Bálint Karosi, composition, December 21, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

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Thursday, December 21, 2017 โ ข 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

doctor of musical arts recital

Bálint Karosi, composition December 21, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Bálint Karosi b. 1979

Harpsichord Concerto (2017) I. Allegro II. Meditation III. Vivace The Saint Peter’s Period Orchestra Sonata for bassoon and piano (2015) I. Allegro cantabile II. Recitativo III. Toccata Adrian Morejon, bassoon A Hiromi Fukuda, piano The Question (2017) Text by Kai Hoffman-Krull (2017) Nicholas Nestorak, tenor The Saint Peter’s Period Orchestra Partita for solo harpsichord (2017) Chorale and Five Variations Bálint Karosi, harpsichord A

yale school of music

Concerto after Vivaldi (2017) I. Vivace II. Lento III. Prestissimo The Saint Peter’s Period Orchestra

Members of the saint peter’s period orchestra Edson Scheid, baroque violin A Alana Youssefian, baroque violin Stephen Goist, baroque viola Ana Kim, baroque cello Dara Bloom, baroque bass Bálint Karosi, harpsichord, conductor A

A

Yale School of Music alumnus

This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

artist profile • notes on the program

Bálint Karosi ’14mma, composition Composer and organist Bálint Karosi has won first prizes at the J. S. Bach Competition in Leipzig and the Miami and Dublin international organ competitions, and is recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship for composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His compositions have been performed by the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Spectrum Symphony of New York, the New Hungarian Music Society, Musiciens Libres, the Miskolc Symphony Orchestra, Anima Musica, Antico Moderno, the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival Chorus, the Yale Philharmonia, Canto Armonico, and the Boston Choral Ensemble. He is the cantor at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, where he directs the classical music program with a strong commitment to early and new music.

Bálint is a doctor of musical arts candidate at the Yale School of Music, where he studied composition with Christopher Theofanidis, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Martin Bresnick. He is working on his first opera, Lonely Hearts, with the Hungarian playwright Almási András Tóth.

and players who played and preserved them for hundreds of years. Composing for period instruments is a rare undertaking among composers today. The process can pose some technical and aesthetic challenges to players and composers alike, but the results can be very satisfying. The harpsichord, for example, has no dynamic control (in the sense of a modern piano), a limited range, small volume, and a weak, plucky, decaying timbre. Baroque strings have a more limited range and smaller projection than their modern counterparts. I do believe, however, that the advantages outweigh the limitations. Textures are lighter; fast passagework and ornaments are easier on the action of the harpsichord; articulations and speech-like phrasing are easier on a baroque violin. But perhaps even more importantly, players trained in early music are used to reading scores with very few or no performance indications, relying on expressive elements accumulated through their experience and research. When these players bring baroque performance practices to a modern score, the result is a collaborative, creative reading that enriches the performance in a unique way.

Harpsichord Concerto (2017)

notes from the composer I have always been attracted to antique instruments and their sounds. Antique organs in particular have the ability to transport us into our distant past and communicate music written for them with an authentic accent. The very existence of these instruments pays witness to their enduring appeal to generations of caretakers

My Harpsichord Concerto was made possible by a grant from the Hungarian Arts Council, or NKA. I wrote it in June 2017 when preparing for a performance of Bach’s Concerto in D minor, BWV 1050.

The model quickly becomes evident, especially in its first movement. The second movement is a chorale fantasia for violin and harpsichord on the chorale tune, “Es ist genug,” a melody composed by

notes on the program

Johann Rudolph Ahle, most familiar from Berg’s Violin Concerto. The third movement is not unlike any concerto by Vivaldi, with a fun exchange between a fairly virtuosic orchestral ritornelli and the harpsichord’s passage work.

Sonata for bassoon and piano (2015) I have always loved the bassoon’s timbre and blending quality from my years as a clarinet player in a woodwind quintet. I composed my Sonata for bassoon and piano in 2015 for the principal bassoonist of the Opera Orchestra, Bálint Mohai.

Bálint was the bassoonist with Musiciens Libres at the premier of my Triple Concerto for harp, cimbalom and guitar in 2015.

After the concert, he asked me to write a piece in a “singing” style for bassoon and piano. I have composed some long melodic lines in the bassoon and a repeated-note pattern in the piano to create a sense of continuity and blend. The bassoon’s floating melody is broken up in octaves to take advantage of these different timbres. The second movement uses special effects in both instruments in a recitative. The final movement is a toccata that recapitulates the repeated notes and rhythmic patterns heard earlier in the first movement. Adrian Morejon and Hiromi Fukuda gave its U.S. premiere at National Sawdust this past January.

The Question (2017) Text by Kai Hoffman-Krull (2017) My short solo cantata, The Question, depicts an imagined conversation between Jesus

and Pilate in which Jesus answers Pilate’s unanswerable question. In John’s account, Jesus remains silent but Pilate declares Jesus innocent. I always wondered what Jesus’ response might have been, or why he chose to remain silent. I sketched a poem with some possible answers borrowed from philosophy and handed it to my longtime librettist collaborator, Kai Hoffmann Krull, who composed the compelling text for this work.

Partita for solo harpsichord (2017) Concerto after Vivaldi (2017) My Partita for solo harpsichord and Concerto after Vivaldi belong to a cycle of keyboard works that I conceived for baroque organ for a publication by Wayne Leupold Editions. The cycle also contains a trio sonata, a passacaglia, a prelude and fugue, a partita, and a chorale prelude. In these Bachian genres, I matched the range of Bach’s organs (pedals extending up to D above the staff and manuals up to C above the staff). The Partita is a manualiter work, based on Ahle’s Chorale melody. It plays equally well on the harpsichord or the organ, but slightly better on the harpsichord with its arpeggiated textures. My Concerto after Vivaldi is in three movements, originally written for solo organ, later transcribed for a baroque ensemble featuring two solo violins. It follows closely the blueprint of a typical Vivaldi concerto with a few unexpected elements.

text

The Question (2017) Text by Kai Hoffman-Krull (2017) Pilate asked Jesus what is truth?

Jesus responded, Truth is yes each word shaped by the other.

If you say I am Pilate and I say true could I not say yes? The mountains are sand and the beach a mountain Yes true in my time, not yours.

In my time the mountains were not yet formed.

When Pilate heard this he went back outside and said go and crucify him.

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

He responded, Truth is use.

If a person speaks the truth a mind in the wind can come to the fire.

If a person speaks false their secret rusts the nails of the home and one day the wind separates each board from the others. Tell me Do not all tools need attention?

Tools must be used for them to continue to offer their use.

When Pilate heard this he went back outside and said go and crucify him.

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?

Jesus responded, Truth is coherence truth is when belief builds like rain creating the sea.

Can you take a man at the end of his years and tell him what he lived was not true no, we believe what our days teach us. Truth is the water everyone must cup in their own fingers.

When Pilate heard this he went back outside and said go and crucify him.

Jesus responded, Nothing is true but reality makes it so.

Truth depends on the discovery of the real, correspondences outside of our beliefs.

While it is possible to believe in something that is false it is the belief we should always question.

When Pilate had heard this he went back outside and said: I find no guilt in this man.

Robert Blocker, Dean

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