The Yale Cellos Aldo Parisot, Director April 26, 2017 ¡ 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Robert Blocker, Dean
The Yale Cellos Aldo Parisot, Director
the yale cellos Aldo Parisot, Director Ole Akahoshi, Principal Mingyao Zhao Allan Hon Bitnalee Pong Páll Quinn Kallmansson Hyunjeong Kwak Jiyoung Choi James Rosamilia Yiqiu Chen Yeji Yoo Eric Adamshick Nayeon Kim Samuel DeCaprio Justin Park
David Popper 1843–1913
Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68
Sergei Rachmaninoff 1873–1943 arr. Dmitri Atapine ’10DMA
“Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart in Peace” from All-Night Vigil, Op. 37
Edvard Grieg 1843–1907 arr. Y. Alvin Wong ’09AD, ’11MMA
Holberg Suite, Op. 40 IV. Air
Maurice Ravel 1875–1937 arr. Claude Kenneson
Piano Concerto in G major, M. 83 II. Adagio assai
Robert Schumann 1810–1856 arr. Wong
Kinderszenen, Op. 15 VII. Träumerei (Reverie)
Tomaso Albinoni 1671–1751 completed by Remo Giazotto
Adagio in G minor (1958) arr. Mark Tanner
intermission
yale school of music April 26, 2017 · 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
please note As a courtesy to the performers and audience members, turn off cell phones and pagers.
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750 arr. August Wilhelmj & Aldo Parisot
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 II. Air “on the G string”
Bach arr. Colin Hampton
Cello Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012 IV. Sarabande
Photography or recording
Wojciech Kilar 1932–2013 transc. Sascha Mandl ’94MM
Orawa (1988)
Paintings by Aldo Parisot
Please do not leave the hall during selections.
of any kind is not permitted.
The projections you see tonight over the stage are of paintings created by Aldo Parisot in a career as an artist that began in 1969 and continues to this day. To see more of these artworks, and for more photos and videos about Aldo Parisot and the Yale Cellos, please visit online: » www.aldoparisot.com
program notes by Susan Hawkshaw (unless otherwise indicated)
david popper Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68 Cellist David Popper was born in Prague in 1843, the son of a Jewish cantor. Legend has it he would have played the violin if the local conservatory hadn’t had a shortage of cellists, but as luck had it, he grew into one of the premier cellists of his time. On the recommendation of Franz Liszt, Popper agreed to teach in Budapest, but he continued to concertize widely, and often performed chamber music with Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann. Popper composed more than sixty works for his instrument, many of which were the most popular pieces of the period. He dedicated the Hungarian Rhapsody to the Belgian cellist Jean Gérardy and gave the premiere himself in 1894 in Budapest. The work, composed in the “csárdás” style, shares musical ideas with Liszt’s Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody. It alternates poignant, highly embellished gypsy melodies with breathtaking pyrotechnics.
sergei rachmaninoff “Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart in Peace” Like many sacred choral compositions that we hear today primarily as concert works — the Mozart Requiem or Monteverdi Vespers, for example — the All-Night Vigil was originally intended to function as a series of movements within a church service, embedded within prayers, chants, and litanies. Rachmaninoff wrote the fifteen unaccompanied motets that
make up this religious masterpiece in less than two weeks, but the work stands at the summit of Russian Orthodox church music. It is a vast and spacious choral symphony for the liturgy, full of colors that alternately soothe and dazzle the ear. “Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart in Peace” was the composer’s own favorite in the Vigil; in fact, he is said to have wished it to be sung at his own funeral. The movement is a beautiful tenor melody — the only entirely solo movement in the work — over rocking choral chords that evoke the traditional Dies irae chords. The basses’ final descent to a yawning low B-flat (in this arrangement, a C, to match the lowest note on the cello) is among the most haunting moments in the work.
edvard grieg Air The Holberg Suite was written for the celebration of the bicentennial in 1884 of the birth of Ludvig Holberg, a Norwegian playwright. Although Holberg lived in Denmark and most of his works were performed there, he was still considered a native son of Norway. Since both Grieg and Holberg were born in the picturesque town of Bergen, it was natural that Grieg would be invited to compose for this occasion. From Holberg’s Time was originally composed as a piano suite with five movements, but an arrangement for string orchestra made in 1885 has emerged as the most popular. The music looks back to the style of Bach’s keyboard suites and also to the
suites of Grieg’s French contemporaries, at a time before neoclassicism became fashionable. In the Air, a long melody is heard twice at the beginning; then, after some additional material, a varied repetition of the melody concludes the piece.
maurice ravel Adagio assai Maurice Ravel was born at Ciboure on the French Basque coast in 1875, but grew up in Paris where he was educated at the Conservatoire de Paris as a composition pupil of Gabriel Fauré. Before 1927, he told pianist Marguerite Long that he was composing a concerto for her, then labored over the work until 1931. With the composer conducting, Long performed the premiere in Paris the next year. The Adagio assai from Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major has always aroused controversy over its origins. The composer himself hinted at Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet as a source of inspiration, while others have remarked on the theme’s likeness to that which opens Fauré’s Ballade of 1881. —Claude Kenneson
robert schumann Träumerei The great Romantic composer Robert Schumann, who was unhappy because of Clara Wieck’s father’s disapproval of their romantic relationship, pulled himself out of his depression to begin in January or February of 1838 his Novelletten, and in February and
program notes
March his Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Op. 15. He wrote up to thirty short pieces, but chose only fifteen to comprise Kinderszenen, a well-known piano cycle, which was not composed for children, but as Schumann remarked in a letter, as “reflections of an adult for other adults.” The “Träumerei” is the seventh piece in the cycle and is enormously popular and often played apart from the whole cycle, in many different transcriptions, and is sometimes used as an encore. The beauty of the music comes not only from its melodic construction but from the free manner of performance, using tempo rubato, a technique of performance practice involving a rhythmically free interpretation of the music. It presents a lovely ascending phrase, beginning with an upward fourth, in several different permutations that form a stable opening, repeated, then additional permutations, and a return to the original at the end.
tomaso albinoni Adagio in G minor The Venetian Tomaso Albinoni was one of the great composers of concerti from the Italian school around 1700 that included Corelli, Locatelli, Vivaldi, and numerous others. He was an extraordinarily prolific composer, also writing vocal music, including, it is estimated, some eighty operas, as well as nearly fifty cantatas. But it is as a writer of instrumental music that he is remembered today. He influenced other notable composers, including J.S. Bach, who used themes
taken from Albinoni’s Op. 1 (Sonate a tre) in four of his keyboard fugues. The Adagio in G minor was an incomplete movement from an Albinoni Sonata a tre; ensemble sonatas of this time were played by the aristocracy and often consisted of four movements alternating slow and fast tempi. The movement was discovered and completed by Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto. The form is A-B-A, with the A section, which returns somewhat altered, presenting a long series of melodic statements traded from one section to another. The middle section has solo writing in the manner of a cadenza.
in an arrangement that used only the G string of the violin. Aldo Parisot, who has conducted works for cello ensemble since at least the late sixties, has made a special arrangement for cello ensemble of the “Air,” which has been performed many times both at international cello festivals as well as in New York and at Yale. The piece was recorded by The Yale Cellos for the Delos CD Bach/Bachianas. johann sebastian bach Sarabande
The idea of grouping dances together to make a composition goes back even before the Renaissance. These dances were performed at royal courts for johann sebastian bach the entertainment of the royalty and Air “on the G String” their guests. The suite, a collection of movements based on the dances, was Although J. S. Bach is better known a very popular form in the late Baroque as a kantor of four Leipzig churches period and Bach wrote suites for enand as a composer of sacred music semble, keyboard, cello, flute, violin, beginning with his tenure in that and lute. Bach’s cello suites date from city in 1723, he also wrote a con- around 1720 or earlier, when he was siderable amount of instrumental in the service of the Prince at Anhaltensemble music and performed some Cöthen. These virtuoso suites were not of his music from his Cöthen period very well known until they were reduring this time. The Leipzig vived and recorded by Pablo Casals Collegium Musicum, a group of stu- in the twentieth century. The Sarabande, dents and professional musicians who the movement being performed togave frequent public concerts, may night from the D major Suite, is a have performed some of this instru- slow movement in triple meter. The mental music. Bach was connected sarabande was originally a dance with with the Collegium and directed it text in the 16th century in Spain and from 1729 to early in the 1740s. Bach’s Latin America; it spread to Italy, France, third orchestral suite, BWV 1068, was and Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries. It existed in fast and slow written in Leipzig around 1725. forms, but a preference developed for The “Air” for strings from this third the slow form in France and Germany. orchestral suite was transcribed for The Sarabande was also recorded for solo violin in 1871 by August Wilhelmj The Yale Cellos’ Bach/Bachianas CD.
program notes
wojciech kilar Orawa (1988) Wojciech Kilar, born on July 17, 1932, in Lwów (formerly in Poland, now in Ukraine), is today one of Poland’s premier symphonic composers. After graduating from the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, he was awarded a French government grant that enabled him to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, a city he still considers his second home. Kilar has been awarded numerous international prizes for composition, among them the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award in 1960, the Jurzykowski Foundation Award in 1983, the State Award Grade I in 1980, the awards of the Minister of Culture in 1967, 1975, and 1976, the prize of the Polish Composers’ Union in 1975, and the ASCAP Award for his score for Coppola’s Dracula in 1992. Orawa (1986) was composed out of sheer delight. In it, Kilar presents the “spiritual essence” of the Tatra Mountains with incomparable suggestiveness, painting a musical portrait of nature in the mountains and of human response to its awesome beauty. Many Poles call the Tatras their spiritual homeland. The title Orawa refers to the Carpathian region on the Polish-Slovak border, criss-crossed by the Orawa river. The word is also reminiscent of “Olawa,” which denotes a mountain pasture, its grass cover trampled by sheep and on which young shepherds celebrated the end of the grazing period with a boisterous “robbers” dance. Orawa is kind of a musical painting of mountain nature and the highland folk. The style could perhaps be described as interrupted
minimalism with repetitive themes and kinetic rhythms bouncing back and forth between small clusters of instruments and the entire ensemble. Subdued passages are punctuated by startling outbursts. It is a dialectic of nostalgia and evokes elements of nature, broadly phrased and saturated with primeval rhythms. The pentatonic modality keeps dissonance to a minimum while scalar ideas give the work an archaic character. The music of nature and folk music (itself deeply rooted in nature) form an inseparable entity, professing, as it were, a pantheistic outlook. –Sascha Mandl
the yale cellos Aldo Parisot, Director
yale school of music Robert Blocker, Dean Box Office 203 432-4158 concerts@yale.edu concert programs & box office Krista Johnson Manager of Concert Programs Kate Gonzales Concert Office Coordinator communications Donna Yoo Director of Communications and Alumni Affairs Katie Dune Design Manager David Brensilver Communications Officer operations Tara Deming Manager Christopher Melillo Assistant Manager Barbara Renner Robert Crowson Brian Daley William Harold Piano Curators Matthew LeFevre Recording Engineer Travis Wurges Video Producer special thanks
The members of The Yale Cellos belong to the very select group of young artists from around the world invited by Aldo Parisot to study with him at the Yale School of Music. Formed in 1983, the ensemble has earned an international reputation for its successful recordings, richness of sound, virtuosity, and many additions to the cello ensemble literature. In addition to sold-out annual concerts in Sprague Hall at the Yale School of Music, the ensemble has performed at Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall and on tour in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The Yale Cellos under Aldo Parisot may be heard on the recording Cellists from Yale issued in Brazil by Phonodisc and the The Yale Cellos Play Favorites, issued by Delos International. Their disc Bach/Bachianas, also on Delos, received a Grammy nomination in 1988. Their most recent recording for
Vincent Oneppo
music.yale.edu
Naxos, Cello, Celli!, was released in November 2005. The group appeared in 1999 and 2001 at the International Cello Festival in Beauvais, France, and at the 2001 Manchester [England] Cello Festival. After their appearance in the latter event, the New York Times called them “dazzlingly well-disciplined,” and Ralph Kirshbaum, director of the festival and a former student of Parisot’s, said “the sense of color and phrasing you get from The Yale Cellos is fantastic. Aldo Parisot is one of the great teachers.” The ensemble toured Korea in 2005 to great acclaim and performed at Cellofest (Texas Christian University) and the Dallas Museum of Art in 2007. In 2009, the ensemble presented a gala concert in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in celebration of Aldo Parisot’s fifty years on the Yale faculty. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times concluded a laudatory review of the performance by saying simply, “What a sound.”
featured artists Aldo Parisot
Claudio Santoro, Joan Panetti, Yehudi Wyner, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, whose Cello Concerto No. 2 (written for and dedicated to him) was premiered by Mr. Parisot in his 1955 New York Philharmonic debut. Since then, he has appeared with the Philharmonic on nearly a dozen occasions.
Aldo Parisot Director Long acknowledged as one of the world’s master cellists, Aldo Parisot has led the career of a complete artist — as concert soloist, chamber musician, recitalist and teacher. He has been heard with the major orchestras of the world, including Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rio, Munich, Warsaw, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh under the batons of such eminent conductors as Stokowski, Barbirolli, Bernstein, Mehta, Monteux, Paray, Carvalho, Sawallisch, Hindemith, and VillaLobos. As an artist seeking to expand his instrument’s repertoire, Mr. Parisot has premiered numerous works for the cello, written especially for him by such composers as Camargo Guarnieri, Quincy Porter, Alvin Etler,
Born in Natal, Brazil, Mr. Parisot began studying the cello at age seven with his stepfather, Tomazzo Babini, and made his professional debut at age twelve. He came to the United States in 1946 and made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, followed by extensive touring in the United States, Canada, and South America. After his first European tour in 1957, he toured annually as a solo cellist throughout the world. Mr. Parisot’s recital activities have been equally international since his Town Hall debut in 1950, and appearances have included London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and both Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Washington D.C. was the scene of another coup by Mr. Parisot when he played the difficult and rarely performed Schoenberg Cello Concerto at the Kennedy Center. In the spring of 1976, Mr. Parisot made a five-week tour of Poland, which included concerts with orchestras and recitals. He created a sensation when he introduced Donald Martino’s composition for solo cello entitled Parisonatina Al’Dodecafonia at the Tanglewood Festival. The New York Times remarked: “Those at this performance are not going to forget [Parisot’s] feat overnight,” and the Boston Globe wrote that “there is probably no cellist
that can equal Parisot’s dazzling achievement.” Harold Schonberg of the New York Times has said of him: “A very strong technician with a sweet tone and impeccable intonation, he is altogether a superior instrumentalist and musician.” Articles about him have appeared in a number of magazines, including the New York Herald Tribune Magazine, Music and Artists, Musical America, Music Journal, New York Magazine, U.S. Camera, They Talk About Music, Reader’s Digest, The Strad, and Instrumentalist, as well as innumerable newspapers around the globe. Mr. Parisot has recorded for RCA Victor, Angel, Westminster, and Phonodisc. During his career, Mr. Parisot has served on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory, Mannes School of Music, New England Conservatory of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Yale School of Music. Since 1981 he has been a regular member of the string master class faculty at the Banff Centre in Canada, returning each summer for teaching and performing. In addition, he teaches and gives master classes at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Great Mountains Music Festival in Korea, and other festivals all over the world, such as those in France, Israel, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, to name a few. Mr. Parisot has also served on the juries of several international competitions, including those in Munich, Florence, Chile, Brazil, Evian, and Paris (Rostropovich), as well as several others in the United States and
featured artists Aldo Parisot
Canada. In 1991, he traveled to Helsinki to serve on the jury of the first Paulo International Cello Competition and to give master classes at the Sibelius Academy. In 1992, Mr. Parisot gave a series of master classes at ChungAng University in Seoul, and in 1994 he gave master classes at the Manchester International Cello Festival, where he also conducted the cello ensemble. He toured Taiwan in January of 2000, performing with faculty colleagues to aid earthquake relief in that country. Since then, he has judged international competitions in Mexico and Korea and has given master classes in Venezuela. In addition to his musical pre-eminence, Mr. Parisot is a noted graphic artist. His tour of Poland included exhibitions of his abstracts in acrylic, and his paintings have been shown at a number of galleries, including those in Boston, New York, New Haven, and Palm Beach. He and his wife, pianist Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot, make their home in the Connecticut countryside, keeping a perennial open house for his many students who have literally come from all over the world to study with the master. Many of his students have been top prize winners in competitions such as Moscow and Rio, and several are pursuing solo careers. In addition, orchestras in Europe, South America, and North America are showing an increasing number of Parisot students on their rosters. A large number of cellists on string faculties throughout the country were once Parisot students.
As director of the Grammy-nominated Yale Cellos, Mr. Parisot performed at the May 2001 Manchester International Festival, where he also gave master classes and was given the Award of Distinction. Under his direction, the group has recorded two CDs for Delos and a CD for Albany Records of the music of Ezra Laderman, Three Works Written for Aldo Parisot. In 2002, a fourth CD, L’art du violoncelle, was released by Calliope Records. The ensemble, which also performed at the Beauvais Festival in France in 1999 and 2001, gave its Carnegie Hall debut in April 1998. Cello, Celli, released by Naxos in 2006, features works by J.S. Bach and Dave Brubeck. In May of 2005, Mr. Parisot and the Yale Cellos toured Korea to great acclaim. Mr. Parisot has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors over the years, including gold medals from Lebanon and Brazil, and honorary citizenships. In 1980 Mr. Parisot received the Eva Janzer “Chevalier du Violoncelle” award given by Indiana University. In 1983, he was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal following his performance at its Staff Day ceremonies, and also received the Artist/Teacher Award presented by the American String Teachers Association. In May of 1997, Mr. Parisot received the Governor’s Arts Award from the State of Connecticut for outstanding achievement as a musician and teacher. Mr. Parisot was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Shenandoah University in 1999, an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Penn State University in
2002, and the Award of Distinction from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England in 2001. In 2006, he was honored by Sejong with a special concert in his honor in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. A Yale faculty member since 1958, Mr. Parisot was named the Samuel Sanford Professor of Music at Yale in 1994 — the first recipient of this honor — and received the Gustave Stoeckel Award in 2002. In 2009, Aldo Parisot celebrated his 50 years on the Yale faculty and was the subject of a feature article in the New York Times, written by Ralph Kirshbaum, entitled “Cello Teacher with a License to Dazzle.” As part of the celebration, the School of Music presented a gala concert by the Yale Cellos in Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall. The sold-out event was attended by dozens of Parisot’s former students. » www.aldoparisot.com
featured artists Ole Akahoshi
Ole Akahoshi Principal Cello Cellist Ole Akahoshi from Germany enjoys a concert career before audiences in North and South America, Asia, and Europe in recitals, chamber music concerts, and as soloist with orchestras such as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Symphonisches Orchester Berlin. He has won numerous competitions, including Concertino Praga and Jugend Musiziert, and is a recipient of the Salon de Virtuosi fellowship award. Mr. Akahoshi has performed in Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Suntory Hall, Seoul Arts Center, National Center for Performing Arts Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei Concert Halls, Wigmore Hall, Wiener Musikverein, and Berliner Philharmonie. His performances have been featured on CNN, NPR, WQXR, Korean Broadcasting, and the major German stations. He has recorded for the Albany, New World, Calliope, Bridge, and Naxos labels. His most recent releases include the string quartet by Behzad Ranjbaran, and the Mendelssohn octet with Gil Shaham. Ole Akahoshi has collaborated with the Tokyo, Michelangelo, and Keller quartets and with Syoko Aki, Sarah Chang, Erick Friedman, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmar Oliveira, Gil Shaham, Ettore Causa, Lawrence
Dutton, Nobuko Imai, Jesse Levine, Myung-Wha Chung, Edgar Meyer, Franz Helmerson, Boris Berman, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Andre-Michel Schub, Garrick Ohlsson, and Elizabeth Parisot among many others. He has served as faculty at the festivals in Banff, Norfolk, Appalachian State University, Festival des Artes Brazil, and the GMMFS in Korea. He has been guest artist with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and Ensemble for the Romantic Century. He has given numerous classes, most recently at the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Sichuan Conservatory. Mr. Akahoshi has served as a judge for the Eastern Connecticut Symphony and the Juilliard Concerto competitions, among others. At age eleven, Ole Akahoshi was the youngest student to be accepted by Pierre Fournier. He received a bachelor’s degree from Juilliard and a master’s degree from Yale, where he studied with Aldo Parisot, as well as an artist diploma from Indiana University under Janos Starker. Mr. Akahoshi has served as teaching assistant for both Aldo Parisot and Janos Starker. Ole Akahoshi is the principal cellist of the Sejong Soloists. He teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music in 1997 where he is Assistant Professor of Cello.
Robert Blocker, Dean