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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Tuesday Serenade, December 3, 2013 @ 7pm

Dr. Boyan Bonev, cello 

Please join us on Tuesday, December 3, at 7 p.m., when Jacksonville Public Library will host a free recital featuring cellist Boyan Bonev, a faculty artist from the University of West Florida.  Making his fifth Music @ Main appearance, Dr. Bonev will perform virtuoso works for unaccompanied cello by J.S. Bach, Dimitar Tapkoff, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Petar Christoskov.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

     Suite for Solo Cello No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1009

     Prelude - Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Bourree  I & II - Gigue [YouTube performance][Score at imslp.org]

Dimitar Tapkoff (1929-2011)

     Sonata for Solo Cello (1990)

     Allegro - Cantabile - Rondo 

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

     Sonata in D Major, for unaccompanied Viola da Gamba, TWV 40:1 (from Der getreue Musikmeister, 1728)

     Prelude - Courante - Recitativo and Aria - Minuet [DailyMotion performance][Score at imslp.org]

Petar Christoskov [aka Hristoskov] (1917-2006)

     Aria for Solo Cello (1999)

     Fantasia, op. 15 [YouTube Performance]

ABOUT THE ARTIST
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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PROGRAM NOTES 

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Once dismissed by many of his contemporaries as being too old-fashioned, the works of the great German Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) probably have been studied more than those of any other composer, making him perhaps the most influential musician of all time. Among works written for unaccompanied cello there is no doubt that Bach’s six Suites are the best known. Current research suggests that they were composed between 1717-1723, while Bach was Kapellmeister in the court of Prince Leopold (1694-1728) at Cöthen. Bach’s own manuscripts of the Cello Suites have never been found, but it is believed that they predate his well-known Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, which were written in 1720. All six of the Cello Suites follow a standard six-movement pattern, but with the fifth movement dance types varying among minuets (in Suites 1, and 2) bourrées (in 3 and 4), and gavottes (in 5 and 6).   For his Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009, Bach takes full advantage of the Cello's sonorous open strings (C-G-D-A), weaving a rich tapestry from the stylized, dancing rhythms.

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Among numerous cultural positions, Bulgarian composer and pedagogue Dimitar Tapkoff (aka Tapkov and Tupkov,1929-2011) worked for Bulgarian National Radio, was Secretary General of the Union of Bulgarian Composers, and was Director of Sofia Opera. He was a professor at his alma mater, Bulgaria's State Academy of Music, and also taught at the Academy of Music and Dance Art. His compositional output includes works for symphony and string orchestra, chamber music, choral music, and music for the stage. Tapkoff's Sonata for Solo Cello (1990) was given as a 60th birthday gift to Bulgarian cellist Zdravko Yordanov (1931-2004). (Yordanov is regarded as the patriarch of the Bulgarian cello school, whose students included Boyan Bonev's teacher at Florida State, Lubomir Georgiev; Dr. Bonev himself had the privilege of knowing Yordanov while at the conservatory in Sofia.) Tapkoff's relatively short movements (2-3 minutes each) demonstrate the composer's capacity for lyric expression mixed with rhythmic vigor. Although the composer uses the highly-charged chromaticism typical of many composers of his generation, he also finds inspiration in Bulgarian folksong. This is especially evident in the concluding Rondo, with irregular rhythms reminiscent of Bulgarian folk dances.

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Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific composer in history, with over 3,000 pieces including 1000+ church cantatas and 600+ suites, plus numerous operas (many now lost) and virtually every sort of composition there was.  He became the most famous musician in Germany, and his popularity extended throughout Europe. By all accounts the generous and affable Telemann was a man of great humor, and a personal friend of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and J.S. Bach (1685-1750), even becoming godfather to C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788), one of  J.S.'s famous sons.  Largely self-taught, Telemann played a wide variety of keyboard, wind, and string instruments, and was involved in publishing as well, issuing both his own poetry and music. Between November 1728 and November 1729, he published a bi-weekly periodical called Der Getreue Music-Meister (The Faithful Music Master).  The 35 lessons were designed to provide amateur musicians with new pieces while improving their skills, and each issue included one large-scale piece for 1-6 instruments, plus, as space permitted, smaller pieces and counterpoint exercises. Telemann composed most, but not all, of the music himself, and mostly tailored the chamber music to skill levels of non-professional musicians.  But several of the pieces, especially those for solo harpsichord or solo string instruments, require more advanced technical skills, and among these is the Sonata in D Major, for unaccompanied Viola da Gamba, TWV 40:1. (The viola da gamba is an archaic, bowed instrument that looks vaguely like a cello, but with six strings and frets similar to those on a guitar; modern performances of gamba music are frequently performed on the cello.)

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Petar Christoskov [aka Hristoskov] (1917-2006) was a Bulgarian violinist, composer and pedagogue. Having completed studies at the Bulgarian State Academy of Music in 1936, between 1940-1943 he continued is education in Berlin, and extended his performance experience in Germany and Austria. After moving back to Bulgaria, he toured Europe and Asia, and in 1950 he joined the faculty of the State Academy of Music. Christokov's orchestral works include solo concertos for piano, violin, and cello; a double concerto for violin and cello; and a triple concerto for violin, cello and piano. Most of his chamber music is for the violin, but he also wrote Improvisation and Presto for viola and piano, op.14, and the two works for unaccompanied cello performed this evening. Christoskov's Aria for Solo Cello was composed in 1999, and like the Tapkoff Sonata, it is dedicated to Bulgarian cellist Anatoli Krastev.  The Fantasia, Op. 15, dates from 1967.

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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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Intermezzo Sunday Concert, 9/22/2013 @ 3pm

ALEXEI ROMANENKO cello

Join us for a free recital of music for unaccompanied cello performed by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra's principal cellist, Alexei Romanenko.

Music selections will include:
• Corigliano: Fancy on a Bach Air [on YouTube]
• Reger: Suite in D minor, Op. 131c, No. 2 [on YouTube I.; II. ; III. ; IV. ][Score]
• Grutzmacher: Etude in D major, Op.38/21 [on YouTube][Score (p.27)]
• Szewczyk: Convergence (2010, World Premiere)
• Bloch: Suite No. 2 (1956) [on YouTube]

Alexei Romanenko, principal cellist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra since the 2005-2006 season, has won numerous awards, including First Prize in the Far-Eastern Competition for Strings, the Presser Music Award, First Prize at the 8th International Music Competition in Vienna, First Prize at the 2nd Web Concert Hall International Auditions, and the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra Cello Fellowship. In addition to numerous solo engagements, Alexei has performed as principal cellist with the Boston Philharmonic, and has been featured on Boston’s WGBH radio's Classical Performances and in national and international broadcasts from Chicago and San Francisco. Mr. Romanenko has taught at the San Francisco Institute of Music, Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, and at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is the organist/pianist at Grace Episcopal Church in Orange Park, Florida, and frequently concertizes with pianist Christine Yoshikawa. 

PROGRAM NOTES, by Ed Lein, Music Librarian

Catalog entries for John Corigliano

American composer John Corigliano (b.1938) more or less grew up with the New York Philharmonic providing the soundtrack for his formative years--his father, John, Sr., was the longtime Concertmaster, and John, Jr. worked on the production crew for Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. At age 26, Corigliano achieved his first big success as a composer with his Sonata for Violin and Piano (1963), and he gained wide-spread recognition with the release of the 1980 film, Altered States, for which he composed the musical score. In addition to winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2, and a 2009 Grammy Award for Mr. Tambourine Man, Corigliano won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Red Violin. Corigliano's Fancy on a Bach Air was composed in 1996, and at first was planned to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of Robert and Judy Goldberg, friends of the composer.  Aptly, the theme from Bach's Goldberg Variations provided the inspiration for a group of composers who collaborated on a set of variations for cello and piano for the occasion. Sadly, the piece became instead a memorial to Robert Goldberg, who died from cancer before the collaborative variations were first performed in August 1997, by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax.  Of his contribution Corigliano writes:

My “Goldberg Variation,” Fancy on a Bach Air, is for unaccompanied cello. It transforms the gentle arches of Bach’s theme into slowly soaring arpeggi of almost unending phase-lengths. Its dual inspiration was the love of two extraordinary people and the solo cello suites of a great composer – both of them strong, long-lined, passionate, eternal, and for me, definitive of all that is beautiful in life.

YouTube entries for Piotr Szewczyk

Currently a doctoral candidate in Violin Performance at FSU, Polish-born violinist and composer Piotr Szewczyk(b. 1977) studied composition and violin at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, earning BM and MM degrees and the Artist's Diploma. He then received a fellowship at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach where he served as rotating concertmaster under Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas. The winner of the 2006 New World Symphony Concerto competition, Mr. Szewczyk has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras and ensembles, and he has given solo and chamber recitals in the United States, Poland, Germany and Austria. His own award-winning compositions have been performed by a wide variety of orchestral and chamber ensembles in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Szewczyk’s string quintet, The Rebel, was performed live on the CBS Early Show by the Sybarite Chamber Players, and was also featured on NPR's Performance Today. Piotr joined the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in September 2007, and in 2008 he won a commission from the Symphony by placing first in its Fresh Ink composition competition. The resulting piece, First Coast Fanfare, was premiered by the Jacksonville Symphony during the 2009-2010 season. Szewczyk composed Convergence in 2010 especially for Alexei Romanenko, who is presenting the world-premiere performance of the piece during today's concert.

Catalog entries for Max Reger

Although his music is now much neglected, while he was alive Bavarian composer, conductor, educator and keyboard virtuoso Max Reger (1873-1916) was as highly regarded as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, and his influence was at least as great: Paul Hindemith credited his own stylistic development chiefly to Reger, and it has been observed that Reger’s post-Wagnerian chromatic excursions paved the way for the atonal sound-world of Arnold Schoenberg, who, incidentally, considered Reger to be a genius. Following the examples of Beethoven and Brahms, Reger fashioned his works in the tradition of "absolute" music, and his complete mastery of the fugue and other contrapuntal techniques demonstrates his devotion to the music of J.S. Bach. In the span of only about 25 years, Reger produced over 1000 pieces encompassing virtually every genre, with the exception of opera.  He wrote abundant chamber music featuring the cello, including four sonatas for cello and piano, and five string quartets. Along with Six Preludes and Fugues for solo violin (Op. 131a), three Duos in Olden Style for two violins (Op. 131b), and three Suites for solo viola (Op. 131d), Reger composed three Suites for Solo Cello, Op. 131c, which he completed in the fall of 1914, against the expanding horror that was World War I.

Catalog entries for F.W. Grützmacher

German cellist and composer Friedrich Wilhelm Grützmacher (1832-1903) was well-known both as a chamber musician and soloist, and he was the principal cellist in the Court Orchestra in Dresden. He concertized widely throughout Europe and Russia, and, in 1898, he was the soloist in the first performance of Don Quixote, by Richard Strauss. Grützmacher also appears to have been the first to perform the solo suites of J.S. Bach in a public concert setting, and he deserves credit for rekindling interest in other important works for the cello from the Baroque and Classic periods, including those by Handel, C.P.E. Bach, Tartini, Geminiani, Haydn and Boccherini, and for preparing new editions of cello works by Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and Mendelssohn.  Not surprisingly, most of Grützmacher's compositions feature his own instrument, including three concertos, and his cadenzas to cello concertos by Haydn and Boccherini are still performed, as is his adaptation of Boccherini's Cello Concerto in B-flat, G.482.  A dedicated and gifted teacher, Grützmacher was a professor at both the Leipzig and Dresden conservatories, and he composed numerous technical exercises for his instrument. Among his 24 Etudes, Op. 38 (ca. 1894, also called "Technology of Violoncello Playing"), the second dozen (Nos. 13-24) are especially challenging, and "ascend to a difficulty level that puts them out of reach of all but the most highly-trained virtuosos" (Robert Battey, in Strings magazine, August/September 2007). Of these, Grützmacher's Etude No. 21 in D major has a higher concentration of continuous double stops, especially in the instrument's upper register, than you are likely to hear anywhere else.

Catalog entries for Ernest Bloch

Swiss-born composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) was educated and began his teaching career in Europe, but he moved to America in 1916 and became a U.S. citizen in 1924. His teaching posts included directorships at the Cleveland Institute of Music, which he helped found in 1920, and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and his students included Roger Sessions, George Antheil, Douglas Moore, Quincy Porter, Randall Thompson, and Leon Kirchner. Although Bloch's diverse, but essentially Romantic output includes some works which adapt atonality and serialism into his own style, his most widely-known works are those which draw inspiration from his Jewish heritage, such as Schelomo, for cello and orchestra (1916), or from "olden times," such as his two Concerti Grossi (1925 and 1952). Bloch wrote the first two of his three Suites for Cello in 1956, finding inspiration in the cello suites of  J.S. Bach.