Masterworks for Winds

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.

Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Grave of Couperin) was originally a suite for solo piano composed between 1914 and 1917. The word “tombeau” in the title is a musical term popular from the 17th century, meaning "a piece written as a memorial". The specific Couperin, among a family noted as musicians for about two centuries, that Ravel intended to evoke is thought to be François Couperin "the Great" (1668–1733). Ravel stated that his intention was to pay homage more generally to the sensibilities of the Baroque French keyboard suite, not necessarily to imitate or pay tribute to Couperin himself in particular. The work was written after the death of Ravel’s mother in 1917 and of friends in World War I. The first performance of the original piano version was given on 11 April 1919. The famous orchestral version features only four movements from the original. The arrangement being presented on this concert is by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen from 1989.

Amy Beach (1867-1944), Pastorale for Wind Quintet

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her “Gaelic Symphony”, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

The Pastorale for Wind Quintet was completed in 1941, just three years prior to her death. Despite her fame and recognition during her lifetime, Beach was largely neglected after her death in 1944 until the late 20th century. Efforts to revive interest in Beach's works have been largely successful during the last few decades.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981), Summer Music (for wind quintet)

Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator and was one of the most celebrated composers of the mid-20th century. His music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression.

As a result of a commission from the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Barber drew from some of his previous work, including the unpublished orchestral piece Horizon (1945), as material for Summer Music. Originally meant to be a septet for three woodwinds, three strings, and piano, Summer Music evolved into a quintet as Barber experimented with some tuning études written by hornist John Barrows for himself and his colleagues in the New York Woodwind Quintet. Summer Music is Barber's only chamber composition for wind instruments, and has become a staple of the wind quintet repertoire. The work was premiered on March 20, 1956 by the first-chair players of the Detroit Symphony.

Kazimierz Machala (1948- ), American Folk Suite for Wind Quintet

A native of Poland, Kazimierz Machala is an active performer, composer, and teacher. He studied horn at the Janacek Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in the Czech Republic. He was also the first horn player in Juilliard’s history to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. He has been an active performer with various orchestras around the world including the New York Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia, as well as various chamber music ensembles. From 1989-2009 he was Professor of Horn at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His arrangement of the American Folk Suite for Woodwind Quintet has been frequently performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Woodwind Quintet.

Max Reger (1873-1916), Quintet for Clarinet and Strings

Max Reger was a German composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and academic teacher. He worked as a concert pianist, as a musical director at the Leipzig University Church as a professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig, and as a music director at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen.

Begun in the summer of 1915, Reger's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings is reminiscent of those of Mozart and Brahms, which Reger particularly appreciated. This was the composer’s last work, and in fact, he died in May 1916 of a heart attack shortly after sending it to its publisher. Becoming his swan song, the Quintet was performed in a ceremony in his memory on November 6, 1916.

Program notes by Larry Reed