CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY of LINCOLN CENTER Wu Han and David Finckel Artistic Directors
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October 10, 2019 at 8:00pm | Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall Pre-concert talk by Professor Simon Morrison at 7:00pm CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER Wu Han and David Finckel Artistic Directors Ransom Wilson Flute I David Shifrin Clarinet I Marc Goldberg Bassoon Chad Hoopes, Kristin Lee, Arnaud Sussmann, Angelo Xiang Yu Violin Matthew Lipman, Paul Neubauer Viola I Nicholas Canellakis, David Finckel Cello I Anthony Manzo Bass I Gloria Chien Piano “NEW WORLD SPIRIT” HARRY T. Southland Sketches BURLEIGH Andante (1866–1949) Adagio ma non troppo Allegretto grazioso Allegro HOOPES, CHIEN ANTONÍN String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat Major, for Two Violins, DVORÁK Two Violas, and Cello, Op. 97 “American” (1841–1904) Allegro non tanto Allegro vivo Larghetto Finale. Allegro giusto SUSSMANN, YU, NEUBAUER, LIPMAN, CANELLAKIS INTERMISSION LEONARD Sonata for Clarinet and Piano BERNSTEIN Grazioso (1918–1990) Andantino—Vivace e leggiero SHIFRIN, CHIEN AARON Appalachian Spring Suite for Ensemble COPLAND (1900–1990) WILSON, SHIFRIN, GOLDBERG, LEE, HOOPES, SUSSMANN, YU, LIPMAN, NEUBAUER, FINCKEL, CANELLAKIS, MANZO, CHIEN 1 | Princeton University Concerts About the Program By Dr. Richard E. Rodda, © 2019 HARRY T. BURLEIGH (1866–1949) Europe (King Edward VII summoned Southland Sketches for Violin and him for a performance when he passed Piano (1916) through London) and wrote nearly 300 songs and made a like number of concert Harry Thacker Burleigh was a pioneer in arrangements of spirituals for solo voice securing a place for African-Americans in and for chorus that were programmed this country’s concert music. Burleigh’s by such leading artists as Schumann- father died soon after Harry (sometimes Heink and McCormack. He was also a also known as Henry) was born in Erie, soloist at New York’s Temple Emanu-El Pennsylvania in 1866, so his mother entered (1900–25), an editor for the prestigious service to the city’s prominent Russell music publisher G. Ricordi (1911–49), and family, who encouraged the boy’s talent a charter member of ASCAP. On May 16, for music by hiring him as the doorman 1917, Harry T. Burleigh was presented for their household musicales so he with the Spingarn Medal of the National could listen in. Burleigh began taking Association for the Advancement of Colored piano lessons and singing as baritone People for the highest achievement by soloist with several of Erie’s churches an American citizen of African descent as a teenager. In 1892, at age 26, he during the previous year. won a scholarship to the new National Conservatory in New York City, where Though Burleigh was known for his songs, he met Victor Herbert and became a choral pieces, and vocal arrangements, student of Antonín Dvorˇák, then directing he also wrote a handful of instrumental the school, who was deeply influenced compositions, including the Southland by his performance of spirituals and Sketches for violin and piano. The Sketches other traditional American songs. (“I are delightful miniatures, the finest kind am convinced,” Dvorˇák stated, “that of salon pieces, characterized by folk- they can be the foundation of a serious and spiritual-inspired melodies, catchy and original school of composition to be rhythms, and appealing harmonies, but developed in the United States.” His “New they also signify a seldom-remarked World” Symphony shows their effect on aspect of Burleigh’s legacy to American his music.) Burleigh’s appointment as music—they were among the first works soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church in by an African-American composer Manhattan in 1894 met with controversy, available to an international audience. but he quickly became much admired Burleigh’s songs were first published in there for the quality of his singing and 1898 by the New York firm of G. Schirmer, for his many arrangements of spirituals, which issued others of his works until and he held the post for the next 52 years. he signed on with the brothers George He toured widely through America and and William Maxwell in 1902. William 2 | Princeton University Concerts princetonuniversityconcerts.org | 3 About the Program ran his own publishing house, which of a sturdy two-story brick house in became the principal outlet for Burleigh’s Spillville, a settlement of a few hundred songs for the next decade; George was souls founded some 40 years before by a the New York representative for both “Bavarian-German” named Spielmann. the London music publisher Boosey & It was not the Germans, however, who Hawkes and the Milan firm of Ricordi, followed Spielmann to the open spaces of publisher of Verdi and Puccini. George Iowa, but the Czechs and the Bohemians, hired Burleigh as an editor for Ricordi, in Dvorˇák’s countrymen, among whom were which capacity he not only oversaw the members of his secretary’s family, the clan publication of his own music, including the Kovarik. Though Dvorˇák was certainly not 1916 Southland Sketches, but also freely uncomfortable in his position as Director offered his advice to his African-American of the National Conservatory in New York colleagues and promoted the publication City (he boasted in a letter to one friend and performance of their compositions. about his $15,000 salary, an enormous George also worked during those years sum in the 1890s), he missed Prague, and with Victor Herbert, Burleigh’s teacher, hearing Czech spoken in the streets, and to establish an organization to protect the pigeons, and the traditional songs, the copyright of musicians, writers, and so was easily persuaded by Papa and publishers. When they founded the Kovarik, Spillville’s school teacher and American Society of Composers, Authors, choirmaster, to spend the summer of and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914, Harry 1893 in the little slice of his homeland Burleigh was among its charter members. that had dropped onto the Midwestern prairie. In his Reminiscences, Kovarik A set of spirituals by Harry T. Burleigh will recorded the following information: be performed by the Richardson Chamber “The Master’s day in Spillville was more Players on the Princeton University Concert or less as follows: He got up about four Series on Sunday, November 24 at 3PM. o’clock and went for a walk—to the stream or river—and returned at five. After his walk, he worked; at seven he ANTONÍN DVORˇÁK (1841–1904) was sitting at the organ in church, then String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat Major for he chatted a little, went home, worked Two Violins, Two Violas, and Cello, Op. again, and then went for another walk.... 97, “American” (1893) Almost every afternoon he spent in the company of some of the old settlers. He On June 3, 1893, Antonín Dvorˇák left got them to tell him about their bitter his apartment at 327 East 17th Street and difficult beginnings in America.... in New York City, and journeyed via He liked being there.” Though there Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago was little musical stimulation for him to Calmar, Iowa. An hour after arriving there (considerable energy had to be at Calmar, a carriage deposited him, his expended just to find a piano for his wife, their six children, a maid, and the rooms), Dvorˇák’s creativity blossomed composer’s secretary at the doorstep in Spillville. Just three weeks after he 2 | Princeton University Concerts princetonuniversityconcerts.org | 3 About the Program arrived, he completed the F-major Quartet begins with a mock drum-beat from the (Op. 96, known since it was new as the viola and continues with another pentatonic “American”) and immediately began a melody of simple construction. The central quintet for two violins, two violas, and section is given over to a long, minor- cello which was completed on August 1st, mode melody initiated by the viola. The just before he left for a week to participate third movement is a set of five variations in a “Czech Day” at the Chicago World’s on a two-part theme (minor, then major) Fair. In mid-September, before returning that Dvorˇák sketched in December 1892, to New York, Dvorˇák wrote to Dr. Emil the first scrap of music he wrote after Kozánek in Krome˘rˇíž, “The three months arriving in America. (He is said to have spent here in Spillville will remain a considered for a time composing a new happy memory for the rest of our lives. national anthem utilizing the second half We enjoyed being here and were very of this melody for the text “My country, happy, though we found the three months ’tis of thee.”) The Finale is an invigorating of heat rather trying. It was made up to blend of rondo and sonata elements, us, however, by being among our own much of which is based on the skipping people, our Czech countrymen, and that rhythms of the opening measures. gave us great joy.” Both the quintet and the quartet were officially unveiled by the Kneisel Quartet in Boston on New LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–1990) Year’s Day, 1894; the performance was Sonata for Clarinet and Piano repeated 12 days later at Carnegie Hall (1941–42) in New York City and a few months after that on the inaugural season of Princeton Leonard Bernstein had already University Concerts. accumulated a formidable curriculum vitae by the time he wrote his Clarinet The opening movement of the E-flat Major Sonata at the age of 23. Born in 1918 String Quintet grows from a pentatonic to a Russian Jewish family who had theme previewed in a shimmering setting settled in Massachusetts, he attended that serves as an introduction. The music the prestigious Boston Latin School as a becomes more animated for the formal youth and took piano lessons from Helen presentation of the main theme.