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November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924) Mélodies November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano Fauré’s first work, “Le papillon et la fleur,” was a mélodie (song) composed in 1861 when he was a sixteen-year-old student at the École Niedermeyer. He continued to compose mélodies throughout his long life, penning his last set, L’horizon chimérique, in 1922. He progressed from writing primarily romances to working in a mature style—influenced by poet Paul Verlaine—beginning with the celebrated “Clair de lune,” and eventually focusing his attention on the song cycle and its many interconnections. Often considered the master of French song composers, Fauré left his mark on all who followed, including Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel. Fauré loved texts that permitted him to create a mood or set a scene rather than those that restricted him to illustrative details and he altered texts of lesser poets when it suited his purpose. Verlaine’s poetry drew a new style from him, a more continuous flow and more use of modality, though he still concentrated on atmosphere rather than on each textual nuance, as Debussy did at roughly the same time. Fauré’s first Verlaine setting, “Clair de lune” (1887), is subtitled “minuet,” the composer’s response to the eighteenth-century images in the text of elegant statues, parks, and masqueraders. Verlaine’s Mandoline, which describes eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte serenaders, was set by Fauré in 1891, having already attracted Debussy in 1882. Fauré permitted himself to repeat the opening verse to achieve a ternary form. His accompaniment figures suggest the plucked mandolin. In 1884, submerged beneath Fauré’s musically serene exterior, there lurked a certain violence, which erupted in “Fleur jetée.” One of Fauré’s most successful Silvestre settings, it recalls Schubert’s “Erlkönig” in its savage repeated octaves and blustering scales. The voice part is no less dramatic as the rejected lover implores the wind to dry up her broken heart. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

JOSEPH JORDAN, OBOE

March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Six Bagatelles from Op. 119 March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano Beethoven was constantly composing piano miniatures, and he saved those that never found a home in his piano sonatas for later publication as collections of unrelated pieces, some to be used as exercises. When he published his first set of Bagatelles, op. 33, in 1803, he was the first to attach the French term for “trifle” to a set of unrelated pieces for piano, though occasionally the term had been used in the previous century for sets of dances or songs. He published two other collections of Bagatelles—Opus 119 in 1823 and Opus 126 in 1825. Those of the last set date from 1824, but the dates of composition for the Opus 119 set range from his early Bonn days through 1822, the period of the Missa solemnis and the three last piano sonatas, opp. 109, 110, and 111. In Beethoven’s mind these miniatures were by no means inferior to his more extended piano works but were simply ideas that were complete in themselves. We can well imagine his incensed reaction, reported by Anton Schindler, when the publisher Peters returned six of them in 1823 saying they weren’t worth his asking price and that he ought to consider it beneath his dignity to waste his time on such trifles. The publication of the set of eleven Bagatelles in 1823—by Clementi in London and Schlesinger in Paris as Opus 112, “corrected” to 119 later in the century—actually caps a convoluted history, discussed by scholars in exhaustive detail. One of the most salient points is that in April 1820 Beethoven broke off work on the Missa solemnis to comply with a request from Friedrich Starke for a contribution to his piano pedagogy book, Wiener Piano-Forte-Schule . Beethoven ended up supplying Nos. 7–11 of the eventual Opus 119 for the 1821 publication, calling them by the German term Kleinigkeiten , in the same wave of German patriotism that had seen him using the term Hammerklavier . Beethoven’s sketches from this time are fascinating in that they show the first movement of the E major Sonata, op. 109, to have originated from the impetus to supply bagatelles, which helps account for its unusual form. Clearly this impetus also inspired him to complete Nos. 1–6, for which he drew on his rich store of materials from as early as 1791–1802. As it happens, however, the improvisatory-sounding No. 6 that begins this evening’s selection is of 1822 vintage judging by sketches that appear amid work on the Credo of the Missa solemnis . It seems wholly appropriate to group Nos. 6 through 11 together as examples of a somewhat later style. The Bagatelles sometimes employ a binary form (two sections with repeats), as in the intimate, chromatically inflected No. 8, or a rounded binary (second half returns to the opening material, both halves repeated) as in the valse triste of No. 9. But many times Beethoven lets the material command its own form, as in the aforementioned No. 6, which puts us in mind of his improvisations, not only at concerts or private gatherings but for himself alone. No. 7 is especially striking for its trills—that sound like chiming bells at the outset but become almost demonic before the precipitous ending—and No. 10, briefest of all, is notable for its single-minded playfulness. With the profound No. 11, one suspects that Beethoven found its individual form totally satisfying—first section repeated, second section a series of varied thoughts—and decided against marring its delicate nuances by employing it in another context. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 19, 2019: Paul Jacobs, organ WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Adagio and Allegro (“Fantasy”) in F minor, K. 594 May 19, 2019: Paul Jacobs, organ On October 3, 1790, Mozart wrote from Frankfurt to his wife, Constanze, in Vienna: “I have now made up my mind to compose at once the Adagio for the clockmaker and then to slip a few ducats into the hand of my dear wife.” He went on to complain about the shrill little pipes of such a high-pitched instrument and his distaste for the childish sound. The “clockmaker” seems to have been Father Primitivus Niemecz, librarian at Esterháza Palace and colleague of Haydn, who had made several clock-organs for which Haydn wrote or arranged music. Most of Europe’s popular automated instruments, ranging from hand-held devices and table-top clocks to full sized organs, provided entertainment in palaces and mansions, but the mechanical clock for which Mozart wrote the Adagio and Allegro, K. 594, graced the mausoleum of a private gallery and waxworks collection in Vienna. The gallery had been created by Joseph Nepomuk Franz de Paula, Baron Deym von Stržitéž, who operated under the alias Johann Müller after an illegal duel had forced him to leave his post in the Austrian army. Among his collection of plaster casts of ancient artworks and wax figures of famous people, Müller had created a most unusual monument to “the unforgettable and world-famous” Field Marshal Ernst Gideon, Baron von Laudon (or Loudon), who had died on July 14, 1790. A wax figure of Laudon could be viewed in a glass coffin, “splendidly illuminated from 8 o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock at night,” and, said the announcement in the Weiner Zeitung, “upon the stroke of each hour a Funeral Musique will be heard and will be different every week. This week the composition is by Herr Kapellmeister Mozart.” Mozart’s relationship with Father Niemecz remains a mystery, but it seems clear that the link between them was the commission from Müller for the mausoleum. As is happened, Mozart’s “wholly appropriate” music soon became the only music to be featured at the monument. He had actually written two pieces for this commission, both in F minor—K. 594, dated December 1790, which contains three sections, Adagio-Allegro-Adagio, and K. 608, dated March 3, 1791, also in three sections but reversing the tempo scheme to Allegro-Andante-Allegro. Yet a third organ-clock piece followed on May 4, 1791, an Andante in F major, K. 616, but that piece was intended for a clock organ of higher range. This or a similar piece, rather than the F minor pieces, was likely what prompted Mozart’s complaints from Frankfurt about writing for such a high-pitched instrument, but with any of these three pieces he would have been quite happy to know that today they are usually performed on an organ or piano four-hands. The Adagio and Allegro, K. 594, begins in solemn chords over rising bass gestures, after which the bottom drops out to let the treble ring. Similar shorter alternations of registers bring on the majestic and jubilant Allegro, whose many passages of imitative and sequential fast notes make a glorious display in two repeated sections. The Adagio then returns with some bold chromatic explorations before resolving contemplatively in the home key. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) Four Impromptus, D. 935, op. 142 February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Schubert composed his Four Impromptus, D. 935, in December of 1827 just after completing another set of four that summer or fall, D. 899—all possibly as pieces for himself to play at musical gatherings or soirées. Publisher Tobias Haslinger was initially responsible for calling these now-famous pieces Impromptus, with Schubert’s permission, when he issued the first two of the earlier set (later op. 90, nos. 1 and 2) in December 1827. Though Haslinger announced the publication of the entire first set for the following year, Nos. 3 and 4 did not appear until 1857, by then published by Tobias’s son Karl. The manuscript of D. 935 shows Schubert himself already calling the pieces Impromptus, and his intention that these follow the first set as a sequel shows in his numbering them 5 through 8. This set was not published, however, until Diabelli issued them in 1839, eleven years after Schubert’s death. The designation impromptu had been used before by Bohemian composer Jan Václav Vořišek for pieces modeled after the poetic piano miniatures by his teacher Václav Tomášek called eclogues. Schubert surely knew the piano pieces of both these composers—he probably knew Vořišek personally—and he no doubt also knew Beethoven’s first set of bagatelles, which were pioneers in the field of short freestanding piano pieces. The word impromptu suggests spontaneity, and it is possible to imagine Schubert creating these gems as he extemporized at the keyboard, yet their sophistication suggests that considerable thought went into them. The scope of the D. 935 Impromptus, the first in particular, contributed to the delay in their being issued, because publishers wanted shorter, easier, and therefore “more marketable” piano pieces. The declamatory minor-mode opening of the first Impromptu sets the tone for an imposing rather than trifling piece, yet it still manages to sound improvisatory. Two contrasting ideas—one with gentle pathos and one with brilliance—complete this first-theme group, which brings on a tender second theme in the relative major. So far Schubert gives the impression of a sonata form, so much so that Schumann called it “obviously the first movement of a sonata.” Schubert then inserts a dreamlike section that might be considered the closing of an exposition except that it unfolds unhurriedly as an entire piece in itself—in two parts, each repeated (binary form). Scholar John Daverio aptly called this section a “Dialogue without Words” because of its exchange between treble and bass; it has also been labeled a trio section or an episode. Completely avoiding a development section, Schubert recaps all of these sections, now grounded “properly” in the home key (both major and minor), and concludes with a brief recall of the dramatic opening theme. Despite the piece’s nods to sonata form—or to sonatina form (abridged sonata form with no development) or to abridged sonata-rondo form—Schubert imperturbably followed his own muse in designing its large-scale parallel proportions. The second Impromptu contrasts outer sections of simple chordal texture supporting a tender melody with a central trio of nonstop arpeggiated triplets over rocking bass, in which heard or implied melody lines seem to emerge. Both the outer sections and the trio are comprised of two parts, the second of which in each case provides dynamic contrast and some luscious harmonic surprises. For the third Impromptu Schubert borrows and slightly alters a simple theme he had used twice before—in his incidental music for Rosamunde and the slow movement of his A minor String Quartet—and treats it to five variations. Lighthearted for the most part, the variations take an impassioned turn in the minore third variation and end with a pensive variant of the theme. In the fourth Impromptu, one of Schubert’s most brilliant and unusual movements, he adopts a Hungarian style—a rarity for him even though he had spent two summers working for the Esterházy family in Hungary and must have been familiar with the Hungarian or Roma/Gypsy style as it flourished in Vienna. Shifting triple and duple meter, syncopated accents, long-short rhythms, sections of contrasting tempo, fluid harmonies, certain scale passages, and melodic embellishments all point to that style, which Schubert knew was fitting for an improvisatory-sounding piece. Even though this Impromptu bears signposts of a scherzo-trio-scherzo organization, the proportions again bear Schubert’s original stamp with the “trio” spinning out at more than twice the length of the “scherzo” and a coda longer than the closing “scherzo” section. Schubert concludes with one of his most daring pianistic features—a rapid-fire descending scale spanning six octaves. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

MATTHEW POLENZANI, TENOR One of the most gifted and distinguished lyric tenors of his generation, Matthew Polenzani has been praised for the artistic versatility and fresh lyricism that he brings to concert and operatic appearances on leading international stages. This season Mr. Polenzani returned to the Metropolitan Opera in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, conducted by James Levine, and in Verdi’s Rigoletto, opposite Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Alexandra Kurzak. He is Massenet’s Des Grieux in Laurent Pelly’s production ofManon at the Royal Opera Covent Garden, and he makes his role debut as Tito in David McVicar’s production of La Clemenza di Tito at Lyric Opera of Chicago, opposite Joyce DiDonato. The tenor makes his debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin opposite Elina Garanca and Ildebrando D’arcangelo, as Berlioz’sFaust, under the baton of Sir Donald Runnicles. He then returns to the Bayerische Staatsoper for I Capuleti e I Montecchi, with Elina Garanca as Romeo, and Riccardo Frizza conducting. Concert appearances include Britten’s Serenade for Tenor and Horn with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, and with the LA Philharmonic in La Traviata, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. Among the many highlights from recent Metropolitan Opera seasons are the premieres of Bartlett Sher’s production of L’elisir d’amore, which opened the 2012 season, and David McVicar’s production of Maria Stuarda, Willy Decker’s production of La traviata, Julie Taymor’s legendary Die Zauberflöte, Jürgen Flimm’s production of Salome with Valery Gergiev, and revivals of Don Pasquale, Don Giovanni, Roméo et Juliette, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Così fan tutte, Falstaff, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and L’Italiana in Algeri. To date, he has sung over 285 performances at the Met, many conducted by his musical mentor James Levine. In other American theaters, appearances include Werther, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, La traviata, Roméo et Juliette, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Die Entführung, and Il barbiere di Siviglia for San Francisco Opera, and Die Zauberflötewith James Conlon at Los Angeles Opera. Following Matthew Polenzani’s debut as Gérald in Delibes Lakmé with Opera Bordeaux in France in 1998, appearances in other major European theatres included productions of Don Pasquale and La traviata at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, the Aix en Provence Festival (commercially available on DVD on Bel Air Classiques) and on a tour of Japan with Turin’s Teatro Reggio; I Capuleti e I Montecchi at the Paris Opera; L’elisir d’amore at the Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Naples’ Teatro San Carlo, and Rome Opera; Così fan tutte at Covent Garden with Sir Colin Davis and in Paris with Philippe Jordan; Lucia di Lammermoor at Frankfurt Opera, the Paris Opera, and Vienna State Opera; La Damnation de Faust in Frankfurt; Manon on a tour of Japan with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden under Antonio Pappano; Idomeneo in Turin with Gianandrea Noseda, Manon with Fabio Luisi, and La traviata at La Scala; Rigoletto at the Vienna State Opera conducted by Jesus Lopez-Cobos, and at the Salzburg Festival in Don Giovanni in a new production by Klaus Guth, conducted by Bertrand de Billy. Mr. Polenzani is in great demand for symphonic work for the world’s most influential conductors including Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Riccardo Frizza, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Louis Langrée, James Levine, Jesús López-Cobos, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Michael Tilson Thomas, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman, and with many major orchestras both in the United States and Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Orchestra della Santa Cecilia, Orchestre National de France, Orchestra Giovanile “L. Cherubini” at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris at the Saint Denis Festival. In recital, Matthew Polenzani has appeared in recital with Julius Drake at Wigmore Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Celebrity Series Boston at Jordan Hall, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; with noted pianist Richard Goode in a presentation of Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, and in recital at the Verbier Festival with pianist Roger Vignoles (commercially available on CD on VAI). In a recent season, Mr. Polenzani was honored to have appeared on all three stages of Carnegie Hall: in concert with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Zankel Hall; in solo recital with James Levine at the piano in Weill Hall; and in a Schubert Liederabend on the stage of Isaac Stern Auditorium with colleagues Dorothea Röschmann, Waltraud Meier, and René Pape, again with James Levine as pianist. Matthew Polenzani was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Tucker Award and Metropolitan Opera’s 2008 Beverly Sills Artist Award. An avid golfer, he makes his home in suburban New York with his wife, mezzo-soprano Rosa Maria Pascarella and their three sons.

October 18, 2009 – David Chan, violin; Jeewon Park, piano FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) Duo Sonata in A, Op. 162, D. 574, for violin and piano October 18, 2009 – David Chan, violin; Jeewon Park, piano Although Schubert was never a great instrumental virtuoso in the mold of Paganini or Liszt, he grew up in a family that loved music, and he performed from his earliest years as a singer, violinist, organist, and pianist. His schoolteacher father, an amateur cellist, organized family string quartet sessions in which the young Franz played the violin and viola, and he often performed the piano parts for his own songs and chamber works. In 1816, at the age of 19, Schubert composed three sonatas for violin and piano (later published as “Sonatinas”), which demonstrated his hands-on knowledge of both instruments and the influence of Beethoven’s works for that combination. The following summer, his lyrical sensibilities now in full flower, the 20-year-old Schubert wrote the exquisite “Duo” in A major for violin and piano. The entire work is an unbroken stream of graceful, beautifully crafted melody, reflecting his quintessential genius for song. Although the designation “Duo” was not appended to the A-Major sonata until its publication some 23 years after his death, the aptness of the title is justified by the continuous dialogue between the two instruments, particularly in the third and fourth movements. The Allegro moderato begins with a strolling, dotted-rhythm piano figure over which the violin floats a sweet and constantly evolving melodic line. The piano contributes to the thematic dialogue, but the violin dominates the musical texture of this uncommonly lovely movement. Taking a cue from Beethoven, Schubert follows the first movement with an exuberantly heroic Scherzo, featuring leaping intervals, brusque cross rhythms, and unexpected juxtapositions of forte and piano. A soft, sinuous chromatic violin scale announces the contrasting trio, which is characterized by a subtle dynamic range and trimly gliding intervals. The piano fully establishes its musical partnership in the lyrical, 3/8 Andantino. Composed in the ABA form of one of his Lieder, Schubert provides a mellow “duet without words” in which the violin and piano contribute equally to the musical discourse. The final Allegro vivace continues the melodic interweaving of the violin and piano parts. Cast as a whirling Viennese waltz, the movement brings Schubert’s Duo Sonata to a buoyant conclusion. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 30, 2016: Wu Han, piano; Philip Setzer, violin; David Finckel, cello DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975) Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, op. 8 October 30, 2016: Wu Han, piano; Philip Setzer, violin; David Finckel, cello The sixteen-year-old Shostakovich composed his First Piano Trio in the throes of love for Tatyana Glivenko, daughter of a well-known Moscow philologist. He had met her on holiday on the Crimean peninsula in the summer of 1923 and wrote home to his mother extolling the virtue of “free love,” though he commented that marriage was valuable for family life. He maintained a relationship with Tatyana for years—largely through correspondence, for they were often geographically separated. Toward the end of the summer of 1923, when Tatyana had already gone home, Shostakovich began his one-movement Piano Trio. He wrote to Tatyana asking her permission to dedicate the piece to her and divulged, “About three years ago I wrote a piano sonata; it was of course a childish thing, immature, but it had some material that was not bad and which I included in the trio in the form of a second subject.” Scholar Sofia Khentova reports that he also employed material from the first movement of a quintet he had written and abandoned the previous April. According to some sources, the Trio received a trial performance during the screening of a silent film on October 25, 1923, at the Harlequinade Cinema in Petrograd, with violinist Veniamen Sher, cellist Grigori Pekker, and the composer at the piano. Others assert that Shostakovich did not begin playing piano for silent films until 1924. In any case, the same group did perform the work, provisionally retitled Poem, at the Petrograd Conservatory in December 1923 (on the 13th or 19th, depending on the source). On April 7, 1924, Shostakovich played the Trio as part of his successful audition for entry into the Moscow Conservatory. Another performance, often listed as the public premiere, took place on March 20, 1925, at the Moscow Conservatory with violinist Nikolas Fyodorov, cellist Anatoli Yegorov, and pianist Lev Oborin. The composer performed the Trio several more times, but the score then lay in obscurity until 1983, when it was published with the reconstruction of a missing passage of twenty-two measures in the piano part, made in 1981 by Shostakovich student Boris Tischenko. Written in Shostakovich’s early post-Romantic style, the Trio contains only hints of some of his later edgy sonorities, but does show characteristic marchlike and perpetual-motion ideas alongside lush lyricism. The introduction begins meditatively with three chromatically descending notes in the cello that generate much of the movement. The main theme proper exhibits both forthright and scherzando qualities. His self-borrowing, which would become a lifelong trait, appears here, as he mentioned to Tatyana, in his lyrical second theme, emerging as a singing cello melody from ethereal piano chords. It unfolds almost identically—even as to key (E-flat major), time signature (6/4), and tempo marking (Andante)—to the second movement of a B minor piano sonata he had written and discarded in 1920 or 1921, thus preserving the material he modestly called “not bad.” Shostakovich’s sonata form is free and rhapsodic, swinging easily in and out of many keys and incorporating a wide variety of tempos. He ends in a grand, climatic recall of his lyrical theme, capped by a brief rush of the perpetual motion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

YOOBIN SON, FLUTE Flutist Yoobin Son was the first Korean to join the New York Philharmonic’s wind section when she became a member of the Orchestra in November 2012. She has served as the principal flute of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and principal flute of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Son has performed as a soloist with ensembles including the New Haven, New Jersey, Florida, William Paterson University, and Korean symphony orchestras, and the Prime and Seoul Philharmonic orchestras. She has appeared in recital throughout the United States, among them the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago, as well as on the Young Artist Series of the Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation in Seoul, South Korea. A dedicated chamber musician, Ms. Son has participated at festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival and Music from Angel Fire. She is an alumna of Carnegie Hall’s The Academy, where she was an active performer in the acclaimed Ensemble ACJW. As part of the Academy’s fellowship program, Ms. Son was a teaching artist at P.S. 207K in Brooklyn. She has received honors including the Grand Prize at the Florida Orchestra Young Artist Competition, First Prize at the National Flute Association Soloist Competition, Second Prize at the Koussevitzky International Winds Competition, and the Conductor’s Award at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Auditions. Yoobin Son received her bachelor of music degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, master’s degree from Yale University, and professional studies and artist diploma from the Manhattan School of Music. Her principal teachers have included Robert Langevin, Ransom Wilson, Jeffrey Khaner, and Bradley Garner.

MICHELLE GOTT, HARP Michelle Gott, a native of Las Vegas, is a versatile performing artist dedicated to the artistic presentation of traditional repertoire and the creation of new works in collaboration with emerging composers. Ms. Gott began her studies at the age of four under the leadership of her mother and harpist, Caryn Wunderlich Gott, and immediately took to the stage in the performance of solo and chamber works. As a featured soloist, Ms. Gott has performed concertos with the ART Symphony Orchestra, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, the Nevada Chamber Symphony, and the Henry Mancini Institute. In April of 2006, Ms. Gott debuted in Carnegie Hall with the East Coast premiere of a new concerto for harp and wind ensemble by Los Angeles composer, Kevin Kaska. Ms. Gott regularly performs with the New Juilliard Ensemble and AXIOM, and has also worked with the Slee Sinfonietta at the University of Buffalo and the New York-based Sequitur Ensemble. In January 2008, Ms. Gott performed for Elliot Carter with the New Juilliard Ensemble as part of a historic FOCUS! Festival celebrating the composer’s centennial year. For the same Festival, she also performed Carter’s virtuosic work, Trilogy, for oboe and harp with oboist, Nicholas Stovall. Michelle Gott has worked closely with composer, Ursula Mamlok, for whom she performed Mamlok’s Music for Viola and Harp in 2006 for both the Ursula Mamlok Festival at the Manhattan School of Music and for Juilliard’s FOCUS! Festival. Ever striving to support the vital dialogue between composers and performers, Ms. Gott has collaborated closely with Virko Baley, Kevin Kaska, Anthony Cheung, Cristina Spinei, Brian Mark, Philippe Bigar, and Roderick Gorby. Ms. Gott is one of the founding musicians of the ART Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra INSONICA. An active chamber musician, Ms. Gott has performed several times for Juilliard’s Chamberfest, including a 2005 premiere of Cristina Spinei’s Petrarca (a setting of four Petrach sonnets for tenor, flute, viola, and harp) and a performance of Maurice Ravel’s Introduction et Allegro. Most recently, Ms. Gott devoted a recital at Juilliard to innovative chamber music, which included premieres of new works by Brian Mark and Roderick Gorby and a rare performance of Raga for two harps by French-Canadian composer, Caroline Lizotte. Following a concurrent passion for musical theater, Michelle has performed as a substitute harpist for Anna Reinersman at The Producers on Broadway and frequently performs as a substitute for Jacqueline Kerrod at The Fantasticks. Avidly committed to her work as an artist, teacher, and educator, Ms. Gott has coached young harpists for the pre-college programs of both The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music and for the InterSchool Orchestras of New York. Through the Morse Fellowship at Juilliard, she gained invaluable experience teaching music to 2nd and 3rd grade students in Harlem. For three years, Ms. Gott was also a teaching assistant for undergraduate theory courses in counterpoint at The Juilliard School. As a member of Juilliard’s Gluck Community Service Fellowship for five years, Ms. Gott presented over 60 interactive concerts for both children and adults in hospitals, cancer facilities, psychiatric rehabilitation centers, and homeless shelters in New York City. The challenges presented by these many performance and teaching situations are at the heart of Ms. Gott’s dedication to teaching artistry and her ardent belief that the artist should strive to be an integral and essential member of society. Michelle Gott has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the Henry Mancini Institute, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Lucerne Festival Academy under the direction of Pierre Boulez. She was a winner of both the 2004 and 2006 Anne Adams Award, a prizewinner of the 2005 American Harp Society National Competition, and a winner of the 2004 International Jazz and Pop Harpfest Competition. In May 2007, Ms. Gott received the honor of the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Leadership and Achievement in the Arts from The Juilliard School. She holds both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Harp Performance from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Nancy Allen and is currently in the C.V. Starr Doctoral Program. Ms. Gott is also currently on summer faculty at the Performing Arts Institute of the Wyoming Seminary.

April 24, 2022 – Marc-André Hamlein, piano MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN Suite à l’ancienne (Suite in the old style) (2020) April 24, 2022 – Marc-André Hamlein, piano For biographic background about pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin please see the artist’s biographical profile in this program. Just like C.P.E. Bach in this afternoon’s first piece, Marc-André Hamelin turns a retrospective gaze on the Baroque suite form, though through a much later lens. A consummate piano virtuoso who has composed throughout his illustrious career, Hamelin wrote his Suite à l’ancienne as a commission rather than as a solo vehicle for himself. He first encountered pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo in 2017 when he judged the 15th Van Cliburn International Competition. He was impressed by her performance of his Toccata on L’homme armé, which he had composed as the competition’s compulsory piece. For her part, Kudo was enamored of the piece and felt she had finally found the composer she wanted to commission with her funding from the prestigious Gilmore Young Artist Award. Said Hamelin, “I was very happy to accept. I knew I would be in good hands.” Kudo gave the premiere of the Suite à l’ancienne on February 21, 2021, in a “Virtual Special Event for The Gilmore” (Gilmore International Piano Festival). Hamelin himself will perform the piece in May 2022 at the Berliner Klavierfestival and agreed to play it one month earlier on this Parlance Chamber Concert at the request of Michael Parloff. Kudo had asked for something inspired by J. S. Bach, which turned Hamelin’s thoughts to the Baroque suite. “My suite is directly derived from the Baroque models of the various works in the genre by Bach and Handel in that the general forms are very similar. Beyond that, even though the language remains completely tonal (in A major/minor in this case), the harmony is much more involved, more chromatic.” Further, the work brims with textures and pianistic effects built on an intimate knowledge of masterful piano works ranging from Chopin and Ravel to Godowsky and Skryabin. Many Baroque suites opened with an introductory movement that was meant to be improvised or written out so as to sound like an improvisation. The stunning Préambule that opens the six-movement Suite à l’ancienne indeed sounds improvisatory with its careful notation tempered by the instruction to be played “liberamente” (freely). The brief movement commands attention with its rapid, chromatically inflected figurations that range the entire keyboard at double or triple forte throughout, ending with a grand A major chord. The Allemande presents a delightful contrast, meant to be played sweetly, charmingly, without agitation. In the binary form of most suite movements (two sections, each repeated), the music swings along easily, tunefully, despite its intricate chordal texture. In the Courante, literally “running” in French, Hamelin combines the Baroque dance type in fast triple meter with the light and playful character of a nineteenth-century scherzo, also in fast triple meter. Kudo calls this movement with its fast running sixteenth notes and leaping accompaniment “fiendishly difficult.” The right and left hands switch roles briefly at the start of the second section, which intensifies—without getting louder!—when both hands join in the fleeting sixteenth notes. The opening returns, then alters course to end in an impish disappearing act. Rather than using the typical “sarabande” designation of many Baroque suites, Hamelin titles his slow movement “Air avec agréments” (Air with ornaments). Its sound is magical, Impressionistic—shimmering in the upper register of the piano, delicately sprinkled with ornamental flourishes. A brief transition to the lower register leads directly into the next movement. This is the point in a Baroque suite where composers would often insert their choice of dances—gavotte, minuet, bourrée, among others—usually in pairs with a return to the first dance after the second. Hamelin does just that with his Gavotte—more of a graceful bustle than a courtly dance—which envelops the Musette. In earlier centuries the musette was a dance-like pastoral piece named for the small French bagpipe and imitating its sound with underlying drones and simple stepwise melodies. Hamelin cleverly makes his “drones” sound in open fifths, but they actively oscillate while ranging the left half of the keyboard. By holding everything in the pedal, including the right hand’s melodic lines, Hamelin creates a mesmerizing effect before the Gavotte returns. The Gigue makes a dazzling—and humorous—conclusion to the Suite à l’ancienne, fully in keeping with the spirit of the Baroque gigue but blasted into the twenty-first century. At one point, in a particularly chromatic passage, Hamelin writes: “Whoa, this floor’s too slippery—let’s go jig somewhere else.” The music rights itself, as if to start the section again, but continues on its roller-coaster course to a return of the jaunty opening just before the triumphant finish. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ALEX BROWN, JAZZ PIANO Setting the tone for the second decade of the 21st century, pianist Alex Brown kicked it off with a feature article in the January 2010 issue of Keyboard magazine. His reputation continues expanding via his notable performances with everyone from innovative saxophonist Miguel Zenon to the legendary Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. A member of Paquito D’Rivera’s ensemble since 2007, he shared in that ensemble’s 2010 Grammy nomination for D’Rivera’s album, Jazz-Clazz. Of Brown’s 2010 debut CD with his own ensemble, Pianist, DownBeat magazine proclaimed it “A really fine record that leaves you wanting more.” This just a year after his 2009 graduation with a Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory where he studied with Danilo Perez and Charlie Banacos, among others. Due to his diverse influences, classical, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean, and Brazilian styles all co-mingle—naturally and infectiously—in Brown’s music. Doubtlessly, this versatility contributed to his collecting an array of student and young composer awards from ASCAP, DownBeat magazine, and BMI, propelling him towards a professional career. Now in Alex Brown’s rear-view mirror are appearances at top jazz venues and festivals, including: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, Birdland, Blue Note in New York (and Tokyo), Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., the Telluride Jazz Celebration, and Israel’s Red Sea Jazz Festival.