February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685-1759) Endless pleasure, endless love from Semele Angels ever bright and fair from Theodora February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano Handel had been producing Italian opera for thirty years in London when in 1741 he came to a financial dead end and turned to oratorio as his main creative outlet. But Semele , his 1743 setting of William Congreve’s English opera libretto, shows that he had not quite given up his operatic aspirations. Though intended for concert performance “after the Manner of an oratorio,” the work was doomed when it opened in February 1744 because the public wanted a Lenten oratorio rather than something so close to Italian opera and full of licentious gods. Despite containing some of Handel’s most lovely and effective music, Semele remained in a mixed-genre wasteland until the modern era when it became one of his most-performed works. Semele is a mortal woman, betrothed to Athamas but in love with the god Jupiter. At her request he snatches her aloft from the wedding ceremony. Juno, Jupiter’s wife and guardian of marriage vows, plays on Semele’s ambition to become immortal and, disguised as Semele’s sister, tells her to refuse Jupiter’s advances until he promises to appear to her in his true godlike form. Juno knows he will have to keep his promise, which will end Semele’s life. At the end of Act I, Semele sings the delightful, justly famous air “Endless pleasure, endless love,” which tells of her joy now that she is in Jupiter’s realm. Congreve’s libretto had assigned this “gavotte” to another character after Semele’s exit from the scene, but Handel no doubt wanted to give his star another opportunity to shine and decided such a discrepancy did not matter in an unstaged oratorio. Handel composed Theodora between June 30 and July 31, 1749, setting a libretto by Thomas Morell, who had adapted a story from Robert Boyle’s The Martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus (1687) together with some material from Pierre Corneille’s Théodore, vierge et martyre (1646). This fourth and best of Morell’s oratorio librettos for Handel inspired some of the composer’s most profound music. First performed on March 16, 1750, Theodora , like Semele , was not well-received—possibly because of its unusual subject matter and tragic ending. Its failure greatly disappointed Handel, who considered it his best oratorio. Two centuries later the work’s merits have been fully recognized and it has received masterful revivals, some even staged. The non-Biblical story involves Christian martyr Theodora, who is condemned to slavery as a temple prostitute by Valens, Roman president of Antioch, for refusing to offer sacrifices to goddesses Venus and Flora. Didymus, a Roman officer converted to Christianity by Theodora, helps her escape at the cost of his own freedom. She offers her life in exchange for his, but Valens condemns them both to death. Theodora sings the heartfelt “Angels, ever bright and fair” in Act I, scene 5, in response to being taken prisoner and told of the fate worse than death that awaits her. She pleads with the angels to take her to heaven as a virgin. Her poignant pleas come to a brief contrasting peak before resuming with the return of the opening, now with improvisatory embellishments of the melody, as was customary in Handel’s day. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 13, 2025: Quartetto Di Cremona Osvaldo Golijov (1960) Tenebrae April 13, 2025: Quartetto Di Cremona Golijov commanded international attention in 2000 with the premiere of his St. Mark Passion , commissioned in honor of the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach’s death. He had steadily been winning over influential musicians, beginning with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, which premiered his Yiddishbbuk at Tanglewood in 1992, and he has enjoyed collaborations with such dynamic artists as the Kronos Quartet, Dawn Upshaw, Yo-Yo Ma, Gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks, Mexican rock band Cafe Tacuba, tablas virtuoso Zakir Hussain, and legendary Argentine musician and producer Gustavo Santaolalla. His music typically combines his Argentine and Eastern European Jewish musical heritages with Western art music. Highlights of Golijov’s career include his groundbreaking chamber opera Ainadamar, based on the life of Federico García Lorca and featuring Dawn Upshaw, which premiered to great acclaim in 2003, the same year Golijov received the coveted MacArthur “genius grant.” The Metropolitan Opera just presented a critically acclaimed new production of Ainadamar in the fall of 2024, coproduced by Detroit Opera, Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, and Welsh National Opera. Golijov’s recent works include The Given Note , a violin concerto for Johnny Gandelsman and The Knights, and the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis , which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024 and which premiered in suite form by the Chicago Symphony the following fall. Golijov has held numerous residencies with major orchestras and in the 2012–13 season held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. Since 1991 he has taught at the College of the Holy Cross, where he is Loyola Professor of Music. “I wrote Tenebrae ,” explained the composer, “as a consequence of witnessing two contrasting realities in a short period of time in September 2000. I was in Israel at the start of the new wave of violence that is still continuing today, and a week later I took my son to the new planetarium in New York, where we could see the Earth as a beautiful blue dot in space. I wanted to write a piece that could be listened to from different perspectives. That is, if one chooses to listen to it ‘from afar,’ the music would probably offer a ‘beautiful’ surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one could hear that, beneath that surface, the music is full of pain. “I lifted some of the haunting melismas from Couperin’s Troisieme leçon de tenebrae , using them as sources for loops, and wrote new interludes between them, always within a pulsating, vibrating, aerial texture. The compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground. After finishing the composition, I realized that Tenebrae could be heard as the slow, quiet reading of an illuminated medieval manuscript in which the appearances of the voice singing the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (from Yod to Nun, as in Couperin) signal the beginning of new chapters, leading to the ending section, built around a single, repeated word: Jerusalem.” —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

< Back Hugo Wolf Italian Serenade for string quartet Program Notes Previous Next

STELLA CHEN, VIOLIN Stella Chen Violin 2023 Young Artist of the Year, Gramophone Awards Praised for her “silken grace” and “brilliant command” (The Strad), American violinist Stella Chen first gained international recognition as the winner of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition. Her critically acclaimed debut album Stella x Schubert, released in 2023 on Apple Music’s Platoon label, earned her the Young Artist of the Year title at the Gramophone Awards. Chen has performed across North America, Europe, and Asia in concerto, recital, and chamber music settings. She recently made debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Her performances have taken her to some of the world’s most iconic venues, including the Vienna Musikverein, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and Berlin Philharmonie. She appears frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, both in New York and on tour. Highlights of Chen’s 2025–26 season include concerto debuts with the Vancouver Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Antwerp Symphony orchestras, and an American tour with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, including a performance at Carnegie Hall. She appears in recital and chamber music performances at La Jolla Music Society, Chamber Music San Francisco, and leads a residency at San Francisco Conservatory. A dedicated chamber musician, Chen has been featured at festivals including the Kronberg Academy, Moritzburg Festival, Ravinia, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, Bridgehampton, Rockport, and Sarasota Music Festival, where she returned as faculty in 2025. Chen is the inaugural recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, where she was mentored and inspired by Robert Levin. Her teachers and mentors have included Donald Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, Li Lin, and Catherine Cho. She received her doctorate from the Juilliard School, where she was recently appointed to the College Division String Faculty. She also serves as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Shenandoah Conservatory and is on the faculty of the Nume Festival and Academy in Cortona, Italy. Chen performs on the “General Kyd” 1720 Stradivarius, generously on loan from Dr. Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. 2025-26 season / 342 words. Not to be altered without permission. Intermusica represents Stella Chen worldwide as part of Intermusica New York Martin Wittenberg, Director, Intermusica New York +1 (719) 200-6426, mwittenberg@intermusica.com Emma Cayeux, Assistant Artist Manager, Intermusica New York +1 (646) 298 2826, ecayeux@intermusica.com Jessica Barra, Artist Manager +44 7827 028 792, jbarra@intermusica.com https://intermusica.co.uk/artist/stella-chen

TIM FAIN, VIOLIN With his adventuresome spirit and vast musical gifts, violinist Tim Fain has emerged as a mesmerizing new presence on the music scene. The “charismatic young violinist with a matinee idol profile, strong musical instincts, and first rate chops” (Boston Globe) was featured as the sound of Richard Gere’s violin in Bee Season. Selected as one of Symphony magazine’s “Up-and-Coming Young Musicians of 2006,” and a StradMagazine 2007 “Pick of Up and Coming Musicians,” Fain has recently captured the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Young Concert Artists International Award. As The Washington Post recently raved, “Fain has everything he needs for a first-rate career.” He electrified audiences at his New York concerto debut at Alice Tully Hall with Gerard Schwarz and the New York Chamber Symphony, and at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Performing works from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky to Richard Danielpour and Philip Glass, he has been soloist with the Mexico City and Oxford (UK) Symphonies, recently made his debut with the Baltimore Symphony with conductor Marin Alsop and with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, appeared as soloist with the Philip Glass Ensemble at Carnegie Hall in a concert version of Einstein on the Beach, made his Ravinia recital debut, and gave a special performance of the Beethoven Concerto at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. Other recent and upcoming performances include appearances with the Champaign-Urbana, Wheeling, Illinois and Maryland Symphonies, as well as recitals for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Mavrick Concerts, Howland Chamber Circle, and Carmel Music Society and in Utah, Maryland, Syracuse and elsewhere throughout the United States. He appeared in recital at Amsterdam’s venerable Concertgebouw, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Kennedy Center Mexico’s Festival de Musica de Camara in San Miguel de Allende, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, New York’s Kosciuszko Foundation, and California’s Carmel Mozart Society, University of Georgia, San Diego Art Institute, University of California at Davis, and Boston’s Ives Festival, and Alice Tully Hall and the 92nd St Y. A sought-after chamber musician, Tim Fain has performed at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York’s Bargemusic, Chamber Music Northwest and the Ravinia, Spoleto (Italy), Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, Caramoor, Bard, Lucerne (Switzerland), Vail Valley, Moab, and Martha’s Vineyard Festivals. He has toured nationally with Musicians from Marlboro, and is first violinist of the Rossetti String Quartet. A dynamic and compelling performer in traditional works, he is also a fervent champion of 20th and 21stcentury composers. His provocative debut CD on Image Recordings of music for solo violin reflects Fain’s inquisitive passion and intellect by combining old and new in solo works by J.S. Bach, Fritz Kreisler, Kevin Puts, Mark O’Connor, Daniel Ott, and Randy Woolf. He was hailed for his appearance onstage with the New York City Ballet, where he performed alongside the dancers in the company’s acclaimed premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s “Double Aria,” and he has also appeared with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Seán Curran Company, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in the U.S. and abroad. He also continues to pursue his passion for jazz and has worked with jazz pianist Ethan Iverson, and recently appeared at the Jazz Standard with composer and saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli and The Cutting Room with composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. A native of Santa Monica, California, Tim Fain is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Victor Danchenko, and The Juilliard School, where he worked with Robert Mann. He currently lives in New York City.

October 17, 2021: Escher String Quartet JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) String Quartet in G, Op. 77, No. 1 October 17, 2021: Escher String Quartet In 1799 the young Prince Lobkowitz commissioned Haydn, the most celebrated composer in Europe, to write a set of six quartets, at the same time commissioning six from Beethoven, Vienna’s rising star. Haydn completed two, the present one in G major and a second in F major, and he even wrote the middle two movements of the next, which was to have been in D minor, but then he stopped. The two quartets were published in 1802 as Opus 77 with a dedication to the prince, and the two separate movements appeared in 1806 as Opus 103. After composing some eighty-three quartets—trailblazing works that greatly defined the genre—why did Haydn abandon the commission and quartet writing altogether? It is likely, as his biographer Robbins Landon suggests, that he didn’t want to compete with Beethoven, his former pupil, whose response to the commission was his wonderful Opus 18 set. Now known as Beethoven’s “early” quartets in view of his later contributions, these were nevertheless considered groundbreaking in their day. In any case, Haydn had nothing to apologize for in his masterful two Opus 77 Quartets, but he was feeling his age and wanted to invest his energy in large vocal works, an area in which Beethoven could not yet compete. The Opus 77 Quartets represent Haydn at his best, providing examples of all the traits we find so characteristic of the mature master: well-proportioned sonata forms sometimes based on a single theme, frequent use of harmonies related by the interval of a third, weighty slow movements, fast minuets that are essentially scherzos, and reliance on folk idioms. And yet they also show him still stretching his creative powers. In the first movement of the G major Quartet, for example, he expands his development section to equal the proportion of the exposition. This first movement’s main theme projects a martial character, based, according to Haydn scholar Bence Szabolcsi, on a Hungarian recruiting song. Haydn soon introduces a running triplet figure that he cleverly weaves around the martial idea and around the lyrical second theme introduced by the second violin. His development section includes a “false reprise” that features this second idea in the “wrong” key. Having dealt at length with this theme in the development, he omits it in the true recapitulation and continues with his coda. The solemn slow movement (in the third-related key of E-flat) gives a soloistic role to the first violin, as Haydn had done in many of his preceding quartets. He relies on a kind of free sonata form though without a clear second theme. Among his felicitous harmonic excursions and devices is a wonderfully unexpected shift in the development that brings on a hushed rendering of the main theme in a distant key. The Presto scherzo-minuet shows the master’s unabated energy in the fast pace and acrobatic leaps. Toward the end of the first of his three sections (minuet-trio-minuet), the violin reaches a note unprecedented in the quartet literature: a super-high D. The trio suggests a rustic peasant dance but in a new style for Haydn. Was he perhaps, as Landon wonders, experimenting in Beethoven’s language to please the prince, or might he even have perpetrated a subtle spoof? Haydn’s spirited finale returns to his Gypsy-Croatian-Eastern roots in its melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic style, though scholars have not identified a direct folk quotation. With his characteristic fashioning of the second theme out of the first, Haydn makes this sonata-form movement essentially “monothematic.” The finale offers the crowning example of Haydn’s successful blend of folk and “art” music. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Fantasia and Fugue on 'Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam' January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN Liszt’s fascination with Bach’s organ works was closely tied to three organists: Johann Gottlob Töpfer, municipal organist in Weimar; Alexander Winterberger, who was to premiere the massive “As nos” Fantasy and Fugue; and Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, who became the Weimar court organist. Töpfer was the teacher of both Winterberger and Gottschalg, but he was best known as an influential organ builder, and Liszt particularly admired his novel ideas on registration in the midst of most German organists’ conservative style. Liszt spent considerable time visiting church organs across Thuringia with Gottschalg and coached the younger man on playing Bach. Gottschalg published an account of these coachings, revealing that Liszt was puzzled by his playing of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor with the full organ on one manual as was the German custom at the time. Surely Bach would never have done so with three manuals at his disposal, opined Liszt, and when Gottschalg played the work with new registration for Töpfer, his teacher said, “You should always play it like that.” Gottschalg also reported on Liszt’s shortcomings as an organist, saying he never became fluent with the foot pedals and even tried to initiate a notation system of stems up for the right foot and stems down for the left. However, even though Gottschalg himself found it practical it didn’t catch on in Germany. Of Liszt’s original organ works, his first, the epic Fantasy and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” (Come to us, to the waves of salvation) is considered his finest. Liszt composed it in 1850 based on the chorale sung by three Anabaptists in the first act of Meyerbeer’s opera Le prophète . Though it was commonly held that Meyerbeer had based the chorale on a traditional Jewish melody he had heard in his uncle’s synagogue, Meyerbeer confided to Liszt that he had made it up. Liszt dedicated the dedicated the Fantasy and Fugue to Meyerbeer, who wrote to Liszt that he was honored and pleased, though he mistakenly thought it was written for piano. Five years later the twenty-one year old Winterberger premiered the several-times-revised version of the gigantic work for the inauguration of the new four-manual organ at the Merseburg Cathedral. As Liszt’s Toccata and Fugue on B-A-C-H was not ready, he had asked Winterberger to perform the “Ad nos” Fantasy instead, which had been published in 1852. Liszt traveled several times to Merseburg to help Winterberger prepare, in particular as to its complex registral colors. The Fantasy states the Meyerbeer chorale theme, which Liszt masterfully transforms and manipulates into two grand climaxes. He then introduces the chorale theme in a hushed Adagio in F-sharp major, the key he considered divine. The final virtuosic Fugue employs a subject based on the chorale, and elements of the previous sections return in recapitulatory fashion, to which Liszt adds a triumphal full-organ coda. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2017 AT 3 PM ALESSIO BAX AND LUCILLE CHUNG, PIANOS A Pianistic Partnership BUY TICKETS ALESSIO BAX, PIANO “Among the most remarkable pianists now before the public.” — Gramophone LUCILLE CHUNG, PIANO “…a blazing, gutsy performance.” — The Washington Post FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS "Bax and Chung are husband and wife, so it's not surprising that their piano duets work so well. They share a brilliant clarity in their playing. In this scintillating recital, it's hard to find even a fleeting moment where ensemble is less than meticulous." - The Sunday Times, London, November 2014 PROGRAM Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata in C, K. 521 for piano 4-hands Program Notes Sergei Rachmaninoff Suite No. 2, Op. 17 for two pianos Program Notes Dmitri Shostakovich Concertino in A minor, Op. 94 for two pianos Program Notes Witold Lutoslawski Variations on a Theme of Paganini for two pianos Program Notes

VIDEOS PARLANCE PERFORMANCE VIDEOS VIDEO CONCERT PREVIEWS PARLOFF MULTIMEDIA LECTURES AND INTERVIEWS Watch in full screen Go to the video you'd like to watch. Press the red button with white arrow to play video. At the bottom-right of the video player, click full screen icon. An introduction to violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and guitarist Jason Vieaux An Introduction to Met Harpists Emmanuel Ceysson and Mariko Anraku Beethoven’s 9th violin sonata: The Kreutzer or the Bridgetower? Introduction to Brahms’s A-Major Violin Sonata, Op. 100; Stefan Jackiw, violinist Introduction to Brahms’s Klavierstücke, Op. 119; Richard Goode, pianist Introduction to Mozart’s A-minor Piano Sonata; Richard Goode, pianist Introduction to pianist Richard Goode Introduction to Vibraphonist Stefon Harris Preview of Matthew Polenzani & Ken Noda’s March 29, 2015 Concert A Short History of William Walton’s Façade Entertainments

2010-2011 SEASON 2010-2011 SEASON 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

January 14, 2024: Goldmund Quartet ANTON WEBERN (1883-1945) Langsamer Satz January 14, 2024: Goldmund Quartet Webern was in love. In his third year as a student at the University of Vienna, he became romantically involved with his cousin Wilhelmine (Minna), and Webern’s diary, each entry filled with passionate outpourings combined with images of nature, radiates his happiness: “Our love rose to infinite heights and filled the universe! Two souls were enraptured!” The Langsamer Satz (“slow movement”), originally for string quartet, was composed in June 1905 as a direct expression of that love. They kept their affair secret knowing the anguish it would cause both sets of parents, but they married in 1911 after finding out Minna was pregnant. The marriage was officially prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church and solemnized only in 1915, by which time three of the couple’s four children had been born. In 1904 Webern had begun private composition studies with Arnold Schoenberg, which were to have profound impact on his life. There are some indications in the original set of parts for Langsamer Satz that the work was played, most likely within the Schoenberg “circle,” but Webern never made the work public. He may have suppressed it as a student work or because his compositional style soon underwent a major shift toward Schoenberg’s atonal language. In any case, it was not until 1962, almost twenty years after his death, that the world first heard this moving piece, performed on May 27 in Seattle by the University of Washington String Quartet. Langsamer Satz shows Webern’s indebtedness to late Romanticism in its rich harmonies and sweeping melodic lines. While this kind of expressiveness soon became telescoped into bare essentials, the movement exhibits the contrapuntal techniques that enabled him to structure even his most concise serial compositions. The piece consists of four basic sections, the fourth a reprise of the first, plus a coda. Though the key of the movement is E-flat major, the flowing opening melody gives the initial impression of C minor. A short, more restless section in G minor precedes a beautiful new calm theme that, if the opening was not enough, puts to rest questions about Webern’s lyrical abilities. The section peaks with the opening bar of this theme played triple forte, doubled in three octaves. In the reprise of the opening section, the second statement of the main theme is now the property of the cello. A coda based on the lyrical third section climaxes ecstatically and Webern’s wordless expression of love concludes quietly in E-flat major after a brief reminiscence of the C minor opening. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 18, 2022: Seth Morris & Maron Anis Khoury, flutes; Bryan Wagorn, piano FRANZ AND KARL DOPPLER (1821-1883; 1825-1900) Rigoletto Fantasie for 2 flutes & piano September 18, 2022: Seth Morris & Maron Anis Khoury, flutes; Bryan Wagorn, piano Brothers Franz and Karl Doppler both began studying flute at an early age with their father, composer and oboist Joseph Doppler. Franz played in the conventional manner with the flute out to his right, but Karl played “backwards” with the flute out to the left! As teenage flute virtuosos they made several concert tours together, then in 1838 settled in Pest, Hungary. They both became flutists of the German Town Theater and in 1841 of the Hungarian National Theater. Karl also served as a conductor at the National Theater until 1862. Franz composed several operas that met with considerable success, and Karl composed a singspiel, some incidental music, and songs that also found a receptive audience. They even composed several works jointly, such as the present Rigoletto Fantasy. Together they helped found the Philharmonic Concerts in 1853 and periodically toured as a duo. In 1858 Franz left for Vienna to become first flutist for the Court Opera and later conductor of the ballet orchestra; his fifteen ballets date from this period. From 1865 Franz also taught flute at the Vienna Conservatory. Karl stayed on for a time in Pest, but then moved to Stuttgart in 1865 to serve as court Kapellmeister, a post he held for thirty-three years. Besides composing for the theater, they each wrote a number of piano pieces and works for male chorus, and the compositions of both brothers achieved great popularity in their day. The Fantasy and Variations on Motives from the Opera Rigoletto, of Verdi, to use the work’s full title, was published in 1878 as Opus 38, but it may have been composed years earlier. One can easily imagine the brothers working on it when they lived in the same vicinity and touring with the piece long before it was published. On the other hand, maybe they had a reunion and celebrated by collaborating on the piece. In any case, they would have been very familiar with Verdi’s themes, since Rigoletto had been immensely popular ever since its Venice premiere in 1851. The aria that receives the most attention in the course of the Fantasy is the celebrated “Caro nome,” which is treated to several variations, interspersed with interludes that bring in other themes from the opera. The famous “La donna è mobile” makes a brief appearance, and we also hear parts of “Povero Rigoletto—La rà, la rà,” “Bella figlia dell’amore,” “Figlia! Mio padre!,” “Cortiginai, vil razza dannata,” and “Sì, vendetta.” The scoring for two flutes happily accommodates the many passages of parallel thirds and sixths so common to Italian opera. The Dopplers also added virtuosic filigree, switching off between players so that each has ample chance for dazzling display. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes