Monday, February 27, 2012

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, 6/10/2012 @ 2:30 p.m.


CLICK HERE for a larger view

Jost Van Dyke, piano


CHOPIN: Prelude in C# minor, Op. 45
YouTube Performance / PDF of the Score (from imslp.org)

J.S. BACH: English Suite No. 5, in E minor, BWV 810
YouTube Performance / Download PDF of the Score (from imslp.org)
  • Prelude - Allemande - Courante - Sarabande -
    Passepied I (en Rondeau)/Passepied II - Gigue
ALBÉNIZ: El Puerto (Iberia, Bk. 1, no. 2)
YouTube Performance / PDF of Book 1 (from imslp.org)

BRAHMS: Intermezzi & Capriccios
      (from Klavierstücke, Opp. 76 & 118, and 7 Fantasien, Op. 116)
PDF Scores: Opus 118, no. 1 / Opus 76 / Opus 116, no. 4
  • Intermezzo in A minor, Op. 118, no. 1 [On YouTube]
  • Capriccio in F# minor, Op. 76, no. 1 [On YouTube]
  • Intermezzo in E Major, Op. 116, no. 4 [On YouTube]
  • Capriccio in C# minor, Op. 76, no. 5 [On YouTube]
  • Intermezzo in B-flat Major, Op. 76, no. 4 [On YouTube]

ALBÉNIZ: El Albaicín (Iberia, Bk. 3, no. 1)
YouTube Performance / PDF of Book 3 (from imslp.org)


ARTIST PROFILE and PROGRAM NOTES, by Ed Lein, Music Librarian


Musician and photographer Jost Van Dyke is actively involved in local and national arts communities. At the same time he is one of the Florida Panhandle's most popular fitness gurus, as a certified Pilates instructor at multiple fitness centers in Tallahassee. A concert pianist by training, Mr. Van Dyke's path to--and back to--the recital hall has not been an easy one, but it has led him through many varied and rewarding endeavors.

Jost was born with Poland's Syndrome, manifested as an underdeveloped arm and the absence of chest muscles on his right side. Piano lessons were suggested as therapy, and not only did the lessons help with the continuing development of his arm, they unlocked an abiding talent that otherwise might have gone undiscovered. Brought to the attention of legendary pianist Edward Kilenyi (1910-2000), the prodigious youth was invited to join Kilenyi's studio at Florida State University while Jost was still in high school.

While completing his Piano Performance degree under Kilenyi, Mr. Van Dyke (then billed as Joseph Dykes) served as music director for a number of high-profile productions in the FSU School of Theatre. In 1984, this led him to New York City as Artist in Residence and Musical Director in the Musical Theatre Department at Marymount Manhattan College. He continued his own studies as well, working with concert pianists Thaddeus Sadlowski, Regina Shamvilli and Daniell Revenaugh, and Mr. Van Dyke garnered a following as a solo recitalist, beginning with his 1985 Manhattan debut at Marymount. Upon completing his residency in 1990, he accepted a position with the National Dance Institute. During his time in New York he concurrently became active in the music publishing industry, with consecutive positions at Carl Fischer Music, International Music Co. & Bourne Music, and MCA/Universal Music.

In the early 1990s, he faced a new challenge with the onset of focal dystonia of the right hand. The condition causes uncontrollable muscle spasms, and it has hindered or ended the careers of many distinguished musicians, including Leon Fleisher and Keith Emerson, and it may have contributed to Glenn Gould's retreat from the concert stage into the recording studio. Undefeated, Mr. Van Dyke accepted the challenge as an opportunity to explore fine art photography, leading to solo and group exhibitions in Tallahassee, Jacksonville, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Savannah. His photographic work is represented in the permanent collection of the Bergen Gallery at Savannah College of Art and Design, and in private collections around the nation.

Mr. Van Dyke's path led back to Tallahassee and into the culinary arts, and in the late 1990s he wrote a monthly newspaper column on gourmet food and wine. He began practicing yoga and Pilates, which unexpectedly opened a new career avenue when he was approached to become a fitness instructor. Applying the same dedication as to his earlier pursuits, he trained for certification with Master Pilates Teacher June Kahn. He now also writes ENDORphiNATION, a column featured in the online publication The Alchemical Heart, and he is a member of COCA (Council on Culture & Arts), in Tallahassee.

Attributed in part to his disciplined physical training, the effects of Mr. Van Dyke's focal dystonia have dissipated. This Intermezzo Series performance marks not only the Jacksonville concert debut of Jost Van Dyke, but his first public recital in nearly two decades.

Hear Jost Van Dyke play Ravel's Ondine at InstantEncore.com, recorded live during a 1991 recital in New York City.


Program Notes

The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities and coloristic potential of the piano when it was a still-developing keyboard instrument, and he rightly has been called the "Poet of the Piano." Much of all piano music by subsequent composers shows his influence, and his revolutionary use of chromatic harmonies and unusual key relationships profoundly influenced composers of symphonic music and operas as well, such as Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883)—thus Chopin's importance in the development of the "Romantic" style in general can not be overestimated.

For proof of Chopin's "Wagnerian-like" modulations, one need look no further than the Prelude in C# minor, Op. 45, composed in 1841--when Wagner was just starting to discover his voice with the premiere of The Flying Dutchman, and almost two decades before Tristan und Isolde would emerge. Judging by a letter from Chopin to his music copyist, composer Julian Fontana (1810-1869), Chopin impressed even himself with his seamlessly shifting tonal centers. Composed two years after his 24 Preludes, Op. 28 (1839), Op. 45 is often called "Prelude No. 25," and it was the last piece with that title Chopin wrote.


Once dismissed by many of his contemporaries as being too old-fashioned, the works of the great German Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) probably have been studied more than those of any other composer, making him perhaps the most influential musician of all time.

Of the 19 variously-titled suites Bach wrote for solo harpsichord, his English Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810, is among the earliest half dozen, most likely written ca. 1715-1720, when Bach was working either in Weimar or Köthen. No one can say exactly why the six English Suites (BWV 806-811) have been nicknamed "English," especially since the choice and ordering of various dance movements most definitely subscribe to the contemporary French model, and the suites' contrapuntal textures are decidedly German. Bach's manuscript is lost so we don't know if he made any reference to the Brits himself, but one of the earliest surviving copies says the suites are "for the English," and it has been conjectured that Bach perhaps had a particular English performer or patron in mind when he wrote them. Then again, maybe Bach, ever the teacher, came across some works by English composers that he didn't much care for, and his suites were meant "for the English" to show them how it's done ... .


Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) is among the best-known proponents of Music Nationalism of Spain. He was a piano prodigy who gave his first public concert when he was four, and at age six he was denied admittance to the Paris Conservatory only because he was too young. But shortly thereafter he enrolled in what is now the Royal Conservatory in Madrid, and young Isaac soon became known as the greatest prodigy in Spain. In 1875, he gave a series of concerts in Puerto Rico and Cuba, but this was not the result of the 15-year-old youth stowing away on a ship to the New World, as many reputable sources have previously repeated. Rather less romantically, it now appears that Isaac accompanied his father, a customs official, to Cuba when his father was transferred to work there. In 1876, back in the Old World, a 16-year-old Isaac was granted a Spanish royal stipend to study at the Brussels Conservatory. In 1879, he took First Prize in piano performance in Brussels, and embarked on a highly successful concert tour of Europe. At twenty, he travelled to Budapest hoping to study with Liszt. But when this dream went unrealized (Liszt had already departed Hungary for Italy), Albéniz returned to Spain and toured the country both as a pianist and, for a time, the conductor and manager of a musical theater company.

Following a South American tour he settled in Barcelona in 1883, and there he met Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922), a musicologist and composer who convinced Albéniz that it was important for Spanish composers to write music based on the characteristic folk songs and dances of their homeland. This turned out to be very good advice--although Albéniz also continued to compose music in a more-or-less cosmopolitan style, it is for his Spanish-flavored music that he is most remembered. He lived in London in the early 1890s, and moved to Paris in 1894, where he befriended many of the city's leading composers and began to absorb the influences of the recently-departed César Franck (1822-1890) and the still-going-strong Claude Debussy (1862-1918). As a virtuoso performer Albéniz was compared to Liszt and Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894), but soon after the turn of the century bad health impeded his performance career. When Albéniz died in 1909, he was virtually incapacitated from Bright's Disease, a chronic kidney disorder.

Composed between 1905 and 1909, Iberia is a collection of 12 pieces for solo piano, organized into four books of three pieces each. It is ranked universally among the finest works by any Spanish composer, and French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) extended his praise beyond geographic boundaries, calling Iberia "the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of the instruments." Subtitled "Twelve New Impressions," Iberia was designed as a kind of musical travelogue, with each piece representing a particular locale, primarily in southern Spain, and drawing upon rhythmic and melodic gestures suggestive of each place. The harmonic soundscape also pays tribute to the Impressionism of Debussy, and, in something of a reversal, Debussy became a big fan of Iberia, such that the Spaniard's vibrant music provided inspiration for the Frenchman. But the virtuosic (sometimes bordering on sadistic) piano writing of Iberia is all Albéniz--and it is sometimes so difficult that it's said Albéniz considered destroying the pieces because, in his disease-weakened state, he was unable to play through them himself. In discussing the dozen pieces that comprise Iberia, the Portuguese virtuoso Artur Pizzaro observed: "The technical writing is totally original and at least as mind-numbingly difficult as Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. ... The only reason I can think of as to why they are not more present in recital halls throughout the world is the sheer difficulty of their performance."

El Puerto (The Port) is the second piece in Book 1, and the "puerto" in question is the fishing town of El Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cádiz on the southern Atlantic coast of Spain. The music itself is a zapateado, a kind of flamenco tap-dance that the conquistadores borrowed from the native Mexican Indians (along with their gold and corn). So it is perhaps especially fitting that a zapateado represents El Puerto de Santa Maria, since it is the very port where Columbus set sail on his second trip to the Americas.

Book 3 of Iberia opens with El Albaicín, which depicts the Albayzín district of Granada overlooking the Alhambra. Along with the Alhambra, Albayzín has been designated an UNESCO World Heritage site, with its architectural reminders of the area's Medieval Moorish past. In his musical portrait of the district, Albéniz draws on the percussive rhythms introduced by the North Africans, and he conjures a fully-realized gypsy flamenco dance, by turns fiery, ethereal and gracefully sensual, and replete with aural images of stamping feet, clapping castinets and a flashing guitar.


At a time when it was fashionable to write programmatic music that illustrated specific scenes, poems, or stories, the great German composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was recognized by his admirers as “Beethoven’s true heir” (Grove Concise Dictionary of Music) by demonstrating that established abstract formal procedures could be used to organize musical discourse without sacrificing the passion and deeply individualistic expression that defines 19th-Century Romantic music. Thus, Brahms joined Bach and Beethoven as one of the great “Three Bs” of classical music.

As a youth, Brahms earned a living as a pianist, but after he became established as a composer he limited his public performances to playing only his own works. His last large-scale composition for solo piano was Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35, composed in 1863. Following his 1865 arrangements for solo piano of his 16 Waltzes, Op. 36 (originally for Piano, 4-hands), there was a gap of thirteen years before Brahms resumed writing solo music for his own instrument.

In 1878, his 8 Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces), Op. 76, appeared, followed by 2 Rhapsodien, Op. 79, the following year. Then there was another 13-year gap before he produced his 7 Fantasien, Op. 116, and 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117, in 1892; followed by 6 Klavierstücke, Op. 118, and 4 Klavierstücke, Op. 119, in 1893. Among the thirty individual piano pieces from his Op. 76 forward, Brahms named eighteen of them “Intermezzo,” and seven “Capriccio.” Neither term has a precise, predictable meaning, but in comparing Brahms’s use of the titles various commentators have observed that his Intermezzi tend to be more “introspective,” while still running the emotional gamut from light-hearted to darkly impassioned; and the Capriccios tend to be “stormy” and more improvisatory in their formal structure. Although all of Brahms's later piano pieces are on a relatively intimate scale, in both his chamber music and solo works his piano writing is usually quite challenging, to say the least--so it is evident that in addition to being one of our most enduring composers, Brahms never lost his touch as a virtuoso performer.





Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, 5/20/2012 @ 2:30pm

Gia Sastre, flute & Katherine Roberts, piano

        *Arranged by the performers

Miami native Gia Sastre holds degrees from DePaul University in Chicago (MM) and Florida State University (BM), and also pursued a resident course of study in Great Britain with Paul Edmund-Davies, who was then principal flutist of the London Symphony Orchestra. Prior to moving to Jacksonville, Ms. Sastre spent several years in Chicago as a recitalist and freelance artist. As a soloist, Ms. Sastre won the Musicians Club of Women Farwell Award, and she performed in the Chicago Cultural Center and other venues throughout the Chicago area. She frequently performed with harpist Ann Laura Tapia as a member of the Abellimento Flute & Harp Duo, and in 2006 the Duo released their debut recording, Abellimento, to critical acclaim. [Abellimento can be heard on Pandora and is available through iTunes and Amazon.com.] In addition to maintaining a private studio, Ms. Sastre served on the Community Music faculty of DePaul University as both flute instructor and flute choir director.

Ms. Sastre now performs regularly throughout the city of Jacksonville, including a December 2010 Intermezzo Sunday Concert as a member of Flutation, a Flute Duo. Other local engagements have included a presentations of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf for Jacksonville Public Library's Youth Services, and concerts with the Chamber Music Society of the Good Shepherd, Riverside Fine Arts Series, and the First Presbyterian Church of Jacksonville.

Gia Sastre teaches through her home flute studio, working with dedicated and talented students of all ages. She is a member and adjudicator for the Florida Flute Association and Jax Flutes. When she is not playing or teaching music, Gia enjoys time with her husband and their two little boys.


A native of Atlanta, Georgia, pianist Katherine Roberts studied with Dr. William Phemister at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois, where she received a BM in Piano Performance. More recently, she studied with Jacksonville University professor Mary Lou Wesley Krosnick. Ms. Roberts has participated in piano competitions, and given solo recitals in Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia and Florida. She has an extensive background in performing chamber music, both in her home town and in Jacksonville. In addition to numerous weddings and special events, among her local performances Ms. Roberts has played for the Community Concert Series and Wednesday Happenings at Riverside Presbyterian Church, for the Advent Concert Series at First Presbyterian Church, and at Jacksonville University.

A piano instructor to both children and adults, Ms. Roberts has been a member of the National Guild of Musicians and the Music Teachers Association. She has taught piano privately from her home studio, and she established a piano instruction studio at the Christian Home and Bible School in Mount Dora, Florida. She has volunteered her time and talents to the Jacksonville community as a piano instructor at the PACE Center for Girls, and as a counselor at First Coast Women’s Services. Other community activities include writing and directing The Great Composers program for elementary school students, and serving on the board of the Jacksonville Symphony Association for three years. Additionally, for the last 12 years she has played piano and keyboards for Christ Church, PCA, where she is a member.

The mother of three grown sons and the grandmother of one grandson, Katherine "Kakie" Roberts resides in Jacksonville with her husband, Don.


PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Once dismissed by many of his contemporaries as being too old-fashioned, the works of the great German Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) probably have been studied more than those of any other composer, making him perhaps the most influential musician of all time. Despite being thought of as a fuddy-duddy, he nonetheless was one of the earliest composers to write out the keyboard part in some of his sonatas for solo instrument with accompaniment, rather than simply using the more common basso continuo. Since we know Bach used some of his music as teaching pieces for his family and patrons, one might suppose that some of the sonatas with written-out keyboard parts perhaps provided examples of how Bach thought artfully improvised accompaniments should sound. Of course, in some sonatas Bach does use the conventional basso continuo, employing a single-line bass part to indicate the desired chord changes, and from which the keyboardist improvises harmonic and rhythmic support -- much like bass and keyboard instruments function in pop and jazz bands today.

Of the six sonatas for a solo flute with accompaniment listed in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue), the first three (BWV 1030-1032) are more "modern," with a written-out keyboard part, while the latter three (BWV 1033-1035) use the then more traditional continuo. Of these, BWV 1032 is now thought to be by C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788), one of Bach's composer sons, and BWV 1033 might also have the same authorship. The authorship of the present Sonata in E-flat Major, BWV 1031, is considered somewhat less iffy, although it has been suggested that it could be a joint effort between the elder Bach and his aforementioned progeny. Still, as British music historian Nicholas Anderson has observed, "What is indisputable ... is the high quality of its craftsmanship and its expressive charm."

J.S. Bach wrote well over 1000 works in virtually every genre common among his contemporaries. The big exception is opera, but many of Bach's cantatas do share defining characteristics of the Baroque opera seria, with alternating recitatives and arias, ensembles and choruses. In modern times some of Bach's cantatas have been staged, and even an early performance of his secular cantata, Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd (What pleases me is just the merry hunt), BWV 208, called for props, and probably even had at least a little staging. It was composed in 1713 for the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weisenfels (1682-1736), on a libretto by Salomon Franck (1659-1725), a frequent collaborator with Bach at the court in Weimar. Intended as an allegory praising the birthday boy (who fancied himself a great hunter), the cantata ostensibly centers around Diana, the goddess of the hunt in Roman mythology. One of Diana's companions is Pales, the patron deity of shepherds, and Pales is assigned what has become one of Bach's most recognizable inspirations, Schafe können sicher weiden (Sheep may safely graze). The aria, meant to illustrate the Duke's kindness toward his underlings, has become so popular that it has been adapted for performance by solo organ or piano, and arranged for orchestra and any number of instrumental combinations.


Sheep may safely graze
      With a good shepherd's protection.
Under rulers where goodness reigns,
There we find rest, and peaceful days,
      And all that makes a joyful nation.

    --English translation, ©2012, E. Lein


In addition to numerous symphonies, chamber works, masses, and solo piano music, the Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed over 600 songs in his short life, and he has remained unsurpassed in the ability to marry poetry with music. Even Beethoven, who apparently never met the younger composer, touted Schubert's genius when he was given some of Schubert's songs shortly before his death. Although Schubert was virtually unknown to the general public, his music was regularly performed in private concerts for Vienna’s musical elite, and by 1825 he was in negotiations with four different publishers. But the bulk of Schubert's masterworks remained unpublished at the time of his death, so he generally had had to depend on his devoted circle of friends to help maintain his finances. After Schubert died, probably from medicinal mercury poisoning, his wish to be buried next to Beethoven, who had died just the previous year, was honored.

Following Schubert's Ave Maria, D. 839, his Ständchen (Serenade), D.957, no.4, must come in as a close second among his most-beloved songs, and, as with Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze, Schubert's popular "Swan Song" has been arranged for practically every performance ensemble imaginable. "Leise flehen meine Lieder," is the first line of the text by German poet Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860) that served as Schubert's inspiration; what follows is an English translation of the verses.


Softly pleading, my songs now wend
Through the night, to thee;
Into this silent grove descend--
My love, come to me!

Slender treetops rustle, Whisp’ring
Here in the moonlight;
No spiteful gossip’s eavesdropping,
Dear, might give thee fright.

Hear ye the nightingales’ sad cries?
Ah! They beseech thee;
With their sweet, lamenting sighs
They beg you, for me.

They know well the bosom’s yearning,
They know well love’s pang;
They with silver tones are stirring
Each sore heart again.

Let them, too, cause thy breast to stir;
My darling, hear me!
Trembling, I shall await thee here!
Come, overjoy me!

    --English translation, ©2012, E. Lein


French composer Jules Mouquet (1867-1946) became a professor of harmony at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1913. He himself had excelled there as a student of Théodore Dubois and Xavier Leroux, winning several prestigious composition prizes, including the Prix de Rome in 1886, the same prize Debussy had won two years before. His Late Romantic style is characteristically French, with fluid chromaticism and modal inflections coloring an essentially Impressionistic soundscape. Mouquet's most-performed work is La Flûte de Pan (Pan's Flute), op. 15, composed in 1906, for flute with either piano or orchestra. Each of the work's three movements is prefaced with a brief poem in French -- these are the lines that precede the first movement, Pan et les bergers (Pan and the Shepherds):

O Pan qui habites la montagne,
chante nous de tes douces levres une chanson,
chante nous la en t'accompagnant du roseau pastoral.

O Pan, who dwells on the mountain,
Sing us a song from your sweet lips,
Sing to us accompanied by your pastoral reed-pipe.


Even though Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) was not one of Les Six, the group of young Parisian composers who represented a new direction in French music of the early 20th Century, his best-known pieces evoke the same cosmopolitan sophistication and breeziness that one might expect from French composers of their generation. A student of Fauré at the Conservatoire de Paris, Ibert won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1919. In addition to composing, he became director of the French Academy in Rome in 1937, and in the mid-1950s he directed the Paris Opéra. Perhaps most remembered for the orchestral works Escales ("Ports of Call," 1924) and Divertissement (1930), Ibert's catalog includes compositions in all genres, including film music and opera, and his Flute Concerto (1934) remains a great favorite as well. When Ibert's Aria: 1930 was issued, his publisher anticipated a high demand for the piece. The original version apparently is for wordless voice with piano and an optional obbligato instrument, but the piece was also published for piano and almost every melody instrument or two imaginable. Its popularity continues, especially among flutists and saxophonists.


Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a quintessentially French composer, pianist and music critic whose own revolutionary music ushered in many of the stylistic changes of the 20th Century. Debussy is universally identified as the chief proponent of musical “Impressionism,” but he did not approve of that label and the associations he felt it harbored. But since his death the term, as applied to music, has been redefined almost exclusively around the characteristics of some of Debussy's most famous pieces, so whatever negative connotations "Impressionism" once may have had have since evaporated.

Just as Chopin's writing for the piano has influenced almost every piano piece written since, Debussy's body of piano music has had a similar effect on the works of his successors. But in 1890, when Clair de lune (Moonlight) and the other pieces in Debussy's Suite bergamasque were originally composed, Debussy was only beginning to develop a style that later would alter the fabric of Western music. The Suite was not actually published until 1905, and it is very likely that Debussy revised the music to reflect some of the stylistic changes that had developed in the meantime, but Clair de lune was conceived in the Late Romantic language Debussy inherited. Regardless, it remains one of the best-known and loved piano solos in the world. And, like Bach's Sheep may Safely Graze, and Schubert's Serenade, Clair de lune is equally effective in any of a vast array of arrangements as it is in its original form.


Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a composer, organist, pianist and teacher, and he is widely regarded as the foremost French composer of his generation. Although Fauré greatly admired Wagner he remained relatively free of Wagner’s highly-colored influence, and instead led his own harmonic revolution by treating chords with added 7ths and 9ths as consonant and by introducing modal inflections into an essentially diatonic framework; in the process he successfully bridged the styles of Saint-Saëns (his teacher) and Ravel (his student). Fauré’s compositions are distinguished by perfectly crafted melodies floating over rich and radiant backgrounds. Among his best-known works is the hauntingly beautiful choral Requiem, and his songs and chamber music have a devoted, and well-deserved, following.

Fauré composed his Fantaisie, Op. 79, in 1898, for French flutist Paul Taffanel (1844-1908), Fauré's teaching colleague at the Paris Conservatory. Taffanel is credited with founding the "French School" of flute playing, with its emphasis on a lighter tone and incorporating vibrato, as opposed to a "strong and steady" tone that had characterized earlier playing. This far-reaching approach has had a tremendous effect on flute performance ever since, and was made possible in part by the development of the metal flute, which by now mostly has supplanted the older wooden instruments everywhere, except in Celtic music ensembles.



Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, 4/15/2012 @ 2:30 p.m.

Lawrence Quinnett, piano

  • Ligeti: Etudes, Book I
        No. 1: Désordre - No. 2: Cordes à vide -
        No. 3: Touches bloquées - No. 4: Fanfares -
        No. 5: Arc-en-ciel - No. 6: Automne à Varsovie

Lawrence Quinnett is currently in the D.M. program for Piano Performance at Florida State University. He completed his B.M. from Methodist University and M.M. from Converse College. His formative teachers have included Carolyn Cloud- Absher, Ann Clem, Jon Maisonpierre, Jane Gardiner, Douglas Weeks, and Read Gainsford.

Mr. Quinnett won first place in the FSU Chapman Competition in 2011, the South Carolina Music Teachers’ Association Young Artist Piano Competition in 2008, and the Southeastern College Piano Competition in Whiteville, North Carolin in 2006. While at Methodist University, he received the Willis C. Gates Music Award for Excellence two years in a row.

Solo and chamber music engagements have taken Mr. Quinnett to various cities in North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida, to St. Kitts in the Caribbean, and to England, with concerts in Harlaxtan, Peterborough, Coventry, Mundford, and London. He has participated in master classes with Simone Dinnerstein, Elizabeth Pridinoff, Miles Hoffman, Igor Resnianski, Carl Cranmer, Zenon Fishbein, Epifanio Comis, Anton Kuerti, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Cavani String Quartet, Frederick Moyer, Shai Wosner, and Randall Atcheson, among others.


PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the “Classical” style that his two most famous younger contemporaries, Mozart and Beethoven, built upon, and by the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely celebrated composer in Europe. Known as both “Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet,” Haydn started out as a choirboy and never developed into a keyboard virtuoso, so his 52-62 keyboard sonatas (depending on who's counting) were mostly composed in the early part of his career as a court musician.

Haydn's Piano Sonata, H. XVI:34 (aka, No. 54, in the Robbins-Landon listing), was written in the early 1770s, and is one of only seven he wrote in a minor key. Haydn's first and third movements are both in the home key of E minor, and the middle movement is in the relative G major. But, unusually, the key of the second movement changes to E minor before it concludes, and then stops on an open-ended dominant chord in the new key. This leads immediately into the finale, thus providing a direct link between the movements that is really very unusual for Haydn. The sonata is from his "Sturm und Drang" ("Storm and Yearning") period, and it demonstrates an energetic rhythmic drive and economy of thematic development that cleared the path from which Beethoven journeyed to ever greater heights.


In 1943, the music education of the Hungarian-Jewish composer György Ligeti (jerj LIGG-itty, 1923-2006) was interrupted when he was forced into a labor camp for the hellish months preceding the end of World War II. His 16-year-old brother and parents were wrenched from their comfortable home into Nazi concentration camps, and when the blood-red cinders had settled, György and his mother were the only members of his immediate family who had survived the Holocaust. After the war, Ligeti resumed his studies in Budapest, which he completed at the Franz Liszt Academy in 1949. He spent a year after graduation conducting ethnomusicological research, but then he returned to the Academy as a professor of harmony, counterpoint, and musical analysis. By that time the Communists had replaced the Fascists, so Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe suffered isolation from artistic developments in the rest of the world. And as Ligeti's music moved from a fairly romantic style influenced by folk music (and Bartók) into 12-tone atonalism, it escaped less and less the censor's pen. Shortly after the failed Hungarian Revolution in October and November of 1956, Stalin's brutal fist fell hard on the Hungarian Nationalists, but Ligeti was able to slip through the Iron Curtain, hidden in mail bound for Austria. As a refugee, he first joined up with avant garde darling Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) in Germany, and eventually, in 1968 Ligeti and his wife became Austrian citizens, by which time he was already garnering recognition as one of the world's most distinguished composers. Ligeti had a brief professorship in the United States, at Stanford University in 1972, but returned to Europe as a music professor in Hamburg, Germany, from 1973 until his retirement in 1989. He died in Vienna at age 83, after having spent his last years confined to a wheelchair.

In 1968, besides gaining Austrian citizenship, he unexpectedly got a widespread, international audience when Stanley Kubrick sneaked some of Ligeti's music into the groundbreaking motion picture, 2001, a Space Odyssey -- even though Kubrick had failed to ask the composer's permission. The selections by Ligeti used in the film (Atmospheres, Kyrie from Requiem, Lux aeterna, and an altered version of Aventures) demonstrate the dense, appropriately monolithic "micropolyphonic" style that is still perhaps most closely associated with the composer. But Ligeti's work actually was constantly evolving, often humorously absurdist, and, although he never returned to the unabashedly tonal idiom of his youthful works, in the 1990s he once again did return to his native folk music for inspiration. But even by the early 1980s Ligeti's music had allowed for major and minor chords to help break the unrelenting microtones, halftones and tritones that washed through the musical mainstream of the 1950s through the 1970s, creating his own harmonic landscape that he described as neither tonal nor atonal. Regardless, his polyrhythmic vitality, inspired in part by folk music of Central Africa, engages a broader audience in ways lesser modernist composers might envy.

Altogether, Ligeti wrote 18 Études for piano solo, grouped into three Books, completed in 1985 (Nos. 1-6), 1994 (Nos. 7-14), and 2001 (Nos. 15-18), respectively. They are regarded by pianists as an exploration and extension of piano technique, bringing forward the tradition of Chopin, Liszt and Debussy through the late 20th Century into the 21st.

    Études, Book I
  • No. 1. Désordre ("Chaos," Molto vivace, vigoroso, molto ritmico), explores fast polyrhythms (i.e., two or more distinct rhythmic units played simultaneously), but also with the right hand playing only white keys and the left only black.
  • No. 2. Cordes à vide ("Open strings," Andantino rubato, molto tenero), starts out with simple, languid arpeggiations that mimic the perfect-fifth tunings of a violin's open strings, becoming quicker and more complex as the subtly impressionistic étude progresses.
  • In No. 3, Touches bloquées ("Blocked keys," Vivacissimo, sempre molto ritmico - Feroce, impetuoso, molto meno vivace - Feroce, estrepitoso - Tempo I), one hand depresses shifting "blocks" of piano keys that prevent the depressed notes from sounding when the other hand plays chromatic figures around and over them.
  • No. 4, Fanfares (Vivacissimo, molto ritmico, con alegria e slancio) is another polyrhythmic study, with an ostinato pattern in 8/8 time (subdivided as 3 + 2 + 3).
  • As the title suggests, No. 5, Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow," Andante con eleganza, with swing), rises and falls in arching patterns that the composer likens to a rainbow.
  • The title of the elegiac No. 6, Automne à Varsovie ("Autumn in Warsaw," Presto cantabile, molto ritmico e flessibile), refers not so much to the season, as to an annual contemporary music festival in the Polish capital, called "Warsaw Autumn." The study offers a constant, polyphonic transformation of a descending figure introduced as the piece begins. This same "lamento motif" was first heard in Ligeti's Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982), written to be performed in celebration of the 150th birth anniversary of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), and it uses the unusual instrumental combination that Brahms had pioneered. Ligeti's Trio shares a deeper, emotional connection with its inspiration in that both works reflect the sadness each composer felt following the loss of their respective mothers, and Brahms had also used a melodic gesture that is referred to as his "lamento motif."


The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities and coloristic potential of the piano when it was a still-developing keyboard instrument, and he rightly has been called the "Poet of the Piano." Much of all piano music by subsequent composers shows his influence, and his revolutionary use of chromatic harmonies and unusual key relationships profoundly influenced composers of symphonic music and operas as well, such as Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner--thus Chopin's importance in the development of the "Romantic" style in general cannot be overestimated.

Among the five Polish national dances, the polonaise (stately 3/4 time) and mazurka (lively 3/4 time) are the best known, thanks to Chopin having written so many of them both. (The three lesser-known dances are Kujawiak, krakowiak and oberek -- the polka was widespread throughout Central Europe and not exclusively Polish, in case you're wondering.) Chopin's earliest known compositions were two polonaises written when he was seven years old, probably before he could even reach the pedals, and his last work in the genre, the Polonaise-Fantaisie, was written three years before he died. Among Chopin's 18 (or so) polonaises, the "Military" Polonaise, Op. 40, no. 1 (1838), and the "Heroic" Polonaise, Op. 53 (1842, sometimes nicknamed "Drum"), are the most-recognizable by the general public. The "oh, that one" main tune of the "Heroic" is preceded by a flurry of rumblings and chromatic scales. The polonaise in general has been described as being like a march in triple meter, and that is certainly the case in this piece. Although it holds true to its 3/4 time signature throughout, the middle "B" section, with its descending 4-note ostinato, is especially martial. The music suddenly becomes rather delicate, almost waltz-like, before an ocatve run leads into the triumphal return of the principal tune from the beginning.


César Franck (1822-1890) was a Belgian-born composer, organist and teacher who became a central figure of late French Romanticism. But this was not exactly what had been expected early on.

As a lad, César-Auguste was quite the piano prodigy, and his father, Nicolas-Joseph, did his best to provide for the best music education in order to capitalize on his son's talent. Papa Franck got César-Auguste into leading conservatories, first in their hometown of Liège (until 1837), and later in Paris (until 1842). The elder Franck, it seems, was determined that his son would become the next Mozart, and gain fame (while providing fortune) tracing the footsteps of Chopin and Franz Liszt (1811-1886) through Europe's fashionable salons. However, the big-footed Liszt had the opportunity to witness a teenaged César-Auguste perform and Liszt cautioned Franck Père that, although Franck Fils definitely had the talent, he didn't seem to have the flamboyant temperament needed to fill Liszt's enormous shoes, and trot off hobnobbing with countesses and such. Papa Franck was undeterred, but Liszt proved to have the keener insight. César-Auguste ultimately left the Paris Conservatory, and reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting, it seems, from the unrealistic demands dumped upon him by his overbearing father, who had required César-Auguste to concertize and teach, on top of trying to keep up with his studies.

Amid the angst Love blossomed. One day, ca. 1846, César-Auguste proposed to one of his piano students, Mme. Félicité Saillot (1824 - 1918). At the time French law required a Father's permission for a son not yet 25 to marry, and Nicolas-Joseph refused his consent. This, finally, was the straw that disabled a poor camel, and César (deliberately dropping the "-Auguste" as a sign of defiance) stormed out with only what he could carry, and moved in with his would-be in-laws. On December 10, 1847, César came of age, and, when he and Félicité got married on February 22, 1848, his by now resolute and reconciled parents did at least show up for the ceremony.

Having abandoned his previous career track, the reticent youth concentrated on the church organ, and kept to his teaching as well. He also continued composing, but contemporary Parisian taste hungered for opera, so Franck's penchant for "absolute" instrumental forms were never exactly eaten up by the public, including even most of his mature masterpieces. But his reputation as a virtuoso organist grew, and from 1858 until his death, Franck held the prestigious appointment as organist at the newly-built Basilica Sainte-Clothilde. His reputation throughout Europe as a virtuoso organist and the master of improvisation was apparently well-deserved, such that after hearing the grownup César improvise, Liszt commented that it was as though J.S. Bach had been reincarnated. In 1872, Franck became also the organ professor at the Paris Conservatory, where, additionally, he had a very devoted circle of student composers, including D'Indy, Duparc, Vierne, and Chausson.

In 1874, Franck finally got around to hearing the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde, the revolutionary opera by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) that had premiered nine years previous. Wagner's pervasive chromatic harmonies seemed to have provided the catalyst that finally brought Franck, then already in his fifth decade, to the top of the heap of late-Romantic composers. Franck's genius was to take Wagnerian chromaticism, combined with Bach's counterpoint and Liszt's cyclic thematic transformations, and shake them all together with Beethoven's sense of formal integrity, to create something uniquely his own in the process. Franck's crowning achievements in orchestral and chamber music include the Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879), Variations symphoniques, for piano and orchestra (1885), Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano (1886), Symphony in D Minor (1888), String Quartet in D Major (1889).

His last years also included two masterworks for solo piano, the Prélude, Choral et Fugue (1884), and Prélude, aria, et final (1887). The former (and present) piece obviously pays homage to Bach, by taking the prelude and fugue combo so identified with J.S. (and otherwise neglected since his death, except by Mendelssohn), and expanding it with the sandwiched chorale, another genre that conjures Bach just by its mention. Rival composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) complained that Franck's "chorale is not a chorale and the fugue is not a fugue," and Franck certainly breaks through the boundaries that Bach had defined. But Franck obviously knew what he was doing, and rather than merely imitating the earlier master, he instead manages a kind of grand Romantic apotheosis of the Baroque forms. In this regard, Franck's work shows an affinity with Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101, in which Beethoven's first and last movements demonstrate an expanded prelude-fugue relationship that likewise is interrupted, in Beethoven's case by a march rather than a chorale. Whether or not Franck drew inspiration from Beethoven, the three movements of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue demonstrate Franck's favored cyclic treatment of shared and recurring thematic material, as characteristic elements from the preceding movements join into the Fugue as it races toward its brilliant final gestures.


Russian composer and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was one of the greatest pianists of all time. Although of the 20th Century, Rachmaninoff's music remained firmly rooted in 19th-Century Russian Romanticism. For a time some post-War critics foolishly dismissed him as old-fashioned, but the lush harmonies and sweeping melodies that characterize his music assure it a continuing place in the world’s concert halls. Astonishingly, Rachmaninoff had what might be called a "phonographic" memory in that upon hearing virtually any piece he could play it back at the piano, even years later—and if he liked the piece it would sound like a polished performance!

Lilacs was originally the fifth song in Rachmaninoff's 12 Romances, Op. 21, completed in 1902, and he adapted it as a solo piano piece himself. He composed songs throughout his career, and his melodic talent was perfectly suited to vocal music, so it is surprising that his songs are not better known. What follows is an English translation of the original Russian song text by Ekaterina Andreyena Beketova (1855-1892) that inspired the piece.



      Lilacs --English version ©2011, by E. Lein
      Come tomorrow, at dawn,
Across the dewy lawn,
I shall breathe in morning's freshness;
And in the shade's perfume,
Where the crowding lilacs bloom,
I shall seek my happiness ...
For in this life one joy alone
Would the fates but let me own,
And my joy finds life within that lilac bower;
Among those verdant branches,
Mid fragrant petaled bunches
Goes my poor luck there, to flower ...

Monday, February 13, 2012

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, 3/11/2012 @ 2:30pm

Flint River Trio

Russell Brown, clarinet
Boyan Bonev, cello
Mimi Noda, piano

Bohuslav Martinů : Variations on a Theme of Rossini, H. 290, for Cello & Piano
    1. Theme: Poco allegro - Allegro moderato
    2. Variation I: Poco allegro
    3. Variation II: Poco piu allegro
    4 .Variation III: Andante
    5. Variation IV: Allegro
    6. Theme: Vivo. Moderato maestoso
Robert Schumann : Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, for Clarinet & Piano
    SCORE (PDF, from imslp.org)
    1. Zart und mit Ausdruck (Tenderly and with expressiveness)
    2. Lebhaft, leicht (Lively, delicately)
    3. Rasch und mit Feuer (Rapidly and with fiery passion)
Ludwig van Beethoven : Trio in Eb Major, Op. 38
    SCORE (PDF, from imslp.org
    YouTube recordings:
    1. Adagio - Allegro con brio
    2. Adagio cantabile
    3. Tempo di minuetto
    4. Tema con variazioni: Andante
    5. Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace
    6. Andante con moto alla marcia; Presto
DOWNLOAD CONCERT PROGRAM NOTES (pdf)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Russell Brown is Assistant Professor of Woodwind Studies at Albany State University in Albany, Georgia. He also serves as faculty advisor of the Rho Delta chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and is himself a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda Honor Society. Mr. Brown holds an MM in Music Composition from the University of Florida, an MM in Music Performance from The Ohio State University, and a BM in Music Performance from Valdosta State University. He is a current PhD Candidate (ABD) in Music Composition at the University of Florida. Mr. Brown regularly performs contemporary music in various chamber groups. In Georgia, he also performs with the Albany Symphony Orchestra and the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra, and in Florida he has performed with The Florida Orchestra (Tampa), the Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, and the Ocala Symphony Orchestra. Russell Brown's compositions have been performed in venues across the country, including performances by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and by the R20 Chamber Orchestra, from Wroclaw, Poland.


Award-winning Bulgarian cellist Boyan Bonev holds DM and MM degrees from the Florida State University, and a BM degree from the National Music Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria. Dr. Bonev teaches cello and double bass at Darton College (Albany, Georgia), is the orchestra director at Leon High School in Tallahassee, and is a faculty member of the FSU Summer Music Camps. He performs in Georgia with the Albany Symphony, and in Florida with the Tallahassee, Pensacola, Florida Lakes, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestras. Dr. Bonev is also an active performer of solo and chamber music, and his repertoire includes wide variety of solo and chamber music works from the Baroque and Romantic eras, contemporary compositions, and virtuoso show pieces. He has been a featured soloist with the Florida Lakes Symphony Orchestra and the Stara Zagora Symphony Orchestra (Bulgaria), and he has performed in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. A prize winner from the Bulgarian National Competition for Singers and Instrumentalists, and the International Competition "Music and Earth," Dr. Bonev took part in various programs for the Bulgarian National Television and Radio, and he has performed in a number of prestigious music festivals in the United States and Europe.


Mimi Noda, Assistant Professor of Piano at Albany State University, holds a DM in Piano Performance, Chamber Music, and Accompanying from Florida State University. Her BM is from the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, Japan, and after being graduated she was pianist for the Japanese Choral Association for six years. In 1998, she began her graduate studies at the University of Georgia, and the following year she received the Director’s Music Excellence Award, and was winner of the annual UGA concerto competition. She received her MM in Piano in 2000, and then moved to Lubbock, Texas, as Senior Staff Accompanist for the School of Music at Texas Tech University. In 2002, she began her doctoral studies in Tallahassee, and while there she received the Tallahassee Music Guild Scholarship and the Florida-Japan Institute Scholarship, and she was inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, the National Music Honor Society. She also taught Japanese in FSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics from spring 2006 until spring 2009. In addition to her faculty responsibilities at Albany State, Dr. Noda is a keyboardist with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and she regularly volunteers keyboard performances at Albany's Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. She also enjoys singing as a member of the Albany Chorale.


PROGRAM NOTES, by Ed Lein, Music Librarian

Continuing the line of Czech composers from Dvořák through Smetana and Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) is the best-known Czech composer of the mid-20th Century. Both prolific and versatile, Martinů wrote over 400 works in virtually all genres, including more than a dozen operas, 6 symphonies, and 28 works for solo instruments and orchestra.

His father was a poor shoemaker and church bell-ringer, and, owing to a rather frail constitution, young Bohuslav spent most of his childhood confined to the bell tower where his family lived. But his musical gifts were nonetheless recognized early on, and he began taking violin lessons when he was six or seven years old, and also began to compose around the same time. With the backing of his entire hometown of Polička, on the Bohemian-Moravian border, he moved to Prague in 1906, and entered the Conservatory there. Perhaps because of the introversion his childhood isolation had encouraged, he discovered he was not cut out to be the violin virtuoso his town folk were counting on--he was expelled from the Conservatory in 1910, due to what his teachers deemed "incorrigible negligence." Somewhat ironically, by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Martinů himself had become a teacher, which, together with his health issues, exempted him from military service. But as other young musicians were conscripted, Martinů began playing violin with the Czech Philharmonic, and the orchestra performed some of his compositions. More importantly, he was exposed to a wide variety of musical styles, including especially the music of Debussy, which he said profoundly influenced his development as a composer.

Martinů moved to Paris in 1923 to study with French composer Albert Roussel (1869-1937), and to absorb the influences of Stravinsky, American jazz, and everything else that was churning in the Arts Capital of the World. Throughout his life, Martinů carried a picture postcard of the church he grew up in, and, perhaps inspired by his nostalgic homesickness, rhythmic and melodic elements of Czech folk music became integrated into his increasingly neoclassical style. But in 1941, not long after the 1940 German invasion of France, he and his French wife found themselves living in the United States, unable to speak English and with no job prospects. Fortunately, as with Bartók and a few other ex-patriot composers fleeing from the Nazis, Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitsky (1874-1951) was able to assist Martinů getting commissions and performances, and the virtually unknown Czech exile soon achieved a growing reputation among the Yanks. All six of Martinů's symphonies were written and fairly widely performed in America, and they prompted the internationally-famous Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969) to declare Martinů the greatest living composer of symphonies.

Written in 1942, Martinů's Variations on a Theme of Rossini was among the first compositions he completed in the U.S., and it was composed for the virtuoso cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976), for whom Martinů also wrote several other works. The titular "Theme of Rossini" refers to Dal tuo stellato soglio (From Your Starry Throne), from the opera, Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt, 1819 version). But before Martinů got hold of it, Rossini's tune was first used by Italian violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), in his Sonata "a Preghiera" ("In Prayer" Sonata), aka, Moses Fantasy, a set of variations written originally for the violin's G-string. Perhaps because Moses was still in Egypt and Commandment VII had yet to be handed down, cellists have shown no remorse in absconding with Paganini's violin piece and moving it to their own A-string. Regardless of whether Martinů heard a cello transcription, or perhaps even studied the violin original during his conservatory days, Paganini's Fantasy, with its transformation of Rossini's reverential prayer into a light-hearted romp, is where Martinů's fanciful flight actually originates. Only, "Variations on a Variation from Paganini's Variations on a Theme of Rossini" does seem a little too long for a title.


The hopes of the great German Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) to become a concert pianist were dashed in his early twenties when he permanently damaged his hand, so he redirected his energies to both composing and music criticism. From childhood he was torn between literature and music, and Schumann's abiding respect for the poet's voice helped make him a master songwriter. He also managed to combine these two loves even in some of his purely instrumental music, by using verse and dramatic narrative to color and direct the musical discourse.

That being said, a work which has no apparent connection with any verbiage is Schumann's three-movement Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Op. 73, for clarinet and piano. If Mendelssohn had written these lyric miniatures they might well have been called "Songs without Words," but Schumann himself toyed with the idea of naming them Nachtstücke (Night Pieces). Schumann quickly wrote his would-be nocturnes over the course of two cold days in February, 1849, near the outset of what he would later refer to as "my most fruitful year," and he thought they would be equally effective with violin or cello. The composer instructed that the movements be played without a break, and, as his tempo markings indicate, the first movement is nostalgically dreamy, and the second one sprightly. The third movement becomes a jaunty ride, ever faster and faster in its Coda, so, with apologies to Bette Davis, "fasten your seatbelts ... ."


The Transcendent German-born composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) began his compositional career essentially imitating the styles and forms he inherited from Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and W.A Mozart (1756-1791), but during his "middle" period (ca. 1803-1815) Beethoven expanded and personalized this inheritance, creating works that have come to represent the culmination of the Classical style in much the same way that the works of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) represent the culmination of the Baroque. During Beethoven's "late" period (ca. 1815-1827), he discovered new paths toward still more personal, even intimate, musical expression, and, despite the gradual and eventually total degeneration of his hearing, he forged the way beyond the Classical tradition into the Romantic.

To anyone familiar with Beethoven's Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, his Trio, Op. 38 will be immediately recognizable as an arrangement of the composer's earlier best-seller. Dating from 1799-1800, Beethoven seems to have used Mozart's six-movement String Trio in E-flat Major, K. 563, as the model for the Septet. Beethoven's serenade became so popular with the music-buying public that others had started selling unauthorized arrangements for different instrumental combinations, so Beethoven made an arrangement for reduced forces himself, and issued it in 1805 with a new opus number. The original Septet was for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and string bass, and it was unusual for its time in that the clarinet was treated as an equal to the violin. Beethoven's Trio version allows for either clarinet or violin, with cello and piano.