Intermezzo : Sunday, April 12 @ 3pm

Trio Solis
FSU Faculty Artists

• Corinne Stillwell, violin,
• Gregory Sauer, cello
• Read Gainsford, piano

PIOTR SZEWCZYK: Piano Trio No. 1
@YouTube: I. Aggressive--II. Dark--III. Energetic

EDWARD LEIN: Dark Eyes Variations in the form of a Sonatina
InstantEncore Recording

FRANZ SCHUBERT: Piano Trio No. 1, op. 99, D. 898
     1. Allegro moderato—2. Andante un poco mosso
     3. Scherzo. Allegro—4. Rondo. Allegro vivace
YouTube Recording

With a dynamic combination of energy, creativity, and insight, Trio Solis (“Trio of the Sun”) was founded in 2008 by violinist Corinne Stillwell, cellist Gregory Sauer, and pianist Read Gainsford. Already distinguished as solo performers, these musicians have embarked on a journey together to explore the piano trio repertoire with a unique synergy of brilliant technique, probing musicianship and a wealth of experience. Highlights of recent seasons include the Trio’s debut on the Seven Days of Opening Nights series in Messiaen’s exalted Quartet for the End of Time with internationally acclaimed clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. They were invited to be the featured soloists for the opening of the 2010-11 orchestral season in Tallahassee, performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in celebration of the extensive renovation of the historic Ruby Diamond Auditorium. Committed to sharing music by living composers with audiences, the group included the Piano Trio of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in their Carnegie Hall debut program, and enjoys playing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy by Paul Moravec. They are also regularly featured artists in the biennial Festival of New Music in Tallahassee, Florida. Beyond their performing activities, the members of Trio Solis are devoted teachers and maintain full studios at Florida State University. Their students have achieved successes in competitions, won positions as teachers and performers, and been accepted at some of the world’s top graduate schools. In addition to master classes and school residencies, the Trio’s newest initiative, Building Bridges, benefits community organizations through collaborative performances with outstanding young musicians at the beginning of their careers.

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PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

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Polish-born violinist and composer Piotr Szewczyk recently completed his doctorate at The Florida State University in Violin Performance, and holds the B.M. and double M.M. in violin and compo­sition from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He has been a member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 2007, and was Composer-In-Residence at the Florida Chamber Music Project in Ponte Vedra for the 2013-2014 season. In addition to multiple awards as violinist, Dr. Szewczyk has won numerous local, national and international awards and competitions for for his compositions, including the Theme Song contest for WJCT's First Coast Connect show with Melissa Ross, and the Jacksonville Symphony's 2008 Fresh Ink competition. His music has been featured on NPR Performance Today and the CBS Early Show, and has been performed by numerous ensembles including the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Alias Ensemble, Dover Quartet, Sybarite 5, Juventas Ensemble, Atlanta Chamber Players, New Music Raleigh and many others. His Apparitions for Violin, Flute, Clarinet, Cello and Percussion, released on Navona records NOVA CD, was called “magical” by Gramophone Magazine. Dr. Szewczyk's Piano Trio No. 1, composed in 2010, won the The American Prize in Composition--Chamber Music (Professional Division) in 2014. The three-movement work exhibits something of a cinematic quality, with the first "Aggressive" movement bustling with nervous excitement interrupted by moments of jazzy, lyric reflection; the second "Dark" movement perhaps suggesting a "film noir" atmosphere; and the final "Energetic" movement seemingly battling through the darkness into an expansive, triumphant dawn.


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 drawing on this performance experience the majority of his early compositions are vocal and choral works. Following performances by the Jacksonville Symphony of 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. His translations of songs and song cycles are frequently published in music program guides in North America and Great Britain, ranging from student recitals to concerts by major orchestras, including Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Utah Symphony; he also contributes articles to the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Encore magazine. Composed and first performed in 2010, the tongue-in-cheek Dark Eyes (Variations in the Form of a Sonatina) is based on Florian Hermann's famous waltz tune popularized by Russian gypsies. Following a fiery introduction, the dancing rhythms of the Polish polonaise and the Cuban havanaise characterize the sonatina’s primary and secondary thematic groups respectively; the coda begins with the Dark Eyes tune transformed into a fughetta subject, and the movement ends with a restatement of its opening fanfare.

“One glance at Schubert’s Trio and the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.” This is how composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) extolled the ebullient Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, op. 99 (D. 898) by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), the Austrian composer whose tragically short life nonetheless saw the creation of over 600 songs in addition to his numerous symphonies, chamber works, masses, and solo piano music. Likely completed during Schubert's final year, the Piano Trio No. 1 (composed along with his Piano Trio No. 2  and the song cycle Winterreise) became the first piano trio of significance written since Beethoven finished the "Archduke" Trio in 1811. Like Beethoven's famous model, Schubert's trio has four movements. The sparkling first movement includes a paraphrase of the song, Des Sängers Habe (The Singer's Possessions), with a text that reflects Schubert's own circumstances: “Shatter my good fortune to pieces, Take all my possessions from me, But allow me yet my zither And I shall remain happy and rich!” Whereas Beethoven's "Archduke" has the Scherzo second and then a slow movement, Schubert switches the order, placing his lyrical Andante after the opening, followed by a thoroughly Austrian Scherzo that pairs a folksy Ländler with a waltz. Schubert's sunny "Rondo" finale incorporates developmental techniques of a sonata-form, and paraphrases another of his songs, Skolie (Drinking Song, 1815), D. 306: "Let us in the morning light of May Enjoy the flowers of life Before its fragrance fades!"

Tuesday Serenade, October 15, 2013 @ 7pm

Dr. Gregory Sauer and Dr. Heidi Louise Williams  

Faculty artists from Florida State University, performing:

• Lukas Foss: Capriccio (1946) [on YouTube]
• Frank Bridge: Sonata in D minor (1913-17) [on YouTube]
        [SCORE pdf from imslp.org]
        I. Allegro ben moderato. II. Adagio ma non troppo
• Daniel Crozier:  Nocturne (1997)
• Francis Poulenc: Sonata, Op. 143 (1940-48) [on YouTube]
        I. Allegro-Tempo di marcia. II. Cavatine. III. Ballabile. IV. Finale

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ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

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 In 2006, Gregory Sauer joined the faculty of Florida State University's College of Music in Tallahassee, where he is Associate Professor of Cello.  Dr. Sauer is also the principal cellist of the Tallahassee Symphony, and assistant principal of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra. For eleven years prior to his arrival in Florida, he taught at the University of Oklahoma, where he was named Presidential Professor (2005), and he served nine seasons as principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra.

A native of Davenport, Iowa, Gregory Sauer attended the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory. He was a prizewinner in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Ima Hogg National competitions, and has performed concertos with many orchestras, including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Quad City Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and Columbus (GA) Symphony. Dr. Sauer has appeared in recital at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, and at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. He founded and served as co-Artistic Director of Chamber Music Quad Cities for thirteen years, and he has performed in numerous music festivals, including Tanglewood, Austin Chamber Music Center, Victoria Bach Festival, Texas Music Festival, Colorado Music Festival and Garth Newel Music Center.

With his FSU colleagues pianist Read Gainsford and violinist Corinne Stillwell, Professor Sauer is co-founder of Trio Solis, whose first CD, Diamonds in the Haystack, was named Critic's Choice in the January/February issue of American Record Guide. Since the trio's inception in 2008 they have performed throughout the U.S., including at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, and twice for our Music @ Main concerts.

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Associate Professor of Piano Heidi Louise Williams joined the faculty of FSU's College of Music in 2007, after having taught piano and piano chamber music at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music for eight years. She is also artist-faculty for the MasterWorks Summer Music Festival in Winona Lake, Indiana, and recently joined the 2013 faculty of the Interharmony International Music Festival in Tuscany, Italy.  Dr. Williams completed her BM, MM, and DMA degrees at Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where she studied with renowned pianist Ann Schein and coached chamber music with Earl Carlyss, Samuel Sanders, Stephen Kates, and Robert McDonald.

Professor Williams has appeared in solo and chamber music performances across the United States and abroad, including recitals at Carnegie's Weill Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Taiwan National Recital Hall.  Praised by New York critic Harris Goldsmith for her "impeccable solistic authority" and "dazzling performances," Dr. Williams is the recipient of numerous awards, and she is equally, if not more proud of the growing roster of her students who have won prizes regionally, nationally and internationally for their solo and collaborative artistry.

Dr. William's 2011 solo debut CD for Albany Records, Drive American, was named among the top 10 classical albums of the year by Philadelphia City Paper, and made Fanfare magazine's 2012 Critics' Wants List for its "theatrical range that ... is veritably operatic," and her "tremendous panache and integrity" as an interpretive artist. An avid chamber musician, Heidi Louise Williams has collaborated with many outstanding American and international performers, and has recorded solo, concerto and chamber music for the Naxos and Albany labels.

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PROGRAM NOTES, by Edward Lein, Music Librarian

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Catalog entries for Lukas Foss

Composer, conductor, teacher and pianist Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was born in Germany (as Lukas Fuchs), and his prodigious musical talent was recognized at an early age. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, his family moved first to Paris, and then, in 1937, to the United States, where the 15-year-old Lukas continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  He became a U.S. citizen in 1942, and went on to become a driving force in American music. Foss held professorships at UCLA (following Arnold Schoenberg), SUNY Buffalo and Boston University, and was composer-in-residence at Harvard, the Manhattan School of Music, Carnegie Melon University, Yale University and Boston University.  He was music director/conductor of various ensembles and orchestras, including symphonies in Buffalo, Brooklyn, and Milwaukee, as well as in Jerusalem, and he used these positions to share his abiding affection for the music of previous eras, while also championing contemporary works.  One might say Foss's own compositional output was "exploratory" in that it encompasses many of the diverse musical styles associated with the 20th Century, and he prided himself on being "crazy in the sense of unexpected."  With works ranging from folksy populism to serial constructs, aleatoric excursions, electronic musings and minimalist iterations, Foss had a talent for blurring the lines between seemingly disparate vocabularies, and not only among contemporary trends. Some of his better-known pieces transplant (decompose?) fragments of earlier music into modern soundscapes, such as Renaissance Concerto, for flute and orchestra (1985), and the orchestral  Baroque Variations (1967), which--as if musical quotation were not tribute enough--includes a xylophone tapping out "Johann Sebastian Bach" in Morse code.  Published in 1948, the composition of Foss's Capriccio for Cello and Piano dates from 1946, while he was the Boston Symphony's pianist under Serge Koussevitsky, with whom Foss had studied conducting during the summers from 1939 to 1943. Although the piece was composed for the famous cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, it is dedicated to the memory of Koussevitsky's first wife, Natalie, who had died in 1942. Even so, the rollicking piece is not an elegy but more a celebration of a life, and, in harmonies and gestures somewhat reminiscent of Copland's early ballets, it perhaps demonstrates just how "American" the new-citizen Foss had already become.

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Catalog entries for Frank Bridge

On the whole, the finely-crafted works of British violist and composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941) suffer an undeserved neglect, at least outside of Great Britain, and so he is perhaps most remembered as the teacher of his singular composition student, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).  Not surprisingly, prior to World War I (1914-1918), Bridge wrote in a Late Romantic style typical of his British contemporaries, but after the war his music became more and more dissonant, in keeping with Continental tends.  Bridge composed his Cello Sonata in D minor between 1913 and 1917, and it already exhibits flashes of more "modern" tonal colors.  In his piano writing, Bridge's use of parallel 4ths, 5ths and triads shows an affinity with Debussy, and the work's striking lyricism might easily bring to mind Rachmaninoff.  "The War to End All Wars" was still raging when Bridge completed the Sonata, and one cannot help but feel the almost desperate melancholy that perfuses much of the second movement as a reflection of the tremendous suffering and loss that accompanied that international tragedy.  Bridge's Cello Sonata remains among his most-performed works, and has been included in at least 18 different commercial CD releases since the early 1990s.

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Daniel Crozier (b. 1965), who received his DMA from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is Assistant Professor of Theory and Composition at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida, and previously served on the faculties of the Peabody Preparatory and Radford University (Virginia).  Dr. Crozier has a special connection with the First Coast: he was the winner of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's Fresh Ink composition contest for Florida composers in 2004. The win included a commission from the Symphony, manifested in Ballade, a 10-minute orchestral piece first performed in the Times-Union Center in 2006. Among other honors, Crozier won first prize in the 1995 National Opera Association Chamber Opera Competition for his second opera, With Blood, With Ink (1993), and received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, as well as numerous awards from ASCAP.  In 2002 saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the Walden Chamber Players presented the premiere performance of Dr. Crozier's Toccata for Soprano Saxophone and String Trio, and the Seattle Symphony has recorded several of his works.  Closer to home, Crozier’s Winter Aubade (2009), for solo piano, was written for FSU's Heidi Louise Williams, who included it in her CD of American piano music, Drive American, and who gave the European and Asian premieres of the piece this past summer. For today's concert, Dr. Crozier has kindly provided a note about his Nocturne for cello and piano:

The Nocturne was completed in 1997 and premiered at the Aspen Music Festival that summer by cellist Jason Duckles and pianist Blair McMillen. The piece evolves through an exploration of the relationship between four dependent but contrasting musical ideas. When it appears, the third of these essentially takes over the musical discourse and eventually, at its last appearance, generates the piece’s climax. When the principal idea returns at the end it appears in a new, warmer light, tempered by the intervening dialogue. Though the formal plan just described does not closely match most of the exquisite Nocturnes for solo piano that he left us, the piece does homage to Chopin, whose favorite instrument after the piano was the cello.

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Catalog entries for Francis Poulenc

Even before he had any formal training as a composer, Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was already famous as one of Les six, a group of young Parisian composers and pals who were linked to Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie, and who were regarded by their admirers as the antidote to the perceived excesses of both Germanic Romanticism and Gallic Impressionism. Of their group--the others being Honegger, Milhaud, and the virtually forgotten Auric, Durey, and Tailleferre--Poulenc’s music remains the most frequently performed. Although the musical influences of Stravinsky's Neoclassicism and the Parisian dance-hall are often present, Poulenc’s unpretentious style remains clearly his own, characterized by effortless melody, distinct rhythms, and novel yet gorgeous diatonic harmonies. Poulenc, himself a pianist, had a much-lauded talent for writing for wind instruments, but he apparently felt a little less secure writing for solo strings: while working on his Cello Sonata, Op. 143 (1940-1948), he enlisted the advice of French cello virtuoso Pierre Fournier, to whom the work is dedicated. The advice paid off, such that in this duo for cello and piano Poulenc created what author and critic David Hurwitz identifies as the composer's "biggest and most important solo sonata."

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1/12/2009 @ 6:00 pm : Trio Solis

CLICK for larger view

Founded in 2008, Trio Solis combines three dynamic virtuosi, Corinne Stillwell (violin), Gregory Sauer (cello), and Read Gainsford (piano), all faculty artists at Florida State University's College of Music. Joining them is the versatile Karen Pommerich (viola), a violinist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra.

PROGRAM SELECTIONS


• Ludwig van Beethoven: Trio in D Major, opus 70 no. 1 "Ghost"
• Arno Babajanian: Trio in F-Sharp Minor (1952)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Quartet in G Minor, KV 478

Corinne Stillwell (violin) earned her degrees from The Juilliard School, where she first enrolled at age ten. A versatile musician, she has appeared in recital at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, on the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago, and as soloist with numerous orchestras across the United States and on tour in Eastern Europe. Her chamber music activities have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and at the festivals of Aspen, Norfolk, Skaneateles, the Victoria Bach Festival, and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top in Texas. Frequently heard on WXXI-FM public radio, she has collaborated with David Shifrin, Robert Levin, Pepe Romero, members of the Pro Arte and Cavani quartets, and members of the faculty at the Eastman School of Music. She has served as Assistant Concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic and prior to that, was a member of the Harrington String Quartet in Amarillo, Texas. In 2007, Ms. Stillwell joined the faculty at Florida State's College of Music, where she is Assistant Professor of Violin.

TRIO SOLIS

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Praised for his versatility, Gregory Sauer (cello) has appeared in numerous solo recitals, including performances at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, and numerous chamber music performances have included appearances at Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Promusica, and the Boulder Modern Music Festival, among many others. Greg has performed concertos with the Houston Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, the Quad City Symphony, and Oklahoma City Philharmonic, to name only a few. A Prizewinner in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and Ima Hogg national competitions, he served nine seasons as principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Sauer is Assistant Principal Cello of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and, prior to joining the Florida State University music faculty in 2006, he taught at the University of Oklahoma for 11 years, where he was named Presidential Professor in 2005.

TRIO SOLIS

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Read Gainsford (piano) has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and his native New Zealand as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. He has made successful solo debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, and has performed in many other prestigious venues, including the Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Fairfield Halls, Birmingham Town Hall and St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. Dr. Gainsford has recorded for the Amoris label, BBC Radio Three, Radio New Zealand's Concert Programme, and has broadcast on national television in New Zealand, the UK, and Yugoslavia. Since moving to the United States in 1992, Read has been a guest artist for the American Music Teachers Association, has appeared at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, and has spent several summers at the Heifetz International Music Institute. He is a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble X, and also the Garth Newel Chamber Players. Formerly on the faculty of Ithaca College where he received the college-wide Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, Dr. Gainsford became Associate Professor of Piano at FSU in 2005.

TRIO SOLIS

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Although for this performance she plays the viola, Karen Pommerich has played violin with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since 1991, and has appeared as soloist with the JSO for Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante and Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo. Prior to moving to Jacksonville she was the Principal 2nd Violin of the Tallahassee Symphony, and in 2008 she was Principal 2nd Violin with the Sarasota Opera and began performing with the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee. During the summer months Ms. Pommerich is the Assistant Principal 2nd Violin with the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and she has played both violin and viola in numerous chamber ensembles. She has coached chamber ensembles and sectionals of the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra, Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, and the Prelude Chamber Music Camp. Additionally, Karen teaches privately and is active in the Body and Soul program, which delivers live music in health care settings.

TRIO SOLIS

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PROGRAM NOTES by Ed Lein, Music Librarian

The music of the transcendent German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) formed the culmination of the Classical style and the foundation of the Romantic, and his revolutionary masterworks still provide benchmarks other composers strive to attain. Beethoven wrote the “Ghost” Trio, Op. 70, no. 1, in 1808, and along with his “Archduke” Trio, Op. 97, he created what have remained the best-known works in the genre for two centuries. Although composed immediately following his “Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6), Op. 68, the “Ghost “ Trio actually shares some thematic material with his Symphony No. 2, Op. 36. Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio got its nickname from Carl Czerny (1791-1857), a pupil of Beethoven who became a famous musician in his own right, because the tremolos in the slow movement reminded him of the ghost scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This association with Shakespeare and the supernatural is perhaps not entirely fanciful: Beethoven’s sketches indicate that as he worked on the Trio he was toying with writing an opera based on Macbeth!

TRIO SOLIS

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Although Arno Babajanian (sometimes transliterated Babadjanyan, 1921-1983) is virtually unknown in this country, the Soviet-Armenian virtuoso pianist and composer of everything from pop tunes and jazz pieces to classical works and musicals remains a national hero in his homeland. In addition to a 2006 Armenian commemorative postage stamp, a monument to him was erected in 2002 in Yerevan, the Armenian capital and his hometown, but a public outcry deemed that the sculpture was more a caricature than a likeness, so it had to be reworked and was officially re-unveiled in 2003. While he was in kindergarten Babajanian’s precocious talent was discovered (or at least suspected) by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978), and the famous composer insisted that the 5-year-old receive formal musical training. So when Babajanian was seven he was enrolled in the Yerevan Conservatory, and he later continued his training at the Moscow Conservatory. Much like Khachaturian, Babajanian absorbed characteristics of Armenian folk music into his own style, and his later works also show influences of Bartók and Prokofiev, and sometimes even Schoenberg. His 1952 Trio, cited as one of Babajanian’s most important works, is unified by the recurrence of the opening theme in all three movements.

TRIO SOLIS

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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. He wrote more than 600 works, including 22 operas and over three dozen symphonies, plus numerous concertos, chamber works, piano pieces, and choral works. Written in 1785, Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1, KV 478, is the earliest masterpiece for a surprisingly rare performance ensemble combining piano with string trio—Haydn wrote nothing for piano quartet and Beethoven never returned to the medium after three very early Piano Quartets, WoO 36, coincidentally also written in 1785 when Beethoven was only 14. Mozart was originally commissioned to write a set of three quartets suitable for amateur musicians, but the publisher canceled the order for the last two quartets because the first one was too difficult for amateurs, and he feared the new quartets would be unlikely to return a profit. Nonetheless, this Quartet is one of Mozart’s finest creations, and the great Czech Romantic composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) borrowed the opening theme for the finale of his String Quintet, Op. 1. Always strapped for cash, Mozart luckily got to keep the advance payment from the commission, but even with the commission canceled Mozart found the instrumentation artistically rewarding, enough so that he returned to it 9 months later, producing his Piano Quartet No. 2, KV 493.

TRIO SOLIS

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