Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

George Gershwin, arr. by Robert Russell Bennett, Ballad from “Porgy and Bess:”  In George Gershwin (1898-1937), classical music met the  Jazz Age.  George and his brother Ira were sons of Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States in the 1890s.  George began to study classical music at age 12.  At age 16, he opted for Tin Pan Alley, dropping out of high school to write songs for music publisher Jerome Remick.  His first hit song was “Sewanee,” recorded by Al Jolson in 1920.  With Ira as his lyricist, he wrote music for Broadway and London.  “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “The Man I Love,” “’S Wonderful” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” remain permanent fixtures of American song.  In 1924, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue showed that he could write concert music as well as songs.  After he read the novel Porgy and saw a stage adaptation in 1926-27, Gershwin’s ambitions began to focus on writing an opera.  In 1935, he finally produced “his last work and magnum opus ... an opera of greatness” [David Dubal].  The songs of Porgy and Bess are now “completely integrated into the mainstream of American culture” [id.].  On July 11, 1937, at the height of his fame, he died of a brain tumor.  Only in America, could “an artist with Gershwin’s magic touch ... be cherished equally for his serious and his popular work.  Gershwin remains America’s best-loved composer” [Dubal].  Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1960) was an American composer and arranger who worked with Gershwin and other composers of the era, as an orchestrator and arranger.  After Gershwin’s death, he became known as the definitive orchestrator of “Porgy and Bess.” 

Astor Piazzolla, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (“Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas”):  Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) took the Argentinian tango from the dance hall to the concert hall, composing, as he said “for the ear rather than the feet.”  Born in Argentina, his family moved to New York City from 1925-1936, where he absorbed the life of Little Italy.  He returned to Buenos Aires at age 15 and began a life as a musician and composer.  Through a chance meeting with Artur Rubenstein, who often toured in Argentina, Piazzolla met the country’s leading composer Alberto Ginastera, with whom he studied classical music.  He spent a year in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger.  After composing a number of works for her review, she told him that she could hear Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók and Hindemith in his works, but not Piazzolla.  He played her one of his tangos and she exclaimed, “You idiot!  That is the real Piazzolla!”  The combination of musical influences in his life gave him a “unique blend of tango, classical music and jazz” [All Music Guide].  Piazzolla composed the four tangos of this suite as independent works between 1965-1970.  Only retrospectively did he revise them to reflect the fast-slow-fast format of each of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”  The suite was premiered in 1970 to great acclaim.  It has been scored for numerous instrumental combinations, including the chamber trio version Brightmusic will play at this concert.

Edward Knight, Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon: Edward Knight (b. 1961) has been honored as Oklahoma's Musician of the Year and with the Outstanding Faculty Award, Oklahoma City University’s highest teaching honor.  His works have been performed by artists including violist Paul Neubauer and Tony winner Kelli O'Hara and by the New York Philharmonic in venues from the Hollywood Bowl to Carnegie Hall.  Oklahoma-based commissions include Cradle of Dreams, a choral and orchestral composition for a 100-piece orchestra and 250 voices, two full-length musicals, three acclaimed song cycles, and works for chamber music including Beneath a Cinnamon Moon, which Brightmusic commissioned in honor of the Oklahoma centennial.  Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon was commissioned and premiered in 2011 by the enhakē quartet, and presented by the Oklahoma City University Wind Philharmonic in a symphonic band version the following year.  Of this work, the composer writes: “In Korean legend, the beautiful and diligent weaver Chiknyo and handsome herder Kyonu fall so deeply in love that they begin to neglect their duties. The king punishes them for their folly, and orders them separated.  They work and weep in solitude for a year, she in a remote western kingdom and he in a land to the east.  They finally are granted a visit one day each summer, where they again walk the Silver River on a celestial bridge formed by the wings of birds on the seventh day of the seventh moon.”

Ernö von Dohnányi, Sextet in C Major, op. 27:  Dohnányi (1877-1960) was born in present-day Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.  He was a dominant figure in Hungarian music during the first half of the 20^th Century.  He composed, in addition to work as a pianist, a music educator and a conductor.  As a composer, Dohnányi was not a nationalist, like his fellow countrymen Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly.  Instead, he composed in the broader Romantic European tradition of Liszt and Brahms, once even having been labeled “the Hungarian Brahms.”  Dohnányi remained in Hungary during World War II, using his influence and fortune to protect Jewish musicians.  After losing both of his sons in the war (one in combat, the other executed for his role in a plot to kill Hitler), he moved to the United States, composing and teaching at Florida State University.  Dohnányi wrote the Sextet in C Major, his last major composition for chamber music, at age 58, shortly after he became the director of the Budapest Academy.  The Sextet consists of four “very Brahmsian movements” [John Henken] which “cover a wide range of moods” [Rob Cowan].  Although written and premiered in 1935 (with Dohnányi at the keyboard), it was not published until 1948.  “His chamber works are in a deeply personal style, with rich lyricism, highly energetic rhythm, and almost always filled with an abundance of humor” [Graham House].  This work, in particular, “demands considerable virtuosity from its players” [Chapel Hill Records].