Funding This recording is supported by grants from the Department of Music and the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Commercial Recording Featuring Solo Piano Works by Timo Andres and Phil Young was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Folding Time CLARA YANG, PIANO

WORKS BY MUCZYNSKI ANDRES CHOPIN YOUNG SCHUMANN

WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1572 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Folding Time

Timo Andres (b. 1985)

13 How can I live in your world of ideas? [8:48] CLARA YANG, Folding Time Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) CLARA YANG, PIANO 14 Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 [11:27]

Robert Muczynski (1929-2010) Phil Young (Yang Zhihua , b. 1952) PIANO

TROY1572 Maverick Pieces, Op. 37 15 Reflection on a Tang Poem [7:28] 1 Allegro marcato [:37] 2 Andante sostenuto [1:28] Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 3 Allegro ma non troppo [:50] Humoreske, Op. 20 4 Moderato [1:42] 16 Einfach — Sehr rasch und leicht [5:39] 5 Allegro [:41] 17 Hastig [4:55] 6 Andante sostenuto [1:42] 18 Einfach und zart — Intermezzo [4:32] 7 Allegro grazioso [:53] 19 Innig [2:34] 8 Allegro brillante [:35] 20 Sehr lebhaft — Mit einigem Pomp [3:16] 9 Andante molto [1:32] 21 Zum Beschluss [6:06] 10 Allegro ma non troppo [1:02] 11 Adagio [:54] Total Time = 68:59 12 Allegro con spirito [1:40] TROY1572 PIANO

CLARA YANG, WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM

TROY1572 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Folding Time Folding The Performer Sessions, and the Aspen Music Festival. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with artists such as members of the , the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the San Praised by New York Arts for her “effortless and smooth” technique and her “devastatingly limpid Diego Symphony, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. and pliable” tone, Chinese-American pianist Clara Yang has performed in notable venues and series such as Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Remonstrantse Kerk (The Netherlands), the Seymour Centre A sought-after teacher, Ms. Yang has frequently given masterclasses in the United States and (Sydney, Australia), the Barclay Theater (Irvine, California), Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theater abroad in major universities and conservatories such as the Liceu Conservatory in Spain, King’s (Rochester, New York), the Sunset Center (Carmel, California), Meymandi Concert Hall (Raleigh, College London, and Duke University in North Carolina. She has been Assistant Professor of Piano North Carolina), Carolina Performing Arts Series, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Dame Myra Hess Series at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2011. Her students have won prizes in state, (Chicago Cultural Center), and Mas i Mas at the Museu d’Història de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). national, and international competitions. She was featured as one of the three scholars in the acclaimed Chinese national magazine Globe in 2014. Her live solo recitals were broadcast on ABC Classic FM in Australia and New Zealand, 98.7 WFMT, and on Wayne Picciano’s Grand Piano series, which was broadcast on television in multiple states across Ms. Yang received her D.M.A. in piano performance at the Eastman School of Music, where she was the country. Concert highlights as a soloist include performances with the European Union Youth a student and teaching assistant of Nelita True. She studied with Claude Frank at the Yale School Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Eastman Philharmonia under Jeff Tyzik, the Pacific Symphony of Music (M.M., Artist Diploma) and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern Orchestra under Carl St. Clair, the Longview Symphony under Tonu Kalam, and numerous appearances California as a student of John Perry. Her former principal teachers during her pre-college years with the North Carolina Symphony under Grant Llewellyn. Her cello-piano duo album Grieg and Prokofiev include Profs. Hans Boepple, Zhou Guang-ren (Central Conservatory, Beijing), Huili Li, and Xie Yuan. with Los Angeles Opera cellist Xiao-Dan Helen Zheng was released by Albany Records in 2014. This She has also worked with numerous renowned performers and pedagogues, such as Boris Berman, album won a Global Music Awards Silver Medal, and it has been aired on Montana Public Radio Peter Frankl, Karl Heinz Kammerling, Robert Levin, Lee Kum-Sing, Jerome Lowenthal, David Shifrin, KUFM 89.1 FM, Women in Music CKWR FM 98.5 (Canada), and WCPE 89.7 FM (North Carolina) with a the Emerson String Quartet, the Ysaye String Quartet, and the Raphael Trio. featured interview. She recorded Lee Weisert’s Érard, which was written for her, for Weisert’s album Wild Arc on the New Focus label. Her upcoming major project includes collaboration with renowned composer Chen Yi, who will write a concerto for her to perform with the China Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Long Yu in the Carolina Performing Arts Series in the 2016-17 season. The Music Folding Time explores the connection between the past and the present. American composers Robert As a guest artist, Ms. Yang has given successful solo recitals in numerous major conservatories and Muczynski, Timo Andres, and Phil Young have distinct compositional styles, yet their works contain universities internationally, including the Musical College of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory elements that convey a sense of nostalgia for the past musical eras. In particular, their pieces on this in Russia, King’s College London, the Liceu Conservatory, the Cervera Conservatory, and the Manresa album contain certain structural traits, sentiments, or concepts influenced by the Romantic era. The Conservatory in Spain, the Beijing Central Conservatory, the Shanghai Conservatory, and the Central three modern pieces are interspersed with two major 19th-century Romantic works – Chopin’s Ballade Conservatory Piano Academy in Xiamen, China. She has performed in renowned music festivals such No. 4 and Schumann’s Humoreske. Anachronistic forays are often a part of the compositional landscape as the Music Academy of the West, the Sarasota Music Festival, the International Holland Music today. In that sense, we look back to the past, but the past is also vividly alive in our present day. An innovative traditionalist, Robert Muczynski was a major American composer who was born in Schumann’s Humoreske has always occupied a special place in my heart since my time at Yale as a Chicago. Using many traditional techniques to portray abstract concepts, his piano compositions are student of Claude Frank. German writer Jean Paul’s writing was a source of inspiration for this work. often concise and descriptive. Maverick Pieces are a set of twelve short character pieces composed According to Schumann scholar John Daverio, Jean Paul defines “humor” as an “infinity of contrast” in 1977. These rarely performed pieces alternate between the exciting and the lyrical, reminiscent and a “setting of the small world besides the great,” so when viewed together, “a kind of laughter of the 19th-century character pieces in structure. Jazz elements and Bartok’s rhythmic influence are results which contains pain and greatness.” Schumann wrote in a letter to his beloved wife Clara also apparent. The brevity of these pieces allows them to be heard as a whole. Wieck from Vienna in 1839, “All week I’ve been sitting at the piano and composing and writing and laughing and crying, all at the same time. You will find this beautifully illustrated in my Opus 20, Schumann is a major influence in Timo Andres’ music. How can I live in your world of ideas was the great Humoreske.” completed in 2007. It starts out as a passacaglia or theme and variations, but is then gradually —Clara Yang overtaken by extraneous material from somewhere else entirely. Originally written for two pianos as part of Shy and Mighty, he transcribed it for a solo pianist. In its solo version, the pianist must work much more strenuously to denote the mercurial transitions (“needle-drops”), which characterize the piece. The quotations of Chopin and other familiar themes evoke the sound and ideas of the past centuries. The Composers Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural , Shifting back to the Romantic period, Chopin’s Ballade No.4 was written in 1842 in Paris and Nohant, studied at and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. A Nonesuch Records artist, his newest and it was revised in 1843. The most challenging ballade of the set, its thematic development and album of orchestral works, Home Stretch, has been hailed for its “playful intelligence and individuality,” harmonic modulations are complex and fascinating. Thematic materials are slowly transformed in (The Guardian) and of his 2010 debut album for two pianos, Shy and Mighty, Alex Ross wrote in The various textures. Drama unfolds organically and culminates in a coda of great emotional intensity. New Yorker that “it achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since An epic story is told in a mere twelve minutes. came on the scene... more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.”

Phil Young’s Reflection on a Tang Poem was commissioned for this album in 2014. The music was inspired In recent seasons, Andres has received commissions from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Los by a classic Chinese poem “Night Mooring by Maple Bridge” by renowned Tang-Dynasty poet Zhang Ji: Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a consortium including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and San Francisco Performances for Jonathan At moonset cry the crows, streaking the frosty sky; Biss and the Elias String Quartet. Other commissions include new works for Kirill Gerstein, Tertulia, Dimly lit fishing boats beneath maples sadly lie. yMusic, the Attacca Quartet (for the Library of Congress), and a song cycle, Work Songs, for an Beyond the city wall, from Temple of Cold Hill, ensemble including , , Becca Stevens, Nathan Koci and himself, premiered Bells break the ship-borne roamer’s dream and midnight still. at the Ecstatic Music Festival and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music.

The use of pentatonic-scale based modes enriches its ancient Chinese music flavor, while the light flowing texture creates a translucent quality reminiscent of ancient Chinese brush painting. A dramatic arch is beautifully illustrated with Romantic sentiments and Impressionist colors. Andres earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the and is one A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1986, Phil Young was granted a full sixth of the Sleeping Giant composers’ collective. He performs regularly with ACME and has received scholarship to study composition with Prof. Elinor Armer. His symphonic piece “Fantasy for awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI, and ASCAP, as well as grants from New Orchestra” won the school’s 1985 Conservatory Composition Competition. Prior to his academic Music USA and the Copland Fund. study at the San Francisco Conservatory, Young studied with Prof. Luo Zhongrong, a leading Chinese composer, and he worked as a composer for the Symphony Orchestra of the Beijing Song and Dance Robert Muczynski (1929-2010) is considered one of America’s most distinguished composers. Group (now known as the Beijing Symphony Orchestra). Muczynski was Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, Tucson, serving as head of the composition department and composer-in-residence for 23 years. During these years he was the recipient of many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination for the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, Op. 41. Other awards include two Ford Foundation fellowships and more than 30 Acknowledgements ASCAP creative merit awards. His works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments and Dates of Recording: January 5-7, 2015 chorus are now familiar throughout the world. Muczynski studied composition with Alexander Producer, Editor and Recording Engineer: Matthew Snyder Tcherepnin at DePaul University, Chicago during the late 1940s. His principal piano teacher during his undergraduate and graduate years at DePaul was Walter Knupfer. At age 29 Muczynski made his Location: Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill, North Carolina New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall, performing a program of his own compositions for piano. Piano: Hamburg Steinway Model D At this time he was head of the piano department at Loras College in Iowa. His works have been Piano Technician: John Foy performed in the major cities of Europe, Australia, and Asia. His orchestral and chamber music has Publishers: Robert Muczynski’s Maverick Pieces, Op. 37 been featured at , The Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Wigmore Hall in is published by G. Schirmer, Inc.; London, and many other significant venues. Timo Andres’ How can I live in your world of ideas is published by Project Schott; Phil Young’s Reflection on a Tang Poem is available direct from the composer. A finalist of the International Composition Competition “Citta di Udine” Italy 2014, Phil Young (Yang Zhihua, b. 1952) composes music in various forms, including symphonic, chamber, electronic, vocal, Photographer: Jordan Haywood and film. His works have been performed internationally by renowned ensembles, such as Ballet Special thanks to Carolina Performing Arts and Phil Young. San Jose Silicon Valley Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, South Bay Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra (US), Thuringer Symphony (Germany), Symphony Orchestra of the Beijing Song and Dance Group (China), and Taiwan National Chinese Orchestra.