Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Quartet for Flute and Strings in C major, K. 285b

Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived only 35 years, yet he produced over 800 compositions and ranks with Bach and Beethoven as one of the world’s greatest composers.  Haydn, the leading composer of the day, recognized his extraordinary talent, telling his father, “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me.”  The older composer even went so far as to prophecy that the world would not see his like again for a hundred years.  Mozart was a child prodigy like no other.  By the age of six, he was entertaining monarchs.  He would write his first symphony at eight and over half his operas before his 20th birthday. 

Mozart is widely reputed to have despised the flute. His father was on his son’s case for being slow to fulfill a lucrative commission. In an apparent snit, the petulant youth wrote, “I am quite inhibited when I have to compose for an instrument which I cannot endure.”  Yet, some of his most cherished music is written for the flute, including his Quartet for Flute and Strings in C, written between 1781 and 1782.  The piece bears all the hallmarks of Mozart’s pen:  clarity and elegance with graceful melodic lines and playful interaction between the instruments.  It was adapted from the sixth movement of his Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, more commonly known as the Grand Partita.    

Michael Webster (b. 1944), Sonata Cho-Cho San for Flute, Clarinet and Piano

Michael Webster is a composer and clarinetist who is Professor of Music at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.  He is also artistic director of the Houston Youth Symphony.  

His concert trio Sonata Cho-Cho San is named for the tragic heroine of Madama Butterfly and based on popular themes from Puccini’s opera.  It is not the “typical virtuosic operatic potpourri. Rather, it follows the story, resembling a sonata mirroring Puccini’s use of recurring and developing themes,” writes the publisher.  Cho-Cho San, a 15-year old Japanese girl, is sold in marriage to a U.S. naval officer, Pinkerton, with whom she falls in love.  His ship sets sail shortly after the wedding. Meanwhile, Cho-Cho San gives birth to their child and waits patiently for her husband’s return.  After three years, Pinkerton finally returns with his American wife, who intends to raise the boy as her own child.  Ultimately Cho-Cho San commits seppuku with her father’s knife. Following the dramatic plot line of the opera, Webster skillfully casts the winds as versatile performers, equally suited to deliver Puccini’s beautiful and sweeping vocal lines.  

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello and Piano, H. 315 

Prolific Czech composer and violinist Bohuslav Jan Martinů entered the Prague Conservatory at age 16, where he was later booted out for “incorrigible negligence.”  He rejected the rigidity of the formal program,  preferring instead to learn on his own.  He moved to Paris, abandoned the romantic style and began to experiment with modern French stylistic developments and jazz idioms.  In the early 1930s he settled on his main composition style:  neoclassicism.  

“In pure chamber music I am always more myself,” Martinů wrote a friend in 1947. “I cannot tell you with what happiness I begin to compose chamber music.” That same year he wrote his deeply personal and expressive Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello and Piano, and his love affair with the form becomes apparent. The quartet is written in the graceful neo-classical style, a tribute to Mozart, while also containing elements of old Czech folk tunes, which he would frequently turn to throughout his career. 

Kenji Bunch (b. 1973), Ralph’s Old Records for Violin/Viola, Cello, Flute, Clarinet and Piano 

American composer Kenji Bunch, a native of Portland, Oregon, serves as artistic director of Portland’s Fear No Music, that fosters the advancement of new music.  He also teaches at Portland State University and Reed College.  The critically-acclaimed Juilliard grad fuses traditional American and European music with elements of hip hop, jazz, bluegrass and funk with lighthearted and delightful results. 

Based on a collection of his father’s old 78 rpm records, Bunch’s “Ralph’s Old Records” is a fresh take on old depression-era tunes that Kenji grew up with. “My dad’s name is Ralph Bunch. He has a bunch of records,” he wrote on his Facebook page. Some of the tunes may be familiar, but all of them will have an engaging familiarity in the style—full of jazz, whimsy and humor. Bunch has won “a reputation as one of the nation’s finest and most listener-friendly composers of his generation,” wrote The Oregonian. 

Program notes by Sara Grossman