DAVID J. GROSSMAN, DOUBLE BASS Double bassist and composer David J. Grossman enjoys a multifaceted musical career on both the East and West Coasts — as a bassist in the New York Philharmonic (having joined in spring 2000 as its youngest member) and as newly appointed principal bass of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist and clinician, Mr. Grossman has given recitals and master classes at prestigious venues and music schools across the country, including the Boston Conservatory, Yale School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, The Hartt School, Penn State University, and the New York Summer Music Festival. He has released two albums — one classical and one jazz — titled The Bass of Both Worlds, available at davidjgrossman.com. Mr. Grossman is also an ardent educator. He is as a member of the double bass faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and he joined the Mannes School of Music faculty in fall 2017. Also a passionate chamber musician, he performs in the New York Philharmonic Ensembles series at Merkin Concert Hall and has appeared at 92nd Street Y and with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In the field of jazz, Mr. Grossman was a member of the Marcus Roberts Trio and has performed with Wynton Marsalis, among many others. As a composer, David J. Grossman’s compositions include Mood Swings for trombone and double bass, written for New York Philharmonic Principal Trombone Joseph Alessi; Fantasy on “Shall We Gather at the River?”, available on former New York Philharmonic English Horn Thomas Stacy’s recording Plaintive Melody; and two early compositions, Swing Quartet and String Quintet No. 1, which were premiered by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

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September 26, 2021: James Thompson, violin; Oliver Neubauer, violin; Clara Neubauer, violin; Jeanelle Brierley, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Isabella Bignasca, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Sihao He, cello; Joel Noyes, cello; David J. Grossman, bass; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741) Concerto for Four Violins in B minor, RV 580, op. 3, no. 10 September 26, 2021: James Thompson, violin; Oliver Neubauer, violin; Clara Neubauer, violin; Jeanelle Brierley, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Isabella Bignasca, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Sihao He, cello; Joel Noyes, cello; David J. Grossman, bass; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord If one were to compose a concerto every month for thirty-five years, one would still not match Vivaldi’s feat. Of his close to 500 concertos, more than 230 were written for solo violin and strings, some 120 for a variety of other solo instruments with string accompaniment, many for more than one soloist, and approximately 60 for string orchestra without solo instrument known as ripieno concertos. And, he managed to compose solo and trio sonatas, operas, oratorios, masses, motets, and cantatas in addition to performing, teaching, and traveling. Vivaldi’s extraordinary mastery of instrumental forms and orchestration influenced generations of composers. Vivaldi was an accomplished violinist himself, having studied with his father, a violinist at the famous St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice. Vivaldi trained for the priesthood, taking his Holy Orders in 1703, the same year he became maestro di violino at the Pio Ospedale Pietà, an orphanage and renowned conservatory for girls in Venice. Though his later activities as a composer and impresario occasioned much travel, Vivaldi retained his association with the Pietà throughout his life and many of his instrumental works were designed for his students there. About 1711 the Amsterdam firm of Estienne Roger issued Vivaldi’s first published set of concertos, L’estro armonico (“harmonic caprice”), op. 3, one of the most influential collections of instrumental music of the eighteenth century. The twelve concertos were composed over a period of years, probably for the Pio Ospedale Pietà. L’estro armonico was and still is prized for its wealth of originality in regard to style, form, orchestration, and concentrated rhythmic designs. Bach was among the many who were enthralled by the collection, transcribing six of the concertos for his own use and imitating Vivaldi’s rather flexible forms in his own concertos. Vivaldi established the three-movement norm for concertos. He typically cast his first and last movements in ritornello form, in which periodic returns of thematic material alternate with contrasting episodes. Ritornello elements are present in the present Concerto’s first movement, but the ritornello itself is subordinate to the domination of the four soloists. Instead of opening with a typical ritornello for the full ensemble, Vivaldi introduces the major motives in two of the solo violins. The texture of the four solo parts is constantly varied, but the four soloists are never featured simultaneously; most often they play singly or in pairs. The slow movement follows the multisection style of previous composers such as Corelli. The sections consist of a Largo featuring dotted rhythms, a Larghetto made up entirely of elaborative repeated figures—a different figure in each part—and an Adagio probably meant for a cadenza-like elaboration. The dancelike finale in 6/8 meter follows a much more clear-cut ritornello form. The first solo violin predominates, but each soloist is given an opportunity to shine. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 19, 2019: Friedrich Heinrich Kern, glass harmonica; Chelsea Knox, flute; Elaine Douvas, oboe; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Adagio and Rondo, K. 617 for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello May 19, 2019: Friedrich Heinrich Kern, glass harmonica; Chelsea Knox, flute; Elaine Douvas, oboe; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello On a visit to England in 1761, Benjamin Franklin was impressed by Edmund Delaval’s playing on musical glasses—the rubbing of moistened fingertips around the rims of glasses tuned by adding or subtracting water. He was inspired to improve on the instrument by affixing glass bowls of graduated sizes concentrically around a horizontal metal spindle and rotating the apparatus with a crank attached to a treadle. This keyboard-like arrangement made chords and scales easily playable. Franklin’s glass armonica (later dubbed “harmonica”) received later modifications, some unsuccessful—such as the use of a kind of violin bow or keyboard mechanism to activate the sound—but others were worthwhile, such as the extension of the instrument’s range by German maker Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur. Performances across Europe by Schmittbaur’s student Marianne Kirchgässner (1769–1808), blind from the age of four, brought the instrument to the peak of its popularity. Kirchgässner’s playing in Vienna in 1791 inspired Mozart to compose his Adagio for solo glass armonica and also the Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, for glass armonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello, which he dated May 23. She gave the quintet’s first performance with Mozart himself—probably on the viola part—at Vienna’s Kärntnerthortheater on August 19, and performed both pieces many times thereafter. Despite the fact that she died from a chest infection, rumor had it that the cause of death was nerve deterioration caused by the instrument’s piercing vibrations. The overall volume of the glass armonica, however, is relatively soft, and a critique of a performance she gave in London complained that her part couldn’t be heard above the other instruments. Whether the volume of the glass armonica was at issue, or there was simply a desire for wider circulation, a version with piano came into use even in Mozart’s day. In the present performance, Friedrich Heinrich Kern plays the verrophone, a modern version of the glass harmonica using tuned glass tubes, invented in 1983 by Sascha Reckert. Thus it gives a contemporary presentation of the sound rather than a “period instrument” re-creation. Mr. Kern has made subtle modifications in Mozart’s score to accommodate the differences in playing technique between the two instruments. Because the verrophone can produce more volume than the glass harmonica, the instrument is perfectly suited for Mozart’s quintet—a captivating, rarely heard piece that turned out to be the last chamber work from the master’s pen. The Adagio’s dramatic C minor outer sections alternate powerful chords with delicate ruminating passages. The contrast of the solemn and the ethereal brings to mind Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which he was composing contemporaneously. His turn to the major mode brings a graceful middle section that features a lovely keyboard melody interspersed with comments by the quartet. Throughout both movements Mozart takes special care to alternate the keyboard with the other instruments, making the London critic’s complaint seem querulous. Mozart’s treatment of the deceptively simple main theme of the Rondo shows sophistication in its many decorative variants that keep the ear engaged. The form is also a masterful infusion of rondo and sonata form. Most striking are the intervening sections that use a descending chordal pattern—which also receives its share of variation—to launch some ravishing modulations. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685-1759) Endless pleasure, endless love from Semele Angels ever bright and fair from Theodora February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano Handel had been producing Italian opera for thirty years in London when in 1741 he came to a financial dead end and turned to oratorio as his main creative outlet. But Semele , his 1743 setting of William Congreve’s English opera libretto, shows that he had not quite given up his operatic aspirations. Though intended for concert performance “after the Manner of an oratorio,” the work was doomed when it opened in February 1744 because the public wanted a Lenten oratorio rather than something so close to Italian opera and full of licentious gods. Despite containing some of Handel’s most lovely and effective music, Semele remained in a mixed-genre wasteland until the modern era when it became one of his most-performed works. Semele is a mortal woman, betrothed to Athamas but in love with the god Jupiter. At her request he snatches her aloft from the wedding ceremony. Juno, Jupiter’s wife and guardian of marriage vows, plays on Semele’s ambition to become immortal and, disguised as Semele’s sister, tells her to refuse Jupiter’s advances until he promises to appear to her in his true godlike form. Juno knows he will have to keep his promise, which will end Semele’s life. At the end of Act I, Semele sings the delightful, justly famous air “Endless pleasure, endless love,” which tells of her joy now that she is in Jupiter’s realm. Congreve’s libretto had assigned this “gavotte” to another character after Semele’s exit from the scene, but Handel no doubt wanted to give his star another opportunity to shine and decided such a discrepancy did not matter in an unstaged oratorio. Handel composed Theodora between June 30 and July 31, 1749, setting a libretto by Thomas Morell, who had adapted a story from Robert Boyle’s The Martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus (1687) together with some material from Pierre Corneille’s Théodore, vierge et martyre (1646). This fourth and best of Morell’s oratorio librettos for Handel inspired some of the composer’s most profound music. First performed on March 16, 1750, Theodora , like Semele , was not well-received—possibly because of its unusual subject matter and tragic ending. Its failure greatly disappointed Handel, who considered it his best oratorio. Two centuries later the work’s merits have been fully recognized and it has received masterful revivals, some even staged. The non-Biblical story involves Christian martyr Theodora, who is condemned to slavery as a temple prostitute by Valens, Roman president of Antioch, for refusing to offer sacrifices to goddesses Venus and Flora. Didymus, a Roman officer converted to Christianity by Theodora, helps her escape at the cost of his own freedom. She offers her life in exchange for his, but Valens condemns them both to death. Theodora sings the heartfelt “Angels, ever bright and fair” in Act I, scene 5, in response to being taken prisoner and told of the fate worse than death that awaits her. She pleads with the angels to take her to heaven as a virgin. Her poignant pleas come to a brief contrasting peak before resuming with the return of the opening, now with improvisatory embellishments of the melody, as was customary in Handel’s day. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SCOTT STEVENS, PERCUSSION Scott Stevens has been a percussionist and timpanist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1977. He received his degrees from The Juilliard School where he studied with Saul Goodman and Elden “Buster” Bailey. In the summers, Mr. Stevens is a member of the percussion faculty at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Interlochen, Michigan.

October 30, 2016: Wu Han, piano; Philip Setzer, violin; David Finckel, cello Ludwig van Beethoven Trio in E-flat, Op. 1, No. 1 October 30, 2016: Wu Han, piano; Philip Setzer, violin; David Finckel, cello Beethoven carefully considered his presentation to the musical world of Vienna. Though he had composed quite a few works by 1795, he chose the three Trios that form Opus 1 as his first publication. He had been sponsored by Elector Maximilian Franz to move from his hometown of Bonn to Vienna at the end of 1792, to study with the great Joseph Haydn and to make his name in a musically more active world. Haydn was writing piano trios at that time, and though Beethoven probably had started work on his trios before he left Bonn, it was natural for him to work on them under the influence of his new teacher. When Haydn left for a sojourn in London in January 1794, Beethoven immediately began studies with Johann Albrechtsberger, which continued for fourteen months until Haydn’s return. A sketch for one of the movements of the G major Trio, op. 1, no. 2, was found among lessons Beethoven had done for Albrechtsberger. The Trios were performed privately in 1794 at the house of Prince Lichnowsky, the dedicatee of the Opus 1 Trios. Ferdinand Ries, later Beethoven’s pupil, reported many years after the fact that Haydn was among the distinguished guests in the audience and that the older composer had many nice things to say about the works, but advised against publishing the Third in C minor, saying the public would have difficulty understanding it. Ries also reported that Beethoven took this to be a sign of jealousy on Haydn’s part. It has been shown more recently that Ries’s account mixed up the chronology and that possible qualms Haydn may have had about the C minor Trio were raised upon his second return from London in 1795, after the Trios had already been published. In response to this and other accounts that Haydn was envious of the younger composer, esteemed musicologist James Webster wrote, “[I]t is inconceivable that the powerful and original genius of Haydn at the height of his powers should have had any difficulty with this work . . . or indeed any of Beethoven’s music of the 1790s, unless for reasons that reflect on Beethoven’s limitations rather than his own.” Furthermore, Webster demonstrated that no irreparable falling out between the two composers occurred in the 1790s, though they did experience a period of distrust between 1800 and 1804. Beethoven may have worked more on the Trios after the 1794 performance and perhaps other performances of them at Prince Lichnowsky’s. But his most likely reason for delaying their publication until 1795 was to build up a following—meaning a sufficient number of subscribers. Like the other Opus 1 Trios and the Opus 2 Piano Sonatas, Beethoven conceived of the E-flat major Trio in four movements, despite the custom of the day to compose chamber works with piano in three movements. Beethoven’s first public utterance, the first theme of the first movement, takes simple repeated chords and upward-rushing arpeggios and makes distinct motives out of them—short “building-block” kinds of motives that remained central to his mature style. Three quiet repeated chords begin the second theme, which stays within a narrow range in contrast to the more ebullient first theme. His sonata-form movement concludes with an extended coda, showing even in his early work the tendency toward substantial codas that begin almost as second development sections. The Adagio cantabile gently follows a rondo scheme as three presentations of the graceful main theme alternate with two contrasting episodes. Beethoven adds ornamental variants with each recurrence of the main theme and subtracts from its total length in the second appearance to make a more concise form. Beethoven wrote a scherzo instead of a minuet for the third movement of his Trio. Haydn had written minuets in fast enough tempos to be considered scherzos and even used the term Scherzo in his Opus 33 Quartets of 1781, but he was not writing scherzos in his piano trios or for that matter giving them a fourth movement. Beethoven’s sense of humor surfaces in the present Scherzo as it merrily begins in a key twice removed from the home key (the dominant of the dominant). The recurring little three-note motive with a grace note contributes to the section’s cheerful character. The Trio certainly changes character and texture, with long sustained notes in the strings supporting quiet legato figures in the piano. A striking leap of a tenth, heard three times, initiates the exuberant Presto Finale, which contains elements of both sonata and rondo form. The second theme, with its arpeggiated then stepwise descent, enters in each instrument in turn—violin, cello, piano, and again in the violin. Beethoven shows a little harmonic ingenuity late in the movement when this theme appears in E major before returning dramatically to the home key of E-flat. Just before the affirmative closing measures he has a bit of fun with his leaping motive. All in all the Trio makes a very assured as well as promising first opus. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 27, 2019: Quartetto di Cremona GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813–1901) String Quartet in E minor October 27, 2019: Quartetto di Cremona Verdi suddenly found himself with time on his hands in a hotel room in Naples in the spring of 1873. Teresa Stolz, his leading soprano, had fallen ill just after Don Carlos had opened and just as concurrent rehearsals were to begin for Aida. Since she was to sing in both, things ground to a halt and Aida’s premiere was postponed several weeks. Did Verdi relax? Did he work on another operatic project? No—to everyone’s great surprise, he wrote his only piece of solely instrumental music, his String Quartet in E minor. What possessed him to write a string quartet, that most hallowed of media, late in life and without prior experience? We can only assume he was confident he had the skill and wanted to prove it, and because the chance might never come again. On April 1, just after Aida opened, he invited seven or eight guests to the Hotel delle Croce, where he had set up music stands and four chairs. Soon four musicians from the theater orchestra—identified only as the Pinto brothers, violins, Salvadore, viola, and Giaritiello, cello—entered and played the Quartet for the surprised but delighted guests. They were so pleased that they demanded an encore, which Verdi granted, though he himself was unsure whether he liked the Quartet. “I don’t know whether the Quartet is beautiful or ugly,” wrote Verdi to Count Arrivabene several weeks later, “but I do know it’s a Quartet!” For a time Verdi refused to publish the Quartet or to allow other performances, though he did schedule another himself, this time for an invited audience of 100 guests at the Hôtel de Bade when he was in Paris in 1876 for a production of Aida. The Quartet was again received with great enthusiasm, which finally led Verdi to consent to its publication. He must have begun to think fondly of it, for he later indicated he would be willing to conduct a full string orchestra performance of the Quartet in London. Though many commentators have weighed in on whether it has the “proper” sort of working out expected from the Germanic tradition, or whether any operatic “weaknesses” have crept in, the fact remains that it contains wonderful melodic ideas, skillful and idiomatic writing for the strings, and—something Verdi enthusiasts delight in—an occasional hint of one or another of his operas. Verdi had studied the Classic quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with his composition teacher Vincenzo Lavigna, and it is said that he kept scores of them on a shelf above his bed. Verdi’s Quartet does not sound Classical, nor German, but it does maintain a light enough texture and enough elements of Classical form to sound retrospective. The sonata-form first movement centers around a melancholic wisp of an idea that begins in the low register of the second violin, then begins again, and is finally expanded. The process is repeated again an octave higher with the first violin. Several commentators have found hints of Aida in this theme, which then generates a great deal of activity. The second theme brings a contemplative though brief contrast in smooth four-part writing. Verdi condenses the form so that the first theme is still being developed until the recapitulation begins with the second theme. The second movement contrasts graceful, lilting outer sections with a sweet theme in longer note values and another restless, agitated section. The chromatic inflections of the outer theme give it a more Romantic than Classic flavor. Its return at the midpoint of the movement, between the two episodes, hints at rondo form, though this appearance occurs in a very remote key. The extroverted third movement, which begins at a lightning quick pace, imparts an impish off-kilter effect with its many irregular phrase lengths. The trio section has the cello “sing” an expressive melody to light pizzicato accompaniment—a section that would sound right at home in one of Verdi’s operas. His return to the opening follows traditional scherzo-trio-scherzo form. Verdi shows off all his contrapuntal prowess in the fugal finale. This is a gossamer fugue, however, not majestic nor weighty, prompting Julian Budden’s characterization as “a light-hearted Grosse Fuge,” referring to Beethoven’s monumental quartet movement. The composer himself labels it “Scherzo Fuga,” employing the term scherzo in its original meaning of a merry jest, rather than as a designation for a movement like his third, in triple meter and ternary-form. Several commentators have heard in this finale a premonition of the conclusion of Falstaff, the great comic opera of Verdi’s last years. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Shéherazade for soprano and piano March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano While still a student at the Paris Conservatory in 1899, Ravel conceived an opera to be based on the tales of the Thousand and One Nights . Well-aware of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (1888), Ravel wrote his own Shéhérazade Overture based on the legends, but the work’s lack of success when Ravel conducted it that June gave him pause, and he prohibited it from being published. Then in 1903 he was inspired to set three poems by fellow member of the Apache society Tristan Klingsor (pseudonym of Leon Leclerc), whose cycle entitled Shéhérazade had just been published. Wrote Leclerc: Ravel immediately announced his intent of setting some of my poems into music. His love of difficulty led him to choose, in addition to “L’indifférent and La flûte enchantée , one which, by reason of its length and narrative form, seemed the least likely suited for his purpose: Asie . The fact is that at this time he was extremely preoccupied with the challenge of adapting music to speech, heightening its accents and inflections and magnifying them by adapting them into melody; and to assist him to carry out his project he asked me to read the poems out loud to him. Like much of France and other European countries at the turn of the twentieth century, Ravel was fascinated with evocations of the Far East. The interest was not so much a kind of armchair tourism, but rather represented in the words of musicologist Kurt Oppens—whose knowledge of French poetry was second to none—“the decadence of a hypercivilized culture.” Worth quoting at length, Oppens wrote: Concerning decadence : all such once-fashionable catch names and slogans isolate one single element that, in truth, is common to all art. Every new style is “decadent” in the sense that it pays the price of progress by falling off from a previous achievement. Ravel’s Shéhérazade , however, is decadence with a capital D, a prototypical example of what Decadence as a movement was about. The kind of travel described in a poem such as Asie leads out of the boundaries of the self into archetypal images, a world of subconscious dreams, or eroticism and murder, a mixture that in its concrete political embodiments, led to the unspeakable tragedies of [the twentieth] century. . . . The emotonal-musical climax coincides with these words: “Je voudrais voir des rose et du sang; / Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine .” (I would like to see roses and blood; / I would like to see those who die for love or else for hate.” . . . The “I” of Leclerc’s poem does not think of dying; he is looking at death and responding to it as if it were a stimulant, an aphrodisiac. . . . Ravel’s music for “Asie” is essentially one big rolling wave, a masterfully articulated and controlled crescendo and decrescendo. (The element of control is of course non-decadent; decadent art is in itself a contradictory or dialectical proposition.) It is fascinating that when Ravel conducted these songs himself, he began with “Le flûte enchantée,” followed by “L’indifférent,” and ended with “Asie,” as in the order of the premiere, which was sung by Jane Hatto of the Paris Opéra on May 17, 1904, with Alfred Cortot conducting the orchestra of the Société Nationale. The published order makes for a more subdued ending, in keeping with the intimate love songs of “La flûte enchantée” and “L’indifférent.” Of the two shorter songs, “La flûte enchantée” offers an intimate melody—often sad, occasionally joyful—evoking the thoughts of the poem’s slave girl, who in her master’s house hears her lover playing the flute. “L’indifferent” also unfolds as a private love song, one shrouded in an air of mystery both as to the poem and Ravel’s setting. Is the protagonist Scherherazade herself seducing a young boy or is the androgenous nature of the addressee something that attracted Ravel? Whatever the case, Ravel skillfully captures the elusive, maybe dreamed or imagined-from-afar seductiveness of the poem. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Texts and Translations Asie Asie, Asie, Asie, Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice Où dort la fantasie comme une impératrice En sa forêt tout emplie de mystère. Asie, Je voudrais m'en aller avec la goélette Qui se berce ce soir dans la port, Mystérieuse et solitaire, Et qui déploie enfin ses voiles violettes Comme un immense oiseau de nuit dans le ciel d’or. Je voudrais m’en aller vers des îles de fleurs En écoutant chanter la mer perverse Sur un vieux rythme ensorceleur, Je voudrais voir Damas et les villes de Perse Avec les minarets légers dans l’air, Je voudrais voir de beaux turbans de soie Sur des visages noirs aux dents claires; Je voudrais voir des yeux sombres d’amour Et des prunelles brillantes de joie En des peaux jaunes comme des oranges; Je voudrais voir des vêtements de velours Et des habits à longues franges, Je voudrais voir des calumets entre les bouches Tout entourées de barbe blanche; Je voudrais voir d’âpres marchands aux regards louches, Et des cadis, et des vizirs Qui du seul mouvement de leur doigt qui se penche Accordent vie ou mort au gré de leur désir. Je voudrais voir la Perse, et l’Inde, et puis la Chine, Les mandarins ventrus sous les ombrelles, Et les princesses aux mains fines, Et les lettrés qui se querellent Sur la poésie et sur la beauté; Je voudrais m’attarder au palais enchanté Et comme voyageur étranger Contempler à loisir des paysages peints Sur des étoffes en des cadres de sapin Avec un personnage au milieu d’un verger; Je voudrais voir des assassins souriant Du bourreau qui coupe un cou d’innocent Avec son grand sabre courbé d’Orient, Je voudrais voir des pauvres et des reines; Je voudrais voir des roses et du sang; Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine. Et puis m’en revenir plus tard Narrer mon aventure aux curieux de rêves En élevant comme Sinbad ma vieille tasse arabe De temps en temps jusqu’à mes lèvres Pour interrompre le conte avec art . . . La flûte enchantée L’ombre est douce et mon maître dort Coiffé d’un bonnet comique de soie Et son long nez jaune en sa barbe blanche. Mais moi, je suis éveillée encor Et j’écoute au dehors Une chanson de flûte où s’épanche Tour à tour la tristesse ou la joie. Un air tour à tour langoureux ou frivole Que mon amoureux chéri joue. Et quand je m’approche de la croisée Il me semble que chaque note s’envole De la flûte vers ma joue Comme un mystérieux baiser. L’indifférent Tes yeux sont doux comme ceux d’une fille, Jeune étranger, et la courbe fine De ton beau visage de duvet ombragé Est plus séduisante encor de ligne. Ta lèvre chante sur le pas de ma porte Une lange inconnue et charmante Comme une musique fausse. Entre! Et que mon vin te réconforte . . . Mais non, tu passes Et de mon seuil je te vois t’éloigner Me faisant un dernier geste avec grâce Et la hanche légèrement ployée Par ta démarche féminine et lasse . . . —Tristan Klingsor Asia Asia, Asia, Asia, Ancient, marvelous country of fairy tales, where fantasy sleeps like an empress in her forest filled with mystery. Asia, I would like go away with the ship which is rocking this evening in the port, mysterious and lonely, and which finally spreads its violet sails like an immense bird of night in the golden sky. I would like to go towards the islands of flowers, while listening to the wayward sea sing to an old bewitching rhythm. I would like to see Damascus and the Persian cities with airy minarets rising into the sky. I would like to see beautiful silk turbans above black faces with bright teeth; I would like to see eyes dark with love and pupils shining with joy in faces with skins yellow as oranges; I would like to see velvet clothes and robes with long fringes, I would like to see pipes held between lips all surrounded by white beards; I would like to see harsh merchants with shifty looks, and cadis, and viziers, who with a single movement of their bending fingers, grant life or death according to their wish. I would like to see Persia, and India, and then China, The pot-bellied mandarins beneath the umbrellas, and the princesses with fine hands, and the scholars who quarrel over poetry and beauty; I would like to linger at the enchanted palace and as a foreign traveler contemplate at leisure countrysides painted on fabrics in frames of fir with a figure in the midst of an orchard; I would like to see smiling assassins, the executioner who cuts an innocent neck with his great curved sabre from the Orient. I would like to see beggars and queens; I would like to see roses and blood; I would like to see those who die of love or hate. And then come back later narrate my adventure to those curious of dreams while raising like Sinbad my old Arab cup from time to time to my lips to interrupt the tale with artistry . . . The Enchanted Flute The shadow is soft and my master sleeps wearing a comical bonnet of silk and his long yellow nose in his white beard. But I, I am still awake, and I hear outside a flute song in which pours out sadness or joy in turn. An air sometimes languorous, sometimes frivolous that my dear lover plays. And when I draw near the window, it seems to me that each note flies away from the flute to my cheek like a mysterious kiss. The Indifferent One Your eyes are soft like those of a girl, young stranger, and the fine curve of your beautiful face shadowed with down is still more seductive in its curve. Your lip sings on my doorstep an unknown and charming language like a false music. Enter! And let my wine refresh you . . . But no, you pass, and from my doorstep I see you leaving making a last gesture with grace and your hips gently swaying, with your feminine and languid walk . . . Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2020 AT 3 PM YING FANG, SOPRANO KEN NODA, PIANO BUY TICKETS KEN NODA, PIANO YING FANG, SOPRANO “A warm, agile, and appealing voice…a star in the making.” – Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS The luminous Metropolitan Opera soprano Ying Fang is one of today’s fastest-rising young artists. She has been hailed by the New York Times for her “pure and moving soprano, phrasing with scrupulous respect for the line and traveling with assurance through the mercurial moods.” Ying Fang will join the esteemed collaborative pianist Ken Noda in best-loved opera arias and songs by Händel, Mozart, Schubert, Bizet, and Rachmaninoff. PROGRAM Georg Friedrich Händel Endless Pleasure (from Semele ) Program Notes Georg Friedrich Händel Angels ever bright and fair (from Theodora ) Program Notes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Un moto di gioia (from Le Nozze di Figaro ) Program Notes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Deh vieni non tardar (from Le Nozze di Figaro ) Program Notes Franz Schubert Viola Program Notes Franz Schubert Nacht und Träume Program Notes Georges Bizet Chanson d’Avril Program Notes Georges Bizet La Coccinelle Program Notes Sergei Rachmaninoff Six Songs, Op. 38 In My Garden at Night, To Her, Daisies, Pied Piper, Dreams, A-oo Program Notes Watch Ying Fang perform S'altro che lagrime in the Met’s production of La Clemenza Di Tito:

December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio SAM PERKIN Freakshow December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio Sam Perkin earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from the Cork Institute of Technology’s Cork School of Music and an Artist Diploma from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, France, where he was awarded the Prix Salabert for composition. He has since written for leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists such as the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Vanbrugh Quartet, the Fidelio Trio, and Finghin Collins. In 2017 he composed Language for contemporary violin specialist Miranda Cuckson, exploring the inner workings of different human languages, and in Waves (2016–18) he “attempted self-cure for tinnitus” as one of his projects for the Irish Chamber Orchestra. His many fruitful collaborations with that ensemble began in 2015 with his luminescent Nimbus for string orchestra. Based dually in France and Ireland, Perkin serves as composer-in-residence with the Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading new-music ensemble. His first major work for that group, Grey Area (2017–19), forges a novel combination of the world of street skateboarding with contemporary music. In Alta, another inventive work of 2019, Perkin collaborated with Finnish northern lights specialist Unto K. Laine to incorporate recorded sounds of the aurora borealis. Emerging from the pandemic in 2021, the Luminosa Orchestra premiered his Visualization, in which musicians “bathe” everyone in the vicinity in “invisible music,” inspired by the sonic meditations of Pauline Oliveros. Most recently, in July 2022, his hybrid new symphony Children in the Universe for ensemble and halo track was premiered by the Crash Ensemble at the Galway International Arts Festival. Perkin composed Freakshow in 2016 for the Fidelio Trio on a commission from the leading Welsh music festival Gwyl Gregynog to mark the centenary of the Dublin Easter Rising of 1916, when close to 2,000 activists were arrested and imprisoned in the Welsh camp Fron-Goch for six months. Perkin explained: “Freakshow is inspired by the research of Welsh journalist and broadcaster Lyn Ebenezer, whose book Fron-Goch Camp 1916 explains how the camp became known as the ‘University of Revolution’ because leading figures such as Michael Collins were imprisoned there. “One anecdote in particular fired my imagination: the story of the Circus of Rats which acts as a portal to the absurd world of this macabre Suite. One of the prisoners at Fron-Goch used to go to great lengths to catch these rats and to put on a show for his fellow inmates. From an oblique compositional perspective and through a macabre lens, I decided to write a set of miniatures dedicated to the stars of the ‘Freakshow.’ “Building on themes of captivity and spectacle, the seven movements in the work explore seven different stories. One such story is that of the two-headed nightingale, conjoined twins who were sold to the circus when they were very young, then went on to learn five languages, dance, and play music. They eventually went on to tour the globe and achieve stardom due to their famous waltzes and vocal duets. I conveyed this musically by composing a warped waltz that shifts slightly out of and back into time.” Other stories include The Living Skeleton as the third movement and The Gentle Giant, a tribute to the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, as the fourth. The fifth movement deals with the Ovitz family, Hungarian Jewish actors/traveling musicians most of whom were dwarves and who were horrifically experimented on by Nazi “doctor” Josef Mengele. The sixth features Li Yeng, “The Basket Lady of Weijing Province,” a famed contortionist who dazzled audiences on world tours from 1880 to 1910 with the Circus of the Electric Antlers—an avant-garde troupe far ahead of their time in using psychedelic mushrooms and loudly amplified tape loops of electric guitar. The suite concludes with The Armless Fiddler, the story of Carl Unthan, who had no arms and instead played the violin with his toes. Says Perkin, “What I really enjoyed in this piece was composing for instruments in a slightly different way than I usually would, being sarcastic, macabre, humorous, something a bit different to how I usually write. How do you make a violin sound sarcastic? Sul pont, pizz, arco? It’s not really that simple; it’s more based on the gestures, the musical gestures, there’s something deeper to it than just an effect. That’s something I really explored in this piece.” Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 11, 2018: Benjamin Beilman, Violin; Orion Weiss, piano FREDERIC RZEWSKI Demons for violin and piano (2017) March 11, 2018: Benjamin Beilman, Violin; Orion Weiss, piano Dynamic, engaging, and committed to social issues, pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard, where he studied with Randall Thompson and Walter Piston, and his master’s degree at Princeton, where his teachers included Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. Following additional studies with Luigi Dallapiccola on a Fulbright scholarship in Florence, Rzewski began making a name for himself as a performer and teacher of new music in Europe. In 1966 in Rome he cofounded Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), where he explored collaborative improvisation. Rzewski returned to New York in 1971 but later took a post at the Royal Conservatory in Liège and continued to work with MEV in Rome. He has taught periodically at other renowned institutions, in particular the universities of Cincinnati, SUNY–Buffalo, California–San Diego as well as Yale, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and the Berlin Hochschule der Künste. As both composer and performer, Rzewski has long focused on issues that dominate the headlines. Coming Together (1972), for example, sets a letter by Attica State Prison inmate Sam Melville who was later killed in the Attica riots, and Rzewski’s monumental piano work The People United Will Never Be Defeated (1975) presents a set of variations on Sergio Ortega’s song for the mass mobilization of working-class people. More recently, Songs of Insurrection for piano (2016) treats melodies by imprisoned soldiers at a Nazi concentration camp, Korean peasants of the Donghak Rebellion, and Irish nationalists during the “Easter Rising,” among many others. To Rzewski’s credit, his works are incredibly moving and show a characteristic drive whether he employs atonal or tonal techniques, incorporates improvisation or not, or treats his own or popular melodies. Rzewski composed Demons in the spring and summer of 2017 for violinist Benjamin Beilman and pianist Orion Weiss on a commission from Music Accord. Dedicated to author and political activist Angela Davis, the work receives its premiere on March 3, 2018, in Baltimore at the Carice Smith Performing Arts Center and continues its round of premiere performances in Boston at the Longy School of Music, here on the Parlance Chamber Concerts, and in Heidelberg, Germany. The composer writes: “In Dostoyevsky’s 1871 novel of the same name, the character Kirillov kills himself in order ‘to become God.” Inspired by the Russian Nihilist movement of the 1860s and specifically by the charismatic figure Nechayev, Dostoyevsky’s book is a study of the self-destructive forces present in the Russian society of his time. It foreshadows Lenin and the Revolution of 1917, as well as the ideas of Nietzsche and Freud, and had a deep influence on writers like Mann, whose Doctor Faustus is a similar study of modern Germany. “While it is futile to try to express musical ideas in words, it is possible to say that my piece is a meditation on similar trends in the world of today. “In early November 2016, I had the honor to assist at a spectacular performance of my composition Coming Together of 1972 at the San Francisco Conservatory, with Angela Davis as the speaking soloist, a few days before the presidential elections. There was a public discussion that followed. Davis seemed to know the results already. She said that if the Left had done its job, the present situation would not have arisen. “These and similar ideas were all going through my head as I was writing Demons a few months later. I am not religious, and don’t know much about devils and such, but as an artist I cannot help feeling sensitive to whatever it is that awakens these ideas in humans, causing them to go crazy. I am not sure that scientists or doctors understand these things any better than writers or musicians. Perhaps, on the contrary, although we cannot explain them in rational terms, we can nevertheless throw some light on them, in our own way. “My piece is in four movements, and so is a kind of sonata. . . . There are periodic references to two songs throughout the piece: “Iroes,” made popular in the 1990s by the singer Maria Dimitriadis, and a song that became known during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (notably as performed by Barbara Dane), “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle,” which also provided the title for the recent book of Angela Davis. “Thanks to a new generation of classical musicians like Benjamin Beilman, there is a revival of interest among younger players in new music that in some way continues the classical tradition. One can only hope that this trend will continue. Although Marx’s analysis of capitalism as a ruthless system following its relentless course independently of human will continues to be valid, there are nonetheless reasons to think that alternatives are possible. As Mark Twain put it, prophecy is really hard, especially when it’s about the future.” © Jane Vial Jaffe *Commissioned by Music Accord for Benjamin Beilman. Comprised of top classical music presenting organizations throughout the United States, Music Accord is a consortium that commissions news works in the chamber music, instrumental recital, and song genres. The consortium’s goal is to create a significant number of new works and to ensure presentation of these works in venues throughout this country and, if the occasion arises, internationally. For more information, please go to www.musicaccord.org . Return to Parlance Program Notes