Sunday, May 14, :00 p.m. Margaret Madsen. Senior Recital. DePaul Recital Hall 804 West Belden Avenue Chicago

Transcription

1 Sunday, May 14, :00 p.m Margaret Madsen Senior Recital DePaul Recital Hall 804 West Belden Avenue Chicago

2 Sunday, May 14, :00 p.m. DePaul Recital Hall Margaret Madsen, cello Senior Recital SeungWha Baek, piano PROGRAM Mark O Connor (b. 1961); arr. Mark O Connor Appalachia Waltz (1993) Hans Werner Henze ( ) Serenade (1949) Adagio rubato Poco Allegretto Pastorale Andante con moto, rubato Vivace Tango Allegro marciale Allegretto Menuett Jean Sibelius ( ) Theme and Variations for Solo Cello (1887) Intermission Samuel Barber ( ) Cello Sonata, Op. 6 (1932) Adagio ma non troppo Adagio Allegro appassionato SeungWha Baek, piano

3 Program Johannes Brahms ( ); arr. Alfred Piatti Hungarian Dances (1869) I. Allegro molto III. Allegretto V. Allegro; Vivace; Allegro SeungWha Baek, piano P.D.Q. Bach ( ) Suite No. 2 for Cello All by Its Lonesome, S. 1b (1991) Preludio Molto Importanto Bourrée Molto Schmaltzando Sarabanda In Modo Lullabyo Menuetto Allegretto Gigue-o-lo Margaret Madsen is from the studio of Stephen Balderston. This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of the degree Bachelor of Music. As a courtesy to those around you, please silence all cell phones and other electronic devices. Flash photography is not permitted. Thank you.

4 PROGRAM NOTES Mark O Connor (b. 1961) Appalachia Waltz Duration: 4 minutes Besides recently becoming infamous for condemning the world-renowned late pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki as a fraud, Mark O Connor is also known as an award-winning violinist, composer, and teacher. Despite growing up in Seattle, Washington, O Connor always had a passion for Appalachian fiddling and folk tunes, winning competitions in fiddling, guitar, and mandolin as a teen and young adult. It s no surprise, then, that his most famous composition embodies the lush, rolling Southern mountains. Borrowing from fiddling tradition, O Connor originally wrote his waltz for unaccompanied violin in Since then, O Connor has arranged his waltz for numerous solo instruments and ensembles. If the listener closes their eyes, it can at times be difficult to tell how many people are performing this unaccompanied solo work. O Connor achieves this effect by often having the cellist play on two strings at once, each string alternating with melody or harmony in response to the other. The piece features two very distinct sections which the listener hears multiple times, the first very dense and more outwardly festive, the second majestic and lower in pitch. The frequent drones and ornaments are staples of fiddle music. Interestingly, despite featuring the correct time signature of three beats per measure, Appalachia Waltz lacks the strong underlying beats of a typical dance and favors a contemplative mood over the usual waltz effervescence. Hans Werner Henze ( ) Serenade Duration: 8 minutes This quirky serenade, full of character and surprises, was composed by a mind which had been striving to escape the oppressive Nazi culture in Germany since he was a child. Hans Werner Henze, the eldest son of a fascist father, struggled to get his parents to accept his musical and compositional calling. After being drafted into the military, Henze actually enhanced his already robust music education by learning about new

5 Program Notes countries and exiled composers when he ended up in a British prisoner of war camp. The serenade came about in the post-war period. By then, Henze was sustaining himself with commissioned works, and his experimentation with twelve-tone music (in which a repeating sequence of all twelve notes, A through G#, is the melodic basis of a piece) is apparent in this early work. Despite being so short and so numerous, each of the nine movements features a distinct character, sometimes even displaying character contrasts within a movement. Henze s frequent use of dance forms (Tango, Minuet, etc.) foreshadows his eventual love for ballets and other orchestral works, while the vast array of contrasting sections mirrors his overall stylistically restless output. Towards the end of his life, he requested that this piece and only one other be performed at his funeral. Jean Sibelius ( ) Theme and Variations for Solo Cello Duration: 10 minutes This unpublished work by Sibelius has no real name. The movements might be presented in the wrong order; they had to be pieced together from two different manuscripts by Sibelius scholars after his death. Even the year of composition was guessed based off handwriting samples. Very little is also known about how to interpret this piece, as Sibelius wrote in very few dynamic or tempo indications and left some ambiguous markings that had to be edited out or approximated posthumously. For the uninitiated, a theme and variations is a simple musical form, opening with a very simple tune (although an introduction precedes the theme in this case) which the composer then alters and embellishes in as many contrasting variations as they see fit. At the end of this piece, Sibelius leaves the performer with a wistful coda which, like the introduction, is not based off of the theme. Overall, the piece embodies a powerful loneliness, which is accentuated by the instrumentation of just a single cello. Unlike Henze, Jean Sibelius was lucky to grow up in a musical family in Finland during a time when Finnish culture was being heavily promoted (the nation has a long history of being ruled by other countries). Around

6 Program Notes the time he composed this theme and variations, Sibelius was becoming increasingly interested in his childhood hobby of composing. Despite being a relatively immature work of Sibelius, it rejoices in the Nordic musical traditions everybody associates with him today. Samuel Barber ( ) Cello Sonata, Op. 6 Duration: 20 minutes Continuing the trend of cello music written by men in their early 20 s, American composer Samuel Barber wrote this piece while studying composition at the Curtis Institute of Music. He worked very closely with both his professor, to whom the piece is dedicated, and his cellist classmate Orlando Cole, who he named the physician at the birth of this sonata. Despite it quickly becoming a staple in the cello repertoire, Barber continuously worried about how his sonata would be received by audiences. His colleagues were very focused on the avant-garde, while Barber took inspiration from older works such as Brahms Cello Sonata no. 2. The piece even sounds less American than European. However, its blend of modernism and Romanticism, of New World and Old World sounds, makes it a worthy first American cello sonata. Barber s Cello Sonata opens with a series of leaps in both the cello and piano which echo throughout the first movement. This turbulent introduction and the warm, gentle second theme are reminiscent of the Brahms sonata mentioned earlier. Although it follows a standard sonata structure, the key relationships are very modern. The second movement lulls the audience with its slow, sentimental introduction before exploding into outright festivity. Marked presto, one of the fastest tempo markings, both performers speed through this middle section before reaching the restatement of the opening. Finally, the restlessness of the first two movements comes to a head in the last, a stormy test of one s time-keeping abilities.

7 Program Notes Johannes Brahms ( ); arr. Alfred Piatti Hungarian Dances Duration: 9 minutes 1868 was a good year for Brahms; he completed five collections of 25 total piano pieces, including the Hungarian Dances and his famous Wiegenlied (Lullaby). Ever since he was young, Brahms admired the music of the Roma people (Roma people were strongly associated with Hungary), and elements of their music can be found in other pieces of his otherwise Germanic output. Not long after they were published, most of these ten dances for piano four-hands were arranged for full orchestra by other composers. These are the versions most people are familiar with today. The dances were also popular on the piano, as amateur pianists could play the duets together and Europe was embracing the idea of national identity and pride more and more. Brahms captures the folksy Roma essence with frequently emphasized offbeats, a strong, steady pulse in the background, capricious tempos, and a generally unrestrained nature. P.D.Q. Bach ( ?) Suite No. 2 for Cello All by Its Lonesome, S. 1b Duration: 10 minutes Considered a pimple on the face of music, the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals, and the most dangerous musician since Nero, P.D.Q. Bach was shunned by his famous family and never received a formal music education. Due to his black sheep status, very little is known about him, except for what Professor Peter Schickele has uncovered. Schickele became aware of the youngest Bach son when he discovered one of his cantatas being used as a coffee filter in a Bavarian castle in Ever since, he has researched Bach s odd life and gone on promotional tours of his works. In addition to inventing the loudest instrument in history, the pandemonium, Bach wrote a wide range of compositions (all plagiarized), and patented medicines to actually raise money. Apologies to the audience in advance. Notes by Margaret Madsen.

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