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February 18, 2024: Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Michael Stephen Brown, piano Max Bruch (1838-1920) Kol Nidrei for cello and piano February 18, 2024: Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Michael Stephen Brown, piano When Bruch was selected in August 1878 for the directorship of a choral society in Berlin, he expressed surprise since the Stern’scher Gesangverein had taken no notice of any of his choral works. He had really hoped for a position in England, which did come to pass two years later, but meanwhile he took up his duties in Berlin. He worked on just two compositions there, the Scottish Fantasy and Kol nidrei. Bruch assumed the position of director of the Philharmonic Society in Liverpool in late August 1880, completing his Kol nidrei there that fall. Subtitled Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Cello and Orchestra, the work was composed for Liverpool’s Jewish community. The composer described his sources: Two of the melodies are first-class—the first is an age-old Hebrew song of atonement, the second (D major) is the middle section of a moving and truly magnificent song “O weep for those that wept on Babel’s stream” (Byron), equally very old. I got to know both melodies in Berlin, where I had much to do with the children of Israel in the Coral Society. The success of Kol nidrei is assured, because all the Jews in the world are for it eo ipso [by that very fact]. Bruch’s first-mentioned melody is traditionally sung on the eve of Yom Kippur during the service of atonement, when worshipers proclaim that all vows (“Kol nidrei”) made unwittingly or rashly during the year should be considered null and void. Many melodies and their variants have been employed for the Kol nidrei, varying according to local tradition. Bruch’s Kol nidrei melody is the approximately 200-year-old Ashkenazi version, parts of which may go back more than a thousand years. Though he had to condense it, he retained most of its most characteristic turns of phrase. Bruch’s work unfolds as a paraphrase with variational sequences on the melody, and though he was writing for cello and orchestra, his approach seems vocally oriented—an area in which he always felt comfortable. The second theme enters soulfully in the cello atop harp and string arpeggios. This melody, too, is repeated and embellished in many ways, though it never loses its poignant quality. Its treatment takes us to the end of the piece, which closes in tranquility after three rising arpeggiated figures in the cello. The composer was quite partial to this theme—he employed it again in his choral work Three Hebrew Melodies. Though a Protestant, Bruch was often thought to be Jewish because of the strong Jewish affinities so compellingly woven into his music. Of the many cellists asking Bruch to write something for cello along the lines of his violin concertos and Scottish Fantasy, it was Robert Hausmann, said Bruch, who had plagued him for so long that he eventually composed Kol nidrei for him. Bruch was pleased by trial performances in Liverpool by cellist Joseph Hollmann and in the arrangement he made for violin which was tried out by Ernst Schiever. Hausmann did in fact receive the dedication and gave the public premiere in Berlin. Bruch surmised from Hausmann’s reports that the work had suffered in the Berlin orchestral sessions because of “an insanely slow tempo” and vowed to conduct it himself when he came to Berlin at the end of December 1880. With Hausmann’s ensuing performance in London, Hollmann’s in Russia, Jules Delsart’s set for Paris, and publication in 1881, Kol nidrei received an auspicious launch that translated into a well-deserved place in the repertoire. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

BRUCE ADOLPHE, COMPOSER Composer, author, lecturer, and performer Bruce Adolphe — known to millions of Americans from his public radio show Piano Puzzlers, which has been broadcast weekly on Performance Today, hosted by Fred Child, since 2002 — has created a substantial body of chamber music and orchestral works inspired by science, visual arts, and human rights. Mr. Adolphe has composed several works based on writings by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio: Body Loops (piano and orchestra); Memories of a Possible Future (piano and orchestra); Memories of a Possible Future (piano and string quartet); Self Comes to Mind (solo cello and two percussionists); Obedient Choir of Emotions (chorus and piano); and Musics of Memory (piano, marimba, harp, guitar). Yo-Yo Ma premiered Self Comes to Mind, with a text written by Antonio Damasio especially for the project, in 2009 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Mr. Adolphe’s other science-based music include Einstein’s Light for violin and piano, recorded by Joshua Bell and Marija Stroke on Sony Classical, and his tribute to NASA scientist and astronaut Piers Sellers, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the world is, which received its world premiere at the Off the Hook Arts Festival in Colorado in 2018 and was performed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in March, 2019. Among his human rights works are I Will Not Remain Silent for violin and orchestra and Reach Out, Raise Hope, Change Society for chorus, wind quintet, and three percussionists, both recorded on the Naxos/Milken Archive label. Mr. Adolphe is the resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the author of several books, including Visions and Decisions: Imagination and Technique in Music Composition (Cambridge, 2023); The Mind’s Ear (third edition, 2021, OUP). He contributed the chapter “The Musical Imagination: Mystery and Method in Musical Composition” to the recently published book Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal (OUP, 2019), an anthology of writings by neuroscientists and artists. Mr. Adolphe contributed the chapter “The Sound of Human Rights: Wordless Music that Speaks for Humanity” to The Routledge Guide to Music and Human Rights (2022).

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, PIANO Recital appearances this season include a return to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on the Great Artists Series. He also performs at Wigmore Hall, the George Enescu Festival, Ascona (Switzerland), Prague, Munich, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Moscow State Philharmonic, at the Elbphilharmonie for the Husum Rarities of Piano Music Festival, Monte Carlo, and the Heidelberg Festival, among other dates. Mr. Hamelin is the inaugural guest curator for Portland Piano International, where he opens the season with two solo recitals. He returns to San Francisco Performances – a series with whom he has a long and deeply supportive artistic relationship – as a Perspectives Artist for their 40th Anniversary Season, performing a solo recital; Die Winterreise with tenor Mark Padmore; and the world premiere of his own Piano Quintet, commissioned by SFP and performed by himself and the Alexander String Quartet. An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, in 19/20, Hyperion releases two albums by Mr. Hamelin – one a solo disc and the other with the Takács Quartet. He recently released a disc of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-Flat Major and Four Impromptus; a landmark disc of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Concerto for Two Pianos with Leif Ove Andsnes; Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus; and Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski. His impressive Hyperion discography of more than 60 recordings includes concertos and works for solo piano by such composers as Alkan, Godowsky, and Medtner, as well as brilliantly received performances of Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and Shostakovich. He was honored with the 2014 ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of Year (Piano) and Disc of the Year by Diapason Magazine and Classica Magazine for his three-disc set of Busoni: Late Piano Music and an album of his own compositions, Hamelin: Études, which received a 2010 Grammy nomination and a first prize from the German Record Critics’ Association. Mr. Hamelin was a distinguished member of the jury of the 15 th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2017 where each of the 30 competitors in the preliminary round performed Hamelin’s Toccata on L’Homme armé; this was the first time the composer of the commissioned work was also a member of the jury. Mr. Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, with nearly 30 compositions to his name. The majority of those works – including the Études and Toccata on L’Homme armé – are published by Edition Peters. Mr. Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller. Born in Montreal, Marc-André Hamelin is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the German Record Critics’ Association and has received seven Juno Awards and eleven GRAMMY nominations. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue, BWV 903 March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano Bach’s first biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote of Bach’s celebrated Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue: “I have taken infinite pains to discover another piece of this kind by Bach, but in vain. This fantasia is unique, and never had its like.” Forkel had duly taken note of the Fantasia’s bold chromatic improvisatory flights, the unusual use of recitative in an instrumental piece, and the drama and harmonic adventurousness in both the Fantasia and Fugue, and was astonished to find that Bach had written no other works like it. Bach may well have composed the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue before 1723, and it may have been one of the pieces he wrote for the new two-keyboard harpsichord for which he traveled to Berlin to acquire for the Cöthen court. The work most certainly was the product of Bach’s practice of improvising at the keyboard and appears to have gone through many stages in the way that Bach himself played it. One manuscript for the work states that the piece had reached its final form by 1730, but many versions postdate this manuscript, including versions known to have been played by Bach’s sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Bach scholars have identified some thirty-seven different roughly contemporary manuscript sources for the work—some that wound up as far afield as Vienna, Italy, and France, attesting to the work’s universal appeal. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue was also championed by nineteenth-century piano virtuosos such as Liszt and Busoni. With its chromatic flourishes and broken chords, the opening of the Fantasia sounds extemporized. It also contains progressions that Bach wrote out in chords but that are meant to be played in arpeggiated style—these often take daring harmonic excursions. Bach also borrowed from vocal tradition by including a passage marked “recitative,” which imitates speech in its free declamatory style. The ensuing three-voice Fugue is all the more remarkable when one considers that Bach originally conceived it in all its complexity on the spot. Though he and other keyboardists of the day were trained in such improvisation, and though he no doubt polished the Fugue over successive years as he performed it and used it as a teaching piece, the achievement is still remarkable. The Fugue subject itself is an especially lengthy one that contains several different motivic elements for later elaboration: a four-note chromatic ascent that occurs twice, a little three-note “dip” at the peak, a four-note descent that balances the previous ascent, and a stepwise rhythmic sequence based on a repeated eighth note and two sixteenths. At several points Bach heightens the drama by introducing a pedal tone (a long held note), under or over which figuration unfolds until the tension is released by the resumption of motion in the pedal voice. The last of these occurs with great drama at the conclusion, where the release launches a descending version of the rhythmic sequence over which a series of massive chords unfolds, bringing a final flourish and cadence. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

December 3, 2023: Brentano String Quartet; Antioch Chamber Ensemble LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Cavatina from String Quartet in B-flat, Op. 130 December 3, 2023: Brentano String Quartet; Antioch Chamber Ensemble When Prince Nicholas Galitzin ordered “one, two, or three new quartets” from Beethoven in November 1822, he could hardly have realized that he was instigating a series of works by which all later generations would judge profundity. Though the prince may have sensed something new in the first of the quartets (E-flat major, op. 127) and might have raised an eyebrow when the second (A minor, op. 132) appeared with an “extra” march and recitative before the finale, he must have been astounded by the third (B-flat major, op. 130). Composed between August and November 1825 in its original version, the B-flat Quartet began with an outwardly normal first movement only to be followed by a suite of four shorter movements and capped by a fugue of incomprehensible scope and difficulty. The prince pronounced himself pleased with the Quartets, but was only able to make one payment before going bankrupt and joining the army. Too late for Beethoven himself, but in the proper spirit, a son of Galitzin paid with interest what was owed into the Beethoven estate. The ever-faithful Schuppanzigh Quartet premiered the B-flat Quartet on March 21, 1826. Despite clamorous applause for other movements, the colossal fugue met with some resistance and the usually headstrong Beethoven was somehow persuaded to detach it and compose another concluding movement. Eventually, however, performances proliferated with the original ending—or sometimes both. The fifth movement, Cavatina, one of Beethoven’s most introspective and eloquent pieces, borrows its title from the term for an operatic aria. The emotional force of this “prayer” never failed to touch the composer himself. His friend, violinist Karl Holz reported that “the Cavatina was composed amid tears of grief; never had [Beethoven’s] music reached such a pitch of expressiveness, and the very memory of this piece used to bring tears to his eyes.” In an outwardly simple three-part form, the movement climaxes with the heartrending sobs of the first violin—Beethoven marks these “beklemmt” (oppressed, fearful)—before the condensed reprise of the opening. The emotional impact that Holz reported is so widely recognized that the movement is often played as a memorial tribute. Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Sechs Klavierstücke (Six Piano Pieces), op. 118 October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano In the four sets of piano pieces that appeared in 1892–93, opp. 116–119, Brahms took up the writing of “miniatures” that he had begun with the Ballades, op. 10, and the Piano Pieces, op. 76. The later pieces, particularly the intermezzos, which make up fourteen of the twenty pieces in these four sets, tend generally toward the introspective, though flashes of youthful exuberance flare up occasionally—in the outer sections of both the Ballade, op. 118, no. 3, and the Capriccio, op. 116, no. 7, for example. No precise chronology can be determined for these pieces, yet the structural economy and tendency toward harmonic and textural “impressionism” all point to Brahms’s late style. Four of the six pieces in Opus 118 are labeled “intermezzo,” Brahms’s nonspecific designation that covers a fairly wide range, from the opening passionate, stormy Intermezzo (op. 118, no. 1) to the desolate, haunting tone picture of the last (no. 6). The first of these, laid out in two sections, each repeated, presents a recurring feature in Brahms’s works, namely a descending melodic shape. Many have associated the descending line, which recurs particularly in the late works, with resignation on the part of the composer. The closing Intermezzo in E-flat minor casts its tragic spell from the opening single-voice theme, fashioned from only three neighboring pitches. Its inward aspect gives no hint of the intensity of the climax in the middle section. Similar in nature to the “cradle-song” intermezzos, op. 117, the serene, beautiful A major Intermezzo (no. 2), lies within the grasp of good amateur players, and hence is one of the best known of these pieces. Its more restless middle section, full of Brahms’s beloved three-against two rhythms, contains several well-integrated contrapuntal devices. Imitation between the two hands is also important in the quietly agitated F minor Intermezzo (no. 4), both in the opening section and in the chordal textures of the middle section. The G minor Ballade (no. 3) provides contrast to all the other pieces in the set with its bold and lively spirit. One of its playful aspects is the brief recall of the opening theme in the “wrong” key (D-sharp minor) in the middle of the central section. The fifth piece, which Brahms labeled “Romanze,” again suggests a cradle song with its melodic directness and rocking chordal accompaniment; the impression continues in the middle section with its melodic decorations over a rocking repeated pattern in the bass. Brahms’s masterful variation techniques are apparent not only here, but in the elaborations of the basic material in the outer sections. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 8, 2015 – David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975) Sonata for Cello and Piano in d minor, Op. 40 (1934) February 8, 2015 – David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano While interpreting the events of a composer’s life as impetus for his creative work is always risky business, one important personal development from Shostakovich’s life around the time of his Cello Sonata nevertheless remains inescapable. In the summer of 1934, Shostakovich fell passionately in love with Yelena Konstaninovskaya, a 20-year-old translator. Much to the dismay of his wife Nina (despite their mutual agreement to an open marriage), the composer spent the majority of their summer holiday writing letter to his young mistress. “There is nothing in you which fails to send a wave of joy and fierce passion inside me when I think of you,” he wrote. “Lyalya, I love you so, I love you so, as nobody ever loved before. My love, my gold, my dearest, I love you so; I lay down my love before you.” William T. Vollman dedicates a chapter of his epic novel Europe Central to the tempting–albeit improbable–influence of the affair with Konstaninovskaya on the music of the Cello Sonata. Though rooted in fancy, Vollman’s poetic assessment of the work nevertheless speaks to its lyrical pathos and sense of romantic abandon: Each of Shostakovich’s symphonies I consider to be a multiply broken bridge, an archipelago of steel trailing off into the river. Opus 40, however, is a house with four rooms……[He] built Opus 40 for her and him to dwell in, and she led him inside. They were going to have an apartment with a dark passageway, then steps and halfsteps. They’d live there, deep below the piano keys in Moscow. Nina could stay in Leningrad… Therefore, Opus 40, and in particular the first movement, composed of firelight and kisses, remains the most romantic thing that Shostakovich ever wrote. Shostakovich and Nina separated, and the composer, as Vollman alludes, remained in Moscow with no definite plans to follow his wife back to Leningrad. It was during this time that work on the Cello Sonata began. By 1935, however, Nina was pregnant with the Shostakoviches’ first child, and the marriage essentially righted itself (which did not preclude later extramarital affairs by both Dmitry and Nina). Shortly after the affair ended, Konstaninovskaya received an anonymous political denunciation and spent roughly a year in prison. Shostakovich composed the Cello Sonata for the cellist Viktor Kubatsky, an esteemed cellist and one-time principal at the Bolshoi Theater. Shostakovich, also an able pianist, subsequently toured with Kubatsky, premiering his Cello Sonata in Leningrad on Christmas Day, 1934, alongside the cello sonatas of Grieg and Rachmaninov. The composer reportedly performed the piano parts to all three works from memory. ©2006 Patrick Castillo Return to Parlance Program Notes

March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Six Bagatelles from Op. 119 March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano Beethoven was constantly composing piano miniatures, and he saved those that never found a home in his piano sonatas for later publication as collections of unrelated pieces, some to be used as exercises. When he published his first set of Bagatelles, op. 33, in 1803, he was the first to attach the French term for “trifle” to a set of unrelated pieces for piano, though occasionally the term had been used in the previous century for sets of dances or songs. He published two other collections of Bagatelles—Opus 119 in 1823 and Opus 126 in 1825. Those of the last set date from 1824, but the dates of composition for the Opus 119 set range from his early Bonn days through 1822, the period of the Missa solemnis and the three last piano sonatas, opp. 109, 110, and 111. In Beethoven’s mind these miniatures were by no means inferior to his more extended piano works but were simply ideas that were complete in themselves. We can well imagine his incensed reaction, reported by Anton Schindler, when the publisher Peters returned six of them in 1823 saying they weren’t worth his asking price and that he ought to consider it beneath his dignity to waste his time on such trifles. The publication of the set of eleven Bagatelles in 1823—by Clementi in London and Schlesinger in Paris as Opus 112, “corrected” to 119 later in the century—actually caps a convoluted history, discussed by scholars in exhaustive detail. One of the most salient points is that in April 1820 Beethoven broke off work on the Missa solemnis to comply with a request from Friedrich Starke for a contribution to his piano pedagogy book, Wiener Piano-Forte-Schule . Beethoven ended up supplying Nos. 7–11 of the eventual Opus 119 for the 1821 publication, calling them by the German term Kleinigkeiten , in the same wave of German patriotism that had seen him using the term Hammerklavier . Beethoven’s sketches from this time are fascinating in that they show the first movement of the E major Sonata, op. 109, to have originated from the impetus to supply bagatelles, which helps account for its unusual form. Clearly this impetus also inspired him to complete Nos. 1–6, for which he drew on his rich store of materials from as early as 1791–1802. As it happens, however, the improvisatory-sounding No. 6 that begins this evening’s selection is of 1822 vintage judging by sketches that appear amid work on the Credo of the Missa solemnis . It seems wholly appropriate to group Nos. 6 through 11 together as examples of a somewhat later style. The Bagatelles sometimes employ a binary form (two sections with repeats), as in the intimate, chromatically inflected No. 8, or a rounded binary (second half returns to the opening material, both halves repeated) as in the valse triste of No. 9. But many times Beethoven lets the material command its own form, as in the aforementioned No. 6, which puts us in mind of his improvisations, not only at concerts or private gatherings but for himself alone. No. 7 is especially striking for its trills—that sound like chiming bells at the outset but become almost demonic before the precipitous ending—and No. 10, briefest of all, is notable for its single-minded playfulness. With the profound No. 11, one suspects that Beethoven found its individual form totally satisfying—first section repeated, second section a series of varied thoughts—and decided against marring its delicate nuances by employing it in another context. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 18, 2024: Stefan Jackiw, violin; Michael Stephen Brown, piano Arvo Pärt Fratres for violin and piano February 18, 2024: Stefan Jackiw, violin; Michael Stephen Brown, piano In 1960, while still a student at the Talinn Conservatory, Arvo Pärt won national attention for his Nekrolog, dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. It was the first work by an Estonian composer to use Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system, so it created something of a scandal. The notoriety had its rewards, however, as it brought Pärt commissions from state sources and from cellist Rostropovich. Soon tired of his serial phase, Pärt began a series of alternations between creative output and withdrawal to search for a new style. One of his explorations came up with the collage technique, resulting in such compositions as his Collage on the Theme B-A-C-H (1964) and Second Symphony (1966). During the 1970s Pärt supported himself by writing some fifty film scores. His Third Symphony (1971) followed one of his “withdrawal” periods, in which he studied fourteenth- to sixteenth-century polyphony, from Machaut to Josquin. He followed another of his “creative silences” with For Alina (1976), a small piano piece of high and low extremes. Pärt said he reached a “new plateau” with this piece: “It was here that I discovered the triad series, which I made my simple, little guiding rule.” He has written in this triadic style, which he calls “tintinnabuli” (after the bell-like resemblance of notes in the triad), ever since, with only slight modifications. From 1982, when he moved to Berlin, he has composed primarily religious works for chorus or small vocal ensembles. Pärt composed Fratres, originally for string quintet and wind quintet, in 1977 for Hortus Musicus, an early-music ensemble in Tallinn. The title refers to the fraternal spirit of the Hortus Musicus. In the decades since then he has written versions of this popular piece for many different combinations: wind octet and percussion, strings and percussion, and string quartet—and versions in which violin, cello, or guitar take a solo role. In the violin and piano version, the violin alone introduces the piece’s essential hymnlike theme in its low register under virtuosic string crossings that transmit Pärt’s triadic harmonies. The hymnlike additive theme—reminiscent of a style of medieval church singing called organum—recurs eight times in the piano, employing slight variants but always in the same contour and with the same rhythmic pattern. The violin weaves imaginative “variations” through and around this framework. Pärt employs a brief, low tolling in the piano punctuated by percussive strums of the violin to separate each recurrence. The dynamics create an arch form, moving from soft to loud and back, with a particularly climactic use of double-stop chords in the violin’s central “variation.” The piece concludes with the quiet tolling measures. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 5, 2014 – Osmo Vänska, clarinet; Erin Keefe, violin; Gilles Vonsattel, piano BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945) Contrasts, BB 116 October 5, 2014 – Osmo Vänska, clarinet; Erin Keefe, violin; Gilles Vonsattel, piano If the celebrated “king of swing” clarinetist Benny Goodman had not commissioned a work from Bartók, the composer probably would never have written a chamber work that included a wind instrument—this was the sole instance. In 1938 Bartók’s old friend, violinist Joseph Szigeti, wrote to him on behalf of Goodman to commission a chamber work the two could play together. The clarinetist made some very specific requests: he wanted a short work—six to seven minutes so it could fit on two sides of a 78 rpm recording—that should contain two movements, one in each of the Hungarian styles lassú (slow) and friss (fast) that Bartók had made so popular in his Rhapsodies. The composer, however, couldn’t help but respond as he had to previous commission requirements: he wrote what he wanted! Bartók did begin along the specified parameters, completing two movements—now the outer two—probably in August 1938, though they were considerably longer than expected. Goodman, Szigeti, and pianist Endre Petri performed these Two Dances, as they were called, at Carnegie Hall on January 9, 1939. The opening Verbunkos (Recruiting dance) movement possessed a livelier character than that of a lassú introduction, so already in September 1938 Bartók composed a slow movement to separate his two dances, though he waited until December to inform Goodman. The premiere of this complete version, finally named Contrasts, occurred in April 1940 when Bartók came to New York and played the piano part in a now-famous Columbia recording with Goodman and Szigeti. The same trio played the work live in Boston on February 4, 1941, and after Goodman’s three-year period of exclusive performance rights expired, chamber groups everywhere took up the colorful piece. As a proper recruiting dance should, the opening movement struts and postures, and includes the typical kind of melodic ornamentation that reflects Bartók’s familiarity with the national style. Both violin and clarinet are given ample opportunities to show off. After the initial march idea, the composer introduces a memorable theme that is ripe with characteristic Hungarian short-long rhythms. Just before the end Bartók provides a clarinet cadenza that displays the instrument’s range both in pitch and dynamics. The slow movement, Pihenő (Relaxation), projects a more serious quality, incorporating sounds that biographer Halsey Stevens suggests were inspired by Bartók’s study of Indonesian gamelan music. A brilliant shimmering passage introduces trills, pizzicato, and murmuring motives associated with what Bartók called “night music,” first introduced in his Out of Doors for piano in 1926. For the only time in any of his works, Bartók employed scordatura (unusual tuning of a string instrument) here in his whirlwind finale. Sebes (Fast dance) begins with the violin taking up a fiddle tuned with the bottom string raised and the top string lowered by a half step. As a result his opening chords sound like the beginning of a danse macabre—similar to Saint-Saëns’s famous example, which also uses scordatura. Bartók also has the clarinetist trade an A clarinet for one in B-flat in the movement’s outer sections, which changes the color slightly, but also reflects the curious tonality of the work—one of its contrasts?—ending in a different key than it began. Bartók interrupts the movement’s frantic perpetual motion for a slower middle section that features a plaintive melody and eerie washes of sound. Here the piano creeps in contrary motion against the slithering of the violin and clarinet, all in a complex meter of 13/8. The composer employs myriad effects from glissandos and “honking” grace notes to a cadenza of violin pyrotechnics to make this one of chamber music’s most riveting finales. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 20, 2022: Steven Banks, Saxophonist-Composer Xak Bjerken, Piano, Principal Strings of The Met Orchestra ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1894-1942) Hot Sonate for alto saxophone and piano November 20, 2022: Steven Banks, Saxophonist-Composer Xak Bjerken, Piano, Principal Strings of The Met Orchestra Erwin Schulhoff was a child prodigy who, in 1902 at the age of eight, so deeply impressed Antonín Dvořák with his playing and improvising on the piano that Dvořák advised him to begin composition studies immediately. Schulhoff studied first in Prague, then in Vienna, where he became a good friend of Alban Berg, and later in Leipzig, where he studied with Max Reger. He also took some lessons with Debussy in Paris shortly before World War I. Schulhoff’s musical interests varied widely. He collaborated with visual artists Däubler, Grosz, and Klee in Germany, where he had settled in 1923. A champion of modern music, he worked on the problems of quarter-tone music with Alois Hába after his return to Prague in 1929. His improvisatory skills naturally led to his dedication as a jazz pianist and to the incorporation of jazz in several of his own compositions. He also showed great interest in music of the distant past, unearthing and arranging medieval and Renaissance music of Bohemian composers. Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, the great German music encyclopedia, characterizes Schulhoff as a “composer of extraordinary talent and creative power.” Alfred Einstein appreciated his gift for creating comical and grotesque effects in music. Schulhoff’s desire for social revolution led to his leftist political views. In 1932 he composed a cantata setting of the original German text of the Communist Manifesto of 1848. He was granted Soviet citizenship to protect him from arrest during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, but when the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941 Schulhoff was sent to the Wülzburg Concentration Camp where he died on August 18, 1942. Schulhoff composed his Hot Sonata on a commission from the Funk-Stunde (radio station) AG in Berlin, which premiered the work on April 10, 1930, with American saxophonist Billy Barton and the composer at the piano. By this time Schulhoff was recognized as a jazz expert, having even published a jazz method for piano. Jazz movements had become increasingly more frequent in his works and he used the title Hot-Sonate, using the American word “hot” that had become synonymous with jazz. The piece is laid out in four movements, each headed not by a tempo marking but by a metronome marking, though in the sultry third movement he asks the saxophone to play “lamentoso ma molto grottesco” against the piano’s “molto ritmico.” The jaunty first movement, which has something in common with Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk, is rife with jazz syncopations, swinging along merrily until its nonchalant ending. The second movement heats up the action with darting licks for the saxophone, an especially syncopated piano part, and a surprisingly abrupt ending. The bluesy third movement has the saxophonist bending pitch to slide into its destination notes while the piano keeps its steady beat. The final movement drives forward motorically until Schulhoff inserts a slow contrasting section. The momentum resumes, once again catching the listener off guard with the suddenness of the ending. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano Spirituals Good News; You Can Tell the World; Deep River; Ride on King Jesus November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano Spirituals Angel Blue concludes her program with a set of four traditional spirituals, an apt choice as it reflects a significant time in her life when she and her sister dreamed of being opera singers. Interviewed for PBS’s Great Performance: The Magic of Spirituals episode, she reflected on Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle’s Spirituals in Concert, which she as a seven-year-old and her older sister watched with intense interest. Said Blue, “We took it upon ourselves to become Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle. So we would hold hands in my sister’s room and we would play on VHS ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,’ and we would sing that back and forth to each other. . . . And we’d sing it over and over again. This concert has been one of the things in my life I think that has kept me going in terms of opera and what it means to be a classical singer.” The four spirituals she has selected range from the jubilant “Good News,” which rejoices in the “robe” and “crown” awaiting in “that Kingdom,” and the equally upbeat “You Can Tell the World,” to the profoundly moving “Deep River,” concluding with the triumphant “Ride on King Jesus.” Her emotional involvement with these spirituals reflects her deep family ties, not only to her sister but to her father Sylvester Blue, a singer and choir director who she says is “the reason I sing, the reason I know anything about opera.” —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes