Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series
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Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series Misha Amory, Viola Thomas Sauer, Piano Hsin-Yun Huang, Viola Photo by Claudio Papapietro Support Scholarships The Juilliard Scholarship Fund provides vital support to any student with need and helps make a Juilliard education possible for many deserving young actors, dancers, and musicians. With 90 percent of our students eligible for financial assistance, every scholarship gift represents important progress toward Juilliard’s goal of securing the resources required to meet the needs of our dedicated artists. Gifts in any amount are gratefully welcomed! Visit juilliard.edu/support or call Tori Brand at (212) 799-5000, ext. 692, to learn more. The Juilliard School 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. 1 ELLIOTT CARTER Elegy (1943) (1908-2012) IGOR STRAVINSKY 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 violin 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—Lionel Tertis, William Primrose, Nobuko Imai, Kim Kashkashian, Paul Neubauer, and Tabea Zimmermann as noted soloists; Walter Trampler, Samuel Rhodes, Michael Tree, and Martha Katz carving out new expressive territory in the chamber music 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 cello but alternatively published for the viola and too good to leave out. 2 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 Budapest 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 Paul Hindemith’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 composers 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 New York City 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 violas can produce. 4 Following this are two well-known short works, Elliott Carter’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.