Student Recital

Luciana Hontilă, violin Alyssa Ottmar, viola

Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 5:30 PM Voxman Recital Hall

PROGRAM

Suită Românească Vasile Filip Doinind (1900-1983) Țărăneasca Hora Bătuta

Partita no. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004 Johann Sebastian Bach Chaconne (1685-1750)

~ Brief intermission ~

Sonata for Solo Violin Op. 115 Sergei Prokofiev I. Moderato (1891-1953) II. Theme and Variations. Andante dolce III. Con brio

Sarabande con Variazioni Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935)

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Luciana Hontilă is from the studio of Katie Wolfe and performs this recital in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance and Pedagogy. Program Notes

Vasile Filip was a Romanian violinist, professor and composer born in Botoșani. Filip studied music in Iași at the Music Conservatory then continued at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris. Some of his mentors were Julies Boucherit, Lucien Capet, Max d’Ollone and George Enescu. The Romanian Suite consists of four dances and their main theme is the Romanian folk music. He incorporated violinistic technique in each of these movements portraying the characteristics of the dances. The suite was written in memory of Grigoraș Dinicu, a Romanian violin virtuoso and composer of Roma ethnicity.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He was born in Eisenach, Germany, into a family of working musicians. He started learning to play the harpsichord, the violin, the organ and composition at a very young age. He composed hundreds of choral and instrumental works. The Chaconne is known as the longest movement of the entire 6 Violin Sonatas and Partitas by Bach. The Chaconne movement is considered the culmination of the suite and it is almost half of the entire Partita no. 2. The movement is based on the Baroque dance form known as the chaconne. The musical form is a set of continuous variations using the triple meter, with the emphasis on the dotted second beat, on a repeated harmonic progression or ground bass. These variations end with cadences that lead into the next section without a break in between, creating a sustainable momentum throughout the piece.

Sergei Prokofiev was a Russian Soviet composer, pianist and conductor. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Prokofiev studied piano and composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Some of his mentors were Alexander Winkler, Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Nikolai Rimsky- Korsakov. The Sonata for Solo Violin Op. 115 was commissioned by the Soviet Union’s Committee of Arts Affairs as a pedagogical work for the talented violin students. It was originally designed to be played by multiples violinists in unison. The opening sonata-allegro movement (Moderato) begins in a sprightly manner, marked by spiccato, broken-chord figuration; from there, the movement continues with something similar to a hoedown, and then, a dance-like theme built on chordal repetition. The tension between these conflicting musical ideas is played out in the movement's totally traditional formal plan, which culminates in an exciting, busy conclusion. The second movement, a theme and variations, never departs very far from the original theme; though straightforward, the movement has a certain charm. The final movement (Con brio) is characterized by a wild mazurka rhythm.

Johan Halvorsen was a Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist. He worked as a professor of music in Helsinki, was the concertmaster for Bergen and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and later he was appointed conductor of the orchestra at the newly opened National Theatre in Oslo, a position he held until his retirement. Some of his mentors were Adolph Brodsky, Adolf Brecker and César Thomson. The Sarabande con Variazioni is a duo for violin and viola based on a theme from Händel’s Keyboard Suite in D minor, HWV 437. Halvorsen echoes the musical language of the baroque, remaining faithful to the original tune for the first part of his arrangement, but soon the music blossoms into a number of separate variations, some lyrical and expressive, others explosively virtuosic.