Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Samuel Barber, Selections from “Souvenirs: Suite for Piano Four Hands,” op. 28:  While totalitarianism and fascism drove European composers to America (among them, Korngold, whose Piano Quintet Brightmusic will perform tonight), home-grown American musical genius also flourished, lead by Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber (1910-1981).  Barber’s music included many 20^th Century features, but his long melodic phrases, lyricism and texture distinguish his music from that of others.  Barber is best known for his heart-rending Adagio for Strings, adapted from the second movement of his String Quartet, op. 11 (1936).  The radio performance of the Adagio in 1938 by the NBC Orchestra, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, instantly made it the ultimate American expression of elegy and pathos.  “Whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback, Barber’s Adagio for Strings plays” [Alex Ross].  “Souvenirs” (1951) reflects a completely different aspect of Samuel Barber – light-hearted nostalgia.  The Suite’s six dances (three of which will be performed tonight)  recall times when he and a friend visited the Blue Angel Club in New York City, and listened to a duo piano team known as Edie and Rack.  The Suite reflects an “awareness of adolescence [which] strikes deep into the American experience” [Wilfrid Mellers].  Barber adapted his original four-hand piano work as an orchestral suite for ballet and also transcribed it for solo piano and two pianos.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Trio in B-flat Major, op. 97 (the “Archduke” Trio) (for piano, violin and cello):  Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote this work in 1810-11, toward the end of his so-called “Middle Period.”  It was not published until 1816, and the surviving autograph score dates from 1814-15.  Recent scholars believe that, after its 1814 premiere, Beethoven revised the work, so it may be “more significant for the development of Beethoven’s late style than has hitherto been suspected” [Barry Cooper].  It is one of more than 20 works that Beethoven dedicated to Archduke Rudolph – Beethoven’s principal patron, as well as his friend, composition student and an amateur pianist.  By the time of its premiere on April 11, 1814, Beethoven was substantially deaf, but he insisted on performing the piano part.  Composer and violinist Louis Spohr contemporaneously noted:  “In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of notes were omitted.”  This was Beethoven’s last public appearance as a pianist.  Many regard this trio as one of the finest piano trios ever written, not just by Beethoven, but by any composer.  “The Archduke, in its size, strength, and emotional amplitude, overshadowed Beethoven’s other fine piano trios.  For many, the Archduke, his farewell to the form, is the greatest of all works for piano, violin and cello” [David Dubal].

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, op. 15 (for piano, two violins, viola and cello):  Korngold (1897-1957), the son of an influential Viennese music critic, was born in the waning days of Imperial Austria.  Hailed as “a new Mozart,” he was a child prodigy and European wunderkind in the early 1900s.  Artur Schnabel even premiered a piano sonata that Korngold wrote before he was a teenager.  By the 1920s, Korngold’s operas had made him a name-brand composer, conductor and teacher throughout Austria and Germany.  Among other recognitions he received was Professor Honoris Causa conferred by the President of Austria.  During the 1930s, he began to travel to the United States to write film scores, where he won two Academy Awards.  He left Hollywood for Austria in late 1937, hoping to present a new opera there, but the growing Nazi anti-Semitic influence over the arts stymied his career in Europe.  In 1938, Korngold accepted a contract from Warner Brothers, thus getting himself and his family out of Austria shortly before the German Anschluss.  He became a naturalized citizen in 1943.  It was Korngold who once said, “We thought of ourselves as Viennese; Hitler made us Jewish.”  After World War II, Korngold lived in Austria for a while, but returned to California, “where he lived his final years comfortably ... in near complete artistic eclipse” [Bruce Eder].  Korngold wrote his Piano Quintet in 1921-22.  Its lush melodic and romantic style reflects the operatic tradition in which his talents had blossomed.  The Quintet is an elaborate work in three complex movements, which require virtuoso piano technique.  It premiered in Hamburg on February 16, 1923, featuring the composer at the keyboard, and was followed by its first performance in Vienna a few days later.