Acknowledgments This album would not have been possible without the contributions of many people. First and foremost I would like Steven Holoc H w o S t to thank the musicians featured on the album for their tremendous dedication and professionalism. I extend the same thanks to the recording engineer Andreas Meyer and to Susan Bush of Albany Records. I would also like to convey my heartfelt appreciation for the generosity of Walter and Loree Reed and the late Betty Ottinger, who supported the recording sessions. My thanks also goes to the musical mentors of my youth: Robert Steen, David Tafoni, and especially Joseph Sounding Surfaces Yaremczak and David Imhof, whose love of music was so infectious that it overrode my better judgment to avoid Five etudes for Piano, op. 5 so fickle a mistress as music. For their patience and inspiration, I am grateful to my composition teachers at Yale, Kathryn Alexander and John Halle. I would also like to thank the remarkable faculty of Rutgers University’s Music trio for violin, viola, and cello, op. 2b Department, past and present: Andrew Kirkman, Floyd Grave, Nancy Rao, and in particular both Richard Chrisman Five Preludes for Piano, op. 1 and Scott Whitener. But among all the teachers and mentors I have had, none has made a more profound difference trio for clarinet, violin, and Piano, op. 2a in my life than Charles Wuorinen, an unquestionable genius who also possesses the patience necessary to convey the insights of his genius to others. Going back considerably further, I must express my gratitude to my parents, who always placed their children’s dreams ahead of their own, and to my late grandmother, Joyce Hennessey, who rarely missed a concert in over twenty years. At Yale, the torch of the indefatigable booster was passed to the lovely Miss Laura Moriaty, whose patience and praise never failed, and whose friendship greatly enriched some of the best years of my life. Finally, as is the case in nearly every worthwhile thing I have done in my life, three people have been indispensable: my sister, Nancy, who has been my confidant and counselor as long as we have been on this earth together; my brother, Andrew, whose talent inspired me, whose faith sustained me, and whose friendship has consistently been one of the greatest sources of joy in my life; and of course, my wife, Catherine, my muse, guardian of my most cherished dreams and font of my greatest joy. Producer and Recording Engineer: Andreas Meyer (Meyer Media Mastering LLC) Post Production Engineer: Jeanne Montalvo (Meyer Media Mastering LLC) All music available direct from the composer. www.holochwost.com www.albanyrecords.com TROY1397 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. weiyin Chen, piano box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2013 albany records made in the usa JonatHan Holden, clarinet | caroline Holden, violin | loiS leventHal, piano ddd waRning: cOpyrighT subsisTs in all Recordings issued undeR This label. andrew KoeHler, violin | SaraH Hedlund, viola | carrie Pierce, cello The Composer The Music Steven Holochwost (b. 1978) earned his undergraduate degree from This album is my first, and includes pieces composed between 2002 and 2010. These pieces Yale University, where he studied composition with Kathryn Alexander feature modal sonorities and lyrical melodies on their ‘sounding surface,’ which are supported and John Halle. While at Yale, he was founding Executive Director of the by a structural architecture developed through the application of Charles Wuorinen’s “nesting” Opera Theatre of Yale College, now in its fourteenth season. In 2001, method of composition. This approach creates similar patterns of musical elements (e.g., intervals, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with distinction in articulations) on every dimension of the composition, a self-affinity that at once reflects the both music and psychology. He earned his doctorate in music theory and self-similar nature of musical sound itself and references the broader tradition of Western art composition at Rutgers University under the tutelage of Charles Wuorinen, music from the Renaissance through the Romantic. completing his dissertation, “The Fractal Nature of Musical Structure,” in 2005 while on fellowship at the Center for the Critical Analysis of The Five Etudes for Piano, Op. 5, composed between 2006 and 2009, are similar to the other Contemporary Culture. He has received awards and citations from the pieces on the album in their approach to structure. They differ, however, in the content of the National Association of Composers, the Fisher Foundation, and the harmonic language employed, which is considerably more varied and occasionally more dissonant American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). His than that heard in the other works. This reflects an expansion of my harmonic palette, catalyzed compositions include works for the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, the University of Chicago Chamber by an encounter with Brian Ferneyhough at the June in Buffalo Festival, who recommended an Orchestra, and the Rutgers Brass, as well as numerous pieces for piano, voice, and chamber enhancement of the rhythmic, registral, and motivic strengths of the Opus 1 Preludes through a ensembles. His music has been performed throughout the United States, and in England, France, more adventurous treatment of pitch. Austria, and Japan, and has been included on programs at Festival South, the Blue Lake Festival, The first Etude opens with a fast, percussive, dissonant introduction, which quickly gives and June in Buffalo. way to a flowing theme set against itself in imitative, polyrhythmic counterpoint. A faster, playful In addition to this career in music, Holochwost is also active at the intersection of develop- central episode prefaces a return to the material of the first section, ending in a contemplative mental psychology and public policy. He holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of coda. Etude No. 2 begins with a tentative, almost trepidatious pulse, against which a bolder poly- North Carolina Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of rhythmic line asserts itself. After a brief interruption by faster, heavier material heard low in the Pennsylvania. He has held positions at the State of New Jersey’s Office of the Child Advocate register, the earlier, more delicate motive returns and forms the transition to the third Etude. A and the University of Delaware’s Early Learning Center, and is presently Senior Researcher broad, expansive theme is introduced to begin this Etude, a theme that is developed throughout, with the consulting firm WolfBrown, where he evaluates programs designed to provide arts in part through superimposition against the heavy, interjecting motive of Etude No. 2. Etude No. 3 education programs for low-income children. His clients have included Carnegie Hall’s Weill closes with a return to the opening material of second Etude, bringing a tranquil close to the Institute, Community Music Works (featured in The New Yorker), Play on Philly (featured in the narrative that unfolded across the second and third Etudes. This tranquility is quickly interrupted Philadelphia Inquirer), and the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information please by the lively, angular figure that is the basis of Etude No. 4, which is subsequently juxtaposed visit www.holochwost.com. and superimposed against a second, ever more strident motive. The fifth and final Etude is an homage to Bartók that begins with a deliberate, fugal exploration of symmetries of both pitch content and the registral deployment of individual pitches, and then moves to a freer, lilting development that gradually builds to a resounding restatement of the Etude’s initial material. The Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello, op. 2b was composed in 2004 for the Jade String Trio, section features a gentle, lilting restatement of this motive, placed in counterpoint with new motivic a New-York based ensemble of musicians who have emigrated from China or are of Chinese- material, before yielding to progressively louder, faster, and more metrically-destabilized material American descent. The Trio’s founder, Ching Chen Juhl, asked for a work based on a traditional that prefaces the final section. Julie Nishimura gave this Prelude its premiere at the University of Chinese folk melody. This melody, which can be heard in the cello at the opening of the piece, Delaware. The fifth and final Prelude is an extended development of a single, autumnal motive provides the large-scale structure for the work. Thus the statement of the melody is followed by a that occurs at the opening of the piece. It was commissioned by the Renee B. Fisher Foundation variation based on its inversion, an ethereal variation in harmonics, a flowing variation comprised and received its premiere by Maria Marra at the Foundation’s annual concert in New Haven. of a stream of triplets, a climatic variation featuring double-stops, and finally a restatement of the melody itself. Each variation is centered around one of the melody’s pitches, and the occurrence The Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, Op. 2a, began its life as a trio for the unlikely combination of each new pitch center is marked by a change in tempo, often initially introduced in a previous of flute, saxophone, and harp. It subsequently underwent a number of incarnations between 2003 section as a polyrhythm. It is a straightforward treatment of a correspondingly simple theme that and 2010 until arriving in its present form. The first movement shares much of its material with nonetheless proved rich with possibilities. The Trio received its premiere at the 2005 June in Buffalo the first Etude. In fact, Etude No. 1 is essentially a reduction of this movement, missing only the Festival, performed by Trond Samundson (violin), Adrienne Elisha (viola), and Mary Artman (cello).