Program Notes

March 27, 2009

Sonata for Violin and Piano (1921) was drafted by Leoš Janáček, a dedicated Czech nationalist, in 1914 while the Moravian people awaited the arrival of the liberating Russian forces at the beginning of World War I. He spent seven years intermittently revising the sonata, which was finally completed in 1921. The first movement opens with an uneasy, restless dialogue between the violin and piano. An impassioned violin declamation, accompanied by an agitated figure in the piano (typical of Janáček’s ‘interruption motives’ and speech rhythms), alternates with a plaintive theme. The “Ballada,” the only movement to remain unchanged in the composer’s extensive revisions, is a lilting, pastoral movement that develops fluidly through the exchange of brief motifs in the two instruments. In the three-part Allegretto the piano articulates a folk melody over a left hand trill as the violin interjects descending scales; the violin then plays a melodious passage before the return of the opening material. The Adagio opens with passages marked “ferocious” in the violin. Near its conclusion, the violin sings a majestic, chorale-like theme over a high trill in the piano to depict, in the composer’s words, “the Russian armies entering Hungary.”

Leoš Janáček  (1854-1928) was born in Moravia, (now the Czech Republic), and apart from a short time in Vienna, he spent most of his life living in Brno. Janáček was a dedicated music educator, an organist, and primarily an opera composer (Jenufa, House of the Dead, Katia Kabanova, and The Makropulos Case, to name a few). He achieved rather late career success following the translation of the operas from Czech into German by Max Brod. (Today, most opera houses program at least one Janáček opera annually.) His compositions are particularly influenced by folk music and the rhythms of speech. The notation of these rhythms and their transformation into musical phrases can often produce short musical phrases and, hence, abrupt changes of mood and tremendous emotional excitement. Though Janáček produced relatively few chamber music works, they are among the most exquisite and original in the repertoire, filled with intense, lyrical suspense and heightened passion.

Elapsed Time (1998), commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, was composed for violinist David Abel and pianist Julie Steinberg during the first three months of 1998 and consists of three related movements: Variations, Almost, and Racer. The title refers to Dresher’s interest in how the nature of musical development affects our sense of the passage of time, as well as his teenage obsession with top-fuel drag racing (a feature most evident in the last movement).

Dresher writes, “The work’s harmonic realm is derived from two contrasting modes:  an octatonic scale (comprised of alternating whole and half steps) and the diatonic scale (a seven-tone scale made very familiar from the white notes on the piano). This is an approach that I first explored in a 1995 solo piano work, Blue Diamonds, and is particularly attractive to me because it generates a great deal from systematically derived harmonic possibilities, rich in both architectural and emotional effect.

Variations: a set of several short and relatively strict variations based on the slow melody played by the solo violin at the start of the work. The basic harmonic and rhythmic material of the other two movements are outlined in the Variations.

Almost: entirely diatonic and spare. This movement, dedicated to composer and author Peter Garland, represents a yearning calm before what comes next.

Racer: a long sprint, definitely more than a quarter mile, with only one short breather.

I want to thank David and Julie for their collaboration and patience in the development of this work, the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress for supporting the commission, and Sue Bernstein for helping make it all happen.”

Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own unique personal style. He works in many forms, including chamber and orchestral composition, new opera and music theater, live instrumental electro-acoustic concerts, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater and dance. He has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, Kronos Quartet, California EAR Unit, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, Present Music, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, and the American Repertory Theater. He has performed or had his works performed at venues including New York Philharmonic, the Munich State Opera, Lincoln Center, Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, the Minnesota Opera, and Carnegie/Zankel Hall.

In May of 2008, the San Francisco Ballet premiered Thread, Dresher’s 30-minute orchestral score for choreographer Margaret Jenkins, commissioned for the Ballet’s 75th anniversary season. Dresher’s most recent opera project was The Tyrant, a solo chamber opera for tenor John Duykers that premiered in 2006 at the Cleveland Opera. Dresher was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, for which is he composing a new music theater work using invented instruments for virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick. His performing and producing organization, the Paul Dresher Ensemble and its Electro-Acoustic Band, has commissioned, premiered, recorded and toured dozens of compositions and new opera/music theater works from many of today’s most innovative composers, including John Adams, Mark Applebaum, Martin Bresnick, John Luther Adams, Roger Reynolds, Eve Beglarian, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis,  David Lang, Bun Ching Lam, Steve Mackey, Terry Riley, John Schott, Randall Woolf, Lois Vierk, and Rinde Eckert.

Aves Nostradamus: Stutter / Prophecy (2008) points to both Schumann’s Der Vogel Als Prophet and Bresnick’s Bird As Prophet, but the connections between my work and theirs are more symbolic than musical. Assuming Schumann and Bresnick aim to write the music of the fully developed elegant (and eloquent) bird, I aim to write the music of the bird in youth—clumsy and energetic.

The work, which consists of two extraordinarily lopsided movements: Stutter and Prophecy, aspires to illustrate the exceptionally complex maturation process of a Prophetic Bird. The episodic progression of the music parallels each critical development the Prophetic Bird experiences–shell to world, flickers to youthful wings, and finally nest to sky.

I wrote Aves Nostradamus while living in Brooklyn, New York, during the last weeks of the summer of 2008 and during my first weeks in New Haven, Connecticut. I would like to thank Karen Bentley Pollick and Lisa Moore for their hard work and dedication.

Sam Adams is a composer, pianist, and contrabassist from Berkeley, California. Adams studied composition at Stanford University with Mark Applebaum and Erik Ulman; electronic music with Chris Chafe, Jonathan Berger, and Jean-Claude Risset; and piano performance with Thomas Schultz. Although Adams focuses most of his energy on composing (these days), he remains a dedicated performer of both contemporary classical and jazz. His compositions have been characterized as “subtle, nuanced, carefully considered and well heard, with a special attention to color.” His works have been performed by The Paul Dresher Ensemble, Beta Collide, The Stanford New Ensemble, and alongside the accompaniment of The Merce Cunningham Dance Group. He is also the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Robert Golden Medal for Achievements in the Arts and Humanities, the Downbeat Magazine Award for Outstanding Performance, The Stanford University Scholarship for Outstanding Musical Achievements, and The California Governor’s Award for Achievements in the Arts. Adams is currently pursuing a Masters in Composition at the Yale School of Music where he studies with Ezra Laderman. Hear more at www.samuel-adams.net.

Road Movies (1995), commissioned by the Library of Congress, was first performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., in October 1995. Composer John Adams wrote, “After years of studiously avoiding the chamber music format, I have suddenly begun to compose for the medium in real earnest. The 1992 Chamber Symphony was followed by the string quartet, John’s Book of Alleged Dances, written for Kronos in 1994, and now comes Road Movies. For years the chamber music scenario remained a not particularly fertile bed in which to grow my musical ideas. My music of the ’70s and ‘80s was principally about massed sonorities and the physical and emotional potency of big walls of triadic harmony. These musical gestures were not really germane to chamber music with its democratic parceling of roles, its transparency, and timbral delicacy. Moreover, the challenge of writing melodically, something that chamber music demands above and beyond all else, was yet to be solved. Fortunately, a breakthrough in melodic writing came about during the writing of The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera whose subject and mood required a whole new appraisal of my musical language.”

The title “Road Movies” is total whimsy, probably suggested by the “groove” in the piano part, all of which is required to be played in a “swing” mode (second and fourth of every group of four notes are played slightly late). Movement I is a relaxed drive down a not unfamiliar road; material is recirculated in a sequence of recalls that suggest a rondo form. Movement II is a simple meditation of several small motives—a solitary figure in an empty desert landscape. Movement III is for four-wheel drives only, a big perpetual motion machine called “40{32afa962bfebb357e7410b63e213524541d07bd24a9220e72b240f97100f6bf4} Swing.” On modern MIDI sequencers the desired amount of swing can be adjusted with almost ridiculous accuracy—in this case, it would be 40{32afa962bfebb357e7410b63e213524541d07bd24a9220e72b240f97100f6bf4}. This swing, however, is very difficult for violin and piano to maintain over the seven-minute stretch, especially in the tricky cross-hand style of the piano part.

John Adams was born and raised in New England and educated at Harvard. In 1971 he moved to California, where he taught for 10 years at the San Francisco Conservatory and was composer-in-residence at the San Francisco Symphony. Adams’ operas, Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, all created in collaboration with stage director Peter Sellars, draw their subjects from archetypical themes in contemporary history. Doctor Atomic had its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in October 2008 under conductor Alan Gilbert, in a new production by Penny Woolcock. Other stage works include the Nativity oratorio El Niño and A Flowering Tree (commissioned to celebrate the 250th birthday of Mozart and inspired by that composer’s Magic Flute).

On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Hallelujah Junction, Adams’s recently released autobiography, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was named one of the “most notable books of 2008” by The New York Times.

Adams’ new String Quartet, written for the Saint Lawrence Quartet, was premiered at the Juilliard School of Music in January. He is presently working on an orchestral piece, City Noir, which will premiere in October, performed by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For more, visit www.earbox.com.

Bird as Prophet for Violin and Piano is the last in a series of twelve pieces entitled Opere della Musica Povera (Works of a Poor Music). The title “Bird as Prophet” refers to a piano miniature of the same name from the Waldszenen of Robert Schumann. Bird as Prophet’s combination of simple programmatic suggestiveness and abstract patterning seeks to recapture the vivid, oracular, but finally enigmatic spirit of Schumann’s (and Charlie Parker’s)