Lands Near and Far

Alexander Arutiunian, Suite for Clarinet, Violin & Piano
Arutiunian was a 20th-21st Century Armenian composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams, “On Wenlock Edge” (for Tenor, Piano, 2 Violins, Viola & Cello)
Williams was a 19th-20th Century English composer
Edward Knight, “Curve of Gold” (for Tenor, Clarinet & Piano)
Knight is a contemporary American composer living in Oklahoma City
Béla Bartók, Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin & Piano
Bartók was a 20th Century Hungarian composer
Alexander Arutiunian, Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano: Born in Yerevan, Armenia, Alexander Arutiunian (1920-2012) was a Soviet-era composer, pianist and professor, whose Armenian heritage informed all of his works. His life centered in Yerevan, where he attended and ultimately taught composition at the Komitas State Conservatory and served as the music director of the Armenian Philharmonic. His graduation composition, the Motherland Cantata, won a Stalin Prize in 1948. In 1970 he was named a People’s Artist of the USSR. “His compositions are written in a very accessible style, which incorporates features of Armenian folk music” [Moss Arts Center]. He “explored ways of harnessing intensity of emotion within established classical form, flavored variously with regional characteristics” [Deutsche Gramophone]. The Verdehr Trio at Michigan State University commissioned Arutiunian’s Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano in 1992, and premiered it in Baltimore, Maryland that same year. All four movements reflect “the vibrant Armenian character of the music which is always present in Arutiunian’s style” [Michael Spencer].
Ralph Vaughan Williams, “On Wenlock Edge:” Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was “a big, burly, indestructible man who had one of the longest creative spans in history” [Arnold Schonberg]. Born into an affluent family, educated at Trinity College Cambridge and the Royal College of Music, his career began slowly. He was not a performance-quality pianist or violinist, and his teaching, church music and scholarship yielded modest returns. He demonstrated an early interest in British music, including field research in the countryside. After studying privately with Max Bruch in Berlin and, more significantly, Maurice Ravel in Paris, Vaughan Williams began to compose in earnest. He disdained the 19th Century German masters and early 20th Century Continental composers, in favor of 16th Century Tudor polyphony, Baroque counterpoint, French orchestration and English folk music. His powers of composition never faltered (he premiered his Ninth Symphony only a few months before his death). He composed On Wenlock Edge in 1909, shortly after his return from France. It was one of the works that heralded him as “a new force in English music” [David Dubal]. Written for the “somewhat unusual combination” of voice, piano and string quartet [Chris Morrison], it reflected Vaughan Williams’ passion “to discover the musical soul of his country” [Francis Routh].
Edward Knight, “Curve of Gold:” Edward Knight (b. 1961) is a former Oklahoma Musician of the Year and winner of Oklahoma City University’s 2013 Outstanding Faculty Award, the University’s highest teaching honor. His works range from Cradle of Dreams, a choral and orchestral composition for a 100-piece orchestra and 250 voices, to two full-length musicals and award-winning song cycles. Brightmusic is proud to have presented several of Dr. Knight’s chamber works, including Beneath a Cinnamon Moon (which Brightmusic commissioned for the 2007 Oklahoma Centennial), INBOX, Raven, and Sea of Grass, Ocean of Sky. Brightmusic commissioned the song cycle “Curve of Gold” and premiered it in March 2010. Its five songs are drawn from the poetry of Sara Teasdale, an American lyrical poet. Texts and the composer’s program notes are included in an insert to this program. For more information about Dr. Knight, see edwardknight.com. Dr. Knight serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Brightmusic.
Béla Bartók, Contrasts, Sz. 111, BB 116: Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was “a tiny, frail man with explosive psychic force ... one of the strongest and most uncompromising musical minds” of the 20th Century [Schonberg]. Educated at the Academy of Music in Budapest, he was an ethnomusical scholar, teacher, composer and “pianist of fierce technique and fine expression” [Alex Ross]. He and fellow Hungarian Zoltán Kodály are famous for their research and early audio recording of Eastern European folk music, much as Ralph Vaughan Williams did in England. Occasionally, Bartók used this “peasant music” for thematic material, but more often he allowed it to influence his compositions indirectly: “the sound, rhythms, and scales of the music of Hungary were so much a part of him that he automatically thought in those terms” [Schonberg]. After Hitler overran Austria, Bartók knew that Hungary could be next. In 1940, he fled for the United States. Penniless and in ill health from childhood, he scratched out a living in New York City. Before leaving Hungary, Bartók composed Contrasts in 1938, on commission by jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. In its original version, premiered at Carnegie Hall in January 1939, the work contained what are now Movements 1 and 3. The following year, Bartók added Movement 2 in time for a second Carnegie Hall performance in April 1940, where he appeared with Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti. Based on Hungarian and Romanian folk themes, Contrasts shows the composer at his full creative maturity. In the last two years of his life, as he was wasting away with leukemia, Bartok completed the Concerto for Orchestra and all but finished his Viola and Third Piano Concertos. On his deathbed, he expressed regret that “I have to go with so much still to say.”