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Home , Frank Bridge, Ruggiero Ricci, Viola sonata

Program Notes Williams Chamber Players: Souvenirs Friday, October 30, 2009

Rebecca Clark When Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was ninety years old and living in New York City, the radio station WQXR made a programme about the British pianist Dame Myra Hess. The producer discovered that Clarke had been a student at the Royal Academy of Music with Hess and that she was a forgotten composer. As a result he also produced a programme about her and her music, which included the Trio (1921). This work was later recorded commercially, on September 1979, twelve days after Clarke's death, and released the following year. Clarke was not an all-round composer like Dame Ethyl Smyth (1858-1949) or America's Amy Beach (1867-1944). She had a much more limited scope, rather like Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953); both gave up composition for long periods. Clarke was born in Harrow, Middlesex of an American father and a German mother. was encouraged in the family; she started playing the at the age of eight, and she entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1902. When her teacher proposed marriage, however, her father removed her but sent some of the songs she had recently composed to Sir Charles Villers Stanford at the Royal College of Music. As a consequence she became Stanford's first female pupil and it was apparently he who persuaded her to take up the . This led to lessons with the great violist, and to a distinguished performing career. In 1912, Sir controversially took six women, including Clarke, into the Queen's Hall Orchestra. Her work as a performer of chamber music, usually in all-female ensembles, prospered and took her to the United States. In 1917 she was visiting friends in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and here met the famous patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who persuaded her to enter the 1919 competition at the Berkshire Festival. The summit of Clarke's career was reached when her viola , submitted anonymously, tied for first prize. Coolidge herself ex9ercised the casting vote and Clarke came second, after Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). Her next landmark was the Piano Trio, another runner-up when she entered it in the 1921 contest. It was premiered in New York and later in London by Marjory Hayward, May Mukle and Myra Hess. Following these sucesses Clarke received a Coolidge commission for the Rhapsody for and piano in connection with the 1923 Pittsfield Festival. During the 1920's Clarke's concert career was enterprising - her tours with May Mukle included India, China and Japan - and her songs and chamber music were published. Influences on her writing included Bloch and Frank and they were all strongly affected by the harmony of late Scriabine. When Clarke was asked why her composing declined at the end of the 1920's she implied that her secret affair with the singer John Goss had proved inhibiting. She reached the next juncture when, visiting family in New York, she was caught by the outbreak of World War II and unable to return to Europe. She began to compose again and her Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale was given at the 1942 International Society for Contemporary Music in Berkeley, California. This second creative period ended in New York in 1944 when by chance she met her old contemporary at the Royal College of Music, the pianist Jame Friskin, whom she married.  Peter Dickinson

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky As early as June 1887 Tchaikovsky made a start on a for the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society (which had requested a work the preceding October), but he gave it up after a few days. He was not to return to the medium until the early months of 1890 when, while living in Florence, and deeply involved with his opera The Queen of Spades, he wrote down the melody that was to become the main theme of the slow movement. This fact alone (and no further programmatic connotation) inspired the title of the finished composition. Tchaikovsky finished the opera on June 20th, and five days later began serious work on the Sextet. He was concerned about the medium, a new one for him, and particularly about the question whether he might not be conceiving music that demanded an orchestra, and then reducing it to six strings. By

1 the time he finished his sketch on July 12, his view of the piece had begun to improve. But he still worried about the scoring as he worked out the final details, which were completed by August 6th. Neither the composer nor his closest friends were entirely happy with the third and fourth movements at a private performance in December. Tchaikovsky set the Sextet aside for a year, then made major revisions to the last two movements and a small adjustment to the first movement, resulting in the form in which we know the piece. The Sextet is one of Tchaikovsky's last multi-movement instrumental works (only the Sixth Symphony followed) and the last in which he retained the traditional patterns of abstract symphonic form. He worked out a splendidly detailed sonata-form exposition for the first movement, in which the transition grows out of a three note figure that appears in the main theme and then continues under the surprising shy entrance of the second theme in the first violin. Although formal structure was always something of a struggle for Tchaikovsky, this exposition clearly demonstrates his hard-won mastery over the years. The slow movement is among the most purely personal passages in Tchaikovsky's output, and the one place in the score where his love of melodic lines laid out as a duet, intertwining, mutually complementary, comes to full flower. The third movement takes a melody of a Slavonic folkish cast and puts it through its paces, alternating two different versions with varied textures and accompaniments. For the finale, Tchaikovsky offers another sonata-form movement based on a dancing theme of Slavonic imprint, varied with two sections of vigorous contrapuntal development. In writing for the mostly German membership of the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society, Tchaikovsky knew that he would be expected to offer some display of his ability at counterpoint, and he obliged with these two passages, the second of which becomes a full scale fugato leading to a wildly sonorous close.

 Steven Ledbetter

Performer Bios

Ronald Feldman, cello Ronald Feldman is artist in residence in orchestral/instrumental music, and coordinator of student string chamber music here at Williams College. After a long career in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s cello section starting in 1967 at the age of nineteen, Mr. Feldman has gone on to receive critical acclaim for a wide variety of musical achievements. Formerly music director and conductor of the Worcester Symphony Orchestra and of the Boston new music ensemble Extension Works, Ronald Feldman was also music director and conductor of the New England Philharmonic for five seasons. In 1991 he and the Berkshire Symphony were awarded the American Symphony Orchestra League’s ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. He continues to be an active cellist, conductor, and a member of the Williams Chamber Players.

Joana Genova, violin Ms. Genova began playing violin at the age of six in her native Bulgaria and made her solo debut at the age of twelve with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra. She is a prizewinner of the National Competition in Bulgaria and has appeared as soloist with the Plovdiv Symphony Orchestra and Shumen Philharmonic. Ms. Genova received her Bachelor of Music at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her Master’s degree in chamber music at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Her teachers included Peter Brunt, Ilya Grubert, members of the Daniel and Prof. Samuel Thaviu. In Holland, Ms. Genova was concertmaster of the Amsterdam Bach Consort and a member of Amsterdam Sinfonietta.

Since 2000, she has lived in the US where she is a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, principal second violin of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra and concertmaster of the Manchester Chamber Orchestra. She is Artist Associate at Williams College and is on the summer faculty at the Manchester Music Festival and The Chamber Music Conference of the East, and teaches violin at the Michael Rudiakov Music Academy in Vermont. Ms. Genova is active as chamber musician for the Manchester 2 Music Festival and the Williams Chamber Players. Her collaborations include performances with the Shanghai String Quartet, Nathaniel Rosen, Michael Rudiakov, Ruth Laredo, Adam Neiman, David Krakauer among others. Ms. Genova has performed as soloist with Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan, Rockaway and Danbury Symphonies and Manchester Festival Orchestra.

Nathaniel Parke, cello Nathaniel Parke is a member of the Bennington String Quartet, principal cello of the Berkshire Symphony and co-principal cello of the Berkshire Opera Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Boston Composers String Quartet with whom he can be heard performing new works by Boston composers on the MMC label. He is currently artist associate in cello at Williams College and instructor of cello at Bennington College in addition to maintaining a studio of private students. He has served as a faculty member and chamber music coach at the Longy School of Music, Skidmore College, SUNY Albany and the Chamber Music Conference and Composer's Forum of the East. As a soloist, he has been heard with the Wellesley, Berkshire and Sage City Symphonies. His free-lance work in the Albany, N.Y. and Boston areas ranges from period instrument performances to premieres of new works. He can be heard on Albany records performing solo cello music by Ileana Perez- Velasquez. He received his training at the Longy School of Music studying with George Neikrug, and in London with William Pleeth. He holds an MFA from Bennington College where he studied with Maxine Neuman. Mr. Parke performs on an instrument made in 1721 by C.G. Testore.

Doris Stevenson, piano Pianist Doris Stevenson, Artist in Residence at Williams College, leads a busy life as recitalist and chamber musician in addition to teaching at Williams. She has played on many of the great stages of the world including and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Salle Pleyel in Paris and Symphony Hall as soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra. She has played with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, Ruggiero Ricci and Paul Tortelier, great artists of the past. The list of distinguished artists she has performed with includes cellists Andre Navarra, Leslie Parnes and Gary Hoffman, violinists Mark Peskanov and Elmar Olivera, violist Walter Trampler and singers Kaaren Erickson, Robert Hale and Catherine Malfitano. She is a founding member of the Sitka Summer Music Festival in Alaska and has appeared in many other chamber music festivals including the Grand Canyon festival, Steamboat Springs Strings in the Mountains, Marin Music Fest, Chamber Music/LA and the Park City International Music Festival. She served for ten years on the piano faculty of the University of Southern California where she was also pianist for the master classes of famed cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky. Her many recordings include David Kechley's Winter Branches with Douglas Moore, a work for two and percussion of Ileana Perez Velazquez on her new CD released last week by Albany Records, the Brahms for cello and piano with Nathaniel Rosen, the Saint Saens violin sonatas with Andres Cardenes and Mendelssohn complete works for cello and piano with Jeffrey Solow. A Stravinsky CD with Mark Peskanov received a Grammy nomination.

Stefanie Taylor, viola Violist Stefanie Taylor, an active chamber and orchestral musician, has participated in numerous festivals and concert series in the United States and Europe. Ms. Taylor performs frequently with the New York Philharmonic; other performance associations include the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the American Symphony Orchestra, where she acts as principal violist. She has premiered several chamber works in New York City, at venues including Merkin Hall, Roulette, and Columbia University’s Miller Theater.

A graduate of Indian University, Ms. Taylor studied violin with Miriam Fried and James Buswell. She received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied violin with Joyce Robbins, viola with Caroline Levine, and chamber music with Julius Levine and Timothy Eddy.

Ms. Taylor has performed on live broadcasts on both WQXR in New York and Vermont Public Radio. During the summers, she serves on the faculty of the Bay View Music Festival in Michigan.

3 Scott Woolweaver, viola Scott Woolweaver, violist, graduated with Distinction from the School of Music where he won the Earl V. Moore and Joseph Knitzer awards for outstanding participation in chamber music, before moving to Boston for graduate studies with Walter Trampler. While at U of M, he founded the Vaener , which won the Grand Prize at the Joseph Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and later founded the Boston Composers String Quartet, which won the Silver Medal at the String Quartet Competition and Chamber Music Festa in Osaka, Japan. Currently he is a member of the Grammy-nominated Baroque ensemble Boston Baroque, the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, and Alea III, a contemporary ensemble in residence at Boston University. Scott is a regular guest of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society and is Director of the Adult Chamber Music Institute at Kneisel HAll in Blue Hill, ME. He is also Lecturer in Viola and Chamber Music at Tufts University. In 2005 he was named Artist Associate at Williams College. He plays a Johan Georg Thir viola made in Vienne in 1737.

Elizabeth Wright, piano Elizabeth Wright, has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, the USSR and Japan. She has appeared in recital with many distinguished artists and was awarded the prize of Outstanding Accompanist at the Fourth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Ms. Wright premiered and recorded many new works, performing in such groups as the American Composers Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Festival and Orpheus. She is principal pianist with the American Symphony Orchestra and was for many years piano soloist for both the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She has been an artist-teacher for the Institute and has served on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Bennington, and Princeton. Appearing frequently on PBS, Ms. Wright has recorded on the Gasparo, Opus One and CRI labels.

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