"With Pluck" Preview Concert, Apr 8

With Pluck

Yale in New York

david shifrin, artistic director

April 8, 2016

whitney humanities center

robert blocker, dean

With Pluck david shifrin, artistic director

Antonio Pasculli 1842–1924

Omaggio a Bellini, Op. 72 Ron Cohen Mann, English horn s Noël Wan, harp s

Henriette Renié 1875–1956

Trio for harp, violin and cello (1901) I. Allegro risoluto II. Scherzo III. Andante IV. Final Suliman Tekalli, violin a James Kim, cello a June Han, harp a, f intermission

Luciano Berio 1925–2003

Sequenza II for solo harp (1963) June Han, harp a, f

Manuel de Falla 1876–1946 arranged by Carlos Salzedo

Seven Popular Spanish Songs (1915) I. El paño moruno II. Seguidilla murciana III. Asturiana IV. Jota V. Nana VI. Canción VII. Polo Evanna Chiew, mezzo-soprano s Noël Wan s, Shin Young Yu s, harp

Claude Debussy 1862–1918

Sonata for flute, viola and harp, L. 137 I. Pastorale II. Interlude III. Final Ransom Wilson, flute f Ettore Causa, viola f June Han, harp a, f

s

Yale School of Music student Yale School of Music alumni f Yale School of Music faculty a

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 Profiles

June Han, harp

Ransom Wilson, flute

Born to Korean diplomat parents, June Han has lived in Belgium, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, The Netherlands, and France, prior to her arrival in the United States in 1994.

Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ransom Wilson graduated from the Juilliard School in 1973, and spent a year in Paris as a private student of Jean-Pierre Rampal. An exclusive recording contract with Angel/ EMI followed soon thereafter, along with extensive performances all over the world.

As flute soloist, he has appeared in concert with some of the greatest orchestras of our time, including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and London Symphony.

She holds a Premier Prix for Harp and for Chamber Music from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, a Master of Music and Artist Diploma degree from the Yale School of Music, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School. She was a student of Marie-Claire Jamet and Nancy Allen. An active proponent of chamber and contemporary music, she performs extensively in Korea, France and New York City. She is a member of Sequitur Ensemble, Ensemble 21, and Riverdale Sinfonietta, and has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Jupiter Chamber Players, Cygnus Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, and The Group for Contemporary Music.

She has collaborated with L’Orchestre de Paris, the Kirov Opera and Mariinsky Orchestras, New York City Opera, Boston Symphony, and frequently performs with the New York Philharmonic. Han has been a guest artist at the Santa Fe, Norfolk, OK Mozart, Skaneateles and Moab music festivals. She has premiered and/or recorded works by Wuorinen, Ruders, Stockhausen, Carter, Zorn, Kernis, Scelsi, and Francaix, to name a few, and her mother Young-Ja Lee. Ms. Han is currently on the faculties of the Yale School of Music, Columbia University Music Performance Program, Pre-College Division at the Juilliard School, and Bowdoin International Music Festival.

She occasionally holds master-classes in her native Korea.

He is turning increasingly to a career in orchestral and operatic conducting, and has recently been named Conductor and teacher of conducting at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. Since 2006 he has been a member of the musical staff at the Metropolitan Opera. Additionally, he is founder of a new ensemble in New York, LE TRAIN BLEU. He has appeared as guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra and Hallé Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Denver Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (with Sir James Galway), and Orchestra of St. Luke’s, among many others.

Ransom Wilson is an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Conductor at SUNY Purchase, Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Artistic Director of LE TRAIN BLEU, and Music Director of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company.

Artist Profiles

Ettore Causa, viola Italian-born violist Ettore Causa is praised for his exceptional artistry, passionate intelligence, and complete musicianship. He was awarded both the P. Schidlof Prize and the J. Barbirolli Prize for the most beautiful sound at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. Causa has made solo and recital appearances in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Zurich Tonhalle, Madrid National Auditorium, Salle Cortot (Paris), Tokyo Symphony Hall, and Teatro Colon, and has performed at festivals such as the Menuhin (Gstaad), Salzburg, Tivoli (Copenhagen), Prussia Cove (England), Savonlinna (Finland), Launadire (Canada), and Norfolk (CT) Festivals. Mr. Causa is a former member of the Aria Quartet and a current member of the Poseidon Quartet, and has collaborated with such renowned musicians as the Tokyo, Artis, and Elias String Quartets, Pascal Rogé, Boris Berman, Peter Frankl, Thomas Adès, Natalie Clein, Ana Chumachenco, Ani Kavafian, Alberto and Antonio Lysy, Liviu Prunaru, Thomas Demenga, Anthony Marwood, Ulf Wallin, William Bennett, and others.

Ettore Causa studied at the International Menuhin Music Academy with Alberto Lysy and Johannes Eskar, and later at the Manhattan School of Music with Michael Tree. After teaching for many years at the International Menuhin Music Academy, Mr. Causa joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music in 2009. His recordings include two Claves CDs: one of the Brahms viola sonata and the other his transcription of Romantic pieces, which was awarded 5 Diapasons. Mr. Causa performs on a viola made for him by Frederic Chaudière in 2003.

Notes on the Program

Antonio Pasculli Omaggio à Bellini, Op. 72 Launching a virtuosic performance career in his early teens, Antonio Pesculli was the 19th century Paganini of the oboe. His compositions and arrangements for oboe, particularly his Études Caractéristiques, required an unprecedented dexterity and adroitness from the performer. Pasculli also arranged frequently for oboe and harp, since two of his daughters were harpists.

The Omaggio à Bellini is a dizzying display of embellishments, challenging figurations, and expressive melodies. As if a da capo aria from Italian opera, the piece begins with a lamenting line in the English horn coupled with delicate accompaniment and commentary in the harp, but turns heroic and joyful in its second half. henriette renié Trio for harp, violin and cello (1901) The lush opening chords of Henriette Renié’s rarely performed Trio for Harp, Violin, and Cello immediately conjure up the impressionistic sound world of turn-ofthe-century France. Born the same year as Maurice Ravel, the two would have overlapped as students at the Paris Conservatoire were it not for Renié’s admittance to the Conservatoire at the age of ten and graduation at the age of twelve. A harpist and musician of prodigious talents, Renié won the Conservatoire’s Premier Prix in harp performance when she was eleven, and was subsequently sought after as a teacher by students more than twice her age. Despite her demonstrably exceptional abilities, Renié struggled to achieve the success and recognition of her male colleagues.

Beyond prevalent sexism, Renié’s deeply religious views ostracized her from the Third Republic’s push to separate church and state. Her independence as a woman and her religious convictions thus made her an outsider in the social climate of her time. But Renié’s legacy has surpassed and endured the social and political circumstances of her epoch, as she remains widely recognized as an innovator of harp pedagogy and repertoire. luciano berio Sequenza II for solo harp (1963) In the 1950s, Luciano Berio began writing an extensive collection of pieces for a variety of solo instruments, a project that would be ongoing for most of his life. Completed in 1963, the harp sequenza is the second of fourteen total pieces, each of which is a “compositional love letter from Berio to the repertoires and possibilities of each instrument.” The harp sequenza is at once idiomatic and innovative: delicate gestures and sounds defy stereotypical depictions of the harp, while maximizing the unique qualities of the instrument. In his liner notes to the 1999 Ensemble Intercontemporain recording of the piece, Berio writes, “French impressionism has left us with a rather limited version of the harp, as if its most obvious characteristic were that of lending itself to the attention of loosely robed girls with long blond tresses, capable of drawing from it nothing more than seductive glissandi.” Glissandi do play a critical, but whispered, role in Berio’s piece, contrasted with sharp, percussive clusters that expose the twangy and crisp character of the harp.

Notes on the Program

manuel de falla Seven Popular Spanish Songs (1915) Manuel de Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs endures as one of his most popular compositions. Written in 1914 at the end of a seven-year stay in Paris, the songs reflect a growing nostalgia for his home country. Each song is from a different region in Spain, demonstrating the diversity and richness of the Spanish folk tradition. The text ranges from expressive lamentations to sweet lullabies to flirtatious romps, and the character of the music follows suite.

The rolling piano textures throughout the cycle are suitable to tonight’s arrangement for two harps and vocalist, the harp perhaps evoking the guitars and stringed folk instruments that might have supported these melodies in their original form. claude debussy Sonata for flute, viola, and harp, L. 137 Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp is emblematic of the lavish impressionistic repertoire that Berio was responding to in his harp sequenza. Written in 1915 amidst a painful battle with colon cancer (which he would eventually succumb to in 1918), the Sonata’s unusual instrumentation creates a dream-like, watery color palette.

Though fragmented in phrase structure and form, the Sonata is composed in three highly intertwined movements. In the first movement, “Pastorale,” the instruments trade floating lines and embellished arpeggios. Moments in motion suddenly seem to become suspended and vice-versa. The second movement, “Interlude,” is propelled by the harp into a rhythmic and jovial dance.

The finale continues the energized tempo

of the Interlude, recalling a pentatonic, Eastern-influence language that characterizes much of Debussy’s earlier works and infusing a burst of fire into the Sonata’s otherwise aqueous sound world.

— Katherine Balch

UPCOMING EVENTS Smithsonian Chamber Players

Yale Choral Artists

april 10 Collection of Musical Instruments 15 Hillhouse Ave | Sunday | 3 pm Vera Beths, violin; Kenneth Slowik, cello; Charles Neidich, clarinet • With William Purvis, horn • All-Beethoven program: Tickets $25 • Students $10 Seniors & Yale employees $20

april 14 YSM Ensembles Christ Church | Sunday | 7:30 pm Jeffrey Douma, director The Motet: Music by Bach, Brahms, Busnoys, Victoria, Poulenc, Messiaen, and more Free admission

Lunchtime Chamber Music

Yale Cellos april 13 YSM Ensembles Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Aldo Parisot, director • A concert of music for solo cello and cello ensemble Tickets start at $10, Students $5

april 20 YSM Student Ensembles Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm Music for a variety of chamber ensembles Wendy Sharp, director Free admission

The Planets

New Music New Haven april 14 New Music New Haven Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm Featuring music by faculty composers David Lang and Aaron Jay Kernis, along with new works by graduate student composers Free admission

april 29 Yale Philharmonia Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C major, “Jupiter”; Holst: The Planets Tickets start at $10 • Students from $5 Yale employees from $8 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door

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Robert Blocker, Dean