Program & Residency Schedule
12:30 PM - Coaching of student chamber ensembles, Music Room 2162:30 PM - Masterclasses for individual instruments (check glass case in LHSOM Lobby for specific locations.
Program
Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, and Piano.......Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)Quartet for Winds (1933).......................................Jean Francaix (1912-1997)
Allegro
Andante
Allegro molto
Allegro vivo
Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2 (1923)............................Paul Hindemith(1895-1963)
Lustig: Massabig schnelle Viertel
Walzer: Durchweg sehr leise Ruhig und einfach, Achtel
Schnelle Viertel
Sehr lebhaft
Intermission
Schaflos! Frage und Antwort (Sleepless! Question and Answer).................Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Intermission (1950).........................................Morton Feldman
Bagatelle sans tonalitee (Bagatelle Without Tonality)........................Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Novelette, Op. 21, No. 8.....................................Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Syrinx for Solo Flute (1913)......................................Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Sextet for Piano and Winds (1939).................................Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Allegro vivace Divertissement: Andantino Finale: Prestissimo
Kathy Fink, flute
Thomas Gallant, oboe
Pascal Archer, clarinet
Cynde Iverson, bassoon
Wei-Ping Chou, horn
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Program Notes
Camille Saint-Saëns began piano studies at the tender age of three and performed his first public concert at age ten, playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C Minor and a Mozart piano concerto for which Camille added his own cadenza. He entered the Paris Conservatory when he was thirteen to study organ, composition, orchestration, accompaniment, and singing. His various talents earned him the title of the “French Beethoven” by Charles Gounod. While his musical style was generally conservative with respect to melody, it was in his harmonic implementations that he was far more progressive. According to Daniel Fallon and Sabina Teller, “it cannot be said that he evolved a distinctive musical style. Rather, he defended the French tradition that threatened to be engulfed by Wagnerian influence and created the environment that nourished his successors.”Franz Liszt had mastered the repertoire of Mozart, Bach, and other composers within twenty-two months of piano study. He formally studied piano with Carl Czerny and music theory with Antonio Salieri. His talents were such that he was able to begin concert tours of England by age twelve. He met the Countess Marie d’Agoult in 1832, fled with her to Switzerland to marry, and eventually had three children with her including Cosima, who would become the wife of Richard Wagner. He was known widely and fondly for his technical mastery over the most difficult of piano repertoire, his own contributions to the literature for the instrument, his extravagant and highly emotionally charged conducting styles, and his pioneering of the concept of “thematic transformation” in his symphonic poems.
Morton Feldman developed a unique set of compositional and aesthetic principles from his interaction with abstract expressionist painters in New York City. These guidelines included, according to Steven Johnson, “a dislike of intellectual systems and compositional rhetoric…a belief in handmade methods; and a trust in instinct.” Some of his most notable compositional achievements were those from European commissions that were solicited by residencies in Berlin in the early 1970s. He was also a professor composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1973 until his death in 1987.
Claude Debussy was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. His artistic principles underwent a curious evolution from an admiration for the Wagnerian theatrical ideologies to an eventual realization of their supposed futility and inapplicability and his consequent turn to the Symbolist conceptions of art. These ideas were put to practice in his opera Pelléas et Mélisande on a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck.
Robert Schumann began piano studies at the age of seven. He became heavily interested in music and literature during his early years as opposed to the study of law, which he felt was too rigid and restricting to his own imagination and creative talents. After sustaining a hand injury by using a device to attempt to attain greater motion and flexibility of the middle finger of the right hand, he turned to composing and excelled in this activity, producing masterpieces for piano, chamber ensembles, and full orchestras.
Jean Françaix, like other great composers, was a highly precocious young musician. His talents were such that no less a man than Maurice Ravel wrote to Jean’s father, Alfred, on the importance of nurturing his son’s abilities: “Among the child’s gifts I observe above all the most fruitful an artist can possess, that of curiosity: you must not stifle these precious gifts now or ever, or risk letting this young sensibility whither.” He was even sent to study composition with Nadia Boulanger at the age of 10, shortly after his first piece was submitted by his parents to a renowned publisher.
In total, he composed over 200 works, many of them combining the traditional genres with personal compositional ingenuity. For instance, he retained the conventional form of exposition, development, and recapitulation while instilling into it a “dialogue-like” content. Muriel Bellier describes it as “incessant jocular dialogues breaking out among instrumental parts in his works [which] agreeably turn the musical discourse into something very like animated conversation in the form of brief phrases sprinkled with emphases and effects, different characters and great rhythmic variety.”
The Quartet begins in an unmistakably twentieth-century guise, featuring the characteristic short melodic fragments passed from instrument to instrument over a highly disjunct and dissonant harmonic accompaniment. The only instances of fully-developed melodies occur in the middle section of the first movement—a kind of elegiac flute figure over a diabolical, carnival-istic waltz accompaniment. The upbeat spirit of the opening section resumes and persists into the conclusion of the movement. The perennially nostalgic spirit of the oboe’s tone is featured prominently throughout the slow, second movement which is replete with a generally contemplative aura. The third movement’s opening passage is almost pointillist in nature. Shortly following that is a dance figure of a character that could accurately be described as a fusion of jazz and Celtic tendencies. The final movement opens with what appears to be an homage to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in terms of its four-note ostinato figure that is passed between the instruments. The piece continues in a frenetic soundscape that switches to a delightfully sustained chorale-type passage, changing at the last moment to a brisk concluding sweep.
Paul Hindemith’s musical education began with early studies on the violin with the Swiss violinist Anna Hegner and subsequently with Adolf Rebner, teacher at the Hoch Conservatory and leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, the ensemble that Paul would join in 1914 and of which he would be promoted to leader in 1917. Shortly after working with Rebner, Paul engaged in composition studies with Arnold Mendelssohn, Felix’s great-nephew. His sudden conscription into military service in 1917 would not stop his musical activities. He actually formed a string quartet with his fellow soldiers and continued to compose.
As for his compositions, his general approach is best described as “eclectic,” given his output in various styles such as marches, lyrical airs, and waltzes and for various instrumentations including solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and large orchestras. This ability to conform his musical material to so many different ensembles was a part of the “New Objectivity,” which required composers to be able to model their works to the occasion for which it was being written.
The first movement consists of a wide variety of permutations of a common rhythmic motive. Through it all, the melodic content is erratic and angular. The second movement is a waltz merely by virtue of the harmonic and rhythmic foundation provided by the bassoon, and even this is only given intermittently. The third movement begins with comparatively lengthy and slow passages, eventually giving way to an oboe and bassoon duet over an accompaniment with the rhythmic profile of that of the march from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It ends on a surprisingly somber and poignant note. The final movement is primarily homorhythmic and emphatic of rhythmic and harmonic figures of the utmost dissonance.
Francis Poulenc was comparatively slow in terms of the development of his musical progress. While he did begin piano study at the age of 5, he had to complete a traditional education at the Lycée Condorcet on his father’s demands before entering the Conservatoire—a plan which was ultimately thwarted by the unexpected and untimely deaths of both his parents, causing him to instead study with Ricardo Viñes. However, these personal obstacles, compounded by his assignment to military service from 1918 to 1921, did not deter him from continuing his musical activities, just as it did not for Hindemith.
Like many other creative geniuses, however, he suffered from mental illnesses throughout his life. In the late 1920s, he suffered from a major bout of clinical depression. These problems would magnify into what would today be considered a bipolar condition. As Myriam Chimèmes wrote, “subject to a manic-depressive cycle, Poulenc always rebounded from depression into phases of enthusiasm, and was possessed successively by doubt and contentment."
The first movement starts with an upward A melodic minor scale, surging in the piano, clarinet, oboe, and bassoon, but which immediately leads to the onset of the melodic and tonal ambiguity that is so characteristic of much 20th century chamber music. No discernible melody is heard. Short, erratic passages are traded back and forth between the various winds throughout the movement until a brief respite from the mayhem is provided in the form of brief, melodious passages in the oboe and bassoon. Right after those conclude, the initial mood restarts. After a calamitous arrival on a jarring chord, the bassoon intones a plaintive and melancholy solo which leads to a much slower and more subdued section reminiscent of a late-Romantic slow movement in its ceaseless chromaticism and periodic uncertainty. A piano passage with a hint of primitivism due to the parallel fifths heralds the transition to the return of the opening material. Horn snarls and woodwind surges bring the movement to an abrupt conclusion. The second movement begins with a contemplative melody in the oboe, which is passed to the clarinet, over an unobtrusive and rhythmically repetitious piano accompaniment. A melodic interplay between the horn and flute, repeated later on in the piano, oboe, and clarinet and almost suburban in its joviality, begins the second, faster section of this movement. A strikingly sad A-flat minor chord concludes the movement. A catchy dance rhythm and typical alternating melodic fragments rather than a fully developed theme pervade the opening of the final movement, until the music comes to a metaphorical “screeching halt.” The piece then comes to a dreamy and solemn conclusion, complete with lilting figures in the piano.
The other pieces on this evening’s program allow one to hear the instruments of the ensemble pieces in more exposed, individualized capacities, complimenting the impressions derived from their functioning within the ensemble settings.