June 12, 2016

JPL Program Calendar

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

1. Allegro con brio
2. Scherzo - Allegro molto
3. Adagio
4. Allegro

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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.

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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.

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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.

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PROGRAM NOTES

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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PROGRAM NOTES - under construction - Please check back

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Tuesday Serenade, January 7, 2014 @ 7pm

 Min Young Cho, violin & Eun Mi Lee, Piano

Franz Schubert 
   Sonatina for Piano and Violin Op. post.137, No.1, D. 384
     Allegro molto - Andante - Allegro vivace
     [recording/scores at imslp.org]

Josef Suk 
   Appassionato Op.17, No.2 
   Burleska Op.17, No.4 
   [scores at imslp.org]

Felix Mendelssohn 
   Sonata in F major for Violin and Piano (1838)
     Allegro vivace - Adagio - Allegro vivace
     [click links for YouTube performances]

Dr. Min Young Cho is a native of Seoul, Korea, and she has performed with many orchestras in her homeland, including the Korean-American Youth Orchestra, Gwacheon Youth Orchestra, Seoul National Symphony Orchestra, Korean Philharmonic Orchestra and Gangneung Philharmonic Orchestra. Her talent as an ensemble player remains much in demand, and she often serves as concertmaster or assistant concertmaster for many of the orchestras she plays with. She regularly performs with a number of chamber and symphony orchestras in North Florida, including Tallahassee Bach Parley, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonia Gulf Coast, as well as with the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and Panama City Pops Orchestra. As a guest solo artist, other recital engagements have included appearances at Chipola College (Marianna, Florida) and Valdosta State University (Valdosta, Georgia), and for Jacksonville Public  Library's December 2012 Promenade! concert she performed in a trio recital.

As a winner of the American Fine Arts Festival, Dr. Cho performed at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), and also was awarded an AFAF Summer Music Courses in Europe scholarship. Other competition wins include the Korea Music Competition, the Chungbu Conservatory Competition, and the Music World Newspaper Company’s Competition. Dr. Cho received her Bachelor of Music degree from Dankook University in Korea, and both her master's and doctoral degrees from Florida State University, where she also has taught as a Graduate Assistant. Her principal teachers have included Corinne Stillwell, Karen Clarke and Daesik Kang.

In her native South Korea, Eun Mi Lee received a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano from Ewha Women’s University, and a Master of Music degree in Piano Accompanying on scholarship at Sungshin Women’s University.  In 2007, Ms. Lee was accepted into the Master’s program at Florida State University's College of Music, working closely with Valerie M. Trujillo, the Grammy-nominated associate professor of vocal coaching and accompanying.  Eun Mi Lee is continuing her post-graduate studies at FSU, where she is a doctoral candidate.

A passionate accompanist and teacher, she began working with faculty artists and student performers at Baekseok Conservatory, Muyngji University, and University of Seoul, and she has been a member of Korea Collaborative Pianists Association since 2002. Much in demand as a collaborative artist, Ms. Lee has pursued an interest in performing new music, and recorded Soo Jin Cho's 2-piano work, Exodus, released by the Society of Composers, Inc., in March 2010, on an album entitled Mosaic.

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JAXCAT entries for Franz Schubert

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.

Austrian musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967) prepared a chronological thematic catalog of Schubert's total output, which now includes 998 pieces altogether. Considering the generous bulk of Schubert's oeuvre, it is surprising that only eight of the nearly 1,000 works are for a solo instrument with piano. Of the six duos from among these that are for violin and piano, four are sonatas, and, given Schubert's proficiency on the violin as well as piano, they are perfectly idiomatic to the forces at hand. In 1836, Diabelli issued the first three sonatas, all composed in March and April 1816, renaming them Sonatinas, Op. 137, probably to better whet the growing appetites of amateur players.

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JAXCAT entries for Josef Suk

Josef Suk (1874-1935) was a Czech composer and violinist who began his music studies with his father. Suk entered the Prague Conservatory at age 11, where his teachers included Antonin Dvořák, who provided the greatest influence on Suk's early, nationalistic style. Dvořák considered Suk his best student, and in addition to becoming friends, Dvořák also became Suk's father-in-law in 1898. Suk's compositional style became more cosmopolitan during the last few years of the 19th Century, and even more so following Dvořák's death in 1904, and the death of Suk's wife, Otilie, in 1905. Now known as a chief representative of Czech Modernism, Suk became a professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory in 1922, where he served as head from 1924-1926, and again from 1933-1935.

Suk also enjoyed a career as 2nd Violinist with the internationally-famous Czech Quartet for four decades, so it is surprising that he wrote relatively little chamber music. Considered Suk's first mature chamber composition, his set, Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 17, dates from 1900. In addition to the Appassionato (No.2) and Burleska (No.4), the other pieces are Quasi Ballata (No. 1) and Un poco triste (No. 3). Except for a brief Minuet (1919), Suk wrote no other music specifically for his own instrument and piano.

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JAXCAT entries for Felix Mendelssohn

The prodigious musical talents of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) rivaled those of Mozart, and like Mozart, Mendelssohn did not live to see his 40th birthday. But his affluent German family provided young Felix with an intellectually stimulating and stable environment, and protected him from the childhood exploitation that Mozart endured. At sixteen, Mendelssohn produced his first masterwork, the Octet for Strings, Op. 20, and the following year saw the completion of the brilliant A Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture. In terms of achieving his musical maturity, Mendelssohn surpassed even Mozart. He grew into a superstar composer, pianist, organist and conductor, and he also founded Germany's first conservatory, located in Leipzig.

The first two of Mendelssohn‘s three sonatas for violin and piano were composed at ages 11 and 16 respectively. The Sonata in F minor dates from 1838 and is a work of his maturity, but it was never submitted for publication by the composer, nor does it appear to have been performed prior to its rediscovery by British virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin in the early 1950s. This has caused some to ponder why Mendelssohn might have “rejected” so fine a work, but it is much more likely that the composer simply never found time to revise the Sonata to his full satisfaction. Unlike so many composers, Mendelssohn did not depend on the publication of his works for income, so he had the luxury of taking as much time as he wanted to refine various details—e.g., even though Mendelssohn first conducted his ever-popular “Italian” Symphony (No. 4) in 1833, he still was withholding it from publication at the time of his death 14 years later! 

12/8/08 @ 6:15 pm : Polish Music for Violin & Piano

CLICK for larger view

Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra violinist Piotr Szewczyk and award-winning pianist Christine Clark join forces for an evening of chamber music by composers from Mr. Szewczyk's Polish homeland.

Piotr Szewczyk
Polish-born violinist and composer Piotr Szewczyk (b. 1977) attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, studying composition with Darrel Handel, Joel Hoffman, Henry Gwiazda, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and Michael Fiday, and violin with Kurt Sassmannshaus, Piotr Milewski and Dorothy DeLay. While earning both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees as well as his Artist Diploma, Piotr served as concertmaster of several of the College-Conservatory's orchestras. Mr. Szewczyk recently completed a fellowship at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach where he served as rotating concertmaster under Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas, and in September 2007 Piotr joined the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. The winner of the 2006 New World Symphony Concerto competition, Mr. Szewczyk has appeared as soloist with numerous ensembles, including the Lima Symphony, New World Symphony, World Youth Symphony Orchestra, Queen City Virtuosi, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Piotr also has given solo and chamber recitals in the United States, Poland, Germany and Austria, often performing compositions written especially for him by composers from around the world. Mr. Szewczyk’s own compositions have been performed by numerous orchestral and chamber ensembles and he has won a number of international composition contests. His music has been performed on NPR and at the American Symphony Orchestra League Conference by ALIAS Ensemble in Nashville. Mr. Szewczyk’s string quintet The Rebel was performed live on the CBS Early Show by the Sybarite Chamber Players, and is being prepared for publication. Most recently he won the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s 2008 Fresh Ink composition competition, earning a commission to write a new piece for their 2009/10 season. More about Mr. Szewczyk at verynewmusic.com

Christine Clark
A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Christine Armington Clark began piano studies with James Crosland, and continued her professional training at Oberlin Conservatory. She received a Master's degree in piano performance from the University of Illinois and studied with Leon Fleisher in the Peabody Conservatory Artist Diploma Program upon the recommendation of legendary concert pianist Lorin Hollander. Ms. Clark was national finalist in the Collegiate Artist Competition sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association, and attended the Aspen Music Festival on a piano performance and accompanying scholarship. She competed in the Maryland International Piano Competition, and won the Boca Raton Piano Competition. A versatile musician, Christine played keyboard with Trap Door, a local rock group, and toured Europe under the aegis of Proclaim! International. She taught piano at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, and her numerous chamber music performances include an appearance at the Goethe Institute in San Francisco. Well known along the First Coast, Ms. Clark has appeared with the Jacksonville Starlight Symphonette and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and frequently appears in solo and chamber recitals. President of Friday Musicale and a board member of numerous arts organizations, Christine A. Clark is also an attorney, and while working as a law clerk in Washington, D.C., she gave perhaps her most unusual recital, performing in the United States Supreme Court at the request of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.


PROGRAM SELECTIONS
Henryk Wieniawski - Obertas
Krzysztof Penderecki - Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1
Henryk Wieniawski - Legende
Henryk Gorecki - Variazioni
Karol Szymanowski - Song of Roxanne
Grazyna Bacewicz - Oberek No. 1
Piotr Szewczyk - Two Movements
Henryk Wieniawski - Polonaise Brillante in D-Major


PROGRAM NOTES
by Ed Lein, Music Librarian (c2008)

Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880) : Obertas, op. 19, no.1 (1860) ; Legende, op. 17 (1859) ; Polonaise Billante in D-Major, op. 4 (1852)
As a violinist the prodigious talent of Henryk Wieniawski was recognized early on by his pianist mother, and she managed to get her son admitted into the Paris Conservatoire when he was a mere lad of eight, despite his being underage and not even French. From age 15 until his death from heart failure at 45, Wieniawski maintained a rigorous concert schedule that included a two-year tour of North America (1872-74), and his influence as a teacher is still evident particularly among violinists from Russia, where he taught from 1860 to 1872. Wieniawski's two dozen published compositions include pieces that are reckoned among the cornerstones of the violinist's repertoire, requiring the highest level of technical proficiency and often featuring virtuoso effects that heighten the passionate melodic expression. His works demonstrate a continuing interest in cultivating a national music based on characteristically Polish forms, including mazurkas, as in Obertas (from Two Mazurkas, op. 19), and polonaises, as in the early Polonaise brillante, op. 4. Wieniawski apparently wrote his works to perform himself, but his Legende, op. 17, has a more personal significance: it was through its composition that Wieniawski was finally able to convince the parents of Isabel Hampton that he was worthy enough to marry their daughter.


Krzysztof Penderecki (b.1933) : Sonata for Violin and Piano No.1 (1952)
In 1960, the performance of Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima catapulted the relatively unknown music professor to the forefront of avant-garde composers, realizing, in a work charged with microtonal clusters, extreme registers and a wealth of other novel performance techniques, a musical experience that for many captured the horror and pathos of atomic devastation. Since then Penderecki has become one of history's most awarded composers, winning not only numerous composition prizes and commissions, but also receiving honorary degrees and memberships from prestigious universities and conservatories around the globe, and national orders from Germany, Monaco, Austria and Spain in addition to his native Poland. Beginning in the mid-1970s his compositional language matured to include tonal, even Romantic, harmonic and melodic elements. Although this direction was often decried by shortsighted critics as dulling his youthful cutting edge, Penderecki ignored them and continued on his own path, and thus perhaps even foreshadowed current trends among much younger composers. Although his Sonata no. 1 is a student work reminiscent of Bartók, the precocious teenager nonetheless created a work of surprising maturity, expertly drawing on his training as both violinist and pianist.


Henryk Gorecki (b.1933) : Variazioni, op. 4 (1956)
Much like his better-known contemporary Penderecki, Henryk Gorecki first achieved fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a darling of the European avant-garde spearheaded by Pierre Boulez, only to abandon their intellectual asceticism, and instead strive during the 1970s toward a more personal idiom that often seems to embrace deep sorrow as a catharsis for healing. Upon his abandonment of post-Webern serialism in favor of a simpler and more direct style, Gorecki was dismissed by critics as suddenly unimportant. But Gorecki went on to surprise even himself when the 1992 release of his then 15-year-old Symphony no. 3, op. 36 ("Symphony of Sorrowful Songs") sold over a million copies world-wide, an unmatched success for a modern symphony. His mature style, sometimes described as "sacred minimalism," is infused with religious mysticism and characterized by modal harmonies derived from early Polish church music melded with repetitive melodies and rhythms. In contrast, Gorecki's youthful Variations, op. 4, has been described as combining "the fluid lyricism of Szymanowksi, the rhythmic fervor of Bartók and the textural severity of Webern," but with his own voice "already recognizable, especially in the way small melodic or harmonic motifs suddenly explode with the energy of a split atom [Mark Swed, LA Times, 10.3.1997]."


Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) : Song of Roxanne (1926)
Karol Szymanowski, sometimes called the father of modern Polish music, is the most important Polish composer of the early 20th Century. He perhaps is best-known in this country for his solo piano music and his Stabat Mater for chorus and orchestra, although now his four symphonies, two violin concertos, chamber music, vocal music, and stage works are becoming better known as new recordings become available. Szymanowski's early works show the decided influences of Chopin, Wagner, Scriabin, Reger and Richard Strauss, but as he traveled extensively through Europe and Mediterranean Africa, the influences from the different cultures he encountered, along with exposure to works by Debussy and Ravel, as well as to Stravinsky's early ballets, began to color his work. After losing his family estate in Timoshovka (now in the Ukraine) following the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), Szymanowski settled in Warsaw in late 1919 and became an increasingly important figure in that city’s musical life. In 1926 he was appointed director of the Warsaw Conservatory, and as he became enthralled with Polish folk music his later works grew more nationalistic, celebrating his Polish heritage. Suffering from tuberculosis, Szymanowski retired to a sanitorium in Switzerland in 1935, and died there in 1937. A splendid example of the exoticism of Szymanowski's "middle period," the Song of Roxanne is an extract from his 1926 opera King Roger, arranged for violin and piano by violin virtuoso Paul Kochanski (1887-1934), an intimate friend of the composer who frequently offered Szymanowski advice and guidance in writing for the violin.


Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) : Oberek No. 1 (1949)
Grażyna Bacewicz joins Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) as the only Polish women yet to achieve international recognition as composers. At age seven, Bacewicz began her career as a violin prodigy, and from 1928-1932 she studied violin, piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory and philosophy at Warsaw University. She then received encouragement from Szymanowski, plus a stipend from the famous pianist and Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski, to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, a teacher whose numerous illustrious students ranged from Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter to Burt Bacharach and Quincy Jones. During the 1930s Bacewicz was the principal violinist for the Polish Radio Orchestra, with whom she was able to perform several of her own compositions. Forced underground during World War II, Bacewicz continued composing and performing for secret concerts in Warsaw, and after the war she joined the faculty of the State Conservatory of Music in Łódź. Between 1956-1966, inspired by a number of important composition awards and commissions, and especially after sustaining serious injuries in a car crash, she concentrated exclusively on composing. Not surprisingly, many of Bacewicz's works feature the violin, including seven violin concertos, five violin and piano sonatas, and 2 sonatas for unaccompanied violin. Her Oberek no. 1 (1949), which adapts a traditional Polish dance that is often described as a very lively mazurka, was hastily written as an encore piece for a concert she would perform the following evening!

Piotr Szewczyk (b.1977) : Two Movements (1998)
Written during his sophomore year of college, Piotr Szewczyk's Two Movements was his first composition for violin and piano, and even though it is an early work, it, like the early works of Penderecki and Gorecki on this program, already demonstrates elements of the composer's later style. When commenting on the piece the composer observed, "It has a youthful eagerness, energy, virtuosity and sincerity. The First Movement starts with a slow introduction and gradually progresses through different tempos and moods to finally dissolve. The Second Movement is a crazy, fast, twisted rondo, full of energy, surprising twists and turns--never letting go to the very end.”