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July 5 – Monday Sonatas

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Thomas – Dream Catcher (New England premiere)

Prokofiev – Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major

Chopin – Cello Sonata in G minor

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Augusta Read Thomas

American composer Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964) has composed an "impressive body of works embodying unbridled passion and fierce poetry." The American Academy of Arts and Letters inducted her with such accolades in 2009. Among other awards, she also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, and her Astral Canticle was one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Her works have been performed by numerous major orchestras, but she has an especially strong connection with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Thomas has also had close associations with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim, and composer/conductor Pierre Boulez. She has taught composition or held major positions at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, Tanglewood, and the American Music Center. She has sometimes described her work in visual terms:

I try very hard in my music to have it retain that passion and that sense of spontaneity and alive-ness — as if it were a sparkler, with lots of flames and lights flying off of it. It's completely white-hot and alive.

Thomas's discography includes 45 commercially-recorded CDs.

Dream Catcher (2009)

This work, for solo violin (or viola), received its world premiere on May 17, 2009 by Maria Schleuning, for whom Thomas wrote the work as a gift. It has been described as "dreamy ruminations with jazzy dance episodes." Thomas herself describes the intended effect as "optimistic" and "sunny," and she also refers to the work's subtle "perfumes" of her compositional "grandparents:" such as Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and jazz. As in other compositions, her approach in Dream Catcher is to make the work evolve gradually. She particularly does so in terms of its pacing and thematic transformations. On the other hand, she balances such a Bach-like organic approach with gestures that seem to be quite spontaneous. The middle of the work is faster and more rhythmic, and the ending of the work is comparatively lyrical.

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Sergey Prokofiev

In his early career, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) moved around within various national contexts. As a child prodigy, he attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory and had already composed large-scale works. He was also a leading piano virtuoso and composed a pair of piano concertos just before the First World War. Prokofiev then traveled to London and Paris and after the 1917 Russian Revolution visited the US for two years. In the 1920s, he lived in Paris for a number of years. In the early 1930s, he periodically returned to his native land, where he had a slow-but-steady rise to success with film music and the initially-blacklisted ballet Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev returned permanently to the USSR in 1935. One scholar has argued that the composer needed the straight-jacket of the Soviet Union in order to have something to fight against. His compositions included film music (such as for Alexander Nevsky, 1938), orchestral music, cantatas and similar works (including Peter and the Wolf, 1936), and solo/chamber music. The latter includes the Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major (1939-40, performed on July 26). However, his health declined, and the Communist Party also veered against him in his final years as being too "formalist." In an interesting coincidence, Prokofiev died on the very same day as Stalin.

Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major (Op. 94b, 1943-4)

Prokofiev based this work on his Flute Sonata (op. 94, 1942). Around the same time, he also produced his darker-sounding Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor (July 12). The second sonata is, however, quite positive-sounding and neo-classical in nature. The first movement ("Moderately") includes lyrical thematic material. However, it also certain effects that are rather similar to folk-tradition fiddling music. The recapitulation is very brief and arrives at a stasis, reminiscent of a single, lingering note on a harmonica. The second movement Scherzo ("Very quickly") is much less "controlled" in aesthetic than the first movement. It includes a bird-like trio. The third movement ("At a walking pace") is gently calming in nature, with the mildly-soaring material explored on both instruments. The middle section seems inspired by jazz or jazz-influenced art music (e.g., Gershwin). The lower-register violin gestures circle impulsively, and the piano responds with related, but more echoed, material in a higher register. The fourth movement ("Fast, with vigor," the opening is shown) is triumphant in character. It initially leaps about, but then it proceeds more step-wise.

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Frédéric Chopin

Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-49) graduated from the future Warsaw Conservatory in 1829, having been proclaimed "exceptionally talented" and "a musical genius." Most of his works are from his later career in France and for solo piano. These include his nocturnes, mazurkas, waltzes, and etudes. However, he also composed chamber works with cello, including the Cello Sonata in G minor and the Piano Trio in G minor (performed on July 14). Paris in the 1830s provided the cultural milieu in which Chopin succeeded as a piano teacher and composer. Starting in 1838, he had a stormy relationship with the novelist George Sand (b. Amantine Dupin). Early during that relationship, he completed his 24 Preludes (August 6). His health also began to decline, probably due to tuberculosis. In the early 1840s, he wrote such major works as the Ballade No. 4 in F minor (August 4). In 1846-48, he composed his Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major (June 30) and his Cello Sonata in G minor. In 1848, he went to London, but he then died in Paris in the autumn of 1849.

Cello Sonata in G minor (Op. 65, 1848)

This work was Chopin's last published during his lifetime. It was also the work he performed at his final public concert, in 1848. He performed it with his friend, cellist August Franchomme, for whom it was written and to whom it is dedicated. Chopin was never especially comfortable writing for any instrument other than piano, and while writing this work complained: "I write a little and cross out a lot." The first movement ("Moderately fast") often gives the sense of having been improvised at the piano. In the second movement Scherzo ("Quickly, with brilliance"), Chopin initially uses a rhythmically assertive approach. However, he then considerably varies the mood, including material inspired by waltz-like dances. The third movement ("Very slowly") is brief and quite gentle. The Finale ("Quickly") combines something like the bravura virtuosity of Chopin’s earliest works with the idiosyncratic update of that style he had recently accomplished in his "heroic" piano works.

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