Wind Ensemble Cliff Colnot, Conductor Stephen Balderston, Cello

Wednesday, April 26, 2017 • 8:00 P.M. WIND ENSEMBLE Cliff Colnot, conductor Stephen Balderston, cello DePaul Concert Hall 800 West Belden Avenue • Chicago Wednesday, April 26, 2017 • 8:00 P.M. DePaul Concert Hall WIND ENSEMBLE Cliff Colnot, conductor Stephen Balderston, cello PROGRAM Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) Octandre (1923) Assez Lent Très vif et nerveux Grave – Animé et Jubilatoire Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809); arr. Cliff Colnot Cello Concerto in C Major, VIIb/1 (ca. 1761–5; arr. 2017) (World Premiere) Moderato Adagio Finale: Allegro Molto Stephen Balderston, cello WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2017 PROGRAM NOTES Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) Octandre (1923) Duration: 8 minutes Throughout his career, Edgard Varèse displayed a keen interest in the potential impact of new ideas and technologies on music. Composed in 1923, Varèse’s Octandre was premiered in 1924 on a concert organized by the International Composers’ Guild in New York. Octandre is one of a handful of influential pieces composed by Varèse during the 1920’s and 1930’s. This concise piece provides a crystalline example of many of his innovative aesthetic and technical concerns during this time. The distinctive instrumentation and timbral palette of this piece reflects Varèse’s unique concept of sound, focused on an extremely direct approach to tone production that is particularly well suited to the bright, dry timbres of the winds and brass. Varèse further defines the distinctive colors of the piece through a variety of techniques such as percussive flutter-tonguing, use of brassy (cuivré) tone color in the horn, mutes in all of the brass, and use of extreme high and low registers in all of the instruments. Structured in three brief movements, this piece clearly illustrates Varèse’s innovative approach to form. The overall scheme of the movements is a slow/fast/slow-fast pattern that eschews the traditional fast-slow-fast scheme typical of classically oriented three-movement works. The boundaries among the three movements are also obscured by the high degree to which they share closely related materials. At the outset of the first movement, a line played by the solo oboe illustrates an economy of means that is characteristic of Varèse’s style. This opening line initiates a principle idea that is used throughout the work, based largely upon a four-note pitch cell. The repetitive, yet subtly varied presentation of this cell is typical of the relatively static approach to material that Varèse uses throughout the work. Movement I is structured in WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2017 PROGRAM NOTES three major sections. Beginning with the distinctive oboe solo, Varèse rapidly fills out the entire chromatic pitch-space of the piece and introduces all of the instruments in the ensemble. A brief transition played by the bassoon descends into a lower register and initiates a second section that forms the torso of the movement. This section is based largely upon a second important motive, repetitive blocks of sound that are juxtaposed and subjected to rhythmic variations. These blocks are typical of Varèse’s concept of ‘sound mass,’ musical ideas consisting of multiple similar elements that are characterized by a particular gesture, dynamic, color, etc. The movement closes with a return of the solo oboe, this time playing in a higher register. As in the first movement, the very brief second movement opens with another solo, this time the piccolo playing in its distinctive lower register. Presented together with punctual gestures in the rest of the ensemble, this solo provides a backbone for the first part of this section. Following a brief grand pause, the movement once again focuses on block-like ‘sound-masses,’ characterized by wide leaps and repeated notes. The leaps, in particular, provide a strong link between this material and the linear idea presented in the opening oboe solo at the beginning of the piece. Rather than relying on a more traditional notion of a linear unfolding of form, Varèse uses non-linear juxtapositions of these ‘sound-masses’ as a fundamental approach to building form. The third movement provides a summation of the two principle materials used in the first and second movements. Beginning once again with solo lines, this time played by the bassoon and bass, this linear strand plays a greater role in this movement than in the first and second. As it continues, it is layered with ‘sound-mass’ blocks, creating a synthesis of the two principle ideas used in the first two movements. Connections between the movements are further underscored by the return of the solos in the oboe and piccolo, each presenting variants of the WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2017 PROGRAM NOTES material they played earlier in the piece, this time combined with other instruments, such as the E-flat clarinet and bassoon, among others. The movement culminates with an extended presentation of the opening melodic material in the upper register of the trumpet combined with repetitive ‘sound-masses’ played by all of the other instruments. The relative stasis and clarity of this moment gives way to a brilliant final presentation of ornamented leaping material in the piccolo, E-flat clarinet and brass instruments that combines elements of both of the original motivic ideas, and brings the piece to a climactic close. Notes by Christopher Wendell Jones. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809); arr. Cliff Colnot Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Hob. VIIb/1, (ca. 1761–5) Duration: 25 minutes Franz Joseph Haydn composed the Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major Hob. VIIb/1 sometime during his first four years of work for the Esterházy family. This wealthy royal family maintained an orchestra, and Haydn was expected to conduct and compose new works for the musicians. Haydn listed the concerto in a catalogue of his works that he created during his lifetime, but the music was lost for two hundred years. An archivist found it in the collection of the Czech National Library in Prague in 1961. Since its discovery, it’s become an important part of Classical era repertory for solo cello. The form of this concerto more closely resembles Baroque concerti than later Classical era concerti such as those by Mozart. Haydn originally composed this concerto for Joseph Franz Weigl, the principal cellist of the Esterházy orchestra. Haydn and Weigl were likely good friends. Haydn was godfather to Weigl’s son, Joseph, who went on to become a composer in his own right. Haydn’s virtuosic writing for cello in both his early symphonies and this concerto suggests that he respected Weigl’s abilities as a performer. In this concerto, Haydn writes passages in the cello’s WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2017 PROGRAM NOTES high range that abruptly jump to the instrument’s lower ranges. In the slower movements, he composed singing melodies that contrast with more florid sections of rapid notes. The faster third movement has highly technical passages that make virtuosic demands on the cellist. Two cadenzas that come at the end of the first and second movements offered an opportunity for the solo cellist to improvise an ornamental passage that demonstrates the range of their virtuosity. Haydn composed the accompaniment for a small orchestra of strings with a pair of oboes and a pair of horns. Cliff Colnot has arranged the orchestral parts for a woodwind ensemble. Transcribing and arranging orchestral works for wind band has a long tradition in European art music. During Haydn’s lifetime, conductors arranged popular orchestral and operatic works for harmoniemusik – small wind bands – that were typically employed by wealthy households to provide entertainment. Maestro Colnot reimagines the orchestral accompaniment using instrumentation that was not available to Haydn. He uses, for example, contemporary instruments like alto flute and bass clarinets to achieve subtle tone colors. His orchestration retains the pair of oboes, but English horn and bassoon fill in for the two horns. Flute and clarinets replace violins, and the alto flute plays lines that Haydn composed for violas. The bass clarinets play the cello and bass parts. Notes by Katherine Brucher. WIND ENSEMBLE • APRIL 26, 2017 BIOGRAPHIES In the past decade Cliff Colnot has emerged as a distinguished conductor and a musician of uncommon range. One of few musicians to have studied orchestral repertoire with Daniel Barenboim, Colnot has served as assistant conductor for Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Workshops for young musicians from Israel, Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries. Colnot has also worked extensively with the late Pierre Boulez and served as assistant conductor to Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He regularly conducts the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he recorded Richard Wernick’s The Name of the Game for Bridge Records, and he collaborates with the internationally acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird. Colnot has been principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary MusicNOW ensemble since its inception. Colnot was principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an orchestra he conducted for more than twenty-two years and was principal conductor of the University of Chicago’s Contempo Ensemble for over fifteen years. Currently, Colnot conducts the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. He has appeared as a guest conductor with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, and the Chicago Philharmonic. Colnot is also a master arranger. His orchestration of Shulamit Ran’s Three Fantasy Pieces for Cello and Piano was recorded by the English Chamber Orchestra. For the chamber orchestra of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, Colnot has arranged the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande (both published by Universal) and Manuel De Falla’s Three Cornered Hat.

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