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BMS
YORK
Triptych
Thursday, 9 January 1997
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Leeds Finalist Recital (14 February 1997)
There's good news and bad news. First the bad news. Those of you who were
present at the finals of the Leeds Competition, or saw them on television, will
remember that, as it turned out, the six finalists all came from the corners of the
carth. None of those we have approached could manage 14 February, or any other
date available to us. It is a great disappointment to all of us, but the risk is
inseparable from circumstances such as these.
There is good news, however. Our incoming Programme Secretary has managed
to book the winner of the competition, Ilya Itin, for our next season: unless his
planned UK tour falls through, he will open the 77th season of the British Music
Society of York with a recital on 9 October 1997.
Meanwhile we have been fortunate to enlist for next month's concert the piano
duo of Benjamin Firth and Peter Hill who memorably played for us back in March
1989: their programme will feature Stravinsky's clectrifying Concerto for two solo
pianos, Messiaen's powerful Visions de l'amen and an early work by Ravel.
Your Views
The BMS is a socicty run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committcc
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
members. They should all be wearing badges, and, whatever they say, do want to
hear from you.
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30
B'S!
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Thursday, 9 January 1997
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
Ruth Scott oboe
Sarah Burnett bassoon
Christopher Hughes piano
Mozart
Robert Planel
Beethoven
TRIPTYCH
Geoffrey Bush
André Jolivet
Rakhmaninov
Poulenc
Divertimento in Bb, K.240
Andante & Scherzo
Trio in Bb, Op.11
INTERVAL
Trio for oboe, bassoon & piano
Sonatine for oboe & bassoon
Vocalise, Op.34 No. 14
Trio for oboe, bassoon & piano
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
JOM
BS
YORK
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TRIPTYCH
Triptych was formed in 1990 at Cambridge where all three members were
studying music. They have performed extensively round Britain as a trio and
have also broadcast on Classic FM. They have recently won an award from the
Countess of Munster Trust, with the support of which their appearance tonight
has been made possible.
Ruth Scott (oboe) attended the Junior Guildhall School of Music; after
Cambridge she did postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music and spent
a year at the Karlsruhe Hochschule für Musik with Thomas Indermühle. Sarah
Burnett began playing the bassoon at the age of 11, gaining a place at
Cheetham's School; after Cambridge she did a postgraduate year at the Royal
Academy of Music, where she won the Bassoon Prize and a silver medal in the
Shell/LSO competition. Christopher Hughes (piano) was a chorister at King's,
Cambridge, and won a music scholarship to Eton; after Cambridge he was a
postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers were
Yonty Solomon and John Blakely.
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PROGRAMME NOTES
Divertimento in Bb, K.240
Allegro
Andante grazioso
Menuetto
Allegro
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
The term divertimento, as the very word implies, suggests music designed to
divert and please. We expect a divertimento to be a piece in 4-8 (or even more)
movements for 4-8 (or even more) wind (and/or stringed) instruments, containing
music that tries to charm the ear rather than stimulate the brain. But even this
catch-all definition derives from the end of the 18th century when the position had
already clarified somewhat.
During the heyday of the form, the mid 18th century, "divertimento" was one of a
group of titles which were almost interchangeable divertimento, cassation,
serenade, nachtmusik, notturno, partita and so on. Each had its own nuance of
applicability, even to the extent of reflecting the time of day at which it was meant
to be performed. But the situation was fluid: the terms overlapped a good deal
and, naturally, altered their meaning over the years and decades. And given that
most of this music was not published at the time, but circulated in manuscript
copics, it was not unknown for changes of title to take place to suit local tastes.
Many works survive only in such circulating copies and may well be known by
titles not given to them by their composers. Some we even rename ourselves: the
works we call the early piano sonatas of Haydn he called divertimentos, following
his Austrian models. Similarly, when he invented the string quartet he did so by
adapting the string divertimento, retaining this name as late as the Op.20 Quartets
(1772). Later he used "sonata" and "quartetto", which, for convenience, soon
came to be applied retrospectively to his earlier output.
Mozart wrote the Bb Divertimento, K.240, in January 1776: the autograph has
survived, so we can be sure of both date and title. It was one of a series of five
divertimentos he wrote at around this time for his employer Archbishop Colloredo
of Salzburg, probably for use as Tafelmusik [-table-music], background music for
use at banquets and social occasions. All were originally scored for a sextet of
wind instruments - pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns. The combination was a
common one, particularly effective if the event was to take place out of doors.
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Andante et Scherzo
Robert Plancl
(1908 -
Not every published composer makes it into standard musical reference works,
even the capacious 20 volumes of Grove 6, and Robert Plancl has proved to be one
of these. Fortunately, the Internet has again come to my rescue, in the form of a
website run by a small classical label in the USA to promote its recordings. Under
http://summit records.com/records/recordings/dcd145/ we find that the French
composer Robert Plancl was born in Montelimar on 22 January 1908 and studied
at the Paris Conservatoire where in 1933 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome.
Most of his energies, however, have gone into music education: not only has much
of his music been for educational use, he rose to be Inspector General of Music
Education in the schools of Paris.
The Prix de Rome was a generous and far-sighted scheme inaugurated by the
Institut de France in 1803. Winners of competitions in musical composition,
painting, architecture etc. would be sent to Rome to spend four years on a
scholarship at the French Academy (Villa Medici) in Rome, engaging in study
and creative work, not to mention soaking up the "artistic atmosphere" of Italy
and the inspiration of each other's company. The prize-winning composer was
chosen by competition at the country's highest academic institution, the Paris
Conservatoire. Winners have included practically every major French composer
with (as readers of the programme notes to the last BMS concert may remember)
the notorious exception of Ravel.
Not a few of them fell foul of the Institut's restrictions. Berlioz, for example,
wanted to breach the terms of the award and return to Paris almost as soon as he
arrived. He had heard a rumour (correct, as it turned out) that the girl he had
become engaged to on the eve of his departure had married another. Berlioz made
off back to France determined to get access to the couple (by dressing himself in
women's clothes) and kill both of them, then himself. Fortunately for him, and
music, he had got only as far as Nice when he calmed down and wrote the King
Lear Overture instead. Claude Debussy's brush with the authorities came about
over the irksome requirement to submit annual proof of the benefit of staying
Rome in the form of an envoi consisting of an orchestral score. One year he sent
only a piano duct score accompanied by the somewhat transparent excuse that the
orchestral score had perished at a fire at the binders.
None of which tells you much about Robert Planel, of course, but I hope gives you
a better perspective on the Prix de Rome.
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Trio in Bb, Op.11
Allegro con brio
Adagio
Theme and (9) Variations
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Beethoven wrote this Trio probably in the first half of 1798. It was composed at
the request of a clarinettist (unnamed in the sources) and originally scored for
clarinet, cello and piano, though when it was first published in October of that
year the violin was given as an alternative to the clarinet. (This is not just a
question of the publisher hedging his bets at the cost of a few words on the title
page. The clarinet is a transposing instrument, which means music written for it
has to be written in a different key to the one in which it is meant to sound. To
make the same music playable by a violin, a separate part has to be printed in the
proper key though this has the advantage of allowing the addition of a little
double stopping and other characteristic changes.)
According to Beethoven's pupil Czerny, it was the wish of clarinettist in question
that Beethoven make one of the movements a set of variations on a popular
operatic hit of the time, the jaunty trio Pria ch'io l'impegno from Joseph Weigl's
two-act comedy L'amor marinaro. It is sometimes forgotten that Beethoven wrote
many such sets of variations, mostly for piano solo, on operatic hits, particularly
during the 1790s. Somehow the idea of such flippant pieces does not square with
our idea of the serious, cerebral Beethoven, and these works are mostly overlooked
except as fodder for piano students: virtually all the variational works for which
he is remembered take their themes from outside the operatic world. Again
according to Czerny Beethoven even had doubts about the variations in this Trio
and long intended to write a new finale and let the variations stand on their own.
But he never got round to it.
It would have been a shame if he had. Their exuberance and wit make a perfect
foil for the genial and inventive first movement and for the Eb Adagio, with its
suggestion of a slowed-down minuet. The theme of the variations begins with a
one-and-a-half-beat upbeat figure with which Beethoven has a lot of fun. The
first variation is for piano alone; the second for the other two instruments. Both
the fourth and seventh variations are in the minor - No.4 serious, No.7 a tongue-
in-cheek funeral march. The ninth variation, with its contrapuntal byplay, is
extended into a coda with a brief excursion into G major.
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INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano
Adagio maestoso - Vivace
Poco Lento - Tempo di vivace
Geoffrey Bush was born in London and educated at Salisbury Cathedral Choir
School, Lancing College and Balliol, where he managed to take an MA in classics
and D. Mus in the same year. He has been active as a lecturer in music for extra-
mural departments in Oxford and London and as a scholar specialising in 19th-
century English music. He has composed several operas, mostly to his own
librettos, including one based on Oscar Wilde's story Lord Arthur Savile's Crime.
Geoffrey Bush
(1920-
Bush completed this Trio in 1952, writing it specially for the Camden Trio - the
bassoonist Archie Camden, oboist Evelyn Rothwell (perhaps better known as Lady
Barbirolli) and the pianist Wilfred Parry. They gave the Trio its first performance
in Canterbury on 18 November 1952.
The Trio is in two movements. The first is a Vivace, preceded by a slow
introduction. The second movement is slower and brings back music from the
first movement's Vivacc as a coda.
Sonatine for oboe and bassoon
Ouverture
Récitatif
Ostinato
André Jolivet
(1905 - 1974)
André Jolivet was the son of a painter and a pianist. During his school days he
was interested as much in art. books and plays as in music: at the age of 15, for
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instance, he devised a ballet for which he wrote the music as well as designing the
costumes and scenery. In his mid 20s he encountered the music of Varèse and
became effectively his pupil. The uncompromising modernity of Jolivet's
resulting compositions, in marked contrast to the neo-classical style prevailing in
the France of the time, attracted like-minded composers, with three of whom (one
of them Messiaen) he founded the group Jeune France. The group (of course)
issued its own manifesto and held its first concert in June 1936. After the Second
World War Jolivet hit his mature style, less uncompromising than before, but
more direct and much more effective. This period was dominated by a series of
concertos, starting with the 1947 Concerto for ondes martinot and orchestra.
Like many 20th-century French composers, Jolivet has been notably drawn to
wind instruments, in particular the flute. The Sonatina for oboe and bassoon is a
relatively late work, dating from 1963. The scoring may have been meant to
complement that of a Sonatina he had composed two years earlier for flute and
clarinet.
Vocalise, Op.34 No.14
Sergey Vasil'yevich Rakhmaninov
(1873 - 1943)
A vocalise is a piece written for the human voice and meant to be sung without
words: one or more vowel sounds are used, which may or may not be specified by
the composer. Many vocalises are exercises, studies to help the singer concentrate
on technical problems without the distraction of having to put across the meaning
of a text. Like the instrumental Study, they began as technical exercises, meant
for the studio/teaching room, but could not be prevented from infiltrating the
concert hall. Vocalises for concert use date back at least to the middle of the 19th
century (Spohr wrote a Sonatina in 1848), but the heyday of the idea was the early
part of this century, when no stone was being left unturned in the search for
colour. It was the Russian composer Glier who produced perhaps the most
eyebrow- (if not hair-) raising example, a fully-fledged Concerto for coloratura
soprano and orchestra.
The most popular example, though, is by Rakhmaninov. He wrote it in the late
summer of 1915, shortly after completing the All-Night Vigil, known more loosely
as the Vespers. It was composed for Antonina Vasil'yevna Nezhdanova, and they
gave its first performance at a Kusevitsky concert in Moscow on 6 February [old
style: 24 January] 1916. Nezhdanova was a lyric-coloratura soprano who had
appeared at the Bol'shoi Theatre in Moscow at around the time when
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Rakhmaninov was on the staff there as a conductor, and they gave a number of
recitals together.
The Vocalise was published in 1916. For some reason not entirely clear it
acquired the designation "Op.34 No. 14", tagging it on to a set of 13 Songs which
Rakhmaninov had composed back in June 1912. As an attractive short piece.
with an eminently singable melodic line, it is no surprise that the Vocalise has
proved popular with all kinds of instrumentalists.
Trio for oboc, bassoon and piano
Presto: Lent - Presto - Le double plus lent - Presto
Andante: Andante con moto -
Rondo: Très vif
Francis Poulenc
(1899-1963)
Poulenc was one of those rate creatures, an artist born with a silver spoon in his
mouth. His father was the founder of the Rhone-Pouicnc chemicals conglomerate,
and young Francis never wanted for anything. He was a jolly, gregarious man
with a wide circle of close friends who clearly meant a good deal to him - his
posthumously-published memoirs are entitled Moi et mes amis [= me and my
friends].
His music is a battleground of conflicting sides to his nature: he was a brilliant
melodist among French composers perhaps second only to Fauré; he idolised
Mozart and loved music of the classical and baroque periods; at the same time his
enthusiasms ranged from the aggressively modern scores of Stravinsky and
Prokof'yev to the sentimental kitsch of café music. If this wasn't enough, the
secular, worldly Poulenc was locked in conflict with religious impulses. The
abiding glory and fascination of Poulenc's music is the way it switches from one
style to the other, now sliding effortlessly, now startlingly juxtaposed.
Outside music for the stage, Poulenc is principally known for his piano music and
incomparable songs. But there are several chamber works, mostly featuring wind
instruments, their sharp, pungent sound admirably suiting his brittle, pointed
style; indeed, the late sonatas for flute, clarinet and oboe are all cornerstones of
those instruments' repertorics.
As well as these sonatas, Poulenc wrote the Sextet for piano and wind quintet
(1932), which the Aeolian Ensemble played for us in December 1993, and this
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Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano, composed between February and April 1926.
Even these weren't the beginning of Poulenc's chamber music for wind
instruments: they were preceded by three less well-known sonatas -
for two
clarinets (1918), for clarinet and bassoon (1922) and for horn, trumpet and
trombone (also 1922).
The 1920s were very much a time when wind instruments were "rediscovered".
They'd never really gone away from orchestral music, but had been kept at bay
from chamber music (other than outdoor, serenade-type music) by the
predominance of strings. But their biting attack and highly characteristic tone
colourings admirably suited much of the astringent music written after the First
World War: one only has to think of Stravinsky's Symphonies of wind
instruments (1920), Octet for wind instruments (1922-3) and Concerto for piano
with an orchestra of wind instruments (1923-4), and to remember just how
seminal an influence Stravinsky was on composers like Poulenc.
The acknowledged influence on this Trio is not Stravinsky, however, but Manuel
de Falla, to whom the work is dedicated. Poulenc had met the Spanish composer
in 1918, and the two were close throughout the 1920s. Poulenc later recalled "I
dedicated that little Trio to Falla to show him as best I could my loving
admiration."
The Trio has two movements. The first has a slow introduction giving on to a
witty Presto, for much of which A major and minor battle it out for possession.
The lyrical slow movement is based in Bb, but shifts towards the end to lead
straight into the Db major of the hectic Rondo.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The remaining concerts in the 76th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Friday, 14 February 1997
Benjamin Frith & Peter Hill
(piano duo)
Ravel Sites auriculaires
Stravinsky
Messiaen
Concerto for 2 solo pianos
Visions de l'Amen
Friday, 14 March 1997
Rossini
Bizet
Damase
Françaix
Mozart
Arnold
London Winds
Quartet No.1
Jeux d'enfants
17 Variations
Quartet
Adagio in Bb, K.411
3 Sea Shanties, Op.4
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 15 January 1997
Capricorn
Chamber music by Mozart, Clara Schumann (G minor Piano Trio), Jonathan
Harvey and Brahms (C minor Piano Quartet)
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S
O
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark S
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs S
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mrs B. Fox S
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F. A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
If you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, cither at the ticket desk before cach concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mr L.W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts.
The Society also NEMS
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Registered Charity No.700302
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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way,
essed
the
AS
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BORTHWICK
SMS 3/2/5 (1)
OF
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
16
INSTITUTE
*
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BMS
YORK
Peter Hill & Benjamin Frith
(two pianos)
Friday, 14 February 1997
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Leeds Finalist Recital
When the present season of BMS concerts was being planned, tonight was given
over to a recital by one of the prizewinners of the Leeds International Piano
Competition: indeed, our booking was one of the prizes he 1996 Competition.
Those of you who were present at the finals, or saw them on television, however,
may remember that, as it turned out, the six finalists all came from the corners of
the earth. None of those the Hon. Programine Secretary has approached could
manage our February date, or any other available to us.
It is a great
disappointment to the Society, but an element of risk is inseparable from
circumstances such as these.
There is good news, however. Our incoming Programme Secretary has managed
to book the winner of the competition. Ilya Itin, for our next season: unless his
planned UK tour falls through, he will open the 77th season of the British Music
Society of York with a recital on 9 October 1997.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
H
DE
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BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Friday, 14 February 1997
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
PETER HILL &
BENJAMIN FRITH
(two pianos)
Ravel
Sites auriculaires
Stravinsky Concerto for two solo pianos
INTERVAL
Messiaen Visions de l'Amen
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
D
BS
YORK
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BENJAMIN FRITH & PETER HILL
Benjamin Frith was a pupil of Fanny Waterman and his piano playing has won
many prizes: British National Concerto Competition. Mozart Memorial Prize,
Italian Busoni Competition (joint), Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition.
His recordings for the super-budget label Naxos include piano music by
Schumann and the two Mendelssohn Concertos.
Peter Hill read music at Oxford and later studied the piano with Cyril Smith and
Nadia Boulanger, who described him as "a born artist, a beautiful natural talent".
He combines his playing career with academic work: as a player he specialises in
20th-century music, particularly Messiaen - his series of recordings of Messiaen
for the Unicorn-Kanchana label were warmly endorsed by the composer; he
lectures at the University of Sheffield and has recently published a major study of
Messiaen.
Two works from tonight's programme, the Stravinsky Concerto and Messiaen
Visions de l'Amen are available on CDs in performances by Benjamin Frith and
Peter Hill: the Concerto as part of an all-Stravinsky CD (Naxos 8.553386) which
also includes the duet version of The Rite of Spring (which they played when they
visited us last in March 1989) and the slighter, but charming two-piano Sonata;
and Visions de l'Amen as part of Peter Hill's survey of Messiaen piano music for
Unicorn-Kanchana with the number DKPCD9144. Various recordings of the
Ravel pieces exist in the current catalogue, but strangely none seems to include
both the pieces making up Sites auriculaires.
Sites auriculaires
Habanera
Entre cloches
PROGRAMME NOTES
Maurice Ravel
(1875 - 1937)
Sites auriculaires constitutes one of Ravel's earliest pieces and demonstrates three
clear influences on his musical development: Ricardo Viñes, Erik Satie and
Spanish music. Ricardo Viñes was a very important figure in French music from
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the late 1890s to the 1930s: a phenomenal pianist, he was also a champion of
contemporary music, encouraging composers and premiering their works from
Debussy and Ravel up to early Messiaen. Ravel and Viñes met in 1888, when
they were still boys. They entered the Paris Conservatoire on the same day and
ended up in de Bériot's piano class: Ravel remained an indifferent pianist, but
Viñes went on to be de Bériot's star pupil. In February 1893 Ravel and Viñes
played a two-piano version of Chabrier's Trois valses romantiques for the
composer: the two spent many hours at the keyboard experimenting with "new
chords", a formative experience for Ravel.
Erik Satie was another potent influence on French music. As a composer he is
now mostly remembered for his eccentricities, but at the time the influence of hs
musical voice, particularly in the matter of simplicity (his was the opposite pole to
the prevailing over-inflated sub-Wagner style), was immensely liberating to a new
generation of composers
As for Spanish music, many French composers flirted with the style - Bizet and
Chabrier, to quote the most obvious examples - but with Ravel it was more in the
genes, his mother being of Basque descent.
Given all these influences it is not surprising that in 1895 Ravel composed his
Habanera for two pianos. He left the Conservatoire that July with his hopes of
becoming a pianist dashed, and so it was at this time he was considering
becoming a composer. (He was to return to the Conservatoire in 1898 to study in
Fauré's composition class.) The dance style of the habanera, with its seductive,
lazy rhythm, was popular in the world of Spanish music (witness the celebrity of
the Habanera from Carmen): the dance itself is Latin American in origin, as the
name suggests - Habana is the Spanish name for Havana, capital city of Cuba.
Two
years later, in 1897, Ravel wrote a second two-piano piece, Entre cloches,
presaging another lifelong interest, the sound of bells. Logically enough, Ravel
paired the two pieces, giving them the Satie-esque title Sites auriculaires [=
auricular places], the idea presumably being that these are places to be
experienced through the ears. The first performance was given by Viñes with
Marthe Dron at a Société Nationale concert in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, on 3 March
1898. It was not a success. It didn't help that the Société Nationale was a
somewhat conservative organisation, but there were other problems. The pianists
were playing at a new invention of the Pleyel company, two pianos boxed together
in a single frame. The pianists in theory faced each other, but in practice the
music stands were in the way and without eye contact they lost each other in some
of the more complex cross-rhythms. With the failure, Ravel made no attempt to
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have the work published: it didn't appear in print until 1975. But he did make
use of the Habanera: he later arranged it, virtually unchanged, as the third of the
four sections comprising his orchestral Rapsodie espagnole (1907-8).
Concerto per due pianoforti soli
Con moto
Notturno: Adagietto
Quattro variazioni -
Preludio e Fuga
Igor' Fyodorovich Stravinsky
(1881 - 1971)
In one sense tonight's concert could easily be titled French Music for two pianos.
Ravel and Messiaen qualify easily, but Stravinsky's case does need a little
pleading. It would be difficult to think of a 20th-century composer who produced
music so saturated with Russian-ness as Stravinsky's Les noces alone was
enough to reduce Dyagilev to tears of recognition and nostalgia. Yet such a view
of Stravinsky is coloured to some extent by the undue emphasis given to his works
of what one muight call his Dyagilev period, from 1908 to the mid 1920s, that is
from Firebird through to Mavra and Les noces. But through this time Stravinsky
spent only a small portion of cach year in Russia, and after 1914 was not to return
until he made his celebrated visit in 1962.
With the 1920s it became abundantly clear that the Russia he had known and
loved had gone forever. The Russian works dried up, and Stravinsky developed
and embraced a new style, understandably (if simplistically) called neo-classicism,
which dominated his output until the surprise conversion to serialism in the
1950s. Stravinsky settled in France, taking his rightful place at the forefront of
the composers working in what they made very much the centre of the musical
world at that time. He took French citizenship on 10 June 1934 and the first work
he completed after that date was his Concerto for two solo pianos, dated 9
November 1935.
Stravinsky had begun the Concerto in the autumn of 1931, directly after the
Violin Concerto, writing what eventually turned out to be the work's first
movement. But then he abandoned the piece. The problem, he explained, was
that he always composed at the piano, testing his ear against the reality of sound:
even his orchestral music was done this way, often with the help of additional
hands. But not even Stravinsky could play two keyboards at once. The problem
was solved in 1934 when he got the Pleyel company to manufacture "a double
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Title
d
VICT
WORKS
rdin
loped
SE
D
D
piano, in the form of a small box of two tightly-wedged triangles. I then
completed the Concerto in my Pleyel studio, test hearing it measure by measure
[bar by bar] with my son Soulima at the other keyboard."
Stravinsky wrote the Concerto for his own usc. Nowadays we remember
Stravinsky the performer almost exclusively as a conductor, thanks largely to the
archival recordings he began making in the late 1940s, but during the 1920s and
1930s he was just as active as a pianist. He wrote the Concerto for piano and
wind and the Capriccio for piano and orchestra for himself, as well as the Piano
Sonata and Serenade. After composing the Violin Concerto for the violinst
Samuel Dushkin in 1931, the experience of working with the instrument and the
player inspired him to write the Duo Concertant for violin and piano, with which
he and Dushkin toured. It was the success of this collaboration which spurred
Stravinsky on to complete the equivalent work for two pianos, the Concerto which
he had in effect begun between the Violin Concerto and Duo Concertant. He
began work on it again in Paris in 1934 and eventually completed it in November
1935 - the delay being caused by his busy life as a performer.
He wrote the Concerto to play with his son Soulima, and they gave the first
performance on 21 November 1935 at the Salle Gaveau in Paris at a concert
organised by the Université des Annales. Soulima was just 25. The younger of
Stravinsky's two sons, he had become a professional musician, having studied
with Nadia Boulanger. He had appeared as soloist in both the Piano Concerto and
Capriccio under his father's baton two years before.
Stravinsky used the title "Concerto" in its original musical meaning - a work in
which several instruments are alternately blended and contrasted. There are four
movements. The sonata-form first movement, in E minor, was the first part to be
written, dating, as we have seen, from three years before the remainder. Next
comes a Notturno in G major, its lyrical, highly ornate style strongly reminiscent
of the slow movements of the Capriccio and Violin Concerto. Then comes a set of
four variations which lead into the final Prelude and Fugue. The variations are
based on two ideas from the main subject of the Prelude and Fugue, which, of
course, are not heard until after the variations: in the original manuscript these
two movements were the other way round, but Stravinsky took the bold step of
placing the variations before the theme.
(Incidentally, in the published edition the movements are numbered I - IV, but in
the talk with which he introduced the first performance Stravinsky spoke of the
Concerto being in three movements, the last being a Prelude and Fugue "précédés
de quelques pièces varieés.")
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INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Visions de l'Amen
Amen de la Création
Amen des Étoiles, de la Planète à l'Anneau
Amen de l'Agonie de Jésus
Amen du Désir
Amen des Anges, des Saintes, du Chant des Oiseaux
Amen du Jugement
Amen de la Consommation
Olivier Messiaen
(1908 - 1992)
In 1940 Messiaen, then in his carly 30s, was taken prisoner by the Germans and
sent to a prisoner of war camp. Stalag 8A in Silesia (part of Poland which
Germany had overrun). Here (thanks to a music-loving Kommandant) he wrote
and, with three other POW musicians. performed the apocalyptic Quatuor pour ·le
Fin du Temps. In 1941 he was released and repatriated and was almost
immediately appointed professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire.
The most influential teaching he did at this time, however, were the seminars in
analysis and composition he gave between 1943 and 1947, semi-privately in the
home of a friend. Two of thosc attending the seminars proved of particular
importance, Pierre Boulez and Yvonne Loriod. Loriod made a deep impression
on Messiaen: all his subsequent piano music was inspired by, and composed for,
her, from the Turangalila-Symphonie (1946-8), with its awesome solo piano part,
to arguably the greatest single piano work of the 20th century, the Vingt Regards
sur l'Enfant Jésus (1944). She became his second wife in 1962.
Visions de l'Amen was the first work he wrote for this remarkable woman, for
them both to play together. He wrote it in the early months of 1943, his first
major composition since release from Stalag 8A. He gave the first performance
with the then 19-year-old Loriod in Paris on 10 May 1943. The work shows the
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C
31
0
1.
1
or
1st
C
he
three influences which underlie all his mature output: a deeply-held religious
belief, bordering at times on the ecstatic; an interest bordering on obsession with
Hindu (and to a lesser extent ancient Greek) rhythmic patterns; and birdsong.
Messiaen himself explained the significance of the title:
"Amen" has four different meanings. First, the creative act (Amen - so be it!).
Second, "Amen" - I submit, I accept; Thy will be done. Third, "Amen" - the wish,
the desire, that this may be, that you would give to me and I to you! Fourth, "Amen"
- all is fixed for ever, consummated in Paradise. Adding to these the life of creatures
that say "Amen" by the very nature of their existence, I have tried to express the
varied richness of the "Amen" in seven musical visions.
The "seven musical visions" are the seven movements of the work. Here is a list,
together with tasters from Messiaen's own commentaries on them:
1. Amen of the Creation
The whole piece is a crescendo. It begins absolutely
pianissimo in the mystery of that primeval nebula which already contains the
potential of light. All the bells quiver in this light - light and therefore life.
2. Amen of the Stars and of the Ringed Planet A savage and brutal dance. The
stars, suns and Saturn, the planet with its multi-coloured ring, rotate violently.
3. Amen of the Agony of Jesus Jesus suffers and weeps... He accepts. Thy will
be done, Amen.
4. Amen of Desire The word desire must be taken in its highest spiritual sense.
As the Angel named the Prophet Daniel "Man of Desire".
5. Amen of the Angels, Saints and Birdsong Song of the purity of the saints:
Amen. The exultant vocalise of birds: Amen. "The Angels fall before the throne
on their faces: Amen" (Revelation)
6. Amen of the Judgement An intentionally short and harsh piece.
7. Amen of the Consummation The First Piano surrounds the Second ... with a
ceaseless carillon of chords and brilliant scintillating rhythms, in ever closer
rhythmic canons: sapphire, emerald, topaz, jacinth, amethyst, sard, the entire
rainbow of precious stones of the Apocalypse that sing, collide with, dance, colour
and perfume the light of Life.
Like many of the works of Messiaen, Visions de l'Amen is on an epic scale. The
whole piece clocks in at 45-50 minutes, with movements ranging from three
minutes or under for the shortest (Amen du Jugement) to 12 minutes or
thereabouts for the longest (Amen de l'Agonie de Jésus).
Programme notes by David Mather
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The final concert in the 76th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, will take
place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Friday, 14 March 1997
London Winds
Quartet No. 1
Jeux d'enfants
17 Variations
Rossini
Bizet
Damase
Françaix
Quartet
Mozart Adagio in Bb, K.411
Arnold
3 Sea Shanties, Op.4
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 19 February 1997
University Chamber Choir
Adrian Thompson & Jeanette Ager soloists
Peter Seymour conductor & piano
Janáček's Diary of one who disappeared, Dvořák's Gypsy Songs, plus part-songs
by Kodály, Janáček, Seiber and Martinů
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me
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Petric
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth $
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs §
Mrs M. Danby-Smith S
Mrs B. Fox §
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick S
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards $
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
If
you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, cither at the ticket desk before cach concert, or at 8, Petersway.
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
In addition to the generosity of our Bencfactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
AK
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mr L. W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Registered Charity No.700302
OF
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIEFIES
NEMS
INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
*(SMS 3/2/5(2)
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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BMS
YORK
London Winds
Friday, 14 March 1997
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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J
BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Dick Stanley
Robert Stevens
Albert Ainsworth
John Petric
Nigel Dick
Stephanie Kershaw
Brian Richards (outgoing)
Amanda Crawley (incoming)
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Sylvia Carter, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Sheila Wright
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
Continued on back cover
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B'S
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
76th Season
Friday, 14 March 1997
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
LONDON WINDS
Philippa Davies (flute) Gareth Hulse (oboe)
Michael Collins (director & clarinet)
Richard Watkins (horn) Robin O'Neill (bassoon)
Rossini Sonata a quattro No. 1 in F
Bizet
Jeux d'enfants
Damase
17 Variations
INTERVAL
Françaix Wind Quintet No. 1
Mozart
Adagio in Bb, K.411
3 Shanties, Op.4
Malcolm Arnold
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
DOC
BS
YORK
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LONDON WINDS
London Winds is directed by clarinettist Michael Collins, the youngest ever
professor at the Royal College of Music in London. The group was formed in
1988 and gave their first concert at the Wigmore Hall; they return there regularly,
and have made festival appearances on the South Bank and at the Barbican, as
well as broadcasting on BBC Radios 3 and 2. They made their Canadian debut in
1993 and first appeared in the US two years later. They enjoy a close association
with the pianists Pascal Rogé and Barry Douglas.
London Winds are highly regarded for their performances of contemporary scores,
and have been chosen by Sony Classical to cover the music for wind instruments
in the huge project to record the complete works of György Ligeti. Other
recordings include the complete wind symphonies of Richard Strauss for
Hyperion, and Beethoven's Piano and Wind Quintet with Pascal Rogé for Decca.
Moderato
Andantino
Allegro
PROGRAMME NOTES
Sonata a quattro No.1 in F
Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868)
The six Sonate a quattro [= sonatas in four parts] represent just about the earliest
surviving music by the young Gioachino Rossini. [The correct form of the
forename in Italian is Gioacchino, but he used just one c - his spelling always was
a little shaky.] Much of his carly history is hazy, a situation not helped by the fact
that some of it had to be picced together from off-the-cuff remarks dropped by the
composer in later life: Rossini retired at the age of 37, the most famous and
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successful opera composer of the age, to pursue the life of a bon viveur in Paris,
and those who have come across his penchant for self-deprecatory humour will
know just how much credence to place on these biographical glimpses. It was
certainly a colourful childhood - elements from it might well be confected into the
basis of a comic opera of the sort for which he became famous.
His mother, Anna, was 19, his father, Giuseppe, the 32-year-old lodger, when
Giachino's imminent arrival precipitated the marriage. Even the day of his first
appearance was special: it was 29 February 1792 when his voice was first heard in
Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of what is now Italy, roughly on a level with
Florence. His childhood was overshadowed by the Napoleonic wars. Pesaro
formed part of the Papal States, ruled from Rome, but the tyrannical and
oppressive local governor was much resented, and the invading French were
widely seen as liberators. Rossini senior was at the forefront of the pro-French
movement, and the enthusiasm with which, as town trumpeter, he stirred
revolutionary fervour earned him the nickname "Vivazza" - as well as a term of
imprisonment later, during a period when the Papal States regained the upper
hand.
Father and Mother made a precarious living doing whatever musical work they
could find. Mother was a singer of modest talent and also worked as a seamstress;
father sang or played in the orchestra at various opera houses. It was while they
were engaged at the nearest large city, Bologna, for the opera season, that the
seven- or eight-year-old Rossini had his first keyboard lessons from one Giuseppe
Prinetti: according to the composer's later colurful account this Prinetti eked out
his income from pupils by distilling brandy and, not possessing a bed, used to
sleep upright under the city's arcades.
In 1802 the family moved to Lugo, Giuseppe's home town, and it was here that
Rossini's evident thirst for knowledge found what it was waiting for: he took
singing lessons from a local priest, Giuseppe Malerbi, a man of some substance,
whose musical knowledge and taste and above all, library of scores - were to
have an enormous influence. This showed two years later, in the summer of 1804,
when, before he had had any formal education in music theory, Rossini composed
his six Sonate a quattro.
They were composed for Agostino Triossi, a landowner with an estate not far
away, near Ravenna. Rossini scored them for the unusual combination of two
violins, cello and double bass, not because he was being experimental or quixotic,
but for practical reasons. A manuscript copy which turned up in the Library of
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Congress in Washington contains a note by Rossini, clearly written in his own
age, describing the set as:
six dreadful sonatas composed by me at the country place (near Ravenna) of my
Maecenas friend Triossi, when I was at the most infantile age, not having taken
lessons in counterpoint, the whole composed and copied out in three days and
performed by Triossi, double bass, Morri, his cousin, first violin, the latter's brother,
violoncello, who played like dogs, and the second violin by myself, who was not the
least doggish of the three, by God.
The Sonatas have a clarity, freshness and grace that have endeared them to the
public since 1825/6, when a Milan publisher issued versions of five of them for
conventional string quartet. (No.3, with its extensive solo writing for double bass,
would have lost its point in such a transcription and so was omitted.) The
Quartets have also been successfully adapted for wind quartet (flute, clarinet,
bassoon and horn), to whose repertory they have proved a sunny and popular
addition. Rossini, whose father taught him the horn and whose orchestral writing
contains some of the most striking and effective writing for wind instruments at
that time, would no doubt have approved. The wind quartet version transposes
the first of the sonatas from G major to the more manageable F major.
Jeux d'enfants
Trompette et tambour
Petit mari, petite femme
La toupie
La poupée
Le bal
Georges Bizet
(1838-1875)
Bizet is chiefly remembered for Carmen and other works for the stage, but he was
also a formidable pianist, laying the groundwork for much of his subsequent
achievement working as an operatic répétiteur. Music figured prominently in the
family home, and his parents always meant him for a musical career: in a striking
reversal of normal parental attitudes they found they even had to hide away
literary classics so as not to distract him from musical studies. The boy's
remarkable gifts did not go unnoticed: a special dispensation allowed him to enter
the Paris Conservatoire before the statutory age, and his career there was littered
with second then premier prix in practically every course he took, culminating in
our old friend the Prix de Rome - his years in the Italian capital were amongst the
happiest of his life.
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For someone combining his gifts as a composer and as a pianist., Bizet's piano
music comes as something of a disappointment. The earlier music is immature,
while the mature music simply tries too hard. While still at the Conservatoire,
Bizet was entrusted by Gounod with the task of making the piano reductions
necessary for the printed vocal scores of his operas - Bizet was renowned for
dizzying ability as a score-reader: unfortunately the style seems to have rubbed
off, and his original piano music often has the over-inflated feel of an orchestral
reduction. Only the Variations chromatiques de concert of 1868 gets an
occasional airing as a novelty item.
The same criticisms cannot be levelled at his greatest work for the piano, the 12
pieces for piano duet making up his Jeux d'enfants [= children's games],
composed in 1871, just four years before his premature death, years that were to
see the composition of both L'arlésienne and Carmen. As he was entering a
children's world, even though (perhaps especially because) his chosen medium
was that of four hands at one keyboard, he renounced his normal piano style and
produced pieces of startling simplicity and delicacy. His success, and that of the
pieces, inspired a series of similar "childhood" duet pieces from French
composers, amongst them Fauré's Dolly Suite and Ravel's Ma mère l'oye [=
mother goose]. Bizet immediately made orchestral versions of six (perhaps seven)
of the duet pieces, five of which he formed into a suite, first performed in 1873
and published under the title Petite Suite.
Gordon Davies' wind quintet arrangement takes the five movements chosen for
the Petite Suite, reversing the order of the second and fourth pieces to produce:
Trumpet and Drum, Little husband, little wife [presumably what we would call
"mummies and daddies"]; Spinning Top; The Doll - in fact a cradle song; and
finally a galop entitled The Ball.
17 Variations
Jean-Michel Damase
(1928-
Jean-Michel Damase is one more to add to this season's impressive tally of
winners of the Prix de Rome. Damase came from a musical family (his mother
was a professional harpist) and began his musical studies early. He composed his
first piece at the age of nine, a song to words by Colette, whom he had just met.
In 1947, at the age of 19, he won the Conservatoire's first prize in composition
with a Quintet (flute, harp and string trio) and the Prix de Rome with his cantata
Et la belle se réveilla.
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To begin with Damase pursued a subsidiary career as a pianist, but commercial
Damase has
success as a composer allowed him to concentrate on that area.
composed several operas, including one based on Anouilh's Euridice, but is
probably more drawn to ballct. He has a typically French understanding of
instrumental colour, and this comes over most clearly in his chamber music. He
has also, unsurprisingly, written extensively for harp, including two concertos.
The Dix sept Variations for wind quintet date from 1951, the same year as the
First Harp Concerto. It is one of his most attractive and popular works, brimming
over with wit and the odd hint of affectionate parody.
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Wind Quintet No.1
Andante tranquillo - Allegro assai
Presto
Tema con variazione
Tempo di marcia francese
Jean Françaix
(1912-
Like our first Plantagenet king, Henry II, Jean Françaix was born in Le Mans,
midway between Normandy and the Loire. He studied first at the Le Mans
Conservatoire, where his father was director and his mother taught singing, and
then at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied composition with Nadia
Boulanger and graduated from Isadore Philipp's piano class in 1932 with the
Premier Prix.
The forthright, opinionated, but wickedly accurate Norman Lebrecht calls Jean
Françaix:
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By name and nature the quintessential French composer, contemptuous of foreignness,
elegant as a cravat and conservative to the core ... His music is at best witty and light
as a soufflé.
And Françaix is never better than when writing for wind instruments, for which
he had an affinity. One of his earliest works of this kind was the Wind Quartet
written in 1933 for members of the Le Mans staff, a work which the Aeolian
Ensemble played for us in December 1993. The First Wind Quintet followed
rather later. Here's how Françaix introduced the work for the 1988 CD by the
Aulos Wind Quintet (who, for the occasion, commissioned the Second Quintet):
In the 1950s Louis Courtinat, solo horn player with the Orchestre National de la
Radiodiffusion Française, requested me to write a wind quintet (my first) for him
and his colleagues; he wanted it to be very demanding, so that the five players
would be able to display their prowess to the full. I am by nature a peaceable
sort of person, but while composing it I made great efforts to give as malevolent
an impression as possible. And I seem to have succeeded! The five of them had
to closet themselves away for six months, with their neighbours muttering
imprecations meanwhile, in order to rehearse the piece adequately. But the
effect of fearsome difficultics on our friends the virtuosi is much the same as the
effect of frightening fairy-tales on children. My wind quintet conquered the
world - its success was beyond my wildest dreams.
You will appreciate some of the problems musicologists are faced with if I say that
the Quintet was written in 1948 and first performed by Courtinat's quintet in May
1954.
The first of the Quintet's four movements opens with a slow introduction. The
second is a vigorous scherzo with a contrasting trio section in the style of a
plaintive waltz. The slow movement is a theme with five variations, while the
finale, as its tempo marking shows, is in French march style.
Adagio in Bb major, K.411
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
Think of Mozart and the clarinet and you automatically think of Anton Stadler,
the friend for whom he wrote the great Concerto and Quintet. In fact, Stadler was
only one of a nest of players Mozart knew and wrote for, others being Stadler's
younger brother Johann Nepomuk, along with Anton David, Vincent Springer
and three men (presumably related) all called Griessbacher. This was a time
when the development of the clarinet was at its most active, and Anton Stadler in
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particular was working on other members of the clarinet family, the lower-
reaching basset clarinet and the basset-horn (not a horn, in fact, but a clarinet that
was curled so that the brass bell at the end came out behind the player's elbow,
like a horn).
The Adagio is one of a number of picces Mozart wrote for this group of players.
It was scored for two clarinets and three basset-horns, and the calm serenity of the
outer sections suggest that Mozart had some ceremonial use in mind - possibly
Masonic: these men were members and Mozart often included basset-horns in his
known Masonic works. The autograph has survived, but it is undated, and
assigning a year has proved problematic - as can be seen from the number in
Köchel's chronologically arranged catalogue: 411 in the original edition, 440a in
the third edition and 484a in the 1964 sixth edition. The latter date is based on
associating it with other pieces of a similar type from 1785, but Alan Tyson's
analysis of the types of manuscript paper Mozart used suggests a date of 1782-3,
making Köchel's original 411 just about spot on.
The transcription for wind quintet is by Günther Weigelt.
3 Shanties, Op.4
Allegro con brio
Allegretto semplice
Allegro vivace
Malcolm Arnold
(1921-
Malcolm Arnold is one of the very few composers to emerge as it were from the
brass section of the orchestra: plenty have been pianists or organists; or string
players; rather fewer have been wind players. Those whose principal study was
the trumpet are very rare.
Arnold studied at the Royal College of Music in London, having won an open
scholarship in 1938. He joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1941,
becoming first trumpet the following year. After two years' war service he spent a
season in the BBC Symphony Orchestra, before returning to the LPO in 1946.
But in 1948 he won a Mendelssohn Scholarship and took a year off to study
in Italy. Since then he has devoted hir self to composing and
compos
conducting.
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To some, Arnold's musical style could be seen as dangerously populist, but its
exuberance, wit, spontaneity and colour disarm all such criticism. He is one of
the few "serious" composers who can write genuinely funny music, a vein not
always confined to such pieces as his contributions to the legendary Hoffnung
Festival concerts. His accessible style has also led to commissions for films, most
notably his Oscar-winning score for the 1957 film The bridge on the River Kwai.
The Three Shanties, now a staple of the wind quintet repertory, was one of
Arnold's earliest pieces, composed in 1943 when he was still in his early 20s and
had just joined the LPO as first trumpet. It was composed at much the same time
as the overture Beckus the Dandipratt and was apparently given its first
performance in an aircraft hangar in Bristol during a lunchtime break from war
work.
The three shanties are: What shall we do with the drunken sailor?, Boney was a
warrior and Johnny come down from Hilo. None is named in the score as such,
although the second movement is headed by the quatrain:
Boney was a warrior
Way, hay, yah
O Boney was a warrior
John François
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mrs F. Andrews S
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick &
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr & Mrs J. Briggs §
Mrs M. Danby-Smith
Mrs B. Fox §
Mr G. Hutchison §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
Mrs S. Wright §
If you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before cach concert, or at 8. Petersway.
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS are supported by the NFMS with
funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
AK
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mr L.W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Registered Charity No.700302
OF
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
BORTHWICK INSTITUTE
BMS S/2/5 (3)
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by Wright Design of Easingwold.
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BMS
YORK
nadme
Il’ya Itin mo
Thursday, 9 October 1997
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Our December Concerts
At the Annual General Meeting last June the Committee was asked to look again
at the policy of holding one of the society's concerts in December. Our December
concerts tend to be the most sparsely attended: that time of year is so busy,
culturally and socially, that few of us can get to everything we would like to - even
without the distraction of late-night Thursday shopping. At the same time, we
have to fit in with our hosts at the University, and, if we were to drop our
December concert, the most obvious candidate for a sixth date would be in the
first days of the university summer term, usually in the latter part of April. How
would you feel about this? Do let a Committee member know, then we can make
the right decision on the Society's behalf.
Of course, any change would not affect the current season (1997/8), and probably
not the next (1998/9) either, since concert planning is a long-distance art these
days.
Our Anniversary Commission
More news of Christopher Fox's Oboe Quintet, which the BMS commissioned to
celebrate its 75th anniversary and which was given its first ever performance here
in February 1996. The Quintet was given its first Swiss performance in Basel on
21 September and enjoyed great success. The Ives Ensemble have taken the work
up and will be giving two performances in Holland early next year, in Amsterdam
and Utrecht.
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
MPDOR
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med
الال
BS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
77th Season
Thursday, 9 October 1997
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
IL'YA ITIN
Messiaen
(piano)
Chopin Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat, Op.61
4 Mazurkas, Op.30
Barcarolle in F sharp, Op.60
Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus
INTERVAL
Prokof'yev Piano Sonata No.8 in B flat, Op.84
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
B'S
YORK
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121
MAOY to
IL'YA ITIN
hiso
Il'ya Itin was born in 1967 and studied the piano under Nataliya Litvinova at the
Music School for gifted children in Yekaterinburg (known then, and throughout
the period of Soviet power, as Sverdlovsk). He gave his first professional recital
at the age of five. He continued his studies at the USSR's most important centre
of music education, the Moscow Conservatory, where his teacher was Lyev
Naumov. He appeared frequently there in recital and with major orchestras,
including the then Leningrad Philharmonic.
In 1990 Mr Itin moved to New York where he studies with Yin Cheng Zong. The
following year he won First Prize and the Chopin Prize at the Ninth Robert
Casadesus Competition in Cleveland. He has appeared in the States in Cleveland
and New York and in Europe in France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy and
Poland.
In September 1996 Mr Itin won the First Prize and the Contemporary Music Prize
in the Leeds International Piano Competition. As well as a cash prize, the
prizewinners of the Leeds Competition "win" a number of international recital
and concerto engagements: at the invitation of the Competition's founder, Dr
Fanny Waterman, one of the engagements at stake in the 1996 Competition was
an appearance at the BMS, and we are delighted that Mr Itin's understandably
busy schedule in the wake of his victory has allowed him to play for us tonight.
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8
2
et
and
7
S
PROGRAMME NOTES
Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat, Op.61
Frédéric Chopin
(1810-1849)
Chopin's output was dominated by the piano, and his music for the instrument
seldom strays outside a handful of forms - ballades, nocturnes, sonatas, studies,
waltzes and so on. Two of them are quintessentially Polish, the mazurka and the
polonaise. The mazurka was a traditional Polish country dance (often sung as
well as danced) which Chopin was responsible for bringing into the concert hall,
his 60 or so examples often containing some of his most intimate music.
The Polonaise, on the other hand, already had a long history in the concert hall.
Bach had used the form (the Polacca in the First Brandenburg Concerto is one) as
well as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, amongst others. There is evidence that it
originated as courtly aristocratic dance, and this would account for the magisterial
style Chopin often adopted in his polonaises. There is a wealth of patriotic feeling
in the famous Military Polonaise (A major, Op.40/1), the epic F sharp minor
(Op.44) and the heroic A flat (Op.53).
For all the aristocratic bearing of such music, Chopin was himself quite an
ordinary homely person - as comes across in his letters to his family back home in
Warsaw. Here's a taste from a letter dated "Paris, 12 December 1845".
... I've told you about Chenonceaux, now about Paris. Gavary sends best greetings to
Ludw. and Jedrz. (he sends her Massillon, his own work); likewise the Franchommes.
I dined at both houses before Mme S. arrived, and we talked a lot about you both. I'm
already starting on my treadmill. Today I've given only one lesson, to Mme
Rothschild, and have excused myself from two, as I had other work. My new mazurkas
have come out in Berlin at Stern's, so I don't know whether they will get as far as you -
you in Warsaw generally getting your music from Leipzig. They are not dedicated to
anyone. Now I'd like to finish my cello sonata, barcarolle and something else I don't
know what to call; but I doubt whether I'll have the time, as the rush is beginning. I
have received many enquiries whether I will give a concert, but I doubt I will. Liszt
has arrived from the provinces, where he's been giving concerts; I found his card in the
house. Meyerbeer is here, too. I was to have gone today to a soirée at Leo's to see
him, but we're going to the Opéra, to the new ballet (new for Mme S.), Le diable à
quatre, in which the costumes are ours. Now I'm writing to you after the ballet, on
Saturday morning. Nothing is changed at the Opéra, it's just as it was when you were
there. As yet we have seen nothing else; neither the Italian theatre where they do
Verdi, nor Mme Dorval in the new drama Marie Jeanne, which is said to be one of her
best parts.
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From the
The "something else I don't know what to call" is most probably the Polonaise-
Fantaisie, completed in the summer of 1846 and published in Paris and Leipzig
that November as Op.61. It's no wonder Chopin had difficulty finding a title for
it. Like many of his late works it is structurally experimental, a work with no
precedent to help shape it, only Chopin's improviser's instincts.
questing introduction (whose harmonic web would remain unequalled for a
generation) and the clear polonaise idea this gives on to, through many
contrasting episodes to the final apotheosis, Chopin creates a discursive,
developmental, seamless whole.
4 Mazurkas, Op.30
No. 1 in C minor: Allegro non tanto
No.2 in B/F sharp minor: Vivace
No.3 in D flat major: Allegro non troppo
No.4 in C sharp minor: Allegretto
Chopin
If the polonaise was the vehicle for some of Chopin's grandest and most
magisterial music, that other Polish dance form, the mazurka, was its opposite.
Typically only two or three pages long, most have a directness and simplicity
which tempts Chopin into his most intimate thoughts. And with this simplicity of
utterance goes, with a few notorious exceptions, an absence of extreme technical
demands which has endeared them to the great piano-playing public where they
compete with only the more seductive waltzes and dreamier nocturnes.
Chopin wrote the four Mazurkas of Op.30 in 1836 or 1837, the period of his semi-
official engagement to Maria Wodzinska. It was the end of this relationship
which caused the depression responsible for the famous funeral march later
incorporated into the B flat minor Piano Sonata and led "on the rebound" to the
relationship with George Sand: Chopin had not at all taken to Sand when he met
her in 1836, but by the end of the 1830s she had become the greatest passion and
greatest inspiration of his life.
When the Op.30 Mazurkas were published in 1838 they were reviewed by
Schumann:
Chopin has elevated the mazurka to a small art form; he has written many, yet few
among them resemble each other. Almost every one contains some poetic trait,
something new in form and expression.
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O
1
Like the waltz and the minuet, the mazurka has three beats to the bar, but unlike
them has a strong second beat (oom-oom-pa, rather than oom-pa-pa), often
highlighted by a dotted rhythm on the first beat: all the Op.30 Mazurkas contain
this dotted rhythm and it is especially prominent in Nos. 3 and 4.
Op.30 No. 1 in C minor is the most straightforward of the set, though Chopin uses
the simple framework to highlight some spectacularly plangent turns of melodic
phrase. The second Mazurka delighted Schumann with its tendency to hover
between B minor and F sharp minor, beginning firmly in the first, alternating
between the two, then ending firmly in the second - a radical step in the 1830s,
particularly in a piece of such modest dimensions. A similar ambivalence can be
found in the third Mazurka, which switches between the major and minor key:
after the short introduction, listen to the way each phrase of the strutting main
theme is echoed quietly in the minor key.
No.4 in C sharp minor is the most expansive of the set and also includes one of
Chopin's most daring inspirations: in the final dozen bars he introduces a
sequence of chromatically-descending seventh chords that would not be out of
place in Debussy or late Grieg - music of 60 years and more later. Schumann
rightly foresaw the fuss that conservative critics and theorists would make at this
bold step (and was not, it must be said, over-zealous in Chopin's defence!). The
passage has understandably become one of the most frequently quoted in any
discussion of Chopin's harmonic style.
Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op.60
Chopin
Chopin began his Barcarolle in the autumn of 1845, but did not complete it until
the summer of 1846. The autograph is full of alterations, showing the trouble it
caused him.
Although only in his middle 30s, Chopin was ill with tuberculosis, and his health
was fast declining. This was also the time that a rift began to grow between him
and George Sand, with whom he had been living since 1838. The summer of
1846, when the Barcarolle was completed, was the last the two spent together:
Chopin left her country house, Nohant, for good in November.
By this time, Chopin had stopped giving public concerts - nearly all his pieces
require some degree of force, and regular concert giving was simply beyond his
strength. In fact, he was to make only one more appearance as a pianist, at a
private concert in Paris in February 1848. Amongst the pieces he played was the
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Barcarolle, though even this was a tax on his physical resources. Charles Hallé,
the German pianist who was a friend of Chopin and later settled in Manchester
where he founded the orchestra that still bears his name, was present at the
concert and wrote of his performance of the Barcarolle:
Chopin played it from the point when it demands the utmost energy in the opposite
style, pianissimo, but with such wonderful nuances that one remained in doubt if this
new rendering were not preferable to the accustomed one.
"Barcarolle" (It barca a boat, cf. barque) is the name given to a song in 12/8 or
6/8 time sung by Venetian gondoliers, usually with an accompaniment suggesting
a rocking boat. There are famous examples in Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliers
and Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (both dating from the 1880s), but there are
operatic usages as early as Weber's Oberon (1826). The form was also used in
instrumental music, notably in three of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words,
though he used the title Venetianisches Gondellied.
Chopin's Barcarolle really belongs to the tradition of the nocturnes. If Chopin
had called it a nocturne, no-one would have questioned it, though many would no
doubt have pointed to the barcarolle-like features - the 6/8 rhythm, the melodic
lines in thirds and sixths, and the gently lapping left hand accompaniment
redolent of the waterways of that great city. Like most of Chopin's pieces,
however, the Barcarolle is led by his extraordinary improviser's ear, resulting in a
work of enormous range and harmonic adventure.
Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus
Olivier Messiaen
(1908 - 1992)
In 1940 Messiaen, then in his early 30s, was taken prisoner by the Germans and
sent to a prisoner of war camp, Stalag 8A in Silesia (part of Poland which
Germany had overrun). Here (thanks to a music-loving Kommandant) he wrote
and, with three other POW musicians, performed the apocalyptic Quatuor pour le
Fin du Temps. In 1941 he was released and repatriated and was almost
immediately appointed professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire.
The most influential teaching he did at this time, however, was at the seminars in
analysis and composition he gave between 1943 and 1947, semi-privately in the
home of a friend. Two of those attending the seminars proved of particular
importance, Pierre Boulez and Yvonne Loriod. Loriod made a deep impression
on Messiaen: all his subsequent piano music was inspired by, and composed for,
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}
}
)
her, including the Turangalîla-Symphonie (1946-8), with its awesome solo piano
part. She became his second wife in 1962.
The first piece Messiaen wrote for her featured in the concert Peter Hill and
Benjamin Frith gave us last February, the monumental Visions de l'Amen. This
was a cycle of seven pieces Messiaen composed in the early months of 1943 to
play with her at two pianos. He followed this with a still larger cycle of 20 pieces
for solo piano, the Vingt Régards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, which some hold to be the
most important piano work written in the 20th century. It was composed between
23 March and 8 September 1944, months which saw the D-Day landings and the
liberation of the city where they were written, Paris (25 August). Yvonne Loriod
gave the first performance of the complete two-hour work in that city's Salle
Gaveau concert hall on 26 March 1945. She was just turned 21.
It is impossible to translate the title Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus into English
without sounding at least a little foolish. Literally it is "twenty looks at the Jesus-
Child". In his own writings on the work, Messiaen points out how the 20 pieces
"express the various contemplations of the Jesus-Child in the crib and the
Adorations which are bestowed on him." The pieces "are arranged according to
contrasts of tempo, intensity and colour - as well as for certain symphonic
reasons" the last being a reference to the framework by which every fifth piece
deals directly with the Divinity, making suitably extensive use of the cycle's God
Theme. Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus [= the kiss of the Jesus-Child], No.15 in the
cycle, is one of the most important of these framework pieces, being a portrait of
Jesus, "the visible manifestation of the invisible God", in the manger - which is
why it beings with the God Theme in cradle-song style, "as if the heart of the sky
encompassed our sleep with its inexhaustible tenderness."
Messiaen's subtitle to the movement reads "At each communion, the Jesus-Child
sleeps with us near the door; then he opens it on the garden and rushes into the
bright light to embrace us." The image reminded Messiaen of a favourite
devotional picture showing the Jesus-Child leaving his mother's arms to embrace
the young St Theresa.
Though there is an abundance of incident, Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus is
fundamentally one of the most calm and measured of the 20 Regards. It is also
one of the longest, lasting around 10 minutes.
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INTERVAL
dr
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
Piano Sonata No.8
in B flat major, Op.84
Andante dolce
Andante sognando
24. Vivace
Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof'yev
(1891-1953)
Prokof'yev was a pianist-composer in the tradition that went back through
Rakhmaninov, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, as far as Beethoven, Mozart and
beyond. Like Chopin, Prokof'yev almost invariably composed at the piano, but he
saw himself primarily as a composer, not a pianist. He was forced to support
himself and his family as a pianist in the difficult years after the Revolution when,
like so many artists, he left the country: but where Rakhmaninov, for instance,
would offer essentially classical programmes, sprinkled with a few works of his
own as novelties, Prokof'yev would try as far as possible to play his own music
and included the classics only at need.
So it is noticeable that as Prokof'yev's career as a composer became more viable
and secure he wrote for the piano less and less. If you look at the music written
before his 30th birthday, the main part of it is for piano, but this comprises the
bulk of his output for the instrument: what followed were chiefly minor pieces or
transcriptions from orchestral scores. The shining exception to this generalisation
is the series of three piano sonatas, Nos.6, 7 and 8 (Opp.82, 83 and 84) composed
between 1939 and 1944.
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"Composed between 1939 and 1944" doesn't make it sound much like a set: the
consecutive opus numbers are more generous. Prokof'yev planned and started
writing the set in the summer of 1939, which he spent at the health resort of
Kislovodsk in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains. He planned the ten
movements that would make up the three sonatas that summer and began work on
them all at more or less the same time, switching from one movement to another
as ideas came or inspiration flagged. It sounds a bizarre method of working, but it
is quite common with the kind of composer who devotes a specific period every
day to creative work: Prokof'yev frequently had several different pieces on the
stocks in this way. In the event, though, he found he was spending most time on
the A major Sonata (No.6, which Artur Pizarro played for us in November 1991),
and this was completed first, in 1940. No.7 in B flat major, which Noriko Ogawa
played for us back in October 1988, followed after a gap in 1942 and No.8, also in
B flat, two years later.
A set of three piano sonatas. What suddenly brought on the desire to return to
piano music with a vengeance in this way? The likeliest reason seems to be that
Prokof'yev was "touching base", as the expression goes, returning to the roots of
his creativity. The late 1930s was a nervous time for prominent Russians,
particularly artists and the intelligentsia in general. Against the background of
the great political show trials occurred episodes such as the public denunciation of
Shostakovich's opera The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk region and ballet The
limpid Stream in the pages of Pravda. Shostakovich had bounced back with the
Fifth Symphony (1937), the rapturous reception of which had ruffled Prokof'yev's
feathers somewhat. Prokof'yev had a highly developed competitive sense (at
school he was the sort of sneak who not only kept records of everybody's marks.
but boasted of it in his autobiography) and had grown into maturity trying to
outdo his older contemporary Stravinsky. Since his return to the Soviet Union a
few years before he had had a rather dismissive attitude towards his
younger rivals
with what he saw as their insular outlooks. Now the best of them was more than
treading on his toes. Prokof'yev clearly felt he needed to re-assert his position in
Soviet music and piano music was the most promising avenue: orchestral music
would be a risk - most of his scores of the last decade or more had been heavily
criticised, if not derided; dutiful Soviet propaganda music was also a non-starter
after his grandiose Cantata for the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution
(1937) had been rejected out of hand; and as for opera and ballet, he already had
one of each in the pipeline trying to fight its way to the stage through the
backbiting and bureaucracy of major Soviet companies. No, piano music was
safest, particularly since it was, unexpectedly, a known weakness of Shostakovich.
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There were positive influences as well as the negative, most particularly a young
woman he had met at Kislovodsk. Maria-Cecilia Abramovna Mendel'son,
generally known as Mira, was at 24 exactly half his age. Her father was an
economist, and she was a student at Moscow's main literary institute with
ambitions to be a writer. She became a literary collaborator, secretary, librettist,
mistress and finally, in the January of 1948, his second wife. Much of the
optimism and energy that went into the laying down of the ten movements of the
sonatas can be traced to her. In her memoirs of him, however, she puts more
stress on the book he was reading at the time, Romain Rolland's study of
Beethoven: it cannot be mere coincidence that so many of Beethoven's sonatas
were composed and published in threes.
As we have seen, although the Sonatas were planned and begun together, they
were completed separately. Of course Prokof'yev was not idle in between: the
years between the completions of the Sixth and Eighth Sonatas saw the
composition of, amongst other things, the operas Betrothal in a monastery (after
Sheridan) and War and Peace (after Tol'stoy) and the ballet Cinderella, as well as
work on the music for the first part of Eisenstein's great film Ivan the Terrible.
The bulk of work on the Eighth Sonata was done in the early summer of 1944 at
the "House of Creative Work" belonging to the Composers' Union, situated on the
grounds of a collective poultry farm near the town of Ivanovo. It was perhaps the
most contented period of Prokof'yev's life, which shows in both the Sonata and
the other great work of that summer, once more in B flat major, the Fifth
Symphony. Prokof'yev dedicated the Eighth Sonata to Mira - the only one of the
three to bear a dedication.
Proko'yev had given the first performance of the Sixth Sonata himself in April
1940, in a live broadcast from the Moscow headquarters of the Composers'
Union: it was the last sonata he introduced himself. The first concert performance
of the Sixth was given by a young pianist who lived in the same apartment block
as Prokof'yev and whose playing had made a great impression on him, Svyatoslav
Rikhter. Rikhter became Prokof'yev's favourite interpreter: amongst other
premieres entrusted to him were those of the Seventh and Ninth Sonatas, the last
named being dedicated to him. But for the premiere of the Eighth Sonata
Prokof'yev turned to another young pianist, the 28-year-old Emil Gilel's, who
gave the first performance in Moscow in the December of 1944.
The three Sonatas are of very different characters, and each has its enthusiasts.
The Sixth Sonata is the most angry of the three, full of fierce determination. The
Seventh is nervous and energetic, in many ways the most unsettling of them. By
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I
e
e
C
J
E
3:
3
NO
contrast the Eighth is, in overall character, calm, reflective and spacious, at times
almost sunny. Rikhter came to it with some difficulty (presumably why Gilel's
was given the premiere), but eventually came to see it as the "richest" of the nine
sonatas: "It has a difficult inner life, with profound contradictions ... The Sonata
is rather difficult to grasp, but difficult because of an abundance of riches - like a
tree loaded down with fruit."
The first movement is the longest Prokof'yev wrote in a piano sonata, its calm and
lyrical (dolce means "sweetly") opening providing the perfect foil for later
emotional turmoil - a vice enthusiastically exploited by Schubert in later years.
The slow second movement is comparatively short, one of the dances in slow
motion which seemed to fascinate Prokof'yev. The finale really does show
Prokof'yev returning to his roots: fast, athletic, toccata-style outer sections enclose
an ironic central Allegro ben marcato full of mischievous, in-your-face
dissonance.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 77th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Friday, 7 November 1997
Maureen Smith & Simon Rowland-Jones
(violin & viola)
Mozart
Martinů
J. Haydn
Mozart
Handel (arr.Halvorsen)
Duo No.1 in G, K.423
3 Madrigals
Duo No. 1 in F, Hob. VI: 1
Duo No.2 in Bb, K.424
Passacaglia in G minor
Thursday, 11 December 1997
Chilingirian String Quartet
Barber, Britten, Arvo Pärt and Mozart (Dissonance)
Thursday, 8 January 1998
Brodsky String Quartet
Beethoven, Shostakovich (No.8) and Brahms
Also in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall starting at 8.00
Wednesday, 15 October 1997
New London Consort
Philip Pickett (director)
Programme devoted to the original 13th-century Carmina Burana (on whose texts,
but not tunes, Orff based his celebrated choral work)
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1.
BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Stephanie Kershaw, Lesley & David Mather,
Marc Schatzberger and Dick Stanley
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr&Mrs/J. Briggs §
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mrs B. Fox &
Mr G. Hutchison &
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
-Mrs S. Wright §
Mrs F. Andrews § Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr R.A. Bellingham
-Mr A.R. Carter §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards &
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Rich Mr.L.W. Robinson §
Mr R.A. Stevens &
Mr D.A. Sutton
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner § Mr J.I. Watson
Mr R. Wilkinson §
Mrs H.B. Wright §
If
you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before each concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
In addition to the generosity of our Benefactors and Patrons, the activities of the
BMS have been supported by the NFMS
with funds provided by Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. The Society also
gratefully acknowledges the assistance of
the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Yorkshire & Humberside
ARTS
Registered Charity No.700302
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
INSTITUTE
BORTHWICK
*BMS 3/2/5 (4)
OF
HISTORICAL
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.
RESEARCH
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BAS
YORK
The Chilingirian
String Quartet
Thursday, 11 December 1997
Programme: 80p
Presented by the British Music Society of York
in association with the Department of Music
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NOTICE BOARD
Our December Concerts
At the Annual General Meeting last June the Committee was asked to look again
at the policy of holding one of the society's concerts in December. Our December
concerts tend to be the most sparsely attended: that time of year is so busy,
culturally and socially, that few of us can get to everything we would like to - even
without the distraction of late-night Thursday shopping. At the same time, we
have to fit in with our hosts at the University, and, if we were to drop our
December concert, the most obvious candidate for a sixth date would be in the
first days of the university summer term, usually in the latter part of April.
Our soundings have suggested that the majority of the Society's membership are
against a move from December to April, and the Committee has therefore decided
not to make any change to the layout of our seasons at this juncture
Internet
The BMS has a small but discernible presence on the Internet. If you haven't
found it already, the URL is http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/psev/bms.htm
Your Views
The BMS is a society run for the benefit of its members by a dedicated committee
elected from amongst those members. If there is something you think we should
be doing, or should not be doing, don't keep it to yourself: please tell a committee
member. They should all be wearing badges, and, however it may appear, they do
want to hear from you.
800
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B'S
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
77th Season
Thursday, 11 December 1997
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall
THE CHILINGIRIAN
STRING QUARTET
Barber
Britten
Arvo Pärt
Mozart
Levon Chilingirian violin
Charles Stewart violin
Asdis Valdimarsdottir viola
Philip De Groote cello
String Quartet, Op.11
String Quartet No.3, Op.94
INTERVAL
D
Summa
String Quartet in C, K.465 (Dissonance)
For the sake of others in the audience, please turn off all
alarms on watches, calculators etc. before the concert starts,
and use a handkerchief when coughing.
BAS
YORK
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CHILINGIRIAN STRING QUARTET
Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Chamber Music Award for 1995, the
Chilingirian Quartet celebrated its 25th anniversary last season, having been
formed in London in 1971. With tours to 30 countries on six continents,
performing in major concert halls throughout the world, and with recordings for
EMI, RCA, CRD, Nimbus, Chandos, Conifer and Virgin Records, the
Chilingirian Quartet has become one of the world's most celebrated and widely
travelled ensembles. The Chilingirian is Quartet-in-Residence at the Royal
College of Music, London and gives concerts every season at the Queen Elizabeth
and Wigmore Halls.
The Chilingirian recording of the six Mozart quartets dedicated to Haydn was
voted Best String Quartet Recording by critics of Gramophone. The Quartet has
also recorded the core Classical and Romantic repertoire, whilst also exploring
less familiar ground. Most recently the Chilingirian has recorded both of John
Tavener's existing string quartets with works by Arvo Pärt for Virgin, the Tippett
Triple Concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Richard Hickox
for Chandos, a Russian disc, a Panufnik disc and the world premiere recording of
Hugh Wood's Quartets 1-4 for Conifer.
PROGRAMME NOTES
String Quartet in B minor, Op.11
Molto allegro e appassionato
Molto adagio - Molto allegro (come prima)
Samuel Barber
(1910 - 1981)
The American Samuel Barber was one of the first students at the Curtis Institute
in Philadelphia, as a protégé of its founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok. His fellow
students included the composer (of, amongst other things, Amahl and the night
visitors) Gian-Carlo Menotti, who remained Barber's lifelong partner. As well as
composition and piano, Barber also studied singing, so much so that in his 20s he
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was seriously considering a career as a singer. In this he was encouraged by his
maternal aunt Louise, a professional contralto, who had married the then famous
and influential American song composer Sidney Homer.
After college, in the late 1920s and 1930s, Barber spent a great deal of time in
Europe, the recipient of various bursaries, prizes and awards. In 1939 he returned
to the Curtis as a teacher of composition, but he had no vocation as a teacher and
resigned in 1942. It was during Barber's travels in Europe, in 1936, that he
composed his String Quartet, which he dedicated to his aunt and uncle, the
Homers. The first performance was given that December in Rome by the Pro Arte
String Quartet: his First Symphony was also premiered there that same month.
When the Quartet was published, in 1939, it appeared as the Quartet "No.1": as
with Debussy's Quartet years earlier, no second work was ever forthcoming and
the "No.1" was quietly dropped. It wasn't in any case Barber's first work for
string quartet: his Op.1, composed in 1928 when he was a student at the Curtis
Institute, was a three-movement Serenade for string quartet.
The Op.11 Quartet is in two movements. The first is a powerful Allegro in B
minor. The second is an extraordinarily eloquent Adagio in B flat minor, closing
on a chord of F: it is followed, by way of a coda, by a condensed recapitulation of
music from the opening movement, rounding off the structure in B minor. (A
later edition of the score prints this coda as a third movement.)
The Adagio movement was an immediate hit with audiences, and the follow
year, when he was asked by Toscanini for pieces to try on the NBC Symphony
Orchestra over the next season, Barber produced a version for string orchestra.
As the "Adagio for strings" it has become his most popular and most frequently
performed piece, notable for its timeless feel and the long-breathed melodic lines
characteristic of the composer.
String Quartet No.3, Op.94
Duets: With moderate movement
Ostinato: Very fast
Solo: Very calm
Burlesque: Fast - Con fuoco
Recitative and Passacaglia La serenissima: Slow
Benjamin Britten
(1913 - 1976)
The Third Quartet was Britten's last important composition: he completed it
towards the end of 1975, while on holiday in Venice. Britten had been frail and
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semi-paralysed since undergoing heart surgery in May 1973, and though he
helped the Amadeus Quartet prepare the work in September 1976 he died a
fortnight before the premiere, which took place on 19 December.
It was a long time since Britten had written a string quartet: Quartets 1 and 2 date
from 1941 and 1945. Hans Keller, one of the most perceptive critics and powerful
advocates of Britten's music, did his utmost to persuade the composer to write
another quartet, and as the BBC music producer with overall responsibility for
new music, was able to guarantee a BBC commission for it. He had to wait a long
time, but was rewarded with the work's dedication.
The Third Quartet is closely tied to the city of Venice. It was in 1973 that Britten
completed his valedictory opera Death in Venice, after Thomas Mann's story of
1911. This was a work that had great personal meaning for him, and he clearly
identified with the hero, Gustav von Aschenbach.
The Quartet has five movements, in the sort of symmetrical arch shape associated
with Bartók. At the apex stands the emotional core, the Solo for the first violin,
with transparent accompaniment for the other instruments. On either side of this
come two scherzo-like pieces: before it Ostinato, through which strides a wide-
ranging four-note figure; and after the Burlesque, a title which links it to a
movement from another great "valedictory" work, Mahler's Ninth Symphony.
But it is the outer movements that bear the main structural weight of the Quartet.
The first lives up to its name Duets by exploring all the possible pairings offered
by the quartet combination. The finale, permeated by quotations from the opera
and cast in Britten's favourite passacaglia form, takes as its title Venice's famous
nickname, La serenissima.
INTERVAL
Coffee and drinks are available in the foyer. Coffee is 80p a cup: to find us, just
go past the bar, out on to the landing, and turn to the left.
(
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)
)
>
Summa
Arvo Pärt
(1935 -
Arvo Pärt is the most famous Estonian composer. For those of you who need a
swift geographical refresher course, Estonia (capital Tallinn) is the most northerly
of the three "Baltic States" - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - which were ruled by
the Teutonic Knights in the middle ages, by Sweden from 1521 and by Russia
from 1721. They became independent at the end of the First World War, but were
swallowed up again by the Soviet Union during the confusion of the Second
World War, only to become independent once more with the collapse of
communism in the early 1990s. Estonia's eastern border is with Russia and its
southern with Latvia: to the north it faces Finland across the Gulf of Finland, and
to the west Sweden across the rather wider Baltic Sea.
Pärt worked as a sound technician for Estonian Radio from 1957 until 1967,
during which period he also graduated from the composition class at the Tallinn
Conservatory. His first compositions were, unsurprisingly, in the sub-Prokof' yev
orthodox Soviet academic style of the time, but by his First Symphony (1964) he
was writing in a rigorously mathematical serial style based on developments in
50s western music, a brave thing to do in the Russia of the early Brezhnev era. It
was not the answer he needed, however, and he continued experimenting: his Pro
and Contra (of 1966, one of the countless concertante works Rostropovich
wheedled out of virtually every composer he encountered) juxtaposes various
styles in a way that comes close to collage.
It was in the early 70s that Pärt found his individual distinctive voice, founded
fairly and squarely in plainsong. With it he produced music that is contemplative,
serene, timeless and occasionally not immune from religiosity. Religion was
certainly the springboard for Summa, which dates from 1978, since it is based on
a setting Pärt made for four unaccompanied voices of the Latin text of the Creed.
Like much of Pärt's music, it is a work of great stillness: "As it was in the
beginning, it now, and ever shall be, world without end."
Pärt creates a gently pulsating, hypnotic rhythm by kaleidoscopic redistribution of
a few rhythmic germs within a fluid metrical structure (virtually every bar has a
new time signature). Nor do the notes do anything to disturb the calmness: none
of the instruments has any note other than the seven belonging to the key
signature of G minor, and the first violin and viola have no notes other than the
three belonging to the G minor arpeggio.
Summa lasts just over five minutes.
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(I am grateful to Bettina Tiefenbrunner of the Promotion Department of
Universal Edition in Vienna for her generous help in the preparation of this note.)
String Quartet in C major, K.465 (Dissonance)
Adagio - Allegro
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro molto
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(1756-1791)
Mozart and Haydn were close friends and sincere admirers of each other's music.
Haydn was to survive Mozart by over 17 years, but he was actually a generation
older, being already 23 when Mozart was born. The difference was that Haydn
was a relatively late starter, while Mozart was composing almost as soon as he
could write: Mozart's first symphony dates from only five or six years after
Haydn's.
It seems that the two men did not meet till 1781, when Mozart "left" the service of
the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg and moved to Vienna, where the Esterhazy
household, Haydn included, spent part of each year. The two were already known
to each other, both through publication and performance of their music and
through Haydn's younger brother Michael, who had been a colleague of Mozart's
at Salzburg.
Joseph Haydn is generally credited with making the string quartet the powerful
musical medium into which so many subsequent composers poured their best,
most intimate, most hard-won music. When his Op.33 Quartets appeared in the
same year, 1781, Haydn's preface explained how they had been composed "in a
new and special manner": here, essentially, was music for four equal partners,
music to be taken seriously by composer, performers and audience alike.
The radical new departure was not lost on Mozart, who composed his first
example of the new type of quartet at the end of 1782, the G major, K.387. Over
the next couple of years, five others were to follow: the C major, K.465, was the
last of them and is dated 14 January 1785. These six Quartets were published in
September 1785 by Artaria of Vienna as Mozart's "Op.X" [that is Op.10]. The set
was inscribed to Haydn with a florid dedication in Italian.
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Haydn heard some of the Quartets at a concert at the Domgasse in Vienna on 15
January 1785. Not long after, Mozart's father Leopold visited Vienna and was
able to write to his daughter:
On Saturday evening [12 February] Herr Joseph Haydn and the two Barons
Tinti came to see us and the new quartets were performed, or rather, the
three new ones [including K.465] which Wolfgang has added to the other
three which we have already. The new ones are somewhat easier, but at the
same time excellent compositions. Haydn said to me: "Before God and as an
honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me
either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most
profound knowledge of composition."
The day before the meeting described there by Leopold Mozart, Haydn had joined
the masonic lodge Zur wahren Eintracht in Vienna: Wolfgang Mozart had missed
the ceremony as he was giving the first performance of the D minor Piano
Concerto, K.466.
The C major Quartet, K.465, is known as the "Dissonance" solely because of the
first movement's Adagio introduction. In fact this contains very little actual
dissonance, though tonally and harmonically it is unstable and misleading. The
first movement proper is a masterpiece of motivic by-play, ideas being tossed with
reckless abandon from instrument to instrument: the infectious spontaneity hides
the fact that these quartets cost one of music's most fluent composers a great deal
of effort. The story is the same wherever you look in the Quartet: the slow
movement with its dialogues between first violin and cello, the Minuet with its
figures played by one instrument after another, and even in the sparkling finale,
whose light heart disguises a texture as intricate as a Bach fugue.
Programme notes by David Mather
Floral decorations by Sue Bedford
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FORTHCOMING CONCERTS
The next concerts in the 77th Season of the British Music Society of York,
presented in association with the Department of Music at the University, are as
follows. They take place in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, beginning at 8 pm.
Thursday, 8 January 1998
Beethoven
Shostakovich
Brahms
Brodsky String Quartet
Quartet in G, Op.18 No.2
Quartet No.8 in C minor, Op.110
Quartet in A minor, Op.51 No.2
Friday, 13 February 1998
Schumann
Bartók
Bruch
Mozart
Beethoven
Ravel
Chopin
Contrasts Trio
Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132
Contrasts
Short Pieces for trio, Op.83
Trio in Eb, K.498 (Kegelstatt)
Thursday, 14 March 1998
Ashley Wass (piano)
Sonata No.31 in Ab, Op.110
Miroirs
4 Ballades
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as
BAS
YORK
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY
of YORK
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
President Dr Francis Jackson
Vice-Presidents
Chairman
Vice-Chairman
Hon. Treasurer
Hon. Asst. Treasurer
Hon. Secretary
Hon. Publicity Secretary
Hon. Programme Secretary
NFMS Representative
Hon Auditor
Members of the Committee
Joan Whitworth, Jim Briggs
Rosalind Richards
Robert Stevens
Sylvia Carter
Albert Ainsworth
John Petrie
Nigel Dick
Sheila Wright
Amanda Crawley
Dr Richard Crossley
Derek Winterbottom
Lesley & David Mather, Marc
Schatzberger and Dick Stanley
BENEFACTORS AND PATRONS
The BMS manages to maintain the high standard of its concerts largely through
the generosity of its Benefactors and Patrons. Without their gifts to the Society,
many of them covenanted, we could not hope to balance our books.
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68 The British Music Society of York, BMS 3 2 5, Page 68 |
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Ocr'd Text:
Our Benefactors (§) and Patrons are as follows:
Mr A. Ainsworth §
Dr D.M. Bearpark §
Mr J. Briggs §
Mr N.J. Dick §
Mr A.D. Hitchcock §
Mr J.C. Joslin §
Mr J.C. Miles
Mrs F. Andrews §
Mr R.A. Bellingham
Dr R.J.S. Crossley
Mr J.C. Downing §
Dr F.A. Jackson
Prof. R. Lawton §
Mr P.W. Miller §
Mr B. Richards §
§
Mr G.C. Morcom §
Mr & Mrs L.W. Robinson
Mr J.B. Schofield §
Mr D.A. Sutton
Mr J.I. Watson
Mrs H.B. Wright §
Mrs D.C. Summers §
Mrs M.S. Tomlinson §
Miss L.J. Whitworth §
NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF MUSIC SOCIETIES
NEMS
If you would like to become a Benefactor or Patron, please get in touch with our
Hon. Treasurer, either at the ticket desk before each concert, or at 8, Petersway,
York, YO3 6AR. All other correspondence about the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. Secretary, 6, Bishopgate St., York, YO2 1JH.
The BMS is affiliated to the National Federation of Music
Societies which represents and supports amateur vocal,
instrumental and promoting societies throughout the United
Kingdom.
The Society also gratefully acknowledges the
assistance of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Registered Charity No.700302
Mrs P.J. Armour
Mr & Mrs D.A.C. Blunt
Mrs M. Danby-Smith §
Mr C.G.M. Gardner
Mrs E.S. Johnson §
Mr R.P. Lorriman §
Mrs A.M. Morcom §
Mrs R. Richards §
Mrs I.G. Sargent
Dr G.A.C. Summers §
Dr & Mrs G.M. Turner §
. Mr R. Wilkinson §
BORTHWICK
4
OF
INSTITUTE
BMS 3/2/5 (5)
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Compiled by David Mather and published by the British Music Society of York.
Reproduced by WrightDesign of Easingwold.