The Vivace Trio
Carolyn Snyder-Menke, soprano & flute
Gia Sastre, flute
Denise Wright, piano
PROGRAM GUIDE (PDF cover)
PROGRAM NOTES (PDF insert)
- PROGRAM SECTIONS
- Ian Clarke: Maya (2 flutes & piano)
- Claude Debussy: Danse (piano solo)
- Leo Delibes: Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleurs (Flower Duet) from Lakme (2 flutes & piano)
- Gabriel Faure: Berceuse from The Dolly Suite (2 flutes & piano)
- Phillipe Gaubert: Divertissement Grec (2 flutes & piano)
- Edward Lein: 2 Calendar songs (soprano & piano)
- Carl Nielsen: The Fog is Lifting (flute & piano)
- Maurice Ravel: La Flute Enchantee (from Sheherazade, soprano, flute, piano)
- Camille Saint-Saens: Une flûte invisible (soprano, flute, piano)
An accomplished flutist and singer, Carolyn Snyder Menke has an A.A. in Music from College of Marin in Kentfield, California and a B.M.E. with a concentration in flute from Indiana University; she later studied privately with Peter Lloyd, principal flute with the London Symphony Orchestra. Among her voice teachers and coaches, Ms. Snyder Menke sang in a masterclass in Oberlin’s Italy program taught by internationally-renowned soprano Elly Ameling, who called Carolyn's performance “perfection!” Among her opera roles, Carolyn has appeared with Atlanta’s Harrower Summer Opera Workshop as "Susannah" (Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro), "The Foreign Woman" (Menotti's The Consul), and "Irma" (Charpentier’s Louise). She won the Thomas Scott Award in Marin County, 2nd place in the NATS competition, and was a quarter-finalist in Savannah Georgia’s American Traditions Competition for Singers. In addition to the Vivace Trio, Carolyn has performed with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the Arabesque flute trio, the Marin County Woodwind Quintet and the Arioso Flute Quartet. She has performed for Body and Soul, the Art of Healing since 2001, and also does freelance work. 
The music of British flutist and composer Ian Clarke (b.1964) has been performed across five continents and is a favorite of both professional and student musicians. As a soloist and teacher Clarke has appeared at major conventions and events in Canada, Italy, Brazil, France, Iceland, Slovenia, Hungary, Netherlands and numerous times for the British Flute Society and for the National Flute Association in the USA. He completed Maya in 2000, basing the work for two flutes and piano on an earlier piece called Passage (1986). The composer says the title "maya" is a reference to the Sanskrit word for "illusion" rather than to the Mesoamerican civilization.
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a quintessentially French composer, pianist and music critic. His own revolutionary music ushered in many of the stylistic changes of the 20th Century, starting with his most famous orchestral work, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894). A decade earlier Debussy had won the Paris Conservatory's top composition award, the Grand Prix de Rome. He didn't enjoy much about his three-year stay in Italy, except for the folk music. Inspired by the southern Italian tarantella, Debussy's lively Danse was originally titled Tarentelle styrienne when first published in 1891, but he renamed it when he issued this slightly revised version in 1903.
French composer Léo Delibes (1836-1891) began his professional life at the Théâtre Lyrique before moving up to the more prestigious Paris Opéra, and he enjoyed a long string of successes at first composing light-hearted operettas. Delibes wrote over two dozen works for the stage, the best-known of which are the ballet Coppelia (1870) and the opera Lakmé (1883), from which Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleurs (the Flower Duet) is universally known, thanks to British Airways using it in commercials since 1989.
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a composer, organist, pianist and teacher, and he is widely regarded as the foremost French composer of his generation. Although Fauré greatly admired Wagner he remained relatively free of Wagner’s highly-colored influence, and instead led his own harmonic revolution by treating chords with added 7ths and 9ths as consonant and by introducing modal inflections into an essentially diatonic framework; in the process he successfully bridged the styles of Saint-Saëns (his teacher) and Ravel (his student). Berceuse ("Lullaby") is the first of six pieces in Fauré's Dolly Suite, op. 56 (1893-96), written for his daughter. Originally for piano four-hands, the popular Berceuse has been arranged for orchestra and several chamber music combinations.
In 1919 at age forty, the French flutist, conductor and composer Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) became one of the most prominent musicians in France by earning three important appointments almost simultaneously: Professor of Flute at the Conservatoire de Paris, and Principal Conductor of both the Paris Opéra and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Gaubert composed a wide variety of instrumental, orchestral and vocal music, plus two operas. As one might expect, many of his most effective compositions feature his own instrument, including Divertissement grec for 2 flutes and harp or piano, first published in 1908.
Early in his career Florida native Edward Lein appeared throughout his home state as tenor soloist, and the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following a performance of Meditation (2006) by the Jacksonville Symphony, his instrumental catalog has grown largely due to requests from Symphony players, who also performed In the Bleak Midwinter (2007) in an orchestral version arranged from the original song setting of Christina Rossetti's poem featured today. Representing spring in the four Calendar Songs, I Meant to do My Work Today (2013) provides music for Richard Le Gallienne's famous children's poem; this is its first-ever performance!
Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is recognized as Denmark's greatest composer, but his international reputation wasn't secured until the 1960s when recordings of his orchestral music became widely available. Although a violinist himself, his music for wind instruments is among his most popular, including a wind quintet, a concerto for flute, and one for clarinet. The Fog Is Lifting is from Nielsen's incidental music for Moderen ("The Mother"), Op. 41; the allegorical play by Helge Rode celebrates the reunification of Southern Jutland with Denmark. Originally for flute and harp, the movement depicts a mother taking leave of her son, observed by the King through the rising mist.
The music of Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) is among the most-frequently performed and recorded of any composer. The Frenchman wrote his magically evocative Shéhérazade in 1903, setting three poems by his friend Tristan Klingsor (pseudonym of Léon Leclère, 1874-1966), first for high voice and piano, with an orchestral version soon following. The cycle's second song, La flûte enchantée, is a straightforward depiction of romantic yearning as it relates how lovers, separated by constraints of servitude, discover that they can still form an immediate connection through music.
By the age of three, the French composer and keyboard virtuoso Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) could read and write and had penned his first piano piece; by seven he had mastered Latin; and by ten he could perform from memory all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas upon request. An expert mathematician and a successful playwright, he published poetry, scholarly works in acoustics and philosophy, and popular travelogues. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was perhaps Saint-Saëns' favorite poet, and the composer wrote two settings of the pastoral Viens! une flûte invisible, the first in 1855 as a duet for soprano and baritone with piano. The featured second version for voice, flute and piano dates from 1885, the year the poet died.
| Une flûte invisible, text by Victor Hugo | English translation, by E. Lein, ©2015-16 |
| Viens! - une flûte invisible Soupire dans les vergers. - La chanson la plus paisible Est la chanson des bergers. Le vent ride, sous l'yeuse, Le sombre miroir des eaux. - La chanson la plus joyeuse Est la chanson des oiseaux. Que nul soin ne te tourmente. Aimons-nous! aimons toujours! - La chanson la plus charmante Est la chanson des amours. | Come! An invisible flute Sighs through the woods. The most peaceful song Is the song of shepherds. Beneath the holly-oak a breeze ripples across the water's dark mirror. The happiest song Is the song of birds. Let not a care torment you. Let us love! forever love! The most enchanting song Is the song of love. |
