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Friday, July 3, 2015

June 12, 2016

JiWon Hwang, violin
Boyan Bonev, cello
Mimi Noda, piano

* SARASATE: Romanza Andaluza, Op. 22, No. 1
* LEIN: Nocturne
* PIAZZOLLA: Libertango
* POPPER: Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68
* BRAHMS: Piano Trio No.1 in B Major Op.8

Allegro con brio
Scherzo - Allegro molto
Adagio
Allegro

Korean violinist Ji Won Hwang earned her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea, where she also taught, in addition to conducting the Soongsil Boy's Orchestra. After moving to the United States she became a teaching assistant at The Florida State University while working on her Doctor of Music degree under the guidance of violinist Eliot Chapo. She has performed as a solo artist and with a variety of ensembles in the Big Bend area, including as violinist with the Eppes String Quartet under the sponsorship of Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Ellen Taafe Zwilich. Winner of the top prize of the Korea Germany Brahms Association Competition in 2004, Dr. Hwang has performed throughout Asia, Europe and North America, and recently gave a concert entitled "Russia in New York" at Carnegie Hall. In addition to her solo engagements, she plays for symphony orchestras in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.

Award-winning Bulgarian cellist Boyan Bonev teaches cello and double bass at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, and previously taught in Georgia at Albany State University and Darton College. Dr. Bonev is on the faculty of the Florida State University Summer Music Camps, and performs with the Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, Florida Lakes, and Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestras. Active as a solo and chamber musician, Boyan Bonev has appeared in concert and educational programs for Bulgarian National Television and Radio, in performance at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), and as soloist with orchestras in the United States and Europe. Dr. Bonev holds Doctor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the National Music Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Mimi Noda was a collaborative pianist with the Japanese Choral Association before relocating to the United States in 1998 to pursue graduate studies. While earning degrees at the University of Georgia (MM) and Florida State University (DM), she was awarded a number of prizes and scholarships in piano performance, and also taught Japanese in FSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Now an Associate Professor of Music at Georgia's Albany State University, in addition to annual faculty recitals, other recent solo engagements have included a recital in Tokyo, Japan. Apart from responsibilities in the Music Dept., Dr. Noda has established a course in Japanese at ASU, and will be teaching Japanese through the Study Abroad Program for the University System of Georgia. Her volunteer activities include performing at Albany's Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, and giving piano lessons to children at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee.

PROGRAM NOTES

Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) was a popular virtuoso whose light touch and flawless tone inspired several of the Romantic period's enduring showpieces, including Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, Saint-Saens' Introduction & Rondo Capriccio and Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, not to mention concertos by these and other composers. As an eight-year old Sarasate already was giving concerts, and after winning the Paris Conservatory's top performance prize at age 17, he began an international solo career that continued unabated for four decades--his star shone so brightly that even Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went to hear him play! Composed in 1879, Romanza Andaluza (op. 22, no. 1) is the third of Sarasate's eight "Spanish Dances" for violin and piano. Paying obvious tribute to the music of his homeland, Sarasate capitalizes on the violin's low register while introducing his folk-like original tunes, then harmonizes them with persistent double-stops that enhance the music's dancing lyricism with virtuosic flair.

SCORE (pdf)
Hear it on YouTube

Florida native Edward Lein (b. 1955) holds master's degrees in Music and Library Science from Florida State University. Early in his career he appeared throughout his home state as tenor soloist in recitals, oratorios and dramatic works, and most of his early compositions feature voices. Following performances by the Jacksonville Symphony of his Meditation for cello, oboe and orchestra (premiered June 2006) and In the Bleak Midwinter (premiered December 2007), his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players for new pieces. The Nocturne is the second movement from his Sonatina (2007). It presents a languid tune that alternates with a hymn-like chorale, perhaps suggesting a quiet boat ride down the St. John's River at dusk.

SCORE (pdf)[Beginning at p.8]
Hear it on Instant Encore

With an estimated catalog of over 3,000 compositions, Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992) pretty much single-handedly reinvented the tango. Born in Argentina, Piazzolla spent most of his childhood in New York, where he developed a fondness for jazz and classical music. His father taught him to play the bandoneón, a concertina common to Argentine tango ensembles, and when he returned to Buenos Aires in 1937 he played with some of the leading bands. He also began composition studies with Alberto Ginastera and won a grant in 1953 to study in Paris with legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Returning to Argentina in 1955, Piazzolla infused the traditional national dance with characteristics of jazz and formal elements from his classical studies. Although this nuevo tango ("new tango") style was met with resistance in his homeland, it captivated Europeans and North Americans and his international career blossomed. Libertango reflects his "liberation of the tango," and has been recorded over 500 times since originally recorded and published in 1974.

Hear it on YouTube

Called "the Rostropovich of the 19th century," David Popper (1843-1913) was born in the Jewish ghetto of Prague and became one of Europe's most celebrated cellists. In addition to holding prestigious orchestral positions, Popper was well-known as both solo virtuoso and chamber musician, partnering with a number of high-profile pianists, including his wife Sophie Menter (whom Liszt cited as the world's greatest woman pianist), Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Also a highly respected teacher, Popper joined the faculty of the Budapest royal conservatory in 1896, and his influence continues to this day through the High School of Cello Playing, Op. 78 (1901-05), something of a bible for advanced cello students. A gifted melodist, most of Popper's compositions showcase the expressive and technical capabilities of his instrument, amply demonstrated in the Hungarian Rhapsody, Op. 68 (1894), likely his best-known work.

SCORE (pdf)
Hear it on YouTube

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 B’s” of classical music. Originally composed in 1854, Brahms revised his Piano Trio No. 1, op. 8 in 1889, but, remarkably, he allowed both versions to remain in print (although, not surprisingly, it's the revision that's almost always performed). Another remarkable thing about the Trio is that it's one of very few multi-movement instrumental works composed during the 400 or so years comprising the Baroque through Romantic periods that begin in a major key and end in a minor one.

SCORE (pdf)
Hear it on YouTube

SELECTED RELATED LIBRARY RESOURCES

CD VIOLIN S525 R758 DG
Romances [sound recording] / Gil Shaham, violin (featuring Sarasate : Romanza andaluza).
CD P584 I59se SONY
Soul of the tango [sound recording] : the music of Astor Piazzolla.
780.92 P584Az, 2000
Le grand tango : the life and music of Astor Piazzolla / by María Susana Azzi.
CD STRING P831 I59se NAXOS
Romantic cello showpieces [sound recording] / David Popper.
780.92 NEUNZIG
Brahms / by Hans A. Neunzig.
CD B813 T834 TELDEC
The piano trios [sound recording] / Brahms (Trio Fontenay).

May 8, 2016

JPL Program Calendar

Joshua Ross, piano

Lyapunov - Transcendental Etude Op. 11 No. 1 "Berceuse"
Chopin - Nocturne Op. 15 No. 1 in F minor
Chopin - Scherzo Op.31 No. 2 in B flat minor
Brahms - Rhapsody Op. 79 No. 2 in G minor
Liszt - Au bord d'une source
Ravel - Jeux d'eau
Schumann - Kinderszenen Op.15

CLICK HERE for the Program Guide (pdf)

Among the winners of the 2013 American Protégé International Competition of Romantic Music, pianist Joshua Ross recently made his Carnegie Hall debut in Weill Recital Hall in February 2014. He holds a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from the University of Georgia, where he studied with Dr. Martha Thomas, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from The Florida State University, where he studied with Dr. Heidi Louise Williams. He also studied with Dr. James Nalley, performed and studied at the 2008 Schlern Music Festival, in Vols am Schlern, Italy, and has played in master classes for renowned pianists Angela Cheng, Natsuki Fukasawa, David Northington, and Richard Cionco, among others.
Among recent engagements, Mr. Ross performed for the Steinway Piano Society of Bonita Springs in their Past Winners Recital Series, as well as the 2013 American Bandmasters Association conference in Tampa, Florida as featured pianist with the internationally-acclaimed University of Georgia Wind Ensemble. Recent competition performances include the 2012 Georgia Music Teachers Association National Competition as well as the UGA concerto competition.
Pursuing his passion for teaching, Joshua was on the faculty of the UGA Community Music School, where a gave private and group piano lessons to both children and adults. He currently teaches at the Steinway Piano Gallery of Bonita Springs, Florida. Originally from Naples, Florida, Joshua is a devoted alumni of the FSU Marching Chiefs, in which he played the saxophone, enjoying many high-profile engagements including the 2010 Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta, and the 2011 Inauguration of Governor Rick Scott.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Russian composer and concert pianist Sergei Lyapunov (1859-1924) was also a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, among other teaching positions. His Douze études d'exécution transcendente ("12 Transcendental Etudes," Op. 12) contain his best-known pieces, including the Berceuse ("Lullaby," Op. 11, no. 1). Lyapunov intended his set as a continuation of Franz Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, which Liszt had planned as a cycle of 24 etudes in all the major and minor keys but did not live to complete.

The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin was the first composer to make full use of the expressive qualities 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 can not be overestimated.
Among his best-loved works are the 21 Nocturnes ("Night Pieces"). Published in 1834, Nocturne Op. 15, no. 1 opens and closes with lyrical sections in F major, flanking a "fiery" middle section in F minor.
Among his many other achievements, Chopin was the first to "liberate" the scherzo from its previously subsidiary role as an interior movement in multi-movement works. With Chopin the scherzo becomes an independent piece that retains the lively tempo and 3/4 time of its precedents, but which often dispenses with the jocularity implied by the title ("scherzo" is the Italian word for "joke"), and which rather expansively elaborates on the traditional "ABA" formal design. First published in 1837, in his 3-part Scherzo No. 2, Op. 31 the beginning and concluding "A" sections share characteristics of sonata-allegro design, but are interrupted by the central, episodic "B" section.

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 B’s” 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 Rhapsody, Op. 79, No. 2 in G minor is from a pair of like-titled works dating from 1879.

Hungarian-born Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is widely regarded as the greatest pianist of all time, and his performances excited an hysteria that today is reserved for only the most popular of rock stars. Despite great fame following a sometimes impoverished youth, Liszt remained unspoiled and donated great sums of his concert earnings to a wide variety of charitable causes, and in later life he even took orders in the church. An innovative composer, Liszt is credited with creating the symphonic tone poem as a form, developing the technique of thematic transformation, and anticipating some of the harmonic devices of Impressionist composers. Au bord d'une source ("Beside a Spring") is the 4th piece in his suite, Années de Pèlerinage,Première année: Suisse (Years of Pilgrimage, 1st Year: Switzerland), which he captioned “In the whispering coolness begins young nature’s play” (quoting poet Friedrich Schiller).

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was a great French composer and master orchestrator who maintains a place among the most performed and recorded composers of all time. He is often identified with Debussy as a chief proponent of musical Impressionism, but Ravel melded exotic harmonies with classical formal structures to create a personal, refined style that transcends a single label. About his famous piece inspired by Liszt and with a title translated as "Water Games," Ravel provided the following commentary: "Jeux d'eau, appearing in 1901, is at the origin of the pianistic novelties which one would notice in my work. This piece, inspired by the noise of water and by the musical sounds which make one hear the sprays water, the cascades, and the brooks, is based on two motives in the manner of the movement of a sonata—without, however, subjecting itself to the classical tonal plan."

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, but he managed to combine these two loves even in some of his purely instrumental music by using poetry and dramatic narrative to color and direct the musical discourse. Composed in 1838, the 13 pieces that comprise Schumann's Kinderszenen ("Childhood Scenes," Op. 15) are not really intended specifically for children, as one might suppose at first glance. Rather, they are nostalgic remembrances of youth filtered through the experience of adulthood.

March 13, 2016 @ 3 p.m.

JPL Program Calendar

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts
Piano Students

Vera Watson, Faculty Coordinator

PROGRAM NOTES (PDF)

Janine Albrecht
BEETHOVEN: Sonata in F minor, Op. 2 No. 1
I. Allegro

Shoshana Howard
KUHLAU: Sonatina in C Major, Op. 55 No. 3
I.Allegro con spirito

Kara Straight
HAYDN: Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI: 10
I. Moderato

Bethany Roberts
MOZART: Sonata in B-flat, K.333.
I. Allegro

Andrew Urso
BEETHOVEN: Sonata in G, Op. 14 No. 2
I. Allegro

Gabrielle McGrath
LINN: Nocturne d’Esprit

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts is a Duval County Public School for students grades 9 through 12 with a desire for intensive study in the arts. Established as an arts school in 1985, the school attracts students from all parts of North Florida and South Georgia who have talent in dance, instrumental or vocal music, performance or technical theater, film and video production, creative writing, and visual arts. A high academic standard, coupled with broad arts curriculum, offers students an opportunity to excel in a chosen discipline while preparing them for post-secondary education.

Douglas Anderson's Piano Program
In 2000 DA’s Piano program was recognized as the best music program in Northeast Florida and was awarded the Jacksonville Symphony Association’s Harmony Grant. The Piano Department offers serious young pianists a unique opportunity to be in an intensive and varied program and to work with internationally acclaimed guest artists.

Vera Watson has been Chair of the Piano Department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts since 1999. She holds National Certification in piano from the Music Teachers National Association and a Florida Professional Educator’s Certificate. Under her leadership the DA piano program was recognized as the best music program in Northeast Florida by the Jacksonville Symphony Guild in 2001, for which Douglas Anderson received the Harmony Grant. In 2003, Ms. Watson received the Surdna Foundation Grant in New York City, in recognition of her achievements among the best arts teachers in the United States. In 2010, Friday Musicale presented Vera Watson with the Carolyn Day Pfohl Music Educator Award for Outstanding Achievements. She is especially proud of her many students who have been accepted into prestigious music conservatories, and have become successful artists.

PROGRAM NOTES Under Construction

BEETHOVEN: Sonata in F minor, Op. 2 No. 1 ; Sonata in G, Op. 14 No. 2
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.

KUHLAU: Sonatina in C Major, Op. 55 No. 3
German-born Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) was known primarily as a concert pianist and composer of Danish opera, but he wrote music in virtually every genre. His compositional catalog includes almost 200 published works - impressive in itself, but who knows how many more works were lost when his house burned down?

HAYDN: Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI: 10
Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the “Classical” style that his two 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. 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 for the instruction and amusement of his noble patrons.

MOZART: Sonata in B-flat, K.333.
Austrian-born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), unquestionably one of the greatest composers in history, began his career touring Europe as a 6-year-old piano prodigy, and he absorbed and mastered all the contemporary musical trends he was exposed to along the way. Mozart wrote 22 operas, including, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi fan tutte (1790), and The Magic Flute (1791), as well as 40 symphonies (“No. 37” is by Michael Haydn, but with a new introduction by Mozart), 27 concertos, chamber music, sonatas, and choral pieces, numbering over 600 works all together.

LINN: Nocturne d’Esprit
American composer, pianist and educator Jennifer Linn is also very active in music publishing, with concurrent positions at Hal Leonard Corporation and G.W. Schirmer. Ms. Linn has taught for more than 25 years, including as visiting lecturer in piano pedagogy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has presented recitals, workshops and master classes throughout the United States and Canada. Many of her compositions have been selected for the National Federation of Music Clubs festival list and the London College of Music repertoire list and are frequently recommended in reviews by Clavier and American Music Teacher magazines.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, April 27, 2014 @ 3 p.m.

M. Brent Williams, violin
Douglas Jurs, piano
Faculty Artists from Valdosta State University & Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College

Libby Larsen: Blue Piece for Violin and piano
Maurice Ravel: Sonata in G
- Allegretto (G major)
- Blues. Moderato (A♭ major)
- Perpetuum mobile. Allegro (G major)
George Antheil: Sonata No. 2
Gershwin-Heifetz: Selections from Porgy and Bess
Summertime/A Woman is a Sometime Thing - My Man's Gone Now - It Ain't Necessarily So - Tempo di Blues

M. Brent Williams has enjoyed a varied career as a soloist and chamber musician in nine different countries and as a member of over fifteen symphony orchestras. He is currently the Concertmaster of the Albany Symphony Orchestra (GA), Assistant Concertmaster of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra (FL) and Principal Second Violin of the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra (GA). Williams has performed concerti with the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Gulf Coast (FL), the Opera Teatro di Lucca Chamber Orchestra (Lucca, Italy), Albany Symphony Orchestra and Valdosta State University Percussion Ensemble. Williams has been a lecturer of Violin and World Music at Valdosta State University since 2008 where he performs with the Azalea String Quartet and is the director/founder of VSU’s Pan-American Ensemble (the university’s first, full-fledged world music ensemble). He has also been on the faculties of the Chapel Hill Chamber Music Workshop (NC), Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (MI) and Florida State University Summer Music Camp in addition to being the former Director of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra Symphonic Strings and Co-Director of TYO’s Fiddlers (FL). Williams’ live performances have appeared on many NPR stations including WBLV (MI) and KRTS (TX) and he has recorded for the Naxos, Koch and Emeritus labels. Williams holds BMA from the Oklahoma University, MM and DM from the Florida State University.

A dedicated chamber musician, his current group enhake was the Grand Prize Winner of the Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition (2009), First Prize Winner of the International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition (2008), received the Judges’ Special Recognition Prize at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition (2008), was awarded the James and Lola Faust Chamber Music Scholarship (2009), was a finalist of the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition (2011), was a semi-finalist at the Concert Artists Guild Competition (2009) and also received the American Composers Forum’s Encore grant in addition to multiple Musical Associate Grants from FSU. With enhake, they have held residencies at the OK Mozart festival (2008-present), Texas A & M University, University of Costa Rica, Bach Institute of Music (San Jose, Costa Rica), National Superior Institute of Music (Moravia, Costa Rica), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brasil), Federal University of Goias (Brasil), Universidade de Brasilia and Mesa State College, in addition to performances at the Pan-Music Festival at the Seoul Arts Center (South Korea) and on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Newman Series, Appleton Museum Chamber Series (Ocala, Fla.), and for both Music @ Main and Friday Musicale concert series in Jacksonville. enhake performed the ICMEC Winners’ concert at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall (2008) and returned 3 May 2010 to perform a recital entitled “American Portrait” which included the premiere of Libby Larsen’s Rodeo Reina del Cielo— a piece written for the group.

Chicago-born pianist Douglas Jurs was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano and Music Theory at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Fall 2012, having previously served on the piano faculties at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and Edgewood College. Dr. Jurs has performed solo and collaborative recitals throughout the U.S. and abroad in cities like Vienna, Nice, and Milan and at festivals such as the Holland International Music Sessions, Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Centre d’Arts Orford in Quebec, among others. He won First Prize at the 2004 Lee Biennial Piano Competition, and was winner of the University of Wisconsin Beethoven Competition in 2010.

Dr. Jurs is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Blue Horse Music Festival in Woodstock, Vermont, a biannual winter/summer concert series that features acclaimed musicians performing in the intimate Blue Horse Inn music parlor. A committed teacher, Dr. Jurs has over ten years of private piano teaching experience and his pre-college students have won competitions at the local, state and national levels. In past summers, he has worked as an Artist Teacher at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. As a long-time advocate for arts outreach, Dr. Jurs has performed in correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals and as a past Associate Artist with Cleveland Opera, in over 100 public schools throughout Ohio. He was one of the first teachers to work with the University of Wisconsin Piano Pioneers program, an initiative that brings affordable music lessons to low-income students.

Dr. Jurs' music degrees are from the University of Wisconsin (DMA), Cleveland Institute of Music (MM), and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music(BS-OF), where he was a Friends of Music Scholar, double major in Piano and English Literature, and rider for the Cutters cycling team.

PROGRAM NOTES - under construction - Please check back

Libby Larsen: Blue Piece for Violin and piano
Score & Recording on the Composer's website

One of the most-performed and recorded living American composers, Grammy Award-winner Libby Larsen (b. 1950) has over 500 works in virtually every vocal and instrumental genre, including 15 operas. In 1973 Larsen co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composer’s Forum, and she has held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony. Her brief Blue Piece received its premiere in March 2010 by Cora Cooper at the Kansas Music Educators Conference.

Maurice Ravel: Sonata in G
YouTube performance

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was a great French composer and master orchestrator who maintains a place among the most performed and recorded composers of all time. He is often identified with Debussy as a chief proponent of musical Impressionism, but Ravel melded exotic harmonies with classical formal structures to create a personal, refined style that transcends a single label. In 1897 Ravel composed a violin sonata in A minor, a student work which has been published and recorded posthumously; so his more famous Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major is sometimes referred to as “Sonata No. 2.” Those familiar only with Ravel’s opulent pre-war works may be surprised by its sparse textures, and the composer said that he purposely did not try to hide the difference between the legato sound of the violin and the relatively brittle, percussive sound of the piano. Ravel began writing the G major Sonata in 1923, but due to declining health and "writer's block" he did didn't finish it until four years later. It is his last chamber music composition, and it summarizes the diverse elements that blend into his mature style: impressionistic modal and whole tone inflections, parallel triads and open fifths, bi-tonal passages and a peppering of sharp dissonances, sometimes glittering accompaniment figures, and, especially in the second “Blues” movement, a fascination with American jazz and blues and the music of George Gershwin. Ravel himself was the pianist for the 1927 world premiere in Paris, as well as for the American premiere the following year.

George Antheil: Sonata No. 2
YouTube performance

American modernist composer, author and inventor George Antheil (1900-1959) was a precocious youngster from Trenton, New Jersey, who started studying music seriously at age six. Despite never finishing high school, by age 19 Antheil had convinced composer Ernest Bloch to teach him privately, and around the same time he began getting a monthly stipend from Mary Louis Curtis Bok to assist with his composing. Mrs. Bok, who later would found the Curtis Institute of Music, would continue to provide Antheil with at least limited financial support for two decades. In 1922, Antheil moved first to Berlin, then to Paris a year later where his circle of associates included fellow composers Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie and Virgil Thomson, and also writers, including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Even before crossing the Atlantic, the self-styled Bad Boy of Music (as Antheil titled his 1945 autobiography) had written "The Airplane," his second piano sonata and the first in a series of compositions inspired by the sounds of machinery that would bring him notoriety. Antheil returned to Germany in the late 1920s, but when Hitler began to gain ground in the mid-1930s Antheil returned to The States, eventually moving to Hollywood where he became much admired for his film scores. He also entered into an improbable wartime partnership with actress Heddy Lamar to develop a radio-controlled torpedo that used technology adapted from player pianos (you can't make this stuff up...).

While living in Paris, British poet Ezra Pound commissioned Antheil to write three violin sonatas for Olga Rudge, an American concert violinist (and Pound's mistress). In discussing Antheil's Second Sonata violinist Mark Fewer observes:

The form of this sonata for violin and piano is extraordinarily “out of the box,” particularly for 1923! Everything — from the wild swings in musical content to ideas that never quite finish themselves to the completely over-the-top cadenza and the quiet tango with the pianist switching to drums at the end—is revolutionary. The best way I have found to describe it is to use the analogy of channel-surfing — it really is like sitting down with a remote control and changing the channel every few seconds.

Gershwin-Heifetz: Selections from Porgy and Bess
- Summertime/A Woman is a Sometime Thing
- My Man's Gone Now
- It Ain't Necessarily So
- Tempo di Blues
YouTube performance

George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote his first song in 1916 and his first Broadway musical in 1919, and remained a fixture of the New York stage for 14 successive years. In 1924 he enjoyed success in applying jazz idioms to concert works with Rhapsody in Blue, and until the end of his life he produced larger-scale works alongside songs for musicals and films. Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess (1935), with lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, remains the only opera by an American-born composer firmly established in the repertory. Upon the death of Lithuanian-born virtuoso Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), his obituary in The New York Times called him "perhaps the greatest violinist of his time." In 1944, Heifetz transcribed Selections from 'Porgy and Bess' for use in his own concerts, and they have remained favorites of violinists ever since.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, May 11, 2014 @ 3 p.m.

Dr. Gary Smart, piano & Marilyn Smart, piano

Faculty Artists from The University of North Florida

Under construction - Please check back!

SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Selections from 10 Pieces for Piano, Op. 75 (1937, arranged from Romeo and Juliet)
   6.        Montagues and Capulets
   10.      Romeo and Juliet’s Farewell
        Gary Smart, piano

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Chasons de Bilitis (1898)
    I      La flûte de Pan
   II      La Chevelure
   III     Le Tombeau des naïades
        Marilyn Smart, soprano & Gary Smart, piano

L’isle joyeuse (1904)
        Gary Smart, piano

Intermission

GEORGE GERSHWIN
A Foggy Day (A Damsel in Distress, 1937)
Someone to Watch Over Me (Oh, Kay!, 1926)
Somebody Loves Me (George White's Scandals, 1924)
        Marilyn Smart, soprano & Gary Smart, piano

Three Preludes (1926)
    I        Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
   II      Andante con moto e poco rubato
   III     Agitato
        Gary Smart, piano

Love is here to Stay (The Goldwyn Follies, 1938 & used in An American in Paris, 1951)
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off (Shall We Dance, 1937)
        Marilyn Smart, soprano & Gary Smart, piano

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

The musical career of Marilyn Smart has been both active and diverse. She has worked with such luminaries as Robert Shaw, Seiji Ozawa, and Dave Brubeck, and has sung in unique venues in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Smart’s singing has delighted audiences not only in public and university concert halls, but also in rural American schools, special cultural outreach venues in Japan, and even Eskimos villages in northern Alaska. Awarded a special citation by the Ford Foundation's Contemporary Music Project, she has long championed the work of contemporary composers and, with her husband, composer-pianist Gary Smart, is recognized for their performances of American art song. A former student of Margaret Harshaw, Josef Metternich, and Phyllis Curtin, Smart has taught at the University of Wyoming, Kobe College, and Osaka University. Since joining the faculty of UNF in 1999, she has performed as soloist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, for the Friday Musicale, the St. Cecelia Society, and many other local musical organizations. At UNF, Marilyn Smart teaches Applied Voice, French, Italian, and German Diction, as well as Vocal Literature.

Gary Smart is a composer, classical and jazz pianist, and teacher, and may be the only pianist to have studied with Yale scholar/keyboardist Ralph Kirkpatrick, the great Cuban virtuoso Jorge Bolet, and the master jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. Smart’s work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Music Educator's National Conference, the Music Teacher's National Association and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been performed in major venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Dr. Smart's compositions are published by Margun Music (G. Schirmer) and his work has been recorded on the Capstone and Albany labels. He spent two residencies in Japan, and taught in Indonesia as "Distinguished Lecturer in Jazz" under the auspices of the Fulbright program. Gary Smart is currently a Presidential Professor of Music at the University of North Florida, where he served as Chairman of the Music Department from 1999-2003.

Program Notes, by Ed Lein (Under Construction - Please check back)

Ukrainian-Soviet composer and pianist Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) wrote some of the most-frequently performed and recorded music of the 20th Century, including the delightful Peter and the Wolf and exuberant “Classical” Symphony. Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, composed between 1935-36, originally had a happy ending, with Juliet reviving in time to stop Romeo from killing himself, because, as the composer observed, dead people can’t dance. But Soviet theaters were fearful of incurring the wrath of Stalin’s regime for corrupting the beloved story, so Prokofiev eventually was persuaded to restore the Bard’s tragic ending. The complete ballet finally premiered in Czechoslovakia in 1938, but in the meantime Prokofiev was determined to get the music before the public, even without toe-shoes. He prepared a couple of orchestral suites, and also arranged selections as Ten Pieces for Piano, Op. 75, which he first performed in 1937. Montagues and Capulets is the best-known music from the ballet, and its bellicose haughtiness aptly conjures the feuding families. The blustering is interrupted by a chilly minuet depicting the first meeting of the 13-year-old Juliet with Paris, an older suitor to whom she's betrothed. Romeo at Juliet’s before Parting takes place at dawn, after the star-crossed lovers’ secret wedding the night before. The music develops a theme representing Romeo’s love, but contains a few hints at the tragedy that will soon unfold.

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. Since his death the term as applied to music has been redefined almost exclusively around the characteristics of some of Debussy's most famous works, such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La mer ("The Sea"), so whatever negative connotations "Impressionism" once may have had since have evaporated.

Debussy's 1898 song cycle Trois chansons de Bilitis offers a prime example of the musical style he pioneered, including using modal scales in addition to, or instead of, the diatonic major and minor scales most characteristic of Western music from the Baroque period forward. Debussy also emphasizes consecutive "parallel fifths" between musical lines, which in traditional harmony is a big no-no. (According to legend, every time a student of harmony writes a parallel fifth, Bach kills a kitten.) In addition to creating an exotic sound-scape, these devices were perfect for conjuring the archaic atmosphere of the song texts by Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), a friend of the composer. Louÿs presented his original poetry as though it were translations of recently-discovered ancient Greek verses, supposedly authored by the courtesan "Bilitis." For a time Louÿs fictional character fooled even the most respected scholars!

Trois Chansons de Bilitis on YouTube

Debussy's effervescent L’isle joyeuse was inspired by L’Embarquement pour Cythère ("The Embarkation for Cythera"), by French painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). The painting depicts an amorous boating party visiting the supposed birthplace of Venus, complete with Cupids flitting about. Writing to his publisher Debussy observed, “This piece seems to embrace every possible manner of treating the piano, combining as it does strength with grace, if I may presume to say so.” It begins with a glittering haze of whole-tone harmonies and eventually ends in A major, harmonically bridged with Lydian modal inflections (like a major scale but with a raised fourth). Debussy's music captures the sensuous excitement depicted in Watteau's excursion, but it's hardly a vacation for the pianist. As Debussy himself observed, “Lord, but it’s difficult to play!”

George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote his first song in 1916 and his first Broadway musical in 1919, and remained a fixture of the New York stage for 14 successive years. In 1924 he wrote Rhapsody in Blue, which lead to further successes applying jazz idioms to music for the concert hall. Until the end of his life he produced larger-scale works alongside songs for stage musicals and films, including Porgy and Bess (1935), the only opera by an American composer firmly established in the repertory. Like Mozart, Chopin and Mendelssohn, Gershwin did not live to see his 40th birthday, but he nonetheless left a legacy of songs that can fill several chapters in "The Great American Song Book," and among American composers his concert music is rivaled in popularity only by works of Copland, Barber and Bernstein (and probably surpasses each).

No doubt inspired by Chopin's 24 Preludes. Op. 28, Gershwin apparently toyed with the idea of composing a set of 24 jazz-and-blues-inspired preludes, and actually committed seven to paper. Completed in 1926, two of the seven were rejected (apparently by Gershwin's publisher), two were adapted for violin and piano and published as Short Story, and the remaining became the famous Three Preludes, which the composer himself played in the first public performance in New York City.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Intermezzo Sunday Concert, February 9, 2014 @ 3 p.m.

Jorge A. Peña, viola
Maila Gutierrez Springfield, piano

Haydn/Piatigorsky : Divertimento in D Major
1. Adagio
2. Minuetto
3. Allegro molto

Manuel De Falla/Peña : Suite Populaire Espagnole
1. El Paño Moruno
2. Seguidilla
3. Nana
4. Jota
5. Asturiana
6. Canción
7. Polo

Henri Vieuxtemps : Sonata in B-flat Major
1. Maestoso
2. Barcarolla (Andante con moto)
3. Finale scherzando (Allegretto)

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Honduran-born violist Jorge Peña is a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and a former member of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. He has performed for Midwest Clinic, Grand Teton Music Festival, St. Augustine Music Festival and Island Concert Association, as well as at the National Gallery of Art, Tanglewood Music Center, University of North Florida and Jacksonville University. As a solo artist he has appeared throughout the Americas and Europe. With chamber music holding a special place in his career, Jorge and his wife, cellist Jin Kim-Peña, formed and perform with the Movado Quartet, and he often collaborates with a variety of ensembles, such as the Ritz Chamber Players, the Dover Quartet, the Diaz Trio, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta Virtuosi. Mr. Peña is Founder and Artistic Director of the annual St. Augustine Music Festival, the largest free music festival in the United States. Mr. Peña was graduated from Columbus State University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music with degrees in performance and chamber music. He studied with Curtis Institute President Roberto Diaz, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra principal viola Richard Field, and Julliard quartet member Earl Carlys.

Award-winning pianist Maila Gutierrez Springfield is an instructor at Valdosta State University and a member of the Maharlika Trio, a group dedicated to commissioning and performing new works for saxophone, trombone and piano. Twice-honored with the Excellence in Accompanying Award at Eastman School of Music, Maila has been staff accompanist for the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, Georgia Southern University, the Buffet Crampon Summer Clarinet Academy and the Interlochen Arts Camp, where she had the privilege of working with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. She has collaborated with members of major symphony orchestras, including those in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jacksonville. Maila can be heard on saxophonist Joren Cain’s CD, "Voices of Dissent," and on clarinetist Linda Cionitti's CD, "Jag & Jersey." Ms. Springfield was awarded a Bachelor of Music degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music.

PROGRAM NOTES by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Haydn/Piatigorsky : Divertimento in D Major

JAXCAT entries for Joseph Haydn

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the “Classical” style that his two younger contemporaries Mozart (his friend) and Beethoven (his pupil) built upon. By the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely celebrated composer in Europe.

When Haydn was 8 years old he was accepted as a choirboy at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where in addition to vocal training he received instruction in violin and piano. But puberty spoiled all that, and by about 1749 Haydn found himself re-cast as a struggling free-lance musician. His choirboy years had not provided him with any substantial training in music composition, so he began to teach himself the essentials, pretty much on his own. Through the next decade he began to make a name for himself as a composer, and in 1757 Haydn earned a full-time position as the chief musician for the aristocratic Morzin family. This success was short-lived: by 1761 Count Morzin's finances had tanked and Haydn found himself newly-married and unemployed. But as a manor-door was slamming shut behind him, Haydn climbed through a palace-window of opportunity and immediately entered into the employment of the fabulously wealthy Esterházy family, becoming their Kapellmeister in 1766. Both Prince Paul Anton (1711-62) and his successor, Prince Nikolaus (1714-90), were music connoisseurs, and Haydn thrived under their patronage. In 1779, Nikolaus even agreed that Haydn could publish and sell works apart from those composed for (and belonging to) the family, and Haydn's reputation spread throughout Europe. Unlike his grandfather and father, Nikolaus's son and heir, Prince Anton (1738-94), was no musician, so after Nikolaus died in 1790 the composer was free to travel, most notably to London, and his international reputation as the greatest living composer was sealed. When the financially-independent Haydn returned to Vienna in 1795, he was himself an important public figure. He continued his association with the Esterházy family, but he was no longer their servant, and he neither needed nor wanted full-time employment. Instead, he could compose for himself and for posterity.

JAXCAT entries for Gregor Piatigorsky

In addition to being Haydn's boss for nearly three decades, Prince Nikolaus played the baryton, an archaic bowed instrument with frets akin to the bass viol, that was pretty rare even back then. So one of Haydn's chief tasks was to write music for Nikolaus to play, which resulted in 123 trios for baryton, viola and cello. The music of the present Divertimento in D Major was adapted and arranged from the baryton trios by legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976). Published in 1944, The majority of the music derives from Haydn's Baryton Trio in D Major, H. XI:113, but rather than providing a straight-forward arrangement, Piatigorsky used Haydn's music essentially to create a new work. As violist Myron Rosenblum observes, "What Piatigorsky seems to have done is to take the baryton and viola lines, merge them, with much recomposing to come up with his own work." Piatigorsky created the Divertimento to play himself, and in addition to the versions for either viola or cello and piano, there is also a version for cello and orchestra.

Manuel De Falla : Suite Populaire Espagnole

JAXCAT entries for Manuel De Falla

During the early decades of the 20th Century, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) gained an international reputation as the leading Spanish composer of his generation. Infused with the rhythms and harmonies of the folk songs and dances of his native Andalusia, Falla’s music has been described as representing “the spirit of Spain at its purest” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Among his best-known works are the ballets El amor brujo (Love, the Magician, 1915) and El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-cornered Hat, 1917), and the beautiful Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain, 1916), for piano and orchestra.

In 1907, Falla moved from Madrid to Paris where he met and shared ideas with many of the era’s leading composers, including Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. In 1914, shortly before he returned to Spain with the outbreak of World War I, Falla wrote Siete canciones populares españolas (Seven Popular Spanish Songs). Five of the songs are settings of existing folksongs, and two, Jota and Polo, are original tunes that mimic Spanish folk dances. In harmonizing the pieces, rather than providing accompaniments based simply on modal scales, Falla drew his harmonies from the natural overtone series. For an instrumental version, Falla collaborated with violinist Paul Kochanski (1887-1934) to prepare the first edition of Suite Populaire Espagnole, which adapted six of the songs, omitting the Seguidilla. Many subsequent arrangements have been made for a variety of different instruments, both with and without the Seguidilla movement. Jorge Peña has prepared his own edition for viola, and includes all seven canciones.

Henri Vieuxtemps : Sonata in B-flat Major

JAXCAT entries for Henri Vieuxtemps

Belgian composer and violinist Henri Vieuxtemps (1820–1881) was a child prodigy who famously performed a concerto at age six, and who went on to gain an international reputation as both performer and teacher. Vieuxtemps was a student and eventually professor at the Brussels Conservatory, and he represented the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing. He lived in Russia for five years (1846-51), where he founded the violin school at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, while also serving as principal violinist in the court of Czar Nicholas I. In 1871, Vieuxtemps suffered a stroke that affected his bowing arm, effectively ending his concert career and interrupting his teaching. A second stroke in 1879 made even teaching impossible, and he retired to Algeria to be near his daughter and son-in-law, but he still continued to compose. Most of Vieuxtemps' compositions feature the solo violin, and he is most remembered for his seven violin concertos, with which he helped redefine Romantic concertos as works of symphonic scope rather than merely vehicles for virtuosic display. Other works of note include two cello concertos, three string quartets, and several works featuring the viola, another instrument of which Vieuxtemps had been a master. One of these, the Viola Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 36, was first published in 1863, and included an alternate part for the cello.

Friday, August 30, 2013

Tuesday Serenade, May 6, 2014 @ 7pm

Dr. Ken Trimmins, trumpet
Dr. Mimi Noda, piano
Faculty Artists from Albany State University

Pierre Gabaye
Boutade for Trumpet and Piano
[Video performance]

Ernst von Dohnányi
Capriccio in B Minor, Op. 2, No. 4
[Piano roll performance]

Jacques Castérède
Brèves rencontres: Three Pieces for Trumpet and Piano
1. Divertissement - 2. Pavane - 3. Scherzo
[Video performance]

Ernst von Dohnányi
Aria in C Major, Op. 23, No. 1

George Enescu
Légende for Trumpet and Piano
[Video performance]

Frédéric Chopin
Ballade No. 4 in B Minor, Op. 52
[Video performance]

Eugène Bozza
Caprice No. 1 for Trumpet and Piano, Op. 47
[Video performance]

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dr. Ken Trimmins is a dynamic and versatile trumpet player, composer and educator who excels in both jazz and classical genres. He completed a distinguished 23-year career with the United States Air Force Band, serving as director of operations, musical director and band leader for a number of touring ensembles. As a trumpet soloist, he has been a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State, and his broadcast performances have included appearances on BET Jazz and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Dr. Trimmins holds degrees from Valdosta State University (BA), Mercer University (MM), and FSU (DMA), and has studied with a number of world-renowned artists, including jazz great Bobby Shew, Willie Thomas, Vincent DiMartino, and former Atlanta Symphony principal trumpeter Jim Thompson. Currently Assistant Professor of trumpet, conducting and jazz at Albany State University (Albany, Georgia), Dr. Trimmins previously served on the faculty of Armstrong Atlantic State University, in Savannah. As a jazz artist, he performs with The Ken Trimmins Jazz Quartet.

Dr. Mimi Noda was a collaborative pianist with the Japanese Choral Association before relocating to the United States in 1998 to pursue graduate studies. While earning degrees at the University of Georgia (MM) and Florida State University (DM), she was awarded a number of prizes and scholarships in piano performance, and she also has taught Japanese in FSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In addition to her responsibilities as Assistant Professor at Georgia's Albany State University, 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 (in alphabetical order by composer's last name) - by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

Although the catalog of French composer Eugène Bozza (1905-1991) includes five symphonies, an opera, and a ballet, he is known primarily for his chamber music for wind instruments. His Caprice No. 1, Op. 47, dates from 1943, while Bozza was conductor of the Opéra-Comique in Paris. It was written as a contest piece for the Paris Conservatory, and among the technical challenges for the trumpeter is its frequent use rapidly-repeated notes in all registers. The Caprice begins with a rather moody introduction before the capriciousness begins, and the introduction is recalled, momentarily muted, and extended before a jaunty dash to the finish.

Born in Paris on April 10, 1926, French composer and pianist Jacques Castérède (1926-2014) passed away just a few weeks ago, on April 6, 2014. Among several awards he won while studying at the Paris Conservatory was the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome in 1953, for the cantata La boîte de Pandore (Pandora's Box). In 1960, he returned to the Conservatory as a professor, and also taught in China at the invitation of the Chinese government. Castérède's output includes works for the stage, vocal and choral music, orchestral music, and chamber music, and, as with so many French composers, he was quite generous in writing chamber music for wind instruments. The three movements of Castérède's Brèves rencontres ("Brief Encounters) were composed in 1965 as a contest piece for the Conservatory.

The Polish-born pianist Frédéric Chopin 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 can not be overestimated. Chopin is credited with establishing the Ballade as an extended instrumental form, and all four of his solo piano works bearing this title are considered among the crowning achievements of the Romantic period. British pianist and composer John Ogdon (1937-1989) called the Ballade No. 4, Op.52, completed in 1842, ”the most exalted, intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions ... it contains the experience of a lifetime.”

Hungarian-born composer, pianist and conductor Ernst von Dohnáyi (born Ernő Dohnányi, 1877-1960) first gained international recognition as a pianist performing in the tradition of Franz Liszt, and as a composer his first published work, Quintet in C minor, Op. 1 (1895), was introduced to the Viennese public by no less than Brahms himself when Dohnányi was only 18. Between 1905 and 1915 Dohnányi taught in Berlin, and then returned to Hungary where he became a driving force in his homeland’s musical life, both as a teacher and as the conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic. Dohnányi always remained true to his conservative Romantic voice in his own compositions, but he vigorously promoted the music of his younger contemporaries Bartók and Kodály, thereby actively encouraging the development of a modern Hungarian school of composition. Dohnányi remained in Hungary through most of World War II, but moved first to Argentina in 1944, and finally to Tallahassee, Florida, where he joined the music faculty of FSU in 1949. The Capriccio in B minor is the last of Four Pieces, Op. 2, written in 1897 when Dohnányi was 20. His Aria in C Major is the first of Three Pieces, Op. 23, composed in 1912.

If you ask musicians to name a Romanian composer, unless they draw a complete blank they almost certainly will answer "George Enescu" (1881-1955), or, as the French say, "Georges Enesco." As fate would have it, Enescu was born the same year as the Kingdom of Roumania (the "u" was dropped later), and he became a national hero in his fledgling homeland. Enescu's compatriots have since named an international airport after him, and changed the name of the village where he was born to "George Enescu." Young George's extraordinary musical gifts were recognized early. He earned the silver medal for his prodigious virtuosity when he graduated from the Vienna Conservatory at age 12, and he entered the Paris Conservatory at 14. Among the greatest masters and teachers of the violin, Enescu also was so highly regarded as a conductor that he was considered as Toscanini's replacement for the New York Philharmonic, and he just as easily could have become a leading piano virtuoso. Légende was composed in 1906 in collaboration with Merri Franquin, a trumpet professor at the Paris Conservatory who gave the first performance. The piece incorporates lyrical episodes and virtuoso passages, and utilizes the full range of the trumpet while demonstrating its chromatic capabilities that were only just evolving. Légende is regarded among the greatest 20th-Century works for trumpet and piano.

French composer and pianist Pierre Gabaye (1930-2000) was at home in jazz as with the classics. Among numerous prizes from the Paris Conservatory, he won a 1956 Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, Le Mariage forcé (The Forced Marriage), and 1st Prize in piano at the International Jazz Competition sponsored by Jazz-Hot magazine that same year. His Neoclassical compositions mostly date from the 1950s and 60s, but his last work, Marche pommarde for concert band, was composed in 1988. He taught at the Conservatory in Vésinet, and served as Director for Light Music for Radio France from 1975 to 1990. Despite his many awards, Gabaye’s essentially light-hearted music has never gained wide-spread exposure. He is most remembered for his chamber music for woodwinds and brass, and—if YouTube performances are an indication—his joyous Boutade ("Outburst") for Trumpet and Piano (1957) ranks among the most popular.

Tuesday Serenade, March 4, 2014 @ 7pm

Music Students from

Douglas Anderson Schools of the Arts

Vera Watson, faculty coordinator

Douglas Anderson's Piano Program
In 2000 DA’s Piano program was recognized as the best music program in Northeast Florida and was awarded the Jacksonville Symphony Association’s Harmony Grant. The Piano Department offers serious young pianists a unique opportunity to be in an intensive and varied program and to work with internationally acclaimed guest artists.

PROGRAM NOTES (Alphabetical order by composer) - UNDER CONSTRUCTION - Please check back!

ALEXANDER : Tango à la Mango [SCORE EXCERPT] [RECORDING - click on the title under the cover illustration]

Dennis Alexander is one of America's most prolific and popular composers of educational piano music for students at all levels. Professor Alexander taught at the University of Montana, Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Northridge, and currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he maintains an active composing and touring schedule. Tango à la Mango is from A Splash of Color, Book 3, which he describes as "Romantic and Contemporary Piano Solos Designed to Enhance an Awareness of Imagery in Performance."

JAXCAT entries for Ludwig van Beethoven

BEETHOVEN: Presto (1st Movement), from Piano Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3
[SCORE] [RECORDING]

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. Even though his Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 10, No. 3, composed in 1798, is still grouped with his "Early" works, Beethoven already had begun experimenting with new formal procedures, building upon what he had learned from the models Haydn had provided.

CHOPIN:

JAXCAT entries for Frederic Chopin

Nocturne in C# minor, Op. posth. [SCORE] [RECORDING]
Nocturne in D-flat, Op. 27, No. 2 [SCORE] [RECORDING]

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.

Influenced greatly by the piano works with the same title by Irish composer John Field, Chopin's 21 Nocturnes remain among his most popular pieces. These "night pieces" are typically characterized by singing melodies somewhat reminiscent of bel canto opera arias, with accompaniments characterized by arpeggios and broken chords.

JAXCAT entries for Claude Debussy

DEBUSSY : Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum [SCORE] {RECORDING]
Arabesque No.1 [SCORE] {RECORDING]

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, such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La mer ("The Sea"), so whatever negative connotations "Impressionism" once may have had have since evaporated. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum is the first of six movements in Debussy's piano suite, Children's Corner, which was dedicated to the composer's daughter in 1908. The title "Gradus ad Parnassum" refers less to the famous book of counterpoint instruction by Johann Joseph Fux, and more to a collection of piano exercises by Muzio Clementi with the same title. Debussy's early Arabesque No. 1 (Andantino con moto) is the first of Deux Arabesques, composed between 1888-91. The arching curves of the two pieces provide an aural evocation of the visual curlicues typical of the Art Nouveau movement that helps define the end of the 19th Century.

JAXCAT entries for Joseph Haydn

HAYDN : First Movements from Sonata in D Major & Sonata in C major

Genial Austrian composer (Franz) Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the musician most credited with establishing the “Classical” style that his two younger contemporaries Mozart and Beethoven built upon. By the time of his death "Papa" Haydn had become the most widely celebrated composer in Europe. 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 for the instruction and amusement of his noble patrons.

JAXCAT entries for W.A. Mozart

MOZART : Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545. II. Andante [SCORE] [RECORDING]

Wolfagang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), unquestionably one of the greatest composers in history, began his career touring Europe as a six-year-old piano prodigy, and he absorbed and mastered all the musical trends he was exposed to along the way. Mozart’s graceful and charming Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545, is likely the one that first comes to mind when his 18 works in the genre are mentioned. Despite its present-day popularity, the Sonata, dating from 1788, remained unpublished while Mozart was alive, not appearing in print until 1805.

JAXCAT entries for Sergei Rachmaninoff

RACHMANINOFF : Moment musicaux Op. 16, No. 4, Presto [SCORE] [RECORDING]

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was a Russian composer and conductor, and 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! Rachmaninoff was only 23 when he wrote the 6 concert pieces grouped as his opus 16, entitled Moments musicaux (Musical Moments). No. 4, Presto, is the most bravura piece in the set, and with its torrential flood of notes it seems to pay homage to Chopin's famous "Revolutionary" Etude.

JAXCAT entries for Domenico Scarlatti

SCARLATTI : Sonata in D minor L.422 [SCORE (go to p. 5)] [RECORDING]

In the beginning of his career Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) concentrated mostly on vocal music, following in the footsteps of his famous father, Alessandro. But in 1719 Domenico resigned his position in the Vatican, and moved first to Portugal in 1720, as music master to the Portuguese royal family, and then to Spain in 1729, following one of the Portuguese princesses after she married. It was after he left Italy that he began to concentrate more on keyboard music, and it is for his 555 one-movement keyboard sonatas that he now is most remembered. The toccata-like Sonata in D minor (L. 422) is regarded as one of his finest compositions, and it is meant to imitate the mandolin in its use of rapidly-repeated notes.