Legacies I: the creative continuum

This concert is generously supported by Ronni Lacroute

PROGRAM NOTES

Nathan Campbell

A distinguished alum of Fear No Music’s Young Composers Project, Nathan Campbell (b.1990) was born and raised in Washington State and began piano and composition studies at a young age. He earned a BM in Composition at Chapman University and his MM at the San Fransisco Conservatory of Music.

The winner of several awards, including the 2013 San Fransisco Shanghai International Chamber Music competition, Campbell has worked with groups including The Friction Quartet, Fear No Music, The Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the SFCM Orchestra, The Firebird Ensemble, The Penderecki String Quartet, Phonochrome, and The International Low Brass Trio.

Cloud Valley for four cellos (2014)

Campbell is deeply affected by his Pacific Northwest surroundings, and currently resides in Bellingham, Washington, where he composes and teaches. He writes the following about Cloud Valley: “While backpacking through the North Cascades in the summer of 2013, I experienced a weather pattern that saw heavy rains and thunderstorms at night and clear skies and warmth during the days. The valleys would be drenched and the warmth from the morning sun filled the valleys with clouds. The trail often led me higher up along the ridges having emerged from these valleys and I got to enjoy the experience of looking out across miles of mountainous landscape with a sea of clouds spreading out below the peaks and ridges. There was a heavenly isolation as the layer of clouds provided me with a layer of separation from all the worries and turmoil of the world below. I had started sketching out a piece for cello quartet prior to this hike and the experience fit the material.”

Victoria Vita Poleva

The Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Poleva (b. 1962) studied at the Kiev Conservatory before teaching there herself from 1990-2005. Her early works, such as her ballet score Gagaku and Anthem for chamber orchestra, show the influence of the polystylism of Alfred Schnittke’s Soviet avant-garde. From the later 1990s she developed a more reserved, tonal style of writing associated with the “sacred minimalism” associated with composers such as Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli. Celebrated throughout Europe, her works have been commissioned by violinist Gidon Kremer and the Kronos Quartet, and in 2009, her Ode To Joy was performed at a concert commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Simurgh-quintett for piano and string quartet (2000)

Poleva’s piano quintet, “Simurgh-quintett” refers to the Simurgh, a giant but benevolent winged creature from ancient Persian mythology. A number of legends of the simurgh suggest it was female, over 1700 years old and thus all-knowing, and served as a unifying force between the earth and the sky. Specifically, Poleva uses an 8th-century Sufi poem by Farïd ud-Dïn Attär called “The Conference of the Birds” which depicts a group of thirty birds that set forth on a journey through seven valleys to meet their queen, the Simurgh, only to see their own reflections in the lake near the Simurgh’s home, thus realizing they themselves were indeed the leader they were looking for (in Farsi, Simurgh translates to “30 birds”.

Poleva’s work is constructed with two main elements: psalmodic speech (piano) and choral singing (strings), both based on texts from Ukrainian Orthodox prayer, and presented almost in the antiphonal style of this religious practice. To represent the journey from separation to unity, these two elements gradually rotate, intertwine, and coalesce over the course of the work. Throughout the work we hear the images of soaring birds, ruffling feathers the flapping of wings, and other bird sounds that suddenly culminate with the singing of the fiery Simurgh in its unified glory.

Alfred Schnittke

The German-Jewish composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) spent much of his career in Moscow first studying and later teaching at the Moscow Conservatory. Like many concert composers in Russia, he enjoyed steady work writing for film, producing over 70 film scores in his 30 years in Moscow before spending his later years in Hamburg.

Piano Quartet (1976)

Clearly influenced by Shostakovich, Schnittke also incorporated serial techniques and other modernist touches before developing his own highly influential style of music known as polystylism, in which he juxtaposes strikingly disparate kinds of music into the same composition, often in unpredictable ways and in rapid succession. Schnittke once remarked of this method “the goal of my life is to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck in doing so.”

Schnittke’s later years were spent in ill heath, and are notable for his conversion to Catholicism and an developing interest in mysticism, resulting in a spare, meditative style of writing that contrasted the frenetic energy of his earlier work.

His Piano Quartet is a good example of his polystylist years, mixing jarring dissonance, clusters, and extended performance techniques with an almost ghostly apparition of Mahler’s sketch of a scherzo for the same instrumentation, written a hundred years earlier. Schnittke begins the work by quoting Mahler’s scherzo opening, and after obsessively referring to the work several times during his own piece, he ends his quartet with a complete presentation of the 24 measures of Mahler’s unfinished pencil sketch, before adding his own final notes.

Gustav Mahler

Much has been said about the influence of Bruckner and Wagner upon Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), and certainly we find ample evidence of this in Mahler’s epic symphonic works and restless chromaticism. Less discussed but nonetheless significant was the effect the music and mentorship of Brahms- the seminal figure from the other end of the late 19th century aesthetic spectrum- had on the career of the young Mahler composing and conducting in Vienna.

Mahler studied composition with Brahms’ friend Robert Fuchs at the Vienna Conservatory, and shared an apartment with Hans Rott, an obsessive admirer of Brahms. The Brahmsian influence can be heard in Mahler’s vocal writing in both his choral symphonies and particularly in the song cycle Songs of a Wayfarer. And clearly, both composers held Beethoven in the highest regard.

Though the two composers were aware of each other, their paths didn’t cross until 1890, when 30-year old Mahler was conducting Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Budapest Opera. Brahms, by now the dean of Viennese composers at 57, was invited to attend the performance, but declined, insisting that no one could do the work justice anymore so he can only enjoy it by reading Mozart’s score at home and would rather spend the evening drinking beer. However, he was persuaded and not only attended the performance, but shouted enthusiastically at its conclusion and insisted on meeting the young conductor who made it happen. The two would remain in touch, with Brahms helping to secure a conducting positions for Mahler in both Hamburg and later Vienna. Brahms was even supportive of Mahler the composer, whom he generously dubbed “the king of the revolutionaries!”

Piano Quartet (1876)

Mahler’s earliest compositions were a Sonata for violin and piano, a piano quintet, and a movement of a piano quartet. Of these, only the quartet survived, along with the sketch for the scherzo movement mentioned above. Written in 1876, the work was evidently awarded first prize in a Vienna Conservatory composition competition. Other than an informal performance shortly after it was written, in Mahler’s hometown of Jihlava (in which Mahler played piano). there appears to have surprisingly been no public performance for nearly a century, when it was finally performed on a live radio broadcast in New York City in 1962.

Johannes Brahms

Of the nearly 400 songs that Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote, the fourth song in his collection of five art songs from 1868 includes within it perhaps his most transcendently famous melody, Wiegenlied (Lullaby). But the set contains some notable features aside from this celebrity that are representative of Brahms’ uniquely complex craft. The first three songs all have brief meter changes, which is unusual for folk music-based songs. The piano scoring throughout the set is notably active and challenging, and the final song stands out as serious and profound, after the somewhat breezy set of folk songs preceding it.

Five Songs, op. 49 (1868)

The text for the five songs is as follows:

1. Am Sonntag Morgen (On Sunday Morning) Text by Paul Heyse, after an Italian folk song

Am Sonntag Morgen, zierlich angetan,
Wohl weiß ich, wo du da bist hingegangen,
Und manche Leute waren, die dich sah’n,
Und kamen dann zu mir, dich zu verklagen.
Als sie mir’s sagten, hab’ ich laut gelacht,
Und in der Kammer dann geweint zur Nacht.
Als sie mir’s sagten, fing ich an zu singen,
Um einsam dann die Hände wund zu ringen.

On Sunday morning, dressed so gracefully,
Well do I know where you went,
And there were many people who saw you
And came then to me to complain about you.
When they told me, I laughed loudly,
But then in my room, I wept the night.
When they told me, I began to sing,
But then afterwards, alone, I wrung my hands raw.

2. An ein Veilchen (To a Violet) Text by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty, after an Italian poem by Giovanni Battista Zappi

Birg, o Veilchen, in deinem blauen Kelche,
Birg die Tränen der Wehmut, bis mein Liebchen
Diese Quelle besucht! Entpflückt sie lächelnd
Dich dem Rasen, die Brust mit dir zu schmücken.
O dann schmiege dich ihr ans Herz, und sag ihr,
Daß die Tropfen in deinem blauen Kelche
Aus der Seele des treu’sten Jünglings flossen,
Der sein Leben verweinet, und den Tod wünscht.

Hide, o violet, in your blue calyx -
Hide my melancholy tears, until my darling
Visits this spring! If she smilingly picks
You from the grass to adorn her bosom with you,
Oh then nestle yourself to her heart, and tell her
That those drops in your blue calyx
Flowed from the soul of the truest youth,
Who is weeping away his life and wishes for death.

3. Sehnsucht (Yearning) Text by Josef Wenzig, after a Bohemian (Czech) folk poem

Hinter jenen dichten Wäldern
Weilst du meine Süßgeliebte
Weit ach weit, weit ach weit!
Berstet ihr Felsen,
Ebnet euch Täler,
Daß ich ersehe,
Daß ich erspähe
Meine ferne, süße Maid!

Behind those thick woods
You stay, my sweet beloved,
Far, oh far away!
Shatter, you rocks,
Be leveled, you valleys,
That I might see,
That I might glimpse
My sweet, far-off maiden!

4. Wiegenlied (Lullaby) Text from German folk collection (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) and Georg Scherer (verse 2).

Guten Abend, gut Nacht,
Mit Rosen bedacht,
Mit Näglein besteckt,
Schlupf unter die Deck’:
Morgen früh, wenn Gott will,
Wirst du wieder geweckt.

Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht,
Von Englein bewacht.
Die zeigen im Traum
Dir Christkindleins Baum
Schlaf nun selig uns süß
Schau im Traum’s Paradies.

Good evening, good night,
Bedecked with roses,
Covered with carnations,
Slip under the blanket
Early tomorrow, God willing,
Will you be woken again.

Good evening, good night,
Guarded by angels,
Who indicate to you by dream
The tree of the Christ child:
Sleep now blissfully and sweetly,
Behold Paradise in your dreams.

5. Abenddämmerung (Twilight) Text by Adolf Friedrich von Schack

Sei willkommen, Zwielichtstunde!
Dich vor allen lieb’ ich längst,
Die du, lindernd jede Wunde,
Unsre Seele mild umfängst.

Hin durch deine Dämmerhelle,
In den Lüften, abendfeucht,
Schweben Bilder, die der grelle
Schein des lauten Tags gescheucht.

Träume und Erinnerungen
Nahen aus der Kinderzeit,
Flüstern mit den Geisterzungen
Von vergangner Seligkeit.

Und zu Jugendlust-Genossen
Kehren wir ins Vaterhaus;
Arme, die uns einst umschlossen,
Breiten neu sich nach uns aus.

Nach dem Trennungsschmerz, dem langen,
Dürfen wir noch einmal nun
Denen, die dahingegangen,
Am geliebten Herzen ruhn;

Und indes zum Augenlide
Sanft der Schlummer niederrint,
Sinkt auf uns ein sel’ger Friede
Aus dem Land, wo jene sind.

Be welcome, hour of twilight!
Long have I loved you above all;
You soothe every wound,
Gently embracing our souls.

Throughout your dusky brightness
In the air, damp with evening dew,
Hover images that the glaring
Light of the noisy day dispells.

Dreams and memories
Approach from childhood times,
Whispering with ghostly tongues
Of past happiness.

And to the comrades of our youthful pleasures
We turn in our father's house;
Arms that once embraced us
Are open wide to us again.

After the long pain of separation,
We may once again
Be with those who have gone hence,
And rest among beloved hearts;

And until upon our eyelids
Slumber gently flows down,
A blessed peace sinks down upon us
From the land where our friends are.

—

Translations copyright © by Emily Ezust, from the LiederNet Archive— https://lieder.net/

Clara Wieck-Schumann

Clara Wieck-Schumann (1819-1896), who was one of the most renowned concert pianists in Europe as well as a fine composer in her own right, had put her writing on the back burner while managing her husband Robert’s composing career, tending to his increasing health issues, and raising their eight children.

Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 20 (1853)

C. Schumann’s op. 20 variations on a theme from Robert’s Bunte Blätter (Album Leaves) op. 99 no. 4, was her first return to composing in over ten years. She wrote it within two weeks and presented it to her husband on June 8th, 1853 for his 43rd birthday. On September 30th of the same year, an unknown 20-year old composer named Johannes Brahms first visited the home of Robert and Clara Schumann, beginning friendships with them both that would become possibly the most formative and significant of his life.

The mutual respect and admiration these three composers had for each other could not be more evident than in this variations project. Robert Schumann’s theme was constructed with his frequently used C-L-A-R-A motif, a five note descending figure. Brahms would actually go on to write his own set of variations on the same theme (op. 9), and also include in it a quote of Clara Wieck’s Romance Variée, op. 3 in his final variation. This is significant because Robert Schumann had quoted the same melody of Clara’s in his own Impromptus sur une romance de Clara Wieck, op. 5. Then Brahms, remarkably, was able to convince Clara to incorporate the same theme from her earlier work into an inner voice of HER final variation of op. 20. This generous sharing of ideas and inspiration epitomizes our celebration tonight.