Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2015-16 | 27th Season Special Events Haimovitz Plays Bach Matt Haimovitz, cello Thursday, October 22, 8:00 p.m. Saturday, October 24, 8:00 p.m. From the Executive Director This October has been such a full and rewarding month so far. We celebrated John Luther Adams, recipient of the William Schuman Award, with three New York premiere concerts that captivated audiences with soundscapes inspired by the Arctic. We also opened our Early Music series with a screening of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc accompanied by a medieval score devised and sung by the Orlando Consort. This week, Matt Haimovitz performs on the Miller stage and around Columbia’s campus, bringing Bach and new works to audiences in a myriad of spaces, and it has been lovely to see students and professors stumble upon a cello suite on their walks to class. Matt and I share a passion for bringing classical music to new audiences, and watching Matt deliver these suites to the Columbia community has been inspiring. Haimovitz Plays Bach culminates here at Miller with the presentation of the complete Bach Cello Suites and six accompanying new overtures. Each overture is a unique reflection of the composer’s experience with and interpretation of Bach. Next Tuesday, Ensemble Signal returns to continue our Pop-Up Concert series. This time, they’ll present pieces that inspire them as artists with an amazing repertoire that features solos for violin and cimbalom. In a few weeks, we kick off November and our Jazz series with the return of the incomparable Anat Cohen. I’m thrilled to welcome her back to our stage to perform a program of Brazilian jazz, and I can’t wait to watch her infectious energy transform the theater. Thank you for joining us to hear Matt Haimovitz, a true master of his craft. It has been a joy to watch this project develop, and I’m so proud to share it with you tonight. Melissa Smey Executive Director Please note that photography and the use of recording devices are not permitted. Remember to turn off all cellular phones and pagers before tonight’s performance begins. Miller Theatre is ADA accessible. Large print programs are available upon request. For more information or to arrange accommodations, please call 212-854-7799. Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2015-16 | 27th Season Haimovitz Plays Bach Thursday, October 22, 8:00 p.m. Cello Suites III, IV & V Matt Haimovitz, cello Run Vijay Iyer (b. 1971) Suite III in C Major, BWV 1009 J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Bourrées 1 & 2 Gigue La Memoria Roberto Sierra (b. 1953) Suite IV in E-flat Major, BWV 1010 Bach Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Bourrées 1 & 2 Gigue INTERMISSION Gabriel Mohammed Fairouz (b. 1985) Suite V in C minor, BWV 1011 Bach Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gavottes 1 & 2 Gigue This program runs approximately 2 hours, including intermission. Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2015-16 | 27th Season Haimovitz Plays Bach Saturday, October 24, 8:00 p.m. Cello Suites I, II & VI Matt Haimovitz, cello Overture to Bach Philip Glass (b. 1937) Suite I in G Major, BWV 1007 J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Menuets 1 & 2 Gigue The Veil of Veronica Du Yun (b. 1977) Suite II in D minor, BWV 1008 Bach Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Menuets 1 & 2 Gigue INTERMISSION Lili’uokalani Luna Pearl Woolf (b. 1973) for solo cello piccolo Suite VI in D Major, BWV 1012 Bach Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gavottes 1 & 2 Gigue This program runs approximately 2 hours, including intermission. About the Program In 1890, when the cellist Pablo Casals was on the verge of his fourteenth birthday, he visited a music shop in Barcelona. There, amongst the stacks of sheet music, he saw the six suites for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. The rest, as they say, is history. From our position in the early 21st century, it’s difficult to imagine the cello suites considered anything less than masterpieces, and yet in the not so distant past, they were treated (for the most part) simply as exercises. They were pieces learned to bolster technique, or improve the agility and strength of the fingers. But Casals envisioned something else when he began to delve into the scores, and that was music worthy of the stage. By the early days of the new century, he was performing the suites in recitals, and over the course of a few years, starting in 1936, he made the first audio recordings of the suites. It would do for them what Glenn Gould would do for Bach’s Goldberg Variations twenty years later. At the time, the cello repertoire didn’t offer much from the Baroque period—the 150 years between 1600-1750—and for good reason. During that period, the violoncello was generally relegated to the bassline as part of the continuo (along with the harpsichord, which provided a sense of percussive rhythm). There are only a couple of works from that era specifically for the solo violoncello (or viola da gamba), among them the Seven Ricercars for solo cello by Domenico Gabrielli (c.1651-1690), and the suites by Bach. Thus the suites were not only valuable for their beauty, but for their rarity. Why were the cello suites written, and for whom? No one knows for certain. In fact, the original manuscripts in Bach’s hand have been lost to time. It is only thanks to his second wife, Anna Magdalena, and her effort to copy the suites around 1728 that we have any record of them at all. We can, however, make some guesses as to their origin and purpose. It is generally accepted that the suites were written between the years 1717-1723 when Bach was employed as Kapellmeister for the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen (presently in Northeast Germany), a principality located about nineteen miles away from Halle, the hometown of Bach’s contemporary, George Frideric Handel. Leopold had a great love of culture and music, and he was apparently an amateur musician as well. According to Philipp Spitta, one of Bach’s 19th century biographers, the prince “...played not only the violin, but the viol-di-gamba and the clavier; and he was also a very good bass singer. Bach, himself, said of him later that he had not merely loved music, but had understood it.” The prince was also a Calvinist, and as Calvinists do not use instruments in their religious services, Bach found himself in the position of writing only music for court entertainment—both public and private—for the first and only time in his career. It follows that several of Bach’s great secular works come from that period in Köthen, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier; the Clavier- Büchlein (“Little Clavier Book”) for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach; another similarly titled collection for Anna Magdalena; and the Brandenburg Concertos. One of Bach’s duties as Kapellmeister would have been to provide chamber music, or music to be enjoyed privately in intimate settings. This is likely the origin of the cello suites. Not only did the prince apparently play the viola da gamba (or, the viol that you hold between the legs), the court musicians also included violoncellist Carl Bernhard Lienicke and Bach’s great friend Christian Ferdinand Abel (their respective sons, Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel would later launch the first subscription concert series in London together). Any, or all, of these individuals (or others we don’t have a record of) could have performed the suites. Structurally, Bach organized the dances comprising all six suites in a precise order following an opening prelude: allemande, courante, sarabande, other, and gigue (easily remembered as PACSOG). The “other” dance varied depending on the suite: where one and two have minuets, three and four have bourrées, and five and six have gavottes. It appears that beginning around the 16th century, certain dances became frequently paired or grouped together, and often included a recherché (also ricercar, all variants meaning “to search for” or “seek out”) or an “unmeasured” prelude, both of which would have been improvised. By Bach’s time, the grouping of the inner three dances (allemande, courante, and sarabande) had become traditional across the continent and into England. One of the first written mentions of a suite proper in that so-called “classical” order was in 1676. It should be noted, however, that not all suites adhered to this traditional layout (and the preludes were no longer strictly improvised). Handel’s Water Music of 1717 is one example contemporary to the cello suites. Bach’s later Orchestral Suites also follow a different structure. The final two suites, numbers five and six, contain technical specificities worth mentioning in some detail. These days, the specifics are generally observed by performers on a case-by-case basis, though opting to adhere to them can make the physical production of the music less cumbersome—and can sonically alter it, as well. In the fifth suite, the manuscript version calls for re-tuning the strings of the cello, a technique called scordatura. With this method, the A string is tuned down a full step to G, changing the original tuning from A-D-G-C to G-D-G-C and lending a different sound-world to the instrument due to the change to open string sonorities. Another thing to note about the fifth suite in particular is that its sarabande is the only sarabande without multiple voices (double/triple stops).