Program Notes
Spoleto Chamber Music
February 12, 2000, Mees Hall

About the Artists

Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music artistic director Charles Wadsworth created the Mid-Day Chamber Music Series at Italy’s Festival of Two Worlds, popularly known as the Spoleto Festival, in 1960 at the request of Gian-Carlo Menotti.  The daily concerts grouped accomplished soloists into chamber groups for inspired music making.  Wadsworth carried the tradition on to Spoleto/USA in Charleston, South Carolina, when this sibling festival was founded in 1977.  As host, Wadsworth has been weaving informal and informative remarks into Spoleto concerts for four decades.  The Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music ensemble made its first tour of the United States in 1997, and now comes to Columbus as part of its third U.S. tour.  Wadsworth himself is a recent recipient of the Chamber Music America Award, and was the founder in 1969 of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Violinist Chee-Yun is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions.  In addition to her performances with Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music during the 1999/2000 season, she debuts with the Oregon and Utah Symphony Orchestras.

Cellist Andrés Díaz won first prize at the 1986 Naumburg International Cello Competition, as well as a 1998 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a grant from the Susan W. Rose Fund for Music.  He is an Associate Professor of Cello at Boston University and co-director of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Quartet Program.

Todd Palmer won the 1990 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and has served as principal clarinetist of Wyoming’s Grand Teton Festival and the Minnesota Orchestra.  He was the first wind player to receive the Grand Prize at the Ima Hogg Young Artist Competition, allowing him to make his concerto debut with the Houston Symphony.

Composer, arranger, and pianist Stephen Prutsman was an award winner at the 1990 Tchaikovsky International Competition, won a 1991 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and received a medal at the 1991 Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition of Belgium.  The same year, he founded the El Paso Chamber Music Festival, where he currently serves as Festival Director.

Spoleto Festival USA Chamber Music appears through arrangement with ICM Artists, Ltd., 40 West 57^th Street, New York, New York 10019.

Josef Suk (1874-1935)

Elegy, for violin, cello, and piano, op. 23 (composed 1902)

Josef Suk was not simply one of Antonín Dvorák’s favorite students at the Prague Conservatory.  In 1898, Suk married Dvorák’s daughter Otilie and so also became his son-in-law.  Around the same time, Suk discovered the work of the Czech poet and novelist Julius Zeyer (1841-1901).  The melancholy mood of Zeyer’s writings, coupled with Suk’s identification of himself and Otilie with Zeyer’s legendary young couple Radúz and Mahulena, made Zeyer the strongest influence on the young composer.  This was in sharp contrast to the lure of folk music on so many of Suk’s Czech contemporaries.  Unlike the works of such composers as Leos Janácek, Vitezslav Novák, Ladislav Vycpálek, or his own teacher Dvorák, Suk’s music has little folk flavoring.

For forty years, Suk was a violinist in the Czech Quartet, yet he wrote surprisingly little chamber music himself.  A good deal of that chamber music dates from his years as a student (1885-1892) at the Prague Conservatory, where he would spend the last dozen or so years of his life teaching composition and serving as rector.  Probably his most prominent student was the composer Bohuslav Martinu.  The composer Josef Suk, by the way, is the grandfather of the currently active violinist of the same name, who was born in 1929.

By the time Zeyer died on January 29, 1901, Suk had already based a number of works on poems or stories of the poet, most notably the orchestral suite “Pohádka, op. 16.”  In 1902, a public festival was arranged in Prague to honor the memory of Zeyer, and Suk was invited to contribute.  Originally, the “Elegy, op. 23” was scored for violin, cello, and harmonium, accompanied by string quartet and harp.  It served as a musical introduction to an open air tableau entitled “When the sun sets above Vyëehrad,” which was part of the Zeyer memorial and inspired by his epic poem “Vyëehrad” (literally, “high castle”).  The same year, Suk arranged the “Elegy” for violin, cello, and piano.

For further information about Josef Suk, we suggest http://www.karadar.it/Dictionary/suk.html

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Contrasts, for violin, clarinet, and piano (composed 1938)

Had clarinetist Benny Goodman not gotten together with violinist Joseph Szigeti to commission a piece that could fit on two sides of a 78 rpm record, it’s likely that Béla Bartók would never have written a chamber work including a wind instrument.  “Contrasts” originally consisted of the first and third movements, roughly corresponding to the subdued “lassú” and the wild “friss” of the Hungarian dance known as the csárdás.  To this two-movement work conceived under the title “Rhapsody,” Bartók added a central interlude, fulfilling the commission and more.

Modestly, Bartók relegated the piano, his own instrument, to a mostly accompanimental role, but the polyphonic violin and the monophonic clarinet explore the entire universe of Bartókian effects.  Not only do the three instruments never blend, but in keeping with the title, their differences are exploited.  Goodman, Szigeti, and pianist Endre Petri premiered the work in New York on January 9, 1939.  The next year, Bartók himself joined Goodman and Szigeti in a famous recording of the work.

The “Verbunkos” was once danced by armed and uniformed Hungarian soldiers to attract the enlistment of young men.  Bartók’s version, marked “Moderato, ben ritmato,” is subtly dominated by the clarinet, which opens the movement and concludes it with a sinuous cadenza.  Marked “Lento,” the moody “PihenÞ is one of Bartók’s characteristic “night music” pieces, full of shifting meters and gamelan-like accompaniment in the piano.  A mistuned violin(scordatura) opens the “Sebes” (marked “Allegro vivace”), but is soon abandoned for a regularly-tuned one.  Likewise, Bartók called for a B-flat clarinet in the outer sections of this finale, in contrast to the clarinet in A for the modal midsection in the Bulgarian rhythm of 13/8.  Near the close, the violin has its turn with an intricate cadenza.

For further information about Bela Bartok, we recommend that you have a look at http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/bartok.html and http://www.ultranet.com/~cwholl/bartok/bartok.html

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Fantasia in F minor, for piano four hands, op. 103, D. 940 (composed 1828)

In his all-too-brief life, Franz Schubert never married, but he is thought to have harbored romantic inclinations toward one of his young music students in particular.  Legend has it that he once declared to Countess Caroline Esterházy (of the same family famously associated with Joseph Haydn) that explicit dedications to her were unnecessary since ALL of his music was dedicated to her.    That being said, the one piece that Schubert actually DID inscribe to her was his “Fantasia in F minor, D. 940” for piano, four hands.

Schubert had begun sketching the piece in January 1828 and had likely drafted much of it by the time he wrote to his publisher Schott about it on February 21^st.  In that letter, he mentioned the dedication to Countess Caroline.  Schubert didn’t actually complete the “Fantasia” until April.  On May 9^th, he and fellow pianist Franz Lachner (1803-1890) played the work for their friend, the dramatist Eduard von Bauernfeld (1802-1890).  In his diary, Bauernfeld wrote, “Today Schubert (with Lachner) played his new, wonderful four-hand fantasy to me.”

The “Fantasia in F minor, D. 940” comprises four uninterrupted contrasting sections.  The first, marked “Allegro molto moderato,” serves as a unifying force, as hints of the opening theme are heard periodically throughout the work and figure prominently in the coda.  A staccato motif later in this section returns as part of the climactic fugue.  The “Largo” section is said to have been inspired by Schubert’s having witnessed the Vienna debut of the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini in March 1828.  The “Allegro vivace” serves as a sort of scherzo with trio.  The final “Con delicatezza” section begins with a recollection of the opening theme, launches into a fugue, then comes to a sudden stop before the coda brings back the opening one last time.

For further information about Franz Schubert, we recommend http://www.siuk.org.uk and http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/schubert.html

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (composed 1962)

Francis Poulenc dedicated the “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano” to the memory of Arthur Honegger (1892-1955).  Both had been members of “Les Six,” the informal group of French composers from the post World War One era.  Ironically, although Poulenc wrote the work in the summer of 1962, it would not receive its world premiere until April 10, 1963, more than two months after his own death on January 30, 1963.  A Carnegie Hall concert that was planned as a tribute turned into a memorial.  Clarinetist Benny Goodman, who had commissioned the work, was joined at the piano by Leonard Bernstein for the performance.

Starting with his “Flute Sonata” of 1956, Poulenc planned to write a cycle of sonatas for each woodwind instrument and piano.  After this “Clarinet Sonata,” he did complete his “Oboe Sonata,” which turned out to be the last substantial work he would finish before his death.  He never got around to a bassoon sonata.  As it happens, all three of the existing sonatas of the projected cycle share certain structural and motivic traits.

After a spirited and angular opening, the “Allegro tristamente” harkens back to “Tel jour, telle nuit” from his opera “Dialogues des carmélites.”  The sharply contrasting central section is cast in a more serious vein.  Throughout, there are passages that bring to mind his 1959 “Gloria.”  Solo clarinet introduces the “Romanza,” mournful and slow.  That mood is banished completely by the rollicking quasi-rondo finale, “Allegro con fuoco.” Chords sound in the piano while the clarinet flutters comically above it all.  A more lyrical second section recalls a theme from the opening movement, and it all ends with a riotous coda.

For more information about Francis Poulenc, please see http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/poulenc.html

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)

Trio in G minor, for violin, cello, and piano, op. 15 (composed 1855)

Inspired by the failed Prague revolution of 1848, Bedrich Smetana strove in both his music and his life to ennoble the culture of his native Bohemia.  He was among the first to challenge the operatic polarities of German versus Italian with a genuine alternative based on his own national themes, best exemplified by his 1866 “The Bartered Bride” and his 1876 “The Kiss.”  Unorthodox in his compositional habits, Smetana shied away from the more formal symphony, preferring instead the less fettered symphonic poem, such as his monumental cycle of six, “Má vlast” (My fatherland).

Even though he became renowned, alongside Dvorák, as one of the foremost Czech national composers, Smetana also wrote his share of searingly personal works.  For these, he generally stayed with smaller ensembles, most notably the two autobiographical string quartets from his final decade.  More than twenty years earlier, however, the 1855 death of his eldest and musically promising little daughter, the four and a half year old Bedéiëka, inspired Smetana to create his most ambitious work up to that date, the “Trio in G minor, op. 15.”

It so happened that Smetana had a simultaneous professional inducement to write the trio.  The violinist Otto von Königslöw arrived in Prague, and with the cellist Julius Goltermann and the pianist Smetana, formed a trio that premiered the work on December 3, 1855.  That evening of music ended with a Robert Schumann trio, and more than one critic noted the resemblance.  Closer to our own time, a critic has suggested that perhaps it was the work of another Schumann, Clara, to whom Smetana might have been referring.  The first movement of this “Trio, op. 15” has some similarity to Clara Schumann’s own “Trio in G minor” and could have symbolized Smetana’s unfulfillable dream about how his daughter might have grown.

The chromatic, sad, and wide-ranging solo violin melody is soon joined by a countermelody in the cello, and by chordal accompaniment in the piano.  The motif of the opening measure serves as the unifying spark for all three movements.  The second theme introduced by the cello is much more at peace.  The second movement (marked “Allegro, ma non agitato”) is a scherzo with two trios or “alternativo” sections.  The main theme of the “Finale” is based on a Czech folksong, “S’il jsem proso na souvrati” (I was sowing millet) with multiple personal and political resonances for Smetana.  It was both an unofficial song of his childhood grammar school and a rallying cry of the Young Czech nationalist movement.  He had also used the same tune in his early “Piano Sonata” of 1846.  A second theme sounds in the cello.  Late in the movement, a funeral march sounds, a clear reference to the beloved daughter lost to scarlet fever.

For additional background on Bedrich Smetana, we recommend http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/smetana.html and http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/smetana.html

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.  He is a contributing performing arts critic to the InnerArt Web site at http://innerart.com/performancespace/index.html and to the eDANZ Web site at http://www.edanz.com.  

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