TIMOTHY COBB, BASS Bassist Timothy Cobb joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Bass, The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair, in May 2014, after serving as principal bass of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and principal bass of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra since 1989. He has appeared at numerous chamber music festivals worldwide, including the Marlboro Music festival, through which he has toured with the Musicians from Marlboro series. A faculty member of the Sarasota Music Festival, he is helping to launch a new bass program for the Killington Music Festival in Killington, Vermont. Mr. Cobb also serves as principal bass for Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, an invited group of musicians from around the world who donate their time biannually and perform to promote international harmony. Mr. Cobb has been designated a UNESCO Artist for Peace from his affiliation with the World Orchestra. He has an ongoing collaboration with actor Stephen Lang, for whom he recorded a solo bass sound track for Mr. Lang’s animated short film The Wheatfield , which depicts a human drama from the Battle of Gettysburg. The two were invited to Gettysburg in July 2013 on the 150th anniversary of the battle to perform in the Salute to the States event held there, and they will continue to collaborate for future events. Mr. Cobb serves as bass department chair for The Juilliard School as well as on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Purchase College, and Rutgers University. He is also a distinguished visiting artist for Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. A native of Albany, New York, Timothy Cobb graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Roger Scott. While at Curtis, Mr. Cobb was a substitute with The Philadelphia Orchestra and in his senior year became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti. Mr. Cobb can be heard on all Metropolitan Opera recordings released after 1986, as well as on a recording of Giovanni Bottesini’s duo bass music with bassist Thomas Martin on the Naxos label.

GARRETT FISCHBACH, VIOLA Garrett Fischbach has been a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1998. He was a member of the San Francisco Symphony from 1996-98 and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. from 1995-96. His 2CD recording of the complete works for solo violin by J.S. Bach was released to critical acclaim in 2004. He was a college division faculty member at Mannes School of Music from 2008-2015, and has been a guest adjudicator at Juilliard Pre-College and Manhattan School of Music. He has performed and taught at the Sun Valley Artist Series, the Sid & Mary Foulger International Music Festival, and International Workshops in Graz, Austria. Garrett earned a Bachelor of Music degree, magna cum laude, from Boston University where he studied with George Neikrug and Yuri Mazurkevich, and a Master of Music degree from Northern Illinois University as a student of Shmuel Ashkenasi. Garrett is an active chamber musician and recitalist, and is sought after in New York City as a teacher for advanced violinists and violists.

NANCY WU, ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER Nancy Wu has served as Associate Concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1989. She performs regularly with the MET Chamber Ensemble and has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Martha’s Vineyard and the Fondation Giannada in Martigny, Switzerland. Ms. Wu has been a coach for the Verbier Festival Orchestra since its founding in 2000. She is an exclusive artist for Thomastik-Infeld Strings. A Fulbright grant recipient, Ms. Wu graduated with honors from Stanford University and the Vienna Hochschule für Musik, and lives in Pleasantville, New York, with her husband, double bassist Leigh Mesh and their two children.

May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Clara Neubauer, violin; Kerry McDermott, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Preludio from Partita No. 3 arrg. for 3 violins & viola May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Clara Neubauer, violin; Kerry McDermott, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola Though we find precedents for Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin in works by Johann Jacob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Paul Westhoff, Bach’s contributions totally eclipsed these and remain unsurpassed to this day in invention and magnificence. Trained as a violinist in his youth by his father, Bach knew the capabilities of the instrument and expanded greatly upon them. The autograph manuscript, dated 1720, presents three sonatas in alternation with three partitas. The sonatas represent the serious Italian sonata da chiesa (church sonata) form with four movements in a slow, fast, slow, fast pattern; the partitas resemble the sonata da camera (chamber sonata), a series of dance movements, which if Bach had been writing in the French style would have been called a suite. Throughout the unaccompanied violin works and in those for solo cello, Bach showed his mastery at creating a many-voiced texture with what is essentially a single-line instrument, often by the use of double stops or rolled chords, but even more often by implying several melodic lines by artful figuration. He counted on the ability of the ear to pick out and hold onto notes in one register and string them together over time as an independent voice; one can often hear such implied voices in counterpoint, occurring in two or more registers. Whereas Bach began each of his solo cello suites with a Preludio, the E major Partita is the only solo violin work to open with such a movement. The cheerful perpetual motion of the Preludio has contributed greatly to the work’s popularity. Bach himself showed a fondness for it by transcribing it for organ and orchestra in Cantatas 120a and 29; he also made a transcription of the entire Partita for lute. The Preludio is notable for its larger-than-usual number of authentic dynamic markings. In 1999 music theorist, conductor, and composer Thomas Krämer published his delightful Preludio in E for four violins based on Bach’s popular movement, whose implied counterpoint translates well to this four-voice treatment. The present performance is adapted for three violins and viola. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 13, 2022: Kristin Lee, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Michael Brown, piano CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Violin Sonata in G minor, L. 140 and Cello Sonata in D minor, L. 135 March 13, 2022: Kristin Lee, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Michael Brown, piano Toward the end of his life Debussy set himself the goal of writing six sonatas for diverse instruments, but he was able to complete only three before succumbing to colon cancer. The devastation in Paris caused by World War I and his declining health had left him unable to compose for almost a year, but he was roused to take up the pen again in the summer of 1915 by a surge of patriotism and by a change of scenery to Dieppe. He completed his Cello Sonata and the Sonata for flute, viola, and harp before returning to Paris that October, and, after another bout with his illness, the Violin Sonata in 1916–17. He dedicated these remarkable works, along with the three he planned to write, “en hommage à Emma-Claude Debussy (p.m.)”—the parenthetical initials standing for “petite mienne” (my little one), his pet name for his second wife. Violin Sonata With immense, tortured effort, and several revisions of the finale, he was able to finish the Violin Sonata by the end of March 1917. It was the last composition he completed. He gave the first performance with violinist Gaston Poulet on May 5, 1917, at the Salle Gaveau, and with repeat performances in Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Biarritz he bid farewell to the concert stage. Debussy’s published title pages for each of the three Sonatas identified him as “musicien français,” by which he proudly showed his patriotism in time of war, but also his often declared determination to put forth a national French style as great as that of his Baroque forbears Couperin and Rameau. In May 1917 Debussy expressed great satisfaction with his Violin Sonata writing to his friend Robert Godet, “In keeping with the contradictory spirit of human nature it is full of a joyous tumult.” Yet only one month later, writing in a depressed state to Godet, he condemned the Sonata: You should know, my too trusting friend, that I only wrote this Sonata to be rid of the thing, spurred on as I was by my dear publisher. You, who are able to read between the staves, will see traces of Imp of the Perverse [story by Edgar Allan Poe] who encourages one to choose the very subject which should be ignored. This Sonata will be interesting from a documentary viewpoint and as an example of what may be produced by a sick man in time of war. Godet firmly challenged his deprecatory remarks saying, “One would be justified in criticizing it if it were not true music; which it undoubtedly is, and in a delightful way.” Nevertheless, Debussy’s dejected criticisms contributed to some harsh evaluations of the work, which happily have been ignored by thousands of violin and piano duos who have enthusiastically embraced this unique contribution from the composer’s late period. A lyrical, melancholy opening belies the first movement’s designation Allegro vivo, but its rhapsodic utterances in the first section erupt into lively passages. The quiet second group of themes is especially memorable for a sultry violin melody replete with glissandos (slides) and syncopated chordal accompaniment; a brief throaty folkish tune, alternating with a high violin melody (first in harmonics) with rippling piano accompaniment; and a slightly exotic tune with more glissandos. Following a return of opening materials, a frenzied buildup leads to a grand Gypsylike improvisation over repeated chords and an abrupt end. The capricious opening of the second movement reminds us of the commedia dell’arte figure of the Harlequin/Pierrot, which runs like a thread through all three late Sonatas—the earlier Cello Sonata was in fact once called Pierrot fâche avec la lune (Pierrot angered at the moon). In the present movement, which is to be played “with fantasy and lightness,” the motives and textures change with utmost flexibility. In contrast to the many delightful quicksilver gestures Debussy also offers an intriguing passage in which the haunting melody is doubled two octaves apart, accompanied all the while by insistent repeated treble chords. Emerging from an agitated piano opening, the violin’s first utterance in the Finale quotes the main theme of the first movement. Debussy colorfully noted the cyclic nature of this theme, saying that it “ultimately leaves the impression of an idea turning back upon itself, like a snake biting its own tail.” Improvisatory-sounding passages liven up the proceedings and again we hear a succession of variegated ideas, both fast and slow. One slow passage begins with a ringing low tone in the piano and a seductive violin melody again with glissandos. Several times his repeated-note accompaniment gives the impression of Spanish guitar figuration. A fascinating section near the end has the violin playing a high repeating pattern while the piano plays the melody in single notes, the whole interrupted twice with brilliant flourishes. A final wind-up produces wild trills in the violin, bold descending octaves in the piano, and one last impudent gesture. Cello Sonata Debussy wrote to his publisher on August 5, 1915, that he was pleased with the “proportions and almost classical form in the best sense of the word” of his Cello Sonata, adding later that cellists had been asking him to add such a work to their scant repertoire for a long time. The first performance took place not in Paris, as is often claimed, but in London, by cellist C. Warwick Evans and pianist Madame Alfred Hobday on March 4, 1916. Another performance followed five days later in Geneva by Léonce Allard and Marie Panthès. The Parisian performance often cited as the premiere did not take place until March 24, 1917, played by Joseph Salmon with Debussy himself at the piano. One of the work’s early performers, Louis Rosoor, printed the following in his programs, claiming to have gotten the description directly from the composer: “Pierrot [Harlequin] wakes up with a start and shakes off his stupor. He rushes off to sing a serenade to his beloved [the moon] who, despite his supplications, remains unmoved.” Debussy, however, complained bitterly to his publisher that the cellist had abused his confidence and it was no wonder his poor music was “so frequently misunderstood.” His protestations ultimately have the effect of corroborating Rosoor’s claim, suggesting that, as with many of the programmatic superscripts he attached to his works, the description did have some bearing on the piece, but that it was not only unnecessary for understanding the piece but might be misinterpreted. Our “musicien français” actually invoked the world of Couperin and Rameau in his Cello Sonata, which, despite his mention of “classical” forms, contains no sonata-form movement. The Prologue, in fact, alternates slow regal music reminiscent of the Baroque French-overture style with prelude-like improvisatory-sounding passages. The harmonies, however, are all Debussy’s. The Sérénade begins as if Pierrot (Harlequin) is tiptoeing to his beloved Colombine’s window. The cello’s constant pizzicato and periodic strumming seem to depict his guitar but also his antics. Debussy also calls for high harmonics, which give the cello a flutelike sound. Without pause the virtuoso finale takes off in a rush of figuration for the piano and a cello line whose sustained notes erupt into a folklike melody. Occasionally Debussy pauses the forward momentum for reflective, slightly exotic (Spanish-influenced?) passages and one particularly slow, soulful interlude, which make the surrounding activity sound that much more dizzying. An emphatic cello recitative and some forceful chords round off the piece. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

BARRY CENTANNI, PERCUSSION A graduate of the Juilliard School, Barry is principal percussionist for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. His engagements with St. Luke’s have included recordings for Sony, Music Masters, Telarc and Deutsche Grammophon, as well as appearances on “Live from Lincoln Center”. As a freelance musician, he has performed on “Late Night with David Letterman”, as well as “Saturday Night Live”. He has also appeared with the bands Yes, the Moody Blues and Metallica and with artists such as Tony Bennett, Sting, Elton John, and Frank Sinatra. He has also performed as an extra percussionist for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the American Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Little Orchestra Society, the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Pops, the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. An active teacher, he has been on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music,The College of New Jersey, SUNY Purchase, New York University and Columbia Teachers College. Presently, he is Chairman of the percussion department of Montclair State University.

2024-2025 SEASON Dear Friends, Parlance Chamber Concerts’s 17th season will begin joyfully on September 29 with a “Cellobration” spotlighting four of today’s leading cellists. Carter Brey, principal of the New York Philharmonic; Rafael Figueroa, principal of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; Zvi Plesser, professor at The Juilliard School; and the versatile soloist and chamber musician Edward Arron will join forces in a rich selection of cello solos and ensembles. On October 20 , the elite French string quartet, The Modigliani , will make it’s Parlance debut. Their far-ranging program will include Joaquín’s Turina’s lushly impressionistic Bullfighter’s Prayer , Brahms’s tenderhearted Quartet in B-flat, Op. 67 , and Beethoven’s sublime Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2. On November 17, the poetic English pianist Paul Lewis will return to PCC's stage. Universally acclaimed for his sovereign Schubert interpretations, Lewis will perform Schubert’s profound final trilogy of sonatas. A special mid-season “series with the series” will showcase the scintillating virtuosity of three of today’s most exciting performers: “The Virtuoso Flutist” On December 15, the phenomenal Crimean flutist Denis Bouriakov will perform a recital of concertos for flute and orchestra by Mozart, Bach, CPE Bach and Saint-Saëns . Denis will be supported by an ensemble of musicians from the New York Philharmonic. Michael Parloff will conduct. “The Virtuoso Organist” On January 19, organist Paul Jacobs will again grace our stage in a afternoon of towering masterpieces for the King of Instruments by Bach and Liszt. Don’t miss the musician that the Washington Post called “one of the greatest living virtuosos.” “The Virtuoso Cellist” On February 9, the renowned British cellist Steven Isserlis will make his long-awaited Parlance debut. Celebrated worldwide for his deeply communicative artistry, Isserlis radiates joy and virtuosity with every note he plays. His internationally diverse program will include works by Beethoven , Martinu , Boulanger , and Edvard Grieg’s soaring sonata for cello and piano. On March 9, celebrate Maurice Ravel’s 150th Birthday with the beguiling Russian-American soprano Erika Baikoff and the stellar Korean pianist Soohong Park. Their recital will feature a selection of Ravel’s most alluring song cycles and ravishing piano solos, including Shéhérazade and Gaspard de la nuit . On April 13 , the lustrous Quartetto di Cremona will make their eagerly anticipated return to PCC. The award-winning Italian ensemble will perform pinnacles of the quartet repertoire, including Debussy’s luminous String Quartet and Beethoven’s spiritually transcendent Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. On May 18, you won’t want to miss our star-studded seasonal finale, Late Night with Leonard Bernstein. This special multimedia cabaret will be hosted by the Maestro’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, in collaboration with acclaimed soprano Amy Burton and pianists John Musto and Michael Boriskin. They will provide an affectionately intimate portrait of the multifaceted titan of 20th-century American music. I look forward to seeing you again soon at Parlance Chamber Concerts! Michael Parloff 2024-2025 SEASON September 29, 2024 Cellobration! October 20, 2024 Modigliani Quartet November 17, 2024 Paul Lewis Plays Schubert December 15, 2024 The Virtuoso Flutist January 19, 2025 The Virtuoso Organist February 9, 2025 The Virtuoso Cellist March 9, 2025 Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert April 13, 2025 Quartetto Di Cremona May 18, 2025 Late Night With Leonard Bernstein Artist Roster Parlance Program Notes LOCATION At West Side Presbyterian Church 6 South Monroe Street Ridgewood, NJ 07450 For map and directions, click here . CONCERT AMENITIES Whee lchair Accessible Fr e e Parking for all concerts

THOMAS HAMPSON, BARITONE Thomas Hampson enjoys a singular international career as a recitalist, opera singer, and recording artist, and maintains an active interest in teaching, research, and technology. The American baritone has performed in all of the world’s most important concert halls and opera houses with many renowned singers, pianists, conductors, and orchestras. Praised by the New York Times for his “ceaseless curiosity,” he is one of the most respected, innovative, and sought-after soloists performing today. Hampson has won worldwide recognition for his thoughtfully researched and creatively constructed programs that explore the rich repertoire of song in a wide range of styles, languages, and periods. He is one of the most important interpreters of German Romantic song, and with his celebrated “Song of America” project (www.songofamerica.net ), a collaboration with the Library of Congress, has become the “ambassador” of American song. Through the Hampsong Foundation, founded in 2003, he employs the art of song to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. Hampson begins his 2011-12 season at San Francisco Opera, where he will create the role of Rick Rescorla in the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’s Heart of a Soldier. The new opera, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, features a libretto by Donna Di Novelli and is directed by Francesca Zambello. Based on the 2002 book by James B. Stewart, the work is inspired by the true story of Rescorla, his wife, Susan, and his friend Daniel J. Hill, culminating in Rescorla’s tragic death in the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center following his heroic evacuation of all 2,700 employees of Morgan Stanley. Hampson’s other operatic engagements this season include Iago in Verdi’s Otello and the title role in Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, both at Zurich Opera, and Verdi’s Macbeth at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Among other season highlights for Hampson are the opening night gala concert with Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra, marking two anniversaries: the orchestra’s 80th and the Kennedy Center’s 40th; Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erdewith the Munich Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta; Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel; Brahms’s Requiem and Dvořák’s Biblical Songs with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck; and recitals in the U.S., Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria (Vienna’s Musikverein), including “Song of America” programs in New York and Cologne. The 2011-12 season will also see the debut of the syndicated “Song of America” radio series, co-produced by the Hampsong Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network of Chicago for release in October. Hosted by Hampson, the series will consists of 13 one-hour programs exploring the history of American culture through song, bringing the “Song of America” project to a national audience of radio listeners. Hampson’s 2010-11 season was dominated by performances celebrating the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s birth and the 100th anniversary of his death. Recognized as today’s leading interpreter of the Austrian composer’s songs, the baritone began the worldwide celebrations on July 7, 2010 – Mahler’s 150th birthday – in Kaliste, Czech Republic, with a recital from the composer’s birth house, streamed live on medici.tv, as well as an internationally televised orchestral concert, available on DVD. Throughout the season he performed Mahler with orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the Czech Philharmonic with conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Mariss Jansons, Philippe Jordan, and Antonio Pappano. Hampson also featured the composer’s songs in recitals in Munich, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Milan and Oslo, and presented the complete songs as “Mahler Artist-in-Residence” at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. His new recording of Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the Wiener Virtuosen – a conductorless ensemble comprising principal players of the Vienna Philharmonic – was widely acclaimed. Additional highlights of Hampson’s 2010-11 season included season-opening performances in the title role of a new production of Verdi’s Macbeth at Lyric Opera of Chicago; three all-Strauss concerts with Renée Fleming and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Christian Thielemann; selections from George Crumb’s American Songbooks, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; “Song of America” recitals at Duke University and Minnesota Beethoven Festival; and the world premiere of William Bolcom’s Laura Sonnets, written especially for him. In Switzerland, he performed at Zurich Opera in new productions of Verdi’s I Masnadieri and Wagner’s Parsifal under Adam Fischer and Daniele Gatti, and appeared in a series of opera galas. In March 2011 he oversaw the inaugural season of the Heidelberg Lied Academy, of which he is artistic director; the academy is part of the Heidelberger Frühling music festival and trains young singers in text-based song interpretation. Raised in Spokane, Washington, Hampson has received many honors and awards for his probing artistry and cultural leadership. His discography of more than 150 albums includes winners of a Grammy Award, two Edison Prizes, and the Grand Prix du Disque. He holds honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music, Whitworth College (WA), and the San Francisco Conservatory, and is an honorary member of London’s Royal Academy of Music. In the 2009-10 season he served as the New York Philharmonic’s first artist in residence, and in 2011 he received the Concertgebouw Prize. He carries the titles of Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France, and was awarded the Austrian Medal of Honor in Arts and Sciences in 2004. He is the 2009 Distinguished Artistic Leadership Award recipient from the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, and in 2008 was named Special Advisor to the Study and Performance of Music in America by Dr. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress. In 2010, Hampson was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

PAUL WATKINS, CELLO Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as cellist and conductor. Born in 1970, he studied with William Pleeth, Melissa Phelps, and Johannes Goritzki, and was appointed principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1990 at the age of 20. He made his concerto debut at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Yakov Kreizberg. He now performs regularly with all the major British orchestras (including seven appearances at the BBC Proms) and many overseas orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin. A member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, Mr. Watkins joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. He is a regular participant at festivals and chamber music series, including New York’s Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, and regularly performs with the world’s finest musicians, including Menahem Pressler, Jaime Laredo, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, and Vadim Repin. Highlights of recent seasons include solo recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and Queens Hall, Edinburgh, his debut at Carnegie Hall performing Brahms’s Double Concerto with Daniel Hope, as well as the premiere of a new concerto written especially for him by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Recent releases under his exclusive Chandos Records contract include Britten’s Cello Symphony, the Delius, Elgar, and Lutoslawski cello concertos, and discs of Martinu’s and Mendelssohn’s music for cello and piano, and an ongoing series of Britsh sonatas with his brother Huw Watkins. In 2009, he became the first ever Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra, and also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra from 2009 to 2012. Since winning the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, he has conducted all the major British orchestras, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Swedish and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Prague Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, and the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras.

September 25, 2016: Escher String Quartet HUGO WOLF (1860-1903) Italian Serenade September 25, 2016: Escher String Quartet Hugo Wolf is known primarily as a composer of nearly 350 art songs, as a champion of Wagner and disparager of Brahms, and as a man who spent the last years of his short life in agonizing insanity. Though Wolf faced many spells when his creative powers failed him, he also experienced great bursts of creativity. The Serenade in G major—he later called it “an Italian Serenade” in an 1892 letter to Emil Kauffmann—was composed in just such a burst, from May 2–4, 1887, in the midst of a larger creative surge during which he was immersed in setting Eichendorff poems. Wolf’s Eichendorff phase played an important role in the Serenade’s conception. The one-movement work relates thematically to the first of the Eichendorff songs “Der Soldat I,” of which the text concerns a soldier’s love for a lady who lives in a castle. The same subject matter appears in Eichendorff’s novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a good-for-nothing) in which an Italian serenade figures prominently in the plot. The hero, who leaves home to seek his fortune, is a violinist, which might explain the importance of the solo violin in the quartet version of Wolf’s Serenade. At one point in the novella an orchestra plays a serenade, which may have inspired Wolf’s eventual arrangement for small orchestra (1892). As he was rescoring the Italian Serenade for orchestra, Wolf clearly had in mind a four-movement work, but attempts in 1893, 1894, and 1897, remained sketches. That he considered the existing one-movement work as a first movement speaks volumes about his approach to form. He made it perfectly obvious, especially as a critic for the Wiener Salonblatt, that he detested absolute music and any sort of academic technique—fugue, pedal points—that first movements inevitably contained. Therefore, instead of following a typical abstract sonata form, he relied on a form that implied some sort of program or narrative, though he never actually specified one. His free rondo form and recitative-like passages create such an effect. The Italian Serenade leaves the overall impression of playful irony, in part because of its saucy main theme, which returns often enough to overrule any lovesick outburst. In one episode the cello plays an impassioned recitative, which is clearly mocked by the response of the other instruments. At the end Wolf brings back the repeated notes of the introduction, with pizzicato chords providing a last bit of wit. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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PASCUAL MARTÍNEZ FORTEZA, CLARINET Pascual Martínez Forteza, Acting Associate Principal Clarinet, The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair, joined the New York Philharmonic in 2001, after holding tenure with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. At age 18 he was appointed assistant principal of the Baleares Symphony Orchestra in his native Spain, later becoming acting principal. He has recently performed as guest principal clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic, under Simon Rattle. Mr. Martínez Forteza appears regularly as a soloist, recitalist, and master class teacher at festivals and conservatories worldwide, including the International Clarinet Festival of Chanchung (China) and The Juilliard School, among others. Since 2003 Mr. Martínez Forteza and Spanish pianist Gema Nieto have played throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States as Duo Forteza-Nieto. Together they founded the Benifaio Music Festival in Spain. Mr. Martínez Forteza also founded Vent Cameristic, a wind ensemble of professional musicians from Spain. As a soloist with that ensemble, he has played every year at the Concerts d’Estiú in Valencia, Spain. In 2003 Spanish National Radio (RNE) produced a CD featuring selections from these performances. Pascual Martínez Forteza started playing clarinet at age ten with his father, Pascual V. Martínez, principal clarinet of the Baleares Symphony Orchestra for 30 years and teacher at the Baleares Conservatory of Music in Spain. Mr. Martínez Forteza earned his master’s degree from the Baleares and Liceo de Barcelona Music Conservatories in Spain and pursued advanced studies with Yehuda Gilad at the University of Southern California, where he won first prize in the university’s 1998 Concerto Competition. He is currently a faculty member at New York University and teaches orchestral repertoire at Manhattan School of Music. A Buffet Crampon Artist and Vandoren Artist, he plays Green Line Tosca Buffet clarinets and uses Vandoren reeds and M30D mouthpieces.