Donald Wheelock Lewis Spratlan John LaMontaine Daniel Asia Matthew St. Laurent David Sanford In Your Head New music for piano four hands Dana Muller Gary Steigerwalt This recording was inspired by the highly successful premiere of Dreamworlds, commissioned of long-time and premiered by Judith Gordon), and Subject to Change, 2011 (chromatic fugue for piano four- hands). friend and colleague Lewis Spratlan for our recital at Mount Holyoke College in February 2016. Colleagues Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, 2014, is yet to be performed. Donald Wheelock and David Sanford agreed to compose works for the album as did Matthew St. Laurent, a former piano student. Lew introduced us to composer Daniel Asia in Tucson where we recently relocated. Awards include first prize in a Hartford Symphony competition, an NEA fellowship, and two Guggenheim In the early 1990’s, colleague and friend John LaMontaine coached us on his Sonata, which completes the grants. Works can be heard on Albany, Harmonia Mundi and New Ariel recordings. Available through the playlist. Except for Sonata, all notes are by the respective composers. composer are recordings of three sonatas for solo strings (violin, viola and cello, each with piano) for Gasp- aro Records (now defunct).
MIND GAMES (2017) responds to Dana and Gary’s initial project theme “In Your Head.” While many of my pieces have suggestive titles, and titles of non-vocal music often involve (loosely speaking) metaphors, this one presented a challenge. On one hand, everything is in your head—where else? On the other, the sort of musical metaphor this would entail needed some thought.
The first thing that came to mind was After-Images, a set of ten orchestral miniatures written for the Five Donald Wheelock, Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor College Orchestra in 1989. Its first movement, “High Expectations”, seemed to represent a state of mind. Emeritus of Music at Smith College, has a long career as Perhaps I could transcribe that and others for piano four-hands. While “High Expectations” did make the composer and teacher. Works include six string quartets cut with much elaboration and extension, no other movement could be made to work. As with any title, only (Nos. 3 & 4 on Albany Records), solo instrument pieces, the composer may know which came first, title or music. I can say, however, titles for “High Expectations”, song cycles, and larger ensemble and orchestral works. “Panic”, and “Abandon” generated the music for their respective movements as did “Cogitation”, in that Mind Games, his most recent composition, is one of many music might represent a calculated, almost autonomous thinking, working out a difficult puzzle, for instance. for piano, including an ambitious set of Piano Variations, The fourth movement, “Reflection”, had several titles relating to the state of contemplation, as required 2007 (Judith Gordon, Albany Records); Suite for the Piano, for composing a quasi-fugue with a complex subject in a highly introspective, baroque-inflected musical 1971 (Jeffrey Jacob, New Ariel Recordings); two Elegies language. All are tonal pieces except “Panic”, which is very chromatic and dissonant—think of the feeling (premiered 1980, Monica Jakuc; 1984, John Van Buskirk); you’d have halfway to the airport, realizing your passport is in your desk drawer at home. Still, except for A Circular Suite, 1984 (miniatures for younger players); “Panic”, the music of Mind Games is pretty traditional. Which is not to say that cheeky moments of dissonant Impromptu, 1992 (commissioned for a Connecticut youth intrusion don’t make their way into other textures, as in “Abandon”, a movement constructed along the lines competition); Sonata in One Movement, 1998 (premiered of a perpetuum mobile. I don’t have periods of abandon myself, but this is what they might feel like if I did. by Deborah Gilwood); Minute Waltzes, 2012 (three tiny And let me not forget to say the project was a challenge and a pleasure, especially working with Dana and waltzes totaling a minute in duration, commissioned Gary, for which I owe them many thanks.
2 3 Lewis Spratlan, recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Life is a Dream, libretto by James Maraniss after Calderón’s La vida es sueño, received its world premiere music and the $35,000 Charles Ives Opera Award (2016) by the Santa Fe Opera in 2010, Leonard Slatkin conducting. Hesperus is Phosphorus, commissioned by the from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was born Crossing Choir and Philadelphia’s Network for New Music, received performances in Philadelphia and New in 1940 in Miami, Florida. His music, often praised for its York in 2012, and was released by Innova. Architect, chamber opera based on the life and work of architect dramatic impact and vivid scoring, is performed regularly Louis Kahn, was released by Navona Records on a CD/enhanced DVD. The Boston Modern Orchestra throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Project released a CD of A Summer’s Day, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, and Apollo and Daphne He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Variations. Of War (large chorus and orchestra) premiered at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, where he studied with Mel Powell and Andrew Megill conductor (2015). Nadia Shpachenko premiered Bangladesh (solo piano, commissioned Gunther Schuller. From 1970 until his retirement in 2006 by Piano Spheres) at REDCAT, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles (2015). Common Ground (soloists, he served on the music faculty of Amherst College, and chorus, and chamber orchestra, component of Crossing Choir’s “Seven Responses” Initiative) was also has taught and conducted at Penn State University, premiered by Crossing Choir and ICE at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral and repeated in New York as part Tanglewood, and the Yale Summer School of Music. The of the Mostly Mozart Festival (2016). recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Composition, as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Spratlan recently completed his fourth opera, Midi, a black French-Caribbean Medea, ca. 1930. Brooklyn’s Bogliasco, NEA, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Bargemusic presented an all-Spratlan concert including Six Preludes for Piano, Piano Quartet No. 2, and MacDowell Fellowships, Spratlan toured Russia and Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano as part of their Music Now series in 2017. His recorded works may be Armenia in 1989 as a guest of the Soviet Composers’ heard on the labels of Opus One Records, Gasparo, Albany, Koch International Classic, Oxingale, Navona, Union during which time Apollo and Daphne Variations for orchestra was premiered, and Penelope’s BMOP, Innova. Knees, double concerto for alto saxophone and bass, was presented in Moscow’s Rachmaninoff Hall under Emin Khatchatourian. DREAMWORLDS (2015) probes the dreams of three very unlike figures: St. Francis of Assisi; Hitler; and a nameless bureaucrat. Each movement emerges from some primordial, universal dream tissue, within and Recent commissions include Earthrise (one-act opera, libretto by Constance Congdon, San Francisco against which the actual dreams play out. Opera); Streaming (piano quartet, Ravinia Festival for its centennial celebration); Sojourner (ten players, Koussevitzky Music Foundation for Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble); Zoom (chamber orchestra, the New St. Francis dreams repeatedly of his quest for holiness and service to the church, represented here as York ensemble Sequitur); Wonderer (solo piano, Borletti-Buitoni Trust for Jonathan Biss); Shadow (solo fragments of Gregorian chant, and his engaged conversation with his bird friends, some of which, e.g. the cello, Matt Haimovitz); Shining: Double Concerto for Cello and Piano (Matt Haimovitz and Christopher white-throated sparrow, make solo appearances. He dreams of his charmed empathy with wolves, who lie O’Riley); Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra (consortium commission by thirty saxophonists across the down in peace beside him, and of his visit to Egypt, where he attempts to persuade the Sultan to end the country); A Summer’s Day (Boston Modern Orchestra Project). bloodshed of the crusades. But his dreams return always to the search for piety and penitence.
4 5 Hitler dreams of power, conquest, and appetite, and of holy German art – Beethoven and Wagner and complete a piano concerto begun a decade earlier. Earning barely adequate income from composing and Haydn’s Deutschland über alles. But world domination through the sacrifices of war increasingly dominates accompanying opera singers, he considered a career in finance, taking courses to become a stockbroker his dreams. The movement closes in the gas chambers of the “final solution” as life seeps out of the six in 1959. In the same week he learned that he had passed the New York State licensure exam with a score million and out of der Führer’s dreams. of 97 per cent, that his freshly completed concerto had won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and that he was to receive his first Guggenheim Fellowship. Premiered by Jorge Bolet and the National Symphony Our poor bureaucrat is just trying to be good and efficient, but she’s not well prepared and makes Orchestra, the Piano Concerto No. 1 “In Time of War”, Op. 9, sparked a succession of commissions that embarrassing mistakes that frustrate her, in her dreams, to entropy and paralysis. Round two: she’s stuck sustained LaMontaine’s career. in a repetitive chore that drives her crazy – she’s too good for this – but she keeps at it until the inevitable explosion occurs. In the third episode pleasant dreams lead her to indulge her romantic side and ultimately Choosing to compose full-time rather than assume a permanent position in music teaching or administra- to all-out romantic passion, which all too quickly subsides. She stays in bed a bit late. Finally the dream tion, LaMontaine told an interviewer in 1984, “Part-time composers risk writing part-time music” and added tissue melts away and she’s left to go back to work. that the downside of the path he selected was living most of his life below the national poverty level. Still, he managed to fulfill brief teaching appointments at institutions such as the Eastman School, University DREAMWORLDS is fondly dedicated to Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt, two dear old friends whose of Utah, North Texas State University, and Whittier College and served as composer-in-residence at the dreamy collaborations have been a big part of my listening pleasure for many decades. American Academy in Rome.
John LaMontaine (1920-2013), born in Oak Park, Illinois, LaMontaine’s catalogue includes symphonic, chamber ensemble, ballet, opera, choral and solo instrumental studied composition with Howard Hanson and Bernard works. By his own admission, he was a prolific but slow worker, usually taking two or three years to complete Rogers at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New major compositions such as the Christmas Trilogy (1961-1969), three pageants commissioned by and York, earning his Bachelor of Music degree in 1942. Working premiered in Washington Cathedral, and Be Glad then America, Op. 43 (1974-1976), an opera sponsored privately with Rudolf Ganz while serving in the U.S. Navy by Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies to celebrate the United States Bicentennial. (1942-1946), he completed studies with Bernard Wagenaar Other major works were performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia at the Juilliard School and Nadia Boulanger at the American Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Conservatory in Fontainebleau. A gifted pianist, LaMontaine Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Pittsburgh Symphony. was selected by audition in 1950 to play piano and celesta in the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini until the In the mid-1960’s and again in 1994, LaMontaine traversed Africa, recording songs of native birds, conductor’s retirement in 1954. attempting to decipher their complex melodies and rhythms. Regarding the music of birds as “a tapestry of sound, the counterpoint of nature”, he incorporated ornithological melodies into his compositions, most The late 1950’s were financially precarious for LaMontaine, notably Birds of Paradise, Op. 34 (1964, piano and orchestra), later choreographed as Nightwings by Gerald despite a commission from the Ford Foundation (1958) to Arpino for the Joffrey Ballet; Mass of Nature, Op. 37 (1968, chorus and orchestra); and Wilderness Journal,
6 7 Op. 41 (1970, a symphony combining orchestra, organ, and bass-baritone soloist singing texts of Thoreau). subject-related material, Secondo’s left hand doubles higher voices at the distance of an octave or underpins the contrapuntal activity with chromatic and diatonic scale figures. Alternating scales in perfect fifths and SONATA FOR PIANO, FOUR HANDS, Op. 25 (1965) illustrates diverse elements of LaMontaine’s piano octaves signal the fugue’s climax and an abrupt return to the weighty opening of the first movement, made writing, including neoromantic lyricism, neobaroque polyphony, and 20th-century serialism and jazz. In conclusive through the punctuation of carillon-like chords. Notes by Gary Steigerwalt & Dana Muller 1994, LaMontaine remarked in an interview that, although he had “no regular procedure for composing”, for a period of time he wrote “a series of works which would make the maximum use of a particular interval” and claimed his four-hand sonata was based on the interval of a perfect fourth. Daniel Asia has been an eclectic and unique composer from the start. He recently received a Music Academy Preamble opens with declamatory tripled octaves in the Secondo, intensified by double-dotted rhythms and Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, powerful accents. The Primo answers with imploring phrases harmonized in perfect fourths and/or their and has received grants from Meet the Composer, a UK inversions, perfect fifths. These lyrical passages, to be played in a flexiblerubato ( ) tempo, contrast with Fulbright award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, MacDowell the rigidity of the Secondo’s opening gestures. A pianissimo second theme of rising melodic perfect fourths and Tanglewood fellowships, a DAAD Fellowship, Copland is introduced in the Secondo, then imitated in the Primo. Tempo and dynamics intensify until the Secondo Fund grants, the NEA (four times) and Koussevitsky reiterates the opening theme’s dotted rhythms. The movement ends quietly with truncated versions of both Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, and numerous themes repeated to the point of exhaustion. others. From 1991-1994 he was the “Meet The Composer” Composer-in-Residence of the Phoenix Symphony, and The visceral Scherzo begins with jagged, heavily punctuated melodic lines in the Primo, provoked by from 1977-1995 Music Director of the New York-based hammered major and minor thirds in the Secondo. After a brief halt, the Secondo creates a wholly new contemporary ensemble Musical Elements. momentum with repetitions of a jazzy three-beat ostinato spread unevenly over measures of 4/4 meter while the Primo plays a chirpy, sharply syncopated tune in the high keyboard register, possibly a reminder Asia’s five symphonies have received wide acclaim from of LaMontaine’s affinity for bird calls. The movement is made wilder through fluctuating meters and frequent live performance and their international recordings. Under a interjections of accented eighth notes in triplets featuring the interval of a fourth in the Primo. By the final Barlow Endowment for Music grant, he wrote a work for The three measures, the quarrel between Primo and Secondo devolves into staggered fortissimo canonic Czech Nonet, the longest continuously performing chamber ensemble on the planet. His recently completed gestures of a four-note motive derived from the movement’s opening. opera, The Tin Angel, and Divine Madness: The Oratorio, are based on the eponymous books by Paul Pines, his collaborator of over thirty-five years. The frenzied canon segues attacca into the final movement,Fugue , based on a gnarly subject furthering the composer’s preoccupation with perfect fourths and spanning a minor ninth that, in a nod toward serialism, Asia also is a conductor, educator, and writer. Professor of Music (Professor of Composition and head of the encompasses all twelve semitones of the chromatic scale. Performers are instructed to play deciso Composition Department) at the University of Arizona since 1988, he has been Coordinator of the UA Fred molto, gradually increasing the tempo of the fugue over the first thirty bars. As the three upper hands play Fox School of Music American Culture and Ideas Initiative since its founding in 2008 and is Director of the
8 9 annual Music + Festival. His recorded works may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, and Albany. film music. Working with established composers and music production companies, he began contributing For further information, visit www.danielasia.net. music for the hit animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He concurrently wrote additional music for several films and video games, including the highly successful reboot of the James Bond GoldenEye game. IRIS (2017) is in three movements. The first is mostly lighthearted, but always threatening to grow darker, or His music can also be heard on several seasons of Star Wars: Rebels. fall off the tracks, as it were. A lyrical mid-section is followed by a return to the opening material that includes an almost metallic climax. The movement ends as it began, offhand and whimsically. Most recently, Matthew has worked as a producer and lead contributor to Noise Refinery, a boutique music company providing tracks for commercials, trailers, and TV productions all around the world. He also lends The second movement is a bit darker in mood, ruminative perhaps. It moves slowly at the start, as it works his talents to the score for Elena of Avalor, currently in its second season, for the Disney Channel. For to gain momentum. Episodic in nature, it features a cadenza-like section as well, before it returns to its further information, visit www.matthewstlaurent.com. opening bell-like sounds. OVERTURE FOR A LUCID DREAM (2017) What is it like to control your own dreams? I have long been The third movement is motoric in rhythm and sound. It is all about unbridled energy, but of a kind that fascinated by this question, and was excited and challenged by the artistic opportunity to explore it through is somewhat allusive. This material is occasionally interrupted by lyrical moments reminiscent of the first music for this album. The concept of lucid dreaming is intriguing; when you become aware you are dreaming movement’s simplicity, while the ending also refers to that movement’s closing gesture, albeit with a final and can influence your journey, a world opens. Though I’m not among the lucky group who has experienced flourish that brings the entire work to a triumphant close. them personally, I was inspired to create a soundtrack that would be fitting if I ever found myself wielding such power in my mind.
Matthew St. Laurent is a Los Angeles-based film composer The piece starts timidly as the dreamer first registers what’s happening, then takes the listener along on an and pianist. A native of western Massachusetts, he has exploration of several musical themes. These weave in and out as the dreamer’s ability to control the nar- always been passionate about writing music. From an early rative gets stronger. It culminates with a fully-realized, grand reprise of the main theme, underscoring the age, he enjoyed creating his own endings to the classical feeling that physical laws no longer apply in this world, then quietly ends as the dreamer wakes from their pieces he was assigned by Dana and Gary—two of his first adventure, always a moment too soon. piano teachers.
At Berklee College of Music, he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring. Shortly thereafter, Matthew moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in TV and
10 11 David Sanford, director of the contemporary big band the Pittsburgh Collective, has received commissions from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Speculum Musicae, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, Chamber Music America and the Barlow Endowment. His works have been performed by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Detroit Symphony under Leslie Dunner, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players, among others. Honors include the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Radcliffe Institute. He was the arranger for cellist Matt Haimovitz’s Grammy Award-nominated disc Meeting of the Spirits. With degrees in theory and composition from the University of Northern Colorado, New England Conservatory, and Princeton University, he currently is Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music at Mount Holyoke College.
THE SILENT HEARTH (2018) I am honored to have been commissioned by Ms. Muller and Mr. Steigerwalt who were – and remain – such a large presence in the musical community of the Pioneer Valley and beyond for many, many years. In December of 2013, the Boston Globe featured an article about Steinert Hall, the former concert hall built in 1896 that remains in a dilapidated state some 40 feet below a piano showroom on Boylston Street near Boston Common which is still used for recordings due to its unique acoustics. Not long after reading the article, I learned from Gary that he and Dana had in fact recorded there; Gary described in vivid detail the dark, cavernous, debris-strewn space that visually echoed the numerous concerts from before its closure as a public concert venue in 1942. Having been the fortunate occupant of the office next to Gary’s in Pratt Hall, Mount Holyoke College’s music building, I was immediately inspired by the idea of the music from those many practices and rehearsals continuing to resonate through the years, at Steinert Hall, and at the college by extension. Accordingly, the four-hand version of Schubert’s Overture to Fierrabras (D. 798) which Gary and Dana recorded at Steinert Hall, forms the harmonic and melodic foundation of The Silent Hearth. 12 13 ber Music Society and with other western Massachusetts performance organizations such as the Pioneer Valley Cappella (Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem). In 2018 they made their debut appearances with Mo- hawk Trail Concerts and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. Orchestral appearances include Pennsylvania Sinfonia, Orchestra New England, Pioneer Valley Symphony, and Mesquite Symphony Orchestra (Texas). Active as promoters of new music, the couple has premiered works by Lewis Spratlan (Dreamworlds), David Sanford (The Silent Hearth), Donald Wheelock (Mind Games), Daniel Asia (Iris), Matthew St. Laurent (Overture for a Lucid Dream), Fred Lerdahl (Quiet Music for two pianos), David Macbride (Still Awake, Steal Away), Anthony Burgess (Schnee in Savosa), and Jan Mul (Concerto for Piano Four-Hands and Chamber Orchestra, North American premiere).
The duo has recorded four compact discs for the Centaur label. Their recording of four-hand works by early twentieth-century European composers (Centaur CD 2127) was hailed “an outstanding disc” by Fanfare, and their album of nineteenth-century Romantic compositions by Anton Rubinstein, Josef Rheinberger and Frederick Shepherd Converse (CRC 2390) was praised for its “panache and conviction” by www.allmusic. com. Also released by Centaur are two volumes (CRC 2272 and 2305) devoted to the four-hand works of Franz Schubert, excerpts from which can be heard in the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed movie Good Will Hunting.
Muller and Steigerwalt appear at schools, universities, and before music teachers’ organizations, offering workshops, master classes and lecture-recitals on a variety of topics. For ten years they wrote program notes and presented pre-concert lectures for the Musicorda Festival on the campus of Mount Holyoke Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt have performed as duo pianists for more than three decades, creating College. programs that encompass the historical and stylistic gamut of the piano four-hand genre. As recitalists, they have performed extensively in the United States, South America and Scotland. Festival appearances range Dr. Steigerwalt is Professor Emeritus of Mount Holyoke College where he taught on the music faculty from from presenting Beethoven’s complete four-hand works at the Beethoven Festival, Oyster Bay, Long Island, 1981 to 2016. Dr. Muller’s teaching career encompasses institutional (University of Houston, University of to performances at Bethlehem Musikfest (Pennsylvania), Music at Penn Alps (Maryland), and Sevenars Southern California, University of Hartford, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College) and private studio Festival and Musicorda Festival (Massachusetts). They performed regularly as members of Wistaria Cham- instruction (Berkeley, California; New York, New York; South Hadley, Massachusetts).
14 15 Page 4 - Photography: Gigi Kaeser | Page 12 - Photography: Tony Rinaldo Page 13 & 14 - Photography: Molly Condit, Great Bear Media