Chamber Music of David Conte SONATA FOR VIOLONCELLO & PIANO STRING QUARTET NO. 2 PIANO TRIO FRICTION QUARTET Miles Graber, PIANO | Keisuke Nakagoshi, PIANO Emil Miland, ’CELLO | Kay Stern, VIOLIN Acknowledgments Recorded at the Caroline Hume Concert Hall; San Francisco Conservatory of Music Recording engineers Jason O’Connell: Sonata for Violoncello and Piano Stephanie Webster: Piano Trio Zach Miley: String Quartet No. 2 Mastering: Rob Murray David Conte’s music is published by E.C. Schirmer Music Company. WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1573 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. Chamber Music of David Conte David Conte TROY1573 Sonata for Violoncello & Piano (2010) 1 I. Allegro moderato appassionato [6:48] [7:18] 2 II. Passacaglia: Adagio serio 3 III. Lied: Andante, always serenely confident & expressive [5:57] 4 IV. Gigue: Allegro giocoso [4:52] Emil Miland, ’cello | Miles Graber, PIANO String Quartet No. 2 (2010) 5 I. Molto Moderato; Allegro [12:22] 6 II. Scherzo/Chorale: Allegro scherzando [3:46] 7 III. Fugue: Adagio serio [6:46] 8 IV. Elegy: Lento assai [6:37] 9 V. Allegro energico [4:28] FRICTION QUARTET Kevin Rogers, VIOLIN | Otis Harriel, VIOLIN Taija Warbelow, VIOLA | Douglas Machiz, ’CELLO Piano Trio (2011) 10 I. Allegro moderato [5:37] 11 II. Chaconne: Slow and expressive [6:55] 12 III. Rondo: Allegro [4:01] Kay Stern, VIOLIN | Emil Miland, ’CELLO Keisuke Nakagoshi, PIANO Total Time = 75:26 WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1573 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TROY1573 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. Chamber Music of David Conte The Composer David Conte (b. 1955) is the composer of more than 80 works published by E.C. Schirmer Music Company, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. He has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Dayton, Oakland and Stockton Symphonies, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera and the Gerbode Foundation. In 2007 he received the Raymond Brock commission from the American Choral Directors Association. His six operas are The Dreamers; The Gift of the Magi; Firebird Motel and America Tropical (both commissioned by San Francisco theater company Thick Description, for whom Conte has been Composer-In-Residence since 1991); Famous, based on the book Famous for 15 Minutes - My Years with Andy Warhol by Ultra Violet; and Stonewall. Conte’s operas have been produced at the Berlin International Opera, USC, University of Minnesota, Hidden Valley (Carmel California), and many other colleges, universities, and regional companies. He has composed songs for singers Barbara Bonney, Thomas Hampson and Phyllis Bryn-Julson, and his work is represented on many commercial CD recordings. His musical, The Passion of Rita St. James, was produced at the San Francisco Conservatory in 2003. David Conte co-wrote the film score for the acclaimed documentary Ballets Russes, shown at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals in 2005, and composed the music for the PBS documentary, Orozco: Man of Fire, shown on the American Masters Series in the fall of 2007. In 1982, Conte lived and worked with Aaron Copland while preparing a study of the composer’s sketches, having received a Fulbright Fellowship for study with Copland’s teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris, where he was one of her last students. He was also recipient of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship and an Aspen Music Festival Conducting Fellowship. David Conte earned his Bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University, where he studied with Wallace DePue, and his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Cornell University, where he studied with Karel Husa and Steven Stucky. He is Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has taught at Cornell University, Keuka College, Colgate University and Interlochen. In 2010 he was appointed to the composition faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, and in 2011 he joined the board of the American Composers Forum. In 2014 he was named Composer in Residence with Cappella SF, a professional chorus in San Francisco. The third movement I call a Lied, as it is modeled on songs by Schubert and Schumann. The The Music movement is a quietly expressive Andante in the sunny and regal key of E-flat major, featuring a singing As a composer I have specialized in vocal music, choral music, and opera, but in recent years I have been line in the cello’s middle register, accompanied by steady eighth-note repeated chords in the piano. The turning my attention to instrumental music. Beginning in 2008 I made a conscious effort to provide musical accompaniment includes continuously rising lines in the inner voices, and the cello takes up this rising line friends and colleagues with pieces. The three works on this CD represent my longest and most ambitious in the climax of the movement. essays in instrumental forms. Quite happily and naturally, I was able to confirm in composing these pieces The fourth movement is a spirited Gigue in D major and 9/8 time built on three contrasting themes: what my long study of the works of the composers I most admire had taught me: that instrumental music the first dance-like, the second humorous, the third broadly sung and lyrical. The first theme from the first is informed by a vocal impulse. Thus, I have striven to imbue these works with both dramatic and lyrical movement is quoted in the last section of this movement, leading to a restatement of the lyrical theme and melodies, along with a respect for the kind of rhetorical narrative that is also found in my favorite composers. the dance theme. The movement concludes with a brisk and lively coda. Sonata for Violoncello and Piano was written especially for cellist Emil Miland. As a performer, Mr. Miland has frequently appeared with many of the world’s finest singers, and his playing for me has always embodied String Quartet No. 2 was commissioned by the Ives String Quartet and composed between July 2009 and many features of vocal technique, including a special kind of portamento, and varying speeds of vibrati. To that January 2010. I wrote my First String Quartet in 1979 as my Master’s Thesis at Cornell University, and end, I fashioned in this piece long, arching melodies that are unabashedly lyrical and romantic in character. having composed a great deal of music for strings in the intervening 30 years, I was eager to return to a The first movement, marked Allegro moderato appassionato, is cast in an expansive sonata-allegro medium that I believe, next to a cappella choral music, shows a composer’s strengths and weaknesses form, and its trajectory unfolds with bold, sweeping gestures. Though firmly in D major, the entire melodic more clearly than any other. and harmonic texture of the movement is highly chromatic, giving the musical character a sense of Karel Husa was my primary composition teacher during my years at Cornell. He guided every phase heightened inflection and intensity. of the composition of my First String Quartet, and I have studied deeply and been inspired by his string The second movement is a Passagaclia in F minor built on a three-measure bass line that includes quartets. String Quartet No. 2 is dedicated to him, after 38 years of friendship. all twelve tones of the chromatic scale. The mood of the movement is predominantly solemn and serious, The first movement is at 13 minutes, the longest movement of any of my chamber music works. It begins though there is a recurring contrasting section based on a more lyrical, expressive theme. The variations Molto moderato with a very long introductory theme stated twice. In composing this theme I was thinking on the ground bass become progressively more rhythmically animated, leading to a climax featuring the of the very long first themes of the first movement of the Copland Third Symphony, and the Harris Third second melodic idea. The work ends solemnly, with the cello moving from its highest register down to come Symphony, two works that I deeply love, and that I think share deep connections. The music quite suddenly to rest on its lowest note, the open C string. breaks into an Allegro tempo, with a fast version of this introductory theme. The movement unfolds through many moods and tempos, ranging from agitated to passionately expressive, ending on a note of solemnity. The second movement, marked Allegro scherzando, is slightly quirky, and is built out of contrasting sections of a main theme with partial statements of the chorale How Brightly Shines the Morning Star by Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608). (I used this chorale as the basis for the final scene of my opera Firebird Motel.) All the instruments have a turn in singing successive phrases of the chorale, culminating in a complete statement of the chorale by the first violin at the end of the movement. The third movement is a Fugue based on a subject that is a 12-tone row. Marked Adagio serio, the music The second movement is a slow and expressive Chaconne in E major, built on a three-measure has a very serious, introspective character.