ANNI CROFUT, DANCER Anni began ballet and modern dance as a child and studied under Lester Horton and Judith Jameson at Jacob’s Pillow as a teen. As an adult she explored Salsa, African dance, Capoeira and Tango abroad. After returning to the U.S. in 2006, Anni has performed with the Berkshire Pulse and at the Mahaiwe Theatre where she introduced her own choreography in ‘The Soldier’s Tale.’ In 2010, Anni created a piece for four women titled ‘Rain,’ focusing on the remembrance of sensuality in young mothers, which was performed at the Sandisfield Arts Center in Sandisfield, MA. This dance sparked a desire to create a full suite of dances about the different stages of a woman’s life. This year, she choreographed a piece called ‘The Queen Years,’ which explores the period in a woman’s life from her 50’s through her 60’s. ‘The Queen Years’ was performed at the International Women’s Day conference at Simon’s Rock of Bard College, and also at the Sandisfield Arts Center.

September 27, 2009 – Danielle de Niese, soprano; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Ken Noda, piano FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) Shepherd on the Rock, Op. 129, D. 965, for soprano, clarinet and piano September 27, 2009 – Danielle de Niese, soprano; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Ken Noda, piano Franz Schubert was unusual among the great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries in that he was not an instrumental virtuoso. Composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Liszt developed early reputations for their formidable keyboard prowess. Their performance skills enabled them to attain varying degrees of “star power,” giving them the ability to introduce their solo and chamber compositions directly to the public, publishers, and influential, music-loving aristocrats of the day. While Schubert sang in a small, pleasant voice and had functional keyboard and string instrument skills, his performance abilities were better suited to intimate musical circumstances. For this reason, his reputation remained largely confined to a Bohemian circle of devoted admirers and friends who gathered on a weekly basis in private homes to hear and perform his latest musical offerings. These events, known as Schubertiades, were attended by artists, literary figures, musicians, and middle-class Viennese music lovers. Schubert was the kind of person to whom friends were naturally drawn and became devotedly attached. He lived most of his adult life off the good graces of his colleagues, who gave him lodgings and would occasionally raise funds to have his music published. When he died at 31, he left behind no books, money, furniture, or estate, but his musical legacy was enormous. Although most of his music remained unpublished at his death, he composed over 1000 separate pieces during his short lifetime. Like Mozart, his memory and ability to concentrate were prodigious. He was able to imagine and hold entire compositions in his head, then write them down at breakneck speed. Schubert’s greatest musical gifts were melodic – for all intents and purposes, he invented the Art Song, composing over 600 of them. In 1828, his final year, Schubert’s friends rented the Vienna Concert Hall and sponsored the first public recital of his music. The response among the attendees was effusive, and Schubert was enormously heartened. It seemed that his fortunes were finally about to change for the better. He received an open-ended request for music from the prominent publishing firm Schott, and he set to work in a final burst of creative activity. One of the most famous sopranos of the day, Anna Milder-Hauptmann (the creator of the role of Leonora in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio), requested that Schubert write her a brilliant concert aria that would allow her wide expressive latitude and be suitable for large audiences. The result was one of Schubert’s most popular songs, The Shepherd on the Rock. Sadly, he died only weeks after completing the song and never had the opportunity to hear it performed. Of the hundreds of songs that Schubert wrote, only two, both composed during his last year, feature obbligato instruments. The first, On the River, involves the French horn, and the second, Shepherd on the Rock, the clarinet. In keeping with the outdoors imagery of the text, the clarinet sonority provides appropriately folkish associations, as well as conveying the pathos and melancholy of the song’s introspective middle section. Schubert chose to blend three poems by two different poets in order to express a wide range of human emotion. Romantic sensibilities are represented in the poetic and musical evocations of nature, picturesque landscapes, the desolation of separated lovers, and the joy of wandering. The song begins in the alpine heights with a young shepherd yodeling across mountain ravines to his lover somewhere below. The clarinet responds with echoes from the depths of the valley. The second section expresses the sadness of life, evoking sorrow and grief as hope for the future ebbs. Optimism and positive emotions return in the final section, which heralds the beginning of spring and the joyous anticipation of wandering. The song ends in a jubilant cascade of scales and arpeggios in the soprano and clarinet. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet Ludwig van Beethoven Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 (“Serioso”) March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet Beethoven’s F minor String Quartet of 1810, the last of his “middle” quartets, is one of a select group of works for which he provided his own descriptive title—other famous instances being his Pathétique Sonata and Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies. He marked his manuscript “Quartett Serioso,” a curious mix of German and quasi-Italian, which apparently meant a work devoid of ostentation whose inner conflicts were expressed by pared-down harmonic, motivic, and formal structures. Unfortunately it could imply that his Harp Quartet, op. 74, written just a year before—and any of his other quartets for that matter—were not “serious,” though surely he meant it as a way to separate his quartet production apart from the proliferation of showy and less weighty quartets by other composers that had begun populating the concert scene. On another front, the work’s “seriousness” has to do with his having written it without a commission because of a personal compulsion, and dedicating it to a friend, cello-player Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz, rather than to a highborn patron. This resonates with his late quartets, which, though instigated by a patron, ended up being composed out of sheer inner necessity. Beethoven had already begun using quartet-writing as the place for exploring his most forward-thinking ideas—which had led to such disappointing critical reception of his Razumovsky Quartets, op. 59—but now this testing ground took a turn toward privacy. He waited an unusually long time before having the Serioso Quartet performed and published. The work received its first performance by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in May of 1814, for which occasion Beethoven apparently revised it. The Serioso was one of several pieces that Beethoven sold to publisher Anton Sigmund Steiner in 1815 in repayment of a debt. The debt must have been substantial because the batch also included the Opus 96 Violin Sonata, the Archduke Trio, the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, and several smaller works. A pivotal work, the Serioso takes a look back to the Razumovsky and Harp Quartets but just as clearly points to the late quartets, though it would be fourteen years before he took up the genre again. Concision and new harmonic relationships are paramount here, and often his compression of both boils down to single notes or pairs of notes. The first movement’s dark, furious unison opening suddenly breaks off, followed by a leaping response characterized by dotted rhythms. The ensuing lyrical elaboration of the opening now pointedly highlights the remote Neapolitan harmony (based on the flatted second scale degree). A prominent pair of half steps in the lyrical passage sets up the somewhat unusual key of D-flat for the lovely second theme. Twice, once at the end of the second theme and once in the midst of the closing theme, explosive ascending scales and daring excursions to remote keys command our attention. It stands to reason that in such a terse movement Beethoven would not repeat his exposition. Instead he shocks the listener again with a crashing major chord that seems to signal a development. Yet this turns out not to be a thorough “working-out” in the classical sense, rather a brief revisiting of the furious opening and the leaping dotted-rhythmic idea, followed by a suspenseful buildup. Beethoven then begins his drastically shortened recapitulation with the fortissimo unison of the transition to the second theme. A coda of the same length as the development balances out this remarkable rethinking of sonata form. The Allegretto ma non troppo begins softly and mysteriously, with a melodic shape similar to the first movement’s opening. Any idea of relaxed, lyrical contrast becomes entangled in a wavering between major and minor and an increasing influx of chromaticism that peaks in the middle section’s fugue. This remarkable interior piece unfolds in two sections before the opening music returns in shortened form. Beethoven continues with a serene coda, but instead of ending peacefully makes a directs link to the ensuing tempestuous scherzo. Beethoven asked that his third movement, a typical place for an irreverent scherzo, be played Allegro assai vivace ma serioso. Propulsive sections with an obsessive dotted rhythm alternate with two trio sections of more lyrical demeanor, which still transmit a restless sense with the first violin’s figurations and unusual harmonic juxtapositions of distantly related keys. A truly slow, reflective introduction prefaces the agitated sonata-rondo finale. Compact once again, the movement features a dancelike but disquieting main theme that Beethoven varies ingeniously on every recurrence. Its last appearance comes to a halt on a hushed major chord that unleashes one of the most talked about endings ever. A lightening quick coda in the major mode rockets forth in unimaginable contrast to the rest of the movement and to the entire piece. In this Beethoven parallels his own Egmont Overture, written just months before, also in a serious F minor with an F major coda, but whereas that ending represents a hard-won victory corroborated by the story, here Beethoven seems simply to be letting go, albeit in breathtaking style. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

MELINDA WAGNER, COMPOSER Melinda Wagner is a Pulitzer Prize winning composer. Her Trombone Concerto was recently premiered by the NY Philharmonic, and she is currently working on a piece for the Chicago Symphony.

February 18, 2024: Michael Stephen Brown, piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) The Valley of the Bells for piano February 18, 2024: Michael Stephen Brown, piano In his autobiographical sketch Ravel said that his Miroirs of 1904–05 “mark a change in my harmonic development pronounced enough to have upset those musicians who till then had had the least trouble in appreciating my style.” He no doubt referred to his freedom to avoid the home key for long stretches and to use passages of unresolved chords over pedal points. Ravel’s formal structures in these five “mirrors” of nature were also freer than in his earlier works. When pianist Ricardo Viñes told him that Debussy dreamed of writing “a kind of music whose form was so free that it would sound improvised” (never minding old improvisatory-sounding forms such as fantasias and toccatas!), Ravel told Viñes that he, too, was working along similar principles. Several weeks later Ravel played his free-sounding Miroirs for the Apaches, his circle of Parisian artists. Ravel dedicated each of the five Miroirs to a fellow Apache—the last of the set, La vallée des cloches, to his only pupil, Maurice Delage. Viñes premiered Miroirs on January 6, 1906, at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique to mixed reviews, as might be expected in view of Ravel’s remarkable new direction. La vallée des cloches, Ravel told pianist Robert Casadesus, was inspired by the sound of the Parisian church bells that rang at noon, and, reported Gabriel Fauré, Ravel referred to the bell sound at the end as “la Savoyarde,” the largest bell in the Basilica of Montmartre. Ravel would go on to feature bells in a number of his other works, such as L’heure espagnole, La cathédrale engloutie, and Gaspard de la nuit. The outer sections of La vallée des cloches depicts five sets of bells, repeating in fragmented phrases at varying rates, with intervals of parallel fourths and octaves prominent to suggest the overtones in the bells’ reverberations. Only in the middle section does a lush melody emerge. Striking but less obvious is Ravel’s use of larger structural planes, extended in time to create varied overarching patterns, much in the same way the Cubists were breaking up time and space to create illusions of solid objects. Ravel required three staves in the score to facilitate the representation of these layers. He was particular, as pianist Henriette Faure learned in a coaching, that the right-hand carillon and the left-hand high octave bells sound on two very distinct levels, “and the whole thing had to remain within a pianissimo that he could, in some mysterious way, achieve without it sounding feeble. . . . The great calm lyrical outpouring [of the central section], on the other hand, requires a profound sonority and a legato that comes from a hand closely wedded to the keys, and from a weight of arm that one ideally gets from sitting rather low at the keyboard.” —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

JERUSALEM QUARTET Alexander Pavlovsky, 1st violin Sergei Bresler, 2nd violin Ori Kam, viola Kyril Zlotnikov, cello “Passion, precision, warmth, a gold blend: these are the trademarks of this excellent Israeli string quartet.” Such was the Times’ (London) impression of the Jerusalem Quartet. Since the ensemble's founding in 1993 and their debut in 1995, the four Israeli musicians have embarked on a remarkable journey of growth and maturation. Their expansive repertoire and extraordinary depth of expression have firmly established them as a distinctive voice in the string quartet tradition. At the heart of their sound lies a warm, full, and deeply human tone, paired with an egalitarian balance between high and low voices. This approach allows the quartet to combine individual expression with a transparent and faithful presentation of the composer’s work. It also drives their ongoing refinement of interpretations of the classical repertoire, while encouraging explorations of new musical territories. The Jerusalem Quartet is a regular and cherished guest on the world’s most prestigious concert stages. The year 2025 marked the Quartet’s 30th anniversary, which the ensemble celebrated with a special focus on Shostakovich’s 15 quartets, presented across 10 cities worldwide, including St. Paul, MN; Cleveland, OH; Portland, OR; Concertgebouw Amsterdam; Beethovenfest Bonn; Philharmonie Cologne; and Tonhalle Zurich. Highlights of the upcoming 2025/2026 season include two North American tours, as well as extensive performances across Europe, with concerts at renowned venues such as the Konzerthaus Wien and Wigmore Hall in London. Another season milestone for the Quartet will be a series of quintet concerts in Europe in spring 2026 with celebrated pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, taking place at prestigious venues including the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. The Jerusalem Quartet’s recordings have received numerous awards and accolades, including the Diapason d’Or and the BBC Music Magazine Award for Chamber Music. Previous Harmonia Mundi releases include a unique exploration of Jewish music in Central Europe between the wars, featuring a collection of 1920s Yiddish cabaret songs from Warsaw performed with Israeli soprano Hila Baggio, as well as the second volume of their complete Bartók cycle released in 2020. Today, the quartet records exclusively for BIS, with their first release for the label in 2025 featuring Shostakovich Quartets No. 2, 7 & 10.

December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Allegretto WoO 39 December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio Beethoven made his final statement in the piano trio genre with this single-movement Allegretto in B-flat major. He inscribed his manuscript score: “Vienna, June 26, 1812: for my little friend Maxe Brentano, to encourage her in her piano playing.” Maximiliane Brentano was the ten-year-old daughter of Beethoven’s dear friends Antonie and Franz Brentano. The composer even included his own suggestions for fingerings to aid his little friend. If Maynard Solomon’s convincing evidence is accepted, Maxe’s mother Antonie was Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the woman to whom Beethoven wrote his famous letter less than two weeks after completing the little Trio. With great anguish, Beethoven nobly resolved not to accept the high-society married woman’s offer to leave her husband, thereby preserving—if we adopt Solomon’s reasoning—his friendship with the family. Nine years later he dedicated his wonderful Piano Sonata in E major, op. 109, to Maximiliane, who must have kept up her piano studies. The sonata-form Allegretto contrasts a busy, cheerful main theme, played by the piano to chordal string accompaniment, with a simple second theme marked by a characteristic dotted rhythm that is echoed alternately by the strings. The development takes an excursion to D major, which Beethoven even notates in the key signature. The slightly varied recapitulation leads to a relatively substantial coda, which comes to a sprightly conclusion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

EDWARD ARRON, CELLO A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since that time, he has appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician, throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The 2024-25 season marks Mr. Arron’s 12th season as the co-artistic director with his wife, Jeewon Park, of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Mr. Arron tours and records as a member of the renowned Ehnes String Quartet and he is a regular performer at the Boston and Seattle Chamber Music Societies, the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Caramoor, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Seoul Spring Festival in Korea, Music in the Vineyards Festival, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, and the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland. Other festival appearances include Salzburg, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Mostly Mozart, PyeongChang, Bravo! Vail, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, Evian, La Jolla Summerfest, Chamber Music Northwest, Chesapeake Chamber Music, and the Bard Music Festival. Mr. Arron’s performances are frequently broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today . In 2021, Mr. Arron’s recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano with pianist Jeewon Park was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label. The recording received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award from the Classical Recording Foundation. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Arron currently serves on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

October 29, 2017: Peter Serkin, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations BWV 988 October 29, 2017: Peter Serkin, piano A wonderful story, recounted by Bach’s early biographer J. N. Forkel, revealed that the Goldberg Variations were the result of a request by former Russian ambassador and insomniac Count Keyserlingk for some clavier pieces that his young house harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, could play for him during sleepless nights. A great patron of the arts, the count lived in Dresden but often visited Leipzig, where in 1737 he had introduced the ten-year-old Goldberg to Bach, recommending him as a harpsichord student. Goldberg indeed took lessons from Bach, but also from his oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, a great keyboard virtuoso who was working in Dresden. It may be, as some scholars claim, that the elder Bach wrote the monumental work for his son rather than for Goldberg, but Forkel’s account cannot be dismissed because some information for his biography came directly from Wilhelm Friedemann and from Bach’s second oldest son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. In any case, Goldberg, too, became an outstanding virtuoso, and seems to have played the Variations frequently. Bach visited Count Keyserlingk in Dresden in November 1741, having published the Variations that fall, and it is entirely likely that he gave him a presentation copy. The count referred to them as “my” variations, but the work cannot have been an official commission or Bach would have included a formal dedication. For posterity the Aria with 30 Variations will always be known as the Goldberg Variations. In the larger scheme of things, Bach, a master organizer, published the work as part of the series he unassumingly titled Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Exercise), which he issued in installments beginning in 1731. This “exercise” represents the pinnacle of Bach’s art and thus an incomparable peak in the whole of music. His six keyboard Partitas make up Part I, followed by the Italian Concerto and the French Overture as Part II, the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major and various organ chorales as Part III, and, finally, the Goldberg Variations. He may even have included the Art of Fugue as Book V had he lived to see it published. In choosing to compose a large set of variations, Bach stood firmly in the tradition of Corelli, Handel, and Rameau, though he himself had not written a keyboard set since his youth. Aria was also a traditional title for the first movement of such a set—Bach’s Aria is a thirty-two measure theme that also appears in Anna Magdalena Bach’s Clavier-Büchlein of 1725. For the first eight bars the harmony and bass line (the basis for most Baroque variation sets rather than the theme itself) are the same as for Handel’s Chaconne avec 62 variations, which Bach surely knew. Handel’s treatment of the last variation as a simple canon (precise imitation of one line by another) must have sparked Bach’s imagination even before the Goldberg Variations, because he used the underlying progression as the basis for several canons. Versions of these later appeared in his Fourteen Canons (BWV 1087), which he eventually copied into his own print of Part IV of the Clavier-Übung, explicitly connecting these two collections. He probably also knew a set of sarabande variations attributed to the “Eisenach” Bach (1642–1703)—or to J. S. Bach’s older brother—which employ the same progression for the first four measures. Forerunners aside, Bach employed a much longer theme than his predecessors had, giving himself a much fuller range to explore his incomparable canonic and variation techniques. The whole set is carefully organized so that every third variation includes a canon, systematically increasing the pitch interval at which the second line begins its imitation, starting with a canon at the unison for Variation 3 and continuing through the interval of a ninth in Variation 27. (The canons in Nos. 12 and 15 proceed in contrary motion.) In addition Bach sets up a threefold pattern of variation types (beginning with the third variation) of canon, free counterpoint, and duet-style. Before No. 3 he includes two free variations and follows No. 27 with three more free variations before he recalls the Aria. Despite Bach’s organizational and canonic rigors, there is nothing dry and pedantic about the Goldberg variations, which certainly must have kept Count Keyserlingk highly engaged rather than lulled to sleep. Bach juxtaposes variations of contrasting meter, specific rhythmic figuration, or texture, and he makes dramatic or witty variations with equal ingenuity. One of the most striking aspects of his elegant wit appears in the variations with hand-crossings, which appear already in the first variation. Here they require a certain athleticism, since Bach designates this variation to be played on just one of the harpsichord’s two manuals (keyboards). (Because Bach intended the Goldberg Variations for a two-manual harpsichord, transferring them to piano necessitates decisions about how best to distribute the two-manual variations, which pianists solve in many different ways.) Variations 5, 14, 20, and 28 also call for similar leaping hand-crossings rather than the type whose hand-crossings are the result of lines of counterpoint crossing each other—Nos. 8, 11, 17, 23, and 26. Both types require great virtuosity, the latter following in a long line of keyboard pieces known as bicinia or pièces croisées. Bach also includes dance types, such as a gigue for Variation 7 (labeled al tempo di Giga in his manuscript) or, though not so-designated, a highly ornamented sarabande for the slower Variation 13 with its emphasis on second beats. He labels Variation 10 a Fughetta, which though not a strict fugue contains an entrance of the fugue subject in every fourth bar. Variation 24 seems to have roots in the instrumental pastorale, similar to the siciliana in its lilting compound meter and deceptively simple or “rural” atmosphere. Many of the variations focus on a certain keyboard technique or challenge in the manner of the études of much later generations. Variation 8 suggests a study in arpeggios and contrary motion, Variation 23 a variety of virtuosic figures including parallel thirds, and 28, sustained measured trills, often in inner voices. Bach makes a striking gesture with French overture–style dotted rhythms as a kind of grand opening statement for the second half of the set. This variation also serves to bring back the prevailing major mode after No. 15, the first of only three variations in minor, whose canonic unfolding introduces two-note “sighs,” some daring chromaticism, and a curious ending that drifts upward. The last minor-mode variation, the soulful, chromatic No. 25, achieves the greatest weight and depth of the free variations, part of Bach’s scheme of increasing drama as well as technical brilliance as the set progresses. Most of the variations exhibit a two- or three-voice texture, though Bach intersperses four-voice variations at judicious intervals. Of these, two make specific reference to older polyphonic styles: Variation 22, marked Alla breve, employs Renaissance-style counterpoint as in a motet, and Variation 30 shows Bach having some fun in a quodlibet. Literally “as you like it,” the term had been used since the mid-fourteenth century to designate a humorous piece that combined two or more independent melodies, often folk tunes, in contrapuntal style. The Bach family reportedly improvised such pieces at family gatherings. Scholars have found at least six snippets in Variation 30 that appear to be folk quotations, of which the most obvious are phrases from “Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir g’west” (I’ve been away from you so long) and “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben” (Cabbage and turnips have driven me away). Bach’s witty combination of these phrases seems to refer to this “hodge-podge” (another meaning of Kraut und Rüben) having driven the main theme away, necessitating the recall of the Aria. Without any knowledge of quotations or elegant witticisms, however, Variation 30’s old-fashioned demeanor has the musical effect of halting the intensifying brilliance built up by the preceding variations, preparing for the Aria’s return to bring the work full circle. It is unlikely that Bach, his sons, or Goldberg played the set of variations straight through at a single performance. Nevertheless, its organization, carefully considered contrasts, cohesion, and technical challenges have made performances of the entire Goldberg Variations the lofty goal of many keyboard virtuosos—to the delight of the listening public. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Piano Trio No. 2 in C, Op. 87 January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio From his holiday haunt at Ischl in June of 1880, Brahms sent the first movements of two piano trios to his friend, famous surgeon and amateur musician Theodor Billroth. Brahms then laid both trios aside—the one in E-flat major permanently and that in C major until precisely two years later when, again at Ischl, he added three more movements. The C major Trio exudes the confidence, happiness, and fulfillment of a composer at his zenith who was widely recognized as one of the greatest of his time. With uncharacteristic pride Brahms wrote to his publisher Simrock, “You have not so far had such a beautiful trio from me and very probably have not published one to match it in the last ten years.” Following his long-standing custom, Brahms tried out the C major Trio, along with the concurrently composed F major String Quintet, at private performances. The first trial took place on August 25 in Altausee, just up the river from Ischl, and the second at Billroth’s home in Vienna on October 19. In December that year Brahms paid Clara Schumann a surprise visit and was delighted to find her trying out the Trio with friends. Finally Brahms gave the public premiere on December 29 in Frankfurt. The work was well received, but Clara complained privately in her diary that Brahms’s playing had degenerated into “thump, bang, and scrabble”—one of the costs of giving up piano practice with his rise as a composer. Though outwardly traditional in layout—sonata-form first movement, theme and variations slow movement, scherzo with trio, and rondo with some sonata features—the C major Trio shows Brahms at his most ingenious in regard to the execution of these structures. The first movement employs two main theme areas that each contain two main ideas. The robust opening idea remains the exclusive property of the violin and cello until the very end of the movement when the piano joins in lustily. One of the most unusual passages occurs in the development when, instead of the expected beehive of activity, Brahms slows down this main idea almost to a leisurely waltz. Another remarkable feature in this second part of the movement is the combining of development and recapitulation functions. Brahms closes with a substantial coda that again includes the “waltz” version of the opening theme, but varied as we have come to expect. Brahms wrote a theme with a Hungarian or Gypsy flavor as the basis for his slow-movement variations. Clara commented particularly on the theme’s folklike nature, brought about in part by the octave doubling of the cello and violin and the short-long rhythms so characteristic of that style. In the course of the variations, Brahms, the supreme master of variation technique, varies not only the string idea, but the syncopated piano accompaniment. The last part of the theme—telescoped from eight to seven bars—shows just one facet of Brahms’s ingenuity, when halfway through he turns the previous material upside down. This inversion appears in each of the variations but the fifth, which signals finality and the onset of the coda. The brief but powerful Scherzo is a gem. The furtive outer sections frame one of the most glorious trios Brahms ever wrote. The gorgeous interplay between the violin and cello produces exquisitely poignant tensions and relaxations as each phrase arches and subsides. Brahms labeled his Finale giocoso or playful, and moments of wit indeed shine through, often based on the staccato pattern of the piano at the outset or on sudden contrasts. Nevertheless, the overall impression is one of restrained intensity that sometimes erupts passionately. Brahms adds to the movement’s aura of importance by affixing an extensive coda in which the slow, tender section near the end reminds us of his unexpected slowing in the first movement. Here it functions as the calm before the storm, which Brahms then unleashes with almost fierce merriment. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

June 2, 2024: Mozart’s Double Concertos WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K. 364 June 2, 2024: Mozart’s Double Concertos Scarcely anything is known about the circumstances surrounding the composition of Mozart’s glorious Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. In the voluminous Mozart correspondence there is no mention of any impending occasion, soloists for whom it was written, or performances that took place. The work was almost certainly completed in the summer of 1779 while Mozart was in Salzburg, having recently returned from a trip to Mannheim and Paris. No dated autograph source survives for scholarly reference, only a sketch of part of the first movement and some cadenza material. Modern editions must rely principally upon the first edition published in 1801 by Johann André. Many have guessed that Mozart had himself in mind as the viola soloist. He had switched allegiance from the violin during this Salzburg period, much to his father Leopold’s chagrin. One can only be thankful that the circumstances did arise for Mozart to compose this glorious work, which the great Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein went so far as to call “Mozart’s crowning achievement in the field of the violin concerto.” Though the Sinfonia concertante is scored like many earlier concertos for strings with oboes and horns, the orchestral writing is much richer. There are many passages for divided violas, extensive separation of the cello and bass parts, and the inclusion of the soloists in the many of the orchestral tuttis (ensemble sections). Furthermore, Mozart originally required the solo viola to be tuned a half-step higher than normal, to give it a brightness that made it stand out from the orchestral violas. Thus, though the work is in E-flat, the solo viola part was notated in D major. (Nowadays, however, the violist often elects to perform the solo part without this scordatura, or unusual tuning.) Mozart’s use of the marking maestoso (majestic) was infrequent; it colors the whole sonority of the first movement. Other unusual features of this sonata form movement are the use of a long, thrilling crescendo known as a “Mannheim crescendo”—used by Mozart in the Figaro Overture but seldom elsewhere—and the eloquent semi-recitatives that open the development. The poignant slow movement is in the older sonata form in which the second part closely follows the material of the first, except for the traditional alterations in the harmonic scheme; this framework was closer to a binary than ternary form. Each successive antiphonal phrase of the soloists seems to outdo the previous in expressiveness. For his Presto finale Mozart employed a sonata rondo without a development—or if there is a development, it lasts only four measures after which an exact recapitulation begins. Here the soloists enter with the main theme in the subdominant, a rare device for Mozart, but one later favored by Schubert. This coupled with other unexpected events, such as the very first entrance of the soloists, contribute to an exhilarating movement rich in inventiveness. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Jason Vieaux, guitar MANUEL DE FALLA (1876-1946) Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Jason Vieaux, guitar In 1907 Spanish composer Manuel de Falla went to Paris, where he formed friendships with Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel that greatly influenced his career. At the time of the Paris production of his opera La vida breve in the winter of 1913–14, a Spanish singer in the cast asked Falla for advice about which Spanish songs she should include on a Paris recital. He decided to arrange some Spanish songs himself using his own system of harmony, which he had just tried out for the harmonization of a Greek folk song requested by a Greek singing teacher. This system stemmed from Falla’s study of Louis Lucas’s L’acoustique nouvelle , a mid-nineteenth-century treatise he had picked up as a young man in Madrid at an open-air book stall, and which was to influence his later style profoundly. It consisted of deriving harmonies from the natural resonance of a fundamental tone, that is, its overtones, then using these as new fundamental tones. Though Falla never lost sight of traditional harmony he claimed that this system, which anticipated harmonic theories of the twentieth century, revolutionized his entire conception of harmony. The composer completed the Siete canciones in Paris before the outbreak of World War I forced him to return to Madrid in 1914. Ironically, He did not permit the singer who had sought his advice to perform them on a Spanish-themed program in Paris because of a bad experience he himself had had performing on a similar Spanish program. The songs were first performed by Luisa Vela (who had just sung in the Madrid premiere of La vida breve ) accompanied by the composer in Madrid on January 14, 1915. The first Paris performance was delayed until May 1920. The songs are dedicated to Madame Ida Godebski, a great friend of Falla; Cipa and Ida Godebski’s famous salon in Paris was a gathering place for many other composers and writers including Roussel, Stravinsky, Ravel, Gide, Valéry, and Cocteau. Falla chose to set seven folk songs from various regions of Spain. García Matos, in his detailed study of Falla’s sources in the Madrid periodical Música in 1953, found that two of the songs closely follow the folk sources as to the tunes and texts, two were retouched slightly, one was modified slightly and expanded, one reworked considerably, and one was probably created from a combination of sources. The songs have been performed far and wide in all manner of arrangements, often titled Suite populaire espagnole . Ernesto Halffter, student and friend of Falla, orchestrated the accompaniment, and subsequent adaptations have appeared for various instruments, notably a well-known arrangement for violin and piano by famous Polish violinist Paweł Kochański. (No. 2 is omitted in the violin arrangement and its offshoots, as is No. 1 in the arrangements for guitar; various order changes are also common.) “Asturiana” takes the listener to the North of Spain for a peaceful lament. The passionate “Jota” takes the name of one of the most widely known Spanish song and dance forms, associated with the region of Aragon. Falla employs the characteristic alternation of sections of rapid accompaniment in 3/8 meter with those in a slower tempo for the melody line. “Nana” is a lullaby, which Falla said he heard as a child from “his mother’s lips before he was old enough to think.” The tune stems from Andalusia, and as such differs from other Spanish cradle songs because, according to the composer, much Andalusian vocal music originated in India. The geographical origin of the “Canción” is uncertain, although Falla followed the popular theme fairly faithfully according to Matos. At the end a canon between the voice (violin in this case) and the accompaniment provides textural interest. The last song, “Polo,” of Andalusian origin, reflects the flamenco or Gypsy world. The original piano accompaniment evokes the guitar’s punteado style—returned here to its source of inspiration—and the accents represent palmadas (hand-clapping) by the spectators. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes