Program notes by Eric Bromberger

WORLD PREMIÈRE
Sonata Populare for Violin and Piano (2010)
Anthony NEWMAN
Born 1941

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER

Sonata Populare for Violin and Piano is a work based on four original songs. The first movement, called War of the Fallen Angels comes from a large choral work called Angel Oratorio, a work based on angelic texts from all spiritual traditions. The last movement of the piece titled, Sound Your Trumpets, Angels is also derived from this work. Technique here is one of variation and not transcription. In fact, the violin versions sound quite different from the songs. The second and third movements are variations on my own Piano Preludes Nos. 5 and 6, with added parts. Again it would be hard to recognize them from the originals.

String Quintet in C Major, Opus 29
Ludwig Van BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Popular during the baroque period, the viola quintet– string quartet with an additional viola–appeared less often during the nineteenth century. Boccherini is reported to have composed 113 viola quintets, but Mozart wrote only six, Haydn none, and Beethoven only one. At the end of the nineteenth century, Dvořák wrote three, Brahms two, and Bruckner one; the form seems virtually to have disappeared in the twentieth century.

The viola quintet is a very particular kind of music. The addition of an extra mid-range voice not only makes for an unusually mellow sonority, it also creates a richer harmonic language than is possible with the quartet and allows the composer to set groups of instruments against each other in a way impossible in the quartet. Among the greatest viola quintets are all six by Mozart, the present Beethoven quintet, and Dvořák’s Quintet in E-flat Major, Opus 97. It may be no coincidence that Mozart, Beethoven, and Dvořák all frequently played viola in chamber music performances.

Beethoven wrote his Viola Quintet in 1801, between the completion of his First and Second Symphonies. It was during this year that his hearing problems had become serious enough that Beethoven confessed them to a few of his closest friends, but nothing in this music reflects the terrible stress this knowledge was causing the composer. In fact, the Viola Quintet is one of Beethoven’s most radiant scores, full of sunlight even in its turbulent final movements.

The very beginning of the Allegro moderato conveys a feeling of unusual spaciousness and calm. The opening theme, heard immediately in the first violin and cello over steady accompaniment, will dominate this sonata-form movement. It is worth noting that while this is a viola quintet, neither viola is allowed a particularly prominent role; the first violin remains the star of this show, introducing all themes and dominating the instrumental texture. A second theme is introduced by violin duet, and the development is driven along by vigorous triplets. But the opening theme controls this movement, and at the close it pushes the coda forcefully to the cadence.

The Adagio molto espressivo is ornate and elegant music, with the first violin once again firmly at the center. Particularly impressive here is the way Beethoven alternates brief phrases between first violin and cello in the quiet development. By contrast, the Scherzo: Allegro is full of power. The bobbing, three-note figure of its main theme pounds through almost every bar–the ear hears it by implication even when it is not physically present. At the trio section, the first viola finally gets a chance to announce a theme, but this section rushes with no change of tempo right back to the scherzo. The ending of this movement– breathtaking in its suddenness–is a masterstroke.

The Presto finale flies: over a steady murmur of sixteenth-notes in the other voices, the first violin soars and swirls. Some have found this music tempestuous, perhaps anticipating the storm of the Pastoral Symphony of seven years later. The rush of music is interrupted several times: once by a powerful fugato and twice by a brief section– Andante con moto e scherzoso–in which the first violin dances gracefully and gravely above the other voices. But the opening flurry of notes always returns, and the music sails to its close.

U.S. PREMIÈRE
Northern Lights for Violoncello and Piano (2010)
Bright SHENG
Born 1955

Northern Lights was commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest, and Bergen Festival by a generous gift from William Ginsberg in honor of his wife, Inger G. Ginsberg. It was finished on December 28, 2009, in New York City. The premières of the work were scheduled by Truls Mørk (World première), Lynn Harrell (U.S. première on August 8, 2010 at SummerFest), and Alisa Weilerstein (New York City première on November 9, 2010, at Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts).

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER

The work is dedicated to Inger G. Ginsberg. Folk music has been my fascination and creative resource for over four decades. In the early 1970’s, I first became infatuated with the folks songs of Qinghai (eastern Tibet), a rare fusion and crossover of several ethnic folk cultures in the region. Subsequently, during my undergraduate years at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, I further systematically studied Chinese folk music traditions. Shortly after I moved to the United States in the early 1980’s, my interest was broadened to include music cultures surrounding China, and the relationship of how these cultures had influenced, intermingled, and infiltrated each other. This led to my series of studies of the music cultures along the Silk Road, an ancient trading route between the old empires of China and Rome, while helping my friend Yo-Yo Ma launch the Silk Road Project. I have also been captivated by American folk music for decades, especially blue grass and country music; and it has long been my hope to find a pretext to include these elements in my work.

My friends Inger and Bill Ginsberg live in New York City and in Helle, Norway, where Inger was born. During one conversation, Bill, well versed in the Norwegian culture, introduced me to Norwegian and Scandinavian folk music. I became even more excited when, after further examination, I noticed its kinship with some forms of American country music, such as Appalachian and Bluegrass.

In many ways, composing music in various styles is similar to a writer using different languages; and the work is usually most effective when the author is most comfortable with the language. On the other hand, for a range of reasons, many literary giants attempted their second (or even third) language to great results. Northern Lights is my first attempt to integrate Norwegian/Scandinavian folk music; and it probably has a linguistic accent. However, as a student who is embarking on his first performance with a newly-learned language, I am fully excited with the probability of including another tongue in my works.

The title of the work, Northern Lights, refers to an astronomical natural phenomenon also known as polar lights (aurora polaris), which are shafts or curtains of fantastically colored light visible on occasion in the night sky, particularly in countries of the polar regions, such as Norway.

Sonata in G Minor for Piano and Cello, Opus 19
Sergei RACHMANINOFF
Born April 1, 1873, Semyonovo, Russia
Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California

Rachmaninoff wrote very little chamber music: two piano trios, various fragments for string quartet, and some short pieces for strings and keyboard. But for one chamber ensemble he felt a continuing affection–the combination of cello and piano. Among his earliest works were the Romance in F Minor for Cello and Piano and Two Pieces for Cello and Piano, Opus 2, and to that combination he returned in his final chamber work, the Sonata for Piano and Cello in G Minor.

Rachmaninoff wrote this sonata in the summer of 1901, when he was 28. Several years earlier, harsh critical attacks had so damaged his self-confidence that he stopped composing altogether. Under the care of the psychologist Dr. Nikolay Dahl, who treated him with hypnosis, Rachmaninoff regained his confidence and composed his Second Piano Concerto, which had a triumphant première. It was in the afterglow of this success that Rachmaninoff wrote the Cello Sonata, and perhaps it should come as no surprise that the sonata shows some of the grand, extroverted manner of the piano concerto. Rachmaninoff and Anatoly Brandoukoff gave the première in Moscow on December 2 of that year. The manuscript itself is dated December 12, 1901–apparently Rachmaninoff went back and made some revisions after the first performance.

The Cello Sonata has been criticized for favoring the piano at the expense of the cello. Rachmaninoff was one of the greatest piano virtuosos of all time, and some critics have felt that he naturally wrote best for the instrument he knew best. While the piano does have an unusually prominent role in this sonata, this was by design rather than by default. After hearing a radio performance of the sonata in 1942, Rachmaninoff phoned the cellist to offer congratulations on her playing but also to complain about the balance of the broadcast: the engineers had set the piano well in the background and Rachmaninoff wanted to specify that this was a Sonata for Piano and Cello and not simply a Cello Sonata.

The first movement opens with a Lento introduction that contains suspended fragments of what will become the sonata’s opening theme. When this theme arrives at the Allegro moderato it gives the lie to all who claim that Rachmaninoff wrote badly for the cello–if ever there was a cello theme, this songful surge of melody is it. The second subject (which critics universally label “Schumannesque”) is for piano alone, and the development is shared equally by the two instruments, though just before the coda the piano is given a virtuosic outburst that almost becomes a small cadenza. The coda to this sonata-form movement is dramatic and declarative.

Marked Allegro scherzando, the brilliant second movement has nothing of the joke about it. Gone are the broad, romantic gestures of the first movement, and in their place comes a muttering, trembling rush of triplets in somber C minor. The movement is in ABA form, which Rachmaninoff varies by inserting a lyric episode into the fast outer sections. The trio section itself is built on a gorgeous lyric theme for the cello, another example of Rachmaninoff’s beautiful writing for the instrument. The ghostly opening section returns to drive the movement to its sudden ending.

The brief Andante, by far the shortest of the movements, opens over an accompaniment of murmuring sixteenth-notes in the piano. First piano and then cello pick up and develop the main theme, a melody so lyric that it should remind listeners of a little-known side of Rachmaninoff: he wrote nearly seventy songs. The Allegro mosso finale contrasts its first theme, built on driving triplets, with a singing second episode. The blazing coda leads to a cadence very much in the manner of the just-completed Second Piano Concerto.