UMS Concert Program, Saturday Nov. 05 To 19: University Musical Society: Fall 2005 - Saturday Nov. 05 To 19 --

Season: Fall 2005
Hill Auditorium

Fall 2005 Season 127th Annual Season
General Information
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Event Program Book
Saturday, November 5 through Saturday, November 19, 2005
Youssou N'Dour's Egypt featuring Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra
Saturday, November 5, 8:00 pm Hill Auditorium
Jean-Yves Thibaudet 9
Sunday, November 6, 4:00 pm Hill Auditorium
Michigan Chamber Players 17
Complimentary Admission Sunday, November 13, 4:00 pm Rackham Auditorium
Concertante 25
Saturday, November 19, 8:00 pm Rackham Auditorium
I
t is now no secret that UMS truly cares about the many cultural com?munities that exist throughout the region. It is our mission and goal to be of service to all of the important traditions that are a reflection of Michigan's many races, religions, cultures, and diasporas.
The Saturday, November 5 concert of Youssou N'Dour and Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra (see p. 5) represents what is best about UMS and our audience development efforts. Last season, we developed deep and meaningful relationships with the Arab community of southeastern
Michigan through our Arab World Music Festival. This season, we are focusing on the heritage of Africa; this particular concert celebrates and acknowledges both commu?nities by bringing them together through music.
Over the past six months, UMS has been working with the Senegalese Community of Michigan; over 300 members of our Sene?galese community will be present in Hill Auditorium paying tribute to one of their country's (and Africa's) greatest artists and world ambassadors. What will it mean for Mr. N'Dour to look out at our Ann Arbor
audience and see so many of his fellow countrymen and countrywomen here in the middle of the Midwestern US What does it mean to the Senegalese community to have their greatest hero and spokesperson on-stage in Hill Auditorium My hope is that it will be a transformative concert for both artist and audience alike.
This is just one of many examples of how UMS has "grown up" over the last 15 years and how we truly want to respond to the many diverse communities that support our mission. All music is World Music and one of the great things about the University of Michigan and the surround?ing region is that so many people from throughout the world form our community. Being able to share and celebrate one another's culture is what UMS is all about!
I hope that you enjoy this concert!
Sincerely yours,
Ben Johnson
UMS Director of Education and Audience Development
UMS Educational Events
through Saturday, November 1 9, 2005
All UMS educational activities are free, open to the public, and take place in Ann Arbor unless otherwise noted. For complete details and updates, please visit www.ums.org or contact the UMS education department at 734.647.6712 or umsed@umich.edu.
Youssou N'Dour's Egypt featuring Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra
Tannbeer ($)
Saturday, November 5, post-concert, Michigan League Ballroom, 2nd Fl., 911 N. University Ave. After the performance of Youssou N'Dour fea?turing Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra, UMS and the Senegalese Association of Michigan host a traditional Tannbeer, an evening of music and dance, featuring Alie Diange and Sing Sing Rhythm. Cash bar and non-alcoholic beverages will be available. $10 fee at the door.
Cosaan Workshop ($)
Sunday, November 6, 11:00 am-5:00 pm, SereNgetti Galleries, Upstairs Gallery, 2757 Grand River Avenue, Detroit Join Detroit's African Dance Works company for a two-day exploration of Senegalese culture (Cosaan) through dance, drum, folklore, and song. $15 per class registration fee. For ques?tions or to register for this event, call African Dance Works at 313.438.2800.
ums University Musical Society
Youssou N'Dour's Egypt
featuring
Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra
Youssou N'Dour, Lead Vocals Fathy Salama, Conductor
Saturday Evening, November 5, 2005 at 8:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor
Tonight's concert is performed without intermission.
15th Performance of the 127th Annual Season
Global Series: Africa
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such pho?tographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Tonight's performance is funded in part by the University cf Michigan Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
Funded in part by the Wallace Foundation Endowment. Educational programs funded in part by the Whitney Fund.
Media partnership for this performance provided by WEMU 89.1 FM, WDET 101.9 FM, Michigan RadioMichigan Television, Arao American News, and Metro Times.
Special thanks to the Senegalese Association of Michigan for their contributions to tonight's events.
Youssou N'Dour and Egypt appear by arrangement with International Music Network.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Notes on Egypt
R
eligious expression in Senegal is so much a part of the fabric of everyday life as to be nearly indistinguishable from popular culture. The religious life of the Senegalese per?meates their national economy, their politics, civil society, and family. With his most recent project, Egypt (Nonesuch Records), Youssou N'Dour, ever the world music explorer, has turned his attention homeward with a musical document of his introspective pilgrimage to the heartland of Sufi (Muslim mystical) culture in his own country.
The spread of Islam was for the most part accomplished not by fire and sword but rather, as Anne-Marie Schimmel has said, "by the preaching of the Sufis who knew how to win the hearts of the people." The particularity of Muslim practices, and of Sufism, in Senegal is to be found in the vibrancy of the country's home?grown Sufi communities, in their palpably "modern" adaptation to the rhythms of post-Independence Africa, in the wholesome social initiatives their teachings inspire among people in all walks of Senegalese life, and in the toler?ant, ecumenical nature of popular response to their programs, celebrations, and rituals. As Mr. N'Dour has explained to both the BBC and Al-Jazeera, "Egypt praises the tolerance of my reli?gion, which has been badly misused by a certain ideology. At a time when there is a debate on Islam, the world needs to know how people are taking over this religion. Our religion has noth?ing to do with the violence, with terrorism."
With his own syncretistic formula of griot praise-singing within an envelope of Sufi chant, Youssou N'Dour celebrates, with Egypt, a reli?gious milieu in Senegal which is obviously spe?cial. Yet, beyond its Senegalese particularity, Egypt is also a confluence of Muslim spirituali?ties, a melting-pot of religious sentiment, history, and search. In the likeness of the unfathomable country which is the album's namesake, Egypt's encounter with the Divine radiates throughout the performance; mediated, in the true spirit of Sufism, by representations of both the humility
and the nobility of human experience. In the likeness of the hardscrabble but gracefully spiri?tual country of Mr. N'Dour's birth, Egypt may prove to be a harbinger of Westerners' appreci?ation for the diverse potentialities of musical art -and of life -in the Muslim world.
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odern Senegalese popular music, known in the Wolof language as mbalax (UMM-BAH-LAAKH), an enchanting blend of Senegal's traditional per?cussion and griot singing with Afro-Cuban and indigenous dance flavors, has found in Youssou N'Dour both its enduring symbol and its strongest innovator.
Born in Dakar in 1959, Youssou N'Dour is a singer endowed with remarkable range and poise, and, as a composer, bandleader, and pro?ducer, with a prodigious musical intelligence.
"...a singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it." -Rolling Stone
The New York Times recently described his voice as "an arresting tenor, a supple weapon deployed with prophetic authority." Mr. N'Dour absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering this through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside Senegalese culture.
Mr. N'Dour has made mbalax famous throughout the world through more than 20 years of touring outside of Senegal with his band, the Super Etoile, an ensemble formed while still a teenager. The Super Etoile "plays with a joyous precision," the Los Angeles Times noted, and The Guardian (London) has called their music "the finest example yet of the meet?ing of African and Western music: wholesome, urgent, and thoughtful."
Admired by the likes of Peter Gabriel, Sting, and Wyclef Jean, Mr. N'Dour has quietly but steadily captured the attention and the affection of a diverse, multi-ethnic, genuinely international audience, urging the delicious urban rhythms of
mbalax beyond the territory of the world music aficionados who first were attracted to him and his musical output.
For all of its openness towards musical cul?tures outside of West Africa, mbalax remains an edgy, idiosyncratic music so much a part of the Senegalese national identity as to be almost indistinguishable from it. Youssou N'Dour con?sequently finds himself a cultural icon in his country and in the Senegalese and West African diasporas, including in the United States. Throughout an astonishing international career, Mr. N'Dour's rootedness in Senegalese dance music and storytelling remains the hallmark of his musical personality.
In February 2005, Youssou N'Dour was awarded his first Grammy Award by the Nation?al Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for "Best Contemporary World Music Album" for Egypt (Nonesuch Records). Youssou N'Dour recently presented the premiere North American performance of the music of Egypt in October at Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium. Tonight's performance is part of the debut tour of Egypt. For more information on Youssou N'Dour, please visit www.youssou.com.
Tonight's performance marks Youssou N'Dour's UMS debut.
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athy Salama was born in Cairo, Egypt. He grew up listening to the family radio, which played the music of Oum Kalthoum, Abdel-wahab, and Farid el Attrash. Later, when he could tune the radio, he reached beyond the
banks of the Nile to jazz music and to a huge variety of world traditional music.
Learning the piano from the age of six (he began by learning the roots of traditional Arabic music up to Oum Kalthoum followed by the Western classics, such as Bartok and Tchaikovsky) provided a solid early musical back?ground. By the age of 13, Mr. Salama was gig?ging in Cairo clubs. Soon the product of Shobra, the "Harlem" of Cairo, traveled to Europe and to New York to learn jazz with great artists and teachers including Sun Ra, Barry Harris, Hal Galper, Malik Osman, Pat Patrick, and Ossman Kareem.
During the 1980s, Fathy Salama composed many popular hits in Cairo, began to tour the world with his music, and won two prizes for his film soundtracks. It is through Sharkiat (his own ensemble) that Mr. Salama has realized his dream of merging modern and traditional music, expressing both a message from his home country and his love of popular music. His music reflects his experiences from the Orient and from Europe. His "success" in the commer?cial music market plays a secondary role; first and foremost he wants his work to be under?stood through his tireless efforts to bridge tradi?tional and modern music.
Today, the adventure takes him on new journeys, allowing him to perform in front of new audiences as well as with other musicians. Current projects include an electronic adventure with the ensemble Kouchari and sacred music as heard in tonight's concert from the Grammy Award-winning Egypt, a collaboration with Youssou N'Dour.
Tonight's performance marks both Fathy Salama and Fathy Salama's Cairo Orchestra's UMS debuts.
Tour Staff
Rob de Vries, Monitor Engineer Stephen Greenwood, Sound Engineer Aaron Straight, Road Manager Babacar Thiam, Tour Manager Mbacke Dioum, Assistant
Youssou N'Dour
ums University Musical Society
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Piano
Program
Robert Schumann
Schumann
Sunday Afternoon, November 6, 2005 at 4:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor
Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18
Sinfonische Etiiden, Op. 13 (1852 version) Thema: Andante Variation I: un poco piu vivo Posthumous variation I Variation II Etude III: Vivace Variation III Variation IV
Posthumous variation IV Variation V: Agitato Posthumous variation II Variation VI: Allegro molto Variation VII
Etude IX: presto possibile Posthumous variation III Variation VIII Variation IX
Posthumous variation V Finale: Allegro brillante
INTERMISSION
Maurice Ravel
Valses Nobles et Sentimentales
@@@@1. Modere
II. Assez lent
III. Modere
IV. Assez anime
V. Presque lent
VI. Vif
VII. Moins vif
VIII. Epilogue: Lent

Ravel
Gaspard de la nuit
3 Poemes pour piano d'aprs Aloysius Bertrand
Ondine
Le Gibet
Scarbo
16th Performance of the 127th Annual Season
127th Annual Choral Union Series
The photographing or sound recording of this recital or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Today's pre-concert Prelude Dinner was sponsored by TIAA-CREF.
Special thanks to Alan Aldworth and ProQuest Company for their support of the UMS Classical Kids Club.
Media partnership for this performance provided by WGTE 91.3 FM, WDET 101.9 FM, and Observer & Eccentric Newspapers.
The Steinway piano used in this afternoon's recital is made possible by William and Mary Palmer and by Hammell Music, Inc., Livonia, Michigan.
Special thanks to Tom Thompson of Tom Thompson Flowers, Ann Arbor, for his generous contribution of floral art for this afternoon's recital.
Mr. Thibaudet appears by arrangement with Mastroianni Associates, Inc., New York City.
Mr. Thibaudet is exclusive to The Decca Music Group.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 Sinfonische Etiiden, Op. 13 (1852 version) Robert Schumann
Born June 8, 1810 in Zwickau, Saxony Died July 29, 1856 in Endenich
Had Schumann not injured his hand permanently by the ill-advised use of a dubious finger-stretch?ing contraption, he might have become one of the 19th century's great pianist-composers, like his admired contemporary, Frederic Chopin. The young Schumann was certainly preparing for a similar career, practicing long hours and writing virtuoso piano music he was hoping to perform. By 1832, he knew that his virtuoso days were over, but the piano remained very close to his heart. So did pianists: he first fell in love with Ernestine von Fricken, who, like Schumann him?self, was studying with the famous Leipzig teacher Friedrich Wieck. He later broke off their engagement for the sake of young Clara Wieck, his teacher's daughter who eventually became his wife -and one of the greatest pianists of the century.
No wonder, then, that Schumann's creative output was largely limited to piano works until about 1840. As one commentator put it, "he turned to the piano as others do to a diary, con?fiding to it all the innermost secrets of his emo?tional life." And Schumann's emotional life was exceptionally rich and intense. In addition to his feelings for Ernestine and Clara, he was pas?sionate about literature and the visual arts, and convinced that artists have a sacred mission in the world. All this found expression in Schu?mann's piano music -one of the summits of the keyboard literature.
The seemingly simple Arabeske captures something of the essence of Romantic art. The title refers to exotic ornamental patterns. Friedrich Schlegel, an influential philosopher whom Schumann held in high esteem, used the term extensively to describe an "artistically ordered confusion, a charming symmetry of contradictions...." Another contemporary, the artist Philipp Otto Runge, created "arabesques" in the form of elaborate ornamental designs,
where a multitude of disparate elements were organized into coherent symmetrical patterns.
Schumann did something similar in music: his Arabeske is built from an extremely simple motif whose repeats and variations result in a complex, yet symmetrical musical structure. Even on the printed page, the main theme looks like an "arabesque," with the middle voice divided between the right-hand and the left-hand systems, and the note stems reaching upwards and then downwards. Those stems can be seen almost like ornamental lines on the page.
The piece is in rondo form; the main theme -in C Major -alternates with two episodes, one in e minor and the other a minor. A final surprise awaits at the end when, instead of clos?ing with the final return of the rondo theme, Schumann appended a dreamy epilog in a slow tempo. There he quotes the movement "The Poet Speaks" from his own Kinderszenen (Child?hood Scenes, Op. 15), and the whole epilog is very much like the piano postlude from his later song cycle Dichterliebe (Poet's Love). Thus, the conclusion is a poetic gesture that places the whole piece in a new perspective: the artist meditates on what he has just created, and the listener likewise muses on what she has just heard.
The Sinfonische Etuden (Symphonic Etudes) established the concert etude as an important pianistic genre concurrently with, but very dif?ferently from, Chopin. Each of Schumann's etudes, like Chopin's, concentrates on a specific technical problem or type of motion, but taken together, they are all variations on a common theme -which means they form a unified large-scale form. That is, no doubt, one reason for the use of the word "symphonic" -another is the wide range of sound colors, from delicate filigree to massive fortissimo chords.
The theme is by Baron von Fricken, an amateur musician and Ernestine's father. The somewhat staid, chorale-like theme gave wings to Schumann's imagination; the variations are in turn playful, expressive, airy, muscular, dance-
like, agitated, stormy, dignified, elfin, energetic, and tender. The work closes with an extended finale, itself conceived as a large-scale rondo in which the main theme acquires a decidedly mar?tial character, with animated and brilliant episodes coming in between.
The Symphonic Etudes had a rather com?plicated genesis. Even the title changed during the course of composition. At first, Schumann planned to call the work Etudes in an Orchestral Character by Florestan and Eusebius, using the names of two fictional young men from his prose writings -they embodied the two sides of the composer's personality, the tempestuous and the dreamy. Upon publication in 1837 -three years after it was written -the work received the title Etudes in the Form of Varia?tions, with Symphonic Etudes as a subtitle. Fif?teen years later in 1852, Schumann revised the work, omitting two variations and making major changes in the finale. This is the version per?formed in this afternoon's recital.
Valses Nobles et Sentimentales Gaspard de la nuit
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure,
Basses-Pyrenees, France Died December 28, 1937 in Paris
The age of the romantic piano, which reached its first maturity with Schumann and Chopin, ended with the generation of Debussy and Ravel. Often labeled as "impressionists" because of their ties with impressionist painting, these two French masters took the earlier romantics as their starting point from which to explore new directions for the new 20th century. The title Valses Nobles et Sentimentales comes from Schubert, or, to be precise, from Schubert's publishers, who in 1825 issued 34 "Valses sentimentales," followed, two years later, by 12 "Valses nobles" (D. 779 and D. 969, respectively). Ravel openly acknowledged his intention "to compose a chain of waltzes in the style of Schubert" when he wrote his own set.
The original version was for piano; Ravel orches?trated the waltzes in 1912.
The waltz had been the rage in European ballrooms for the entire period between Schu?bert and Ravel; the dance itself, or its music at least, had undergone momentous changes dur?ing those years. Schubert's dances could be extremely sophisticated in their harmonic pro?gressions, yet they were mostly confined to 16 measures in length, delicious miniatures that did not aspire to the status of concert music (they were mostly played, often by the composer him?self, at dance parties). Ravel looks back on this tradition many decades later, placing a very per?sonal French imprint on the Viennese model.
Deeply attached to the graceful and ele?gant aspects of the musical tradition (and vastly preferring them to the heroic-grandiose), Ravel had always been a lover of the waltz. As early as 1906, he wrote in a letter to a friend;
What I'm undertaking at the moment is not subtle: a grand waltz, a sort of homage to the memory of the great Strauss -not Richard, the other one, Johann. You know of my deep sympathy for these wonderful rhythms, and that I value the joie de vivre expressed by the dance far more deeply than the Franckist puritanism.
The composition Ravel planned at the time -he called it simply Wien -eventually became La Valse. The present work is an entirely differ?ent project; it lacks the tragic depths of La Valse, though one feels that in many details of harmony it was a preparation for the later work.
There is a rather amusing story about the first performance of the piano version of Valses Nobles et Sentimentales. The Societe Musicale Independante organized a concert at the Salle Gaveau at which the composers' names were not revealed. The audience was asked to guess the composers of the works on the program, and, as Ravel biographer Arbie Orenstein writes, "It became clear that the sophisticated, avant-garde audience was unable to distinguish Debussy from Leo Sachs, Ravel from Lucien Wurmser." Ravel's music, performed by pianist
Louis Aubert, was attributed to be by composers as diverse as Erik Satie and Zoltan Kodaly. Grant?ed, there were also a few people who guessed correctly.
To place this singular experiment in per?spective, we might recall what composer Florent Schmitt was said to have shouted from the bal?cony just three years earlier, in 1908, when parts of the audience were hissing at the premiere of Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole: "Tell them it's Wagner and they'll find it very good." The organizers of the anonymous concert in 1911 were obviously trying to fight prejudiced attitudes among the public.
Ravel's score is prefaced by a quote by a recent French novel, by Henri de Regnier: "...le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occu?pation inutile" (the delightful and ever-new pleasure of a useless occupation). It was the sec?ond time he used one of Regnier's lines as a motto: one of his earlier works, Jeux d'eau (Fountains) for piano (1901), also bears a quota?tion from that writer.
The eight waltzes are in turn fast and ener?getic (noble), and slow and languorous (senti?mental), starting in high spirits and ending on a wistful note. The words of American composer Edward Burlingame Hill, written in 1924, still aptly characterize this exquisite work. For Hill, the piece had
...alternate irony, poetry, intimate senti?ment, suggestions of moods which would be fragile were they not so precise. Full of elusive yet winning emotion, of exasperat-ingly clever yet melting harmonic effects, their melodic charm is perhaps their most insistent quality. The waltzes are unified by an epilogue containing allusions to separate numbers in a masterly summary. In these dances the somewhat improvised waltz receives a new lease of life.
Few works in the standard literature place high?er technical demands on the pianist than does Gaspard de la nuit, and few are more complex in terms of the layers of poetic associations they evoke.
In this extraordinary set of three works, Ravel was inspired by the early-19th-century poet Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841), one of the inventors of the prose poem -that hybrid genre that observes no rhyme or meter and unfolds in long, prose-like sentences yet is unmistakably poetic in style and effect. In her excellent book Images and Ideas in French Piano Music (Pendragon Press, 1997), Siglind Bruhn traces the name Gaspard (Caspar) to a Persian original form, where the name denoted "the man in charge of the royal treasures." In Bruhn's interpretation, "Gaspard of the Night, or, the treasurer of the night...creates allusions to someone in charge of all that is jewel-like, dark, mysterious, perhaps even morose."
Bertrand's poetic fantasies had been inspired, as the poet himself acknowledged in the title of his book, by the dark colorings of Rembrandt and the grotesque 16th-century etchings of Jacques Callot, who was an influ?ence on many Romantic artists from E.T.A. Hoff?mann to Gustav Mahler. Bertrand also quoted other writers in the mottos placed before each of the prose poems; and Ravel responded to each of these artistic and literary stimuli in his music.
The first piece, "Ondine," treats a very pop?ular Romantic legend, that of the mermaid who falls in love with a mortal. (Several years after Ravel, Debussy also used this theme in one of his preludes.) Following Bertrand's lead, Ravel viewed portrayal of the mermaid: following Bertrand, he views her through the eyes of the man to whom Ondine was attracted, yet the feelings of love evaporate at the end just as sud?denly as they had arisen. Bertrand took his cue from a few lines by his friend and fellow poet Charles Brugnot (1798-1831), another cultivator of fantastic images. In the music, the lyrical and expressive melody, unfolding underneath a scin?tillating accompaniment in the upper register, is kept at a fairly soft dynamic level until shortly before the end where a brief fortissimo passage occurs, with the melody surrounded by two sets of rapid figurations in both hands. Soon after?wards, in a particularly touching moment, the main melody of the piece is heard in a slow
tempo and without any accompaniment at all, followed by a final burst of broken chords played fortissimo: Ondine feels a brief moment of sadness, but then immediately breaks into laughter and disappears in the depths of the water.
Many Romantic poets were fascinated by spooky images; and what could be spookier than the image of a hanged man on the gallows In "Le Gibet," Ravel paints a chilling musical portrait, dominated by the sound of the death-knell (a single 'B-flat,' heard without interrup?tion from the first measure to the last). Over and under this persistent pedal-tone, we hear a theme that, at the beginning, is harmonized with not one but two sets of parallel fifths superimposed on top of one another, thereby committing a double sin, as it were; parallel fifths used to be strictly forbidden in classical harmony.
In the last movement, "Scarbo," we meet a mysterious and entirely unpredictable dwarf, appearing in constantly changing forms, who looks scary but turns out in the end to be more eerie than truly dangerous. Still, Ravel wrote the words quelle horreur! (what horror!) in the copy from which he taught the pianist Vlado Per-lemuter, who recalled Ravel telling him about his emotional approach to the piece. Siglind Bruhn has summarized Perlemuter's more extensive recollections; according to the story, Ravel had originally "planned the piece as a caricature of romanticism; but -and there his voice alleged?ly died down to a whisper -he feared he may himself have been caught in the spell." In fact, mockery, as expressed in rapidly changing brief motifs interrupted by sudden rests, gives way to a more personal tone as a more sustained and continuous melodic and harmonic motion sets in. The longest and the most complex of the three pieces, "Scarbo" divides into no fewer than seven distinct sections, with a multiplicity of themes transformed in many guises, with boundless ingenuity and sophistication.
Program notes by Peter Laki.
Three Poems by Aloysius Bertrand
Ondine
thought I heard a vague harmony that enchanted my sleep, and a murmur was spread?ing near me, similar to the interrupted songs of a sad and tender voice. -Charles Brugnot, The Two Genii
"Listen! -Listen! -It is me, it is Ondine, brushing with these drops of water the resonant diamond-panes of your window illuminated by the gloomy moonlight; and there in her silken robe is the lady of the manor contemplating from her balcony the lovely star-bright night and the beautiful sleeping lake.
Each wave is a water-sprite swimming in the current, each current is a path winding toward my palace, and my palace is a watery construc?tion at the bottom of the lake, within the triangle formed by fire, earth, and air.
Listen! -Listen! -My father beats the croaking water with a branch of green alder, and my sisters caress with their arms of foam the cool islands of herbs, water-lilies and gladi?oli, or are laughing at the sickly, bearded willow that is fishing with rod and line."
Having murmured her song, she begged me to accept her ring on my finger, so that I would be the husband of a mermaid, and to visit her palace with her, to be the king of the lakes.
And when I replied that I loved a mortal woman, she wept a few tears, sulking and peevish, then broke into laughter, and vanished in show?ers of rain that drizzled white across my blue window-pane.
UMS ARCHIVES
T
his afternoon's recital by Mr. Thibaudet marks his third UMS appearance since his debut in 1998. Two of the works on this afternoon's program have made regular "appearances" on UMS stages. Robert Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13, have been performed 18 previous times by such pianists as Ignace Paderewski (1916), Erno Dohnanyi (1924), Jose Iturbi (1930), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1934), Artur Rubinstein (1944), Myra Hess (1954), Philippe Entremont (1965), Alfred Brendel (1966), and Murray Perahia (1978), among others.
Gapard de la nuit, considered by many to be Ravel's masterpiece for the piano, was first played in public by Ricardo Vines in 1908. Twenty years later it was first performed for UMS audiences by Myra Hess (1928). Since that time it has been performed in various forms -either as a complete work or an excised movement -on 16 occasions by none other than Vladimir Horowitz (1933), Jose Iturbi (1938), Artur Rubinstein (1953, 1969), Walter Giesek-ing (1956), and Gary Graffman (1968), among others.
The Gibbet
What do I see moving around that gibbet -Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust
Ah! Could what I hear be the screeching noc?turnal breeze, or the hanged man who sighs on the fork of the gallows
Could it be some cricket singing from its hiding place in the moss and the sterile ivy with which the forest covers its floor out of pity
Could it be some fly hunting for prey and blowing its horn all around those ears deaf to the fanfares of the hallalil'
Could it be some beetle that in its uneven flight plucks a bloody hair off his bald skull
Or could it be some spider weaving half a yard of muslin as a scarf for this strangled neck
It is the bell ringing by the walls of a city below the horizon, and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun.
'The iaa("mort" in Old English) is a special fanfare played over the death of a prey at the end of a hunt.
Scarbo
He looked under the bed, up the chimney, in the chest; nobody. He could not understand where he had entered or where he had escaped. -Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Night Pieces
Oh! How many times have I heard and seen him, Scarbo, when at midnight the moon shines in the sky like a silver shield on an azure banner emblazoned with golden bees!
How many times have I heard his laughter resound in the shadow of my alcove, and heard his claw scrape on the silk of my bed-curtains!
How many times have I seen him come down from the floor, pirouette on one foot and roll around the room like the spindle that has fallen from the distaff of a witch!
Did I then believe him vanished The dwarf grew tall between the moon and me like the bell tower of a Gothic cathedral, a golden bell swing?ing on his pointed cap! But soon his body would turn blue, diaphanous like the wax of a candle; his face would grow pale like the wax of a can?dle stub -and suddenly he expired.
P
ianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet continues to captivate audiences worldwide with his compelling performances and poetic inter?pretations. An exciting and versatile musician respected for his mastery of color, nuance, and rhythmic intricacies, he is sought after by today's foremost orchestras, conductors, and music fes?tivals.
Summer 2005 performance highlights, in addition to his Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival appearances include the Los Angeles PhilharmonicHollywood Bowl, Boston Sympho?ny OrchestraTanglewood, and Philadelphia OrchestraSaratoga Performing Arts Center in the US, and the London Symphony Orchestra (for Andre Previn's 75th Birthday Gala), and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, as well as engagements with Orchestre National de Bel-giqueSpoleto Festival (his 24th appearance), Vienna Symphony OrchestraKissingen Festival, and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra.
In the current season, Mr. Thibaudet can be heard in performances throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Of special note is the September 2005 release of Universal Picture's soundtrack to the major motion picture Pride and Prejudice, featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet with the English Chamber Orchestra. Perfor?mance highlights include two appearances at Carnegie Hall: a performance of Gershwin's Concerto in F with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in October 2005 and a solo recital in March 2006; a November solo recital at Lucerne Festival Piano 2005; a chamber music tour of the Netherlands and Spain in December with the Rossetti String Quartet; a February 2006 solo recital at Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall; and a tour of China with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in May 2006.
An award-winning, Grammy-nominated exclusive recording artist for Decca with over 30 recordings, Jean-Yves Thibaudet's newest CD is Strauss's Burleske with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt conducting. Recent recordings include a five-CD box set enti?tled Satie: The Complete Solo Piano Music and The Magic of Satie.
Of French and German heritage, Jean-Yves Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France, where he began his piano studies at age five and made his first public appearance at age seven. At age 12, Mr. Thibaudet entered the Paris Conservatory where he studied with Aldo Ciccolini and Lucette Descaves, a friend and collaborator of Ravel. In 2001, the Republic of France awarded Mr. Thibaudet the Chevalier de I'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2002, Jean-Yves was awarded the Premio Pegasus from the Spoleto Festival for his artistic achievements and his longstanding involvement with the festival.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
ums University Musical Society
Michigan Chamber Players
Faculty Artists of the University of Michigan School of Music
Eriing Blondal Bengtsson, Cello
Aaron Berofsky, Violin
Katherine Collier, Piano
Bethany Erhardt, Cello
Freda Herseth, Mezzo-soprano
Fritz Kaenzig, Tuba
Mark Kirschenmann, Trumpet, Flugal Horn
Amy Porter, Flute Yizhak Schotten, Viola Logan Skelton, Piano Eva Stern, Viola Tzu-Yin Su, Violin Kathryn Votapek, Violin Dennis Wilson, Trombone
Program
Frank Bridge
Dennis Wilson
Johannes Brahms
Sunday Afternoon, November 13, 2005 at 4:00 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor
Three Songs
Far, far from each other
Where is it that our soul doth go
Music when soft voices die
Ms. Herseth, Ms. Stern, Mr. Skelton
Pushback
Ms. Porter, Ms. Su, Ms. Erhardt, Mr. Kaenzig, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Kirschenmann
Quintet for Strings and Piano in f minor. Op. 34
Allegro non troppo
Andante, un poco Adagio
Scherzo: Allegro
Finale: Poco sostenuto; Allegro non troppo
Mr. Berofsky, Ms. Votapek, Mr. Schotten, Mr. Bengtsson, Ms. Collier
This afternoon's concert is performed without intermission.
17th Performance of the 127th Annual Season
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Thanks to all of the U-M School of Music Faculty Artists for their ongoing commitment of time and energy to this special UMS performance.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Three Songs
Frank Bridge
I
Far, far from each other
(Matthew Arnold)
Far, far from each other our spirits have flown,
And what heart knows another
Ah! who knows his own
Blow ye winds! Lift me with you!
I come to the wild.
Fold closely, 0 nature! Thine arms round thy child.
Ah! calm me! Restore me
And dry up my tears.
On thy high mountain platforms,
Where morn first appears.
Where is it that our soul doth go
{Kate Freiligrath Kroeker, after Heinrich Heine)
One thing I'd know,
When we have perished,
Where is it that our soul doth go
Where, where is the fire, that is extinguished
Where is the wind
Where is the wind but now did blow
Where is it Where is it
Where is it that our soul doth go
When we have perished.
Music, when soft voices die
(Percy Shelley)
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Three Songs
Frank Bridge
Born February 26, 1879 in Brighton, England
Died January 10, 1941 in Eastbourne
Frank Bridge was a composer, violist, and con?ductor. He began studies on the violin at a young age with his father, who conducted a theater orchestra in Brighton. In his childhood, Bridge was exposed to music and performing, making arrangements of music for his father's orchestra and filling in as conductor on occasion when his father was indisposed. Bridge contin?ued studies at the Royal College of Music, where he concentrated on both violin and composition between 1896-1899. The College awarded him a scholarship in 1899, which enabled him to study composition with Stanford, and he gradu?ated in 1903. Bridge soon made the decision to take up the viola in favor of the violin. As violist he joined the English String Quartet in 1906 and remained a member of the ensemble until 1915. He was a formidable musician and was also becoming well respected as a conductor. He was invited to conduct opera at Covent Garden and orchestral concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1923 he came to the US to con?duct his music in New York, Detroit, and Boston.
Over the years, Bridge's compositional style developed from late Romantic to influences of the Second Viennese School, all the while retain?ing his English roots. An avowed pacifist, it is thought that this development of his composi?tional style was a reflection of the pervasive tur?moil of World War I. The great American patroness of the arts, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, heard Bridge's work in the 1920s and established a trust for him, which would support his family until his death.
Bridge was the beloved composition teacher of Benjamin Britten. Britten paid tribute to him in his piece Variations on a theme by Frank Bridge, based upon Bridge's Three Idylls for String Quartet (1906).
Pushback
Dennis Wilson
Born July 22, 1952 in Greensboro, North Carolina
Pushback has a couple of meanings for the com?poser. The primary one is the often-written-about topic of love between two people. As a relationship moves in a positive way, one person pushes forward in a pleasant loving manner. On the other hand, the significant other seemingly "pushes back" just enough to offer resistance with an agreeable welcome. This "pushback" has given numerous artists the inspiration to cre?ate great songs, paintings, and prose of expres?sion spanning the whole emotional gamut. This particular composition is created to musically express the "bluer" side of the "pushback" spectrum.
Quintet for Strings and Piano in f minor. Op. 34
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897 in Vienna
In our time, Brahms's Piano Quintet is among the most often performed of his chamber com?positions. This relatively early work is, in the words of the eminent musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey, "the climax of Brahms's first matu?rity...the most sonorous of all extant works for pianoforte and strings and yet the most lightly scored." Brahms originally composed the work in 1864 as the String Quintet in f minor. Brahms had misgivings over his Quintet and worried that an ensemble made up of only strings would be unable to produce the sonority needed to properly project his musical ideas. In the same year, Brahms arranged his String Quintet for Piano and Strings, the version best known today, and the composer later destroyed the original setting. The first movement, "Allegro non troppo," characterized by Tovey as "powerfully tragic," is one of the most impressive movements in all of Brahms so far as structuring and materials is concerned. After the initial statement of the broad, restless first theme (in two octaves in violin, cello, and piano) a fermata on the dominant
chord is followed by energetic 16th-note figura?tion based on two "cells" from the theme. Sub?sequently the first theme is varied further, and, in a development section built mostly on a crescendo effect, several other contrasting themes are concisely elaborated alongside quick tonal shifts. In the recapitulation, the two princi?pal subjects are duly restated, the first forte, the second pianissimo. Then come 19 lyric measures for string quartet alone and an accelerando to an agitated chordal coda which brings the movement to a majestic ending.
The "Andante" is constructed in simple three-part form and has a lilting, distinctly Schu-bertian main theme. It is an unpretentious romanza slow movement and Brahms shameless?ly overindulges in his favorite harmonies of thirds and sixths. This quintet's first admirer, Clara Schu?mann, wrote to the composer, "What an adagio! How rapturously it sings and rings from begin?ning to end! I keep on beginning it over and over again, and wish it would never stop."
Brahms's "Scherzo" features rhythmic dis?placement, sudden changes of dynamics and mood, and alterations of the major and minor mode and of 68 meter with 24. After this, a great burst of rhythmic energy leads to a sonorous climax in the full ensemble. The Trio is dominated by a binary melody in C Major that provides effective contrast to the rhythmic and harmonic activity surrounding it.
Although the "Finale" is essentially cast in sonata-rondo form, it is by no means the light-hearted affair that so many Classical rondos are. It begins with a dozen measures of slow linear chromaticism. The introduction leads in triplet motion and the cello states the unequivocal-sounding principal melody in f minor. After this theme becomes boisterous (even martial) in the full ensemble, there is a lyrical second theme in the first violin that is graced with eccentric syn?copations. A memorable 21-bar interlude brings on an extensive coda where the materials of the "Finale" appear yet again, along with syncopa?tions from the previous movement. The Quintet ends dramatically with an energetic and agitated climax.
Program notes by Phillip Ramey.
Erling Blondal Bengtsson (Cello) came to the University of Michigan following a distinguished teaching and performing career in Europe. He began cello studies at age three with his father in Copenhagen and subsequently became a student of Gregor Piatigorsky at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he joined the faculty immediately upon graduation. He later returned to his native Denmark as professor at the Royal Danish Con?servatory of Music, serving for 37 years. He has given countless master classes throughout Scandi?navia, England, the US, and at the Tibor Varga Festival in Sion, Switzerland. Mr. Bengtsson made his first concert appearance at age four and debuted as orchestral soloist at 10. Since then he has performed as soloist with ensembles includ?ing the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC, English Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon), and the Czech Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Baden-Baden, Brussels, Cologne, Copenhagen, The Hague, Hamburg, Helsinki, Leningrad, Oslo, and Stock?holm. He has made more than 50 recordings. In 1998 his recording of the Kodly solo Cello Sonata was chosen by the Guinness Classical 1000 as among the top 1000 recordings of all time. In 1993 he was awarded the title of Cheva?lier du Violoncelle by the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center of the School of Music of Indiana University. In 2001, he received the Manchester (England) International Cello Festival's "Award of
Distinction," the greatest honor internationally to be bestowed on a cellist.
Aaron Berofsky (Violin) has won international critical acclaim as both a soloist and a chamber musician. He has appeared as soloist with orches?tras in the US, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Canada. Professor Berofsky recently completed his third annual recital at the International Deia Festival in Spain, a series in which he will play the complete Mozart sonatas, a project to be completed in 2007. He regularly appears at festivals throughout North America and Europe, including the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Italy, the Skaneateles Festival in New York, Steamboat Springs in Col?orado, Springfest in Ann Arbor, Garth Newel and the Staunton Festival in Virginia, the Speedside and Guelph Spring Festivals in Canada, and the Oregon Symphony's Mozart 'til Midnight gala. Professor Berofsky is first violinist of the Chester String Quartet which has appeared at the 92nd Street "Y" and at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in New York. He has conducted the Indiana Univer?sity Philharmonic and the South Bend Symphony's Academy Orchestra and participated in a per?formance and recording of John Cage's Atlas Edipticalis and a series of concerts with the cham?ber orchestra Tafelmusik. Professor Berofsky is the concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony. He serves on the faculty of the Meadowmount School of Music, and has taught and coached
UMS ARCHIVES
B
eginning in March 1987, UMS began regularly presenting Michigan Chamber Players concerts, individual concerts by faculty artists of the University of Michigan School of Music, on the annual UMS concert series.
Many of the individual faculty artists appearing in this afternoon's concert have appeared on the UMS series in past seasons. Mr. Schotten makes his 20th appearance under UMS aus?pices; Mr. Bengtsson makes his 14th appearance; and Ms. Collier makes her 11th appearance. Ms. Herseth and Ms. Porter both make their fifth appearances. Mr. Skelton makes his fourth appearance; and Ms. Votapek makes her third appearance on our series. Mr. Berofsky and Mr. Kaenzig each make their second appearance.
This afternoon's performance marks the UMS debuts of Ms. Erhardt, Mr. Kirschenmann, Ms. Stern, Ms. Tzu-Yin Su, and Mr. Wilson.
chamber music at the Oberlin Conservatory, the Quartet Program, the Conservatory of Palma de Mallorca, the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival, and at Interlochen. He can be heard on the Sony, New Albion, Audio Ideas, ECM, and Chesky labels.
Katherine Collier (Piano) has had a distinguished and versatile career as a soloist, chamber music artist, and accompanist. She was unanimously awarded the Performer's Certificate at Eastman. Ms. Collier was the first prize winner of the National Young Artist's Competition and the Cliburn Scholarship Competition, and was the recipient of a Rockefeller Award. She won a Kem-per Educational Grant to study at the Royal Col?lege of Music in London, England. Ms. Collier has been soloist with orchestras in Cincinnati, Dallas, and Eastman-Rochester, and Houston and is an active collaborator with many renowned musi?cians including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, David Shifrin, and members of the Tokyo, Emerson, Ver-meer, and Ying Quartets. She has performed around the world and has appeared at recital halls throughout Europe. She has presented concerts at Merkin Hall, Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, and the Y Music Society in Pittsburgh. She performs at Aspen Music Festival, Interlochen, Meadow-mount, and at Skaneateles. As an accompanist, Ms. Collier worked in the studios of Dorothy Delay at Aspen and Nathan Milstein and the BBC in London. Ms. Collier tours extensively with her husband, violist Yizhak Schotten. They are founders and music directors of the Maui Classi?cal Music Festival in Hawaii and music directors of Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs. Ms. Collier appears with her husband on four CDs on Crystal Records and has recorded with other artists on the Pandora, Pearl, Crystal, and Centaur labels.
Bethany Erhardt (Cello) is currently in her fourth year at the University of Michigan's School of Music pursuing a BM in cello performance. She studies cello with Anthony Elliott and has also recently begun studies with Dennis Wilson. She has been a participant in master classes with Robert DeMaine, Anne Martindale Williams,
Wendy Warner, Timothy Eddy, and the Ying and Cavani String Quartets. She was a two-time final?ist in the high school division of the Masterworks Concerto Competition and was also a winner of the BachFest Young Artists Competition in Kala-mazoo, Ml. She is a recent recipient of the Irving S. Gilmore Student Arts Grant, the Posie Tomlin-son Memorial Music Scholarship, and the Llewellyn L. Cayvan String Instrument Scholarship. Her passions include teaching cello and being outdoors.
Freda Herseth {Mezzo-soprano) has sung criti?cally acclaimed leading roles in opera throughout Germany and has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout Europe, Russia, and Israel. Well known for her work in contem?porary music, she has premiered many works written for her, with performances at the Vienna Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Festival d'Au-tomne at the Bastille Opera in Paris, Steirischer Herbst in Graz, and with the American Music The?ater Festival of Philadelphia in the opera Tanya by Anthony Davis. This past summer Ms. Herseth was a Master Teacher at Westminster Choir Col?lege's "Master Singers and Teachers" session, and has given master classes throughout the US. Ms. Herseth has been the recipient of a stipend from the Richard Wagner Society in Bayreuth, an hon?orary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound, a DAADFulbright grant, and the Van Lawrence Award from the Voice Foundation. Her recordings for the Milken Archive on Bridge of the Binding by Samuel Adler and The Dybbuk by David Tamkin have recently been released. Ms. Herseth has also recorded for CRI, Gasparo, South German Radio and Television, Hessen Radio (Frankfurt), Bavarian Radio (Munich), ORF Austri?an Radio and Television, RAI Italian Radio, and Northeastern Records.
Fritz Kaenzig {Tuba) is Chair of the Wind and Percussion Department at the University of Michi?gan and has served as principal tubist of the Flori?da Symphony Orchestra and as additional or substitute tubist with Amsterdam's Concertge-bouw and the symphony orchestras of Detroit, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and St. Louis. He has recorded and performed as
soloist with several of these orchestras. Since 1984, Mr. Kaenzig has been principal tubist dur?ing summers in the Grant Park (Chicago) Sym?phony Orchestra. As guest instructor, recitalist, soloist, and adjudicator, Mr. Kaenzig has made appearances throughout the US, Korea, and Japan, and was a member of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Prior to joining the U-M faculty, he taught at the University of Illinois and at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Mr. Kaenzig is a past president of the Tubists Uni?versal Brotherhood Association (now known as the International Tuba and Euphonium Associa?tion) which he currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors, and is a frequent featured soloist at its international conferences.
Mark Kirschenmann (Trumpet, Flugal Horn) composes, performs, and records electro-acoustic, improvisational, jazz, rock, chamber, and orchestral music. Much of his work explores the confluence where composition and improvisation meet. Mr. Kirschenmann has an ongoing passion for performing and improvising with his MIDIelectric trumpet. With Quartex in 2003, he performed for Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Houston, Texas, with Pauline Oliveros at her Deep Listening Space in Kingston, New York, and with Hans Rodelius at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He has performed his music in major US venues including the Knitting Factory and Tonic in New York City, the Empty Bottle and Hot House in Chicago, and throughout Europe. In August of 2003, Mark's Three Songs for Baritone Voice and Cello was premiered in Vihti, Finland.
Amy Porter (Flute) was recently awarded the 2006 Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan for distinguished scholarship and con?spicuous ability as a teacher. This is only the third time since 1926 that this award has been given to a U-M School of Music Professor. Recently, she served as the American jury member of the 2005 Kobe International Flute Competition in Kobe, Japan. Ms. Porter recently premiered her arrange?ment of Six Songs by Benjamin Godard, published by Little Piper, and is currently producing a study guide DVD for the Karg-Elert Caprices for Solo Flute. International prizes include: 2001 Deux-
ieme Prix at the ParisVille d'Avray International Flute Competition in France, and the Alphonse Leduc Prize for outstanding musicianship; 1993 Kobe International Flute Competition in Kobe, Japan and the Special Prize for the best perform?ance of the commissioned work required at the competition; and First Prize at the 1990 National Flute Association Competition in the US. From 1991-99, she was Associate Principal Flute of the Atlanta Symphony. Ms. Porter has performed as principal flute with the orchestras of Atlanta, Houston, and Boston. Ms. Porter received her bachelors and masters degrees from The Juilliard School in New York. She also studied at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, Austria. Ms. Porter serves as a founding member and Past President of the Southeast Michigan Flute Associ?ation and is on the Board of the National Flute Association.
Yizhak Schotten (Violin) was brought to the US by the renowned violist William Primrose, with whom he studied at Indiana University and the University of Southern California. His solo appear?ances with orchestras have included performanc?es with conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Thomas Schippers, Sergiu Commissiona, and Arthur Fiedler. He has concertized in Israel, Japan, Tai?wan, Malaysia, Holland, Austria, Mexico, England, Canada, and throughout the US. Mr. Schotten has also had numerous broadcasts on National Public Radio. Formerly a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he has been principal violist of the Cincinnati and Houston symphony orches?tras. Mr. Schotten has been on the faculties and performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Banff, Meadowmount, Interlochen, Tanglewood, Cham?ber Music Northwest, Montreal Skaneateles, and the Juneau Festivals; and abroad at the Taipei Phil?harmonic Festival, the Festival Internacional de Musica Clasica, the Festival de Musique de Cham-bre de Montreal, and the Amsterdam Kamermuzik Festival. He is also Music Director of the Maui Clas?sical Music Festival in Hawaii, the Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs, Col?orado, and SpringFest in Ann Arbor. Mr. Schotten was the Artistic Director of the XIV International Viola Congress and has been a featured artist at six other international Congresses. He has record-
ed for Crystal Records, C.R.I., and Pearl Records, which included his playing on its anthology, His?tory of the Recording of the World's Finest Vio-lists.
Logan Skelton (Piano) is a much sought after pianist, teacher, and composer whose work has received international critical acclaim. He has con-certized widely and been featured on many pub?lic radio and television stations across the country including National Public Radio's Audiophile Audi?tion, Performance Today, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition. To date he has recorded nine discs of solo and chamber repertoire for Cen?taur, Albany, and Crystal Records in addition to performing on two pianos with composerpianist William Bolcom on CD for Naxos Records. He is a frequent guest pianist at prestigious music festi?vals such as Gina Bachauer, Eastman, MTNA National Convention, Chautauqua Institution, American Romanian, Eastern, New Orleans, Indi?ana University, Hilton Head Island, and the Prague International Piano Masterclasses, where in addi?tion to being a member of the artist piano facul?ty he is also Associate Director. He was honored recently by the University of Michigan as the recipient of the prestigious Harold Haugh Award for excellence in studio teaching.
Eva Stern (Viola, Guest Artist) is on the faculty at Eastern Michigan University. Ms. Stern holds a MM degree from the Eastman School of Music where she was a student and teaching assistant of George Taylor. She completed her undergradu?ate studies with Walter Trampler and Daniel Phillips at Purchase College, State University of New York. Ms. Stern is a former member of the Richmond Symphony and the Louisville Orchestra, and plays in the section of the Chautauqua Sym?phony Orchestra and as a substitute with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In demand as a chamber musician, she is a member of the Muse String Quartet and has performed with Chamber Music at the Scarab Club, Chamber Music Ann Arbor, and the Richmond-based new music ensemble Currents. With her husband, pianist Joel Schoenhals, she has performed and taught master classes across the US, Turkey, and the Turk?ish Republic of North Cyprus. The Stern-Schoen-
hals Duo was welcomed as Artists-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts for two summers and has been featured in several broadcasts on National Public Radio.
Tzu-Yin (Daphne) Su {Violin), a native of Taiwan, immigrated to the US in 2000. She began her study of piano at the age of three and her study of violin at seven. She was honorably mentioned in the 2001 ASTA solo competition for the state of New Jersey. Ms. Su performed the New Jersey premiere of the Romance of Hsiao and Chin by Chen-Yi. As soloist with the New Brunswick Chamber Symphony, she performed the Introduc?tion and Rondo by Saint-Saens in May after win?ning the Young Artist Award. In 2002, she performed as soloist with the American Acade?my Conducting Orchestra at the Aspen Music Fes?tival and was featured soloist in the Starling Recitals and Young Artist Concert Series. Ms. Su graduated from East Brunswick High School and Juilliard Pre-College this year and recently received the Presidential Education Excellence award as well as the National Orchestra award and Asian-American Leadership award. Ms. Su served as the concertmistress of the Juilliard Pre-College gradu?ation concert in May. She is currently a full schol?arship recipient at U-M studying with Stephen Shipps and serves as concertmaster of the Univer?sity Symphony Orchestra.
Kathryn Votapek (Violin), a member of the Chester String Quartet since 1990, maintains an active career as soloist and as guest artist at chamber music festivals throughout the US, Canada, Europe, and Central America. She can be heard with the Chester Quartet on the Koch Inter?national Classics, New Albion, and Audio Ideas labels. Along with pianist Raph Votapek and clar?inetist Paul Votapek, she performs as violinist and violist with the Votapek Trio. Ms. Votapek is on the faculty of the Meadownount School of Music and is currently Guest Lecturer of Violin at the University of Michigan. She has been on the fac?ulties of the Interlochen Arts Camp, the Las Vegas Music Festival, the Madeline Island Music Camp, the Quartet Program, the Banff International Fes?tival, and the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival (Italy), and was Associate Professor of Violin and
Artist-in-Residence at Indiana University. Ms. Votapek has performed at the Speedside Festival (Canada), the International Deia Festival (Spain), the Garth Newel Festival, the Fontana Festival, and with the Chicago Chamber Musicians. Ms. Votapek received her BM degree at Indiana Uni?versity and MM degree from The Juilliard School. Her primary teachers were Robert Mann, Franco Gulli, and Angel Reyes.
Dennis Wilson (Trombone) joined the U-M facul?ty after teaching at Kansas State University where he also served as an assistant dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. He has a significant associa?tion with the legendary Count Basie and his Orchestra that began in 1977 as trombonist and arranger. He continues to serve as musical pro?duction manager and educational director with the Basie Band. Mr. Wilson served as the lead
trombonist for the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra throughout its existence. He has toured, per?formed, andor recorded with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, the New Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, the American Jazz Orchestra, the Benny Carter Orchestra, Gerald Wilson's New York Band, and Slide Hampton's World of Trombones. He received a Grammy Award nomination for vocal arrangements for Manhattan Transfer and has performed on Gram?my Award-winning recordings with Ella Fitzger?ald, Count Basie, and Diane Schurr. In January he will arrange, conduct, and perform for the 2006 NEA Jazz Master Award induction ceremony hon?oring Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Tony Ben?nett, and others. The performance takes place at the conference of the International Association for Jazz Education where Mr. Wilson is also a cur?rent member of the IAJE Resource Team.
ums University Musical Society
Concertante
Xiao-Dong Wang, Violin Lisa Shihoten, Violin Ara Gregorian, Viola Rachel Shapiro, Viola Zvi Plesser, Cello Tom Kraines, Cello Kurt Moroki, Double bass
Program
Richard Strauss
John Adams
Johannes Brahms
Saturday Evening, November 19, 2005 at 8:00 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor
Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85
Mr. Wang, Ms. Shihoten, Ms. Shapiro, Mr. Gregorian, Mr. Plesser, Mr. Kraines
Shaker Loops
Part I: Shaking and Trembling Part II: Hymning Slews Part III: Loops and Verses Part IV: A Final Shaking
(Attacca: all movements played without pause)
Mr. Wang, Ms. Shihoten, Mr. Gregorian, Ms. Shapiro, Mr. Plesser, Mr. Kraines, Mr. Moroki
INTERMISSION
Sextet for Strings in B-flat Major, Op. 18
Allegro ma non troppo
Andante ma moderato
Scherzo: Allegro molto Trio: animato
Rondo: Poco allegretto e grazioso
Mr. Wang, Ms. Shihoten, Mr. Gregorian, Ms. Shapiro, Mr. Kraines, Mr. Plesser
18th Performance of the 127th Annual Season
43rd Annual Chamber Arts Series
Media partnership for this performance provided by WGTE 91.3 FM. Concertante appears by arrangement with Arts Management Group, Inc.
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85
Richard Strauss
Born June 11, 1864 in Munich, Germany Died September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen
In Strauss's opera Capriccio the characters spend a lot of time discussing what is more important in opera, the music or the words. The discussion is not entirely academic, however, as the pro?tagonist, a beautiful young Countess, is wooed by a Poet and a Composer, and could really use some help from art theory to make up her mind. Yet don't expect a definite answer to the dilem?ma. With inimitable elegance and grace, Strauss leaves the issue open at the end of the opera -although, if one listens very carefully and reads between the lines of the libretto, the Countess's feelings toward the composer Flamand may be just a few Fahrenheit degrees warmer than her friendship for the poet Olivier, tipping the bal?ance, ever so slightly, in the favor of music.
The first opera on the subject of music ver?sus words in opera was written in the 18th cen?tury. In 1786, Antonio Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole (First the music, and then the words) was performed in Vienna on a double bill with Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario). The libretto to Salieri's opera, by Giovanni Battista Casti, was brought to Strauss's attention in the 1930s by Stefan Zweig, who had seen it at the British Library in London. Zweig, who had been Strauss's principal operatic collaborator since the death of Hugo von Hof-mannsthal in 1929, was barred from working with the composer after the rise of Nazism. Never?theless, he was willing to help anonymously by suggesting subjects. Yet in the hands of Strauss's next librettist, Joseph Gregor (who had also been recommended by Zweig), the opera did not progress to the composer's satisfaction and was laid aside. Some years later, Strauss returned to the idea, and with the help of his friend, the conductor Clemens Krauss, completed what would remain the last of his 15 operas. In the final version, incidentally, almost nothing of Casti's original story was retained, beyond the
fact that there were a composer and a poet onstage.
Capriccio begins with a prelude scored for string sextet. The inclusion of a piece of cham?ber music in an opera has its own symbolic meaning. In the first scene, this music is being played, as the work of Flamand, to entertain the Countess and her guests, including the Theater Director, who sleeps through the entire per?formance. The sextet represents "absolute" music, without words or program, which doesn't interest the man of the theater, although the sensitive Countess is deeply moved by it.
The parts of the six string instruments are woven together in a rich polyphonic tapestry that anticipates Strauss's masterpiece from the year 1945, Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings. The sextet is on a smaller scale, yet it is equally intriguing in its juxtaposition of distant chords and its combination of broad cantabile (singing) melodies with more tempestuous episodes. The action of the opera takes place in a chateau near Paris around 1775, and the music contains numerous allusions to the style of that period, yet Strauss remained faithful to his own post-Romantic idiom, which no one handled more beautifully or more convincingly than he.
Shaker Loops
John Adams
Born February 15, 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts
In the 1960s and 1970s, minimalism, with its simple, repetitive melodic patterns, consonant harmonies, and steady rhythm, seemed like a breath of fresh air and a most welcome antidote to the structural complexities of much avant-garde music of the postwar era. The young John Adams, freshly out of Harvard (one of the bas?tions of that avant-garde), was captivated by works like Terry Riley's In C-the quintessential minimalist composition -and much of the early work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. In his own music, he began by taking his cue from those older colleagues, but he soon found minimalism
in its pure form to be too limiting. Reluctant to give up contrast and variety, he developed his own approach to the style, transcending minimal?ism altogether by the early 1990s at the latest.
Shaker Loops, an early work, was written for the San Francisco Conservatory's New Music Ensemble. In his book Minimalists (Phaidon Press, 1996), K. Robert Schwarz provided a suc?cinct description of the four-movement work:
The title refers to the Shakers...whose ecstat?ic rituals induced quivering and trembling: "loops" alludes to the notation of the score, written as a series of repeated modules, each resembling a miniature tape loop.... Adams kept his modules in a state of flux, shifting unexpectedly from bustling rhythms to motionless pools of sound. In the third move?ment, when the cellos burst forth with melodies of radiant, long-limbed lyricism, Adams made clear that his brand of minimal?ism would embrace the full range of expressive possibilities available to a late-20th-century composer.
Although Shaker Loops has become better known in the string orchestra version, it was originally written for seven solo strings, as heard at tonight's concert.
Sextet for Strings in B-flat Major, Op.18
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897 in Vienna
The two sextets for two violins, two violas, and two cellos are Brahms's earliest chamber works without piano, preceding the string quartets and quintets by several years. They reveal a com?poser full of youthful energy yet possessed of an emotional maturity well beyond his years.
Brahms in his mid-20s did not feel quite ready to write a string quartet. In that genre, Beethoven's legacy seemed even more oppres?sive than it did in others. Although the perform?ing forces are larger, a string sextet actually
presented a lesser challenge. First of all, string sextets did not have such a daunting history (in fact, they hardly had any history at all), and sec?ond, chamber ensembles of six or more players (not necessarily all strings) had previously been associated with lighter, serenade-type music. Brahms, who had composed two orchestral ser?enades in the late 1850s, adapted their genial atmosphere to the chamber-music medium in his first sextet, written between 1858 and 1860 and premiered in Hanover by Joseph Joachim and five of his colleagues on October 20, 1860.
Joachim was not only one of the greatest violinists of his time, he was also a composer in his own right. During their long friendship, Brahms often asked Joachim for his opinion in compositional matters. He did so not only in the case of the Violin Concerto where he needed Joachim's violinistic expertise, but also with the Piano Concerto No. 1, as well as the present sex?tet. In the latter work, Joachim felt that the opening theme of the first movement needed to be stated twice, lest the subsequent modula?tions begin too soon. Brahms heeded his friend's advice, and added 10 measures at the beginning of the work. The first cello thus received the honor of announcing the lyrical theme, which is then taken over by the first violin. The character of this tender and romantic movement is best defined by the performance instructions espres-sivo, tranquillo, and dolce, found frequently in the score.
The second movement, in the form of theme and variations, contains some unmistak?able echoes of Bach's famous "Chaconne" from the Partita in d minor for unaccompanied violin (a piece that Brahms later arranged for piano). The d-minor melody, like many Baroque varia?tion themes, is dominated by a descending har?monic progression, but Brahms enriched it with some characteristic modal (that is, neither major nor minor) inflections. There are five variations, of which the first three grow gradually more and more impassioned. In variations IV and V, the key changes to D Major, and the music evolves from gentle lyricism to a moment of supreme magic. The theme then reappears in its original
form but in a much more subdued instrumenta?tion.
The third movement is an extremely brief scherzo in the Beethovenian mold, with allu?sions to Symphony Nos. 5 and 7. The main sec?tion, already quite fast, frames a Trio that is even more animated. Some of the Trio's thematic material returns, a la Beethoven, as the move?ment's coda.
The last movement's graceful theme is passed from the first cello to the first violin, as in the opening movement. The light serenade tone prevails throughout, except for a brief moment where the music becomes more agitated. Each time the main theme returns, its instrumenta?tion changes. At the last recapitulation, for instance, the melody is divided between two groups of three instruments each, alternating in every measure. The work ends with a spirited coda, getting faster and faster to the end.
Program notes by Peter Laki.
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he musicians of Concertante are out?standingly gifted young artists who have won major national and international music competitions. As solo performers they have graced the premiere stages of the world from New York's Carnegie Hall to London's Royal Festival Hall to Shanghai's Grand Theatre. Concertante draws from its rich pool of artistic
talent to perform a wide array of repertoire ranging
from quintets by estab-
lished masters to less commonly performed nonets and other varied combinations of instru?mentalists.
The ensemble has an interest in furthering the
cause of new music and has to date given the
world-premiere per?formances of new works by Justine
Chen, Tina Davidson, Steven R. Gerber, David Ludwig, Jan Radzynski, Sheila Silver, Josef Bar-danashvili, and Oded Zehavi. It has also offered infrequently performed chamber works by such celebrated composers as Enesco, Adams, Schoenberg, Martinu, and Schulhoff. As a tour?ing ensemble, Concertante has performed across the US, gathering rave reviews and appearing on Minnesota Public Radio's St. Paul Sunday. In December 2002, the ensemble toured the People's Republic of China. Concer?tante is Resident Chamber Music Ensemble of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts in Harrisburg, PA.
In the 0405 season, Concertante's appear?ances included performances in Buffalo, Hon?olulu, Denver, Cleveland, San Jose, Wolf Trap, and a return to Duke University.
In the current season, Concertante returns to the Columbus Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Wooster; appears on the Uni?versity Musical Society's Chamber Arts Series in Ann Arbor; and performs in St. Louis; Pasadena; Carmel; Sun City; Logan, UT; Vancouver; and La Jolla.
Tonight's performance marks Concertante's UMS debut.