Press Release: Musical Exoticism March 12-13, 2012

For Immediate Release

For more information, contact David Johnson, 216-5595

Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma – Concert 4 of the 2011-12 Season

“Musical Exoticism”

featuring three exotic chamber music trios,
from Haydn’s Austria to 20th Century America

Monday, March 12, 2012                                                   Tuesday, March 13, 2012                           
7:30 pm (reception following)                                           7:30 pm (reception following)
St. Edward’s Chapel, Casady School                                    St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral
9500 N. Pennsylvania Ave. (at Britton Road)                       127 NW 7th Street (at Robinson)

On March 12-13, 2012, Oklahoma City’s own Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble will present two performances of its fourth concert of the 2011-12 Season, “Musical Exoticism.”  This will be Brightmusic’s second annual Mae Ruth Swanson Memorial Concert, in honor of the long-time leader of Oklahoma City’s Civic Music Association.

The program reflects works of three musical periods (Classical, Modern and Romantic), three different countries (Austria, the United States and the Czech Republic) and three different composers (Haydn, Ewazen and Smetana).  What these works share is their exotic nature.  The works are: (1) Franz Josef Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major (the “Gypsy Trio”); (2) Eric Ewazen’s Trio for Trumpet, Violincello and Piano; and (3) Bedřich Smetana’s Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in G Minor, op. 15.     

The musicians who will appear are: Gregory Lee (violin), Tomasz Zieba (cello), Michael Anderson (trumpet) and Amy I-Lin Cheng (piano).

The performances will take place: (1) on Monday, March 12th at 7:30 pm in the St. Edward’s Chapel at Casady School, 9500 N. Pennsylvania Avenue (at Britton Road) and (2) on Tuesday, March 13th at 7:30 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, 127 NW 7th Street (at Robinson).  Admission is $10 per adult; students with ID are free of charge.  A reception with the musicians will follow each performance. 

This concert is made possible by season grants from Chesapeake Energy Corporation, the Oklahoma Arts Council and the Ad Astra Foundation, and a special concert grant from the Civic Music Association.   

Brightmusic Musicians Appearing:

Violin: Dr. Gregory Lee, concertmaster of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic; associate professor of violin at the University of Oklahoma.

Cello: Tomasz Zieba, associate principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic; instructor of cello at the Oklahoma City University.

Trumpet: Michael Anderson, trumpeter with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and Oklahoma Jazz Orchestras’ associate professor of trumpet at Oklahoma City University.

Piano: Dr. Amy I-Lin Cheng, concert pianist and collaborative musician; former head of the piano department at Oklahoma City University; currently a member of the piano faculty at the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts and a collaborative pianist at the University of Michigan School of Music; Co-Artistic Director of Brightmusic.

Musical Works To Be Performed:

Franz Josef Haydn, Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major, XV:25 (the “Gypsy Trio”) (violin, cello and piano):  Haydn (1732-1809) epitomizes the Classical era of classical music.  He received his early music education in the home of a distant cousin who, Haydn recalled, gave him “more floggings than food.”  He was a starving artist, almost literally, until at age 29, when he entered the employment of the Esterházy family, the wealthiest in the Holy Roman Empire.  Haydn was a prolific composer, composing 104 symphonies, 83 string quartets, 60 piano sonatas and 23 operas, as well as hundreds of other instrumental and choral works.  He was a good friend of Mozart and a teacher of the impetuous young Beethoven.  Haydn wrote 45 trios for piano, violin and cello, 43 of which survive.  He composed Trio No. 39 during the second of his two extended stays in London.  Each movement is noteworthy.  Movement I is an Andante, not a sonata-standard Allegro.  Movement II is derived from the Adagio movement of Haydn’s 102nd Symphony, contemporaneous with this trio.  The trio’s nickname comes from its third movement – a spirited Hungarian or “Gypsy” Rondo.  Even though Haydn became the most famous composer in Europe, he was a humble and self-effacing man.  According to Harold Schonberg, he had a “direct, clear, good-natured, un-neurotic view toward life and art.”

Eric Ewazen, Trio for Trumpet, Violincello and Piano:  Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) is a contemporary American composer.  He received his bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music and his master’s and doctorate at The Julliard School, where he has been on the faculty since 1980.  His numerous works for soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras have been performed around the world.  The website ArkivMusic.com lists 71 different CDs on which Ewazen’s compositions appear.  Ewazen writes “affable, stylish” music [David Hurwitz], music of warmth and harmonic richness.  His Trio for Trumpet, Cello and Piano is a brand new work.  By special arrangement with the composer, Brightmusic is privileged to be able to give one of the first pre-publication performances of this new work, and the very first performance of the composer’s revised arrangement of the work.  Brightmusic featured another Ewazen composition in February 2010, when our audiences responded warmly to his Trio for Trumpet, Violin and Piano.  For more information about Eric Ewazen, see www.ericewazen.com

Bedřich Smetana, Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in G Minor, op. 15:  Smetana (1824-84) was born in a small town near Prague in the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Hapsburg Empire.  Smetana was an ardent nationalist.  During a short-lived revolution in 1848, he wrote patriotic songs and manned barricades on the Charles Bridge.  After Austria repressed the revolt, Smetana remained under suspicion for many years.  Eventually he moved to Sweden until political conditions at home improved.  Smetana was the first composer to draw upon Bohemian folk songs: “The exoticisms of the Bohemian musical language were not in the Western musical consciousness until Smetana appeared” [Schonberg].  Occasionally he quoted folk music, but more often he composed his own melodies that were infused with the spirit of Czech dances and landscapes.  In 1855, Smetana’s oldest daughter died of scarlet fever.  He poured his grief into the intimacy of what became his nation’s first important chamber music work.  His dedication read, “Written in memory of my first child, Bedřiška, who enchanted us with her extraordinary musical talent, and yet was snatched away from us by death, aged 4½ years.”  Though his grief informs the entire work (all three movements are in G Minor), the principal theme of the second movement is a polka, and the main theme of the third movement was derived from a Bohemian protest song associated with the 1848 Prague rebellion.

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