Ellen Rose, Viola Kristin Ditlow, Piano “There Are No Foreign Lands
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AF1808 PROVIDENCE Ellen Rose, viola Kristin Ditlow, piano “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” —Robert Louis Stevenson Any listener receiving the gift of the music on this disc might assume that the musical partnership between Ellen Rose and Kristin Ditlow began somewhere in the United States, but it was quite the contrary. It began in an airport shuttle in 2011 from the Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport to Sárospatak, Hungary. The destination of the shuttle was the Crescendo Nyári Akademia (Crescendo Summer Institute). A conversation that began between the newly- introduced musical colleagues yielded a promise to play together on a Tune-In (informal morning chapel) service. The piece was the fifth movement of Messiaen’s Quatour pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), and the title, Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the Eternity of Jesus). While this work was originally for cello and piano, it was arranged for viola by Ellen Rose. The performance took place about a week later. One of our faculty colleagues, Mari Salli (a pianist, originally from Finland, faculty member in Hungary, and working in mainland China) extended an invitation to the duo to perform during the 2012-2013 season at the National Theater in Kunming, China in the Yunnan Province. This invitation proved to be the center around which a multi-city tour was formed. From rehearsals and long-distance conversations, concerts planned, to tickets purchased, we embarked across the Pacific for a three-week tour of Beijing, Shanghai, and Kunming. Each city was the site of concerts as well as master classes Ellen Rose, a Juilliard School graduate, served as for violists, pianists, and chamber ensembles. principal viola of the Dallas Symphony from 1980-2017. She has performed with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas One final piece to this story is that the young man who greeted Ellen, her husband Zukerman and Yo-Yo Ma in chamber music concerts Bob, and me at the arrival gate of the Beijing International Airport would, eleven and has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in months later, become my husband! Zheng Yuan was one of Ellen’s artist diploma the U.S., Europe and South America. She served on the students at Southern Methodist University, and he began his engagement with our Aspen Music Festival faculty from 1989 to 2002 and tour as our translator and guide. If he had not been there, we would still be standing currently teaches at Southern Methodist University. Rose in the Beijing Airport! can be heard on two CDs on the Centaur Records label. It is with this framework that we give our duo-debut disc the name Providence. She has given master classes at The Juilliard School, Without it, the weaving together of three continents and years of planning would Manhattan School of Music, and the Cleveland Institute have never come into being. of Music. She has been a performer and guest speaker at Julia Shteinman Photography the Viola National International Congresses in Sweden and the U.S and has written two books: Extreme Viola (a scale book) and Viola Excerpts Plus. In January 2010 she presented a world premiere of a viola concerto commissioned by the Dallas Symphony, dedicated to her by award-winning composer Margaret Brouwer. In March 2012 she recorded the concerto, with maestro Jaap van Zweden conducting members of the DSO. In 2010, she traveled to Romania to do master classes and a chamber music concert. In summer 2010 she joined the faculty of the Crescendo Summer Institute in Sárospatak, Hungary. In November 2012 she did a recital tour of China with pianist Kristin Ditlow, in Beijing, Shanghai and Kunming, giving master classes and coaching string ensembles at the Beijing Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her recital fee in Kunming was donated to the Kunming International Academy to buy instruments and create scholarships. In July 2013 she participated in festivals in Romania and Hungary and continues to be on the faculty at the Crescendo Summer Institute. As a fundraiser, she has worked with Children’s Medical Center of Dallas to raise money for the children’s cancer unit and has raised funds for the Nelson Children’s Center in Denton, Texas, for abused and abandoned children. She was a volunteer counselor at the Dallas Pregnancy Resource Center. Currently she volunteers at the JFK Learning Center, a Dallas Independent School District, teaching small children to learn to read. This Fall she will join the faculty of Literacy Achieves, an English as a second language program for adults. Kristin Ditlow, American pianist, harpsichordist, Sonata no. 6 in A Major - Ridolfo Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) vocal coach and conductor, is enjoying a career in opera and recital in the United States and abroad. She is an We begin our program in parallel with our China tour recital program, with alumna of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Boccherini’s Sonata no. 6 in A Major. Boccherini was an Italian-born cellist. His Westminster Choir College, Tanglewood Music Center, biography boasts numerous positions in theaters and courts throughout Europe, and Merola Opera Program. She holds a Doctor of including a theater position in Vienna as well as an infamous tenure in Madrid. It Musical Arts degree in Accompanying and Chamber was there that the composer brought a job dismissal upon himself from his court Music from the Eastman School of Music, where she position under Infante Luis Antonio of Spain. According to scholar Elisabeth le was a student of Dr. Jean Barr. Guin, the King (Charles III of Spain) ordered Boccherini to alter a passage in a trio that he had newly composed. Instead of removing the passage, Boccherini doubled Her conducting has been praised as “fine and polished” it, and was immediately asked to leave. and featured an “exciting overture,” (Charles Jernigan, Boccherini is credited with bringing violoncello writing into more melodic and when she led Opera Southwest’s Norma ). Philadelphia Rita LaVeck Photography music critic Michael Caruso remarked that her piano performance had “an exquisite virtuosic milieu. In his string quartet writing, the cello lines have more prominence sensitivity and exhilarating thrusts of energy," and the Bethlehem Morning Call than in Joseph Haydn’s (a contemporary composer) quartets. In addition to writing wrote about her performance of Brahms as having “enormous passion, fine string quartets, Boccherini wrote many cello sonatas and other trio sonatas or precision, and great musicality.” chamber works. The arrangement that you will hear on the recording became an established part of the viola repertoire by William Primrose (1904-1982). He Dr. Ditlow is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Vocal Coaching at the University of customarily would perform only the first two movements, omitting a final minuet New Mexico. Notable highlights from the past few seasons include conducting world and trio from his interpretation and performances. premiere operas written by Steve Block, Joseph Illick, Nell Shaw Cohen, and Ron Strauss. She has appeared as a pianist with Ellen Rose (principal violist, Dallas Romance and Whither Must I Wander - Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Symphony Orchestra), Tara Venditti, the Metropolitan Opera National Council, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, OperaWorks, and New Mexico organizations Chatter, Two works of the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams are featured on this Santa Fe Opera, Movable Sol, Opera Southwest, and New Mexico Winds. She disc. The Romance was found amongst many other unpublished compositions after recently conducted Bellini’s Norma to critical acclaim. Performances of hers as a Vaughan Williams had passed away. Scholars believe it to have been written in 1914. conductor and chorus master have been broadcast nationally on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Broadcast. Prior to her appointment at the University of New We performed the Romance throughout China. It is a touchstone to one of my Mexico, Dr. Ditlow has served on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music, favorite stories on tour. While presenting part of our concert for children at the Settlement Music School (Philadelphia, PA), Westminster Choir College, Ithaca Kunming International Academy, we spoke briefly about each piece before College, and the Eastman School of Music. Dr. Ditlow has recorded for both the performing it. I had asked the children to listen for the “waves” in both the piano GIA and Blue Griffin labels. Her disc with saxophonist Dr. Eric Lau, Journey: Five and viola part. Centuries of Song for the Saxophone, was released in 2015. After concluding the performance, a young man, towards the front of the room, raised his hand. She studied lieder and German Romantic poetry during the summer of 2017 in Baden- “134.” bei-Wien, Austria at the Franz Schubert Institut. The 2017-2018 season has boasted her “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I understood you.” debut as both piano soloist and conductor with the New Mexico Philharmonic, as well “134 waves. We heard 134 waves in that piece.” as the premiere performance project of her new opera company, Antigua y Moderna . She is also the co-artistic director of the Southwestern Art Song Society. The second, Whither Must I Wander, is originally for baritone and piano, from Concertstück – George Enescu (1881-1955) Vaughan Williams’ cycle Songs of Travel, and is Ellen’s and my arrangement for viola and piano. Ellen had mentioned during a rehearsal period that the she felt the Investigation of George Enescu’s (known as Georges Enesco in France) biography CD needed a piece to “tie it all together.” I immediately thought of the text of is equivalent to an analysis of his showpiece for viola and piano, the Concertstück Robert Louis Stevenson, and its poignancy and immediacy to traveling artists.