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21st CENTURY CONSORT December 21, 2019 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church 301 A Street, SE, Washington, DC Pre-Concert Discussion 21st Century Consort Christopher Kendall with Gillian Eaton, David Froom, Jeff Kempskie Program Christopher Kendall, Artistic Director “’Round About Midnight” Boyd Sarratt, Manager A Child’s Christmas in Wales Dylan Thomas Paul Cigan, clarinet Readings interspersed throughout the program Gilllian Eaton, actor Ms. Eaton Lisa Emenheiser, piano Daniel Foster, viola Musica a Quattro: Presto tenebroso Stanislaw Skrowaczewski Alexandra Osborne, violin Mr. Cigan, Mr. Foster, Ms. Osborne, Ms. Young Rachel Young, cello Firehose Reel Evan Chambers with Ms. Emenheiser, Ms. Osborne St. Mark’s Chancel Choir Snow and Snow Helen Grime Jeff Kempskie, Director Mr. Cigan, Ms. Emenheiser, Ms. Osborne Mark Huffman, recording engineer The Bells of Rhymney Pete Seeger Matthew Schultheis, stage manager St. Mark’s Chancel Choir Silent Night Paul Mealor Saturday, December 21, 2019 St. Mark’s Chancel Choir Pre-Concert Discussion 4:00 p.m. Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik George Crumb Concert 5:00 p.m. I. Nocturnal Theme VI. Golliwog Revisited St. Mark’s Episcopal Church II. Charade VII. Blues in the Night 301 A Street SE, Washington, DC III. Premonition VIII. Cadenza with Tolling Bells IV. Cobweb and Peaseblossom IX. Midnight Transformation V. Incantation ❖ ❖ ❖ Ms. Emenheiser Eine Kleine Kleinmusik: Violoncelletude David Froom Ms. Young The 21st Century Consort’s 2019–2020 activities are sponsored by the Nicolae Bretan Music Foundation, The Amphion Foundation, Musica a Quattro: Presto Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Board and Friends of the 21st Century Consort. Mr. Cigan, Mr. Foster, Ms. Osborne, Ms. Young www.21stcenturyconsort.org ….slate, blue-gray Hilary Tann Ms. Emenheiser, Ms. Osborne, Ms. Young Following the concert, performed without intermission, the audience is invited to join the artists in the sanctuary for conversation. Ubi Caritas Paul Mealor St. Mark’s Chancel Choir 2 3 Le Zodiaque. After winning the 1956 International Competition for Program Notes Conductors in Rome, he was invited by George Szell to make his A Child’s Christmas in Wales Dylan Thomas American debut, conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in 1958. This led to engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh and Dylan Thomas was a famous Welsh poet and writer whose works in- Cincinnati Symphonies and, in 1960, to his appointment as Music Di- clude the poems Do not go gentle into that good night, And death shall rector of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota have no dominion, Under Milk Wood, and stories and radio broadcasts Orchestra). Skrowaczewski has regularly conducted the major orches- including A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a tras of the world, as well as the Vienna State Opera and the Metropoli- Young Dog. He became popular in his lifetime and remained so after tan Opera. He has made international tours with the Concertgebouw, his premature death in New York City. In his later life he acquired a French National, Warsaw, and Hamburg orchestras, and twice toured reputation, which he encouraged, as a roistering, drunken, and the Philadelphia Orchestra to South America and the Cleveland Or- doomed poet. Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language. He chestra to Australia. has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century and noted for his original, rhythmic, and ingenious In 1981 the American Composers Forum (then known as the use of words and imagery. Thomas’s verbal style played against strict Minnesota Composers Forum) commissioned the Clarinet Concerto, verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good which Skrowaczewski wrote for Minnesota Orchestra principal clar- night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and inetist Joe Longo. Skrowaczewski’s Passacaglia Immaginaria, commis- his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life sioned by the Minnesota Orchestra and completed in 1995, was and death and new life that linked the generations. premiered at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis in 1996 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Skrowaczewski received his second A Child’s Christmas in Wales was written for radio and recorded for Pulitzer nomination in 1999 for his Concerto for Orchestra. He received broadcast by Thomas in 1952, then published in 1955. The summary, the Commander Order of the White Eagle, the highest order conferred on the verso of the title page reads, simply: “A Welsh poet recalls the by the Polish government, as well as the Gold Medal of the Mahler- celebration of Christmas in Wales and the feelings it evoked in him as Bruckner Society, the 1973 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and the 1976 a child.” Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. Musica a Quattro: Stanislaw Skrowaczewski Musica a Quattro is among a small number of exquisite chamber Presto tenebroso works composed by Skrowaczewski over his long career. Like his Stanisław Skrowaczewski (1923–2017) was both a major conducting larger, orchestral works, they show a deep understanding of the instru- figure and a highly-regarded composer. Born in Lwów, Poland (now ments for which they’re written; in terms of compositional approach, Lviv, Ukraine), Skrowaczewski began piano and violin studies at the they demonstrate an integrity of craft and a philosopher’sensibility. In age of four, composed his first symphonic work at seven, gave his first this respect, Skrowaczewski’s life as a conductor and composer public piano recital at 11, and two years later played and conducted merged: he brought to both pursuits a consummate intelligence, Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. A hand injury during the war ter- humanity and striving for spiritual expression. Musica a Quattro’s two minated his keyboard career, after which he concentrated on compos- presto movements are performed in this concert. ing and conducting. In 1946 he became conductor of the Wrocław (Breslau) Philharmonic, and he later served as Music Director of the Firehose Reel Evan Chambers Katowice Philharmonic (1949-54), Kraków Philharmonic (1954-56) In his music, Evan Chambers (b.1963 Alexandria, LA) seeks to capture and Warsaw National Orchestra (1956-59). the energy and physicality of folk performance, translating it into the language of contemporary classical idioms. His compositions bear the Skrowaczewski spent the immediate post-war years in Paris, studying stamp of his family’s participation in the American folk revival and an with Nadia Boulanger and co-founding the avant-garde group early exposure to the edginess and immediacy of community music- 4 5 making. The result is a new music that they could designate either fireboxes or a traditional Irish tune that honors traditional roots as di- with that name. Reels are, after all, the most pyrotechnic of tradi- verse as Albanian polyphony, Sufi tional Irish tune types, and the images of urgency and fire sug- Qawwali music, Sacred Harp singing, gested by the name well suit the feel of traditional dance music Irish dance tunes, and American when it takes off. polkas. His work has been described by The Washington Post as “luminous, I wanted to capture the drive of a traditional session at its peak: the wistful…undeniably poignant,” “with reels blazing along, the tunes stretched tauter and tauter like one an elegant sense of restrained long- long wire until the whole thing seems ready to snap or explode. ing.” The piece is a brief but intense moto perpetuo which never quite coalesces on an actual tune, but takes a very small amount of mate- Chambers is known for his intense rial and heats it up to the point of spontaneous combustion. vocal performances of his own works, and is also an Irish-traditional fid- Snow and Snow Helen Grime dler. He appeared as the fiddle soloist Helen Grime (b. 1981) studied oboe with John Anderson and compo- in his Concerto for Fiddle and Violin at Carnegie Hall with the Ameri- sition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh at the Royal College can Composers Orchestra (its second Carnegie performance) and his of Music. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award for her Oboe orchestral song-cycle The Old Burying Ground was also performed in Concerto, and was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland Carnegie Hall. He won first prize in the Cincinnati Symphony Com- Composition Prize in 2003 as well as all the major composition prizes posers’ Competition, and was awarded the Walter Beeler Composition in the RCM. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship Prize by Ithaca College; his work has also been recognized by the to study at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Luigi Rus- Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran, and Augusta Read solo Competition, Vienna Modern Masters, and the American Com- Thomas. Grime was a Legal and General Junior Fellow at the Royal posers Forum. Chambers’s works have been performed by the College of Music from 2007 to 2009. Cincinnati, Kansas City, Spokane, Memphis, Toledo, New Hampshire, and Albany Symphonies, among others. He has written commissioned Grime has had works commissioned by ensembles and institutions in- works for the Albany Symphony, Toledo Symphony chamber players, cluding the London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Centre, the USMA Wind Ensemble, eighth blackbird, the Verdehr Trio, Aldeburgh Music, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Britten Quorum, the Greene String Quartet, the Detroit Chamber Winds and Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society Strings, and the University of Michigan Bands. of Lincoln Center, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Conductors who have performed her work include Sir Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Professor of composition at the University of Michigan School of Daniel Harding, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Oliver Knussen, and Sir Mark Music, Theatre & Dance, Chambers served as chair of the Department Elder.