Honoring Aldo Parisot: Yale Cellos

Aldo Parisot, director

April 20, 2009 Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

yale school of music April 20, 2009 · 8 pm · Sprague Memorial Hall

The Yale Cellos Aldo Parisot, director

Christopher Rouse b. 1949

Rapturedux (2001)

Dave Brubeck b. 1920

The Desert and the Parched Land (1979)

Heitor Villa-Lobos 1887-1959

Elegy (1999) Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for soprano and 8 cellos (1938-1945)

The Yale Cellos Aldo Parisot Director Ole Akahoshi Principal Hannah Collins Neena Deb-Sen

I.

II.

Aria (Cantilena): Adagio Text by Ruth V. Corrêa Dança (Martelo): Allegretto Text by Manuel Bandeira

Hyunah Yu soprano Ole Akahoshi, Mihai Marica, Lachezar Kostov, Laura Usiskin, Sifei Wen, Joann Whang, Sunhee Jeon, Alvin Wong, Hannah Collins, cellos intermission

Shannon Haydn Sun Hee Jeon Jaehee Ju Wonsun Keem A Yung Kim Yoon Hee Ko Lachezar Kostov Philo Lee Kyung-Mi Anna Lee Mihai Marica

Ezra Laderman b. 1924

Simões (1998)

David Popper 1820-1869

Requiem, Op. 66 (1892) Elizabeth Parisot piano

Mo Mo Jeeeun Song Ying-Chi Tang Laura Usiskin Joann Whang

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1 for 8 cellos (1932) I. Introdução (Embolada): Animato II. Prelúdio (Midinha): Andante III. Fuge (Conversa): Un poco animato

As a courtesy to the performers and audience members, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not leave the theater during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is not permitted.

Alvin Wong Jacques Lee Wood Sifei Wen

program notes

Chrisopher Rouse Rapturedux* Christopher Rouse’s interest in both classical and popular music is characteristic of many composers of his generation.

From 1981 he taught at Eastman; now he is associated with Juilliard. He is known for his orchestral music, as well as several original percussion works. Influenced by sixties and seventies rock, particularly Led Zeppelin, Rouse also admires Berlioz and Bruckner.

Rapturedux was written especially for the 2001 International Cello Festival organized by cellist Ralph Kirshbaum in Manchester, England. Kirshbaum, one of Aldo Parisot’s many distinguished students, now lives in England and teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Aldo Parisot conducted 140 of the best cellists in the world in this work, as was the finale of the festival. Mr. Parisot received the “Award of Distinction” at that time.

Rouse says, “In 1999-2000, I wrote an orchestral piece entitled Rapture for Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. When approached

by Ralph Kirshbaum to write a short, joyful piece for massed cellos for this year’s festival [2001], I decided to develop further some of the material from Rapture.

Rapturedux begins where Rapture ends, on an F major chord, and then finds its own way forward.”

Rapture is an eleven-minute piece which presents a variety of texures, including rhapsodic solos over sustained sonorities, and shows the influence of minimalism.

Rapturedux again makes use of sustained sonorities and interesting harmonic pro-

gressions. According to a news release from his publisher, Boosey and Hawkes, Rapturedux is an “epilog” (redux) to his previous composition entitled Rapture.

Redux comes from the Latin reducere, to lead back.

of the Quartet’s repertoire. Derek Snyder, in arranging for cello ensemble, has added some new material to my original composition with additional places for optional improvisation.

– Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck Elegy The Desert and the Parched Land While he is known as a jazz pianist and band leader, Dave Brubeck is, as he says, a “composer who plays the piano” and has written works for jazz ensemble and orchestra as well as ballets, a musical, oratorios, and cantatas.

Elegy was composed as a dedication to the late Norwegian artist, journalist and critic, Randi Hultin, and was originally titled Blues for Randi. She was an unusual woman who welcomed into her home traveling musicians, and counted among her friends everyone from ragtime piano player Eubie Blake and bebop pianist Bud Powell to those in the more modern school. When I telephoned her to let her know that we soon would be coming to Oslo and would play her piece for her, she declared, “I’ll be there if they have to carry me.” Sadly, she died of cancer before we arrived, so she never heard it, although she had seen the notes on paper.

In memory of Randi, the Dave Brubeck Quartet performed Elegy for the first time in Oslo before an audience of jazz enthusiasts who knew and loved her; and her two daughters, who had flown in from Morocco and England. The occasion was documented by Norwegian television. The piece has since become part

The Desert and the Parched Land was originally written as a soprano solo in my mass, To Hope! Composed in 1979 and premiered in 1980 at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Providence, Rhode Island. It replaced the usual Scriptural reading in the Mass ritual. When I recorded To Hope! at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, I improvised a short piano interlude followed by the soprano returning to sing the original theme. I have since discovered that many other musicians love to play this melody and follow it with an improvised solo. Again, Derek Snyder, in arranging it for cello ensemble, has added some new material to my original composition derived from an improvisation by Michael Moore, the bass player in my quartet.

– Dave Brubeck The Desert and the Parched Land is a beautiful long melody which repeats itself after about two minutes. Brubeck was asked to write To Hope! by Ed Murray, who was connected with the Roman Catholic publication Our Sunday Visitor.

The Mass has been performed in Munich and Berlin, as well as in St. Stephen’s Church in Vienna and in Russia with the Russian National Orchestra, and it has been broadcast throughout Europe and North America. Brubeck says: “Many of the themes that I play with my quartet work equally well in the context of a sacred service. It goes the other way around,

program notes

too – themes from my sacred works can be improvised upon by the quartet.”

– Susan Hawkshaw

Heitor Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras* The famous composer and pioneering music educator Heitor Villa-Lobos (18871959)—who synthesized Brazilian folk and urban music with elements of style from Baroque music, particularly Bach— wrote his Bachianas Brasileiras from 1930 to 1945. Mr. Parisot and Mr. Villa-Lobos were longtime friends. (Villa-Lobos wrote his second cello concerto for Parisot, who premiered it in New York City.)

Villa-Lobos created a national style for Brazil by incorporating folk elements in his music, as many other composers, such as Smetana, Dvorák, Grieg, Sibelius, and Copland did for their own countries in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Villa-Lobos was equally familiar with popular urban and folk music. In his teens, he left his mother and supported himself by playing the cello; he met many popular musicians of the time. From 1905 to 1913, he made numerous trips throughout Brazil, absorbing music throughout his travels.

An embolada is a form of popular Brazilian music involving stanza and refrain, often sung by two musicians. The music is syllabic and rapid, and accompanied by percussion, sometimes tambourines. A modinha is a “light and sentimental Portuguese song popular beginning in the 18th century that also became popular in Brazil.

In Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas No. 1, the embolada, marked Animato, is characterized by incisive melodies, sometimes legato, sometimes staccato or accented, set against lively rhythms. The running sixteenth notes suggest Bach, but the mood of the music is entirely Brazilian.

The modinha presents a variety of slower tempi and some lovely melodic writing.

Villa-Lobos has absorbed Bach and used it in the manner of a contemporary melodic Brazilian style. The fugue has a lively, insistent subject and is an example of contemporary fugal writing—a twentieth-century homage to J.S. Bach.

David Popper Requiem* David Popper was principal cellist in the Vienna Hofoper and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1886, Liszt appointed him professor of the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music. Known in his own time as an outstanding performer, he also composed over seventy-five works, largely for the cello.

His Requiem, Op. 66, dates from 1892. It begins Andante sostenuto, with a passage in F minor for the three cellos; the middle section of the piece presents an expressive melody in shifting major keys, beginning in A major, then E major, B major, and so on. A closing section presents a new melody in triplets in imitation in the three cellos, and at the end the opening melody returns in the three cellos con sordino. * by Susan Hawkshaw

Ezra Laderman Simões (1998)

Simões completes the trilogy of works written for Aldo Simões Parisot. The first work, written in 1994, Aldo, is a theme and variations based on a Brazilian folk song, one that his mother sang to him as a child. The second work, written in 1996, is Parisot, a concerto for multiple cellos.

The work performed tonight, Simões ( or “Simon” in English), was written in 1998. It is an adagio, the middle part of a larger work, and yet one that makes its own statement. There are two distinct contrasting qualities that interweave and give the work its direction: the first, harmonically rich with a gently questioning quality; the other, arching lyric lines over a rather stark underpinning. Into this dialogue, roughly halfway through its eleven minute length, there is a layering of individual lines that inhabit this serene space. These lines interrupt, collide, threaten to dominate, and abruptly disappear, leaving the original material transformed, yet whole. A final section titled farewell brings the piece to a close.

– Ezra Laderman

featured artists

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 Villa-Lobos. 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, Claudio Santoro, Joan Panetti, Yehudi Wyner and 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.

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 recent 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 recent coup by Mr. Parisot when he played the difficult and rarely

performed Schoenberg Cello Concerto in the Kennedy Center. In the spring of 1976, Mr. Parisot made a fiveweek 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 have appeared about him 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 in 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, and the Juilliard School. 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 Yale Summer School in Norfolk, 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.

featured artists

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 Canada. In November of 1991, he traveled to Helsinki, Finland to participate on the jury of the first Paulo International Cello Competition and to give master classes at the Sibelius Academy.

In June of 1992, Mr. Parisot gave a series of master classes at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea and in May of 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 also a noted graphic artist.

His tour of Poland also 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 CD’s 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 again in 2001, gave its Carnegie Hall debut in April 1998.

Cello, Celli a new CD 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 September of 1983, he was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal following his performance at its Staff Day ceremonies, and in 1983, he 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 Doctor 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 in 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.

featured artists

Elizabeth Parisot piano

Elizabeth Parisot, pianist, received her DMA from the Yale School of Music in 1973, and has served on the faculty of the School since 1977. She has appeared in solo and chamber music concerts throughout the world, performing at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Hispanic Institute in Madrid, and the Jerusalem Music Center in Israel.

With her husband, Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot, she has toured extensively, joining him in sonata performances as well as in chamber music with other renowned artists. She served as coordinator and performing artist at the Aldo Parisot International Competitions and Courses in Brazil for several years and has also been a guest artist at the International Music Institute in Santander, Spain, the Banff Festival of the Arts in Alberta, Canada, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Recent tours have included concerts in Korea and Italy with violinist Kyung Hak Yu and performances with faculty colleagues Erick Friedman and Aldo Parisot in Taiwan. She has also performed recently with Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker, and Ralph Kirshbaum. A

collabarative artist with cellists for many years in concerts, master classes, and competitions worldwide, Ms. Parisot was awarded the title “Grande Dame du Violoncelle” in 2007 by the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center at Indiana University “in recognition of her universal contributions to the art of cello playing and cellists.”

Elizabeth Parisot has numerous recordings to her credit, including the two Brahms Sonatas for Cello and Piano with her husband Aldo Parisot (Musical Heritage Society); music by Leo Ornstein and Alexei Haieff for cello and piano with Italo Babini (Serenus); Cellists from Yale issued in Brazil (Phonodisc); The Yale Cellos of Aldo Parisot and The Yale Cellos Play Favorites (Delos); three CDs with Queen Elizabeth Competition winner Nai-Yuan Hu; a disc with cellist Carol Ou; music by Ezra Laderman with violinists Erick Friedman and Kyung Hak Yu and cellist Pansy Chang (Albany Records); and works by Strauss and Prokofiev with violinist Kyung-Hak Yu.

featured artists

Hyunah Yu soprano

Hyunah Yu’s star has risen quickly since appearing as a soloist in St. Matthew Passion with the New England Bach Festival, directed by Blanche Moyse. In the same year, 1999, Ms. Yu was a prizewinner at the Walter Naumburg International Competition and a finalist in both the Dutch International Vocal and Concert Artist Guild International competitions. Her promise was confirmed just a few years later as she was nominated by renowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida and received the coveted Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. This was followed closely by her acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut as part of their Evenings of Song series.

Highlights from her 2007-08 season were concerts with the Bournemouth (Mozart C minor Mass) and Milwaukee (Bach B minor Mass) Symphonies, with the Peabody Symphony performing Britten’s Les Illuminations, a well-received recital tour of Korea, appearances at the Marlboro, Newburyport and Chamber Music Northwest festivals, a Town Hall recital in New York with baritone Randall Scarlatta and a recording project in New York with the Sejong Soloists. In prior seasons, she performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony three times with the Seoul Philharmonic conducted by Myung Whun Chung, again with the Aspen Festival Orchestra under David Zinman, and once more with the Vermont Symphony under Jaime Laredo. Ms. Yu also performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under the baton of Valery Gergiev, and the Bach Mass in B minor in Cologne with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk under conductor Semyon Bychkov.

Her recital career has also been burgeoning with performances at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Baltimore’s

Shriver Hall Concert Series, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Vancouver Recital Society, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Phillips Collection in Washington, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, at the Bemberg Foundation in Toulouse, France, and on short notice at Carnegie Hall, stepping in for Dawn Upshaw.

Hyunah Yu’s opera career has also been momentous, capped thus far by singing the title role in Mozart’s Zaide in New York, London and Vienna which was directed by Peter Sellars and conducted

by Mostly Mozart’s Louis Langree. Her debut CD on EMI, composed of Bach and Mozart arias, was released worldwide in 2007. It was described as “mouthwatering evidence of significant potential” (Gramophone, Feb. 2007) and “…a special talent, one whose faith in God and humanity inscribes every note of her divine Bach and Mozart performances…

Unmissable” by Classic FM CD Review.

Festivals have also been fertile ground for Ms. Yu. A regular at the Marlboro Festival since 2000, Hyunah has toured twice, performing fifteen concerts with Musicians from Marlboro. Other festival appearances include the Great Mountains International Music Festival in Korea with the Sejong Solists, the Aspen Festival, Chamber Music Northwest for David Shifrin and the Newburyport Chamber Festival in Boston.

Ms. Yu, who resides in Baltimore, toured Korea again with the Sejong Soloists at the end of 2008, performed with Boston Baroque in early 2009, and this season also performs a number of recitals and appears at several major worldwide festivals.

the yale cellos Aldo Parisot, director

yale school of music Robert Blocker, Dean 203 432 4158 Box Office concerts@yale.edu E-mail Us concerts & media Vincent Oneppo Director Dana Astmann Assistant Director Monica Ong Design Manager Danielle Heller Box Office Coordinator Tara Deming Operations Manager Christopher Melillo Operations Assistant Manager Kelly Yamaguchi-Scanlon Accomodations & Travel Brian Daley Piano Curator William Harold Piano Curator recording studio Eugene Kimball Director / Recording Engineer Jason Robins Assistant Recording Engineer

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, its richness of sound, its virtuosity, and its many additions to the cello ensemble literature. In addition to annual concerts at Yale University, the ensemble has performed twice at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, New York. At Carnegie, they presented premieres of works by Ezra Laderman, Dave Brubeck, and Christopher Rouse.

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

http://music.yale.edu

Delos International. Their disc “Bach/ Bachianas, also issued on Delos, received a Grammy nomination in 1988. Their most recent recording for Naxos, Bach to Brubeck, 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.

Exhibit and Silent Auction of paintings by Aldo Parisot You are welcome to enjoy the exhibit of Aldo Parisot’s recent paintings, which are available for sale. A list of the paintings and a price list is available on stage. If you are interested in purchasing a painting, please notify a member of the concert staff. Checks,

payable to “Yale School of Music,” and credit cards are accepted.

Proceeds will benefit the Cello Enrichment Fund at the Yale School of Music.