January 15 Program Notes
Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror)
Pärt, born in 1935, is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. This simple style was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voice, the first (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo. Pärt is one of Europe’s best-known minimalist composers. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). Since 2011 Pärt has been the most performed living composer in the world.
In 1962, Pärt was criticized by Tikhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, for employing serialism, which exhibited his "susceptibility to foreign influences". But nine months later he won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the all-Union Society of Composers, indicating the inability of the Soviet regime to agree consistently on what was permissible.
In 1980, after a prolonged struggle with Soviet officials, he was allowed to emigrate with his wife and their two sons. They settled in Berlin. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and for a while lived alternately in Berlin and Tallinn. He currently resides in Laulasmaa, outside of Tallinn. He speaks fluent German and has German citizenship as a result of living in Germany since 1981.
In 2014, London’s Daily Telegraph described Pärt as possibly "the world's greatest living composer" and "by a long way, Estonia's most celebrated export". But when asked how Estonian he felt his music to be, Pärt replied: "I don’t know what is Estonian... I don’t think about these things." Unlike many of his fellow Estonian composers, Pärt never found inspiration in the country's epic poem, Kalevipoeg, even in his early works.
Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror(s) in the mirror) is a composition written in 1978, just before departure from Estonia. The title refers to an infinity mirror, which produces an infinity of images. The piece is in the tintinnabular style: a melodic voice operating over diatonic scales and a tintinnabular voice operating within a triad on the tonic accompany each other. It is about ten minutes long.
From Wikipedia Go to: January 15 program
Johannes Brahms, Trio in Eb for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Op. 40
Brahms loved to visit beautiful, rustic settings, and “vacation” with fresh inspiration and the joy of composing. In the springtime of 1864, still in mourning after his mother’s recent death, he was walking through the Black Forest near the spas of Baden Baden. Here, nature, nostalgia and elegiac reflections gave birth to this beautiful and unusual trio, which he finished and premiered by that winter.
One of the instruments Brahms chose - the valveless Waldhorn or “natural” horn - had strong childhood associations. His musician father had played it, and as a child, the young Johannes had learned to play it too. Brahms preferred the darker, more muted sounds of this natural horn to the new valve instrument just becoming popular, and he specifically recommended its use in this piece.
The first movement is as novel as the instrumentation: rather than the usual full, fast paced “sonata form” set of themes and their development, Brahms begins with a leisurely Andante that oscillates between two themes in rondo fashion; themes that his forest walks may have engendered. The second of these is slightly more agitated than the first. Rich and emotional, this fresh “outdoor” music flows easily while pursuing subtle thematic variations in the composer’s finest manner.
The second movement is a sparkling scherzo with a bounty of short themes engaging all three players in equal dialogue. Its contrasting trio is slower and darkens into a minor key with a cold, distant lament. The romping scherzo does return, but the sorrow broached in the trio seems to call for fuller expression.
This occurs in the slow movement that Brahms labelled “Adagio mesto” (the somewhat rare Italian word “mesto” meaning truly sad). This spare, haunting movement is regarded by many as Brahms’ elegy for his deceased mother. It aches with despair - the somber bass notes from the horn, the ominous rumbling in the piano, and the frequent deafening silences. Near the movement’s end, very briefly, a distant horn calls out a simple German folk hymn, which sounds as an ephemeral light in the prevailing darkness. This is followed by the passionate climax of the movement, before the music slowly sinks into a subdued close.
The exuberant finale relaxes the tension. In total contrast to the underlying seriousness of the first three movements, the music bursts free in a rollicking 6/8, and as the Waldhorn indulges in cheerful hunting calls, the clouds lift. One barely notices that the main theme is the short hymn that appeared in the third movement, now speeded up to lead this irresistible celebration.
By Robert Molison Go to: January 15 program
Franz Schubert, Fantasie in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940
Music for piano four-hands is a genre that is now unfortunately much out of fashion. But in early nineteenth-century Vienna there was a growing market for music that could be played in the home, where there might be only one piano but several amateur pianists. Such music often had an intentionally “social” appeal - it was not especially difficult, and it tended to be pleasing rather than profound. Much of Schubert’s four-hand piano music was intended for just such “home” performers.
The Fantasie in F Minor is quite different: this work demands first-class performers and contains some of the most involving and focused music Schubert ever wrote. The F Minor Fantasie comes from the miraculous final year of Schubert’s life, which saw a nearly unbroken rush of masterpieces. He wrote most of the work in January 1828, completing it in April. He and his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld gave the first performance on May 9, six months before the composer’s death at age 31. He dedicated this music to the Countess Caroline Esterhazy, who ten years before - as a girl of 15 - had been one of his piano students.
I Allegretto molto moderato
The beginning is haunting. Over murmuring accompaniment, the higher voice lays out a wistful first theme, whose halting rhythms and bird-like grace notes suggest to some its origins in Hungarian folk music. This theme is repeated continually and with almost hypnotic effect. But suddenly one notices that the music has slipped effortlessly from F minor into F major. A second subject is introduced, with firm dotted rhythms; somber and almost funereal. After both themes have been treated at some length, the second one reappears, this time in F major.
II. Largo
This movement opens with an angry and turbulent fortissimo theme in F# minor whose rhythms and luxuriant Baroque trills add a great deal of tension. Eventually the first theme gives way to a quiet, lyrical second subject. The first theme is reprised, ending on the C# major dominant.
III. Scherzo
The F# scherzo sparkles like a very fast waltz; its trio section (marked “con delicatezza”) ripples along D major. Here the writing for the first pianist lies so high that much of the section is in the bell-like upper register of the piano, ringing and shimmering as it races across the keyboard. There is a delicate D major trio, followed by the return of the scherzo. The music shifts between A major and F# minor, ultimately ending on C# octaves that drive into a transition back toward F minor for the finale.
IV. Allegro molto moderato
The last movement begins with a restatement of the first movement’s primary theme in both F minor and F major, before transitioning into a fugue based on its second theme. The fugue builds to a climax, ending abruptly on the C major dominant, instead of resolving into either F major or minor. After a bar of silence, the first theme briefly reprises, building rapidly to concluding chords that echo the second theme before subsiding into a quiet ending. In this remarkable cadence Schubert manages to condense the dichotomies of the two themes in the final eight bars of the work.
By Robert Molison Go to: January 15 program
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Piano Trio (piano, violin, and cello)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is a composer with many “firsts” in her career. In 1975 she became the first woman to receive a D.M.A. in composition from the Juilliard School of Music, as a student of Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions. At that time Pierre Boulez, director of the New York Philharmonic, conducted her Symposium for Orchestra at Juilliard. In 1983 she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music, for her Symphony No. 1. She also received the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Prize, several Grammy nominations, an Oscar, commissions from many famous orchestras and several honorary doctorates. She was named to the first composer’s chair in the history of Carnegie Hall. In 1994 she was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. On September 23, 2000 the mayor of Cincinnati proclaimed it as “Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Day.”
Born in 1939 in Miami, she received a B.M. in violin performance from Florida State University. She moved to New York to play in the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. She married violinist Joseph Zwilich and wrote many works in his honor until his death in 1979. Her style of writing evolved from music with an edge (the early works were basically atonal) later shifting to something resembling a neo-romantic style. The current style tends to have immediate audience appeal. Of note is her work Peanuts Gallery for Piano and Orchestra, written for a 1997 Carnegie Hall children’s concert, repeated on PBS hundreds of times since its debut on the network in 2006. She describes her works as obsessed with “the idea of generating an entire work – large-scale structure, melodic and harmonic language and developmental processes – from its initial motives.” Currently she holds an endowed professorship at Florida State.
The list of works is remarkable. There are five symphonies, many other symphonic works for various ensembles, concerti for practically all orchestral instruments and for piano, chamber music for many combinations of instruments and more.
The Trio for piano, violin and cello was written in 1987 under three commissions and was first performed in April of 1988 in San Francisco. The movements are: I Allegro con brio, II Lento, and III Presto. Zwilich has said that she decided to exploit the differences among the three instruments, with dialog and with the instruments switching roles but allowing the three instruments to be three equal voices.
By Roberta Mielke Go to: January 15 program
Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror)
Pärt, born in 1935, is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. This simple style was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voice, the first (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo. Pärt is one of Europe’s best-known minimalist composers. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). Since 2011 Pärt has been the most performed living composer in the world.
In 1962, Pärt was criticized by Tikhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, for employing serialism, which exhibited his "susceptibility to foreign influences". But nine months later he won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the all-Union Society of Composers, indicating the inability of the Soviet regime to agree consistently on what was permissible.
In 1980, after a prolonged struggle with Soviet officials, he was allowed to emigrate with his wife and their two sons. They settled in Berlin. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and for a while lived alternately in Berlin and Tallinn. He currently resides in Laulasmaa, outside of Tallinn. He speaks fluent German and has German citizenship as a result of living in Germany since 1981.
In 2014, London’s Daily Telegraph described Pärt as possibly "the world's greatest living composer" and "by a long way, Estonia's most celebrated export". But when asked how Estonian he felt his music to be, Pärt replied: "I don’t know what is Estonian... I don’t think about these things." Unlike many of his fellow Estonian composers, Pärt never found inspiration in the country's epic poem, Kalevipoeg, even in his early works.
Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror(s) in the mirror) is a composition written in 1978, just before departure from Estonia. The title refers to an infinity mirror, which produces an infinity of images. The piece is in the tintinnabular style: a melodic voice operating over diatonic scales and a tintinnabular voice operating within a triad on the tonic accompany each other. It is about ten minutes long.
From Wikipedia Go to: January 15 program
Johannes Brahms, Trio in Eb for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Op. 40
Brahms loved to visit beautiful, rustic settings, and “vacation” with fresh inspiration and the joy of composing. In the springtime of 1864, still in mourning after his mother’s recent death, he was walking through the Black Forest near the spas of Baden Baden. Here, nature, nostalgia and elegiac reflections gave birth to this beautiful and unusual trio, which he finished and premiered by that winter.
One of the instruments Brahms chose - the valveless Waldhorn or “natural” horn - had strong childhood associations. His musician father had played it, and as a child, the young Johannes had learned to play it too. Brahms preferred the darker, more muted sounds of this natural horn to the new valve instrument just becoming popular, and he specifically recommended its use in this piece.
The first movement is as novel as the instrumentation: rather than the usual full, fast paced “sonata form” set of themes and their development, Brahms begins with a leisurely Andante that oscillates between two themes in rondo fashion; themes that his forest walks may have engendered. The second of these is slightly more agitated than the first. Rich and emotional, this fresh “outdoor” music flows easily while pursuing subtle thematic variations in the composer’s finest manner.
The second movement is a sparkling scherzo with a bounty of short themes engaging all three players in equal dialogue. Its contrasting trio is slower and darkens into a minor key with a cold, distant lament. The romping scherzo does return, but the sorrow broached in the trio seems to call for fuller expression.
This occurs in the slow movement that Brahms labelled “Adagio mesto” (the somewhat rare Italian word “mesto” meaning truly sad). This spare, haunting movement is regarded by many as Brahms’ elegy for his deceased mother. It aches with despair - the somber bass notes from the horn, the ominous rumbling in the piano, and the frequent deafening silences. Near the movement’s end, very briefly, a distant horn calls out a simple German folk hymn, which sounds as an ephemeral light in the prevailing darkness. This is followed by the passionate climax of the movement, before the music slowly sinks into a subdued close.
The exuberant finale relaxes the tension. In total contrast to the underlying seriousness of the first three movements, the music bursts free in a rollicking 6/8, and as the Waldhorn indulges in cheerful hunting calls, the clouds lift. One barely notices that the main theme is the short hymn that appeared in the third movement, now speeded up to lead this irresistible celebration.
By Robert Molison Go to: January 15 program
Franz Schubert, Fantasie in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940
Music for piano four-hands is a genre that is now unfortunately much out of fashion. But in early nineteenth-century Vienna there was a growing market for music that could be played in the home, where there might be only one piano but several amateur pianists. Such music often had an intentionally “social” appeal - it was not especially difficult, and it tended to be pleasing rather than profound. Much of Schubert’s four-hand piano music was intended for just such “home” performers.
The Fantasie in F Minor is quite different: this work demands first-class performers and contains some of the most involving and focused music Schubert ever wrote. The F Minor Fantasie comes from the miraculous final year of Schubert’s life, which saw a nearly unbroken rush of masterpieces. He wrote most of the work in January 1828, completing it in April. He and his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld gave the first performance on May 9, six months before the composer’s death at age 31. He dedicated this music to the Countess Caroline Esterhazy, who ten years before - as a girl of 15 - had been one of his piano students.
I Allegretto molto moderato
The beginning is haunting. Over murmuring accompaniment, the higher voice lays out a wistful first theme, whose halting rhythms and bird-like grace notes suggest to some its origins in Hungarian folk music. This theme is repeated continually and with almost hypnotic effect. But suddenly one notices that the music has slipped effortlessly from F minor into F major. A second subject is introduced, with firm dotted rhythms; somber and almost funereal. After both themes have been treated at some length, the second one reappears, this time in F major.
II. Largo
This movement opens with an angry and turbulent fortissimo theme in F# minor whose rhythms and luxuriant Baroque trills add a great deal of tension. Eventually the first theme gives way to a quiet, lyrical second subject. The first theme is reprised, ending on the C# major dominant.
III. Scherzo
The F# scherzo sparkles like a very fast waltz; its trio section (marked “con delicatezza”) ripples along D major. Here the writing for the first pianist lies so high that much of the section is in the bell-like upper register of the piano, ringing and shimmering as it races across the keyboard. There is a delicate D major trio, followed by the return of the scherzo. The music shifts between A major and F# minor, ultimately ending on C# octaves that drive into a transition back toward F minor for the finale.
IV. Allegro molto moderato
The last movement begins with a restatement of the first movement’s primary theme in both F minor and F major, before transitioning into a fugue based on its second theme. The fugue builds to a climax, ending abruptly on the C major dominant, instead of resolving into either F major or minor. After a bar of silence, the first theme briefly reprises, building rapidly to concluding chords that echo the second theme before subsiding into a quiet ending. In this remarkable cadence Schubert manages to condense the dichotomies of the two themes in the final eight bars of the work.
By Robert Molison Go to: January 15 program
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Piano Trio (piano, violin, and cello)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is a composer with many “firsts” in her career. In 1975 she became the first woman to receive a D.M.A. in composition from the Juilliard School of Music, as a student of Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions. At that time Pierre Boulez, director of the New York Philharmonic, conducted her Symposium for Orchestra at Juilliard. In 1983 she became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music, for her Symphony No. 1. She also received the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Prize, several Grammy nominations, an Oscar, commissions from many famous orchestras and several honorary doctorates. She was named to the first composer’s chair in the history of Carnegie Hall. In 1994 she was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. On September 23, 2000 the mayor of Cincinnati proclaimed it as “Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Day.”
Born in 1939 in Miami, she received a B.M. in violin performance from Florida State University. She moved to New York to play in the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. She married violinist Joseph Zwilich and wrote many works in his honor until his death in 1979. Her style of writing evolved from music with an edge (the early works were basically atonal) later shifting to something resembling a neo-romantic style. The current style tends to have immediate audience appeal. Of note is her work Peanuts Gallery for Piano and Orchestra, written for a 1997 Carnegie Hall children’s concert, repeated on PBS hundreds of times since its debut on the network in 2006. She describes her works as obsessed with “the idea of generating an entire work – large-scale structure, melodic and harmonic language and developmental processes – from its initial motives.” Currently she holds an endowed professorship at Florida State.
The list of works is remarkable. There are five symphonies, many other symphonic works for various ensembles, concerti for practically all orchestral instruments and for piano, chamber music for many combinations of instruments and more.
The Trio for piano, violin and cello was written in 1987 under three commissions and was first performed in April of 1988 in San Francisco. The movements are: I Allegro con brio, II Lento, and III Presto. Zwilich has said that she decided to exploit the differences among the three instruments, with dialog and with the instruments switching roles but allowing the three instruments to be three equal voices.
By Roberta Mielke Go to: January 15 program
