UCONN SFA FACULTY SHOWCASE Program Notes Fantasy for Violin and Piano No. 1 in G Minor Florence Price (1887-1953) Florence Price achieved an unprecedented level of success as a composer for an African American woman in the United States in the early 1900s, though relatively few of her works were published during her lifetime. She studied at the New England Conservatory, taught at Little Rock’s Shorter College and later led the Music Department at Clark University in Atlanta. She moved to Chicago in 1927 and attended Chicago Musical College, studying harmony, orchestration, and composition. Her influence in the Chicago musical landscape was so significant that, upon her death, Chicago honored her by naming an elementary school after her, later renaming the building The Florence B. Price Twenty-First Century Academy for Excellence. Price was an avid composer, writing several hundred works during her lifetime. While her music found success with the orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists of the day, she faced obstacles in publishing due to her race and sex, and decided her time and efforts were better spent composing; most of her music remained as unpublished manuscripts at the time of her death in 1953. Her daughter donated a large body of work to the University of Arkansas Libraries, and a further treasure trove of her manuscripts was discovered in an abandoned house in Illinois in 2009. Recognition of her work, which combines traditional classical styles and formal structures with melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements of African American music, has steadily grown in recent years. Price composed the Violin Fantasy No. 1 in G Minor in 1933 during a particularly prolific period that resulted in some of her best-known works, including the Piano Sonata in E Minor (1932) and Piano Concerto in D Minor (1932-34), and her First Symphony (1932), which was performed at the 1933 World’s Fair by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Fantasy has a cadenza-like introduction and a lengthy coda that frame an ABA thematic and tonal structure. African American influences are most evident in the second theme and during the transition passages, including the rhythmic language, use of the natural seventh scale degree, and the ‘call-and-response’ dialogue between the violin and piano. Falling Trio for Piano, Violin, and Violincello Kenneth Fuchs (b. 1956) Kenneth Fuchs is Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut. He has composed over 75 works for orchestra, band, chorus, and various chamber ensembles, and performances of his music have received glowing reviews worldwide. He has released numerous recordings, including five albums on the Naxos American Classics label with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, and his most recent album, Point of Tranquility (Seven Works for Symphonic Winds), recorded by the United States Coast Guard Band, was released on Naxos in 2020. Fuchs received his masters and doctoral degrees at The Julliard School and studied with Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, David Diamond, Vincent Persichetti, and Alfred Reed. Fuchs’ style is inspired by the mid-20th-Century American Symphonic School, and he describes his own work as “lyrical and developed with counterpoint and innovative formal structures,” with “clearly articulated gestures that can be understood on first hearing.” Falling Trio was composed in 2010 as a commissioned piece for Trio21. It is the second work to grow out of Fuchs' earlier composition Falling Man, a song cycle for baritone and orchestra about 9/11 based on Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name. Falling Man, which was performed on the 15th anniversary of 9/11 at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, also inspired Falling Canons, a seven-movement work for solo piano. This trio is a set of seven variations beginning in B with the theme from Falling Man and following an ascending scalar series. The variations segue directly from one to the next with no pause. As described in the album’s liner notes, much of the work is atonal, but there are two beautiful “reconciliatory” passages in a more diatonic style in an attempt to “reconcile the work’s tonal and non-tonal language.” Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) I Andante II Scherzo. Allegro III Adagio mesto IV Finale. Allegro con brio Brahms composed the Horn Trio in the summer of 1865 in Lichtenthal near Baden-Baden following his mother’s death earlier that year. The work inhabits a unique place in the trio repertoire, defying convention in instrumentation by replacing the typical cello with the natural horn (Waldhorn). While Brahms provided the option for the horn part to be performed on cello, the stylistic elements are so firmly rooted in the horn’s character and long associations with ‘the hunt’ and pastoral scenes that is almost impossible to imagine the piece without it. The trio also defied expected formal structures, including four movements instead of three, and most notably using a rondo instead of sonata form for the first movement. This work is in many ways an elegy to Brahms’ mother, particularly the mournful trio section of the Scherzo and the “mesto” (sad) Adagio. The instrumentation too is nostalgic, indicating use of the older natural horn of his childhood – his father was a professional hornist and taught Brahms to play – rather than the newer and more frequently used valved horn. The first movement is the only first movement in the entirety of Brahms’ chamber music output that is not in sonata form, instead using an ABABA rondo. Episodes are set off by differing meter, and the horn’s pastoral association is particularly evident in the A theme, which Brahms told a friend “occurred to him on wooded heights among fir trees.” The Scherzo second movement is playful and rustic with a contrasting melancholic trio section. The Adagio mesto is deeply emotional, beginning with a dirge in the piano alone and again following an ABABA rondo pattern, with a brief foreshadowing of the Finale’s fanfare theme in the second B section. While the entire trio is in the key of E-flat, the key in which the natural horn is built, the Adagio requires the performer to “stop” the natural horn in order to navigate pitches beyond the available harmonic series; the resulting pitches have a certain haunting quality that fit the movement’s mood. The work closes with a cheerful and brisk Finale, featuring many horn calls and a German folk song his mother had sung to him, In der Waiden steht ein Haus (“In the Meadow Stands a House”). Libertango Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) arr. Pablo Ziegler adapted by Louis Hanzlik Astor Piazzolla is known for revolutionizing tango, adding elements of classical, jazz, and folk music to the traditional Argentinean dance form in a style called nuevo tango. Born in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, Piazzolla spent his early years in New York City with his father, who bought him his first bandoneón (a type of concertina), and also first exposed him to jazz and classical music. Piazzolla returned to Argentina in 1937 where he began performing with tango orchestras and studying composition with Alberto Ginastera, and in 1954 he earned a scholarship to study in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger. When he returned to Buenos Aires in 1956, he created his own performing group, the Octeto Nuevo de Buenos Aires, and began composing nuevo tango in earnest. The new style wasn’t immediately popular in his home country, but was well-received in the United States and Europe. Piazzolla performed and toured frequently, and lived in Italy for a while during the political unrest in Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s. Libertango was written shortly after he moved to Italy in 1973. The title merges the words “Libertad” (liberty) and “Tango”; Piazzolla said “Libertango stands for the freedom which I allow for my musicians. Their limits are defined solely by the extent of their own capabilities and not through any exterior pressure.” The work was released on his first Italian album in 1974 to immense success and is probably the most well- known and instantly recognizable of his compositions, with infectious rhythms that embody the spirit and excitement of the tango. Originally scored for his own octet, Libertango has been recorded in numerous versions by artists from Yo-Yo Ma to Grace Jones. It was featured in the 1981 Jacques Rivette film Le Pont du Nord and in Roman Polanski’s 1988 thriller Frantic. This version has been arranged by Pablo Ziegler and adapted for trumpet, violin, cello, and piano by Louis Hanzlik. Oblivion Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) arr. Louis Hanzlik During his time in Italy, Piazzolla composed Oblivion for the 1984 film Enrico IV by Mario Bellochio, based on a 1922 play by Luigi Piradello. The story centers around an actor who is injured and falls unconscious while playing the character of Henry IV. Upon awakening, he believes himself to actually be Henry IV and assumes that identity. Oblivion is written in the style of a slow milonga, an Argentinean style of dance that is considered to be the precursor to the tango. Sadly haunting and nostalgic, Oblivion has become one of Piazzolla’s most widely recognized and popular works and has since been widely adapted for various solo instruments and ensembles. This version was adapted for violin, trumpet, and piano by Louis Hanzlik. Danzón Paquito D’Rivera (B. 1948) adapted by Louis Hanzlik “[D’Rivera] has become the consummate multinational ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and classical.” – The National Endowment for the Arts Paquito D’Rivera is a multi-award-winning soloist and composer, known for his accomplishments in Latin, jazz, and classical music.