Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Concert 1, August 3, 2021

Ludwig van Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, Op. 16 

German Romantic composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was born in Bonn, Germany, into a family for whom music was a profession.  His grandfather was kapellmeister (music director) to the Bishop of Cologne, and his father was a musician in the bishop’s choir.  He received extensive training and began composing around the age of 13.  He relocated to Vienna when he was 21 and took the city by storm, first as a brilliant pianist and improviser and later as one of the greatest composers in Europe.  This three-movement quintet, composed in 1796, was clearly inspired by Mozart’s quintet K. 452—written in the same key and for the same ensemble: piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn.  While considered the most Mozartian of Beethoven’s early works, the quintet hints at the rebel he would become. Beethoven was a shameless showoff at the keyboard, and this quintet was a vehicle for displaying his jaw-dropping virtuosity. 

Gabriel Fauré,  Pavane for Flute, Clarinet and Piano (arr. Michael Webster)

French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was one of the most influential composers of his generation.  He entered formal training at age 9 and was a student of Camille Saint-Saëns.  He served as organist of L’église de la Madeleine, a highly-coveted posting, and director of the Paris Conservatoire.  His duties left him little time for composing, which he did during his summer breaks.  By the end of his career, he was widely recognized as the leading French composer.   The single-movement Pavane, written in 1887, is a simple and evocative piece originally composed for a small chamber orchestra.  Described by its composer as “elegant, assuredly, but not particularly important,” it remains of Fauré’s most popular works that would inspire a number of other composers to write pavanes. 

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Souvenir de la Havane for Flute, Clarinet and Piano  (arr. Michael Webster)

Gottschalk (1829-1869) was an American romantic composer and pianist born in New Orleans to an Ashkenazi Jewish businessman and French Creole mother.  He learned piano at an early age and was recognized as a prodigy.  At age 13 he entered formal training in Europe.  Despite his exposure to European music, his style remained distinctly American with influences of slave music—the precursor of jazz.  Gottschalk traveled extensively in the West Indies and South America, absorbing the music and culture, and his composition style reflected these influences.  Composed in 1859, Souvenir de la Havane is a languorous habanera marked by distinctly Cuban rhythms and syncopated rhythms with pianistic flourishes.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Grande Tarantelle for Flute, Clarinet and Piano (arr. Michael Webster) 

Owing to its popularity, Gottschalk transcribed the Grande Tarantelle for many different combinations, including a piano solo, piano trio, violin and piano and a recently rediscovered arrangement for orchestra. This lively piece, first performed in Philadelphia in 1864, was arranged for piano and orchestra by Hershy Kay and was later used by George Balanchine in a ballet.

Francis Poulenc, Sextet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon and Piano 

French composer and pianist Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was one of the famed “Les Six,” a prominent group of young composers—five French and one Swiss—living and working in Paris in the early part of the 20th century.  He is best known for his religious and light-hearted secular works.  Written between 1931 and 1932 for standard wind quintet and piano, Poulenc’s three-movement sextet contains complex rhythms with influences of jazz and ragtime.  Poulenc was not satisfied with the original piece and revised it extensively in 1939.  

Concert 2, August 5, 2021

Jennifer Higdon, Piano Trio

Prolific American composer Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) has been a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute since 1994.  She won the 2010 Pulitzer Price for Music for her violin concerto and three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto (2010), the viola concerto (2018) and her harp concerto in 2020.  Accessible and meditative, her Piano Trio was written in 2003 for the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, with two contrasting movements entitled “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.” Higdon wrote, “Can music reflect colors and can colors be reflected in music? I have always been fascinated with the connection between painting and music . . . [which] begs the question, can colors actually convey a mood?”

Edward Knight, INBOX for Flute, Viola and Piano 

Edward Knight (b. 1961) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was introduced to music by his grandmother, Kathryn Dyer Knight, a concert pianist. He excelled at trumpet and as a teenager toured three summers with Musical Youth International, performing in Russia, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and several European capitals.  Knight earned a master’s and doctorate in composition from the University of Texas.  He studied with John Corigliano and at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was the first American to win the Arthur Bliss Memorial Award for outstanding postgraduate composer.  He is currently composer-in-residence and director of music composition at the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University.  He was named Oklahoma’s 2002 Musician of the Year. “INBOX,” written in 2010, was inspired by the modern dilemma of “instant communication, multitasking, and short attention spans,” says M.J. Alexander, photographer and wife of the composer. “INBOX explores a world where a flood of information awaits each morning in your email inbox. The four-movement work presents familiar styles and patterns in an off-kilter way.”

Ludwig van Beethoven, Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in B-flat major, Op. 97, “Archduke”   

Beethoven (1770-1827) settled in Vienna, then the capitol of the music world, when he was 21, in the waning years of the Classical period.  He was a student of Franz Joseph Haydn, but he wasted no time developing his own style, ushering in the Romantic period that would dominate the 19thcentury.  His earlier works are similar to Haydn and Mozart, but by 1800 he was breaking away from Classical restraints, as his music was becoming more individualistic, dramatic and emotional.  By the time he penned the famous “Archduke,” the last of his trios, his style was fully developed as he neared the end of his second period.  Popular from the outset, its meticulously-balanced four movements are solidly Romantic in style. Considered one of the greatest of his chamber works, the trio is a noble work dedicated to an aristocratic pupil and friend of the composer, the Archduke Rudolph. 

Concert 3, August 7, 2021

Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata for Piano and Violin in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2  

The C minor violin sonata of Beethoven (1770-1827), his seventh of ten, was published in 1803 along with two others as “Three Sonatas for the Pianoforte with the Accompaniment of Violin.”  In his youth Beethoven was a brilliant pianist and a competent string player, and all of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano and violin present the two instruments as equal partners, although the composer always listed the piano first.  Considered his grandest, the sonata was written at the beginning of the composer’s second period, during which his music became weightier and darker as he struggled with encroaching deafness and deepening isolation. The four-movement work is bookended by the forceful and often turbulent first and fourth movements, making technical demands on the violin, which was undergoing innovations that Beethoven would fully exploit. The sentimental second movement is followed by a whimsical scherzo.  The piece concludes with a blazing virtuosic coda.   

Harry Burleigh, Southland Sketches for Violin and Piano

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Harry Burleigh (1866-1949) was a composer and arranger admired during his lifetime for his rich baritone voice.  He was instrumental in the development of a characteristically American sound, arranging spirituals and other plantation melodies into classical form.  A student of Antonin Dvorak in New York, Burleigh introduced his teacher to spirituals, and many of those influences later appeared in some of Dvorak’s greatest works, such as his beloved “New World” symphony.  Dvorak wrote, “The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies.  This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.”  Dvorak championed Burleigh, who in turn promoted the works of other Black composers.  In 1914, together with Victor Herbert and George Maxwell, Burleigh helped establish the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers—ASCAP—to protect the copyrights of artists.  His Southland Sketches, written in 1916, are miniature salon pieces inspired by spirituals and folk music and were among the first works to be published by an African-American.         

William Bolcom, Selections from Afternoon Cakewalk for Clarinet, Violin and Piano: Scott Joplin, Easy Winners, and William Bolcom, Graceful Ghost

Afternoon Cakewalk is a suite of rags of various composers by William Bolcom, including one by “the King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin (1868-1917).  The suite, which also includes Bolcom’s own “Graceful Ghost,” premiered in New York in 1979.  Seattle native William Bolcom (b. 1938) is a composer and pianist who has won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy and the Pulitzer Prize.  He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008.  His most notable teachers include Darius Milhaud at Mills College and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, where he won the 2ème Prix de Composition. Scott Joplin wrote over 100 rags, including the popular “Easy Winners.”  Musicologist and Joplin biographer Edward Berlin wrote that the trio section is the composition’s outstanding feature, revealing “musical thinking unusual for ragtime.”  Joplin, a Texarkana native, played a major role in the establishment of ragtime as a national craze. 

Roshanne Etezady, Bright Angel for Clarinet and Piano 

American composer and educator Roshanne Etezady (b. 1973) is lecturer of composition at the University of Michigan and works to expand the audience for new music.  Her wide-ranging style has been characterized as lyrical, sublime, clever and colorful.  Fanfare magazine has described her music as “fresh, effusive, and immediately likeable.”  “Bright Angel: American Works for Clarinet and Piano,” named for the Bright Angel Trail in Grand Canyon National Park, is a sweeping spiritual journey in five continuous movements evoking Native American mythology and the majesty of the Canyon.  

Concert 4, August 10, 2021

Claude Debussy, Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in G major 

French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  He showed early talent and entered the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of ten.  A musical maverick, he discarded the musical conventions of the day, earning him the strong disapproval of the musical establishment.  In 1884 the young composer nonetheless won France’s most prestigious musical award, the Prix de Rome. His only opera, Pelléas and Mélisande, won him international fame by the time he was 40. His G major trio was written in 1880 when he was 18 years old and in love.  Music critic Harold Schonberg observed, “Nothing in the music suggests Debussy.  It is sweet, sentimental and sugared; it verges on the salon.” The BBC praised the “high beauty of many of its passages, and its light, clear textures.” 

Libby Larsen, Slang for Clarinet, Violin and Piano

One of America’s most celebrated and prolific living composers, Libby Larson (b. 1950) has composed works in virtually every genre.  She is co-founder of the American Composers Forum.  Larsen was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and moved with her family to Minneapolis at the age of three.  Her early musical exposure was eclectic: her father was a clarinetist in a Dixieland band, her mother played boogie-woogie recordings, and she was a member of a school choir, learning to sing Gregorian chants. She received a Bachelor’s and Master’s and a PhD at the University of Minnesota.  She won a Grammy for the production of her song cycle Sonnets from the Portuguese, and in 2010, she received a Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America.  Completed in 1989, “Slang for Clarinet, Violin and Piano” is a one-movement work in three sections.  The piece, says the composer, derives its names from “both jazz and boogie slang and twentieth-century ‘new music’ slang throughout the composition,” based on what she describes as a developed “lexicon of musical slang.”  She adds, “the changing musical genres throughout the work give the performers freedom to adapt to each musical language.”  The music, she explains, is patterned after American language—slang—and is more about rhythm than pitch with a lot of body language and truncated dialogue between the instruments.  Enjoy the conversation!

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 for Piano Trio (tr. Beethoven)  

Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote nine symphonies spanning his three musical periods (early, middle and late) and encompassing virtually every human emotion along the way.  His first, written when he was only 25, understandably sounds a lot like Mozart, his idol, and Haydn, his teacher.  With the second symphony, written in classical form in 1801-1802 at the end of his early period, Beethoven the revolutionary is starting to emerge, with sudden mood changes, energy and high drama.  During this time the composer’s deafness was progressing steadily, and he was starting to fear the worst.  Despite deep inner turmoil, the piece is full of good humor and charm.  The critics, nevertheless, reacted harshly to the symphony’s innovations, one calling the piece a “wounded dragon that refused to die.”  The four-movement work was, however, sufficiently popular that Beethoven himself transcribed the entire symphony for piano trio, with all its original virtuosic brilliance.   

Program Notes by Sara Grossman