Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Yevgeny Dodzin (b. September 1, 2000), Heartbreak for Cello and Piano

Yevgeny Dodzin is an enthusiastic 25-year-old double bassist, composer, and conductor. He has been playing double bass since he was 10 years old and composing since he was 21. He completed his B.M. at Shenandoah Conservatory in performance (magna cum laude) and is currently studying for his M.M. in performance and composition at Oklahoma City University. Yevgeny believes that every composition is an experience and a story that should be able to relate to every listener, no matter who they are. As a composer, Yevgeny seeks to reflect the living experience of life and inspire people to think about themselves as well as empathize with others. His influences include composers from across music history such as Alfred Schnittke, Schumann, Kurt Atterberg, and Dr. Edward Knight.

Heartbreak is a composition designed to reflect when a hopeful listener suffers a loss, whether it be personal or professional. The piece starts out hopeful and upbeat but as it progresses gets sadder, slower, and more menacing before ending in a recap of all the themes in a coda to symbolize resignation and acceptance. This piece represents the composer's belief that the listener should be able to relate to the emotions in the music and connect it to their experiences. (notes provided by the composer)

Yevgeny Dodzin, Reminiscence for Violin, Cello and Piano

The piece Reminiscence represents different emotions a person might experience while contemplating a memory. These emotions are showcased in different sections throughout the trio. I wrote this piece with a minimalistic approach, with only one permanent key change and alternating between large and small textures, allowing the emotional spectrum to be shown through changes in mood and atmosphere. I also believe that different emotions can bleed into each other; hence, this piece might feel a bit rhapsodic in some places. (notes provided by the composer)

László Weiner (1916-1944), Duo for Violin and Viola

László Weiner was a Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor.  He studied piano and conducting at the Budapest Music Academy and was a student of the famous composer Zoltán Kodály from 1934-1940.  In February 1943 he was deported by the Nazis to the Lukov forced labor camp in Slovakia, where he was later murdered in spite of efforts to save him by Kodály.            

Duo for Violin and Viola features a wonderful balance between the two parts in four contrasting movements.  There is a sense of harmony in the music, but any reference to a key is fluid, always moving around. The work opens with long melodic passages that are passed back and forth as the music moves along.  The second movement is “upbeat” and features a spirited dialogue including alternating “on the string” and “pizzicato” passages. In the somber third movement, the viola opens with the melodic line and the violin accompanying the solos before they share the melodic spotlight as the movement progresses.  The movement ends with a sense of uncertainty, a lack of resolution. The final movement is in the style of a “Hungarian rondo” with evidence of folk material.  It opens with melodic lines that are accompanied by underlying rhythmic patterns.  The sharing of melodic material continues through the movement. As things move to a close, the dialogue sounds more like a “canon” with the melody being repeated by the other instrument. Then, we are back to “solo and accompaniment” before closing in tandem.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25

Johannes Brahms was a most important German composer and prominent pianist of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, he began composing in his youth and began performing on tours in early adulthood, often premiering his own works.  His style was considered relatively more conservative than that of other composers of the day which included Richard Wagner.  He was quite famous during his lifetime and his output is voluminous and wide-ranging in his choice of medium.

The Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25 was premiered in 1861 in Hamburg with Clara Schumann at the piano.  It was also played in Vienna in 1862 with Brahms himself at the piano along with members of the Hellmesberger Quartet (violin, viola, cello).  In the first movement, Brahms explores a new path of structure in which he blurs the expected transitions from section to section in the first movement. Instead of the traditional, expected repeat of the exposition, he writes a short restatement of the first bars of the movement before moving directly into an intense, extended development section. He then blurs the start of the recapitulation, another change that would have confused his listeners. However, along with this characteristically unorthodox treatment of form, there is an equally characteristic melodic expressiveness that gives a “Brahmsian” lushness to this powerful movement.  Brahms originally called the second movement a “Scherzo”, but Clara apparently suggested that the title “Intermezzo” would be more appropriate, given the movement’s slower tempos and tuneful grace. In the romantically-expressive third movement, Brahms combines two very different ideas, as a melodious theme flanks a dotted-rhythm march. The last movement, a breathless Gypsy-style rondo, “was obviously intended to bring the house down, and it did,” as Brahms’s biographer Ivor Keys noted. At the end of a rehearsal for the performance in Vienna, the first violinist leapt up and proclaimed, “This is Beethoven’s heir!”

Program notes by Larry Reed