557541Bk Kelemen 3+3 11/10/08 9:30 PM Page 1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
559351bk Smith:557541bk Kelemen 3+3 11/10/08 9:30 PM Page 1 movement spirals to its conclusion. silly, cartoon-like cadence figure “pops out” of the Jeffrey Grossman Sonata for Viola and Piano (1953) was originally cascading texture, in a slightly different rhythm each time. Consistently praised for his impressive and wide-ranging musicality in nearly every AMERICAN CLASSICS composed as a work for heckelphone and piano. Smith Piano Sonata (1954) is the most ambitious and style, Jeffrey Grossman has extensive experience as a keyboard performer, including later created versions for both tenor saxophone and viola. extended work on this recording. Smith writes: “The piano repertoire for the piano, harpsichord, and organ from every period of the classical The viola version is a full re-conception, adding chords sonata was written for my colleague at Chicago and long- repertoire. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he holds degrees in music from Harvard and textures (e.g., pizzicato and sul ponticello) that are not time professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University and Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied conducting with possible on the monophonic heckelphone. Smith writes: “I Jeanne Bamberger. Jeanne had been a student of Artur Grammy-award winning conductor Robert Page. He co-founded and currently had a heckelphone on loan in Chicago from 1954 to 1958 Schnabel, and we met in the classes of Roger Sessions in Photo: Katharine Dain serves as artistic director of the Cambridge Early Music Project, an organization LELAND SMITH when I was teaching at the University of Chicago. We had Berkeley in 1947. Jeanne gave the first performance of the which has presented numerous concerts in the Boston area. As a pianist, he has an excellent performing group there. With a pianist and Sonata at the University of Chicago in about 1956.” The studied with Louis Nagel and Lois Shapiro. Grossman is engaged in an ongoing violist we arranged a concert with this sonata (me on first movement of the sonata is a march and trio. The recording project that seeks to explore connections among diverse styles of keyboard Chamber Music heckelphone), Darius Milhaud’s second viola sonata, some opening section begins with a light march (with influences music from all eras and on numerous modern and historical keyboard instruments. piano works of Alexander Tcherepnin and the wonderful of Haydn and Hindemith) before devolving a section of The first CD in this project, There and Back released in September 2006, includes Trio for Heckelphone, Viola and Piano of Paul Hindemith. nearly crazed rhythmic declamation. The trio is in a flowing music by fourteen composers from four continents and four centuries. Sarah Darling, Violin and Viola We repeated this concert at other Midwestern colleges. My triple meter; the sense of beat placement is disrupted in Reunion/Retrouvailles, the next disc in the series, was released in March 2007. It sonata was also played at a U.S. embassy concert in 1964 nearly every bar by grace notes, countermelodies, and represents an even wider range of musical styles and composers, from Mozart to Jeffrey Grossman, Piano by a violist from the Paris opera and myself on piano.” The rhythmic offsets. The second movement is one of Smith’s Wuorinen, including several world première recordings and newly commissioned opening movement of the sonata employs both lyrical most impressive creations, an incredibly virtuosic and works. Grossman is also active as a music engraver and is a user of the SCORE music typography system, developed melodic passages and static “color” sections of cluster- extended rondo that is based upon the opening motive of by Leland Smith. More information about Grossman’s activities can be found on his website: www.jeffreygrossman.com based harmony. A fast, middle section tries to assert itself, the first movement’s march theme. The movement is a but is silenced with the opening material again. The second veritable catalogue of the rhythmic and textural techniques Sarah Darling movement is a light waltz, where the steady expectation of of Smith’s language and is a dizzyingly wild ride, nearly Sarah Darling is always ready to explore new musical terrain. An advocate of the basic waltz rhythm leaves Smith plenty of room for his threatening to “fall off the rails” in places. The short third contemporary music, she has been involved in the première of more than a hundred rhythmic transformations. The finale consists of two movement of the sonata is a slow, lyrical “coda” in two new works, including two concertos dedicated to her and a solo sonata played in vibrant sections surrounding a strangely textured middle parts. In the first part, a melody in the middle register of the Kennedy Center. After a Bachelor’s degree at Harvard and a year at the Juilliard one; mysterious colors in both piano and violin interact the piano is repeated four times (with faster rhythmic School, she spent four years studying in Amsterdam and Freiburg as a recipient of with a repeating harmonic pattern in the piano’s bass values each time) while a filigree surrounds it in the outer Wilson Photo: Susan the Beebe, Paine, and DAAD grants, before returning to her native Boston for a register. The coda of the movement draws quick references registers. In the second section, enigmatic gestures Master’s degree at NEC. Her major teachers include Kim Kashkashian, Wolfram to the previous two movements before disintegrating into accompany fragments of melody before dying away to Christ, Nobuko Imai, Karen Tuttle, James Dunham, and Scott Woolweaver. While the last bars of music, sounding nearly uncoordinated nothing. in Europe, she toured extensively as a member of the Amaryllis-Quartett, with before converging on a unison. Concert Piece for Violin and Piano (1951) is dedicated whom she won the Interlaken and Charles Hennen competitions. She has performed Six Bagatelles (1964) for piano is notable for being the to “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goldberg.” Smith writes: “Robert in the Ravinia, Yellow Barn, Sarasota, Norfolk, Kronberg, Baden-Baden, Verbier, first work that Smith engraved with the initial version of Goldberg was an amateur violinist and classmate of mine Saito-Kinen, and Lucerne festivals, appearing with members of the Juilliard, his SCORE software in December of 1971. It is thus the at Berkeley in 1946–48. He later became a doctor, devoting Cleveland, Mendelssohn, New World, Ying, Orion, and Takacs quartets. She has first musical score to be typeset entirely on a computer. much of his time to the poor and homeless.” Cast in an performed with the Boston Symphony, Boston Philharmonic, Boston Modern C Smith writes: “These bagatelles were written in Paris in extended single movement, this work contains a large Orchestra Project, the Portland and Rhode Island Symphonies, and the Orchestra 1964 where I was using a studio in the Salle Pleyel which number of mood and texture shifts. Particularly notable is of Indian Hill, where she is principal viola. She is a member of the Rosetta Trio, M had purportedly been used by Stravinsky.” These musical the evocative ending, where the work spirals ever faster the Laurel Quartet, and Boston Hausmusik, and is the founder and director of the miniatures each contain various musical elements that are through a large number of harmonic permutations before Arcturus Chamber Ensemble. Passionate about historical performance practice of Y juxtaposed and usually repeated. Frequent use is made of suddenly changing gears and ending quietly in F. all eras, Sarah Darling is Concertmaster and Assistant Director of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and recently repetition with subtle rhythmic variation; a good example led a seminar on early music at the Pergolesi Conservatory in Italy. She is the winner of the NEC, Harvard Bach Society, of this occurs in the third Bagatelle where a somewhat Carson Cooman GBYSO, Arlington, Marlboro, and Freiburg Concerto Competitions. K 5 8.559351 6 8.559351 559351bk Smith:557541bk Kelemen 3+3 11/10/08 9:30 PM Page 2 Leland Smith (b. 1925) Association and the International Society for the benchmark by which professional engravers judge Four Etudes (1952) for piano were written for Darlene Chamber Music Contemporary Music. I also worked for the Mercury music typography. Mahnke. Smith writes: “Darlene Mahnke was a piano Music Publishing Company. In the fall of 1950 I was Smith’s compositions employ a delightfully personal student at Mills College when I taught there in 1951–52. I Sonatina for Violin and Piano (1952–53) 3:26 Sonata for Viola and Piano (1953) 9:44 engaged as a bassoonist with the San Francisco Opera musical style, combining elaborations of traditional forms remember her impressive senior recital which featured 1 I. = c. 96 (Scherzando comodo) 0:57 $ I. = c. 58–62 2:56 Orchestra. In the years up to the mid-sixties I also with a harmonic language integrating both extended Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. She also conducted played in the San Francisco Symphony, the orchestras tonality and atonality. One of the most immediately the orchestra for the Mills College Centennial celebration 2 II. = c. 52 1:25 % II. = c. 48 2:33 of the New York City Ballet and the Chicago Lyric noticeable style elements is a witty sense of musical humor. for which I wrote the music.” Unlike some etudes which 3 III. = c. 120 1:04 ^ III. = c. 104–116 4:08 Opera, and the Chicago Symphony. My teaching career The use of humor within a serious musical language is a focus on a single musical element, each one of these pieces, Four Etudes (1952) for piano 3:16 Six Bagatelles (1964) for piano 5:17 covered 42 years and included public school music, one rare attribute but has occurred from time to time throughout while only a page long, explores the integration of at least 4 I.