David Shifrin, clarinet

David Shifrin clarinet

faculty artist series December 15, 2014 • Morse Recital Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Faculty Artist Series

David Shifrin · clarinet with

yevgeny yontov • piano

Monday, December 15, 2014 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall

Francis Poulenc 1899–1963

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano I. Allegro tristamente II. Romanza III. Allegro con fuoco

Claude Debussy 1862–1918 arr. David Schiff

Two Pieces from Children’s Corner I. Le Petit Berger II. Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum

Debussy

Première Rhapsodie intermission

Olivier Messiaen 1908–1992

Quatour pour la fin du temps I. Liturgie de Cristal II. Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps III. Abîme des oiseaux IV. Intermède V. Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes VII. Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps VIII. Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus Suliman Tekalli, violin Alan Ohkubo, cello

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, please silence all electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Artist Profile • Notes on the Program

David Shifrin · clarinet

Bright Sheng, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, clarinetist David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber music collaborator.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, Mr. Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. Mr. Shifrin is also the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. David Shifrin has been a professor at the Yale School of Music since 1987. He has also served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music, and University of Hawaii. Mr. Shifrin has been on the Yale faculty since 1987 and has been artistic director of the Oneppo Chamber Music Series and Yale in New York since 2008.

He has performed with numerous major orchestras including the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit, Denver, and Memphis symphonies, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras. Internationally, he has performed with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Taiwan. He has served as principal clarinetist with the American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), with the Cleveland Orchestra, Honolulu, and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Chamber Symphony.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared in critically acclaimed recitals around the world, including Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and throughout Germany. His recordings (on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI) continue to garner praise as well as awards, and he has received three Grammy nominations. Sought after as a chamber musician, he appears frequently with such distinguished artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson String Quartets and Wynton Marsalis.

Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by championing the works of 20th and 21stcentury American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano,

Notes on the Program If one might find a thread of commonality in French music in the first half of the twentieth century, without oversimplifying the multiple artistic streams that were occurring simultaneously, it might be this: the search for identity. Faced with two devastating world wars, domestic political scandal and upheaval, and mass immigration from abroad, including an influx of American expatriates, French artists were faced with a life that may have, at times, seemed somewhat absurd. Their response to this absurdity was to defy it, asserting their individuality amid the chaos of the time.

In the distraction of the humorous, the shocking, and the witty, they found a welcome respite from the troubles of existence. francis poulenc Sonata for Clarinet and Piano Among the very last works that the composer wrote, Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano mixes a touch of poignancy with his usual relaxed and playful wit, all wrapped up in a charming package. The sense of nostalgia that perfumes the work

Notes on the Program

likely has to do with the sonata’s dedication.

It was written in the memory of Arthur Honegger, an old friend of the composer, and another member of that infamous musical posse known as Les Six that sought to establish a new, distinctly modern French musical style in the chaotic and frenzied excitement of 1920s Paris.

Poulenc was always thought of as the most rebellious of the six, a truly anti-establishment “bad boy,” calling himself a “musician without a label.” Four decades of maturation and life experience softened the composer’s punkish edge somewhat, but it also gave Poulenc an understanding of human emotion that provides his late works such depth.

The duality of the composer, that of a playful man with a perchance for nostalgia and melancholy, is immediately evident in the first movement, which Poulenc paradoxically marks Allegro tristamente, which, in literal translation, means “sadly happy.” Brief moments of sorrow bubble to the surface throughout the movement, which, though compact, shifts through a variety of emotional states, from frustration through calm acceptance.

The graceful second movement is a Romanza, a lyrical form often favored by Mozart, who, like Poulenc, had a particular love for the sonority and expressive nature of the clarinet. Here again, we can sense the wind soloist’s complex emotional state, as it often floridly expands beyond the strict confines of its form. A wide range of dynamics and expressive markings fills the movement, in which the clarinet is often in dialogue with the piano, who, at times, seems to make futile attempts at calming the clarinet’s fire.

Such fire can hardly be contained in the final movement, marked “fast and with fire.”

The rondo form alternates brief moments of respite with thrusts of energy in the main theme, which brings the movement to a close in a celebratory yelp.

Though the movement is filled with fire, it is not angry. Rather, it sounds like a fastpaced Parisian jazz hall dance number after a few too many drinks (in the slower episodes, the celebrants rest at the sidelines to catch their breath). Perhaps in the end, Poulenc remembers his old friend Honegger in the lightest of circumstances, in those days when Paris was theirs, and the party seemed to never end. claude debussy The beguiling mystery of the title Première Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano is a source of intrigue for many clarinetists, David Shifrin included. If this is, in fact, a First Rhapsody, where, then, is a second? Did Debussy intend to write more works for the instrument, but never got around to their completion? The fact that the piece leaves the desire for more led Shifrin to ask a friend, composer David Schiff, to arrange the composer’s solo piano suite Children’s Corner for clarinet and string quartet. He was, in his words, so “delighted” with the results that he later asked Schiff to arrange a few of the pieces for clarinet and piano. These pieces “fill in the blanks,” so to speak, so that they may be performed alongside the Rhapsodie to round out a program of Debussy’s music for clarinet and piano. We may never know what else Debussy may have written for the instrument had he found the time and desire, but we can be grateful for these charming arrangements. The music from this suite has lent itself to numerous transcriptions, for everything from saxophone quartet to solo organ, and every imaginable instrumentation in between.

Two Pieces from Children’s Corner Debussy published the Children’s Corner suite for solo piano in 1908 and dedicated it to his daughter. The set of six pieces evokes a childlike character. They are by no means

Notes on the Program

simple, nor were they intended to be played by children, but rather, as with Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen, depict a child’s fascination with the world: playful and curious.

“Le petit berger,” or “The little shepherd” is in a pastoral style befitting its subject. It begins with the evocative flute — with the clarinet standing in for its woodwind cousin — of a shepherd, alone in a field, calling his flock. With its exotic whole-tone stepwise motion and modal colorings, it brings to mind the rustic quality of the shepherd character, at one with the natural world. His soliloquy occurs thrice in the movement unaccompanied, and is echoed by a delicately undulating figure in the piano. In contrast to the natural and unlearned “Little shepherd,” “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum” actually satirizes pedagogy itself. The title is a play on words: it refers to two important publications in music history: J.J. Fux’s 17th-century treatise on contrapuntal composition, and piano pedagogue Muzio Clementi’s book of piano exercises, well known to young students both in Debussy’s time and today. Debussy’s work is a jesting depiction of an exercise in finger dexterity, and the composer, in a move of selfawareness, actually pokes fun at his own repetitiveness. The work modulates through a number of different keys, as though showcasing the wide range of fingering possibilities — which extends as much to the clarinet as it does to the piano — and ends triumphantly, as though a diligent piano student, after a great deal of practice, feels a proud sense of accomplishment.

Première Rhapsodie Claude Debussy was never known to follow convention. His music was provocative and often controversial, and he often favored the sensual poetry of symbolist poets and exotic harmonic languages to the conventions of Western European Romanticism.

Even after winning a scholarship to study at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Rome, he never felt completely home in any environment in which he had to follow rules and meet expectations. This world of conventions was not one in which Debussy found comfort or ease of expression. He wrote, while in the midst of his studies, “I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!”

It must have come as a shock when, in 1909, at the age of 48, the composer was elected to join the governing body of the Conservatoire de Paris, as imposing an institution one could imagine in Paris at the time. Among his duties while working with the conservatory was the composition of an examination piece for graduating woodwind students. His contribution was the Première Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano, which he would later orchestrate.

The composer was particularly proud of the brief work, which transcends its status as a “test piece,” showcasing not only the expressive and technical capacity of the performer, but the wide palate of colors and voices available to the clarinet. The work mercurially wanders through a number of unique characters, with sudden changes in tempo, style, and theme. It opens with a placid, lyrical section, which the composer evocatively marks “dreamily slow.” Following a brief and florid cadenza for the solo instrument, the music launches into a more animated section, in which the clarinet playfully interacts with its accompaniment, as though in a pleasant conversation. The composer deftly layers themes that are presented earlier in the work, and reorders them, as though evoking the capricious nature of human memory. In its complexity and wide range of moods and tones, it provides a great test for the clarinet soloist, who must negotiate the composer’s

Notes on the Program

elaborately woven emotional tapestry. We can be grateful that its composer agreed, late in his career, to return to school himself. olivier messiaen Quatour pour la fin du temps It is difficult for us to fully envision the experience of hearing Olivier Messiaen’s Quatour pour la fin du temps as it was first heard in 1941. From the sheltered safety and warm comfort of a modern concert hall, only our imaginations can possibly bridge that gap. The premiere was given in Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Eastern Germany, near the Polish border, on a brutally cold evening in January. There was no heat, little light, and scarcely any comfort of which to speak. However, the work proved to be something of a bright light to these souls in a very dark time. It brought together some 400 prisoners with German soldiers, who sat at the front row.

For a moment in time, music allowed both audience and performers to transcend the harsh reality of their lives. This moment in time is prolonged by the effect of the music itself.

The title “Quartet for the End of Time” carries multiple meanings. The composer’s inscription in the score alludes to the Biblical description of the end of time, depicted in the book of Revelation. Messiaen writes that the work is “in homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, ‘There shall be time no longer.’”

Surely, at such an ominous moment in history, the idea of the apocalypse seems discomfortingly similar. With no conception of when the war would end, the notion of endlessness and the absence of measurable time are themes that were, for Messiaen and his collaborators, frighteningly close to home. Messiaen, who had fought in the French resistance, was captured in 1940,

and, after acquiring a pen and paper from a sympathetic guard, begun work on a trio for violin, cello, and clarinet, as three fellow prisoners played these instruments.

The work was later expanded to include piano, which the composer himself played in the prison.

The collaborative effort of the piece – the fact that it exists because of the humanizing empathy of men – is part of what gives the quartet its power. Messiaen wrote the music, but without Carl-Albert Brüll, the German prison guard who found it in his heart to help the composer in his effort to present the piece, neither they, nor we, would share in its experience.

The “end of time” is likewise manifested musically, both by the choice of tempo — the opening movement is marked “infinitely slow” — and by the composer’s unique treatment of rhythm, which is often in flux, without adhering to a steady pulse. Often, the melody seems to float above the pulse, as though liberated. In the eight movements, which might be thought of as tableaux, the composer depicts the joyous songs of birds, the kaleidoscopic colors of rainbows, and in the sixth movement — the climactic “Dance of Fury” — gongs and trumpets tolling the catastrophic end of the world.

Messiaen hypnotizes us with music so slow that time stands still, removing the listener from the reality of the moment.

Though we cannot fully comprehend the experience that Messiaen and his colleagues shared in a time of war and devastation, we can, just as they did, share in this notion of an imagined paradise. The final, glimmering chords of the piano, under the slowly fading, delicate sonority of the violin, shine like a faint ray of light through a dark cloud. We can, if we allow ourselves, lose ourselves in time’s end.

— Patrick Campbell Jankowski

Notes on the Program

The following are the Messiaen’s own descriptions of each movement, taken from his preface to the score: I. Liturgie de cristal (Liturgy of Crystal) Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees.

Transpose this onto a religious plane and you have the harmonious silence of Heaven.

II. Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Vocalise for the angel who announces the end of time) The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this mighty angel, a rainbow upon his head and clothed with a cloud, who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. In the middle section are the impalpable harmonies of heaven. In the piano, sweet cascades of blueorange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and cello.

III. Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of birds) The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.

IV. Intermède (Interlude) Scherzo, of a more individual character than the other movements, but linked to them nevertheless by certain melodic recollections.

V. Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the eternity of Jesus) Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, “infinitely slow”, on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, “whose time never runs out”. The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal distance. “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1; King James Version)

VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets) Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece of the series. The four instruments in unison imitate gongs and trumpets (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse followed by various disasters, the trumpet of the seventh angel announcing consummation of the mystery of God). Use of added values, of augmented or diminished rhythms, of non-retrogradable rhythms. Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness. Hear especially all the terrible fortissimo of the augmentation of the theme and changes of register of its different notes, towards the end of the piece.

VII. Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time) Recurring here are certain passages from the second movement. The angel appears in full force, especially the rainbow that covers him (the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom, and all luminescent and sonorous vibration). – In my dreams, I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, known colors and shapes; then, after this transitional stage, I pass through the unreal and suffer, with ecstasy, a tournament; a roundabout compenetration of super-human sounds and colors. These swords of fire, this blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: there is the tangle, there are the rainbows.

VIII. Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus (Praise to the immortality of Jesus) Large violin solo, counterpart to the violon-cello solo of the fifth movement. Why this second eulogy? It is especially aimed at second aspect of Jesus, Jesus the Man, the Word made flesh, immortally risen for our communication of his life. It is all love. Its slow ascent to the acutely extreme is the ascent of man to his god, the child of God to his Father, the being made divine towards Paradise.

Upcoming Events

Peter Frankl, piano

Yongyan Hu, guest conductor

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