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GRYPHON QUARTET

Thursday, March 30, 2023

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
First movement from Piano Trio in D, Op. 70 No. 1 (‘Ghost’) (1808)
    Allegro vivace e con brio
RACHEL McFARLANE (b. 2002)
Flutter, for mezzo soprano and piano trio (2023) (Gryphon Trio commission, 2023) (world première)
RIHO MAIMETS (b. 1988)
Riburadapidi, for flute and piano trio (2023) (Gryphon Trio commission) (world première)
ROBERT RIVAL (b. 1978)
Nature Rhythms I (2020) (world première)
    Pulsating jellyfish
    Swaying branch with fluttering leaves
    Drifting, disappearing clouds
    Raindrops falling in puddle
ELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847) Piano Trio No. 2, in C minor, Op. 66 (1845)
    Allegro energico e con fuoco
    Andante espressivo
    Scherzo: Molto allegro, quasi presto
    Allegro appassionatoem>

 

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
First movement from Piano Trio in D, Op. 70 No. 1 (‘Ghost’) (1808)

In 1842, Beethoven’s pupil, pianist Carl Czerny, wrote in 1842 that the slow movement of the D major Piano Trio, Op. 70 No. 1 “resembles an appearance from the underworld . . . “One could think not inappropriately of the first appearance of the ghost in Hamlet,” he concluded. Thus, the nickname of Beethoven Fourth Piano Trio was born. Tonight, however, there are no ghosts, other than a ghost from the past. This Piano Trio was the first work summoned by the Gryphon Trio when they emerged from the musical underworld with their debut appearance, March 7, 1993.

The strength and drama of the music is clear from the very start. Beethoven lays out both themes of the opening movement in unusually close succession. The first is a dynamic, assertive call to attention played in unison and fortissimo by all three instruments, with the piano’s three-octave span enclosing both violin and cello. This ends dramatically on a ‘wrong’ note. The drama built up during the first six bars is then released in a more lyrical, mellifluous sequence that follows. These two ideas continue to be juxtaposed throughout the entire movement, simultaneously confronting one another with contrapuntal force during the course of the musical development.

 

RACHEL ‘RAY’ McFARLANE
Born in Ontario, April 28, 2002
Flutter, for mezzo soprano and piano trio (2023) (Gryphon Trio commission) (world première)

Rachel ‘Ray” McFarlane is a recent graduate, who began as a violinist, in the Claude Watson Program at Earl Haig Secondary School. Currently a Games and Interactive Media Scoring student, on scholarship, with a minor in conducting at Berklee College of Music, she expects to graduate in 2025.

Rachel ‘Ray’ McFarlane writes:
In the vast expanse of the azure sky, a little bird dwelled, its heart full of fervent love for the fiery sun. The bird yearned to bask in the radiant warmth of its beloved, unaware of the perils that awaited. Despite the cautionary warnings, the bird soared higher and higher, driven by an unyielding passion to be near the sun. Blinded by its ardour, the bird flew too close, and was consumed by the sun's blazing flames, its fate sealed by its own innocent devotion. Yet even as the bird met its tragic end, it was at peace, for it had come as close to its beloved sun as it could. Its love for the sun had been the guiding light of its short existence, leading it to its ultimate destiny. And in the sky above, where life is fleeting and the risks are great, the little bird's story serves as a poignant reminder of the boundless power of love, and the dangers that can arise when it is blindly pursued.

Flutter
I see the sun-filled rays through gust and endless blue.
I see the sun-filled rays calling my soul to peace.
What is holding you away from me, my sun?
What is calling you from in me, my sun?
What are you to me, my sun?
Wings outstretched they soar and glide, deep within they wonder why
I fly, tireless grace, seeking your warm embrace.
Now I circle in the sky above. My heart filled with hope, spirit full of love, my sun.
Wings outstretched, they soar and glide. You're with me, clear and bright.
Our love will blaze within my heart. Your light guides me.
My heart filled with hope, spirit full of love, my sun. Your light guides me.
What is holding you away from me darling? What is holding you away? Please I'm trying.
I am flying high, I'm trying. Don't you see me?
Calling my soul to peace, calling my soul to peace, calling my soul to peace.
(Rachel ‘Ray’ McFarlane)

 

RIHO MAIMETS
Born in Toronto, February 26, 1988
Riburadapidi, for flute and piano trio (2023) (Gryphon Trio commission) (world première)

Toronto-born, Canadian-Estonian composer Riho Esko Maimets graduated from the Claude Watson Arts program in 2010. He then studied with Christos Hatzis at the University of Toronto, at the Curtis Institute (2014), and at the Estonian Academy of Music in Tallinn, where he now lives. Now a Doctoral candidate at the Estonian Academy, he composes mainly choral and chamber music as well as works for orchestra, solo songs and music for children.

Riho Maimets writes:
Riburadapidi is an Estonian expression with a wealth of meanings. It can mean ‘along winding paths’ or can instead allude to a succession of events. It has connotations of chaos, humour, with a certain lacking of control. It is a compound word consisting of three parts: ribu (‘litter’), rada (‘path’), pidi (‘along’). In this word, I sense a subliminal attitude, in which one doesn't know what is coming, but, nevertheless, takes it all in stride. This very much reflects my creative process, in which, instead of burdening myself with a specific result in mind, I turn my focus toward enjoyment of the process as the main goal of the creative endeavour. In this giving up control of the creative process and letting go, I feel a beautiful and deeply exhilarating sense of freedom.

 

ROBERT RIVAL
Born in Calgary in 1978
Nature Rhythms I (2020) (world première)

Robert Rival writes:
Periodic natural phenomena are, paradoxically, aesthetically appealing precisely because they are not, in fact, exactly repetitive. Slight irregularities strike a delicate balance between predictability and chaos, producing an endless set of continuing variations—sameness without uniformity. Contemplating ocean waves is soothing; observing the ticking seconds-hand on a clock, mind-numbing.

I have frequently evoked nature's visual rhythms in my compositions, mostly intuitively. Intuition, however, has its limits, and risks rewarding prejudice. We may think we know how waves behave, but do we really? The notion that an empirical approach might reveal new insight led to Nature Rhythms I.

The four movements, related in concept, but in all other respects independent, may be performed in any order, singly, or in any combination. Three draw their basic material from frame-by-frame analysis of videos: of a swaying aspen tree, of raindrops falling in a puddle—which both I shot myself; and of jellyfish, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

How I analysed my first subject, jellyfish, whose mesmerizing locomotion, characterised by gently accelerating pulsations, shall illustrate my approach. Using motion analysis software intended for athletic performance, I advanced, frame by frame, using markers to measure the rates at which a particular jelly's bell expanded and contracted. From about a minute and a half of footage I catalogued 25 such cycles in five different jellies. By quantizing the numbers for human musical performance, I settled on six different types of cycles, i.e. six variations on what at first glance would seem to be a uniform pulsating motion.

These rhythmic cycles underlie the opening sequence of entries in Pulsating jellyfish: the violin suggests the pulsing effect with quick bow speed, the cello following in imitation. For subsequent entries, I simulated the order of cycle types and lengths using a random number generator. All movements feature at least one whimsical, or rather, intuitive, element: here, the piano’s rapid scales suggest the jellies’ fluidly unravelling, arabesque-like arms. Harmony and melody, in all movements, are also entirely my own. These "arms," for instance, consist of octave-non-repeating, seven-note scales, whose strangeness fits the subject.

Swaying branch with fluttering leaves likewise combines an empirical element, a swaying branch, with an invented one, the fluttering leaves. The branch I studied swung like a pendulum across a wide arc, its uneven movement caused by continual changes in wind gusts. I represented movement across this arc by a multi-octave C major arpeggio, whose jubilant unfolding first sounds in the piano. The rustling leaves, their fragmented oscillations variously dividing the beat, and generated randomly, provide a murmuring accompaniment.

Drifting, disappearing clouds is the only movement not based on any video analysis. Instead, I spent hours, supine, gazing at the clouds, fascinated by their slow trajectory across a clear sky on windy days. I would track a particular cloud, noting its gradual metamorphosis, then gasp at its dissolution into the blue sky. I also delighted whenever a faster-moving cloud would cross a slower-moving one, suggesting two conflicting celestial tempos.

Raindrops falling in a puddle ought to have been the simplest to compose but was actually the most challenging to realise. After a rainfall, I filmed water droplets falling sporadically from a tree into a puddle below. There is suspense in the ever-changing time interval between drops; beauty in the ensuing concentric ripples; thrill when two drops fall at close intervals and their concentric waves collide! Each drop became a pizzicato note (the collision) that initiates the ripple, a rapid scale in the piano. But what if two drops fall in proximity? To avoid simple beat subdivisions, I quantized to include attack-points offset by triplet rests, a technique that required using a type of fractional metre notation. The musical effect, however, is straightforward: a drop interrupts the flow of the previous ripple, thereby resetting the tempo, in the same way that each successive drop captures our attention at the expense of the previous one. True to life, the movement is riddled with pauses, moments when stillness reigns in the puddle.

I am grateful to my brother, Dr. David Rival, a fluid dynamicist, for stimulating conversations concerning the science of waveforms; the Gryphon Trio, for believing in the project; and the Ontario Arts Council, for supporting it financially.

 

FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born in Hamburg, Germany, February 3, 1809; died in Leipzig, Germany, November 4, 1847
Piano Trio No. 2, in C minor, Op. 66 (1845)

Although he was a renowned pianist, Mendelssohn found piano music difficult to write. He sometimes squirmed when confronted with his own immensely popular Songs Without Words. But he did warm to the idea of piano in combination with a chamber group. “There is a truly significant and personally far more appealing branch of piano music – trios, quartets and other things with piano parts – i.e., real chamber music, now pretty much forgotten, and the occasional urge to bring something new to it, is for me altogether too great.” The urge seems to have started back in 1832, when Mendelssohn wrote to his sister from Paris: “I would like to compose a couple of good piano trios.” Seven years and a good deal of work later, the first of the two trios, in D minor, saw light of day. Schumann hailed it a masterpiece. But it was not until six years later that Mendelssohn turned his attention to a second trio, in C minor. The minor key was certainly his key of choice in chamber music with piano. It gives his music a vitality and inner energy that is not always present elsewhere. Composition on the new trio went well and, in a few months, it was ready for performance. Mendelssohn himself played the piano part, together with his favoured violinist, Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and cellist Karl Wittmann.

Its first movement is brilliantly constructed. The opening theme, in running octaves on the piano (marked ‘with fire and energy’) is expanded into themes for violin and cello. Before long, the roles of strings and piano are reversed. The entire movement unfolds organically. Passages of great energy and quiet lyricism alternate, always bound together by the unity of their themes. After a tender Andante espressivo, Mendelssohn gives us one of his inimitable, minor key scherzos, which bubbles with energy and vitality. This is music that looks quite black on the page, but which is calculated to sound light and airy, calling for a fine balance between virtuosity and ensemble. “The trio is a bit slippery under the fingers,” Mendelssohn wrote to his sister Fanny, with wonderful understatement, “but even so, it’s not really difficult.” The finale begins with an exuberant theme, constantly surging forward. It reaches its climax with a broad chorale-like theme which provides one of the most stirring moments in Mendelssohn’s music. Its melody, of Mendelssohn’s invention, alludes to traditional Lutheran hymns which Bach used as the basis for two of his cantatas (Gelobet seist du Jesu Christ and Herr Gott dich alle loben wir). This C minor trio is one of the most successful works of Mendelssohn’s maturity, coming one year before the oratorio Elijah and two before his premature death at the age of 38.

 

— Program notes copyright © 2023 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]

piano

ANGELA CHENG
Tuesday, February 28, 2023

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809))
Sonata No. 60, in C, Hob. XVI:50 (c1794-5)
    Allegro
    Adagio
    Allegro molto
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)))
Sonata No. 31, in A flat, Op. 110 (1821)
   Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
   Allegro molto
   Adagio ma non troppo
INTERMISSION
FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849))
Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat, Op. 61 (1846)
FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849))
Ballade No. 1, in G minor, Op. 23 (c1835)
FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849))
Ballade No. 4, in F minor, Op. 52 (1842-3)

 

JOSEPH HAYDN
Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809
Sonata No. 60, in C, Hob. XVI:50 (c1794-5)

Among Haydn's final works for keyboard, written during his second visit to London, this C major sonata is one of a set of three commissioned by Therese Jansen, a virtuoso pianist and highly successful teacher in the British capital. Its three movements show that the 62-year-old Haydn retained a sense of adventure and daring. Brilliant writing abounds, with runs in thirds, daring modulations and dramatic pauses. Haydn pays more attention to dynamic markings here than in any other piano sonata. There are some detailed and much-discussed indications as to pedalling. Haydn also calls for an extended keyboard, including notes a third higher than the five-octave range found on most continental European pianos of the time. (Beethoven was the next to require a similar range with his Waldstein sonata of 1805). This C major sonata, along with its two companions (Hob. XVI:51-2), and the three piano trios (Hob. XV:27-9) that Haydn also wrote for Jansen, represent his most daring and progressive writing for the keyboard. They are also his most demanding. Haydn’s willingness to rethink a genre in which he had been composing for half a century was clearly stimulated by his trips to London. There he found not only advanced piano technology but, in Therese Jansen, a brilliant artist with a technique that inspired innovation.

 

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827
Sonata No. 31, in A flat, Op. 110 (1821)

Op. 110, Beethoven’s penultimate piano sonata, was the only work he completed in 1821, a year beset by illness, finishing it on Christmas Day. His last three piano sonatas, and the five late string quartets to which he would turn after completing the sonatas, share a concern with spiritual and transcendent ideals. In Op. 110, Beethoven’s compositional process is subtle and organic. Motifs recur and are recalled from one movement to another. The movements are designed to follow one another without break and, although it might appear that there is a descriptive program underlying their considerable mood swings, the music provides its own coherent map.

Beethoven writes con amabilatà at the opening of the first movement and the music maintains amiability and warmth of feeling throughout. In contrast, rapidly changing moods and rhythms give the second movement the character of one of Beethoven's gruff bagatelles. Functioning as a scherzo, the music even includes allusions to the themes of two popular songs. The slow movement is linked to and, essentially a part of the finale, together carrying much of the weight of the sonata. Three bars of introduction and a recitative introduce a vocal song of lamentation, marked Arioso dolente. This contrasts with the serene fugue that follows, itself a variation of the same tender theme with which the sonata began. The progression from Arioso dolente to the closing fugue has no parallel in Beethoven’s earlier music. Writer William Kinderman has compared the progression with that of the Agnus Dei to the Dona nobis pacem movements in the Missa Solemnis, music that Beethoven was also wrestling with at the time. At both a musical and a spiritual level, he suggests that the sonata mirrors the promise of liberation that emerges from an endless cycle of suffering and injustice reflected in the music of the mass.

 

FRYDERYK CHOPIN
Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, France, Oct 17, 1849
Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat, Op. 61 (1846)

It was with what now appears as a charmingly modest G minor Polonaise that the seven-year-old Chopin created his first published composition. Just three decades later, the complex, unique Polonaise-Fantaisie, which even Liszt found ‘unfathomable’, and the Cello Sonata were the last extended works in Chopin’s final productive period of creativity. In all, Chopin wrote some 15 polonaises and they contain some of his most beautiful and stirring music. While the earlier polonaises bear traces of the peasant origins of the dance, by 1835, four years after the fall of Warsaw, Chopin’s two Op. 26 polonaises begin to express the noblest feelings and purest type of national character for Poland’s past glory, present heartbreak and future aspirations. The title Polonaise-Fantaisie came relatively late during Chopin’s prolonged work on his Op. 61 which, as the music progressed, he initially viewed through the lens of a fantasy. The distinctive polonaise rhythm in the main theme was added after work was underway, and the structure itself was created from within, revealing the qualities and spontaneity of an improvisation. The music appears to evolve outwards from the nostalgia of the first real melody and, even before it, from the bass triplet figure in the luminous, spacious introduction, where time appears to stand still. Links can be found between all the themes that Chopin introduces in this composition, over which he laboured longer than any other single work, except, perhaps, the Cello Sonata which he was working on simultaneously. It contains some of his most far-reaching, forward-looking excursions in both tonality and restless, constantly shifting harmonies. Yet, for all its apparent irregularities, the music is meticulously, cohesively and convincingly constructed within a modified and somewhat disguised ternary design. The chorale-like Poco più lento heralds an episode that resembles a slow movement, punctuated by two passages recalling earlier episodes. Thumbprints of the polonaise recur throughout, yet the piece still manages, in an ineffable way, to create the impression of a spontaneous, satisfying, inspired fantasy.

 

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849)
Ballade No. 1, in G minor, Op. 23 (c1835)
Ballade No. 4, in F minor, Op. 52 (1842-3)

Chopin’s four Ballades are independent creations, not dependent on one another for their impact. Chopin started composition on the first after he left Poland, in Paris, the city he was to make his home. The last was completed in 1842, when the composer was in declining health, his love affair with the cross-dressing, cigar-smoking novelist Georges Sand past its first passion. The origins of the title are to be found in narrative poetry and folk songs, where the reader would find a descriptive, often dramatic story. By the early 19th century, the term had come to be used for the narrative songs of German composers, with Schubert's Erl-King marking the very peak of the form. Then, in the mid-1830s, Chopin began to use the title Ballade for a single movement, extended piano composition with an implied storyline. In his review of the later F major Ballade, Schumann suggested that Chopin found inspiration in the volume of Ballads and Romances that fellow Pole-in-exile, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) had already published in 1822 – marking the beginning of both Polish romanticism and the ballad in Polish literature. “The ballad is a tale spun from the incidents of everyday (that is, real) life,” Mickiewicz writes, “or from chivalrous stories, animated by the strangeness of the Romantic world, sung in a melancholy tone, in a serious style, simple and natural in its expressions.”

The inspiration, if, indeed, true is not literal. Chopin deliberately chooses a noncommittal title for the new musical genre he has created. He encourages us to use the poetry of our own imagination when listening to the music. The structure of Chopin’s Ballades is at one level free – a kind of individual take on the sonata form principle, working towards an apotheosis of the main themes. But, at another level, the music is disciplined by the utmost rigour and control. After a dramatic opening statement, the First Ballade, in G minor, Op. 23 alternates two richly lyrical themes separated by more fiery material. It concludes with one of Chopin's most ferocious, knuckle-crunching codas. Schumann recounted that he told Chopin that he liked this Ballade better than any other work Chopin had so far composed. After thinking a long time, Chopin replied with great feeling, "I'm glad of that because it's the one I prefer, too."

The Ballade No. 4, in F minor, Op. 52 is a masterpiece. It combines an apparent effortless and inevitable forward momentum with the most sophisticated architectural structure. Its main theme undergoes much variation and transformation, punctuated by episodes, before a powerful and shattering climax and a dramatic, bravura coda bring the work to a virtuoso conclusion.

— Program notes © 2022 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]

 

 

strings

BOREALIS QUARTET
Thursday,February 2, 2023 at 8 pm

IMANT RAMINSH (b. 1943)
String Quartet No. 3 (2010)
    Recitative and Arioso
    Dance
    Legend
    Recitative –
    Celebration
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)
String Quartet No. 8, in C minor, Op. 110 (1960)
    Largo
    Allegro molto
    Allegretto
    Largo
    Largo
INTERMISSION
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
String Quartet No. 12, in F, Op. 96, B. 179 (‘American’) (1893)
    Allegro ma non troppo
    Lento
    Molto vivace
    Finale: Vivace ma non troppo

 

IMANT RAMINSH
Born in Ventspils, Latvia, September 18, 1943
String Quartet No. 3 (2010)

"For me, music could never be separate from daily life,” says Vernon, B.C.-based composer Imant Raminsh. “That is why I have always worked in all branches of music: as a composer, conductor, teacher, violinist, and, from time to time, even as a singer. The only thing that I do not want and am unable to do is to explain my music. Who really can say, how a bird flies, why nature is so resplendent, from where does love come?"

Fortunately and by design, perhaps, little explanation is necessary to enjoy music of a composer that the choral community has known for years. Raminsh is best known for his choral and vocal compositions, although he has steadily composed in most of the main classical genres. In the 1960s after studies at the U of T and U.B.C., Raminsh continued his studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where he played professionally in the Camerata Academica for a while. His three string quartets demonstrate “an ear for what string instruments can do,” in the words of the Borealis’s Yuel Yawney. “And, because of his choral background, [the Third Quartet] has a very singing and lyrical aspect that lends itself well to string instruments.” The Borealis has given the première of all three Raminsh Quartets, working closely with the composer on the process. The score of the Third bears the date of 2010 but had an earlier life as Dialogues (1983) for violin and viola, now reworked, Raminsh says, “to make it more approachable.”

The piece opens with a reflective solo (Recitative) from the viola which is gradually expanded and broadened by the other three instruments and worked into a modally drawn Arioso. The second movement is a playful Dance with a lively theme intricately woven among all four instruments amid some rhythmic shifting. The central movement, Legend, has an enigmatic quality as its restless, somewhat nostalgic theme, again introduced by the viola, travels emotionally far and wide as though telling a story, that ends where it began. A second Recitative is related to the first, now being heard in short bursts from all four instruments, punctuated by tentative running passages. These explode into the concluding Celebration which is joyous, while still under the shadow of the viola theme which opened the work.

 

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Born in St Petersburg, Russia, September 12/25, 1906; died in Moscow, August 9, 1975
String Quartet No. 8, in C minor, Op. 110 (1960)

Written in three intense days, in 1960, during a visit to war-devastated Dresden, Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet immediately became known in the USSR as his ‘Dresden’ quartet. It contains clear images of a city under siege, with echoes of wartime sirens, confusion, brutality and even aircraft gunfire. Its dedication ‘To the Memory of the Victims of Fascism’ was designed to fit in with Soviet propaganda at the time. After a long period in the official deep freeze, the Soviet propaganda machine could now claim that Shostakovich had returned to the fold. Suddenly he became visible once more in the West. He went to the United States. He was appointed Chair of the Tchaikovsky Competition. The Lenin prize capped these well-publicised events. The Eighth Quartet was officially proclaimed an anti-Fascist work.

But Shostakovich had long ago decided that the public face he presented was less important than the private man revealed through the music. The Eighth Quartet became a prime vehicle for the expression of personal thoughts, though it was many years before audiences came to appreciate this. That the quartet is deeply personal is evident from the very first notes, where the cello intones four key notes on which the entire quartet is built. They are D, E flat, C, B. This is Shostakovich's musical signature, DSCH, derived from the German spelling of his name, D.SCHostakovitsch.

In the fourth movement, this Shostakovich signature is juxtaposed with a song familiar to all Russians. It is a noble, emotionally powerful 19th century revolutionary song ‘Exhausted by the Hardships of Prison,’ in which imprisoned revolutionary fighters honour a fallen colleague. This is where many would argue that Shostakovich's autobiographical intent becomes explicit. After the desolation of the opening movement, a nightmarish, frenetic world unfolds. In it, the DSCH motif is thrown around from one instrument to another. The composer's suffering is clear.

The third movement is an uneasy, sardonic waltz. It contains an unpredictable element that constantly suggests that something ominous is around the corner. A quotation from the First Cello Concerto adds to the feeling of instability. Other quotations in the final two movements include music from the execution scene in The Young Guard. Most poignant of all is an aria from his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, heard high on the cello in the closing pages of the work. The five movements of the quartet are played without break.

The composer's son, Maxim Shostakovich, said that the quartet’s public dedication, ‘To the Memory of the Victims of Fascism and War,’ was added only when the Soviet authorities noticed that his father had combined his own musical signature with the well-known revolutionary song. "My father was above all a man who wrote about our contemporary problems," Maxim continues. "The Eighth Quartet is not only a protest against Fascism. The quartet is so deep, so personal. What it reflects is how much my father suffered under the pressure of an ugly and awful regime."

The intensely personal subject matter of the work was further confirmed when the literary and drama critic Isaak Glikman, a long-time friend of the composer, published a letter that Shostakovich wrote to him at the time: "I was thinking about the fact that if I die sometime or other, it's unlikely that someone will write a work in my memory. So, I decided to write it myself. . . The main theme of the quartet consists of the notes DSCH, i.e. my initials. The quartet makes use of themes from my works and the revolutionary song ‘Exhausted by the Hardships of Prison.’ My own themes are the following: from the First Symphony, the Eighth Symphony, the Piano Trio, the [First] Cello Concerto and Lady Macbeth. There are also hints of Wagner (the Funeral March from Götterdämmerung) and Tchaikovsky (the second subject of the first movement of the Sixth Symphony). Oh yes! … and there's also a theme from my Tenth Symphony. Quite something – this little miscellany!” The pseudo-tragedy of this quartet is such that when I wrote it my tears flowed abundantly. . . “

 

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904
String Quartet No. 12, in F, Op. 96, B.179 (‘American’) (1893)

“Why did not Dvořák come to us earlier if he can write such music here in America?” asked the critic of the New York Daily Herald after the première of Dvořák’s new F major String Quartet. The work soon acquired the nickname, ‘American’, and began to be requested by concert promoters everywhere. Boston’s Kneisel Quartet, who gave the première in Boston on New Year’s Day, 1894, repeated the performance 12 days later at Carnegie Hall. Within one year they had given 50 performances. The American had already become the most popular of Dvořák’s 14 quartets.

Dvořák wrote the piece in Spillville, a rural community of Czech immigrants in Iowa, the hometown of the violin student Josef Jan Kovarík whom Dvořák had employed as his secretary. Dvořák, his wife, six children, sister, maid and Kovarík arrived in Spillville June 5, 1893. What he found was a small settlement of 380 Czechs (it has the same population to this day). These settlers maintained the cultural traditions of the old country and communicated with one another in their native language. Dvořák was happier here than at any other time in his three-year stay in the States as Director of the National Conservatory in New York. Within three days he was hard at work on the new string quartet. His early morning walks through the woods by the Little Turkey River brought the sounds of birdsong – something he had missed in New York. He even incorporated the song of a small red bird with scarlet wings (a scarlet tanager) into the third movement of the new quartet.

Dvořák sketched the quartet in just three days and wrote it out fully in a further 12. Always a quick worker when inspiration was running high, Dvořák began work on a string quintet three days later and completed the work by the beginning of August. It, too, is sometimes referred to as the ‘American’. "The influence of America must be felt by everyone who has any 'nose' at all," Dvořák wrote during his summer in Spillville. In the opening movement of the quartet, listeners have heard everything from the melancholy grandeur of the broad plains to the poignancy of plantation songs. The slow movement may combine the intensity of Dvořák’s homesickness with the deep emotion of the spirituals he heard sung by his New York student Henry Burleigh. In the quiet, chorale-like theme in the finale, there are said to be echoes of the little organ that Dvořák used to play in the Spillville church. Above all, though, it's the contentedness and happiness of being in the countryside among friends that seems to be reflected in the music of the ‘American’ quartet.

— Program notes © 2022 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]

strings

ODIN QUARTET
Thursday, December 1, 2022 at 8 pm

ISAAC ZEE (b. 1994)
String Quartet: Connotations IV (2020): Gold, Waves, Decalescent, Hope
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Duo in G, for violin and viola, K. 423 (1783)
    Allegro
    Adagio
    Rondeau: Allegro
INTERMISSION
JESSIE MONTGOMERY (b. 1981)
Rhapsody No. 2 for solo violin (2020)
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Terzetto in C, for two violins and viola, Op. 74 (1887)
    Introduzione: Allegro ma non troppo –
    Larghetto
    Scherzo: Vivace
    Tema con variazioni: Poco adagio
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
String Quartet in F (1902-3)
    Allegro moderato - très doux
    Assez vif - très rythmé
    Très lent
    Vif et agité

 

ISAAC ZEE
Born in Hong Kong, December 22, 1994
String Quartet: Connotations IV (2020): Gold, Waves, Decalescent, Hope

Vancouver-based composer, performer, and educator Isaac Zee writes in a wide range of musical styles. These include music inspired by jazz, the spectralist movement, interactive computer music and, currently, he is involved in the music production of cartoon shows. He characterises his music as exhibiting “a curious speech-like quality while maintaining a sense of instrumental virtuosity, that, together with a taste for microtonal harmony, creates a unique and intriguing musical fingerprint.” Isaac Zee received the Canadian Music Centre Barbara Pentland Award in 2019.

Connotations IV is an ongoing collection of works that elaborate on the same motif based on four prompts, that also serve as the subtitles. Isaac Zee adds: “Connotations IV was written in the year 2020, when no one was allowed to go anywhere outside of their homes. It was, of course, the first major pandemic experienced by many of us. While the end is still nowhere in sight, there was then an optimism some held onto in anticipation of the day when it would all be over. This is condensed into the four words that inspire the composition and act as a subtitle for the piece.”

 

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December 5, 1791
Duo in G, for violin and viola, K. 423 (1783)

A work of Mozart’s maturity, this G major Duo is one of a pair composed during a three-month visit that he and Constanza made to Salzburg, July to October 1783. Mozart’s aim was to belatedly introduce the bride he married one year earlier to his father and sister. Mozart took the opportunity of visiting Michael Haydn, younger brother of Joseph, who had long been employed at the Salzburg court. Mozart found him sick and unable to complete a commission for six duos for violin and viola. Haydn’s employer, the Prince-Archbishop, had little sympathy for his veteran court composer and organist whose partiality to food and drink was well known in court circles. His prescription for recovery was to order the duos completed before payment would be made.

Ever willing to help a friend – and maybe eager, too, to play a trick on an Archbishop with whom he had crossed swords a few years earlier – Mozart immediately set to work. Carefully avoiding the keys of the four duos Michael Haydn had already completed, he left space at the top of the manuscript for Haydn to insert his own name. Reports from the time have it that Haydn copied out the duos, duped his employer, and treasured his friend's manuscript for the rest of his life. What is for sure is that the two duos became very popular in Mozart's lifetime and were advertised for sale in handwritten copies in several European countries. It was only after Mozart's death that they were printed under his own name by the publisher Traeg.

Both duos are sonatas in all but name – sunny, radiant works cut from the same cloth as the mature string quartets. Unlike Haydn's duos where the viola provides a dull, plodding sort of accompaniment to the violin line, Mozart makes a point of treating both instruments as equals. He had already ‘liberated’ the viola from its role as poor cousin to the violin in the lovely Sinfonie concertante, K. 364. Now, from the very opening of the G major Duo, he gives the viola melodic interest equal to that of the violin, frequently having one instrument imitate the other in close succession. Mozart often tricks the ear into believing that more than just two instruments are playing through his inventive contrapuntal writing, use of tone colour and double-stopping throughout the ingenious opening Allegro, lyrical Adagio, and emotionally wide-ranging finale.

 

JESSIE MONTGOMERY
Born in New York, December 8, 1981
Rhapsody No. 2 for solo violin (2020)

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of the contemporary American sound and experience. Her music has been characterised by The Washington Post as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life.”

Montgomery, a classically trained violinist and currently composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, feels grounded in the tradition of classical performance. “I feel very connected to European classical music because of the way I have learned to play the violin,” the Juilliard graduate says. Recent works include Sergeant McCauley, a nonet tracking the journey of her great-grandfather during the Great Migration, a score premièred at a family concert by the National Symphony Orchestra, a cello concerto and a viola concerto. Montgomery continues to work on a planned cycle of six Rhapsodies for solo violin, each of which will be dedicated to a different contemporary violinist and inspired by an historical composer. Rhapsody No. 1 draws inspiration from the six solo Sonatas of Eugene Ysaÿe and was written initially for her own performances in 2014. The Rhapsody No. 2 was written for composer and violinist Michi Wiancko and is inspired in part by the music of Béla Bartók. Its three sections enclose a lyrical, softly sustained, and double-stopped centre inside fast moving outer movement virtuosity.

 

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Terzetto in C, for two violins and viola, Op. 74 (1887)

Dvořák’s family was neither wealthy nor particularly musical but still offered encouragement to their eldest son when an aptitude for music began to reveal itself. The violin was his first instrument. Later, rather than following his father’s trade as a butcher, Dvořák graduated from the Prague Organ School as a trained organist. But the viola provided a meal ticket for the first few years of the Bohemian composer’s professional life. He was a member of a dance band that played in restaurants and for balls. Then, when this band became the nucleus of the orchestra for the new Provisional Theatre, Dvořák led the viola section of the 34-piece pit orchestra through the opera repertoire. It proved a fortuitous move for a quietly ambitious musician who had been slowly and painstakingly acquiring a composing technique when not playing in the band. When Smetana became conductor of the orchestra in 1866, the repertoire of Italian, French and German operas also began to include Czech, Russian and Polish works. In all, Dvořák spent twelve years in the band, all the while developing his own composing technique, well out of the limelight, beginning with chamber works and working up to his earliest orchestral and opera scores.

This extended apprenticeship, viewing repertoire from the inside as a viola player, like Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert before him and Hindemith after, proved helpful. Once Dvořák began to become established as a composer, he was able to work quickly to tight deadlines when needed, often drafting extended compositions in a matter of days. The Terzetto took a week, between January 7 and 14, 1887. Dvořák wrote it for music-making with a friend from his theatre orchestra days, the violinist Jan Pelikán. He had heard Pelikán coaching a student, Josef Kruis, who happened to lodge in an apartment belonging to Dvořák’s mother-in-law, in the same Prague building as the Dvořáks themselves. Dvořák the violist joined the two violinists in their informal music-making.

A professional première followed on March 30, 1887 and the Terzetto was published shortly afterwards. The piece opens with a gentle, lyrical and somewhat sentimental theme, very much in the spirit of hausmusik, music-making in the home. The first movement acts as an introduction to the broader slow movement that follows without break. Here, the sweetness of the outer sections is punctuated by a vigorous middle section. The scherzo is in the style of the furiant, a spirited Czech folk dance, and includes a more relaxed, waltz-like trio. A skilfully crafted set of ten variations on a theme derived from the opening movement concludes this little gem from the byways of the chamber music repertoire.

View on the Music TORONTO blog
Train spotting with a famous composer – Antonin Dvořák

This link can be clicked online, in tonight’s program notes, which can always be found at Music Toronto under the ‘Notes’ tab

 

MAURICE RAVEL
Born in Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, December 28, 1937
String Quartet in F (1902-3)

When French composer Vincent d'Indy first heard Ravel’s new quartet at its première in Paris on March 5, 1904, he enthusiastically said: "It is a piece worthy of any composer's work at the end of a long career.” Ravel, however, was just 28 when he wrote the masterpiece that was to become a cornerstone of the string quartet repertoire and one of the most popular of all quartets. He wrote it immediately before his exotic, sometimes voluptuous song cycle Shéhérazade. Ravel dedicated the quartet to Gabriel Fauré, whom he considered his true mentor, even though academic officialdom had expelled him from Fauré’s composition class at the Conservatoire for failing to write a fugue. Its roots, though, are intertwined with those of the D major quartet of César Franck, composed two decades earlier. And in between these two landmark works – the Franck and the Ravel – equally intertwined with both, lies a third masterpiece, the only quartet of Claude Debussy.

Ravel, the youngest of the three composers, was enthusiastically absorbing the music of Debussy, 12 years his senior, when he began work on his string quartet. He went to every one of the first 30 performances of Debussy’s revolutionary opera Pelléas et Mélisande and had the sound of Debussy's earlier quartet so much in his head that some of its lifeblood carried over into his own piece. He borrowed the use of Eastern exoticism and the modality of the harmony from Debussy. He also borrowed the richly scored textures and the idea of a pizzicato second movement.

Both Ravel and Debussy, at ten-year intervals, followed Franck’s lead in using a single theme, transformed both melodically and harmonically throughout all four movements. Although generally freer in his use of the cyclical principle, with each appearance of the theme, Ravel makes subtle changes, using the thematic unity to bring about a constantly shifting sound world. Critics were quick to comment on the similarity of his quartet with that of Debussy following the première March 5, 1904. They divided themselves and the followers of the composers, into two polarised camps. From this point on, the relationship of these two revolutionary French composers was to grow uneasy. Nevertheless, when Fauré criticized Ravel’s finale as a failure, Debussy was magnanimous in the way he reassured Ravel shortly before the première: “In the name of the gods of music and in my name too, do not alter a thing in your quartet." He was backed up the following month by Jean Marnold, critic for the bi-weekly journal Le Mercure de France, who wrote: “A healthy and sensitive temperament of a pure musician is developing here . . . We should remember the name of Maurice Ravel. He is one of the masters of tomorrow.”

— Program notes © 2022 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]

PIANO

MICHELLE CANN
Thursday, October 25, 2022 at 8 pm

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-49)
Ballade No. 3, in A-flat, Op. 47 (1841)
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Ballade in D, Op. 10 No. 2 (1854)
    Andante - Allegro non troppo - Molto staccato e leggiero - Andante
FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Piano Sonata in E minor (1932)
    Andante – Allegro
    Andante
    Scherzo
INTERMISSION
FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Fantasie nègre No. 1, in E minor (1929)
Fantasie nègre No. 2, in G minor (1932)
Fantasie nègre No. 4, in B minor (1932)
MARGARET BONDS (1913-72)
Troubled Water, from Spiritual Suite (1967)

 

FRYDERYK CHOPIN
Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, October 17, 1849
Ballade No. 3, in A-flat, Op. 47 (1840-1)

With its origins in narrative poetry and folk song, and its use to describe such 19th century songs as Schubert's Erlkönig, Chopin began to use the title Ballade for solo piano music in 1831. All four Chopin Ballades are single movement, extended piano compositions with an implied storyline. They draw on the idea of contrasting and reconciling opposites – the basis of the sonata principle – but free from the constraints of any conventional form. This is clear in the Ballade No. 3 in A-flat, Op. 47 where two contrasting themes are fused into a third. Essays have been written on the way Chopin transforms the themes of this ballade, a true example of art concealing art. Yet it is a mark of the strength of Chopin's creative powers in 1841 that the Third Ballade flows with natural momentum and strikes us as the most romantic of the set.

 

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born in Hamburg, Germany, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, Austria, April 3, 1897
Ballade in D, Op. 10 No. 2 (1854)

While Brahms acknowledges inspiration for the first of the four Op. 10 Ballades from a grisly Scottish ballad, Edward, in a classic British collection (Percy, 1765), no poetic origins appear to lie in the three remaining ‘Ballades’ in the set. However, the musical connections between the four Ballades are quite strong, making Brahms’s Op. 10 the first true Ballade cycle. The second Ballade, with its rocking, lullaby-like rhythms is, in Robert Schumann's words, "richly suggestive to the imagination, containing magical sounds." It is also the glue that binds the cycle together, with an opening section in D major (following No. 1 in D minor) and a central section in B minor, the key of No. 3. The opening section returns in the five-part poetic structure of Op. 10 No. 2, initially, in B major, the key of No. 4.

 

FLORENCE PRICE
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, April 09, 1887; died in Chicago, June 3, 1953
Piano Sonata in E minor (1932)
    Andante – Allegro
    Andante
    Scherzo
Fantasie nègre No. 1, in E minor (1929)
Fantasie nègre No. 2, in G minor (1932)
Fantasie nègre No. 4, in B minor (1932)

FLORENCE PRICE . . . A TIMELINE

Florence Price left a substantial output of over 450 works including 4 symphonies, a piano concerto and Rhapsody, two violin concertos, several tone poems, choral pieces, over 100 songs and arrangements, plus many works for piano, for strings, and for organ.  Almost half of this large catalogue is music for piano.  Much of the music is only now beginning to be published and is constantly being reviewed and seen under a new lens as time and social awareness evolve.  Some has been recorded on CD, more is posted on YouTube, Soundcloud and other online performance portals, all providing a valuable window onto a neglected composer.  A biography by the late Rae Linda Brown titled The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price (Urbana, IL, 2002) brings valuable new research and authenticity to our knowledge of a modest woman who gave few interviews and generally shunned the limelight. 

In her music Price frequently marries traditional European structures, in which she was trained, with melodic writing drawn from her heritage of spirituals, folk, religious and popular music.   Her music resonates with Antonin Dvořák’s call, two or three decades earlier (when spending two and a half years as director of the New York Conservatory), to establish an American national school of music founded on African American and indigenous folk music.  The keyboard was the major medium for Price’s creativity and activity as a musician.  She graduated from the New England Conservatory in 1906 with diplomas in both piano teaching and organ performance, the only student of her year to do so.  After teaching positions at colleges in Arkansas and Georgia, from 1912 until her death in 1953, she performed both instruments publicly and taught privately.

The prize-winning Sonata in E minor (1932) is an expansive late-romantic work, putting high technical demands on the pianist throughout its three thematically related movements.  The first evolves through a fundamental sonata form structure with a slow introduction, as it explores two contrasting, spiritual-like themes in a virtuoso manner.  Price squeezes sequential patterns through many key changes, adding bravura flourishes and concerto-like cadenzas to the movement’s rhapsodic piano writing.  The gently rocking main theme of the central slow movement is related to the second theme of the opening movement and forms a calming, lyrical and soulful refrain throughout the movement.  Beginning with a whirling, tarantella-like descending E minor scale, the vigorous main theme of the finale builds to a somewhat sentimental, broad melody that may have its roots in the slow Andante rocking theme.  The bustling tarantella returns before morphing into a crisp, dance-like variant, followed by a more overt reminiscence of the Andante’s rocking opening.  Then comes more of the crisp dance before further contrasting dance rhythms propel the score into a concerto-like build up, a final glance back at the Andante theme, and a triumphant close.

With the Fantasie nègre, Price creates a musical structure that gives her the freedom to explore the rich legacy of African American folk idioms and melodies.  The Fantasie nègre No. 1, in E minor (1929) takes the spiritual “Sinner, please don’t let this harvest pass” as the basis for an emotionally wide-ranging sequence of variations, building to a thunderous end.  The piece, dated February 9-10, 1929 carries a dedication “To my talented little friend Margaret Bonds,” of whom, more shortly. 

Price wrote four fantasies with the title Fantasie nègre, composed around the same period of her life.  Only the first two pages of No. 3 from 1932 were known until the British pianist and academic Samantha Ege was recently able to reconstruct the piece through her research at the Price archives at the University of Arkansas.  “Nègre relates to Negro, a term not used today, but used in the past and claimed with pride by Black people,” Ege says.  Ege, who was introduced to the music of Florence Price while spending a year at McGill University, adds: “I use the term Negro as a term of empowerment, to keep Price in the spotlight in her own terms.” The Second Fantasie nègre is built largely round a five-note, pentatonic melody.  Through a love of sequential development, Price brings a feeling of freedom to the fantasy and an almost improvisatory feel to its progression.  The Fantasie nègre No. 4, in B minor opens with a mysterious and dramatic introduction before opening into a heartfelt, spiritual-like main theme, again built around five notes.  Although this fantasy won an honourable mention in the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest, Price waited five years to perform it in public.  It had by then been revised and simplified beyond its original large-scale, full-throated lyrical outpouring.  Several versions survive.

 

MARGARET BONDS
Born in Chicago, March 3, 1913; died in Los Angeles, April 26, 1972
Troubled Water, from Spiritual Suite (1967)

In the 1930s, the Bonds family home in Chicago was a gathering place for the black community, particularly musicians and other artists.  Price lived with her daughters under the Bonds roof while going through her divorce and quickly recognised a kindred spirit in the young Margaret Bonds.  Margaret was by now a senior at Northwestern University and her song The Sea Ghost won a prize in the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest, the same contest that saw Price win the piano category with her E minor Piano Sonata and the overall prize with her Symphony in E minor.  Margaret was soon invited to perform in a ballet adaptation of Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 1, in E minor at the Chicago Art Theater.  She also helped Price copy parts for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra première  of the Price symphony.  She also gave the première  of John Alden Carpenter’s Piano Concertino in the same concert.  This June 15, 1933 concert was notable not only for Price becoming the first black composer to have a work performed by a major American orchestra, but Margaret Bonds also became the first black soloist to appear with the CSO.  Bonds and Price continued to collaborate and support one another throughout the 1930s. 

William Dawson, well known for his published arrangements of spirituals and his Negro Folk Symphony of 1934, was also among Bonds’ composition teachers.  He is believed to have encouraged Bonds’ interest in combining jazz rhythms and harmonies with European forms and structures such as those found in her Spiritual Suite of 1967.  All the pieces in this collection draw on specific spirituals, with the best-known piece from the set, Troubled Water, being based on the spiritual Wade in the Water.  This rhythmically driven pianistic showpiece takes the spiritual as its main theme within a traditional sonata structure, colouring and spicing the music with jazz rhythms and gestures.
— Program notes © 2022 Keith Horner.  Comments welcomed: [email protected]

Now on the MusicTORONTO blog
An expanded Timeline and music by Florence Price
http://music-toronto.com/blog/

This link can be clicked online, in tonight’s program notes, which can be found at www.music-toronto.com under the ‘Notes’ tab.

STRINGS

PACIFICA QUARTET
Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 8 pm

American Folk Inspirations

FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
String Quartet No. 1, in G (1929)
   Allegro
   Andante moderato - Allegretto
FREDERICK TILLIS (1930-2020)
From Spiritual Fantasy No. 12 (Suite for string quartet) (1988/95)
   Nobody knows the trouble I see
   Wade in the Water
SEAN SHEPHERD (b. 1979)
String Quartet No. 3 (2020) (Canadian première)
   Hot/Cold
   Before and after the Two Bs
   Bottomless
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Quartet No. 14, in A-flat, Op. 105, B. 193 (1895)
    Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro appassionato
   Molto vivace
   Lento e molto cantabile
   Allegro non tanto

From the soulful melodies of the African American spiritual to the expressive dissonance of jazz improvisation, from folk songs to the beauty of indigenous bird calls, sounds from the American experience have inspired composers to create new music throughout our rich history. ‘American Folk Inspirations’ is a celebration of these influences on artists as showcased in four distinctly original string quartets of Florence Price, Frederick Tillis, Sean Shepherd and Antonin Dvořák. Spanning a period of 125 years, these composers articulate in their own voice musical influences garnered from their unique experiences in three distinct times in America’s history: the Industrial Revolution, Black Tuesday and the stock market crash, the tumultuous upheaval of the Civil Rights Era, and the present day. ( — Pacifica Quartet)

FLORENCE PRICE
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, April 09, 1887; died in Chicago, June 3, 1953
String Quartet No. 1, in G (1929)
   Allegro
   Andante moderato - Allegretto

Florence Price left a substantial output of over 300 works including 4 symphonies, a piano concerto and Rhapsody, two violin concertos, several tone poems, choral pieces, over 100 songs and arrangements, plus works for strings, piano and organ. Much of the music remains unpublished and is constantly being reviewed and seen under a new lens as time and social awareness evolve. As recently as 2009, dozens of Price’s manuscripts, thought lost, were found in St. Anne, Illinois in a summer house about to be renovated. These include her two violin concertos and Fourth Symphony. Some of Price’s music has been recorded on CD, more is posted on YouTube, Soundcloud and other online performance portals, all providing a valuable window onto a neglected composer. A biography by the late Rae Linda Brown titled The Heart of a Woman: the Life and Music of Florence B. Price (Urbana, IL, 2002) brings valuable new research and authenticity to our knowledge of a modest woman who gave few interviews and generally shunned the limelight.

In her music Price frequently marries traditional European structures with melodic writing drawn from her heritage of spirituals, folk, religious and popular music. Her music often resonates with Antonin Dvořák’s call, two or three decades earlier (when spending two and a half years as director of the New York Conservatory) to establish an American national school of music founded on African American and Indigenous folk music. We can hear suggestions of this in the second movement of tonight’s G Major String Quartet. Two years after writing the quartet, Price was to come closer to Dvořák’s call, as a more mature composer, with the 1931 Symphony No. 1, in E minor. This brought national acclaim through a national prize, and a performance at the Chicago World’s Fair by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Frederick Stock -- making Price the first Black woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra. Sporadic performances have since been revitalized by the 2021 release of her Symphonies No. 1 and 3 by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The G Major quartet has a more exploratory feel than the symphony. It is the first of two numbered string quartets, though Price additionally wrote two attractive, thoughtful collections of Spiritual and folksong settings for the medium. Its opening movement sits comfortably within traditional sonata form, with melodic rather than structural development. A gently lyrical opening theme slips effortlessly from key to key, agreeably enough, but lacking the acerbic edge that Prokofiev drew out of a similar technique. The movement’s second theme is more whimsical and dance-like. The slow movement is framed by a touchingly nostalgic theme, influenced by American folksong. In-between comes a darker, minor-key trio section. It is not known whether Price did further work or intended to add movements to the two movements of this string quartet.

FREDERICK TILLIS
Born in Galveston, Texas on January 5, 1930; died in Amherst, MA, May 3, 2020
From Spiritual Fantasy No. 12 (Suite for string quartet) (1988/95)

A long-time educator, composer, performer, arts administrator and poet at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Frederick Tillis left a substantial catalogue of over 150 compositions for piano and voice, orchestra, chorus, and chamber music, in both the European classical and jazz traditions. He started his professional career at 12, as a jazz trumpet and saxophone player, touring with various bands internationally. Studying in segregated schools, Tillis graduated from Wiley College at 19, later receiving his PhD at the University of Iowa. Professor Tillis then instigated many Black cultural initiatives in several arts media while teaching music theory and composition at UMass, Amherst, and directing the University Fine Arts Center.

Many of his works reflect an interest in the spiritual as a springboard for composition. Some of the later compositions broaden to include inspiration from different cultures, including Latin and Asian sources. “Three quarters of the world’s cultures use the pentatonic scale [five notes per octave rather than seven]”he says. “[This is] a profound linkage within the family of man. This five-note scale is the basis of the spiritual, and also the music of Asian cultures, and it is therefore natural to use it to express our interrelatedness, our world brotherhood.”

Among the collection of 14 Spiritual Fantasies for varying combinations of instruments by Frederick Tillis is a four-movement work dating from the 1988. The reflective, darkly drawn, often anguished Nobody knows the trouble I see, with its theme first heard on viola, opens the quartet. Wade in the water, the second movement, is more rhythmically propelled in its outer section, with bluesy and fugal elements in the central section, all expertly crafted, leaving a taste for more. “The composition of the Spiritual Fantasy for string quartet pays tribute to the essence of the musical expressions of pathos and triumph over worldly obstacles encountered by a people who found hope and strength through faith in God,” Tillis said.

SEAN SHEPHERD

Born in Reno, Nevada, July 1, 1979
String Quartet No. 3 (2020) (Canadian première)

Currently beginning a two-year appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at The University of Chicago, Sean Shepherd had the première of his third String Quartet delayed until one month ago, when the Pacifica Quartet gave the première in Logan, Utah. Shepherd has received many awards and enjoys international success, with commissions from the Boston, Leipzig, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestras and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Orchestra of St. Luke's, and Claremont Trio. Early in his composing career, while still studying at Indiana University, Shepherd heard some words of advice from American composer Libby Larsen that helped him discover a unique compositional voice. “As composers, we are actually biographers,” he realised. “We’re kind of just able to tell our story. Then I started to think: ‘Well, maybe I do have an interesting story to tell . . . and, maybe, I can find the most interesting way to say it.’ This is the moment I found my voice.”

Sean Shepherd writes: “This Quartet is my shortest (and, I very much hope, my sharpest) so far. I very readily admit a specific personal struggle with this grouping of instruments – perhaps, after a bunch of people singing together in a sacred space, the most continuously winning group of people making music together in history. I now see writing a ‘good’ string quartet as a lifelong aspiration, rather than something one just sits down to do. Even so, I would say I’ve taken this chance to lean into some of my other long-held habits.

“Over the three short movements, there are lots of quick changes of scene, musical characters presented in high contrast to one another, and some virtuosic and dramatic displays, all within an abstract framework. The only reference I consciously make is in the second movement, titled Before and after the Two Bs. The traditional ‘Three Bs’ (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) are replaced, tongue-in-cheek, here by Bartók and Boulez). While the material borrows directly from neither, the sentiments of a narrow melody, such as often occurs in the 12 Notations [Boulez] or Mikrokosmos [Bartók], presented in a highly fluctuating and variable tempo felt too close not to acknowledge. As for Before and after?, the melody occurs in close canon at the unison in the violins and quickly breaks apart time after time.”

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904
Quartet No. 14, in A-flat, Op. 105, B. 193 (1895)

Chamber music was an important part of Dvořák’s composition, totalling more than 30 works. His Op. 1 was a string quintet, with two violas. His first string quartet followed in 1862 when he was 21. His last quartet, his fourteenth and the work to be heard today, was written 33 years later. His last two quartets, two of his finest, were composed in less than two months. But the ease and pleasure with which he created them came after a difficult period.

Behind him was a second visit to the United States. Artistically, it had been a success and he could look back with pride at the new Cello Concerto, his Symphony From the New World, Op. 95, the American String Quartet, Op. 96 and American String Quintet, Op. 97, with its pentatonic melodies. But Dvořák had felt cut off from his friends and relatives. He had been isolated from the Bohemian countryside and from a life that provided inspiration for his creativity. He returned to Bohemia in late April 1895. Once back in familiar surroundings, he fell back into the old routine that he had missed. He started the day with an early morning stroll in the Karlsplatz Park and resumed teaching at the Prague Conservatory. He checked up on the comings and goings of the railway trains he loved to watch. He had regular evening meetings with younger musicians and actors in Mahulik's restaurant. However, for six months, the ink ran dry until the creative block began to disappear. Soon, we find Dvořák writing: "I work so easily and everything goes ahead so well that I could not wish it better." The result was two late string quartets which, together, can be viewed as a summing up of all that he found good in the world. They are an affirmation of life and nature and reveal total mastery of the medium.

The G major Quartet (Op. 106, B. 192) was the first to break the silence. Paradoxically, given the Opus numbering, Op. 105, B. 103 – today’s quartet – came next. Dvořák had sketched the opening of its first movement (the introduction and exposition) during his last week in New York. Then, having already given it an opus number, he laid it aside. After an initial hint of foreboding, the mood is generally positive and full of well-being, though the dark clouds hovering over the opening do not altogether disappear. The scherzo is a furiant, a Bohemian folk dance, exuberantly propelled, with a trio section full of lilting, soaring melodies. The melodies draw from Dvořák’s nationalist musical language and the composer’s experience of the Indigenous and Black music from the new world. By marrying all these elements, he transcends time and place and creates one of his most satisfying chamber music movements. Then comes a heartfelt slow movement, musing dreamily on a folksong-like melody. Its ending introduces a note of unease into an otherwise untroubled musical discourse. The finale starts cautiously and appears at first reluctant to abandon itself to unbridled joy. But Dvořák’s happiness at being home seems to win through. The music is rich in musical ideas, sometimes nostalgic, more often upbeat and, ultimately, unambiguous in expression.

— Program notes © 2022 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]