WILLIAM BOLCOM Violin Sonatas Solomia Soroka, Violin • Arthur Greene, Piano AMERICAN CLASSICS

559150 bk Bolcom US 12/2/05 12:14 PM Page 5 Solomia Soroka AMERICAN CLASSICS Born in L’viv, Solomia Soroka studied at the Music Academy of Ukraine, and earned her Doctorate at the Eastman School of Music in the United States. She made her solo début with the L’viv Philharmonic at the age of ten with Also available from Naxos: Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Since then she has performed in Ukraine, North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. She has given premières of several important contemporary Ukrainian compositions for violin and won top prizes in three international competitions in the Soviet Union. Solomia Soroka studied with Heifetz, Kotorovych, Zvirko, and Castleman, and is a professor at Goshen College. WILLIAM BOLCOM Violin Sonatas Arthur Greene Solomia Soroka, Violin • Arthur Greene, Piano Arthur Greene was born in New York and studied at Juilliard with Martin Canin. He won first prizes in several international competitions. In the United States he has played with the Philadelphia Orchestra and National Symphony, and has given recitals in Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He performs the complete solo piano works of Brahms, and the cycle of ten sonatas and complete Etudes of Scriabin. His performances have been widely acclaimed by the press and his recordings have been highly praised. He is Professor of Piano at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 8.559216-18 8.559249 8.559244 8.559150 5 6 8.559150 559150 bk Bolcom US 12/2/05 12:14 PM Page 2 William Bolcom William Bolcom (b. 1938) (I do not remember what or how we did, as my head was Sonata No. 3 was commissioned by the Aspen (b.1938) Violin Sonatas buzzing with excitement at sitting in with the Master.) Music Festival with support by the Debby and Martin Sergiu had secured a commission from the McKim Flug Foundation in honour of the 75th birthday of the Violin Sonatas The Seattle-born composer and pianist William Bolcom Nastri, who was then string and orchestral director for Fund of the Library of Congress for a new piece for us legendary violin teacher Dorothy Delay. The first studied at the University of Washington with George the schools of Everett, Washington, an industrial town to play; that summer, as Composer in Residence at the performance was given by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg Frederick McKay and John Verrall, with Darius where we then lived, was kind enough to play through Aspen Music Festival, I began work on the sonata, and the composer in Aspen on 12th July, 1993. First Sonata 21:54 Milhaud at Mills College and the Paris Conservatoire, the little violin-and-piano tunes I wrote for him, incorporating in it many of Joe’s stylistic tricks, The Fourth Sonata is a present from a wife to a 1 I. Legend 8:02 and earned his doctorate at Stanford University. Since interspersed with long reading sessions of the alternate left- and right-hand pizzicato, double-stop husband. Cynthia Birdgenaw, concertmistress several 2 II. Nocturne 4:08 1973 he has taught at the University of Michigan, where Beethoven and Mozart violin sonatas and much else. I slides, his encyclopedia of nuances. One day in August years ago for the University of Michigan School of he is the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished Professor of cannot think of a better way for a non-player to find out 1978 Sergiu phoned me at Aspen; Joe had died, and the Music’s University Symphony Orchestra, married 3 III. Quasi-Variations: Scenes From A Young Life 9:45 Music in Composition, has undertaken commissions about the history and psychology of that instrument than Second Sonata became his memorial. another violinist, Henry Rubin, of the University of First dedicated to Peter and Joanna Marsh. from organizations and individuals worldwide, and has what Gene afforded me, and I shall always be in his The first movement, Summer Dreams, is a modified Houston faculty (concertmaster of the Brooklyn received numerous honours and awards, including the debt. blues with a contrasting middle section. Brutal, fast is a Philharmonic before going to Houston). Cynthia had Revised version requested by and executed for the Daws-Faricy Duo. Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1988 for his 12 New Etudes The First Sonata for Violin and Piano was furious improvisation on a small interval, containing asked for a technically challenging and brilliant work in for Piano. composed in 1956 during my freshman year at the one of the toughest passages for the piano I have ever honour of her husband’s fiftieth birthday. Second Sonata 17:59 Bolcom’s compositions, widely performed and University of Washington in Seattle. It was written for written. The Adagio which follows is a rhapsodic arioso The first movement generally embodies a sonata- 4 I. Summer Dreams 6:26 recorded, include seven symphonies, various concertos, Peter Marsh and his then wife Joanna, who never did leading to a closing, hymn-like tune. The final In allegro form in miniature, directly followed by “White three operas for Lyric Opera of Chicago, three theatre perform the piece. The next spring the violinist Joy Memory of Joe Venuti, a sort of Venutian salsa, recalls Night,” an evocation of insomnia. (In the midst of this 5 II. Brutal, fast 2:09 operas, and an extensive catalogue of chamber music as Aarset and I gave the first performance of the sonata at a much of his style. latter movement a Christmas-carol-like tune emerges, 6 III. Adagio 5:33 well as keyboard, vocal, and choral music. For over university concert. The present revised version was The first performance by Sergiu Luca and the similar, I find out, to a traditional Danish one - not 7 IV. In Memory of Joe Venuti 3:50 thirty years Bolcom has accompanied his wife, mezzo- requested by the Hanley Daws - Katherine Faricy Duo composer took place on 12th January, 1979, in The surprising, as I grew up in towns in Washington State soprano Joan Morris, in performances, both on stage of Saint Paul, who first performed it there in 1984. Coolidge Auditorium at The Library of Congress in with a high percentage of Scandinavians. Whereas the Third Sonata (Sonata Stramba) 21:46 and in over two dozen recordings of American popular I have mostly tightened the piece from the first Washington, DC. memory of it was intended to be soothing toward sleep, song. William Bolcom offered the following notes about version - over 200 measures of repetitious passages I am told by my long-time librettist and collaborator it proved to have the opposite effect on me.) As with the 8 I. A piacere, drammatico – Allegro con fuoco 7:37 the four violin sonatas: have been excised, as well as a fugue in the last Arnold Weinstein that stramba means something like Third Sonata’s finale, the next movement has an Arabic 9 II. Andante 5:44 movement - but I rewrote only slightly, trying to keep “weird” in Italian, and this [the third] is certainly a quality, filled with drama and fatefulness - perhaps 0 III. Like a shiver – attacca 1:02 Ever since I was small I have been fascinated by the youthful energy of the piece. Only three measures weird sonata. Its uncanny mood possessed me some prescience of the current world atmosphere? - and two musical sounds more than any other, the voice and have been added, in the second movement, to fill in a throughout its creation. I of course had Nadia Salerno- suffused with my love of that music; it leads to the Jota ! IV. Moderato, risoluto, all’arabesca 7:22 the violin. I cannot sing, although until recently I had link I always felt missing. I have always had an Sonnenberg’s highly individualistic violin style in mind finale, a Spanish dance with Moorish roots. Commissioned by Music Associates of Aspen and Martin and Deborah Flug Foundation so-called perfect pitch, a gift that is more a curse than a affection for this sonata and am glad for the opportunity when writing this work; it was a pleasure to invoke her The Fourth Sonata (1994) was first performed on for Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg in honour of the 75th birthday of Dorothy DeLay. blessing, I never could seem to get my voice to agree to present it in this new version. dramatic, passionate personality in my work for her. 26th January, 1997, by the composer with the violinist with what my ear tells me is right, and I have never Coming 22 years after the first, the Second Sonata The first movement, after a long and highly Henry Rubin at the University of Michigan in Ann Fourth Sonata 15:13 shown aptitude for any other instrument than the piano. results in part from the violinist Sergiu Luca’s theatrical introduction, intones “guerra, guerra” in its Arbor, Michigan. When I was about ten we trundled out my maternal association with the great jazz fiddler Joe Venuti. Luca principal motive, obsessively and implacably, like war I am delighted that the married team of Solomia @ I. Allegro brillante 2:57 grandfather’s imitation Stradivarius, made in was one of the first classically-trained violinists of the in human history. The Andante seems hardly a relief Soroka and Arthur Greene have recorded my four violin # II. White Night 5:42 Czechoslovakia, I believe, and I took a few not-very- late l970s to begin showing interest in jazz styles, and from the tragic mood despite its lyricism. “Like a sonatas. They have brought a special insight to the successful lessons; when the violin was stolen out of the Venuti, the living legend in his eighties, still had perfect shiver” is a scherzino leading directly into the last works, emphasizing the traditional qualities which I A fitful sleeper recalls an early tune, hoping it will soothe him to sleep.

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