Inspired Tradition Program Notes Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, in G Major, Op. 78 Johannes Brahms Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna In his first twenty years, Johannes Brahms made an astonishing leap, from a miserable childhood in the downtrodden harbor area of Hamburg to an eminent position as a distinguished young composer. He began his career as a musician at the age of twelve by giving piano lessons for pennies, and at thirteen, he was playing in the harbor-side sailors bars. By the age of sixteen, however, he had progressed to playing Beethoven s Waldstein Sonata as well as one of his own compositions in a public concert. In April 1853, just before his twentieth birthday, he set out from Hamburg on a modest concert tour, traveling mostly on foot. In Hanover, he called on the violinist Joseph Joachim, who at twenty-two had just become the head of the royal court orchestra there and who was one of the finest violinists of the time. Joachim was so impressed by Brahms that he gave him a letter of introduction to Liszt in Weimar and sent him to see Schumann in Düsseldorf. Robert Schumann was then Germany s leading composer, and his wife, Clara, was one of Europe s greatest pianists. When they heard Brahms play, they took him into their home. Although this sonata purports to be Brahms s Violin Sonata No. 1, according to the reflections of a student of Brahms, the composer had presumably discarded five violin sonatas that he had composed before he wrote this one, the first that he thought good enough to preserve and present to the world. He composed this work during the summers of 1878 and 1879, when he had already become a mature artist. It was his only piece of chamber music from the productive period in which he composed his
Symphony No. 2, the Academic Festival and Tragic Overtures, the Violin Concerto and the Piano Concerto No. 2. For years after Robert Schumann s death, Brahms remained close to Schumann s widow, Clara, a distinguished pianist and composer in her own right. When Brahms sent her a manuscript copy of this new work, she wrote back, I must send you a line to tell you how excited I am about your Sonata. It came today. Of course I played it through at once, and at the end could not help bursting into tears of joy. Ten years later, when Clara Schumann was seventy years old and in failing health, she still loved the sonata and treasured the friendship of both Joachim and Brahms. From her house in Frankfurt she wrote a touching letter to Brahms, in which she said, Joachim was here on Robert s eightieth birthday and we had a lot of music. We played the [Op. 78] Sonata again and I reveled in it. I wish that the last movement could accompany me in my journey from here to the next world. This sonata is one of the most lyrical compositions among all of Brahms s instrumental works. The violin always has the leading voice, and the piano writing is always so clear and transparent that an imbalance never exists between the two instruments. There are only three movements, not the usual four frequently considered traditional for a sonata, and Brahms wrote to his publisher, clearly in jest, that since he came up one movement short, he would therefore accept 25% less than his usual fee for this work. As in many of Brahms compositions, the movements are intimately interrelated. A three-note motto figure is common to all three movements. A mood of gentle nostalgia permeates the first movement, Vivace ma non troppo, and sets the tone and character for the entire sonata. Brahms here works much like Beethoven had before him: he
introduces a germ out of which themes for the whole movement both evolve and grow. The second movement is a solemn and dramatic Adagio, and the third, a rondo, Allegro molto moderato, contains an episode in which Brahms brings back the slow movement theme. The principal melodic material of this movement, however, comes from a related pair of his songs, Regenlied ( Rain Song ) and Nachklang ( Reminiscence ), Op. 59, Nos. 3 and 4. The text, by Klaus Groth (1819), is, Pour rain, pour down, and recall to me the dreams I dreamt in childhood, my old songs that we sang indoors when we heard the raindrops outside. Raindrops are falling from the trees onto the green grass. Tears from my sad eyes are wetting my cheeks. The Palace of Nine Perfections Zhou Tian Born in Hangzhou, China in 1981 The Chinese-American composer Zhou Tian received his musical education at The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School and studied with Jennifer Higdon, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse, Stephen Hartke, and Donald Crockett (composition); Meng-Chieh Liu and Antoinette Perry (piano). Zhou s music has been performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, the St Cloud Symphony, Symphony in C, American Composers Orchestra, the Biava Quartet, the Arditti Quartet, the Third Angle Ensemble, pianist Yuja Wang and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. He has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Green Bay Symphony and the Music In the Loft Concert Series in Chicago. Recent premieres of his works include First Sight, commissioned and premiered by the
Minnesota Orchestra, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by the Indianapolis Symphony, Blowing Westward at Carnegie Hall s Zankel Hall, Piano Trio at the Kennedy Center, and The Grand Canal Symphonic Suite at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Zhou won first prize in the Washington International Competition for Composers, first-prize in ASCAP and Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Song Competition, three ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and Composition Fellowships from the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals. Zhou s large-scale symphonic suite for soloists, orchestra and chorus, The Grand Canal, was performed during a nationally televised celebration of the 60 th anniversary of the founding of the People s Republic of China. The work was also selected as theme music for the Zhejiang Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. His original score for Eternal Beloved (Ai You Lai Sheng), a romantic epic film, received critical acclaim. Zhou was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Colgate University. Palace of Nine Perfections was composed in 2004; the Curtis Symphony premiered it. The work s title comes from a painting by Yuan Jiang, which has been dated ca. 1691. In his note on the work Zhou writes; Though I learned about the painting when I was in elementary school in China, it wasn t until the fall of 2003 that I first saw the real work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I was immediately moved by its honesty and unusual vividness. Inspired, I wanted to create a musical reaction to Yuan s vision, hoping we can see as well as hear The Palace of Nine Perfections. The work,
consisting of three major parts, is a fusion of Chinese music elements and influences from Western contemporary music. It is a piece that uses a modern symphony orchestra to convey a sense of traditional poetic beauty and energy. The work is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, two bassoons, contra bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, crotale, chimes, triangle, suspended cymbal, snare drum, wood blocks, slap-stick, tam-tam, bass drum, Chinese bell, harp, celesta, and strings. Suite from the Opera, Der Rosenkavalier ( The Knight of the Rose ) Op. 59 Richard Strauss Born June 11, 1864, in Munich Died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch Around the turn of the century, Strauss abandoned the symphonic poem as his principal vehicle of musical expression and turned toward opera. His first two operas are now almost forgotten, but the second two, Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) are dramatic masterpieces whose durable success has not been diminished by their shocking subjects. In 1911, in his fifth opera, Strauss turned away from tragedy and disaster toward brilliant comedy. Der Rosenkavalier came as close to the spirit of Mozart as a 20 th century opera composer could. It is set in 18 th century Vienna and tells a frothy tale of love and intrigue in which a silver rose comes to symbolize betrothal. Both libretto and music are brilliantly witty and colorful, and Strauss did not overlook any opportunity to enliven the work: he even exploited the 19 th century Viennese favorite, the waltz. This Suite was created shortly before Strauss s death. It is a musical summary of the opera in one long, continuous movement in a form similar to Strauss s own symphonic
poems. It has seven sections: introduction, entrance of the Cavalier and presentation of the rose, duet of the young lovers, waltz, love-triangle trio of the young couple with the older grande-dame, another love duet and a closing waltz. The Suite is scored for triple woodwinds, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, one or two harps and strings. Susan Halpern, 2011.