Johan Halvorsen Jennifer Higdon Ludwig Van Beethoven
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CONCERT #3 - Released February 10, 2021 JOHAN HALVORSEN Sarabande con variazione for Violin and Viola Jun Iwasaki violin / Beth Guterman Chu viola JENNIFER HIGDON Piano Trio Pale Yellow Fiery Red Jennifer Frautschi violin / Andrés Díaz cello / Andrew Armstrong piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in B-flat Major, Op. 97 “Archduke” Allegro moderato Scherzo: Allegro Andante cantabile, ma pero con moto Allegro moderato James Ehnes violin / Mark Kosower cello / Max Levinson piano JOHAN HALVORSEN JENNIFER HIGDON (1864-1935) (b.1962) Sarabande con variazione for Piano Trio (2003) Violin and Viola (1897; rev. 1914) Most recent SCMS performance: Winter 2017 SCMS premiere Pulitzer Prize-winning Jennifer Higdon has continued Active as a composer, violinist/violist, and conductor, to entice legions of fans for her accessible but finely Norwegian-born Johan Halvorsen was an esteemed crafted music. A conducting student of Atlanta musical presence in his native country and abroad. Symphony music director Robert Spano, her popular A close friendship with Edvard Grieg certainly lent Concerto for Orchestra—championed and recorded support to his status, enhanced by his marriage to by her mentor—struck a resonant chord with many his famed friend’s niece. Though his life began and music lovers throughout the world of classical music. ended in Norway, his skills and reputation brought Like Rachmaninoff, her music continues to enthrall him to countries far and wide. Educated in Oslo and devotees in the face of snobbish negativity from Stockholm, he was a concertmaster in Bergen before critics who fault her and her Russian predecessor joining the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, but for being “overly” accessible. Still, she continues set foot in Scotland, St. Petersburg, and Berlin during to compose in a neo-Romantic style that sounds his productive years. Though he was mentored by resolutely modern yet comfortably tonal. She joins Jakob Lindberg in Stockholm and Adolph Brodsky in many composers of the past several decades who Leipzig, he was essentially a self-taught musician. found new and relevant purpose in minor/major key harmony. Studies in composition with Ned Rorem As the 19th century drew to a close he composed and George Crumb fostered her gift at incorporating his best-known work, the Sarabande con variazione the beguiling romance of the former with the avant- for Violin and Viola, coming back to revise the work garde proclivities of the latter. Rorem opined, “I don’t a decade-and-a-half later. Composed for a church think of her as a former student but as a colleague. concert, the work’s often-used title attributes the If I had to name 12 important American composers Sarabande theme to a Handel keyboard suite, but in today, four of them would be women, and Jennifer truth the stately motif was ubiquitous through the Higdon is the best of them.” mid- and -late Baroque, generally called “La Folia” (or “La Follia”). Jean-Baptiste Lully drew on it, as did Her Piano Trio was commissioned by the Bravo! many other composers, most famously Arcangelo Vail Valley Music Festival, Vail, Colorado in 2003. Corelli who, in fact, was a friend of Handel’s during Regarding the work she has written: “Can music the latter’s student days in Italy. The theme is stated reflect colors and can colors be reflected in music? chordally by the two instruments before yielding to I have always been fascinated with the connection a series of variations of mostly alternating slow/fast between painting and music. In my composing, I tempos. One hears pizzicato passagework, skittering often picture colors as if I were spreading them on scale-based episodes, and rich variants in tone color a canvas, except I do so with melodies, harmonies, in registers high and low. and through the peculiar sounds of the instruments themselves. The colors that I have chosen in both of the movement titles of my Piano Trio, Pale Yellow and Fiery Red, and in the music itself, reflect very different moods and energy levels, which I find fascinating, as it begs the question, can colors (in music, word, and painting) actually convey a mood?” The Trio is laid out in two strongly contrasted movements that differ in tone color, rhythm, and WINTER FESTIVAL // overall mood. The work opens with Pale Yellow, a brother of the Emperor Leopold II. Fellow composer lyrical statement filled with nostalgia and a pensive Ludwig (aka Louis) Spohr wrote of Beethoven’s demeanor. An extended piano introduction is joined performance of the keyboard part: “In forte passages by the cello and violin respectively. A beguilingly the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the sweet violin solo a minute-plus into the movement strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that has a distinctively American feel that recalls whole groups of notes were omitted.” Beethoven’s Copland—like Higdon, a born-Brooklynite whose friend and biographer Anton Schindler noted that emotional scope transcends urban busy-ness and due to increasing deafness, the composer “withdrew stress. As the movement progresses the temperature forever from public view as a performing artist.” rises, often galvanized by the piano’s assertive trekking over the keyboard. The primary theme of the opening Allegro moderato eschews the big, bold, and heroic character of The ensuing Fiery Red glowingly reflects its title. his typical middle period music. (The assigned Animated, agitated harsh piano chords push things opus number 97 puts it on the cusp of his late forward with tremendous urgency. At times frenetic works). Rather, it has more in common with the and stompingly assertive, the music recalls the comparatively lyrical and poetic music he penned toccata-like piano music of Prokofiev, as well as during the 19th century’s first decade, e.g., the Violin that of his colleague Shostakovich. The piano skips Concerto, Fourth Piano Concerto, and “Pastoral” all over the keyboard, punching out tough chords, Symphony. The graceful and flowing opening emphasized by string pizzicatos. She gives her lyrical theme begins with understated though entrancing impulse a chance to soften the movement with a warmth. After some lovely bridging passages, a quieter episode colored effectively by stratospheric second and more pointed theme emerges in a harmonics. In contrast with the introspective close to series of descending phrases. Construction is fairly Pale Yellow, this movement ends with a sudden and straightforward in its sonata-allegro format, but it emphatic thud from the piano. is the blend of nobility and expressive richness that stamps a seal of greatness on the piece. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN As in the later Ninth Symphony, Beethoven follows (1770–1827) the initial movement with a Scherzo. Marked Allegro, Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in B-flat the cello gets things underway with a humor-filled Major, Op. 97 “Archduke” (1811) rhythmic figure. In the Trio it is also the cello that Most recent SCMS performance: Summer 2015 posits a contrasting chromatic figure that serves as that section’s primary theme. A second tune, rustic Beethoven’s most celebrated chamber works in toto and dancelike, soon emerges. Both the Scherzo are unquestionably his 16 string quartets, but his proper and the Trio are repeated before a coda brings seven piano trios are worthy contenders for highest the movement to an end. honors as well. The best-known of his works in this genre is the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, best The third movement, Andante cantabile, ma pero known by its nickname “Archduke.” Beethoven con moto grows from an unassuming yet ravishing composed the music in 1811, a year marked by great hymn-like tune that undergoes a sequence of five political and social upheaval in Vienna. In general, variations that maintain the overall melodic and the age of aristocratic sponsorship was coming to harmonic contour of the theme while exploring life- an end, supplanted by the growing wealth, power giving rhythmic variants in the music. The movement and largesse of the rapidly emerging bourgeoisie. breathes the air of much-needed serenity, a state Ironic, then, that in the midst of this paradigm shift, of being belied by the vicissitudes of his personal Beethoven should dedicate the work to his long-time life and the political and social maelstrom of the friend, patron, and student, Archduke Rudolf, younger Austrian capital in 1811. FEBRUARY 10, 2021 // Program noteS Marked attacca (“without pause”), the concluding Allegro moderato stomps heartily into the fray, humorously giving the boot to the noble calm of the preceding movement. Bristling with energy and down-to-earth dancelike vitality, the spirit of yang herein replaces the yin of the Andante cantabile. In the face of a great cultural dislocation, the mood is unfailingly upbeat and humorous rather than forcefully dramatic. Program Notes by Steven Lowe WINTER FESTIVAL // .