Experience Ravel’s life and music in its historic context with music historian Susan Waterfall. With contemporary art and photographs, and 26 musical excerpts, you’ll get an overview of a composer whose creative life spanned the voluptuous conclusion of the Belle Epoque, the trauma of the First World War, and the new paths to modernism that emerged in the 20’s and 30’s. 85 years after his death, nosy biographers are still trying to understand Ravel’s mysterious private life, as inscrutable as his music is irresistible.

0:00 Mother Goose Suite Jussen Bros
13:10 Menuet Antique Louis Lortie
13:57 Habanera Tchaidze/Pisareva
16:08 Pavane for a Long-Ago Princess Ashkenazy
18:43 Jeux d’eau Argerich
22:29 String Quartet Hagen String Quartet
25:24 L’Indifferent from “Sheherazade” Leonard/Gaffigan/Detroit Symphony
29:14 Introduction and Allegro Niederrhein Musikfestival
31:30 Alborado del Gracioso Bertrand Chamayou
33:30 Histoires Naturelles Degout/Harrigan
35:55 L’heure Espagnol Koch/Ozawa/Opera Garnier
38:26 Scarbo Mariangela Vacatello
40:52 Beauty and the Beast Salonen and NDR
43:22 Valses Nobles et Sentimentales Ravel Welte Mignon in 1913
45:17 Daphnis and Chloe WDR Orch Cologne, Saraste
47:42 Soupir from Mallarme Songs Anne Sofie von Otter
52:25 Piano Trio Pantoum Merz Trio NEC
54:39 Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis Rutter/Cambridge Singers
57:29 Tombeau de Couperin Perlemutter
1:01:07 La Valse Bernstein Orchestre Nationale de France
1:04:31 Duo Sonata for Violin and Cello Juillard and Bellom, Paris Post 1918
1:08:19 Tzigane Joshua Bell, Maazel, NY Phil
1:11:06 L’Enfant et Les Sortileges orch/chorus Radio France Franck
1:14:00 Chansons Madecasses #2 Magdalena Kozena et al
1:17:02 Violin Sonata “Blues” Hadelich and Weiss
1:19:20 Bolero Dudamel and Vienna Phil
1:22:06 film of Ravel with Olin Downes
1:23:41 Concerto for Left Hand Bavouzet and Salonen/Philharmonia
1:26:21 G Major Concerto Argerich /Krivine/ Orch Nat’l de France (2017)
1:29:31 Don Quixote to Dulcinea Prato and Pratico
1:33:53 Mother Goose Jussen Bros

This biographical film of Claude Debussy offers a pleasurable and informative immersion in Debussy’s Belle Epoque world, with over 125 photographs and images, and excerpts from 18 of his works. An overview of Debussy’s major compositions and relationships will enrich your understanding of Debussy’s unique personality and the beautiful and radical music he created.

00:00 La Damoiselle Elue – Vikingur Olaffson, piano
07:30 Trio in G Minor – Stradivari Tri
09:54 La Musique – Dawn Upshaw and James Levine, piano (from Forgotten Songs)
16:15 C’est L’ecstase langoureuse – Dawn Upshaw and James Levine, piano (from Forgotten Songs)
18:07 La Damoiselle Elue – London Symphony and Chorus; Claudio Abbado; Ewing; Balleys
20:27 Harmonie du Soir – Dawn Upshaw and James Levine, piano (from Forgotten Songs)
22:38 Original Javanese Gamelan Adalah
26:02 String Quartet – Cleveland Quartet
29:58 Afternoon of a Faun – Oslo Philharmonic; James Gafffigan
34:17 Pelleas and Melisande – Welsh National Opera; Boulez; Hagley; Archer
40:20 Flute de Pan from Chansons de Bilitis – Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish
45:39 Nuages from Nocturnes for Orchestra – Vienna Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez
53:19 Jardins Sous la Pluie – Ivan Moravec, piano
58:21 La Mer – Royal Concertgebouw; Bernard Haitink
1:03:29 Reflets dans l’eau -- Arturo Michelangeli
1:07:14 Iberia from Images for Orchestra – Les Dissonances and David Grimal
1:12:14 Jeux – Berlin Philharmonic; Sir Simon Rattle
1:19:09 En Blanc et Noir – Britten and Richter
1:24:27 La Damoiselle Elue – Vikingur Olaffson, piano

This video is a biography of Schubert, with art and portraits from Schubert’s era as well as 16 recorded musical examples, including nine lieder. Waterfall explores the cultural context of Schubert’s life and music, his relationship with Romantic lyric poetry, and his position in the middle-class homes and salons of Vienna, where one’s personal identity was a matter of growing importance. In 1987 Maynard Solomon presented a compelling paper asserting that Schubert was homosexual and died of tertiary syphilis. Solomon claimed that Schubert had written most of his music for a Viennese subculture that was exploring different types of masculinity and reacting to restrictive codes of social behavior. Susan Waterfall avoids extreme characterizations of Schubert as a sexless “tubby tunesmith” and Schubert as a standard bearer for Queer Musicology. He becomes a convincing person, with his sexual preferences and activities only part of the troubling circumstances he encountered in modern Viennese life. Schubert’s art emphasized individual subjectivity, which was the thrust of Romanticism. With enormous musical and communicative gifts, he offered his vision of the world.

00:00 Introduction and early years.
05:36 Studies with Salieri; his first composition. Fantasie in G Major D.1 Tal and Groethuysen
07:45 Early songs and string quartets; Schubert leaves Seminary. String Quartet #8 in Bb. D.112 Ysaye String Quartet
11:33 Relationship with Therese Grob; Kyrie from Mass in F Major D. 105 Lucia Popp, Sawallisch, Symph des Bayerischen Rundfunks
13:41 Schubert’s evolving sexual identity; repressive cultural life in Vienna; early lieder.
17:40 Heidenroslein D. 257 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
20:01 Schubert’s success within his social circle 21:22 Erster Verlust D. 226 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
23:52 Meets Schober; their relationship; social alienation in Schubert’s circle
25:56 Der Wanderer D.493 Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore
28:56 Rejection by Goethe; meets Michael Vogl. Background for Ganymed.
31:05 Ganymed D.544 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
34:46 Growing success; relationship with Mayrhofer and Senn. Schubertiades. Attempts at opera and chamber music.
38:36 “Trout” Quintet D. 667 Perlman, Zukerman, du Pre, Mehta, Barenboim 40:19 Wanderer Fantasy, Unfinished Symphony; Schwind and Kupelweiser illustrate Schubertiades; Schober’s influence, their shared hedonism.
43:29 Der Zwerg D. 771 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
47:14 Schubert’s syphilis is confirmed and treated; psychological changes; first song cycle.
49:16 Auf dem Wasser zu Singen D. 774 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
52:11 Auflosung D. 807 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake
55:37 Schubert works and carouses obsessively; travels in the Alps; Karolina Esterhazy; writes more instrumental music; meets the violinist Schupanzigh; Beethoven’s final concert.
1:00:04 Ninth Symphony in C Major D. 944 John Eliot Gardiner, Vienna Philharmonic
1:02:58 Last string quartet in G Major D. 887. Doric String Quartet
1:06:09 Death of Beethoven; Wintereise, Der Leiermann D. 911 Ian Bostridge and Thomas Ades
1:11:52 Schubert’s late style; C Major Quintet D.956 Emerson String Quartet with David Finkle
1:14:41 Schubert’s concert at Musikverein; last works; final illness and death. Burial(s) and publications.
1:18:42 Conclusion Die Gotter Greichenlands D. 677 Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake

Intro and Outro Music: F Minor Fantasy for Piano 4 Hands D. 940 Sviatoslav Richter and Benjamin Britain

What happens when an impeccably trained young German composer decides he wants a new audience? When a nice Jewish boy starts hanging out with a Marxist poet and a Viennese flapper? When the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow becomes irrelevant? Susan Waterfall and her team have created a film describing Kurt Weill’s life and work, including a unique collection of both historic and contemporary performances of his songs. Weill communicated the soul and style of Modernity while he survived the sweeping historic changes of Weimar Berlin, the rise of Hitler, Paris in the early 1930s, and Broadway in the 1940s.

Meatball Song, HK Gruber and Ensemble Moderne
Alabama Song, Lotte Lenya and original cast of Mahagonny Songspiel
Alabama Song, Audra MacDonald and LA OPERA Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Insufficiency Song, 3Penny Opera, Brecht sings with the Lewis Ruth Band 1930
Pirate Jenny #1, Lotte Lenya in the Pabst film of 3Penny Opera, 1930
Pirate Jenny #2, Lotte Lenya, television excerpt from 1966
Pirate Jenny #3, Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall
Kanonengesang, Vladimir Korneev and Liviu Petcu
The Pimp’s Ballad, Ute Lemper in Potsdam, 2013
Surabaya Johnny, Teresa Stratas, from her video “September Songs”
Abscheidsbrief, Annette Seiltgen and Jan Gerdes
Youkali, Barbara Hannigan and Sir Simon Rattle
Speak Low, Kurt Weill singing and playing
Nanna’s Lied, Anne-Sophie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg
Wie Lange Noch?, Julia Bullock and Christian Reif
Lost in the Stars, Judy Garland on the Judy Garland Show
Intro and Outro, Tango Ballade, the Lewis Ruth Band 1929

Treat your ears and eyes to an in-depth exploration of Debussy’s colorful and captivating Preludes for Piano, Book One, written in 1909-10. Susan Waterfall has assembled memorable historic and current performances. She’ll guide you through the visual and literary images that inspired Debussy to create sound worlds that had never before been imagined. You can follow along with a score, if you have one, or just allow the music to transport you to the fantasy destinations and to the portraits and vignettes that enthralled Debussy and his Parisian public.

Dancers of Delphi, performed by Debussy
Sails (Veils), Anna Tsybuleva
The Wind on the Plain, Sviataoslav Richter
Sounds and Perfumes Turn on the Air of Evening, Paul Jacobs
The Hills of Anacapri, Ariane Jacob
Footprints in the Snow, Evgeni Koroliov
What the West Wind Saw, Richter

What the West Wind Saw, Nour Ayadi
The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, Vikingur Olaffson
The Interrupted Serenade, Paul Jacobs
The Engulfed Cathedral, Dominic Piers Smith
The Dance of Puck, Richter
Minstrels, Francois Dumont

Are you longing for world travel? Do you need a bit of Belle-Epoque Paris? Maybe you’re curious about musical modernism? Susan Waterfall is back, with Book Two of Debussy’s Préludes for Piano, which will provide you with all of the above. Armchair travel is a necessity during the pandemic. Historic and current performances along with fascinating art and photographs will bring to life Debussy’s final twelve preludes, written before the outbreak of World War One. Here’s another opportunity for lifelong learners to find out more about Debussy and deepen their appreciation of these gems of the piano repertoire.

Mists, Krystian Zimerman
Dead Leaves, Marianne Przevalskaya
The Gate of Wine, Sergei Kuznetsov
The Fairies are Exquisite Dancers, Ilya Itin
Heaths, Celimene Daudet
General Lavine, Matthew Edwards

The Terrace for Moonlight Audiences, Ivan Moravec
Ondine, Katia Buniatishvili
Hommage to Pickwick, Paul Jacobs
Canope, Nour Ayadi
Alternating Thirds, Marianne Przevalskaya
Fireworks, Ana Tsybuleva

BREAKFAST WITH CHOU-CHOU

Children’s Corner Suite (1908)
(for Debussy’s daughter Emma Claude, aka Chou-Chou)
Gradus Ad Parnassum
Jimbo’s Lullaby
Serenade for a Doll
The Snow is Dancing
The Little Shepherd
Golliwog’s Cakewalk

Steps to Mt. Parnassus
A child practices Clementi exercises for finger dexterity, gradually becoming lost in daydreams, the way Debussy did as a child, speeding up as the session advances and ending with a flourish.

Jimbo’s Lullaby
Jimbo is Chou-Chou’s toy elephant, named after the elephant at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. To fall asleep, the baby elephant needs stories and a lullaby.

Serenade for a Doll
The serenader tries to charm a doll, strumming a mandolin, and using all his artistry to get a response.

The Snow is Dancing
A child experiences the delicate melancholy and swirling effects of falling snowflakes.

The Little Shepherd
A toy shepherd plays his flute in the open air.

Golliwog’s Cakewalk
Chou-Chou’s favorite doll, called a Golliwog, was a rag doll from the blackface minstrel tradition. Golliwog dances the popular cakewalk and, in a central section, mocks Wagner’s famous ”Tristan and Isolde.”

Rhapsody for Clarinet and Piano (1910)

Sonata for Cello and Piano (1915)
Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
Sérénade: Modérément animé
Final: Animé, léger et nerveux

Six Épigraphes Antiques (1914)
(Based on Chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Louys)
To Invoke Pan
The Nameless Tomb
May the Night Be Propitious
The Dancer with Cymbals
The Egyptian Woman
To Thank the Morning Rain

To Invoke Pan, god of the summer wind
The idyllic childhood of Bilitis and her girlfriend, Selenis. They care for the sheep and Selenis chases grasshoppers.

A Tomb Without a Name
Bilitis and her friend Mnasdika visit the tomb of her mother’s lover and are frightened.

May the Night Be Propitious
In Bilitis’ household, retuals and incantations bring protection during the night.

The Dancer with Cymbals
Barely clothed, a dancer ornaments her performance with finger cymbals. She is by turns sultry and vivacious.

The Egyptian Woman
Bilitis is fascinated by an Egyptian courtesan who sits motionless, her hands on her knees.

To Thank the Morning Rain
The poet, in the morning rain, is writing these verses in the sand. Those who love after him will sing his stanzas together.

Sonata for Flute, Harp, and Viola
Pastorale. Lento, dolce rubato
Interlude. Tempo di menuetto
Finale. Allegro moderato ma resoluto

SOUNDS AND PERFUMES OF EVENING

Debussy and the Waltz

Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir (from Préludes Book I, 1910)
The line from a Baudelaire poem describes the time of evening with flowers release their fragrances, which blend with the violin’s sounds and dance a mournful and languid waltz.

La plus que lente (waltz, 1910)
The valse lente was a trendy musical genre in Debussy’s time and his satirical title suggests that his even slower waltz outdoes the others in sensuousness, eroticism, and romance.

La terasse des audiences du clair de lune (from Préludes Book II, 1913)
On a terrace for viewers of the moonlight, delicate, majestic, and slightly unreal visions are layered with fragments of waltz rhythms.

Ariettes oubliées (song cycle, 1886) (based on poems of Paul Verlaine)
This is Langourous Rapture
It’s Raining in My Heart
The Shadow of Trees
Wooden Horses
Green
Spleen

En blanc et noir (suite for two pianos, 1915)
Avec emportement
Lent. Sombre
Scherzando

Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons (carol, 1916)

Sonata in G minor for Violin and Piano (1917)
Allegro vivo
Intermède: fantasque et léger
Finale: très animé

During his long and productive life, the beloved but enigmatic Johannes Brahms (1833-97) interacted with most of the significant musicians and artists of 19th century. His momentous meeting with Clara and Robert Schumann, when he was only 20, forged a bond of love and familial connection that lasted throughout Brahms’ and Clara’s lifetimes. These chamber concerts divide Brahms’ life roughly in half: before and after 1878, when at 45 he grew the bushy beard he was able to hide behind for the rest of his life.

CLEAN-SHAVEN BRAHMS

Four Ballades, Op.10 (1854)
Andante in D minor “Edward”
Andante in D Major
Intermezzo, Allegro in B minor
Andante con moto in B Major

Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op.40 (1865)
Andante
Scherzo, Allegro
Adagio mesto
Allegro con brio

Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34 (1864)
Allegro non troppo
Andante, un poco adagio
Scherzo, Allegro
Finale. Poco sostenuto - Allegro non troppo - Preso non troppo

BEARDED BRAHMS

Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120 (1894)
Allegro appassionato
Andante un poco adagio
Allegretto grazioso
Vivace

Vier Ernste Gesänge (1896)
”Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh”
”Ich wandte mich, und sahe an”
”O Tod, wie bitter bist du”
”Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete”

String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 “Prater” (1890)
Allegro non troppo, ma con brio
Adagio
Un poco Allegretto
Vivace ma non troppo presto

An exploration of Frederic Chopin’s life and times (1810-1849) delves into his early years as a musical prodigy in Warsaw, and his final 19 years as a popular composer and piano virtuoso in Paris. Chopin’s dedication to Bach, Mozart, Italian opera, and traditional Polish music will be discussed, as well his relationships with Schumann, Liszt, George Sand, Delacroix, and Mickiewicz. Learn about Chopin’s invention and development of pianistic genres such as the prelude, the ballade, the nocturne, the scherzo and the mazurka. Chopin created an idealized image of Poland in order to survive his loneliness, his physical suffering from lifelong illness, and his existential terror. His music awakens a universal longing for a lost homeland, with its memories of idealism, innocence and fulfillment.

CHOPIN: A BOUQUET OF MAZURKAS, and THE LOSS OF LOVE

Seven Mazurkas
Opus 56 #2 in C Major (1843)
Opus 24 #2 in C Major (1834)
Opus 41 #1 in E minor (1838)
Opus 33 #1 in B minor (1837-8)
Opus 33 #2 in D Major (1837-8)
Opus 50 #3 in C-sharp minor (1841-2)
Opus 17 #4 in A minor (1832)

Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op.60 (1846)

Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65 (1847)
Allegro moderato in G minor
Scherzo in D Minor, Trio in D Major
Largo in B-flat Major
Finale. Allegro in G minor, ending in G Major

An exploration of Franz Schubert’s life, and how the Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven changed with an increasingly large, restricted and regimented urban middle class. Schubert’s potent settings of Romantic lyric poetry thrived in bourgeois settings where there was a growing need for personal emotional freedom. The inwardness and subjectivity of Schubert’s music mirrored the search for meaning and belonging in an alienating world where nature was increasingly seen as the only solace.

The original presentation featured Susan performing Moments Musicaux and discussing the significance of Schubert’s “character pieces” which, like the lieder, suited the Romantic goals of intimacy and daydream. Schubert’s exceptional ability to portray women in lieder were demonstrated by soprano Julie Kierstine and pianist Daniel Lockert. The Octet, modeled on Beethoven’s popular Septet, is unusually outgoing, but its gaiety is outlined with Schubertian shadows. The Octet was performed by the Festival Chamber Players.

The most domestic of all genres, the four-hand piano piece, attained its pinnacle with Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor, written in the last year of Schubert’s life. It was performed by Julian Waterfall Pollack and Susan. The String Quintet in C Major for quartet and an additional cello, is a work of supreme inspiration and craft, and expression of Schubert’s love of life as he faced an early death.

Lieder
”Heidenröslein” (1815)
”Erster Verlust” (1815)
”Der Wanderer” (1816)
”Ganymed” (1817)
”Der Zwerg” (1822)
”Auf dem Wasser zu Singen” (1823)
”Auflösung” (1824)
”Der Leiermann” (1827)
”Die Götter Griechenlands” (1819)

SCHUBERT’S “CHARACTER PIECES”

Moments Musicaux (1828)
Moderato in C Major
Andantino in Ab Major
Allegro moderato in F minor
Moderato in C# minor
Allegro vivace in F minor
Allegretto in Ab Major

Lieder
”Lieb schwärmt auf allen Wegen” (Ariete der Claudine)
”Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (Lied der Mignon no. 4)
”So lasst mich scheinen” (Lied der Mignon no. 3)
”Die Männer sind méchant
”Gretchen am Spinnrade”
”Klärchens Lied”
”Suleika”

Schubert’s Homage to Beethoven
Octet in F Major (1824)
Adagio - Allegro - Più allegro
Adagio
Allegro vivace - Trio - Allegro vivace
Andante - variations. Un poco più mosso - Più lento
Menuetto. Allegretto - Trio - Menuetto - Coda
Andante molto - Allegro - Andante molto - Allegro molto


SCHUBERT FACES HIS EARLY DEATH

Fantasy in F minor (1828)
Allegro molto moderato
Largo
Scherzo. Allegro vivace
Finale. Allegro molto moderato

String Quintet in C Major (1828)
Allegro ma non troppo
Adagio
Scherzo
Allegretto

Originally presented as a five-day series of lectures and narrated concerts exploring the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, the most influential and consistently popular composer in Western music. You will learn about Beethoven’s family, friends, patrons, fellow musicians, Napoleon, the Viennese cultural milieu, and the ongoing controversy about the immortal beloved.

Young Beethoven (1792-1802) Arriving in Vienna from Bonn, the socially awkward Beethoven strived to attain the stature of Haydn and Mozart, mastering all genres before his hearing loss becomes pronounced.
Op.11 Clarinet Trio
Op.20 Septet
Ot.24 Violin Sonata Spring

Beethoven: The Heroic Period (1802-1812) Accepting his deafness and physical infirmities, Beethoven vows to “seize Fate by the throat” and pursue his artistic goals.
Op.35 Prometheus (Eroica) Variations
Op.72 Arias from Fidelio
Op.57 Piano Sonata Appassionata

Late Beethoven (1813-1827) After the renunciation of his “immortal beloved,” in social withdrawl and compete deafness, Beethoven forged a final style.
Op.98 An die ferne Geliebte
Piano Sonata Op.109 in E Major
String Quartet Op.132 in A minor

Mozart was the first composer to create such nuanced human feeling in both instrumental and operatic music. To understand the source of his mastery of empathy and characterization, we need to understand the forces at play in his lifetime and the personal challenges that formed his character.

So often when I bring up the subject of Mozart, the response usually includes some reference to the 1984 film “Amadeus”. When it comes to biographical information about Mozart, this film - which won 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture - has been astonishingly influential. On the positive side, it provided Americans with some visual information about 18th century Vienna, the clothing, the wigs, the interiors, the coach rides, the musical salons and performances of opera and orchestral music. But it does seem unfortunate that the film contains such an unattractive and shallow portrait of Mozart, who for most of us represents the highest standard of musical perfection.

The film is filled with historical inaccuracy. Peter Shaffer, who wrote the original play (1979) as well as the film’s screenplay, was primarily intrigued by the subject of artistic jealousy. He designed a plot to demonstrate Salieri’s resentment of Mozart, who is portrayed as a crude, giggling dimwit, who passively received his sublime compositions like a sleepwalker. Mozart was undeserving, but “Loved by God” (“Ama-Deus”).

The search for a believably human Mozart has unfolded in the 225 years since his death with a wealth of biography and critical commentary. There is more biographical interest in Mozart than in any composer before him. The 1,400 extant Mozart family letters, and copious documentation of the colorful characters that appear in Mozart’s life, have provided a store of data that has been interpreted and re-interpreted over time. Even the most casual perusal of the letters reveals a discerning, committed, sensitive, and hardworking person, completely unlike the well-known “Amadeus” figure.

Every period of Mozart’s biography reveals its own prejudices and projections. Initially the dominating role of Leopold in his son’s life was considered positive and normal in the ideal patriarchal family. Over the years Leopold’s negative qualities became more and more obvious until he came to be seen by many as “a monster of jealousy and intrigue”. The overwhelmingly Freudian leaning of Solomon’s 1995 biography petrified the entire Mozart family in a drama of unending patriarchal ambition and repetition compulsion.

Until the late 1990’s, Constanze Mozart was arguably the most unpopular woman in music history, accused (with no factual evidence) of all manner of unworthiness, including adultery. As recognition of Mozart’s own moral stature has increased, so has the willingness of biographers to appreciate Constanze’s valuable role as Mozart’s wife.

No doubt there are contemporary prejudices coloring today’s biographies, but my favorite is Robert Gutman’s “Mozart, A Cultural Biography” (1999). When I read it I had previously read the Davenport, the Hildescheimer, the Solomon, and much of the Einstein. This made it possible to appreciate Gutman’s superior story-telling ability, but the book might seem overwhelming to someone trying to get an overview. I also liked Jane Glover’s “Mozart’s Women” (2005), not at all a feminist diatribe but a more abbreviated and contemporary view, with wonderful commentary about the operas. For those who prefer to get their information from film, a rewarding documentary is Grabsky’s “In Search of Mozart”.

I’m grateful to have spent an entire year with Mozart, “a rare creator whose work, like that of Shakespeare and a few others, can even redeem humanity in all its foolishness and futility”. - Benjamin Ivry, Wall Street Journal

MOZART AT HOME
Some of Mozart’s most charming and self-revelatory works were written for intimate gatherings with friends and family: the Mozarts, the Cannabiches, the Webers, and the Jacquins.

Sonata for Four Hands in C Major, K. 19 (1765)
Allegro

Sonata in C Major K. 309 (1777)
Allegro con spirito
Andante un poco adagio
Rondeau Allegretto grazioso

Pupille amate from Lucio Silla, K. 135 (1772)

Sonata in A minor K. 310
Allegro maestoso
Andante cantabile con espressione
Presto

Sonata for Four Hands in D Major K. 381 (1772)

Sonata for Four Hands in C Major K. 521 (1787)
Allegretto

”Kegelstatt” Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Viola in Eb Major K. 498 (1787)
Andante
Menuetto
Rondeaux Allegretto


MOZART AT COURT AND OUTDOORS
Many of Mozart’s chamber works were composed for aristocratic salons or outdoor entertainment. The performances include two of Mozart’s most serious and introspective masterpieces for these settings. Wind octets usually were light outdoor music for royal parties, but in K. 388 Mozart used the instrumental combination to explore the pathos and drama of the key of C minor. The G minor Viola peaking creative powers enabled him to unify this emotionally turbulent four-movement work, just as his own world was falling apart.

Serenade for Winds, K. 388 (1782)
Allegro
Andante
Menuet and Trio
Allegro

Viola Quintet K. 516 (1787)
Allegro
Menuetto: Allegretto
Adagio ma non troppo
Adagio/Allegro

The Bach fest featured four days of lectures and concerts exploring the life and art of J.S. Bach. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the foundation, the DNA, of our musical culture.

Bach (1685 - 1750) arrived on the scene when the horizontal plainsong procedures of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and early Baroque had evolved into vertical harmonic progressions, dominated by a bass line. Bach understood the dramatic potential of this goal-oriented harmonic movement. He harnessed the tension of expectation to the service of powerful emotional expression. Bach was the first to compose in the 12 major and 12 minor keys, setting in motion the chromatic potential that would be explored for the next hundred years. While perfecting his mastery of older forms, he also created a new international style, assimilating all the current European influences and the achievements of Vivaldi and Corelli. He transcended and redefined every musical genre he used.

The increasingly abstract forms generated by harmonic movement led to a new potential for instrumental music. In the realm of vocal music, his cantatas and passions surpassed any operatic music of his time.

Although Bach’s life coincides with the struggle of the Enlightenment, one foot in the faith-based Middle Ages, the other in reason-based Modernity, Bach was basically untouched by the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. As Taruskin emphasized in his Oxford History of Western Music, Bach lived his life “in defiance of the Enlightenment” and was “eclipsed, in his own time, for the complexity, conservatism, uncompromisingly religiosity, asperity and excess of art”. Two of his sons (C.P.E. and Johann Christian) had far more illustrious and lucrative careers. Bach’s commitment to the “learned counterpoint” of fugue and canon made him resistant to the easier pleasures of melody supported by harmonic accompaniment; the simple and elegant “style galant”, which would lead (through his sons) to the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. In their turn, Mozart and Beethoven would be brought to their knees by Bach’s contrapuntal mastery. Mozart’s life was changed when Baron Van Sweiten gave him a copy of the “Musical Offering”. Beethoven kept copies of the Inventions and the Well-Tempered Clavier in his person library, right next to his bed.

Although the historical context of Bach’s music is of interest, what is more remarkable is its universal appeal. Even people who don’t like music, or don’t usually like “classical” music, like Bach. Perhaps it’s the rhythmic propulsion and the clear direction of the harmonies. There’s also the transformational aspect of Bach’s music, the many people who have testified to it as life changing and a refuge in bereavement. There are endless tales of disillusioned musicians who have returned to careers just to play Bach.

Bach was well acquainted with pain and sorrow. Orphaned at the age of nine, he buried twelve of his twenty children as well as his first wife of twelve years. He lived a life of appalling hardship and stress, embattled and unappreciated, dying with the certainty that works like his St. Matthew Passion, Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations, the B minor Mass, would be forgotten and destroyed. His only comfort was the success of his sons and his hope for Heaven.

John Gardiner suggests that Bach’s supremely ordered music was engaged in a desperate struggle to keep chaos at bay. The passion for order was constantly manifested as Bach’s mind moved from the smallest detail to the enormous all-encompassing structures he favored in his later years. It’s fitting that Bach’s music was sent with the two Voyager space probes in 1977. From the mathematically revealing procedures of counterpoint to the most intimate of harmonic colorations, Bach’s music demonstrates an overwhelming exploration of what it is to be human.

BACH AT THE KEYBOARD
Bach as a father and teacher in relation to the Inventions. The C minor Partita and the Italian Concerto demonstrate the French and Italian influences Bach incorporated to create an international style. The magnificent Six Voiced Ricercare from the “Musical Offering”, Bach’s greatest fugue, will be performed in a special four-hand arrangement.

The Fifteen Two Part Inventions BWV 772-801

Partita in C minor BWV 826
Sinfonia (Grave Adagio; Andante; Fuga)
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Rondeaux
Capriccio

Italian Concerto BWV 971
Allegro
Andante
Presto

Ricercare in Six Voices
from the “Musical Offering” BWV 1079

The Unaccompanied Suites
These extraordinary dance suites were completed in the Cothen years (1717-23). Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, made the fair copies from Bach’s original drafts. They represent the pinnacle of the solo repertoire for their instruments. Two particularly ingenious canons from that “Musical Offering” complete the presentation: a canon that is also a fugue, and a perpetual canon, which is a mirror cannon, based on the “royal theme” of Frederick the Great.

Suite for Cello in C Major BWV 1009
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourree
Gigue

Siciliano from Eb Major Flute Sonata BWV 1031

Andante from E minor Flute Sonata BWV 1034

Partita in D minor for Violin BWV 1004
Allemanda
Corrente
Sarabanda
Giga
Ciaccona

Two Canons from the “Musical Offering” BWV 1079
Fuga Canonica in Epidiapente
Canon Perpetuus (“Mirror” canon)

THE “MUSICAL OFFERING” AND PRUTSMAN PLAYS BACH
Susan Waterfall described the historic circumstances that led to Bach’s “Musical Offering” for Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1747. It was followed by a performance of some of its canons and the great Trio Sonata. Zimmermann’s Coffee-House in Leipzig in the 1730’s was the original setting for Bach’s most beloved Clavier Concerto, and the place where Bach was able to enjoy more secular freedom than in the churches and aristocratic salons where he usually worked. Stephen Prutsman led the Chamber Orchestra in this virtuosic composition, which was performed by Mendelssohn and Brahms in the 19th century.

Four Canons from the “Musical Offering” BWV 1079
Canon Cancrizans (Crab Canon)
Canon Perpetuus supra Thema Regium (Perpetual Canon, Theme in middle)
Canon Motum Contrarium (Canon in Contrary Motion, Theme on top)
Canon in Unisono (Theme on bottom)

Trio Sonata in C minor from the “Musical Offering” BWV 1079
Largo
Allegro
Andante
Allegro

Clavier Concerto in D minor BWV 1052
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro

Umi no Hi featured an entire day of events celebrating Japan’s contemporary and historic music and culture, featuring the compositions of Toru Takemitsu, taiko, and a haiku garden.

Twentieth-century Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu dreamed of swimming in an “ocean that has no east, no west.” His dream of an international culture inspired Susan to bring together traditional and modern Japanese music in celebration of Takemitsu’s legacy and Japan’s July national holiday, Ocean Day.

TAKEMITSU’S DREAM
Three days before his death in 1996, Toru Takemitsu wrote a letter, to American pianist Peter Serkin, describing a remarkable dream - he was a whale swimming in an ocean that had no east and no west. Since the dawn of written music the West had focused on diatonic scales and the creation of complex structures of harmony and counterpoint. The East had favored the development of diverse scales, intricate rhythms and timbre. Takemitsu explored these cultural differences and created music that transcended them.

A self-taught composer from the age of 16, Takemitsu was a master of eclecticism, borrowing from Debussy, Messiaen, the European avant-garde, and jazz. Because of the “bitterness” of his World War II experience, Takemitsu resisted his Japanese identity for decades, paradoxically coming to value it through his contact with John Cage, a dedicated Zen Buddhist. As Takemitsu’s music evolved, it increasingly manifested basic Japanese aesthetic principles such as wabi sabi, ma aware and sawari.

Takemitsu’s music invited a different way of listening and new way of thinking about music. He wanted to free sounds to evolve naturally, rather than being forced into predetermined harmonic and metric forms. He created compelling sonorities, focusing on their entry, growth and decay. The walk through a Japanese garden was Takemitsu’s favorite analytical model.

Takemitsu’s extraordinary imaginative synthesis yielded stunning music for concert and film. His ability to maneuver perceptively between multiple points of view, between different sensibilities and aesthetics, is an essential quality for artists and audiences in our global future.

OCEAN THAT HAS NO EAST, NO WEST

Litany I (1950/1989)

Raintree for 3 Percussionists (1981)

Two Raintree Sketches (1982, 1992)

Contemporary Music for Tsugaru Shamisen, Shakuhachi, Shinobue, Vocies and Taiko

All in Twilight (1988) First movement

”Night” from “Toward the Sea” (1981)

Rainspell (1982)

Summertime (Gershwin) arr. for guitar

Golden Slumbers

In the Woods (1995)
I. Wainscott Pond
III. Muir Woods

Soran Bushi arr. by Julian Pollack

With Wu Man, included compositions of Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and other Chinese composers impacted by the Cultural Revolution.

What is Chineseness?
I aspire to inhabit a Chinese landscape painting. In an idyllic setting, in a secluded teahouse, wrapped in a silk robe, I become one with the views of mountains and rivers without end. My days are filled with practicing calligraphy and painting, reading and reciting poetry, flower arranging, and the occasional visit from a beloved friend. Over a pot of steaming tea, we observe that tea culture reflects the human relationship to nature. A single note strummed on my lute is of such rich timbred complexity that it is completely fulfilling, attentive listening to an individual moment. Understanding that the purpose of art is self-cultivation, my creativity flows with the forces of nature, as effortless action and direct emotional response. The depth of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, enables me to perceive that all aesthetic pleasure is derived from awareness of the Way. The greatest artistic beauty demonstrates natural law.

There is powerful allure in this Chinese image, which evolved for several thousand years. I’m hoping to find, in existing Chinese art and music, some adaptation, some enduring distillation, of this ancient, nature-based aesthetic. I think it still exists as an essence of Chineseness, despite the multitude of ethnicities, the influence of European culture, and the fracturing tumult of modernity.

The music selected for this program is all by Chinese composers. The contemporary ones have mastered procedures of western music and currently live in the U.S., but their Muse is Chinese. Many tunes and techniques are derived from Chinese folk materials and Chinese musicological practices.

“Song” from Tibetan Dance (2000) Bright Sheng

Playing Flute and Drum at Sunset Traditional

Three and Six Traditional

From Eight Memories in Watercolor (1978) Tan Dun
Staccato Beans
Floating Clouds

Dance of the Yi People Traditional

Green (1984) Zhou Long

Four Movements for Piano Trio (1989) Bright Sheng

White Snow in Sunny Spring Traditional

Three Songs for Pipa and Cello (1999) Bright Sheng
Seasons
Little Cabbage
Tibetan Dance

Blue Melody (1993) Kui Dong

Driving the Mule Team Traditional

Definitions by Susan Waterfall

Irresistible Groove:
A compelling beat that takes you over, sometimes communicating a dance style or period of cultural history (e.g. reggae, funk, salsa, swing). Sets your foot tapping and makes you want to dance. In a time of cerebral overload, the visceral component of groove is most welcome, connecting us to our physical selves and giving us energy.

Classical Music:
1) Common usage implies the previous five centuries of European art music. A term hijacked in the 20th c. by Schoenberg, Boulez and their followers in the academic music world. 2) Classical music is written down music, as opposed to improvised music.

Minimalism:
In the second half of the 20th c., a rejection of atonality and dissonance, in favor of resonant, overtone-based harmonies and rhythmic groove. The Minimalist impulse of Riley, Reich, and Glass challenged the prevailing musical hyper-complexity, offering an alternative ideology of accessible simplicity, repeating cells, transparent processes, and a strong pulse. The resulting cleansing of sensibilities was a purification, from which something new could evolve.

Post-Minimalism and New Romanticism:
Terms describing American music as it evolved in the 80s and 90s, including the ongoing work of Adams, Reich, and Glass.

Totalism:
The most recent name for American (classical) music that has diverged from the European classical trajectory. This music is performed in venues considered “classical”, preprogrammed alongside “classical” music, and played by musicians who have been “classical” trained. But it embraces ALL the musical resources available: minimalism, jazz, Latin, rock, pop, techno, and world music (especially African, Indonesian, and Indian music). Its most pervasive feature is a steady beat, over which are often laid poly-rhythms of great complexity.

Contemporary American Music:
More living composers than at any time in history, a staggering multiplicity of traditions, and a public with less time to listen than ever before. The explosion of media is an unprecedented challenge, a benefit and a curse, in a world transformed by accelerating and continuous change. Conditions are ripe for a great renaissance, as artists, the antennae of society, integrate all this change, and create works of art enabling us to contemplate our evolving humanity in today’s world.

“I Got Rhythm” Variations (1933-4) Gershwin

Four Studies (1993) Shickele

”Ode to Billy Joe” (1967) Gentry

Road Movies (1995) Adams
I. “Relaxed Groove”
II. “Contemplative”
III. “40% Swing”

”Milonga in Re” (1970) Piazzolla

”Nuevo Tango” (1986) Piazzolla*

”Mambosa” (2005) Colina

”Golden Horn” (1951) Brubeck*

”Eleanor Rigby” (1966) McCartney*

Eight Lines / Octet (1979) Reich

In 2009, when I began to study American classical music, I was surprised by a striking sensation of “nearness”. What was going on was “here,” not “over there,” on the other side of the Atlantic. Moreover, the evolution of this music was intertwined with my own lived history. In Ives’ music I found my grandparents’ Indiana small town world. My father had been the leader of a swing band and superb jazz clarinetist. Mother was the “girl singer.” My childhood was filled with jazz standards, songs of Stephen Foster, and hits from American musicals like The King and I and Oklahoma!

Growing up, I took for granted the chasm that existed between classical music and everything else. Classical mostly meant “European”, and as a pianist I became increasingly focused on mining the infinite riches of the great European repertoire. While the soundtrack of my life in the 60s and 70s was a rebellious and sexy blend of Beatles, Hendrix, and Dylan, I still believed that European art music was the most evolved. I never expected that chasm to be bridged.

But on a transformative trip to Santa Fe, through the art of O’Keefe and the literature of Cather, I experienced a thrilling new passion for the American landscape and the significance of American history and culture. Upon my return, I began work on a program of American classical music that would convey our unique heritage and offer an inspiring vision of our present. I chose Copland’s clarinet concerto, for which I had often played the piano accompaniment, to conjure the spectacular vastness of the American continent. I discovered that Copland had set poetry of Emily Dickinson, for decade my favorite poet, and a quintessential American voice. I found verses of Walt Whitman, in his profoundly American search for self-acceptance, set by Bernstein and Rorem. Gershwin’s Preludes were a perfect example of jazz transformed into a classical setting.

My son Julian’s desire to play John Adams’ two-piano tour de force Hallelujah Junction led us both into an enriching exploration of Adams’ music. After an impeccable education, Adams’ “heading west,” to the glory of California in the early 70s, was an archetypal American experience shared by many of us. What he found out here, the radical experimentation of Cowell, Cage, and Harrison, electronic music, and minimalism, became elements in his all-embracing personal style. This assimilation of multiple traditions foretells a rich musical future. Equally promising is music critic Alex Ross’ recent observation that many of the 20th century’s tired polarities, including that between elitism and populism, are finally dissolving.

I am finding myself more and more “at home” in contemporary American music. It’s growing out of the soil and sensibility of our multi-ethnic, polyrhythmic and polytonal society. I’m confident that, with a spirit of adventure, tolerance, and inclusiveness, we Americans will have, in Wallace Stegner’s words, “…a civilization to match our scenery.” Maybe a little of that bright California promise of the 60s and 70s will be there, too. Hallelujah, America!!

Andante from Clarinet Concerto (1948) Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)

The Opera House (1897) Charles Ives (1874 - 1954)

The Things Our Fathers Loved (1917) Charles Ives

Ann Street (1921) Charles Ives

Three Preludes (1926) George Gershwin (1898 - 1937)
Allegro
Andante
Allegro

Seven Poems by Emily Dickenson (1949-50) Aaron Copland
Nature, the Gentlest Mother
There Came a Wind like a Bugle
The World feels Dusty
Heart, we will forget him
Dear March, come in!
Going to Heaven
The Chariot

Adagio from Cello Sonata (1948) Elliott Carter (b 1908)

Double Music (1941) John Cage (1912 - 1992) and Lou Harrison (1917 - 2003)

As Adam Early in the Morning (1957) Ned Rorem (b 1923)

To What You Said (Whitman) (1976) Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)

Hallelujah Junction (1998) John Adams (b 1947)

Shall We Gather at the River (1864) Robert Lowry (1826 - 1899) (arr. by Copland)

Music of the Starry Night (1974) George Crumb (b 1929)

(Excerpted from The Berkeley Daily Planet, October 15,2009, by Ken Bullock, after a performance at the East Bay Jewish Community Center)

They Left a Light, Susan Waterfall’s multimedia program of music composed in Nazi prison camps includes Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, composed in 1940 at a P.O.W. camp in Silesia, and rare selections of music composed by Jewish musicians at Terezin (Thereisenstadt) concentration camp north of Prague.

“I’ve wanted to play Quartet for the End of Time again - I played it with some of the same people in 1992 in Mendocino,” said Waterfall.  “It’s so powerful, it takes people into an awareness of the eternal, which makes the music from Terezin more heartrending, knowing these people were denied even a normal lifespan.
I didn’t know right away about Terezin, or in much detail about the camps. After what I’d been immersed in the previous year with Janacek, I was asking what happened to Central European music, this incredible thread that was cut off and died in the camps. Janacek is one of my favorite composers; I wondered why he had no heirs. He had a lot of students - and they were Jews, in the eyes of the Nazis: Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa … all strong Czech nationalists.”

This program includes rare cabaret pieces from Terezin, arranged by Julian Waterfall Pollack. Terezin had been a popular spa before the war; the Nazis concealed the desperate nature of the true life of the camp under the facade of a paradise for Jewish artists and intellectuals. Waterfall says “it’s fantastic to see how music helped people to survive, to escape into it, to express revolt … it was a way to restore dignity, to continue with the best part of their lives from before entering the camps.”

Photographs and drawings of the camps, the composers and original performers, as well as translations of the songs are projected during the performance. Waterfall plays piano and narrates, accompanied by Jeremy Cohen,violin; Burke Schuchman, cello; Emily Onderdonk, viola; and Art Austin, clarinet. Singers are soprano Erin Neff and baritone Paul Murray.

Waterfall’s intensive research led her to other musicians and scholars around the world, including Bret Werb of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; Kobi Luria at the Beit Terezin (Terezin House) in Israel; Serge Dreznin, Paul Hamburg of the Judaic LIbrary and Moshe Zoman. “I met some amazing people during the course of this.  The musical scores were hard to obtain.  Two of them were just threads”.

Though “every story is devastatingly sad; you can’t take it all in - only by accretion,” there are unusual vignettes, like the friendship Messiaen developed with Albert Ruhl, an anti-Nazi guard who helped him get manuscript paper and kept him from hard labor so he could write the Quartet; of Messiaen meeting two musicians who helped him, one an Algerian Jew from a military band, how they listened to birdsong on night watch together.  Also Bartok’s letter to Hitler, insisting Bartok be placed on the list of proscribed composers, as they were the most distinguished.

Waterfall’s programs are always in depth and intensive, with multimedia imagery that expands the effect of the music, consolidating its impact. Nonetheless, music is the thing, beginning with the Messiaen, inspired by his vision of the Angel of the Apocalypse after seeing the Aurora Borealis above the camp.  It’s music that Alex Ross in the New Yorker called “the most ethereally beautiful … of the 20th century,” so transcendental yet forceful, at times a listener feels as if bodily lifted up.

Quartet of the End of Time Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992)
I Liturgy of Crystal
II Vocalise, for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time
III Abyss of the Birds
IV Interlude
V Praise to the Eternity of Jesus
VI Dance of Fury for the Seven Trumpets
VII Tangle of Rainbows, for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time
VIII Praise to the Immortality of Jesus

Music from Terezin
The Birch Tree Viktor Ullmann (1898 - 1944)
Little Cakewalk Viktor Ullmann
Jewish Child Carlo Taube (1897 - 1944)

Variations on a Moravian Folk Song Gideon Klein (1919 - 1945)

I Heard the Wild Geeze Pavel Haas (1899 - 1944)
Tha Bamboo Grove Pavel Haas

Three Songs from the Terezin Cabaret
Under an Umbrella Karel Svenk (1907 - 1945)
Terezin Anthem Karen Svenk
The Carousel Song Martin Roman (b? - 1996)

Dance for String Trio Hans Krasa (1899 - 1944)

Autumn Viktor Ullmann

Lullaby Ilse Weber (1903 - 1944)

Weimar Berlin was “the crucible for every conceivable innovation in music, film, theater, poetry, painting, science, education, city planning, architecture, photography, radio, and journalism.” Under a surface of sensational licentiousness lay a relentless examination of the sorrowful face of humanity in a corrupt and cruel world. Thrust into modernity by the total collapse of governmental and social structure following World War I, Berlin was the capital of a “desperate modernity” from 1918 to 1933, when Hitler unfortunately gained control over the richest cultural life in Europe, scapegoating the Jews for economic ills brought on by the Great Depression and colossal folly of World War I. Although Jews constituted less than one percent of the German population, their passion and genius for Bildung (high culture) had fueled a spectacular rise to prominence as they sought to merge German and Jewish identity. With Nazism the period of mutual enrichment between Jews and Germans ended and the contributions of Jews, as well as of avant-garde artists and intellectuals, were declared “degenerate”. The brilliance of Weimar culture burst into a conflagration of disrupted lives, concentration camps, and death.

Seventy five years later music lovers are beginning to realize the magnitude of their loss. The glorious three hundred year evolution of German music, the backbone of the Western art music we all adore, was disastrously injured just as crucial challenges were being worked out. Traditional forms and tonal language had progressed to a point of unprecedented complexity and esotericism. At the same time, film and radio were offering new opportunities for musical communication. Accessibility was, and remains, the main issue. Beautifully trained composers and performers, inheritors of the German musical language, who might have been capable of solving these conundrums, as well as the educated audiences who might have responded, were now dead or dispersed.

We will never know where an uninterrupted Weimar musical culture might have taken us. Perhaps the great language of Western art music would have evolved to inspire an even more comprehensive vision of human potential, rather than the marginalization and fragmentation we now face. We can only enjoy this first flowering of modern German music, as Weill, Schoenberg, and Eisler, following in the wake of Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss, experimented amidst the anarchy, lust, and unbridled creativity of Weimar Berlin.

WEILL, SCHOENBERG AND EISLER IN WEIMAR BERLIN

The Iron Brigade Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951)

Little Gigolo Arnold Schoenberg
Warning

Minuet & Trio Opus 25 Arnold Schoenberg

Musette Opus 25 Arnold Schoenberg

Opus 8, #7 and #6 Hanns Eisler (1898 - 1962)

Newspaper Clippings Opus 11 (excerpts) Hanns Eisler

Solidarity Song Hanns Eisler

String Quartet Opus 8 Kurt Weill (1900 - 1950)
Sostenuto
Scherzo

Meatball Song Kurt Weill
Shell Oil Song
Berlin in Light

Selections from The Three Penny Opera Kurt Weill
Mack the Knife
Shimmy
Tango
Foxtrot

The Farewell Letter Kurt Weill
Ballade of the Jew’s Whore Hanns Eisler
Song of a German Mother Hanns Eisler

Fourteen Ways of Describing Rain Hanns Eisler
(The film score, for seven instruments and conductor, accompanied Joris Iven’s 1929 film “Regen”)

To the Little Radio Hanns Eisler
And I’ll Never Again See The Land From Which I Came
On the Sprinkling of Gardens

German Children’s Song Hanns Eisler

Leos Janacek (1854 - 1928) never lost touch with Hukvaldy, the remote Moravian hamlet where he was born and died. The wild spirit of those mountains and valleys never ceased to whisper in his ear. From the rhythms and contours of ancient folk melodies and dialects, from animal cries and birdsong, he fashioned a musical language that is strikingly unique and miraculously accessible. In contrast to the urban, sophisticated and cerebral music of his contemporaries, he is a breath of fresh air. Rethinking every aspect of melody, harmony, and rhythm, he became the foremost creator of musical expressivity in the 20th century. He speaks directly to the heart.

If Janacek’s name is not a household word, it’s because his lifelong isolation in Moravia (the eastern region of the Czech Republic) resulted in a delayed appreciation of his importance. Today four of his nine operas are in the mainstream of opera production throughout the world (Jenufa, Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Affair). His two string quartets are among the supreme masterpieces of this genre in the twentieth century. The violin and cello sonatas and the solo piano works are highlights of their repertoires. There are Janacek festivals everywhere and in 2004 the BBC devoted 24 hours of programming to his 150th birthday. The proliferation of Janacek scholarship in the last twenty years has been breathtaking.

This presentation includes highlights of Janacek’s chamber music and you will become acquainted with one of the most fascinating personalities in the history of 20th century music. An almost exact contemporary of Fauré (1845 - 1924), Janacek had a long and eventful life, well documented by early photographs. His first sixty years of passionate folk music research, self-doubt as a composer, a tumultuous marriage, and the tragic death of his two children, were only a prelude to the remarkable late flowering of his genius. His confidence was greatly increased by the gains of Czech nationalism after World War I and by the popular success of his third opera (Jenufa) in Prague. Above all, there was his relationship with a woman, married and 35 years younger. His fixation on the reluctant Kamila Stosslova reveals the mysterious connection between erotic attraction, inspiration, and creativity.

Moravian Folk Songs arranged by Janacek (1892 - 1901)

Mladi (Recollections of Youth, 1924)

On the Overgrown Path (1910 - 1911)
Our Evenings
They Chattered Like Swallows
The Screech Owl Has Not Flown Away

Violin Sonata (1913 - 1921)
Con moto
Ballada
Allegretto
Adagio

First String Quartet (inspired by Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata”, 1923)
Con Moto

Pohadka (Fairy Tale, 1910)
Con moto
Allegro

Second String Quartet (“Intimate Letters”, 1928)
Adagio

Concertino (1925)
Moderato
Piu mosso
Con moto
Allegro

Partners in Crime: Debussy, Ravel, Satie and Stravinsky At a time of unprecedented technological and scientific development, Belle Epoque Paris (1870 - 1914) witnessed an intellectual and artistic flowering that made it the cultural capital of Europe. Transformation was already well underway in the visual arts and literature by 1890, when we find Debussy (28 years old), Satie (24) and Ravel (15) taking their positions in the battle for the future of music. Franck, Saint-Saëns and d’Indy represented the establishment, dominated by the influence of Wagner. For innovative musicians, painters, and writers, the cafes of Montmartre, bookstores like Bailly’s, and many private salons provided opportunity to share experiments and theories. Real friendships evolved as these extraordinary artists spurred each other on, reveling in the scandals that would create a second renaissance in the history of European art. In this presentation, you will hear what caused the scandals and who was scandalized. What follows here is a brief chronology of the friendships.

Satie, nicknamed the “Precursor” by Debussy and later, “The Great Experimenter” by Ravel, became close to Debussy in the 1890s. Together the two experienced concerts, plays and cafe life, and Debussy was influenced by Satie’s musical experiments. Satie was the witness for Debussy’s first marriage and Debussy dedicated several compositions to Satie, describing him as “a gentle medieval musician, lost in this century.” Ravel’s father brought his 18 year old son to hear Satie playing his avant-garde compositions at a Montmartre café. Ravel immediately fell under the spell of Satie’s mischievous and spiritual relationship to music. Both Debussy and Ravel attended the Tuesday salons of the poet Mallarmé, who was a leader of the Symbolist school and host to innumerable important artists. It was Debussy’s transformation of Mallarmé’s poem “L’Après-midi d’un Faun” in 1894 that established Debussy as the undisputed leader of the musical counter-culture. His opera Pelléas and Mélisande in 1902 brought him international stature.

Ravel was already too deeply committed to his own musical taste to succeed at the Conservatoire. He had already been expelled three times when his pre-eminence was finally established by public outcry with “l’affaire Ravel” in 1905 after Ravel was eliminated from the preliminary round of Prix de Rome. As the leader of the next musical generation, Ravel had meals and spent time at Debussy’s home. The two attended each other’s concerts and perused each others scores. Debussy described Ravel as “extraordinarily gifted, but what irritates me is his posture as a ‘trickster’ or a fakir enchanter, who can make flowers spring out of a chair.” An element of competition entered their relationship, amplified by their critics and supporters, but both careers were flourishing. Meanwhile Satie distanced himself from the musical mainstream, writing increasingly iconoclastic music and cabaret songs. Both Debussy and Ravel championed Satie, orchestrating and conducting his piano compositions. Satie and Debussy often spend evenings playing 4-hand piano and Debussy tried to protect Satie’s unique genius when Satie decided to undergo counterpoint classes at d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum.

The plot thickened when Stravinsky (26) moved to Paris in 1909 for the premier of Firebird which had been commissioned by Diaghilev for the Paris season of the Ballet Russe. The influence of Debussy on Stravinsky had been evident since Stravinsky’s student years in St. Petersburg. His teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, told him “Better not listen to Debussy…one runs the risk of getting accustomed to him and one would end by liking him,” After the opening night of Firebird, Diaghilev introduced Stravinsky to “a dark man with a double forehead,” the beginning of a friendship and rich correspondence that lasted until Debussy’s death. After the first performance of Petrouchka several years later, Debussy gave Stravinsky a walking stick with an inscribed monogram of their joint initials. Satie met Stravinsky at a luncheon at Debussy’s in 1911. They became friends and Stravinsky dedicated several compositions to Satie, including “an ice-cream wagon waltz,” in an effort to capture Satie’s special esprit. In 1912 there was a memorable afternoon for Debussy and Stravinsky - the first reading of Stravinsky’s nearly completed Rite of Spring played at one piano, with Debussy playing the bass parts and Stravinsky the treble parts.

Stravinsky was closer in age to Ravel and soon he joined Ravel for evenings with the “Apaches”, Ravel’s circle of artists and friends who saw themselves as “underworld hooligans” but who were passionate aesthetes devoted to the visual arts, poetry and music. In 1912, Stravinsky sat with Ravel and his mother for the first performance of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé, another Diaghilev commission for the Ballet Russe. At Diaghilev’s request, Stravinsky and Ravel now undertook the joint orchestration of a Mussorgsky score. The months they spent together gave rise to the special relationship between Stravinsky’s Japanese Lyrics and Ravel’s Poèmes de Mallarmé.

The outbreak of World War I brought the great artistic outpouring to a halt as half the Frenchmen between 20 and 32 died. Ravel and Satie directly participated in the war effort, Ravel as a truck driver and Satie as a corporal in the Home Guard. Debussy, physically debilitated by rectal cancer, fought the Germans by writing compositions glorifying French culture (En Blanc et Noir, the Cello Sonata). Satie’s music for the ballet Parade (Diaghilev’s 1917 commission) was prophetic of a new aesthetic that would prevail after the war. Debussy made derogatory remarks about Parade, resulting in a terrible rift between the two friends that was barely repaired by a letter right before Debussy’s death in 1918. Satie became the acknowledged leader of Les Six (the new musical avant-garde), contributed to the development of Neo-Classicism, and continued to explore the edges of culture with Dadaism and Communism until his death of 1925.

Ravel emerged from the war and declared that it was Debussy who had pointed the way to the new “austerity,” and showed his own lack of chauvinism by openly admiring Schoenberg’s aesthetics. Both of these influences were evident in Ravel’s 1920 Sonata for Violin and Cello, dedicated to Debussy. Jazz, first heard live in Paris in 1918, played an important part in many of Ravel’s later compositions such as the Violin Sonata and the piano concertos. Ravel died in 1937, defending the work of Debussy, Satie and Stravinsky to the end. Stravinsky began work on L’Histoire du Soldat at the end of the war, setting off in the first of many directions he would explore in the next fifty years.

La Belle Excentrique Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)
Grand Ritournelle
Cancan Grand-Mondain

Je te veux Erik Satie

Three Japanese Lyrics Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)
Akahito
Mazatsumi
Tsaraiuki (dedicated to Ravel)

Trois Poèmes de Stephane Mallarmé (1913) Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)
Soupir (dedicated to Stravinsky)
Placet futile
Surgi de la croupe ed du bond (Dedicated to Satie)

Choses vues à droit et à gauche (sans lunettes) Erik Satie
Choral hypocrite
Fugue à tatons (Fumbling Fugue)
Fantaisie musculaire

Sonate pour violoncelle et piano Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)
Prologue
Sérénade et finale

En Blanc et Noir Claude Debussy
Avec emportement
Lent, sombre
Scherzando (dedicated to Stravinsky)

Sonate pour violon et violoncelle Maurice Ravel
(dedicated to the memory of Debussy)
Allegro
Très vif

Minstrels Claude Debussy

Petite fille américaine Erik Satie
Ragtime du paquebot

”Blues” from Sonata for Violin and Piano Maurice Ravel

Tango, Walz and Ragtime from L’histoire du Soldat Igor Stravinsky

Soul Food
Since Mendocino is a community of food and drink enthusiasts, a few recipes for what was “soul food” to the Brahms family might be an ideal way to commune with the past.

Although Brahms never married, his life was full of enduring friendships. The composer Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, a celebrated concert pianist, the great violinist Josef Joachim, and the musicians Albert Dietrich and Julius Grimm formed a nucleus of intimate relationships when Brahms, aged 19, arrived in Düsseldorf in 1853. After Schumann’s suicide attempt, hospitalization, and death, the friends drew even closer together. There were many journeys north to Brahms’ family in Hamburg, and Brahms’ mother Christiane unfailingly served her famous bilberry fritters with eggnog to the guests. It was a ritual. Clara even made a point of getting the recipe from Christiane so that she could prepare the pastry that Brahms loved above all others.

Musical scores, newspaper article, old photographs, diaries, recipes, letters - all are tantalizing and precious bits of Brahms’ life. In this presentation we arrange them, hoping to conjure the illusive and irretrievable past.

Christiane Brahms’ Blaubeere Krapfen
1 egg, separated
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tblsp. sugar
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup bilberries, blueberries, elderberries, or huckleberries
canola oil to deep fry
powdered sugar

Beat egg white until stiff. Beat egg yolk with sugar, then beat in buttermilk. Add sifted flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in egg white. Add blueberries. Drop batter by rounded tablespoons into hot oil. Turn over once then remove with slotted spoon. Arrange on platter and dust with sifted powdered sugar. Serves 4.

Christiane Brahms’ Eierpunsch
3 eggs, separated
3 cups milk
3/4 cups sugar
1 cup rum
1 tblsp. vanilla
nutmeg
1 cup whipping cream

Beat egg whites until stiff. Whip cream until stiff. Beat egg yolks with sugar until creamy. Add vanilla. Stir in egg whites and whipped cream. Stir in milk and rum. Ladle into small mugs and garnish with nutmeg. Serves 6.

“Heimkehr” Op. 7 No. 6 Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897)
”Der Gang zum Liebchen” Op. 48 No. 1
”Liebestreu” Op. 3 No. 1

”Frei Aber Einsam” (FAE) Sonata (1853) Schumann, Brahms, and Dietrich
Bewegt Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)
Allegro Brahms

”Sandmännchen” from Volkskinderlieder
”Wiegenlied” Op. 49 No. 4

Variations on a Theme by Schumann (excerpts)
Theme Schumann
Variations 4 & 5 Brahms

”Ein Sonnett” Op. 14 No. 4
”An eine Aeolsharfe” Op. 19 No. 5
”Von ewiger Liebe” Op. 43 No. 1

”Nicht Mehr” Op. 32 No. 2
”Wie bist du Maine Königin” Op. 32 No. 9
”Meine Liebe ist Grün” Op. 63 No. 5

”Walzes” Op. 39 (excerpts)

Trio Op. 8 in B Major
Allegro con brio
Scherzo, Allegro molto
Adagio
Allegro

“Joyfulness, enthusiasm, for the artist as for the audience, is the criterion of beauty, of genius, of truth". - Proust
Paris - from 1885 to 1914! For some of us it will always be the perfect place and time, the cultural capital of the world, where prosperity and leisure nurtured a sustained flourishing of all the arts and life was just about perfect. The upper classes spent most of their afternoons and evenings attending private salons, plays, concerts, operas, and art exhibitions. The salons, with their subtle blend of art and socializing, were the domain of women, whose wealth and prestige could be demonstrated by the brilliance of the entertainment provided for their guests. For artists, success in the salons was a stepping-stone to success int he public sphere.

One of the greatest salons in Parisian history was that of American-born Winnaretta Singer, whose sewing machine fortune and striking personality enabled her to influence the evolution of culture, particularly music, through her patronage and commissions. In the spectacular Parisian mansion that she astutely and defiantly bought for herself at the age of 21, she hosted a salon that lasted from 1888 to 1939. With her marriage to Prince Edmond de Polignac in 1891, she became the Princesse de Polignac and at her salon the elite of Parisian society mingled with cultural luminaries. During the course of her long and productive life she was patron, hostess, and friend to composers (Chabrier, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Milhaud, Kurt Weill, and Cole Porter), performers (Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Nadia Boulanger, Rubenstein, Horowitz, Lipatti, Clara Haskil), and writers (Proust, Colette, Cocteau, Virginia Woolf). She commissioned Le Corbusier to design and build low cost housing in Paris and funded scientific projects of Marie Curie as well as archeological digs in Egypt. She translated Plato from the original Greek and Thoreau’s Walden into French. She was an accomplished painter, art collector, organist and pianist.

The Parisian kaleidoscope of unforgettable individuals, movements, “isms”, and changing times can all be brought clearly into focus in the one room where anybody who was anybody could be seen: the salon of the Princesse de Polignac. This makes it quite easy to perceive from here that transformation of art and sensibility during this crucial period in history. The early years of her salon are re-created in the first half of this evening’s concert with works of Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. For the elegant and refined tastes of full-time aesthetes, the arts were still permeated with a reverence or nature and human feeling, the final flowering of Romanticism.

During the difficult years of the First World War, and right before, the fresh winds of modernism began to be felt. Features of ordinary, day to day existence - the cabaret, and the circus - became objects of fascination, especially when transformed by multiple perspectives, multiple tonal areas, and surprising juxtapositions. The contemplation of these kinds of manipulative processes would become the hallmark of 20th century art and music. The second half of the concert includes works by Satie, Stravinksy, Kurt Weill and Poulenc that demonstrate the new modernism.

I owe much of my background in this wonderful era to my father, Frank Waterfall. He was devoted to Stravinsky and some of my earliest childhood memories are of Pétrouchka and Firebird. His keen interest in Stravinsky’s circle led him to Diaghilev and a wonderful biography of Diaghilev’s dearest friend Misia (Godebska-Natanson-Edwards) Sert. He gave me that book in 1981 and it provided my first dazzling vision of an extraordinary period. He also made it possible for me to see, at the age of 20, an unforgettable production of three Stravinsky ballets at the Paris Opera: Les Noces, Rite of Spring, and Renard. To his memory my efforts in this evening’s program are gratefully dedicated.

TALES OF THE PARISIAN SALON: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WINNARETTA SINGER, THE PRINCESSE DE POLIGNAC
Place: Paris, The Salon of Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac
Time: 1888 - 1939

Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

Scherzo from the C minor Piano Quartet, Op. 15 Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924)

”En Sourdine” & “Mandoline” Gabriel Fauré
from Cinq Melodies de Venise

Pavane, Opus 50 Gabriel Fauré

Lamento Prince Edmond de Polignac (1834 - 1901)

Waltz “La Plus que Lente” Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)

”Le Temps de Lilas et le Rossignol” Reynaldo Hahn (1875 - 1947)

C minor Piano Quartet, Op. 15 Gabriel Fauré
Adagio
Allegro molto

Parade (arranged for Piano 4-Hand) Erik Satie (1866 - 1925)

”Garçon de Liége” Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963)

”Je Ne t’Aime Pas” Kurt Weill (1900 - 1950)

Renard (The Fox) Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)



FURTHER READING
Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer Princess de Polignac By Sylvia Kahan (2003)
Misia: The Life of Misia Sert By Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale (1980)
Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet By Otto Friedrich (1992)
The Banquet Year (Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I) By Roger Shattuck (1955)

Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is a Mount Everest of the pianist’s repertoire and I was delighted when Jeanne Stark-Iochmans said she would play it with me. This thrilling and exuberant piece would also offer the audience a chance to focus on the Festival’s brilliant premier percussionists Tyler Mack and Mark Veregge. For me it was an opportunity to immerse myself in the music of Bartók and his life in fascinating and colorful Hungary. I imagined a program of Bartók’s chamber music, embellished with some of the ethnic Hungarian folk music that Bartók spent much of his life collecting. Serendipitously, I learned the Ferenc Tobak, the legendary Hungarian bagpipe player, was living with his family in Mendocino!

Bartók lived (1881 - 1945) during a time of extraordinary political and cultural changes in Hungary. A brief look at Bartók’s early life demonstrates the forces of disintegration and chaos. None of the places where Bartók spent his childhood are part of today’s Hungary. The Austro-Hangarian (Hapsburg) Empire lost two thirds of its territory and half of its population after World War I. This was a population of Hungarian speakers (descended from Huns and Magyrars), Slovakians, Romanians, Germans, Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies. Bartók was a true child of this cultural diversity. His mother was a German speaker who only learned Hungarian to get her teacher’s diploma. Bartók was seven when his Hungarian speaking father died and his mother’s sister, who never learned Hungarian, became the “wife” of the family while Bartók’s mother worked outside. German was now spoken at home. Sent away to various schools, Bartók was alternately taught in German and Hungarian. His first task was to integrate the German and Hungarian aspects of his heritage.

Prodigiously gifted as a pianist and composer, Bartók was offered a full scholarship to the prestigious conservatory in Vienna. By choosing Budapest for his higher education, he committed himself to the pursuit of Hungarian national identity, particularly the search for an authentically Hungarian music. In Budapest he encountered the growing chasm between conservative “patriotic” Hungarians and the left wing, comparatively rootless, primarily German or Jewish intelligentsia. Trained to master and perpetrate the highly evolved Austro-German musical tradition, Bartók’s encounter with peasant music convinced him that “the clearest springs” of musical meaning would flow from that source. While he struggled creatively to integrate the qualities and values of peasant music with contemporary art music, Hungary and Budapest experienced a cultural flowering (1890 - 1917), entered and lost the First World War, embarked on a democracy under Krolyi, and experienced a communist state under Bela Kun, followed by a murderous “white terror” and the rise of fascism under Horthy.

Alienated, Bartók refused medals and awards from the Horthy regime. Then the growing Nazi threat drove him to remove himself in protest from the list of permitted “Aryan” composers, to send all his manuscripts out of Hungary, and to refuse to have his pieces performed in fascist states. Bitterly disillusioned, Bartók retreated more and more into a Hungary of his imagination. Ultimately, after his mother’s death in 1939, he moved with his wife to New York. His last years were spent in the shadow of a losing battle with leukemia.

Approaching Bartók musically, I was overwhelmed by his personal genius and facility, the thoroughness of his mastery of classical forms and procedures, and then, in his years of collecting folk music, his total absorption of the peasant idiom, which enabled him to find his unique voice as a composer. Discovering such a turbulent sea of cultural and historic currents in Bartók’s life, perhaps it is understandable that I began to cling to the sweet faces of the women who peered out at me from the pages of Bartók’s biographies.

Elusive and introverted, Bartók was throughout his life surrounded and protected by women who put his musical needs first. All of them, except his mother, sister, and aunt, began as his tender, young piano students, and became friends, lovers, or wives. These women were the recipients of the letters in which Bartók defined himself, and it was onto their persons that Bartók projected the inspiration to work and break through his intermittent creative blocks. For those reasons, I found it meaningful to organize this program of music around the progression of women in Bartók’s life. They also had their ambitions, their contributions, their beginnings and endings. Because of them Bartók’s genius was able to flourish. His own emotional and imaginative world, all the life around him, all this history and evolution, could be distilled into the musical works of art, which embody the past and enrich the present.

BARTÓK’S WOMEN

Fragment from Unpublished Sonata (1898)

Piros Alma (A Red Apple Drops)

Dedication to Ten Easy Pieces (1908)

My Sweetheart is Dancing (14th Bagatelle) (1908)

Two Burlesques
The Quarrel (1908)
A Bit Drunk (1911)

When the Shepherd Lost his Sheep
Traditional Romanian Folk Tale with Music
Keserves (Lament)
Kett’s (Couple Dance)
Kecske Tánc (Goat Dance)
Arr. by Ferenc Tobak

Tilinka Music (overtone flute)
Keserves (Lament) from Zabola, Transylvania
Tavasz, tavasz (Spring, spring) from Bukovina
Tánc (Dance Tune) from Mara-mures (from a Bartók recording)
Arr. by Ferenc Tobak

The Night’s Music (From the Out of Doors Suite) (1926)

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937)
Assai lento, Allegro molto
Lento, ma non troppo
Allegro non troppo

Elindultam szép Hazámból (I Left My Sweet Homeland)

Romanian Folk Dances (1915)
Stick Dance
Sash Dance
In One Spot
Horn Dance
Romanian Polka
Fast Dance

Two Songs, Opus 15 (1915-16)
My Love
Summer

First Sonata for Violin and Piano (1921)
Third Movement, Allegro

Transdanubian Dance Music
Dudálás (Slow Piping)
Ugrós (Jumping Dance)
Csàrdàs

South of the South of the World lies a flat grassland - the pampas - backed up against the Andes Mountains and open to the sea. The Rio del Plata flows across the top and here evolved the essence of Argentine culture: mestizaje, the blending of peoples.

First of course, were Native Americans whose blood was extinguished or assimilated early on. After 1500 came the Spanish settlers and their descendants - the criollas - leading lonely rural existences on the vast, fertile land. The horses and cattle that had escaped from the early settlers now thrived on the pampas and formed enormous wild herds. The men who captures, tamed and harvested these animals were the gauchos - Argentine cowboys, the archetypal figure of the criolla lifestyle. Even after the pampas was divided into privately owned estancias and the gauchos became ranch-hands, they retained something of their freedom, wildness, and dignity.

The vibrant rhythms and dances of African slaves brought to the Rio del Plata region soon blended with the criolla music. In the early 19th century one-third of the population was black. The number of Afro-Argentines mysteriously declined and disappeared by the beginning of the 20th century, but left behind a powerful musical offspring.

Late in the 19th century came the great waves of Italian and Eastern European immigrants that made Buenos Aires an industrial city. The culmination of all this history, the very life of this city, its music, dance, poetry, its austerity, its melancholy, intellectuality, snobbery, sophistication, its tragic search for its own identity, all are reflected in the culture of tango - tanguismo.

The first three pieces presented are early compositions by Ginastera, written when he was primarily inspired by the criollisma of his youth. Here is the image of the solitary gaucho with his guitar and Spanish melodies, living close to the earth, longing for “home,” drinking and gambling. Any women on the scene lived in camps, kidnapped, unmarried and abandoned. The gaucho had no sense of family - he owned only his knife, his saddle, and his poncho, and worked only for his tobacco, his rum, and his mate tea. He lived and bathed on horseback, and proved his manhood in knife fights and rodeos.

The scarcity of women, the cult of machismo, and the African-American heritage are among the many endlessly contested factors that led to the evolution of tango in the late 1880’s. At first a creature of the brothels of Buenos Aires, it was imported, stylized and tuxedoed in Paris and Hollywood. Finally respectable at home in Buenos Aires, the importance of the dance was enhanced by the importance of the lyrics.

The tango singer Carlos Gardel became an international star in the 1930’s. Tango poetry addressed the plight of the disenfranchised and the colonized, as well as the endless battle of the sexes. The middle part of our program this evening features music from this golden age of tango.

Ginastera’s art led him into the European mainstream, and he left Argentina. His student, Astor Piazzolla, also of Italian ancestry, was destined to be the crucible for the evolution of tango in our time. Piazzolla had the melodic gift of Puccini, the rhythmic gift of Stravinsky or Oscar Peterson, the accessibility of Lennon and McCartney. Tango was a prism through which passed the comprehensiveness of his training: his years as a child in New York’s Little Italy, his impeccable tanguero background, his studies in Paris with the French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, his life long passion for jazz and classical music, and his valuable collaboration with diverse talents in many musical genres. Piazzolla’s life is a Rosetta Stone of all the issues that beset musicians today: classical vs. jazz, pop vs. tango; performer vs. composer vs. improviser vs. arranger; purity vs. inclusiveness. Unfortunately his attempts to create a nuevo tango earned him the scorn and outrage of his fellow porteños (inhabitants of Buenos Aires.) Conventional tango was an icon of porteño identity in a city which, in 2000, had more psychotherapists per capita than any city in the world!

The music Piazzolla left us shares many qualities with the work of the South American writers Borges, Neruda, and Marquez. As the composer John Adams describes it: Their work shocked us with its mixture of brutality, magic, sensuality and humane honesty. The vitality of their expressive world, its emotional range, its unblinking vision of the human condition, its humor in the face of crushing economic and political weight, gave us a shock like a brilliant life-giving jab of pain. In the musical world alone, the discovery of Piazzolla was like the finding of some exotic and dangerous potency drug, a drug that could bring with it the double-edged sword of ecstasy and the bitterest of remorse.

Piazzolla elevated the tango to a universal music for our time. From the contradictions of life in Buenos Aires, to the contradictions of today’s world, these tangos thrill us with everything life can be, bittersweet, sincere, loaded with cultural richness.

ARGENTINA: GAUCHOS & TANGOS
A program with Jeremy Cohen and Quartet San Francisco

Pampeana #1 Alberto Ginastera (1916 - 1983)

Gaucho Dancing Alberto Ginastera

Tres Danzas Argentinas
Danza del Viejo Boyero
Danza de la Moza Donosa
Danza del Gaucho Matrero

Cantos del Tucuman Alberto Ginastera
Yo naci en el valle
Solita su alma
Vida, Vidita, Vidala
Algarrobo, Algorroba!

Felicia Enrique Saborido* (1877 - 1941)

Gallo Ciego Agustin Bardi* (1884 - 1941)

Taquito Militar Mariano Mores* (b1918)

Cumparcita G.H. Matos Rodriquez

Comme Il Faut Eduardo Arolas* (1892 - 1924)

Milonga en Re Astor Piazzolla (1921 - 1992)

Contrabanjeando Astor Piazzolla*

Le Grand Tango Astor Piazzolla

Nuevo Tango Astor Piazzolla*

Invierno Porteño Astor Piazzolla*

Verano Porteño Astor Piazzolla*

Libertango Astor Piazzolla*

*Arr. by Jeremy Cohen

Georges Sand, Pauline Viardot, Misia Sert, Natalie Barney, Winnaretta Singer, Gertrude Stein. For years I’ve been enthralled reading about the salons these women hosted. For in this extremely choice era of cultural history in Paris, stylish and educated people would gather almost every evening to eat, drink, flirt, and carry on passionate arguments about the direction the arts were taking.

These were occasions where new plays, poems, paintings, or compositions could receive an immediate response. Artists were in demand in a more intimate atmosphere than the concert hall. Sparkling conversation was “de rigeur.” The skilled hostess assembled her guests, arranged entertainment and skillfully guided the conversation on pre-arranged topics. Proust reports how his witty friend Mme. Strauss declined to speak on adultery: “Forgive me, I prepared incest by mistake.”
Was the food more delicious? Were the picnics more enchanting, the women more beautiful, the clothing and furnishings more sensual? Wasn’t everything somehow more scaled to human fulfillment? The multitudes who still visit Paris and flock to exhibitions of Impressionist paintings seem to say “yes.” Surely there is more nostalgia for this era than any other in human history.

There is something about Fauré’s music which particularly evokes all these sensory impressions. Listening and playing I catch the scent of roses and lilies and hallucinate the curves of Art Nouveau designs. In Fauré’s milieu of such overwhelming richness in all the arts, the artists themselves became aware of these peculiar correspondences and involuntary memory associations.

After the First World War ended, Fauré in his seventies experienced a bountiful Indian Summer of creativity. The Second Piano Quintet is one of the great achievements of this period: a tour de force of formal technique and profound emotional richness.

The Salon era spanned many generations of Parisian musicians, from Chopin and Liszt to Fauré, Debussy, Bizet and Ravel, followed by members of “Les Six” (including Poulenc and Milhaud) who were transformed by the Parisian presence of Stravinsky. We take the liberty of combining the generations in this program, representing as they do a continuum of Parisian savoir faire and joie de vivre.

A Parisian Salon c. 1885 - 1914
Music by Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Fauré, Bizet, Milhaud

Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor (1923) Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924)
Allegro moderato
Allegro vivo
Andante moderato
Allegro molto