Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Sergei Prokofiev, Overture on Hebrew Themes, op. 34:  According to Harold Schonberg, Prokofiev (1891-1953) “was a stubborn, intelligent, obstinate, and cocky young man of undeniable talent.”  He came to the United States after the Bolshevik Revolution, but “America did not like him, and he did not like America.”  In1919, Prokofiev composed his Overture on Hebrew Themes, commissioned by Russian Jewish musicians then touring America, who gave him a book of Jewish folk songs for inspiration.  He built the Overture on two themes: the first, introduced by the clarinet, evokes klezmer music, while the second, introduced by the cello and the violin, is melodic and nostalgic.  Prokofiev was at the keyboard for the work’s 1920 premiere in New York City.  He returned to Russia in 1936 and survived Josef Stalin’s terror over the arts by “composing watered-down Prokofiev.”  He died in Moscow in March 1953 of a brain hemorrhage – within hours of Stalin’s death from the same cause.    

Franz Schubert, Selections of Lieder:  Schubert (1797-1828) “is, in several ways, the most unfathomable of the great composers” [Alex Ross].  During his short lifetime, he was known primarily as a Viennese song-writer.  Few of his symphonies, chamber music or piano works were known outside a small circle of friends.  Indeed, only 190 of his more than 600 art songs were published when he died, so even the full extent of his song-writing brilliance was not known.  .  Harold Schonberg has said that it took 40 years after his death before “the world woke up to the fact that Schubert was one of the colossal creative figures of music.”  Tonight’s program features six of his Lieder, written from 1817 to 1826, which set to music the works of five poets.  These songs share a common theme – the water.  A program insert sets forth the German texts, as well as Randall Scarlata’s own English translations.

Thea Musgrave, Four Portraits:  Scottish-American composer Musgrave (b. 1928) is an exciting and respected composer in contemporary music.  She infuses her compositions with rich musical language and a strong sense of drama.  Musgrave attended the University of Edinburgh and thereafter studied for four years with Nadia Boulanger at the Paris Conservatory.  After establishing herself in London with a variety of orchestral, chamber, operatic and choral works, she moved to the United States in 1972.  Asked about being a “woman composer,” Musgrave responded, “Yes, I am a woman; and I am a composer.  But rarely at the same time.”  She wrote Four Portraits in 1956, based on a text by Sir John Davies (1569-1626).  The lyrics are, as she put it, “cynical portraits of important personages of the time.”  She would probably add that none of the four breeds has yet become extinct.   

Samuel Barber, Dover Beach:  Samuel Barber (1910-81), trained at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he was “the golden boy of American music” [David Dubal].  His music “is deeply felt, never secondhand” [Wilfrid Mellers].  Barber is best known for his heart-rending Adagio for Strings, adapted from the second movement of his 1936 String Quartet.  But his 1933 setting of the poem “Dover Beach” by Malcolm Arnold (1822-1888) shares with Barber’s most famous work “a striking nostalgia, a longing for an evergreen past” [Dubal].  “Dover Beach” is one of the six Barber works that will, according to Dubal, “stand the severe test of time.”  Our guest artist, Randall Scarlata, recorded “Dover Beach” with the Ying Quartet in a 2013 CD entitled “American Anthem.”    

Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe (“The Poet’s Love”), op. 48:  What a complex man Schumann (1810-56) was: a man of literature as well as music, a music critic (the “discoverer” of Brahms) as well as a composer and conductor.  His relationship with the virtuoso pianist Clara reflects as much storybook romanticism as it does tragedy.  Today, Schumann would probably be diagnosed as manic-depressive.  His 1854 breakdown and suicide attempt sent him to an asylum near Bonn, where he died two years later at age 46.  After he married Clara, Schumann “became Schubert’s true successor as a master composer of songs” [Dubal].  In his sometimes maniacal workstyle, Schumann composed the song cycle Dichterliebe within a matter of days in 1840, based on texts by the anti-Romantic poet Heinrich Heine.  The overall impact of the song cycle is ironic and tragic.  However, “as the singer’s final, sorrowful strains fade, a bittersweet piano postlude offers a sense of repose found nowhere in Heine’s original” [Jeremy Grimshaw].  A program insert sets forth the German text, as well as Mr. Scarlata’s own English translations.