Saturday, March 24, 2012, 8 p.m., Southern Theatre
Fourth Annual Kenneth L. Coe and Jack Barrow Concert

New York Woodwind Quintet

About the Artists

Carol Wincenc, flute
Stephen Taylor, oboe
Charles Neidich, clarinet
Marc Goldberg, bassoon
William Purvis, horn

For 63 seasons, the New York Woodwind Quintet has maintained an active performance schedule in the United States and abroad while also teaching the next generation of woodwind performers.  The Quintet has commissioned and premiered over 20 compositions, some of which have become classics of the woodwind repertoire.  They include Samuel Barber's Summer Music, and quintets by Gunther Schuller, Ezra Laderman, William Bergsma, Alec Wilder, William Sydeman, Wallingford Riegger, Jon Deak, and Yehudi Wyner.  The Quintet has featured many of these in recordings for such labels as Boston Skyline, Bridge, New World Records, and Nonesuch.  The Quintet’s members also honor the legacy of departed members, including the late Samuel Baron, by continuing to perform his transcriptions of works such as Bach’s Art of the Fugue and the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the late Ronald Roseman, by performing his Wind Quintet No. 2 and Sextet for Piano and Winds which was dedicated to the New York Woodwind Quintet and completed just before he died.  The NYWQ has been an Ensemble-in-Residence of The Juilliard School since 1989 where most teach individually as well as coach and administer the woodwind chamber music seminar and program.  The NYWQ now offers mini-residencies based upon their teaching, seminars, and wind chamber music coaching at The Juilliard School.

 

The New York Woodwind Quintet has previously appeared under the auspices of Chamber Music Columbus on November 7, 1960; January 16, 1962; and April 3, 1965.

 

The New York Woodwind Quintet appears by special arrangement with Stanton Management, 25 Cimarron Road, Putnam Valley, New York 10579.

 

Special support for this concert has been provided by a generous grant from the Kenneth L. Coe and Jack Barrow Fund for Chamber Music Performance of the Columbus Foundation.

Program

Pavel Haas (born Brno, Czechoslovakia, June 21, 1899; died Auschwitz, October 18, 1944)

Wind Quintet, op. 10 (composed 1929)

Preludio:  Andante, ma vivace
Preghiera:  Misterioso e triste
Ballo eccentrico:  Ritmo marcato
Epilogo:  Maestoso

Moravian folksong, Jewish chant, and jazz came together in the music of Pavel Haas.  At the Brno Conservatory in the early 1920s, Haas studied with Leos Janácek (1854-1928), absorbing the Czech and Moravian traditions.  As a Jew, Haas grew up with the sounds of the synagogue in his ears.  As a child during the early twentieth century, he was aware of radio, film, and jazz.  Among his surviving works are at least three film scores and incidental music for a number of stage plays.

 

During the 1930s, Haas taught music, but upon the German occupation, he and his wife were prohibited from work and performances of his compositions were banned.  In 1941, he was interned at Theresienstadt, the “model” Nazi concentration camp.  In the notorious propaganda film about the camp made by the German Ministry of Propaganda, Haas himself takes a bow following a performance of his 1943 “Study for Strings.”  Contrary to Nazi promises of safety, most of the participants, including Haas, were soon thereafter shipped to Auschwitz for execution.

 

Composed in 1929, the “Wind Quintet, op. 10” was dedicated to the Moravian Wind Quintet, who premiered it in Brno in 1930.  The moody “Preludio” is followed by the prayer-like “Preghiera”.  Some listeners hear Janácek’s “March of the Bluebirds” in the aptly named “Ballo eccentrico.”  The ultimately optimistic “Epilogo” concludes the quintet.

Paul Hindemith (born Hanau, Germany, November 16, 1895; died Frankfurt, December 28, 1963)

Kleine Kammermusik, op. 24, no. 2 (composed 1922)

Paul Hindemith served in the German army during World War I, playing bass drum in a regimental band and, towards the end of the war, serving in the trenches.  Having formed a string quartet with his fellow soldiers, he recalled a performance of Debussy’s “String Quartet” being interrupted by a radio announcement of the composer’s death, in March 1918.  “We did not play to the end,” Hindemith later wrote.  “But we realized for the first time that music is more than style, technique, and the expression of powerful feelings.  Music reached out beyond political boundaries, national hatred, and the horrors of war.  On no other occasion have I seen so clearly what direction music must take.”

 

Following the war, and especially after signing with the prominent Mainz publisher B. Schott’s Söhne, Hindemith embraced the role of composer.  Attempting to dislodge docile audiences from their complacency, he poured forth a cascade of provocative works in a wide variety of media.  “Kleine Kammermusik” (Little Chamber Music) is related by its opus number to the first of a series of seven “Kammermusik” pieces he wrote between 1922 and 1927.  But the slyly satirical “Kleine Kammermusik” may be the first of Hindemith’s works to fully reflect his individuality.

 

The clarinet opens “Lustig,” a quick march.  The waltz that follows suggests the sounds of a carnival midway.  Marked “Ruhig und einfach,” the central movement is a calm oasis.  The brief scherzo gives each instrument a few moments in the spotlight, leading directly to the spirited dance of the finale.

Samuel Barber (born West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1910; died New York, January 23, 1981)

Summer Music, op. 31 (composed 1956)

Slow and indolent – With motion

The Chamber Music Society of Detroit and popular radio host Karl Haas (1913-2005) commissioned “Summer Music” from Samuel Barber in 1953, envisioning a septet to showcase the first chair players of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.  And although members of the orchestra premiered the work in Detroit on March 20, 1956, “Summer Music” owes its existence – and its evolution from seven strings and winds down to five winds alone -- at least in part to an earlier iteration of the New York Woodwind Quintet.

 

Having been impressed by a performance of the NYWQ in Maine in August 1954, Barber asked to listen as the ensemble rehearsed and to work with him as he composed.  According to accounts by then-flutist Samuel Baron (1925-1997), Barber was particularly fascinated by a collection of chords that then-horn player John Barrows (1913-1974) had identified as being as troublesome to play correctly as they are magnificently sonorous to hear.  Working together, composer and quintet brought the work to life, and following the Detroit premiere, the NYWQ championed the piece.

 

Barber borrowed the theme of the “Slow and Indolent” introduction from his own unpublished orchestral work “Horizon” from a decade earlier.  A second section, marked “With Motion” leads to a brief return of the blues-tinged opening.

Carl Nielsen (born Sortelung, Denmark, June 9, 1865; died Copenhagen, October 3, 1931)

Wind Quintet, op. 43 (composed 1922)

Allegro ben moderato
Menuett
Präludium:  Adagio.  Thema con variazioni:  Andantino festivo

Not often can a composition trace its origins to a telephone call, especially one placed in 1921.  Late that year, the Danish pianist Christian Christiansen (1884-1955), rehearsing with members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, took a call from his friend, the composer Carl Nielsen.  Hearing Mozart being practiced in the background, Nielsen invited himself to the session, beginning a long association with the ensemble.  He planned to write a concerto for each of the five players, but lived to complete only those for flute (1926) and for clarinet (1928) before his death in 1931.

 

As soon as Nielsen finished work on his “Symphony no. 5” in early 1922, however, he got to work on a quintet for the ensemble.  It was finished by April 30, when it received its first private performance and was premiered publically by the Copenhagen Wind Quintet on October 9 that same year.

 

Introduced by the bassoon, the “Allegro ben moderato” anticipates Stravinsky’s neoclassicism in its sonorities and recalls plain old classicism in its sonata form.  The contrapuntal “Menuett” is dominated by the clarinet and bassoon; its humorous trio section features mostly the flute, clarinet, and oboe.  For the “Adagio” prelude to the final movement, the oboist switches to the English horn.  For the theme and eleven variations, Nielsen borrows his own “Min Jesus, lad mit Hjerte faa” (My Jesus, make my heart to love thee), a hymn tune quite familiar to Danes at the time, and treats it with comic irreverence.

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-- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.  He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com).