost reverent theme serves as the basis for four variations and a coda. The tempo never changes throughout the movement, yet the pace increases steadily, for each variations doubles in rhythmic subdivision, quickening and imbuing life into the songful theme without ever breaking the movement’s unity of pulse. The triple subdivided meter lends the variations a lilting rhythmic quality, which at times bears a striking resemblance to dixieland jazz and boogie-woogie music that would emerge decades later in far different circumstances. After reaching the apex of rhythmic activity, in a flurry of trills and an undulating bass, the arietta reemerges, unadorned, in the middle voice, where it unwinds, dissolving seamlessly into the accompaniment, before quietly fading away.

Eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119 A “bagatelle” is defined as “a thing of little importance.” This definition unjustifiably belittles the genre, which, in the right hands, can prove to be a medium for great creativity and emotional expression, and few could argue that Beethoven had the right hands to elevate this “trifle” to artistically sublime heights. Beethoven assembled these eleven bagatelles – pulled from several sources, the first five from 1803, the last five from 1821, and the sixth bagatelle from 1823 – in two groups, 1-6, and 7-11, and his publisher assembled them all as a set. Whether the groups were intended to be played together is debatable, but what makes Beethoven’s bagatelles so remarkable is that, though each brief piece is so individualistic, and unique in form and mood, they can truly work well together in almost any configuration, like a musical montage. These “things of little importance” should be cherished, studied, appreciated, and beloved as works that transcend their diminutive title.

Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor "A Babel of insane sounds heaped upon one another without rhyme or reason," wrote one critic following the premiere of the first version of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto in 1913. This version, written by an enfant terrible still in his early twenties, was lost in a fire during the Russian Revolution of 1917; when the composer revisited the work in 1924, yielding the version that remains today, he wrote that it was “so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered No. 4" (the popular and arguably more "accessible" Third Concerto had been written and performed in the interim). Though Prokofiev remarked on the athleticism of his First Concerto, referring to its “soccer quality;" with the Second, he would “strive for greater depth of content."

Few, however, would deny the athletic qualities of this work, which has come to be counted among the most demanding in the repertoire. It encapsulates all that is beloved of Prokofiev's music: his acrobatic piano writing, his intense projection of emotion into music, his wide variety of characters and styles, and his colorful, brilliant orchestral writing, which elevates the orchestra from the role of mere accompaniment to that of worthy companion, or, occasionally, adversary to the piano. Its premiere left listeners "frozen with fright, hair standing on end," according to one account. Time may have softened the shock factor, but the concerto's freshness and vitality remain today.

The work is in four movements. The first begins innocently enough, with a lyrical, almost vocal primary theme in the piano (the composer writes narrante or "spoken" in the solo part), yet builds to incredible intensity, including a massive (the composer writes "gigantic") cadenza for the piano that occupies most of the movement's development and recapitulation. The almost playful sounding two-bar opening gesture in the plucked strings and clarinets is metamorphosed into a searing brass statement which vehemently engulfs the piano after its lengthy solo venture. The second and third movements, though smaller in scope and scale than the outer two, are no less characterful: the second, a whiplash scherzo with dizzying perpetual motion, like a musical counterpart to a game of soccer; the third, a sort of grotesque march with playful dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The finale is on the same grand scale as the first movement. A distinctly Russian sounding theme, almost lullaby-like in character, provides moments of respite from the abruptly shifting, manic, and savage nature of this exciting and "tempestuous" movement.

Francis Poulenc Les Soirées de Nazelles By all accounts, Francis Poulenc's music largely fits his personality. The dry wit and selfdepricating sense of humor are among those traits which most clearly permeate his music, which is buoyant, lively, and often shimmering with vibrant color, even in its darkest moments. He is a composer who seems reluctant to take himself too seriously, even at moments of great emotional depth and sentimentality. His self-deprication is evidenced in his own appraisal of his solo piano

music, which said "somehow escapes me." He viewed his virtuosity as a pianist as detrimental to his composition, noting that "many of my pieces have failed because I know too well how to write for the piano."

Setting aside Poulenc's own modesty, history has judged Les Soirées de Nazelles – written in 1936 while on holiday at his country home at Nazelles, in central France – as the composer's most important contribution to the solo piano repertoire. Poulenc's grasp of musical character is on display in this series of variations, each of which the composer improvised in the character of one of his friends. These miniature portraits – in the manner of several vignettes in Schumann's Carnaval, or Elgar's famous Enigma Variations – are meant to embody the personalities of the Poulenc's companions. These caricatures, so to speak, are framed by a Preambule and Finale, as well as a movement marked Cadence that provides a transitory function from the variations into the closing movement, which the composer referred to as a "self-portrait." To be familiar with the biographies of Poulenc's friends, and which aspects of their personality are depicted in the variations, is not necessary in order to appreciate this clever work. The character traits demonstrated in the music are so palpable that one might apply them to people in their own lives.

Claude Debussy Suite Bergamasque Claude Debussy once proclaimed that “there is no school of Debussy. I do not have disciples.”

His impact on music around the turn of the twentieth century, is inarguably profound. Although he may have been somewhat uncomfortable with his fame and influence, Debussy was in his time considered the head of the French “new wave” of musical composition – marked by a broadened spectrum of tonality, texture, and form – that ushered in the era that would come to be known as Debussysme. It is fame, in fact, that may have contributed to the publication of the Suite Bergamasque for solo piano. The four brief pieces comprising this suite were written in 1890, when the composer was a student, just 28 years of age, at the Conservatoire du Paris. The fact that the composer opted to publish these works fifteen years later is intriguing. In the intervening years, the symphonic poems Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and La mer, as well as the masterful symbolist opera Pelléas et Mélisande, had spread like wildfire across Europe, making Debussy a household name. Around 1905, the demand for the composer’s music was quite high, and “Debussy fever” was rampant in the Parisian artistic circles. Publishers were eager to capitalize on this popularity, and urged the composer to provide more music to sell, particularly in the lucrative market of solo piano works, which could be played privately in salons by connoisseurs and amateurs alike. The composer’s artistic language had changed a great deal in the decade and a half since the Suite Bergamasque was originally conceived, and Debussy spoke of his distaste for his earlier style of writing, leading the composer to significantly revise these pieces before publication. However, the question of how much of this music comes from Debussy’s student days, and how much hails from a mature composer known to many as a radical and groundbreaking artist, remains unanswered.

It is interesting that so modern and innovative a composer as Debussy would provide us with a suite of pieces in the style of the late Baroque. The Suite Bergamasque is somewhat tongue-in-cheek in its approach to this elegant, elaborate Rococo style. The work is a reinterpretation and evocation of seventeenth and eighteenth century French keyboard music, viewed Debussy’s lens.

Rameau and particularly Couperin, whose styles are evoked in the suite, were arguably as adventurous in their respective times as Debussy was in his own, and in this sense, the composer pays tribute to the freshness of this antiquated music by revitalizing it, and imbuing it with his own take on texture and harmony. Though the form and style of each piece are largely drawn from centuries prior, the liberation from traditional tonality is unmistakably in Debussy’s own voice. The Baroque influence is noticeable from the outset, in the Prelude. The movement unfolds with a free flourishing right hand over a bass line which grounds it to earth, a very much indebted to figured bass writing of the Baroque, although the prevalence of parallel motion would have Rameau turning in his grave, much to Debussy’s chagrin. There are playful character changes throughout which lend the piece an improvasitory feel befitting a Baroque keyboard prelude. The Menuet curiously mixes dense complex contrapuntal writing with a light and delicate style, embellished with grace notes and turns evoking an older style of music. However, Debussy’s playful freedom with the triple meter would make this formal courtly dance quite difficult to align with the feet. One can almost imagine the composer delighting in the idea of dancers tripping over themselves to keep in step. The famous Clair de lune that follows has largely overshadowed the other movements in popularity. This piece is truly an outlier, and does not, in fact, reflect back on the Baroque style. Instead, it likely refers to the symbolist poet Paul Verlaine's poem of the same name. Interestingly, "Clair de lune" or "moonlight," was a title applied in Debussy's later revisions, as it was originally called simply Promenade sentimentale, lacking the nocturnal imagery of the revised title. As found in his later Preludes, the composer was very conscious of how his audience perceived extramusical associations in his music. Now that the title has been given to the piece, however, one almost cannot help but imagine the glistening of moonlight when hearing it. The poem may also provide the key to understanding the title of the entire suite, as Verlaine refers, in the opening stanza, to "charming masqueraders and bergamaskers... playing the lute and dancing and almost sad beneath their fanciful disguises."

Such sadness, however, does not permeate the levity of the closing piece, a Passepied in duple meter. This is a quick yet relaxed dance – literally translated as "pass-foot" – likely originating in the Brittany region of northwestern France. If the Menuet can be considered a "high" or stately dance, then this jovial piece is more reflective of the "low" dances of commoners. Just as Debussy subversively mocks the formality of the Menuet, he just as cleverly elevates the "common" Passepied to a level of elegance and refinement befitting the suite.

Claude Debussy Preludes for Piano, Book 1 Although he is frequently cited as the quintessential "Impressionist" composer, and music's answer to Monet and Renoir, Claude Debussy strongly disliked the term, calling it "an invention of the critics." Debussy's music – with its chromatic language and liberation from the confines of

traditional Western tonal gravity – does have a buoyant, mercurial quality that can entrance the listener into the sense of time suspended. However, the term "impressionism" connotes a sense of vagueness and a lack of specificity that is far removed from Debussy's intricate, and often quite precise writing. To call Debussy's music vague would be like faulting Degas for painting outside of the lines.

The Préludes for solo piano, a masterful set of singular poetic pieces written late in the composer's career, provide a perfect example of this dichotomy between the specific and the merely suggestive. Divided into two books of twelve, published independently, the Préludes, are in somewhat in the tradition of the sets of Bach, Beethoven, Scriabin, Shostakovich, and Chopin.

However, unlike the works of these composers, who wrote each prelude in a different key, running the gamut of major and minor tonality, Debussy's are compositionally more free, and of a vast tonal and chromatic language. What's more, the composer draws from a wide spectrum of non-musical influences throughout. Though a program listing betrays this principle slightly, Debussy interestingly places his titles at the end of each prelude, rather than at the head. He intends for the listener or performer to experience the piece first without the suggestion of a title, and then perhaps to compare their impression of the work – the moods and images called to mind – with the composer's suggestions. Over the course of the twelve preludes in Book I, Debussy draws from Baudelaire's poetry, Shakespeare's comedy, early twentieth-century American Minstrel shows, and depicts images of girls with flaxen hair, Spanish guitarists serenading their lovers, mythical sunken cathedrals, and the rolling hills on the picturesque isle of Capri. Each prelude truly stands alone, and is unique both in its inspiration and style.

However, when heard as a set, though the composer may not necessarily have intended this to be the case, one can draw comparisons between them, as one might do with a collection of poetry or short stories, or with a book of photographs, or a collage. The Préludes can truly suspend time, allowing the listener to become temporarily lost in twelve distinctive worlds within worlds.

Robert Schumann Geistervariationen, WoO 24 Robert Schumann's final years were spent steadily declining into a state of madness. In 1854, at just 44 years of age, he jumped into the Rhine river, in an attempt to end his life. He was rescued by a passing fisherman, and afterwards begged to be sent to an asylum, out of the fear that he might harm his wife Clara, or one of their seven surviving children. He would remain there for two years, before succumbing to illness, and was visited only once by Clara, just before his death.

Much of Schumann's music from his final years was destroyed by his late wife following his death, yet out of kindness and loyalty rather than out of passion or disdain. Clara wanted to preserve her late husband's legacy in its best light, and feared that the music he had written while stricken with mania was somehow inferior, and would tarnish his artistic reputation. When she and Brahms – the Schumann family's close confidante – compiled the complete edition of Robert's music, they intentionally left out the sketches from very late in his life. One work that was published, however, was the very piece that Schumann was writing just before he attempted

suicide: The Geistervariationen, or "Ghost Variations." He had written down the theme just before his plunge into the Rhine, and completed the variations in the brief span between his rescue and departure to the mental hospital.

Schumann claimed that the theme of this brief and poignant set for solo piano was given to him in a dream by the ghosts of Schubert and Mendelssohn, hence the title of the work. He was enthralled by his encounter with spirits, yet claimed that these beings, over time, turned to demons, mocking and haunting him, and disfiguring the theme into. This manic shift between rapture and terror is the culmination of what was likely a lifetime of bipolar disorder. Schumann was a complex figure, torn between radicalism and traditionalism, passion and reason, humor and melancholy; this dichotomy between extroversion and introversion is manifested in the two "characters" derived from his own personality: Eusebius and Florestan.

This duality is also manifested in the theme itself, simple and pleasant yet somehow tinted with melancholy. Rather than reaching ever upwards, the theme begins two descending gestures, relaxing downwards like sighs or laments. This sense of falling remains intact throughout the entirety of the theme, its brief touches of minor tonal color near the end of each phrase add to this sense of poignancy. The five variations that Schumann completed maintain this theme with striking clarity. It haunts the music with its omnipresence, just as it haunted its composer.

Schumann embellishes the theme by floating it atop undulating, somewhat disorienting waves of chromatic triplets in the first variation. In the second, he splits it into two lines in canon, fragmenting, though never totally obscuring, his subject. In the subsequent third variation, the chromatic triplet motive makes its return, though it has moved to the right hand, and the theme has deepened into the left hand's low range, now descending in range, in a macrocosmic expansion of the inherent descending gestures of the theme. The fall continues in the fourth variation, in which the minor coloration from the theme is expanded into the dark tonality of g minor, transforming it into its most sorrowful state. The fifth and final variation, the most technically demanding and in many ways the most "Schumannesque" of the set, begins to obscure the theme behind the mask of chromaticism that had been slowly rising to the fore over the duration of the work. One cannot help but feel – without a clear return of the theme from this obscurity – a lack of completeness and closure. We yearn to hear more from Schumann, and indeed we expect him to continue with his idea. Sadly, the composer was never able to finish this, his "final thought," and we are left with the suspension of not knowing what might have been.

Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 Though it has become perhaps his most enduring and popular work in any medium, Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony is still shrouded in mystery, the truth of its origin and subtext hidden somewhere behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet history, and the iron façade of its composer's reserved demeanor.

The first decade or so after the Soviet Revolution was marked with a liberal tolerance, and even encouragement, of artistic expression. In this environment, talented young composers like Shostakovich – a prodigy of sorts who demonstrated incredible ability from a very early age – flourished in writing provocative and edgy modernist music. Initially a supporter of the regime, Shostakovich combined his modernist bent with patriotic subjects and a nationalistic tone, becoming, as far as the government was concerned, an great exemplar of socialist art. When Stalin came to power, however, this tide of liberalism quickly shifted to reactionary conservatism.

The government set new artistic standards, with radical experimentation and subversive satire condemned as degenerate. The infamous turning point in Shostakovich's artistic life was in January of 1936, when Stalin himself attended a performance of the composer's satirical, edgy, and surreal opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk. Though the opera had been playing for a few years with great success, it became the subject of attack overnight, called "a confused stream of sounds" in the widely circulating Soviet newspaper Pravda. Shostakovich's fall from grace was hard and fast. He withdrew his Fourth Symphony from premiere, and moved out of his apartment, living in a room underneath a staircase, in order to protect his family from soviet police. The composer literally feared for his life.

In this climate of paranoia and subjugation, Shostakovich set to work on his Fifth Symphony, which he composed almost completely in secret. When it finally premiered, in 1937, it was accompanied by an article entitled "An artist's creative response to just criticism." The article, which may or may not have been written by the composer, was considered an authentic repent in 1937, and, along with the piece, brought the composer back into the good graces of the government, in which he remained for the majority of his life. However, since his death in, evidence and the accounts of his friends and family have revealed that the composer was secretly a defector, and only maintained a façade of compliance in the interest of his safety. From today's perspective the Fifth Symphony is now considered to be among music history's most publicly misunderstood works. This symphony, musically conservative in comparison to his previous compositions, was seen at the time of its premiere as evidence of the composer's "overcoming the disease of leftism." In hindsight, however, it seems more likely that the entire work is fraught with irony, sometimes comedic, and at other times bleak. Shostakovich has given his detractors what they demanded, but entirely against his own will. The triumphant finale is inauthentic, like a child apologizing to his parents for bad behavior, yet feeling no remorse. However, the symphony seems to have provided precisely what his audience seemed needed at the event of its premiere in Leningrad. It is a profoundly moving work regardless of the way in which it is interpreted. The composer wrote in his memoirs, "I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about."

As in other great symphonies, appropriately including Beethoven’s Fifth and Mahler's Fifth, the tone moves from darkness to light, symbolizing a triumph over adversity. The D minor to D major tonal trajectory is also shared by Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, which may have inspired Shostakovich’s shift in compositional style in this work. The brooding, ominous opening movement gives way to a macabre scherzo, in which the music seems to waltz against its will. The

third movement, an intimate and contemplative largo, has an almost religious, celestial tone, evoked in the elegiac harp and the delicate and nostalgic music-box sound of the celeste. The finale, from which a triumphant chorale emerges from a stormy bellicose march, contains Shostakovich’s clearest symbolism of the triumph of man over the shackles of suppression. The composer quotes his own song setting of a Pushkin poem entitled “Rebirth.” That poem, and this entire symphony, are reflections of man struggling to overcome the weight of repression.

Perhaps it is most appropriate to reflect on the closing stanza of Pushkin’s poem in hearing this cryptic and evocative work.

Thus vanish the illusions from my tormented soul, and in it appear visions of original and innocent times.

Richard Wagner Siegfried-Idyll, WWV 103 Hearing Siegfried Idyll is like listening in on an intimate conversation: a brief glimpse into the private domestic life of one of the music world's most public and outspoken figures. Richard Wagner presented the work as a birthday gift to his newlywed, Cosima, at their Swiss home on Christmas Day in 1870. The story of their marriage is almost tabloid-worthy in its complexity.

Cosima was the illegitimate daughter (or "love child," as she liked to say) of Franz Liszt, and the wife of the famed German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Both men were dedicated champions of Wagner's music, and close companions of the composer. Wagner – estranged from his wife Mathilde, known as "Minna" – had been carrying on an affair with Cosima, even fathering a child while she was still married, albeit unhappily, to von Bülow. In true tabloid tradition, Cosima had served as Wagner's secretary for a period, when the von Bülows lived a few houses away from the composer in Munich. After Minna's death, the birth of another child that was not his own, and some pressing from Cosima, von Bülow granted his wife a divorce, proclaiming that "you have preferred to consecrate the treasures of your heart and mind to a higher being: far from censuring you for this step, I approve of it." The conductor's respect and near reverence for his friend certainly played part in his approval, and he wrote in his diary "had it been anyone but Wagner, I would have shot him." The young Cosima – nearly a quartercentury Wagner's junior – was at last able to marry the man who called her his true love. Liszt was hesitant about the relationship, and received word of his daughter's marriage to his friend through a newspaper announcement.

Any manifestation of this drama is nowhere to be found in the opening bars of the work, a placid musical depiction of a sunrise, or, in Wagner's words, an "awakening theme." The piece was performed early on that Christmas morning, in its original configuration for an intimate chamber ensemble of thirteen players, to literally awaken Cosima from her slumbers with its opening strain. The work was called, in translation, Triebschen Idyll with Fidi's birdsong and the orange sunrise, as symphonic birthday greeting. Presented to his Cosima by her Richard. It had never been intended for publication or distribution, and was truly meant to be an intimate and very personal gesture.

Financial incentive later compelled Wagner to submit a version – with an expanded orchestration – for publication, under the title Siegfried Idyll, over which Cosima lamented that their "secret treasure is to become public property." To those familiar with Wagner's music, some of the motivic material that would later make their way into his Ring cycle can be heard in infantile form in this piece, particularly in the central Lebhaft section, where a distant horn call foreshadows the leitmotif of Siegfried's call in the Ring. The original title forecasts the intimacy of the work, depicting their family life at their Swiss home, named "Triebschen." The music combines birdcalls beloved of "Fidi," the nickname of Wagner and Cosima's son Siegfried, and a German lullaby – heard first in the solo oboe after the climax of the opening "sunrise" section – that was beloved of the couple's daughter, Eva. The piece, though truly a tone poem in every sense, is loosely structured into three sections, with transitional music that draws them together. The lively central section with Siegfried's call eventually melds with the music from before, transitioning into a final section that recollects the music from earlier in the piece, layering motives on top of one another, in a new, more lively tempo. Motivic development and recollection is, after all, one of the hallmarks of Wagner's compositional technique, and is as present in this small tone poem as in his epic dramatic productions. Presumably, if nothing else, the vigorous trumpet solo in the march-like climactic restatement of the "awakening theme" would have stirred Cosima from her bedroom, so by this final section, all of the musical material is infused with energy, as the young bride was likewise energized by the music. The tempo, dynamic, and tone all become steadily calmer as the pastoral placidity of the opening of the piece returns at the end, bringing the music full circle.

Along with the music, Wagner composed a poem to commemorate the occasion, and it is worthwhile to read the text while hearing Siegfried Idyll, as the music traces the themes and tone of the poem, creating a "tone poem" in the truest sense. Repeated listenings will reveal ever more depth to this intimate music that we are so lucky to overhear. Cosima herself got to hear the work performed three times on that Christmas Day, each performance illuminating the music a bit more, like the light from a rising sun.

It was your self-sacrificing, noble will That found a place for my work to develop, Consecrated by you as a refuge from the world, Where my work grew and mightily arose, A hero's world magically became an idyll for us, An age-old distance became a familiar homeland.

Then a call happily rang forth into my melodies; "A son is there!" —he had to be named Siegfried.

For him and you I had to express thanks in music— What lovelier reward could there be for deeds of love?

We nurtured within the bounds of our home The quiet joy, that here became sound.

To those who proved ever faithful to us, Kind to Siegfried, and friendly to our son, With your blessing may that which we formerly enjoyed As sounding happiness now be offered.

—Richard Wagner Richard Wagner Overture to Der fliegende holländer On this bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth, it is fitting to pay homage to a work of music that the composer would come to call "the decisive turning point of [his] evolutionary career" as a poet and creator of music-dramas.

The most well-known excerpt of Wagner’s 1843 opera Der fliegende holländer is its overture. This work is a sort of tone poem, brilliantly synopsizing the plot and character of the opera entirely through instrumental music. In it, there are three distinctive primary motives that engage in a musical dialogue, reflective of the conflict among the opera’s characters and themes. Tying all of these motives together is the musical depiction of a tempest at sea, heard in the thunderous and crashing percussion, bright and sonorous brass, and the rapid chromatic figures ascending and descending in the upper woodwinds and violins, in a manner reflecting the rise and fall of the powerful waves.

The overture opens with strident open fifth tremolos in the strings and a horn fanfare signifying the ominous ship the Flying Dutchman. The sheer power of this opening shocks the listener in the way that a sailor would experience after having spotted the doomed ship, a dark omen, at sea.

After this tempestuous opening episode, there is a dramatic shift to the second motive of the work, a pious and hymn-like motive introduced first in the pastoral English horn. This music represents the loyal Senta, the heroine of the opera who sacrifices herself out of loyalty to the Dutchman to save him from eternal purgatory. Later, Senta’s theme develops, though now in the mode, meter, style, and tone of the Dutchman’s theme. Wagner thus begins to transfigure his motives, and spin his tale. There is a jaunty interjection in the final portion of the overture, an Fmajor theme representing the Norwegian sailors of the setting. The work ends with a triumphant statement of Senta’s motive, instilled with great energy to represent the heroine’s ecstasy as she plunges into the stormy sea to join the Dutchman in death. The orchestra’s texture stabilizes into a placid d-major, and the arpeggio figure of Senta’s motive, like her sprit, ascends to the heavens.

Benjamin Britten Sinfonia da Requiem Benjamin Britten was only 26 years old in 1940, and, like so many of his generation, had come of age in a time of great tension, fear, and despair. The past decades had seen the collapse of the

world economy, the rise of Stalinism, and the emergence of Nazism from the ashes of a devastated Germany. In the previous year, Germany had invaded Poland, setting off the chain of events that would plunge Europe into the Second World War. Simultaneously, the Empire of Japan was at war with the Republic of China, and unambiguous in its imperialist intent to dominate the Asian continent by force. Britten, along with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, had fled Great Britain to North America in 1939, in the footsteps of close friends W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. An outspoken and at times controversial pacifist, Britten left the European continent on the brink of war, fleeing both the rising tide of fascism on the mainland as well as harsh criticism of his music at home, much of which had in recent years been tied to Leftist, anti-war causes.

Given these circumstances, when the composer received a commission in 1940 from the Japanese Empire for a work to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary of its founding, the composer must have felt conflicted. For the event, Japan had also requested works of other prominent European composers, including Jacques Ibert and Richard Strauss, and the significance of this anniversary as propaganda at this bellicose period for the Empire is irrefutable. Britten took the commission, and the result is his Sinfonia da Requiem for orchestra, an enduring masterpiece displaying incredible skill and passion, and which still resonates today. True to his pacifism, rather than glorifying imperialism, the composer took the opportunity instead to compose both a deeply personal and also incredibly universal work, which the composer once noted in a letter “combines ideas on war & a memorial for Mum & Pop.� In choosing the thematic underpinning of the Requiem, a mass for the dead, the composer combines the symphonic form with a symbolic, programmatic representation of grief and mourning. Two decades later, the cmposer would expand this idea even further, with his incredibly powerful War Requiem. Unshakeable during the time of its composition were the composer's sorrow at the death of his parents, grieving at the loss of life in a time of war. In addition, the work provides a mechanism for musical commentary on the evils of war, in a piece that is, as the composer put it, "a work with plenty of peace propaganda in it."

The Japanese rejected the piece, finding the Christian implications in the titles of the work and the movements to be an insult to Japanese culture, and the overall dark and sombre quality of the work to be inappropriate to the festivity at hand. The Sinfonia da Requiem was instead premiered in the United States, in 1941, and its powerful message of grieving from loss of life, and sheer emotional impact, proved quite relevant and resonant at to audiences at thee time, and has resonated with audiences ever since.

The Sinfonia da Requiem is in three movements, though they are played without pause, melding together into a triptych and Britten threads the movements together seamlessly, a trait bolstered by the fact that all three share the same tonal center of D. The first movement, Lacrimosa, a Latin term for "weeping," is a musical representation of lamentation and outpouring of grief.

Present from the outset of the music is an ominous pulsation in the timpani over the bass instruments, an incessant throbbing underneath the orchestra, fading towards the middle of the movement as the orchestral forces fade into a chamber-like dialogue, and returning at the climax

of the movement. This pulsation may symbolize the distant drums of war, or the inevitable, omnipresent ticking of time, as a reminder of the finite quality of life. The funereal music above this pulse, with its descending half-step "sigh" motif, is a thematic manifestation of weeping. One should note the syncopation in the thematic line, which creates a grating sense of tension as it pulls and struggles against the insistent pulsation of time. After a thinning of texture towards the middle of the movement, an ominous dialogue among the upper winds emerges with a second theme based upon the wide leap of a seventh, that interval which always strives for completion and resolution, further building tension. Following this, the lamenting theme returns once again as it rises in dynamic and range, now doubled in the horns, building to its climax towards the end of the movement. From this terrifying climax, there is a glimmer of hope, however. A Major triad subtly sneaks underneath the texture and rises like a ray of light from behind a dark cloud.

Britten uses the technique of modal mixture, that is, the interplay of the minor and major modes of D, as a compositional theme throughout the piece. Indeed, the arrival of D major in the final movement after a journey through the darkness of D minor at the outset of the first traces a narrative dialogue of hope emerging from a state of grief. This trajectory of minor to major is reflected in Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a suitable companion to the Sinfonia da Requiem. Britten provides the listener with a foreshadowing of his macroscopic programmatic goal with this subtle interplay of minor against major in the first movement. One might note a similar effect near the end of the second movement of Mahler's Fifth, where a truly optimistic brass chorale theme emerges from the darkness of the funeral march, and, though it is ultimately crushed by its morbid surrounding music, reveals itself once again, triumphantly, in the symphony's finale, symbolizing a triumph of the human spirit over the strain and struggles of existence.

The D major triad near the end of the movement thins out to a single, solitary held D, which bleeds over into the second movement of the piece, Dies Irae, or "Day of Wrath." Britten likened this scherzo to a "dance of death," and its macabre, somewhat mechanical quality, with disjunct outbursts from a nervous, frenetic dance meter, is unmistakeable. The composer uses color effects in the orchestra, including fluttertongue in woodwinds, a percussive col legno effect in the strings, in which the musicians use the wood of the bow, rather than the hair, and muted brass fanfares, to create an otherworldly, demonic effect. Indeed, the fanfares in the brass punctuating the orchestra once again remind the listener of the bellicose subject matter at hand, and the hellish nature of war, as well as the manic nature of grief, may be understood in this music. The tension builds throughout the orchestra, and the energy grows, until, at the climax of the movement, Britten brilliantly composes a musical manifestation of literally "dancing to death."

The energy gradually slows, like a machine running out of fuel, and the orchestra ultimately shrieks with disjunct, isolated outbursts, like final cries and whimpers before succumbing to death. One could perhaps read into Britten’s symbolism here, with a subtle implication that war depletes, exhausts, and devastates.

The orchestra sputters away, fading in to the ethereal, placid calm of the final movement of the Sinfonia, “Requiem aeternam.” The title, meaning “eternal rest,” truly does evoke a state of calm, with fragile, open timbres of high strings and winds, and comes across as a sort of “plea for

peace,” as Britten himself put it. One might perhaps discern vague traces of the opening theme from the first movement, with its rising chromaticism, now transplanted into a completely new musical setting implying calm acceptance. The major triad, that symbol of hope that was glimpsed in the first movement, emerges once more in the very end of the movement after one final expression of tension and grief in the violins above murmuring, trembling trills in the lower instruments. The beautiful, rich harmony of the D major triad is set in the soft, warm timbre of the clarinets, which fade away to nothing, as though in a sigh of relief.

In the end, despite its initial darkness, the Sinfonia da Requiem offers a promise of hope that can be shared by all, and a sincere tribute to those lost both in Britten’s personal life, and to those lost in war. In 2010, at a performance of the work, the sitting Consul General of Japan in Boston accepted a copy of the score to the Sinfonia as a symbolic gesture of understanding and friendship between the Japanese people and the memory of its composer. Benjamin Zander, the conductor at the evening’s performance, provided an elegant summation of the work, saying We can feel the terrible anguish in Britten’s work – the protest and grief of the first movement; the violence and madness of the second movement and the deeply felt pleas for consolation and peace in the Finale. The titles - Tears; Day of Judgement and Plea for Eternal Peace are no longer seen only as Christian, but rather as universal categories of despair, pity and hope for redemption, in which all peoples of the world can share.

2014 Bari International Music Festival THE BAROQUE VOICE

Music of the Baroque, in many ways, is not so far removed from the Top 40 popular music of today. Baroque composers emphasized drama, affect, emotional expression, and ornamentation.

Listening to, for instance, a studio-produced recording of Adele's music, we experience the very same thing. Baroque composers completely revolutionized music as a form of communication.

They began to see vocal music as a means of enhancing text, conveying the emotional content behind the lyrics, in the same way that Adele does in her heartfelt pop songs. Melodies, in the new "monodic" style, became more clearly delineated from accompaniment, so that the "tune" – the part that the listener would go home singing – stood out distinctly against a basso-continuo backdrop of plucked strings or the clavicembalo, the Baroque-era equivalents of today's acoustic guitars and pianos. Composers and performers alike emphasized embellishment and ornamentation as a means of enhancing these melodies, in the same way that Adele takes her melodies on impromptu twists and turns, leading us to feel that her words are imbued with passion and spirit. Composers began to use stark contrast between high and low, loud and soft, and quick and slow, in order to convey the theatricality of the music at hand. The Baroque period, beginning in Italy, saw the rise of the oratorio, cantata, and of course that most dramatic of all story-telling musical genres: opera. These new forms of entertainment were meant to be heard and understood by everyone, not merely an elite, trained few, precisely because they conveyed emotion so thoroughly and powerfully. As a result, composed art music surged in popularity, and saturated the cultural landscape, just as the popular artists of today surround us with their music and personas.

Handel's oratorios and operas are prime examples of such entertainments. During his time in London, the composer wrote works in the Italian style, drawing from the popular operas on the continent as inspiration. His subjects were most often religious or historical. They depicted, for instance, the Old Testament tale of Joseph, imprisoned by his jealous brethren, or Julius Caesar in Egypt in the first century B.C., vying for the love and hand of Cleopatra. At times, his subjects were more fantastical, as in Alcina, in which a sorceress casts her spells upon knights who find themselves on her enchanted island. The arias contained in these works were poetical rather than narrative, pausing the action in order to offer reflections on what is taking place, as commentary of sorts. They also invite the performer to embellish the music, particularly in the repetitions of so-named "da-capo" arias, in which the material is quite literally sung twice, though with new ornamentations and emphasis on the repetition. Perhaps in listening to these arias, it is beneficial

to digest the text and meaning when first presented, and then simply get lost in the emotional content of the music in the repetition.

Purely instrumental music in the Baroque was largely an outgrowth of these entertainments.

Works written for solo and chamber ensembles often emphasized a singing, florid style, much like the vocal music of the time, and many of the great instrumental composers wrote in a virtuoisic manner, stirring up emotion and drama tantamount to vocal music, though with no text. One such composer was Heinrich Biber of Germany, certainly among the Baroque period's most experimental musical artists. His Mystery Sonatas for violin and cembalo were envelope-pushing in numerous ways, conveying religious-poetic subjects – in the case of the Visitation, depicting the joyous mystery of the Archangel's visit to Mary of Bethlehem. Not surprisingly, the Baroque style has captivated a number of twentieth century composers, as well as those of today. Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style adopts the “style” of the Baroque, but with a few surprising twists and turns along the way. In this sense, Schnittke is evoking the same sort of shock and awe that one would have felt hearing a similar work 300 years ago, before the next generations of composers – not to mention new advents in technology – changed our culture’s perceptions of music. Even today, composers like Daniel Schlossberg draw inspiration from the often over-the-top and yet somehow restrained style of the Baroque. The Baroque voice is as relevant as ever, and speaks to our modern ears with the same depth of communication as it has for centuries.

INTIMATE VOICES

Richard Strauss 1864-1949 “Ständchen” from Sechs Lieder, Op. 17 - 1888 “Morgen” from Vier Lieder, Op. 27 - 1894 “Die Nacht” from Acht Gedichte aus 'Letzte Blätter', Op.10 - 1885 “Amor” from Sechs Lieder, Op. 68 - 1918 The music of Richard Strauss provides a pivotal link from the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Ever the classicist, he continued to write in the lush, late Romantic German style well into the first decades of the new centuries, when other composers were beginning to experiment with more avant-garde styles and novel concepts of harmonic language. That is not to say that his music is not groundbreaking. Rather, Strauss was quite the modernist, and radical in his own way.

Rather than eschew Liszt and Wagner's progressive developments in harmony, he expanded them even farther. He brought the orchestral tone poem to its most highly developed state, while taking on such extreme, violent, and controversial subjects as Elektra and Salome in his operatic compositions. His large orchestral writing was remarkably colorful and inventive, but his gift at

writing on an intimate scale, for the human voice, is equally unparalleled. Just as Strauss was able to convey complex stories through purely instrumental composition in his orchestral tone poems, he was able to convey poetic meaning behind the texts of his lieder, of which he wrote a great many during his long and productive life (his first few were published in 1885, when the composer was in his early twenties, and his last, the Four Last Songs, were written in 1948, in the final year of his life). The lied clearly held a special place in his heart, and his gift at depicting the colorful imagery in his poetic texts is evident even in the "simple" accompaniment of the piano.

The composer's musical painting of shimmery, twinkling moonlight in Standchen, or of the rising sun in Morgen, are as captivating and transportive as his enormous orchestral works.

Strauss found power in intimacy as well as he did in grandiosity.

Arvo Pärt Fratres for violin and piano - 1977 The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt – who, at nearly eighty years of age, is still writing music today – is perhaps the most perfect example of a modern composer who looks far back in music history for inspiration. Like Strauss did, he chose not to abandon the music of the past, but rather embrace and expand upon what came before. Though his first works were more avant-garde, and inspired by the music of Prokofiev and Bartók, beginning in the 1970’s Pärt began to evolve his aesthetic, looking to centuries old Gregorian chant and early Renaissance polyphony for inspiration. Amid the din of composers seeking new control complexity in their works, Pärt went in the complete opposite direction, finding beauty and truth in the clarity of Renaissance music.

His meticulously crafted compositions derive their tension and relaxation from the inherent push and pull of harmony and color.

Fratres was originally composed for a small chamber ensemble, of strings and winds, in 1977, but has since been adapted for a wide variety of instrumental configurations. The version for violin and piano has proven particularly popular. This captivating and dramatic work alternates between a frenzy of activity in the solo violin, and an entrancing stillness when the two instruments play in partnership. Throughout the work, a six-bar theme – first heard after the piano’s first entrance – undergoes a series of variations, developing and evolving, as the two voices meet. “Fratres” is a Latin term meaning “brothers,” and the intrinsic unity of the violin and piano, which bring calmness, stillness, and focus, to one another, is a poetic musical statement of undeniable depth, power, and simplicity.

Sergei Rachmaninov 1873-1943 Vocalise for violin and piano - 1912

Sergei Rachmaninov’s beautiful Vocalise, was originally written, as the name suggests, for the human voice. It was dedicated to Antonina Nezhdanova, one of the great coloratura sopranos of her time, and was published originally in 1912. The song was written without lyrics, and was meant to be sung merely on a single vowel. The lack of text removes extramusical associations that might distract the mind with language. Instead, Rachmaninoff simply highlights the beauty of the human voice, creating an ethereal, otherworldly, and angelic sound. As there are no words that might be lost in an instrumental transcription, the version for violin and piano simply channels this ethereal human voice through another medium. Instrumentalists and vocalists alike have their own “intimate voices” through which to speak and sing, as the violin herein reveals.

Jean Sibelius 1865-1957 String Quartet in D minor, 'Voces intimae', Op.56 - 1909

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius is known for his powerful nationalistic works, which was inspired by the folk music, mythology, natural beauty and fraternal spirit of his nation. His large symphonic compositions are renowned for the organicism of their structure, seeming to grow from the most minute of seeds into grand works of art. However, there is intimacy in his music as well, as his string quartet in D minor – the only one that the composer wrote once he had reached his mature stage of composition after his studies – so clearly reveals. The quartet, subtitled “Voces Intimae,” is mostly sombre and brooding, and comes off as a sort of quiet dialog among the four “voices” in the strings. These are mostly intimate secrets that the audience overhears, rather than bold statements that we are meant to hear. Although the piece contains moments of exuberant grandeur and excitement, and though the composer ends the quartet with a tone of determination, perhaps the most powerful moments in this work are actually its quietest and simplest statements. In the third movement, a soulful adagio, there are three isolated, pianissimo e minor chords, detached and unrelated to the harmonic movement of before. It was over these three intimate whispers from the quartet that the composer wrote the words “Voces intimate.” Like a Shakespearean aside, Sibelius reveals to us that what lies on our surface is not always the whole truth. Music, like those who create it, is filled with secrets, some of which will never be entirely understood.

Arvo Pärt Spiegel im Spiegel for violin and piano - 1978 The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt – who, at nearly eighty years of age, is still writing music today – is perhaps the most perfect example of a modern composer who looks far back in music history

for inspiration. Like Strauss did, he chose not to abandon the music of the past, but rather embrace and expand upon what came before. Though his first works were more avant-garde, and inspired by the music of Prokofiev and Bartók, beginning in the 1970’s Pärt began to evolve his aesthetic, looking to centuries old Gregorian chant and early Renaissance polyphony for inspiration. Amid the din of composers seeking new control complexity in their works, Pärt went in the complete opposite direction, finding beauty and truth in the clarity of Renaissance music.

His meticulously crafted compositions derive their tension and relaxation from the inherent push and pull of harmony and color.

Written in 1978, just prior to Pärt’s departure from Estonia for Berlin, Spiegel im Spiegel – or “mirror in mirror” – is a musical depiction of the infinite. Like looking at the reflection of a mirror in another mirror, the music repeats almost as though it could go on forever. This mesmerizing work, based on icy triads in the piano – somewhat reminiscent of the opening of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” piano sonata – and rising and falling scales in the violin, hypnotizes with its simplicity. Pärt proves that music can be just as powerful when it whispers as when it screams. Hearing Spiegel im Spiegel leaves us temporarily lost, both standing still and floating in time.

2014 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival PROGRAM 1 Leonard Bernstein: Selections from Mass, Divertimento, and Wonderful Town Leonard Bernstein is perhaps the single most impactful American musician of the last 100 years.

The Bostonian turned New Yorker revolutionized classical music, drawing new crowds of young people, fresh from Beatles concerts, downtown jazz clubs, and elementary school, into Philharmonic performances. The music he composed himself absorbed a variety of subjects and genres that resonated with the daily lives of his audiences, including jazz, broadway musicals, and Judaism. The selections from the works heard today, including speak as clearly as ever to American audiences, and for that reason, Bernstein deserves our praise on this Fourth of July.

Mass, called a “theatre piece for singers, players, and dancers,” is a perfect example of Bernstein’s knack for genre-mixing, as it is truly a hybrid of a traditional, liturgical mass, and a musical theatre piece. It was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy to celebrate the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Its European premiere was given in Vienna, in 1973, by the Yale Symphony Orchestra. The complex work, including a pit orchestra, a “street choir,” a blues band, rock band, a choir of kazoos, and a central character who leads the mass: a Catholic priest called “The Celebrant.”

Divertimento is a celebration of the city of Boston, where the composer grew up. The nostalgic work, commissioned in 1980 to celebrate the centennial of the Symphony Orchestra, cycles through a number of “vignettes,” each highlighting a different aspect of the city’s character.

Cleverly, the whole of Divertimento is based on an expansion of two pitches: B – standing for “Boston” – and C – standing for “Centennial.”

Wonderful Town was a popular Broadway show about two young girls from Ohio who come to New York to seek fame, fortune, and excitement. The show, and its music, celebrate the exuberance and vitality of Greenwich Village in the 1950’s, where nearly anything could happen.

Charles Griffes: Poem for flute and piano, A.93 Born in Upstate New York, Charles Griffes studied composition in Berlin with Englebert Humperdinck – of Hansel and Gretel fame – before settling back to the United States, where he taught music at a preparatory school in Tarrytown, New York, until his death at the young age of 36. The Poem for flute and piano, originally written for flute and orchestra, is an evocative work, shifting through a variety of moods. It has an exotic air, reminiscent of the French impressionistic school of composition, with its lush chromaticism and shifting colors.

Carl Maria von Weber: Trio for flute, cello, and piano in G minor, Op. 63 Known as the pre-eminent German opera composer in the genre’s “Golden age” in the nineteenth century, Carl Maria von Weber revolutionized theatrical music with his use of leitmotif and melodrama, truly among the very first of the “Romantics” to follow in Beethoven’s footsteps, paving the way for the century’s new German style. Weber’s flair for contrast and theatricality, evoking intense emotion and tasteful charm in equal measure, carries over into his instrumental music. The trio for flute cello and piano are a perfect example of such contrast. The first movement pits a dark and sombre g minor against a bright, exuberant middle section in the major mode. A spirited waltz in the scherzo gives way to a “shepherd’s lament,” in which the flute, Weber’s version of the shepherd’s pipe, introduces a folk-like melody which is transformed in a set of variations. Weber rounds out the work with his usual, operatic panache, in a fireworksladen finale showcasing the virtuosity of these three instruments.

Ernst von Dohnanyi: Aria for flute and piano Ernst von Dohnanyi was among the very last of the true Romantics. Born in the kingdom of Hungary in 1877, the young composer was entranced by the music of Brahms, who, late in his life, admired the young composer, and promoted Dohnanyi in Germany. After becoming perhaps the most influential musician in Hungary, the composer fled Europe with his family in the midst

of World War II, eventually settling in Tallahassee, Florida, where he taught at Florida State University, remaining there until the end of his life. Compared to the modern Hungarian nationalists such as Bartòk and Kodály, Dohnanyi’s music is quite conservative, owing much more to the German Romantics than to the folk inspirations of his comrades. The Aria for flute and piano bears the composer’s last Opus number, and was written in 1958 – near the end of his life – for Eleanor Lawrence, née Baker, a pioneering musician and one of the first female flutists to form a successful career in the United States. It is a lyrical and lovely piece, using the solo flute to convey the beauty of the human voice in song Antonin Dvorâk: String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96, “American” The great Czech composer Antonin Dvorak spent the years 1892 to 1895 in the United States, where he was director of the European-modeled National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. It was during this time that Dvorak wrote some of his most famous works, including the great Ninth Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.” While in America, the composer spent summer vacations in a small rural town called Spillsville, in Iowa, which was home to a sizable Czech community, and it was in this secluded locale on the vast prairies that he wrote his 12th string quartet, subtitled – though not by the composer himself – “The American.”

Dvorak was clearly influenced by the culture and natural beauty of the United States, writing that “the works written America differ very much from my earlier works, as much in color as in character.” Though the quartet lacks any obvious quotations of American folk songs or spirituals, it is imbued with a distinctly American character, including the use of the pentatonic (five pitch) mode in the first theme of the opening movement, a trait shared by much American music of the time. One nod to the American natural world is in the third movement, a scherzo, in which Dvorak transcribes the birdsong of the bright red scarlet tanager, said to annoy the composer during his hours of music writing. To convey this irritation, Dvorak humorously quotes the song in the first violin, interrupting the music with its repetitive “tweedle-dee.”

PROGRAM 2 Alexander von Zemlinsky: Quartet in e minor The Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky is a hugely important figure in the transitional period from the Romantic period into the new artistic streams of the twentieth century. Heavily influenced by Brahms and Mahler, he in turn was beloved by Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Alban Berg, and other important creators of the “new craft” in German-speaking Europe. Though he never wrote specifically in the atonal or twelve tone methods of his friend Schoenberg, his free use of chromaticism within traditional mediums gives his music a distinctly modern sound, even today. His E minor string quartet is a very early work, dating from 1893, and the influence of Brahms on the composer, then in his formative years, is unmistakable. In fact, it was written shortly Zemlinsky after first met the master.

W.A. Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonance” Out the 23 extant string quartets the Mozart wrote in his life, the 19th, commonly known as the “Dissonance” quartet, is among the most unique and groundbreaking, owing to its justifiable fame and place of import in the chamber music repertoire. As with most of Mozart’s quartets, much is owed stylistically to the influence “Papa Haydn,” as the composer affectionately called the “father of the string quartet.” This work was the last of the six quartets – written between 1782 and 1785 – that Mozart in fact dedicated to Haydn. The peculiarity of the work in the classical period is evident from the very opening: a rare slow introduction in a time when most quartets opened with something of a “curtain raising” gesture. Mozart grabs the listener’s attention not with volume, but with mystery and intrigue. It is this opening which earned the work its famous nickname. The dissonance generated from the interweaving of the four quartet members as they enter one by one led some to speculate that Mozart had actually written some incorrect pitches. The joke, if it can be called that, is on them, as this chromaticism becomes something of a motive throughout the entire remainder of the work. The composer picks up on the groundwork laid by “Papa Haydn,” opening doors to new possibilities for musical invention in the string quartet.

PROGRAM 3 Paul Hindemith: Clarinet Sonata in B-Flat Paul Hindemith held on to his neoclassical roots, no matter where his harmonic invention took him. He prioritizes proportion, balance, and counterpoint in his music, yet adopts a much more open conception of tonality. Beyond this, the composer was deeply interested in the unique voice and color pallet of each instrument for which he wrote. He penned sonatas for nearly every imaginable instrument, including many – the tuba, alto horn, and saxophone, for instance – that had been neglected by other composers. Each work adopts the distinctive character of the instruments at hand, and, though often quite difficult to play, each is idiomatic. Hindemith never asks any instrumentalist to do anything beyond reason, or “out of character.” Rather, few other composers can profess familiarity with these “characters” as intimately as Hindemith. The clarinet sonata, written in 1939, near the outbreak of World War II, encompasses a variety of moods and styles, shifting between angular and smooth melodic lines, and matching jaunty, jovial march-like themes with expressive lyricism. In short, Hindemith explores and exploits the multitude of voices in both the piano and the clarinet.

Peter Sculthorpe: Songs of Sea and Sky

Songs of Sea and Sky was commissioned by the Yale School of Music in 1987, on the occasion of the retirement of Keith Wilson, who served on the faculty on the school for over forty years as professor of woodwinds, also directing the Norfolk Summer School of Music. The Australian Peter Sculthorpe, who served as a composer-in-residence at Yale in the mid 1960’s, coming to know Professor Wilson both professionally and personally, wrote Songs of Sea and Sky for clarinet, flute and piano as an evocation of a beautiful and exotic place: the island of Saibai, south of Papua New Guinea. The piece is based on a traditional dance song from the island, and moves continuously through six sections, linked together in a continuous movement. As is true of most folk music, the songs of Saibai are intimately related to the daily lives of the people who live there. In this paradise, life is intertwined with the sea, the sky, and the flights of birds. These topics serve as the evocative subject of this beautiful and transportive work.

PROGRAM 4 W.A. Mozart: String Quartet in E-flat major, K. 428 If Franz Joseph Haydn was the “father of the string quartet,” then Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was certainly eager to follow in his father’s large footsteps. From the years 1782 to 1785, after the young Mozart first arrived in Vienna – where he quickly began making a name for himself – the composer wrote six string quartets that he would come to dedicate to Haydn. In a letter written

by Mozart’s true father Leopold, the spiritual “Papa Haydn” is said to have loved these six quartets. He apparently confessed to Leopold that “before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” From the very opening of this third quartet in the set of six, Mozart’s adventurousness is already quite obvious. For a movement in E-flat major, the composer spends a surprising amount of time ambiguously circling and hinting at minor tonalities. The movement’s primary key is not obvious until about twenty seconds in. Before that, Mozart disguises and disorients, casting shadows with tritone leaps and snaking half-steps. Surprises abound in all four movements, as the composer seems determined to catch Haydn – himself known as a master of unpredictability – off guard.

Ernst Dohnanyi: Piano Quintet No. 2 in e-flat If one were to hear Ernst von Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet in E-flat on the radio, and play “Guess the Composer,” perhaps the first guess would be Johannes Brahms, and it would not be too far off the mark. Brahms was, in fact, one of the composer’s most significant musical influences, and

lavished praise on the young composer-pianist as he was making a name for himself in Germany.

Dohnanyi wrote his second quintet for piano and strings in 1914; his first quintet was the composer’s first published work from nineteen years prior, and was the piece that first grabbed Brahms’s attention. This second quintet was written just following the outbreak of World War I, while Dohnanyi was still in Germany, though he left in the next year to serve in the armed forces in his native Hungary. A thick, ominous darkness hovers over the entire work, of which three movements remain. Fragments of a second movement, a lugubrious and tragic funeral march, were found years after the composer’s death. One cannot help but hear the clouds of war in this quintet, from the bleak opening of its first movement through the elegiac, hymn-like placidity of the final few bars. Perhaps this is Dohnanyi’s prayer for peace, uttered long before the Great War would itself come to an end.

Johannes Brahms: String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, op. 51.

Johannes Brahms was forty years old when he published the C minor string quartet, his first venture into the genre. He wrote to his publisher in 1969 that as Mozart took “particular trouble in writing the six beautiful Haydn Quartets,” it was only fitting that he do “his very best to turn out one or two passably decent ones.” Brahms considered the string quartet to be an incredibly important genre, on par with the symphony – which he likewise did not unveil until well into his forties – and, though his first attempt at the genre came twenty years prior, it would take two decades for hypercritical Brahms to fine-tune the work to his satisfaction. Immediately present in this masterful work is the composer’s gift for creating unity and musical cohesion. Brahms plants a few musical “seeds” at the opening of the quartet that he germinates throughout the entire remainder of the work. In a process later referred to as “developing variation,” Brahms carefully evolves these musical gestures, expanding into a wide spectrum of moods, styles, tonal areas, and themes, while never losing sight of the motives that bind the work. The Op. 51 quartet is a giant leap for the genre, and from this pivotal place in his artistic career, the composer was able to take just a small step further to his groundbreaking and masterful first symphony, perhaps not coincidentally in the same key as this work.

PROGRAM 5 Igor Stravinsky: Suite Italienne Charming and witty to its core, Igor Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne is the composer’s adaptation of themes from his great neoclassical ballet Pulcinella, premiered in 1919 and considered a watershed work in the evolution of Stravinsky, undeniably ushering in the composer’s neoclassical period.

The ballet was based on an Italian comedia del arte libretto from the early 18th century, and many of the themes in the score were adapted by Stravinsky from manuscripts of the same period,

popularly thought to come from Giovanni Pergolesi, known as a forefather of comedic opera.

Rather than simply transcribe them, however, Stravinsky adapts these simple, tuneful, and beautiful melodies with his own flair, throwing in surprising harmonies, unique instrumental colors, and playful twists and turns. The composer said that he “re-composed” Pergolesi, as though he had transplanted himself into the early classical period. What sort of music would Stravinsky write in 1710? Perhaps the Suite Italienne, which the composer adapted in 1934, points to the answer. It is a highly successful work, in which the cello takes on the sung arias, as well as instrumental numbers, from the ballet, including a raucous tarantella, and graceful menuet.

Quite often, the piano takes on the starring role, which is fitting, as the story of the work’s origins is not all that poetic, but rather quite practical. Stravinsky adapted the piece for himself to play on piano, with Gregor Piatigorsky on cello, in order to take on tours in Europe. Even the greatest of musical artists, at the end of the day, must somehow earn a living.

Sergei Prokofiev: Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 119 Around 1948, Sergei Prokofiev wrote his C major cello sonata in secret, unsure that it would ever see the light of day. In the few years prior to its composition, the Stalinist regime issued the infamous Zhdanov Doctrine, which issued new regulations for all works of art created in Soviet Union. In a swift campaign, composers including Shostakovich and Khatchaturian, along with a number of literary and artistic figures, were denounced as “formalist,” meaning that their music was too “high brow” and cerebral to be democratically accessible by the masses. Prokofiev was among the many composers whose music was dismissed and banned from public performance at the time. Nevertheless, he kept writing music, and this sonata was written for a close friend, Mstitslav Rostropovich. Before its performance, it had to be “auditioned” before the Composer’s Union. Sviatoslav Richter, the pianist who premiered the work, wrote in his diary of the difficulties of bringing the sonata to light: Noting that “during this period more than any other, they needed to work out whether Prokofiev had produced a new masterpiece or, conversely, a piece that was 'hostile to the spirit of the people.' …It wasn't until the following year that we were able to perform it in public.” There is a darkness to this music, achieved through Prokofiev’s exploitation of the somber lowest reaches of the cello’s range, and in the grave melancholic themes which permeate most of the work.

Sergei Prokofiev: Overture on Hebrew Themes Prokofiev’s unique Overture on Hebrew Themes for string quartet, clarinet, and piano was premiered in New York City in 1920, while the composer was on tour. It was commissioned by an ensemble led by Simeon Bellison, the former clarinetist of the Mariinsky Theater, who soon after coming to the United States would become principal with the New York Philharmonic. Though Prokofiev himself never held the piece in high regard, it nevertheless exhibits his particular wit and unique juxtaposition of the jovial with the bleak, mixing celebratory klezmer music with a nostalgic theme that one can almost imagine coming from a century old Victrola record player.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor When Shostakovich wrote his Piano Quintet in g minor in 1940, he had just returned to the good graces of the Soviet regime, after issuing his incredibly successful “apology” for his artistic wrongdoings, the Fifth Symphony. He was walking on eggshells, and the composer’s symphonies in these years had to meet the populist demands of the Soviets or else risk charges of formalism and subordination, likely leading to imprisonment. It was around this time, however, that Shostakovich began experimenting with chamber music, which, in its intimacy, became an outlet for the true expression of his artistic spirit, less censored by the Stalinist regime. The Piano Quintet showcases the many facets of Shostakovich’s artist personality: his love of Bach and counterpoint in the fugal opening movement, his satirical wit in the third movement, perhaps a jesting portrayal of the crudity and brutishness of Stalin and his comrades, and the obsessive melancholy of the quintet’s opening Lento theme, which returns again and again throughout the entire work. Perhaps this theme represents the recurrence of depression in the mind of a composer who, despite any attempts at distraction, was living through a truly frightening and mournful time.

PROGRAM 5 W. A. Mozart: String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat major, K. 458, “The Hunt” “The Hunt” quartet, as it has affectionately come to be known, was the fourth of Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to his mentor Franz Joseph Haydn. In his dedication of these quartets to Haydn, who was the indisputable master of the string quartet genre, Mozart wrote “Here they are then, O great Man and dearest Friend, these six children of mine. They are, it is true, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor, yet the hope inspired in me by several Friends that it may be at least partly compensated encourages me, and I flatter myself that this offspring will serve to afford me solace one day.” Though Mozart himself never called it so, the work came to be called the hunt in a nod to the opening theme of the first movement, which, with its jaunty, galloping 6/8 rhythm, and triadic melodic components, evokes the calling of hunting horns on horseback.

The hunt was among the most popular activities in upper class society at the time, and musical topics frequently served to remind musical connoisseurs of its delights. The premise of hunting in the outdoors infiltrates the entire quartet, including in the exciting finale, in which the second theme seems to issue a “call and response” effect between pairs of instruments, and at one point, with four staggered entrances among the musicians, one can almost imagine the distant echo of horn calls in the mountains.

Bela Bartók: String Quartet No. 3 There is perhaps no more unique voice in the twentieth century string quartet genre than in the music of the Bela Bartók. While most of Western Europe and the United States conceptualized Hungarian music via Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and “exotic” gypsy-inspired melodies in Romantic opera, Bartok travelled his native land, collecting folk music, and conveying the authentic Hungarian spirit through his experimental modernist language. As a result Bartok’s voice sounds almost otherworldly, as it comes from a cultural body that the West had long neglected. In his third string quartet, written in Budapest in 1926, Bartok combines the freedom and improvisatory feeling of Hungarian dance music within the bounds of a brilliant, tightly constructed form. Matching spirited liveliness with the cerebral. The work is in one continuous movement, with four distinct sections, grouped into two parts: a poignant, slow section, and a livelier second half. One can trace the development of just a few gestures at the very opening throughout the entire work, as though the composer is cultivating a garden of music from a sprinkling of tiny seeds.

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in c# minor, Op. 131 What can one say about this powerful, inventive, and watershed work, arguably the single most important, and perhaps greatest, string quartet ever written? Beethoven’s late quartets, of which this is the third to last in numbering though the penultimate in compositional order, represent the culmination of his artistry. In his final years, after the Ninth Symphony, the composer – steadily losing his hearing, and in constant bouts with health issues, depression, and suicide attempts – turned inward to the intimacy of these four voices as his medium for artistic catharsis. The Op. 131 quartet may be his most experimental, consisting of seven movements and covering six tonalities. It is the deftness with which Beethoven weaves between these connected movements, and moves between key areas, that defies logic. He takes the listener on an expansive journey, though by the end, when the darkness of c# minor has been lifted into the light of c# major, we are unable to recount just how we got there. The resolution catches us off guard, suddenly and abruptly, as though the work’s ending was an inevitability and fatefully pre-ordained from the start.

PROGRAM 7 Antonin Dvorák: String Sextet in A major, B. 80 (Op. 48)

With the A Major String Sextet, Antonin Dvorak truly came into his own as a composer. While many of his early works owe a great deal to German inspiration, there is no mistaking the distinctive Czech sound of this sextet, as the great Bohemian nationalist speaks clearly in his native musical tongue. He wrote it in 1878, after his Slavonic Dances had found success in Europe. Though the outer movements are in more traditionally “Western” forms – a sonata form with a truncated development section and a theme and variations, respectively – the internal movements are uniquely Czech. The Dumka, coming from the Slavic tradition of the epic poetic ballad, the folk-inspired movement is marked by sudden and drastic turns between melancholy and exuberance. The Furiant is a vigorous and lively dance, strongly accented, though with a more relaxed central trio section.

Arnold Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht , Op. 4 Though perhaps most often known today as the “father of twelve-tone music,” the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg is equally important as an expressionist artist. The expressionist movement is marked by a completely subjective view of the world, in which emotion and internal thoughts distort reality. One well-known example in art is in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, in which terror, angst, and isolation are all depicted in the coloration and imagery of the natural world. Schoenberg’s early sextet, “Transfigured Night,” is strongly programmatic, based uonthe expressionist poet Richard Dehmel’s work of the same name. Though completely instrumental and without the aid of words, Schoenberg depicts through music Dehmel’s description of a man and woman, new lovers, walking together in the night. The woman shares with her lover that she bears the child of another man, and her nameless companion reacts to and reflects upon this confession. The sextet, like the poem, is in five sections, and one can trace the emotional tone of the text in Schoenberg’s music. It is among the first examples of true program music in the chamber repertoire, and is a work of great expressive power.

PROGRAM 8 Franz Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 100 Franz Schubert’s pair of piano trios, of which this is the second – and one the last works written before his untimely death at the age of 31 – are symphonic in scale, covering a remarkable expanse of moods, forms, and a rich trove of melodies, though with the economy of only three instruments. Known primarily as a composer of lieder, Schubert’s song-like melodies abound throughout the work, though on an incredibly grand scale. The composer idolized Beethoven, who died in the year that this piece was written. Perhaps as an homage – or a bit of a challenge – to the great master, Schubert writes with a sense of profundity and of a length to match the great Archduke trio. The melancholic Andante movement, with its lamenting, almost funereal air, has

become quite well-known in popular culture, famously haunting the score of Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon, among other examples in the cinematic and television worlds.

The Strauss Family If you were to close your eyes and imagine the great city of Vienna, your conceptual journey would likely have the music of some member of the Strauss family as its soundtrack. The popularity of the Strauss family’s music in nineteenth century Vienna cannot possibly be overstated. They helped to define the genres of Viennese “pop music”: the concert march, the operetta, the polka, and, of course, the waltz. Without the contributions of Johann I, Josef, and Johann II (the “waltz king”), ballroom dancing, Looney Tunes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey would not be the same.

The popularity of the Strauss’ music should not unjustly diminish the perception of its quality.

The clever melodic turns and surprising gestures of these works require the skill of a great and inventive musician. The Louisen-Quadrille is a fine example of the popular quadrille genre, a sort of Viennese square dance for four couples, facing eachother, in the formation of a rectangle.

It is usually marked by six repeated sections, each containing its own internal structure of repeated 8 bar phrases. Though it comes off as light and entertaining music, in reality, the Quadrille is surprisingly complex in structure. Josef Strauss’s polka/mazurka, an adaptation of the popular Polish dances, is somehow more intimate than the music of his Father and Brother.

More introverted and cerebral than many in his family, he was actually an engineer and mathematician by trade, though many in his family acknowledged his musical aptitude and gift for composing, his brother Johann II once confessing that he “is the more gifted of us two; I am merely the more popular…” The waltz king, Johann Jr. was unmistakably the most popular and publicly successful member of the Strauss family. His Nordseebilder or “North Sea Pictures” is a late waltz, inspired by the composer’s travels on the Frisian island of Föhr, off the northern German coast. One can hear elements of both a tranquil sea and a violent storm in this work.

Even the light and popular waltz, as the Strauss family has shown, can be every bit as poetic and profound as more “serious music.”

Erich Korngold: Piano Trio in D major, Op 1 Though his name might not sound familiar to many, Korngold’s music is actually quite wellknown. Though born and trained in Austria-Hungary, he was invited, like so many European composers of the time, to Hollywood in 1934, in order to write the music to films. His first score was a reworking of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the famous Hollywood Bowl production starring James Cagney, Olivia De Havilland, and Mickey Rooney. This was the first of many film scores that Korngold would come to write, winning an Academy Award for his

work on The Adventures of Robin Hood. He treated films as “operas without singing” and drew a great deal of inspiration from the music dramas of Richard Wagner, and the tone poems of Richard Strauss. One can hear traces of his rich late Romantic voice, with its lush colors and expressive chromaticism, even in his first published work, the Piano Trio in D, which he wrote in 1910 at the age of thirteen. A child prodigy by all accounts, word of his talents on the piano had already made their way around Europe by the time that this work was given its American premiere in New York City. Though standard in many respects, the work exhibits formal experimentation and harmonic adventurousness befitting a teenager of great intellect, very little inhibition, and a bit of a playful side.

PROGRAM 9 Leoš Janáček: Concertino for Winds and Strings Czech composer Leoš Janáček wrote the Concertino for piano, winds, and strings – a singular work in the repertoire to say the least – in 1925, after turning seventy years old. The composer seems to have become very nostalgic right around this time, turning out the charmingly reminiscent Mladi or “Youth” for wind quintet, the operetta The Cunning Little Vixen, filled with sprightly music and forest creatures as the cast of characters. These animals crawl their way into this work, which is essentially a small-scale concerto for piano with a “chamber orchestra” of obligato instruments, each possessing its own distinct character. Janáček supplied his own program to the work, with each movement inspired by his memories of interactions with animals as a child. The opening Moderato, with an obligato horn and and insistent, stubbornly unflinching piano motive, represents a grumpy hedgehog’s frustration at the young Leoš, as he blocked the animal from entering his den. The second movement, with its leaping clarinet, depicts the composer menacingly chasing a squirrel through the trees, and the animal’s screeches after being captured. The third movement portrays, “with a bullying expression, the stupid bulging eyes of the screech-owl, tawny-owl and other critical night-birds staring into the strings of the piano.” The finale brings all of these creatures together, each maintaining its unique voice in this little meeting over a set of variations. The composer’s distinctly Czech musical language – often incorporating folk inspired melodies and unique, exotic modes – gives the work a flavor that is unmistakably Janáček’s own. Few other composers could boast that their music is so immediately recognizable in its individuality. One could attempt to draw comparisons, but ultimately, Janáček’s music sounds like that of no one else.

Gabriel Fauré: La bonne chanson The evocative La bonne chanson is a cycle of mélodies, in which Fauré sets the nine poems from the poet Paul Verlaine’s collection of the same name. Verlaine was, along with Stephane

Mallarmé, and Charles Baudelaire, among the most significant poets in the French symbolist movement, in which writers sought to change the function of language, as every word was intended to represent not merely a physical reality of objects and itself, but rather the effect that the experiencing this thing has on us. This literary movement had a profound effect on musicians, who sought to explore hidden meaning and evocation behind their effects.

Among the most profoundly modern developments in Fauré’s song cycle is in the use of repeating motives which return in subsequent songs, like brief, almost Proustian recollections, giving the cycle a sense of unity. Originally written for tenor and piano, one might imagine that the composer inserts himself in the singer’s role somewhat. Fauré was madly in love with a woman who would ultimately leave him for Claude Debussy. The poetry of Verlaine, dedicated to his own wife, seems a suitable fit for the lovestruck composer. Fauré is deeply in touch with the symbolist inclinations of Verlaine’s words, and it is appropriate to pay very close attention to the musical gestures associated with certain phrases and terms, as they almost always are intended to evoke something beyond themselves.

Maurice Ravel: Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarmé Like Paul Verlaine, Stephane Mallarmé was deeply rooted in the Symbolist poetic movement.

His L'après-midi d'un faune inspired Debussy’s masterful symphonic prelude. Maurice Ravel once said that Mallarmé “exorcised our language, like the magician that he was. He has released the winged thoughts, the unconscious daydreams from their prison.” In 1913, Ravel set three of his poems. This is perhaps among the composer’s most avant-garde and almost atonal works, though it still bubbles with Ravel’s quintessential lush coloration and “impressionistic" musical brush strokes. The accompanying ensemble is inspired by the lean yet colorful instrumentation of Stravinsky's Lyriques japonaises and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. Ravel exploits these colorful possibilities in flavoring each expressive phrase of Mallarme's text with unique and evocative hues. Text is conveyed in aural textures that one can almost reach out and feel with one's hand.

W. A. Mozart: Concerto for Bassoon in B-flat Mozart was by all accounts a child prodigy. Children have been compared to this great musical genius ever since, though there has yet to be, nor will there ever likely be “the next Mozart.” This bassoon concerto was written by a lively eighteen year old, in the same year that he wrote the first of his 27 concertos for piano and orchestra. In all likelihood, there were several other bassoon concertos by the composer, though this is sadly the only one that survives, until others perhaps emerge from obscurity. Mozart had a gift for exploiting the greatest expressive capabilities of each instrument for which he wrote. The bassoon in 1774 had about four or five keys, and so its technical limitations are obvious. Mozart gets around this by instead focusing on the resonant timbre of the instrument’s tenor range, and its vocal quality. There is an inherent lyricism to this work, the second movement of which contains a theme that sounds not unlike many of the composer’s greatest operatic arias. Technical leaps do abound here as well, and it is speculated

that, with the newest technological advancements of the day, the instrument for which Mozart wrote the concerto was able to leap octaves with greater ease than ever before. The bassoon’s inherent bounciness and jovial quality is ever present, and provides a delightful foil to Mozart’s expressive melodic lines.

PROGRAM 10 L. v. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 11, Op. 95, “Serioso” “The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public." These are Beethoven’s own words, in reference to his eleventh string quartet – the only one of his works in the genre that the composer gave a subtitle. He called the work “Serioso.” It was written when the composer, at the age of forty, was in the depths of despair. Napoleon, once beloved by Beethoven before the composer’s disillusionment with the imperialism of his regime, had recently conquered Vienna. He was in financial difficulty, poor health, and was losing his hearing more each day. What’s more, he had endured yet another failed attempt at courting a lover, his rejection driving him further into depression, leading him to write even of the appeal of suicide. The darkness of the quartet’s origins is immediately obvious. There is great intensity in this music, with eruptions of rage and manic, sudden shifts of mood. The most famous of these is in the finale, in which the anxious minor key music is suddenly lifted into the relative major, bringing this otherwise forceful and solemn work to an unexpectedly exuberant close. It is not unlike the end to the composer’s popular Egmont overture – perhaps not coincidentally sharing the quartet’s F minor key – which celebrates the triumphal spirit of man over adversity. Perhaps when Beethoven expressed that few people would understand this music, he was admitting that only those who knew him intimately could understand its message. Beethoven believed that composing music was his life’s moral purpose, and through the medium could lift mankind to a higher state of being. Though he may have often wanted to die, he had a reason to go on living.

W. A. Mozart: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K. 581 The year 1789 saw Mozart in dire straits, finding little compositional success, and, no longer in the services of the emperor, paying a high price of artistic freedom. Austria was at war with the Turks, sapping its prosperity, and leaving little money with which the aristocracy could support musicians, even those as great as Mozart. At this time, he composer wrote the masterful Clarinet Quintet, along with his well known concerto for the instrument, for a friend and fellow Freemason, Anton Stadler. The Austrian clarinetist is among the most important musicians in history, truly revolutionizing the instrument – then relatively new – as an expressive solo voice, and becoming its first true “virtuoso.” Originally, the quintet was written for the bassett horn – an instrument of Stadler’s own devising, similar to the modern clarinet though with a slightly extended lower range, and a slightly more warm and occasionally veiled tone. Though the clarinet takes the starring role, there is a conversational quality to the work. In the first movement, the strings present the material, and the clarinet responds, developing and expanding upon it. In the middle movement, the wind instrument becomes the solo voice, in an expressive

aria of sorts, above hushed strings. The third and fourth movements each highlight every respective instrument in turn, including the often subjugated viola, who becomes the solo voice in a minor variation in the finale. Coincidentally, Mozart loved the viola, and tended to play the part himself in performances of his music. At the Viennese premiere of this work, Mozart did just that, playing alongside his good friend, perhaps bringing some pleasantness to what was otherwise a very difficult time in the composer’s life.

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat major

D-flat is an extremely uncommon key in the string quartet repertoire. It contains five flats, and, as a result, relatively few pitches played on resonant open strings. The inherent color of D-flat is dark, somewhat veiled, and sombre. There is a sense of mystery built into the very sound of this twelfth quartet of Shostakovich, a completely unique work, unlike any other in either the composer’s own, or any other’s repertoire. It is also one of Shostakovich’s few ventures into the world of twelve-tone music, built not on scales, but rather on ordered sets of all 12 chromatic pitches in western musical language. While not exclusively a twelve-tone work in the vein of Arnold Shoenberg or Anton Webern, there are subtle nods to it. The composer was in his early sixties when he wrote the piece, and the fact that he decided at this point to “tip his hat” to another compositional technique is somewhat surprising. However, he never fully adopts serialism, using it instead as a tool rather than a rule book. The twelve pitch row presented by the solo cello in the very opening of the quartet does not dictate how the rest of the two movements, or even the first movement, will follow. Rather, Shostakovich, relatively free of the shackles of Soviet oppression at this point in his life, is inclined to experiment. He absorbs this new language into his own. When the cello arrives at the twelfth and final pitch of the opening row, held at length, it is the tonal center of the quartet: a shaded, ominous D-flat.

PROGRAM 11 Jean Françaix: Divertimento for Horn and Piano The music of Jean Françaix is filled with liveliness, wit, and humor. His works, most of which are written for winds, are virtuosic – requiring great technical mastery and refinement – yet have a certain nonchalance that make them sound easy. A man of tremendous talents and gifts, in all likelihood, composition itself came rather easy to him, as his prolific output shows. His talents blossomed early, and in fact Maurice Ravel once told Françaix's parents that "among the child's gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility wither." The humorous Divertimento for horn, as its name suggests, is meant for light entertainment, bubbling with singable melodies – not too far removed from those perhaps found in a burlesque house or vaudeville show – and a variety of colors and timbres that Françaix, a master orchestrator in the

tradition of Ravel, is able to derive from just two instruments. Few other composers could claim to know the distinct style, character, and possibilities of each instruments as well. The title Divertimento is a nod to the traditions of Mozart and Haydn, and Françaix's neoclassical bent, with his traditional phrasing, graceful contours, and adherence to form, are quite obvious.

However, just as Stravinsky, in his most "neoclassical" moments, was known to throw in a few surprises along the way, so too does Françaix. Listen, for instance, to the humorous and occasionally rude interruptions of the horn in the final movement, or the clever ending, and it becomes perfectly clear that this composer, though by all accounts a master and genius, never took himself too seriously.

Gabriel Fauré: Quartet for Piano and Strings No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15, Arranged by Samuel Baron C minor is a key that, in a great deal of Romantic music, often coincides with defiance, insistence, and transcendence over the tragic. Among the more famous symphonic examples are Beethoven’s Fifth, Brahms’s First, and Mahler’s Resurrection, each of which overcomes the graveness of its opening tonality, lifted into the major mode. Fauré’s Piano Quartet, among his first successful works, is not unlike these, yet its C minor key is imbued not with angst, but with warmth. Fauré was French, but unabashedly Romantic, in the vein of his teacher Saint-Saëns, and is often considered the most important composer to link the Romantic tradition of Brahms with the modernist French musical language and “impressionism” of Claude Debussy. Aaron Copland famously called Fauré “France’s Brahms.” Even in this very early quartet, however, one can hear traces of the lush colors and vivid harmonies that we come to expect of turn of the century French music, though it predates, or perhaps foreshadows it, by several decades. The American flutist and conductor Samuel Baron, one of the original members of the New York Woodwind Quintet, and a professor at Yale, arranged this work for his own quintet, with piano.

The lushness of the original is not lost, and is perhaps enhanced, by the winds. The C minor tonality, along with its relative E-flat major, is an especially rich key for woodwinds and horn, enhancing their warm color palette, while the instruments in turn complement Fauré’s sumptuous music.