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Home , Bruce Adolphe, Frank Bridge, Karen Tuttle, Tabea Zimmermann

Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series

Misha Amory, Thomas Sauer, Hsin-Yun Huang, Viola Photo by Claudio Papapietro

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The presents Misha Amory, Viola Thomas Sauer, Piano Hsin-Yun Huang, Viola Part of the Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series

Friday, October 18, 2019, 7:30pm Paul Hall

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY Adagio (1905) (1882-1967) FRANK BRIDGE Pensiero (1908) (1879-1941)

PAUL HINDEMITH “Thema con Variationen” from Sonata, (1895-1963) Op.31, No. 4 (1922) ARTHUR BLISS “Furiant” from Viola Sonata (1934) (1891-1975)

BRUCE ADOLPHE Dreamsong (1989) (b.1955) GEORGE BENJAMIN Viola, Viola (1998) (b.1960)

Intermission

Program continues

Major funding for establishing Paul Recital Hall and for continuing access to its series of public programs has been granted by the Bay Foundation and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation in memory of Josephine Bay Paul.

Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium.

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ELLIOTT CARTER Elegy (1943) (1908-2012) Elegy (1944) (1882-1971)

GYÖRGY KURTÁG Jelek (1965) (b.1926) Agitato Giusto Lento Vivo Adagio Risoluto DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH “Adagio” from Viola Sonata (1975) (1906-75)

Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes, including an intermission

The Viola in the 20th Century By Misha Amory

The 20th century was transformative for the viola as a solo instrument. During these 100 years, the viola changed in the public perception from a poor relative of the into an expressive powerhouse with its own profile. In 1900 the viola in a solo role was a curiosity, a character actor summed up in a few restrictive words: dark, melancholy, intimate. By 2000, the instrument had been reimagined. Champions emerged over the 20th century—, , Nobuko Imai, , Paul Neubauer, and Tabea Zimmermann as noted soloists; Walter Trampler, Samuel Rhodes, Michael Tree, and Martha Katz carving out new expressive territory in the sphere; and great teachers such as Karen Tuttle, Heidi Castleman, and Thomas Riebl transforming the ways we think about the instrument. Hundreds of solo works for the viola were commissioned and written, plunging it into every conceivable context, where it wailed, gasped, chortled, plucked, and stabbed its way to a new identity.

This concert is a very limited tribute to the viola’s 20th century. As a “survey” it is extremely poor: there is no music composed by a woman; no music composed by an Asian, African, or South American; and no music from outside the European tradition, broadly interpreted. My idea is to offer glimpses, or snapshots, of music being written for the viola at five junctures during the 1900s. Each glimpse is “stereoscopic,” consisting of two works written close together in time that mirror each other, contradict each other, or otherwise cast each other in relief. For me, the most important thing is that each work on the program be vivid, have something striking and expressive to say, and display the viola in a particular light. One or two works were originally conceived for the violin or but alternatively published for the viola and too good to leave out.

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Zoltán Kodály’s Adagio (1905) is a lovely early work, prayerful and heartfelt. Originally conceived for violin but also published for the viola and cello, it Zoltán Kodály plays well to the viola’s natural warmth and inwardness, while demanding a huge range—nearly four octaves—from the performer. Born: December 16, 1882, in Kecskemét, Hungary

Died: March 6, 1967, in

Paired with the Kodály work is the brief Pensiero (1908) of Frank Bridge. Commissioned by his famous viola contemporary, Lionel Tertis, this piece Frank Bridge shares the color palette of Kodály’s work, but not its oratory: Instead of Kodály’s soaring, complete arcs of eloquence, Bridge offers inchoate, Born: stammering beginnings, half-submerged ideas. The “pensiero,” or February 26, 1879, “thought,” is so intensely emotional at its source that it can’t be spoken in in Brighton, U.K. graceful, well-rounded sentences, but must remain fragmented, stuck in the process of becoming speech. Died: January 10, 1941, in Eastbourne, U.K.

Jumping ahead a couple of decades, the next pair of works is firmly rooted in the Machine Age: the Theme and Variations from ’s Solo Paul Hindemith Sonata, Op. 31, No. 4 (1922), and the Furiant movement from Arthur Bliss’ Viola Sonata (1934). Hindemith was one of many smitten (and Born: perhaps disturbed) by the power of machines and their unstoppable, November 16, 1895, mesmeric drive—a musical trend famously embodied by Arthur Honegger’s in Hanau, Germany orchestral piece Pacific 231. A viola soloist writing for himself, Hindemith unhesitatingly repurposed his supposedly shy, lyrical instrument to convey Died: his visions of machinelike energy. The theme and variations takes a bold December 28, 1963, idea, stated in octaves, and puts it through a set of variations of increasing in Frankfurt athleticism and energy; at times one can almost hear pistons churning and conveyor belts humming. Despite a brief, more songful oasis in the middle of the movement, the clear message of the music is forward-hurtling, exciting momentum.

3 The Viola in the 20th Century (continued)

The Bliss sonata, another British work commissioned by Tertis, shares Arthur Bliss this love of fast progress. “Furiant” would seem an odd choice for this movement’s title, as it has none of the gaiety of the Czech form, resembling Born: rather a dark Tarantella, bent ultimately on a disastrous end. Despite its August 2, 1891, occasional melodious episodes, the music is predominantly mechanistic, in London with clanks and bumps aplenty. In its apocalyptic coda, amidst the fateful boom of low octave C-naturals in the piano, one hears clear echoes of Died: another “machine-age” viola work of Hindemith’s, the well-known perpetual March 27, 1975, motion from his Op. 25, No. 1 Sonata. in London

Next come two works from the end of the century: Dreamsong (1989) Bruce Adolphe by Bruce Adolphe (Pre-College ’71; BM ’75, MM ’76, composition) and Viola, Viola (1998) by George Benjamin. Beyond certain similarities in their Born: harmonic language—an atonal setting that nevertheless recalls tonal chords May 31, 1955, and gestures, often frankly Romantic—the two works contrast utterly in in their concept and character. Dreams and memory are important subjects for Adolphe, and he has explored them extensively in his compositions. In Dreamsong, one has the impression of a restless night, a state of sliding in and out of uneasy sleep, having a succession of dreams that address the same problem, with no two being quite alike. The material, in its examining and reexamining, has an often obsessive quality; from time to time the music breaks out of its lyrical vein with a swift, desperate passage, before once more subsiding to its former state. The viola part is the troubled protagonist, the piano part is the room’s oppressive walls, the tangled sheets, the buzzing in one’s head.

Benjamin’s Viola, Viola is another story: the two viola parts are tightly George Benjamin entwined, a rapid, frenetic double helix of activity. Information is tossed back and forth at high speed, code is received, replicated and sent back. In Born: the center of the piece, the two parts take turns delivering soloistic, intensely January 31, 1960, wailing orations. But ultimately this piece is not about a psychological state in London or a personal exploration, like Adolphe’s; it is rather a depiction of textures and energy levels, a forensic exploration of the possible range of sound and color that two can produce.

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Following this are two well-known short works, ’s Elegy (1943) and Igor Stravinsky’s Elegy (1944). This, for me, is an especially interesting Elliott Carter juxtaposition of works that bear the same title, were written almost in the same year, yet deliver such different impressions. Carter’s work glows; the Born: lines are long, arced, evoking far-reaching vistas and gleaming sunsets. The December 11, 1908, music is almost too sensual to be elegiac: Here is no bitterness, no sense in New York City of loss, but rather a hazy afterglow, a reflective looking-back on what has come before. Died: November 5, 2012, in New York City

Next to Carter’s Elegy, Stravinsky’s work has an almost monastic severity about it: a set of heavily accented sighs, ornamented in a neo-Baroque Igor Stravinsky manner, set over a somber eighth-note tread. Contrasting with this is a central passage where a fugue unfolds, moving consciously through a Born: series of learned techniques: subject and answer, augmentation, inversion, June 17, 1882, increasing in intensity, peaking, and finally subsiding back to the opening in Lomonosov, music. The viola is muted throughout, evoking the gray scene of a funeral Russia procession, with hooded, anonymous figures moving through the gloom. Died: April 6, 1971, in New York City

Finally, there are two works from the ’60s and ’70s that are diametrically opposed to each other. György Kurtág’s Jelek (1965), or “Signs,” is a terse György Kurtág set of six short movements for solo viola. Kurtág has often been described as the natural heir of Anton Webern—a able to express volumes Born: in very brief stretches of music, “a novel in a sigh.” This relatively early February 19, 1926, work finds Kurtág still partly in thrall to the dodecaphony of the earlier in Lugoj, Romania composer, and, less obviously, in sonic debt to Bartók, whose shadow must have loomed over all mid-century Hungarian musicians. But at the same time this is already full-fledged Kurtág, a master of flutters, snarling, buzzing, whispers and shocking attacks. The six tableaux, some of them only seconds long, vary enormously in their character and sound-worlds: The first is all extremes, the second almost jocular, the third is a shadow world, the fourth a plucked banjo that has gone out of control, the fifth a few arcs of reflective thought, and the sixth an abrasive leave-taking, slamming the door behind it.

5 The Viola in the 20th Century (continued)

Far, very far, from this world is the final movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Dmitri Viola Sonata (1975). Shostakovich, in his late works, moved more and more Shostakovich into music of bare, sparse textures and meditative spaciousness. (His last , from 1974, consists of six slow movements, to be played Born: without pause.) The Viola Sonata is the last piece he completed, and its last September 25, 1906, movement, in its patient pacing and gradual unfolding, has extraordinary in Saint Petersburg expressive power. It overtly pays homage to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, whose rhythms and accompanimental figures are everywhere, and it shares Died: the reflective, sorrowful state of the Beethoven work. Shostakovich opens August 9, 1975, in his movement with a series of falling fourths that seems to depict a sacred Moscow moment, the giving of some kind of blessing. At the same time, one has the feeling that this high priest has his own painful confession to make as he looks back on his life; and the music owes much of its power to this doubleness, a single figure who is reliving memories of suffering and granting spiritual relief at the same time. The music reaches three intense climaxes, the last of which is an extended and terrifying peroration, where the Beethoven idea is powerfully intoned low down on the piano while other forces thrash and flail overhead. Finally, the music evaporates, its energy spent, and a resigned coda, accepting but unutterably sad, brings the movement to a close.

About the Artists

Misha Amory

Soloist, chamber musician, and teacher Misha Amory (MM '92, viola) is a founding member of the , which has concertized on five continents for more than two decades, has recorded extensively, and serves as ensemble in residence at the Yale School of Music. Amory is also a member of the viola faculty at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music, and has given master classes at numerous other schools and festivals. A winner of the Naumburg Viola Award, Amory attended Yale and Juilliard and was a student of Heidi Castleman, Caroline Levine, and Samuel Rhodes. His latest recording, on the Bridge label, features the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach, with his wife, Hsin-Yun Huang.

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Thomas Sauer

Pianist Thomas Sauer earned his BM from the Curtis Institute of Music and his MM from Mannes College of Music. He has taught at Vassar since 1998. Recent appearances include performances at Carnegie Hall, the chamber music societies of and Philadelphia, Wigmore Hall (London), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Bargemusic (Brooklyn), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), Da Camera (Houston), and Princeton University. Festival appearances include Marlboro, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, , and Taos, as well as Lake District Summer Music (England), Agassiz (Canada), Festival des Consonances (France), and Esbjerg International Chamber Music Festival (Denmark). Sauer’s varied discography includes recordings of Beethoven and Haydn piano sonatas for MSR Classics; with Colin Carr, the complete cello and piano works of Mendelssohn on Cello Classics and complete Beethoven on MSR Classics; a disc of Hindemith sonatas with Misha Amory for Musical Heritage Society; music of Britten and Schnittke with cellist Wilhelmina Smith on Arabesque; music of Ross Lee Finney with violinist Miranda Cuckson on Centaur Records; and music of James Matheson for Yarlung Records.

Hsin-Yun Huang

Violist Hsin-Yun Huang (MM ’94, viola) has forged a career performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Recent performances include concerts with Musicians From Marlboro at Weill Recital Hall and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and appearances as soloist under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota. She was the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing. She has commissioned compositions from Steven Mackey, Shih-Hui Chen, and Poul Ruders. Her 2012 Bridge Records recording, Viola Viola, won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her latest Bridge recording features the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach, with her husband, Misha Amory. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993 she won the top prize in the ARD International Competition in Munich and was awarded the Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. A native of Taiwan and an alumna of Young Concert Artists, Huang received degrees from the School, Curtis Institute of Music, and Juilliard; she is on the faculties of Juilliard and Curtis.

7 Juilliard Board of Trustees and Administration

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