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Program notes by David Aaron Carpenter
Phantasy for Viola and Piano, Opus 54
EDWIN YORK BOWEN
Born February 22, 1884, Crouch Hill London
Died November 23, 1961, Hamstead, England
Edwin York Bowen, born in 1884 in a London suburb, was a prolific
composer whose compositions span two World Wars. Bowen’s
eclectically-blended music is unabashedly late-Romantic in personality
and ambience. His works are brooding and emotional with a haunting and
sensual beauty, qualities which explain why Bowen is sometimes referred
to as the “English Rachmaninoff.” In addition to being an accomplished
pianist and composer,
Bowen was a talented conductor, organist, violist, and horn player.
Despite achieving considerable success during his lifetime, many of the
composer’s works remained unpublished and underperformed until after
his death in 1961. The Phantasy in F for Viola and Piano
(1918) contains rich and colorful chromatic harmonies, engaging and
virtuosic writing for the viola, and an overall expressivity.
Completed six months before the Armistice at the end of the First World War in 1918, the substantial Phantasy in F Major, Op. 54
was premièred later that momentous year by the legendary violist Lionel
Tertis at London’s Wigmore Hall. The winner of the 1918 Cobbett prize,
the Phantasyis a bittersweet score. This is an introspective
work that juxtaposes energetic and languid episodes and concludes with
a dramatic finale. An instrumentalist himself, Bowen championed the
deep tonal quality of the viola, and composed numerous works for it.
Bowen frequently performed as a pianist alongside Tertis, and in 1908
Tertis premièred Bowen’s Viola Concerto in C Minor, Op. 25.
Bowen also supported Tertis in his campaign to increase the popularity
of the viola as a solo instrument. In addition to the
previously-mentioned viola concerto, Bowen made numerous other
contributions to the viola repertoire which included the Phantasy,
a quartet for four violas, and two sonatas for viola and piano.
Alongside Arnold Bax and Benjamin Dale, Bowen was one of the first
English composers to add original works to the modern viola repertoire.
Viola Sonata
REBECCA CLARKE
Born August 17, 1886, Harrow, England
Died October 13, 1979, New York City
In a genre of music so dominated by male composers, it is both
refreshing and illuminating to study a major sonata of a female
composer. Rebecca Clarke lived to the age of 93 and composed in the
face of both Victorian stigmas of women and chronic depression. She was
born in England in 1879 and started musical studies on the violin at
the Royal Academy of Music, where she also later studied composition.
To support herself financially, she maintained an active performing
career on the viola, an instrument she would feature in most of her
later works, and became one of the first female orchestral players in
Britain. In 1916 she moved to the United States to continue her
performing career and to focus more closely on composition, an activity
facilitated by her friend and patron, Elizabeth Coolidge.
In an anonymous competition sponsored by Coolidge, Clarke tied Ernest
Bloch for first prize, thereby establishing herself as a forerunner in
20th century composition. Her entry was none other than the Viola Sonata, her most famous work, and one that has become a staple of the viola repertoire. Clarke’s 1919 Viola Sonata is
a powerful example of post-Romantic sonata form with strong
Impressionistic undercurrents. Her use of the pentatonic scale
throughout the work and the clarity of texture elicit hints of Debussy,
Ravel, and Franck. During the Coolidge competition, some of the judges
mistakenly identified the Sonata as a work of Ravel, while The Daily Telegraph reported
“Rebecca Clarke”to be an alias for Ernest Bloch. Indeed, upon first
hearing, this seemingly obscure work takes on an accessible and
familiar quality because of its Impressionist vocabulary. Like much of
her work, this piece possesses soaring melodies suspended above
colorful harmonies as she juxtaposes simple passages with complex
rhythms and stormy eruptions.
The score of the sonata is prefaced with a French poem by Alfred de Musset titled “May Night”:
Poet play your lute, the wine of youth
Ferments tonight in the veins of God
Indeed, in addition to the influence of French musical idiom both in
the tonality and cyclical structure of the work (music from the first
movement reappears in the last), Clarke utilizes an apt French poem to
set the intoxicating mood of the piece. The first movement Impetuosobegins
with a trumpet-like fanfare of open fifth chords, only to immediately
subside into a quasi-cadenza for the viola (the score is marked ad libitum while the piano holds a steady bass chord). Several measures later, the viola accelerates into the Poco Agitato section
where Clarke offers the jagged 4-on-3 rhythm using pentatonicism. The
tradeoff between impetuosity and mollification characterizes much of
this movement, as the first theme’s reappearance is as much a surprise
as the sudden 32nd-note arpeggios in the viola accompanying the soaring
triplets of the piano.
The second movement Vivace is characterized by a 6/8 time
signature and gives the sense of a light, oriental-style dance. This
movement frequently uses chromaticism to propel the developmental
sections forward. Clarke’s emphasis on harmonics and open intervals
contributes to the Oriental tonality. In the French cyclical style, the
last movement opens with an Adagio whose theme is a tenor
version of the first movement’s main theme. However, this range is not
representative of the movement as most of it is written in treble clef
in the higher register of the viola. She ends the work as intensely and
regally as she commenced.
Romeo and Juliet, Opus 64 (arr. Borisovsky)
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Born April 27, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine
Died March 5, 1953, Moscow
Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, composed in
1935 on commission by the Kirov Ballet, has enjoyed a musical
resurgence due to recent scholarship and new revelations concerning the
original score. This current transcription for viola was made by
Russian violist Vadim Borisovsky, a prolific transcriber of more than
250 pieces for viola and viola d’amore, and professor of, among others,
Yuri Bashmet. Notable violinists such as David Oistrakh have also used
and performed Borisovsky’s Romeo and Juliet transcription. Of the 13 scenes Borisovsky transcribed, five will be performed on this concert: the Introduction to the entire ballet, followed by The Young Juliet and Dance of the Knights from Act I, Scene 2; the heartbreaking Death of Juliet from the end of the ballet; and finally Mercutio,
again from Act I, Scene 2—a non-chronological ordering of events which
ends things on a fairly vivacious note. It is interesting to observe
that in order to satisfy the Soviet censors during the Stalin regime,
Prokofiev had to shuffle sections of his original version to eliminate
20 minutes of music, change the orchestration to a more lavish score,
and keep the ending faithful to Shakespeare’s tragedy. Indeed,
Prokofiev’s original version contained a “happy” ending for the ballet
and remained secluded in Russia’s state archives for nearly 70 years
until Simon Morrison, a musicologist at Princeton University who was in
Moscow doing research for a book on Prokofiev, unexpectedly came across
it in 2006.
As Morrison states, what motivated Prokofiev’s original version was his
devout belief in Christian Science, namely that to the faithful, sin,
sickness, and death do not really exist; they are illusions of the mind
that the spirit can transcend.
Le Grand Tango (arr. Gubaidulina)
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
Born March 11, 1921, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Died July 4, 1992 Buenos Aires
The great Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla helped to pioneer the
“New Tango,” (Tango Nuevo) which is distinct from the traditional tango
and incorporates elements of jazz, contemporary uses of extended
polyphony and dissonances, and a complex use of counterpoint.
Piazzolla’s musical idiom elevated the tango to new heights by bringing
it to the concert hall while preserving the original qualities that
Carlos Gardel created. As the composer John Adams says of Piazzolla’s
music, “It is a rare musical mind that can elevate a single small
musical form like the tango into an expressive vehicle of such depth
and range. The impression we take away from experiencing these tangos
is of a complete and indigenous native voice, one whose roots were as
innately Buenos Aireian as Tchaikovsky’s were Muscovite.” Piazzolla was
a notable student of the renowned composer Nadia Boulanger, who helped
develop Piazzolla’s own musical voice, as he attempted to synthesize
tango with classical music and jazz.
He was a prolific composer of original tango compositions and
arrangements, which include orchestral works, chamber pieces, and works
for the solo classical guitar. Piazzolla was 61 in 1982, when he wrote
the Grand Tango for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the première in New Orleans in 1990. Like many of Piazzolla’s compositions, the Grand Tango
has been adapted, since its première, for other instruments. In this
case the transcription (originally for violin, and first recorded by
Gidon Kremer) was made by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina.
Program note by Eric Bromberger
La Campanella, Opus 7 (arr. Primrose)
NICOLÒ PAGANINI
Born October 27, 1782, Genoa
Died May 27, 1840, Nice
Nicolò Paganini practically invented the phenomenon of the touring
virtuoso superstar as we know it today. He learned to play the violin
from his father, and at about age 30 he embarked on a series of vastly
popular tours throughout Europe that dazzled all who heard him. Chopin
heard Paganini in Warsaw, Liszt heard him in Paris, Schubert heard him
in Vienna, and all were struck dumb with admiration for his technical
achievement, which seemed almost beyond mortal capacity. The impression
of superhuman powers quickly led to rumors that Paganini had acquired
these abilities by selling his soul to the devil, and controversy began
to swirl around him. Paganini’s sickly, cadaverous appearance
encouraged such speculation, and some even swore that they saw sparks
flying from Paganini’s bow when he played in darkened concert halls.
Ever the showman, Paganini was well aware of the box office value of
such rumors and did little to dispel them.
Paganini composed his Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Minor in
about 1826. That concerto is almost never played today, but its last
movement has become one of the famous things he ever wrote and has
taken on a life of its own. It is a rondo that imitates the sound of
ringing high bells, and Paganini called the movement Rondo à la clochette (clochette means “small bell”); this movement, though, is universally known under its Italian title, La Campanella.
It is music of hair-raising difficulty, much of it written in the
violin’s highest register to imitate the wildly-ringing sound of tiny
bells. Ironically, this music has become most familiar as a piano
piece: Franz Liszt was so taken with this movement that in 1838 he
arranged it as one of his Six Grand Études after Paganini. At this concert, La Campanella is heard in an arrangement for viola by the great Scottish violist William Primrose (1904-1982).
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