Program Notes, 2010
by Durrell Bowman
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July 19 – Monday Sonatas
Bartók – Rhapsody No. 2 for Violin and Piano
Enesco – Violin Sonata No. 2 in F minor
Schumann – Five Pieces in Folk Style
Bach – Cello Suite No. 3
Béla Bartók
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) had a very full life as a composer, musician, teacher, and ethnomusicologist. After his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, he traveled throughout Europe to collect thousands of folk songs. The modal scales and rhythmic energy of such music inspired and influenced him throughout his career. As fascism began to take hold in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, he banned broadcasts of his works in those countries. He and his wife then left Hungary for the US in 1940. However, he began to suffer from leukemia and died in New York in 1945. Bartók's inventive, polychromatic orchestral works include the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the Concerto for Orchestra. His string quartets and piano music (especially Mikrokosmos) are also staples of 20th century music. Many of his works explored mathematical constructions involving palindromes and/or proportions based on the golden mean (an irrational constant of approximately 1.618). However, his work is also infused with exciting, unusually-structured rhythms. His works also include Allegro barbaro, Contrasts (performed on July 21), the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (July 28), and the Rhapsodies for Violin and Piano.
Rhapsody No. 2 for Violin and Piano (1928)
This work is from a pair of rhapsodies that have very similar structures. They both have two parts with "Moderate" then "Moderately Quick" pacings, and both also make use of a considerable number of elements from Eastern European folk music. The first movement ("slow") of Rhapsody No. 2 begins with an expressive violin theme featuring unusual gestures with many semitones, as well as some double-stops and glissandos. The piano initially accompanies with fairly straightforward chords, but it later provides several short interludes on material somewhat similar to the violin gestures. Towards the end of the movement, the music briefly becomes less assertive, but the two instruments then join in equally-shared variations of the earlier material. The second movement ("fast") is both longer and more active than the first one. The piano provides a much more rhythmically lively opening than it did in the first movement, and the violin melody matches that by being quite dance-like. Indeed, the work's first movement serves as merely a modest introduction to the ongoing, and much more varied, series of folk-influenced styles, effects, and rhythms found in the second movement.
Georges Enesco
Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu (a.k.a., Georges Enesco, 1881-1955) is best known for his String Octet and his Romanian Rhapsodies. However, he created a wide variety of compositions and was also a leading violin virtuoso of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A child prodigy, Enescu began violin lessons at the age of four, started composing music at five or six, and pursued conservatory studies in Vienna starting at seven. He made his professional debut at eight and then also studied at the Paris Conservatory. Concerts solely dedicated to his works first took place in 1897. In the early 20th century, he performed with French pianist Alfred Cortot, formed several ensembles (including the Enescu Quartet), and also began teaching in Paris. In addition, he worked to improve the classical music concert life in Romania. He first performed in the US in 1923, and child prodigy Yehudi Menuhin (and others) studied with him. Back in Europe in the 1930s, he continued his various activities, including work on his opera Oedipus. He returned to the US after World War II and watched from afar as Romania was taken over by a Soviet-backed, communist government. He began suffering from arthritis, gave a final concert (with Menuhin, in 1950), then suffered a stroke (with resultant paralysis) in Paris in 1954.
Violin Sonata No. 2 in F minor (Op. 6, 1899)
This work was composed just after Enescu graduated from the Paris Conservatory. It provides an early example of the composer's ability to create especially expressive, accompanied melodies. In this work, Enescu often uses the Aeolian mode (a.k.a., natural minor), which was frequently used in folk music from the Moldavian region of Romania. However, certain aspects of the sonata also suggest a sense of the composer's recent studies in Paris. Thus, the work also sometimes suggests the mood of music by French composers Ravel and Debussy. Enescu's later chamber music was conceived on a much larger scale, but he nonetheless later considered this sonata to be the first of his works to suggest the character of his emerging style. The first movement ("Fairly turbulent" then "Very quickly") begins with angular octaves in both instruments, but the violin then asserts a melodic idiom separate from the continuing piano accompaniment. The second movement ("Tranquilly") is quite gentle and plaintive, with the violin first taking a fairly sweeping lead, over low, dark piano contributions. However, the roles of the instruments then switch. The third movement ("Lively") is a spritely dance, with frequent, animated "conversations" between the two instruments.
Robert Schumann
German composer and music critic Robert Schumann (1810-56) was profoundly influenced by literature and by an arduous battle for the love of his life. However, he also increasingly suffered from mental problems, attempted suicide in his early forties, and spent his final years in an asylum. (Program notes for other concerts of this Festival provide additional information about Schumann's life and works. See the Table of Contents .)
From 1847 to 1849, Schumann wrote the:
- Three Romances for Oboe and Piano (performed on July 2)
- Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano (July 9)
- Piano Trio No. 2 in F major (July 30)
- Five Pieces in Folk Style
Five Pieces in Folk Style (Op. 102, 1849)
This work comes from one of Schumann's most productive years for chamber music: 1849. As with the other chamber works from that year, the Five Pieces in Folk Style are relatively easy to perform. They avoid the overt complexities of many of the composer's other works. Indeed, they are quite tuneful and generally calm. (Perhaps Schumann was attempting to stave off the onset of his mental illness!) The first piece ("Vanity of Vanities: With humor") includes a swooping, perhaps gypsy-inspired, cello line. The second piece ("Fairly slowly") is quite pastoral, giving the impression of walking alongside a brook. The third piece ("Not quickly, playing with much tone") is especially melodic in the cello, with the piano rather "sputtering" by comparison. The fourth piece ("Not too briskly") is at first a joyous dance, but this style quickly gives way to a more mellow tune. The last piece ("Starkly and markedly") rounds out the set by being somewhat reminiscent of the first one.
Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was arguably the greatest genius of Western music. On the one hand, Bach brought together the harmonic and structural tendencies of German, French, Italian, and other music of the mid- to late-Baroque era. On the other hand, his particular synthesis of such things resulted in a prominent example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. His works are formally precise, but he also organized his melodic material to be fundamentally tuneful. He was a master of counterpoint, especially of the fugue. He spent the greater part of his career working as a music director and organist in a church-related position in Leipzig. Thus, much of his music consists of sacred cantatas and organ works, especially chorale preludes and fugues. However, he also wrote secular cantatas, as well as such additional religious works as the B Minor Mass, several large-scale passions, and six motets. His instrumental music includes such solo keyboard works as The Well-Tempered Clavier and orchestral music that includes the six Brandenburg Concertos. However, it also includes chamber music for various instruments, both accompanied and unaccompanied.
Cello Suite No. 3 (BWV 1009, 1720)
This popular suite for solo cello is one of Bach's six for the instrument. It was written before he moved to Leipzig, halfway into the six years during which he held a comparatively secular position in Cöthen. (The Brandenburg Concertos were written there as well, about a year later.) The Prélude (the opening is shown) is largely improvisatory and quite positive in tone. About halfway through, it introduces a pedal point (i.e., a held or repeated note), over which Bach builds increasingly expressive material. The Allemande mainly proceeds at a measured, brisk, "power walk" pace. It includes many instances of melodic phrases that are immediately repeated at different pitch levels (i.e., "sequences"). The Courante rhythmically "flows" by comparison, but it otherwise picks up on the Allemande's sequence idea by immediately exploring a rich tapestry of contrasting phrases. The Sarabande is at a relaxed pace and is also quite hesitant and expressive. It includes numerous triple- and quadruple- stops that provide the infrastructure for a contrapuntal complexity that can even be strongly suggested on a single instrument such as this. The first of the two Bourrées has a march-like pace, with gestures that may remind the listener of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The second Bourrée suddenly shifts to a minor key. However, the work's concluding, triple-beat Gigue is again joyous and light.