DENIS BOURIAKOV, FLUTE - 2011 Principal Flute of the Metropolitan Opera, Denis Bouriakov enjoys one of the fastest growing careers in the flute world. He has won prizes in many of the most important international competitions, including the Jean-Pierre Rampal, the Munich ARD, the Prague Spring, the Carl Nielsen, and the Kobe competitions. Bouriakov looks outside the standard flute repertoire for works that allow the flute to shine. In addition to having a phenomenal virtuoso technique, he is continually transcribing and performing violin concertos and sonatas, expanding the limits of flute technique and artistry. Mr. Bouriakov released his first solo CD in 2009, which includes the Sibelius Violin Concerto in his own arrangement. He has also recorded the Bach Concerto for 2 Violins in d minor with flutist William Bennett and the English Chamber Orchestra. His anticipated 2012 CD, recorded in Japan, will include works by Copland, Debussy, Boehm, Jolivet and Prokofiev. Bouriakov has performed worldwide as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Moscow Philharmonic, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble of Tokyo, the Odense Symphony, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble of Paris and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra. Denis Bouriakov was born in Crimea (now the Ukraine). At the age of ten, he was given a place at the Moscow Central Special Music School, where he studied with Professor Y.N. Dolzhikov. With the support of the ”New Names” International Charity Foundation and the Vladimir Spivakov Foundation, he toured as soloist to over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, South America, and the USA. He went on to attend the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying with Professor William Bennett (OBE). His graduation in 2001 was accompanied by the “Principal’s Award”, the diploma for Outstanding Recital, and the Teaching Fellowship Award for the following year. In 2006, the Academy awarded him the title of ARAM, Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. While in London, Bouriakov freelanced as principal flute with the Philharmonia of London, the LPO, Leeds Opera North and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Bouriakov’s first position was Principal Flute with the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland, where he also taught at the Tampere Conservatory of Music for 3 years. In 2008, he was appointed Principal Flute with the Barcelona Symphony under Eiji Oue. Later that year he won the Principal Flute position in the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Mr. Bouriakov is very active as a soloist, orchestra player and teacher; his recent engagements have included recitals and master classes in Europe, Asia, USA and Australia.

November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet PHILLIP HOUGHTON Opals November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Phillip Houghton (b. 1954) is one of the most recorded and influential Australian guitars composers. His work expresses a distinctly Australian aesthetic, reflecting the country’s vast landscapes and mystical “dreamtime” Aboriginal legends. He is famously a synesthete, wherein he sees very specific colors when he hears musical tones and timbres. “Opals” (1993, revised 2014) is a three-movement work for guitar quartet, and it attempts to capture the myriad glints and sparkles emanated by Australia’s opalescent national gemstone. In the score, there are detailed notes describing the particular colors and sheens that the music attempts to evoke. The composer provided the following notes for each movement: Rather than being pitch-black, the Black Opal is a stone of fantastic colour. Electric reds, purples, blues and greens of every shade predominate and refract and collide, in a fiery rainbow of splinters of brilliant light against a dark matrix. One could say that the opal is “made” from water, and, in the “Water Opal” movement, I imagined a kaleidoscope of colour in and against a transparent “water matrix”…colours floating, bleeding into each other. Against a white matrix the lighter colours of the White Opal are brilliant and translucent. Evident in this stone is what is called “pinfire” (glittering points of red and green) and the “rolling flash” (which describes the effect of layers of colour which, ripple abruptly and sparkle through the stone when the stone is moved). © William Kanengiser Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet THREE BRAZILIAN PIECES Three Brazilian Pieces November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Da Sábado pra Dominguihnos – Hermeto Pascoal A Lenda do Caboclo – Heitor Villa-Lobos Samba Novo – Baden Powell In this set, LAGQ pays tribute to the rich sonorities and infectious rhythms of Brazil. Inspired by their collaboration in 2006-07 with the brilliant singer Luciana Souza, LAGQ recorded a new CD of Brazilian music for the Telarc label. It opens with a tune by the idiosyncratic jazz musician Hermeto Pascoal, sometimes referred to as the “Frank Zappa of Brazil”; his “Da Sábado pra Dominguinhos” is a fine example of the endless fount of tunes and surprising harmonic changes that characterize his music. We follow this with a lovely tune by the great Heitor Villa-Lobos, one of Brazil’s most celebrated classical composers, and a favorite among guitarists. His “A Lenda do Caboclo” (the Legend of the Native”) was originally written for piano, and features a gently gliding melody interrupted by a bow to the French Impressionist school. Music of the iconic guitar virtuoso Baden Powell closes the set. His “Samba Novo”, a reaction against the wave of popularity of the gentler bossa novo style, is hard driving and aggressive, with an extroverted melodic sense. Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 8, 2018: Danish String Quartet LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in C# minor, Op. 131 April 8, 2018: Danish String Quartet When Prince Nicholas Galitzin ordered “one, two, or three new quartets” from Beethoven in November 1822, he could hardly have realized that he was instigating a series of works by which all later generations would judge profundity. Beethoven had not forgotten the quartet medium in the twelve years since the F minor Quartet, op. 95, but the commission gave him the impetus to turn sketches into finished works. Nevertheless, he could not concentrate on quartet writing until after completing the Missa solemnis , the Diabelli Variations, and the Ninth Symphony, so the project did not begin in earnest until mid-1824. After composing the B-flat major Quartet, the third of Galitzin’s commission, Beethoven continued writing quartets—not for the prince, who never completed payment for the first three, but out of the inner necessity for expression. Thus he added the C-sharp minor Quartet, op. 131, in seven movements in 1825–26, followed by the F major, arriving at the five works known as the “late quartets.” It should be noted that, too late for Beethoven himself but in the proper spirit, a son of Galitzin paid with interest what was owed on his father’s three quartets into the Beethoven estate. In May 1826 Beethoven offered the C-sharp minor Quartet to Schott for publication, receiving much more than he was to have received for each of the three “Galitzin” Quartets, but he did not live to see it in print. Nor did he witness a performance, which first took place publicly in 1835. The work did circulate in private performances, however, and it is fascinating to know that Schubert’s dying wish to hear the Quartet came to pass on November 14, 1828, just five days before the younger composer died. The C-sharp minor Quartet abounds with original features and an otherworldliness that so aptly illustrate the private world of Beethoven’s late period. We have only to listen to the opening notes of the slow fugue that opens the work—a startlingly novel beginning—to realize that we are the privileged eavesdroppers to a bared musical soul. The brooding, contemplative mood immediately sets the movement apart from more customary brisk-paced fugues, and suggests a link with the C-sharp minor Fugue of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier , which Beethoven had known since his youth. He takes his subject matter through numerous permutations and a wide range of keys, so that when he returns to the home key we experience a sense of recapitulation. Just prior comes a passage of ethereal beauty, in which the transparent texture highlights the two entwined violins followed by a duet between the viola and cello. Beethoven planned for the entire Quartet to be played without pause, though he was induced by the publisher to put in “numbers,” which correspond to what have traditionally been called its seven movements. Many, however, have commented on the fact that some of these “movements” might better be viewed as introductions or transitions to what follows, so that the first movement serves as a very extended introduction to the second movement, the very brief “No. 3” makes a transition to the Andante variation, and following the scherzo, “No. 6” serves as the slow introduction to the finale. Thus we find a highly original, expanded conception of the traditional four-movement quartet scheme. “No. 2” opens in a hush that is both gentle and merry, as if emerging from the shadow of the fugue. Here Beethoven turns to sonata style if not to form, since the movement contains no development section, and the mood is dancelike, much as one would find in a scherzo. Through a dramatic octave unison passage he brings about a brief but forceful climax that he immediately breaks into closing fragments. These impart little finality, however, and “No. 3,” like an opera recitative, prepares the next movement. The central Andante movement consists of a simple lyrical theme and six variations that show an amazing array of textures. Beethoven’s extended coda begins like a seventh variation, but then rhapsodizes, trills, and recalls the main theme in innocent guise, all leading to a dramatic flourish that brings on the subdued conclusion. The Presto scherzo begins impishly with the cello issuing a little invitation, only to be met with complete silence before the movement takes off. Beethoven’s two contrasting trio sections begin with playful two-note interchanges to which he adds a theme—marked piacevole (pleasing or amiable)—that is clearly related to the theme of the scherzo. He even begins his trio a third time—a joke he had also made in his Fourth and Seventh Symphonies—but abruptly shifts into an amazing coda that reduces trio elements to fragments before the scherzo theme gradually takes over. Even this return of the main theme throws us momentarily off guard because Beethoven asks for it to be played sul ponticello (on the bridge), producing a glassy, almost eerie sound. He exits this novel effect with a quick push to fortissimo (very loud) to end the movement. The three somber notes that open the relatively brief Adagio plunge us back into the realm of tragedy, here played out in poignant melancholy before erupting in the outcry of the tempestuous finale. After a forceful chord, the finale alternates pregnant pauses with angry unison statements, then takes off at an energetic gallop. Though Beethoven introduces moments of quiet into the first theme area, he saves his main contrast for the second theme, which first makes a long descent, then leaps rapturously to three repeated notes. His development section introduces a new long-note foil for the galloping motive, and makes much of a fragment of the opening unison idea and the scalar descent from the second theme. Following a murmur that grows ever more intense, the recapitulation bursts on the scene with a number of ingenious alterations, chief among which is the expressive return of the second theme in a key far removed from the original. Beethoven’s full-length coda, as in many of his late works, takes us on yet another developmental journey, during which we hear the astounding use of the long notes from the development in powerful octaves. Though Beethoven turns to the major mode of the home key toward the very end, we find little of the victory such a turn signaled in earlier works—the foregoing sense of tragedy in this Quartet cannot be dispelled. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 24, 2017: Mark Holloway, viola; Michael Brown, piano FÉLICIEN DAVID (1810-1876) La nuit September 24, 2017: Mark Holloway, viola; Michael Brown, piano One of the world’s great violin prodigies, Henry Vieuxtemps also grew equally proficient on the viola, which he sometimes played in string quartets, a genre he loved. As a composer he developed largely on his own after some preliminary instruction from Simon Sechter in Vienna and Antoine Reicha in Paris. He gravitated naturally to the violin genres, but he also wrote chamber music—his three string quartets stand out in particular—and a select few viola compositions. His gently flowing La nuit for viola and piano draws on the “rêverie du soir” from Le désert, the programmatic ode-symphonie by Félician David that took Paris by storm in 1844. David had spent some years in Egypt to preach the Saint-Simonian gospel in hopes of restoring Egypt to its ancient greatness. His explorations there led to this descriptive work for soloists, male chorus, reciter and orchestra, which won extravagant praise from Berlioz. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio SAM PERKIN Freakshow December 4, 2022 – The Sitkovetsky Trio Sam Perkin earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from the Cork Institute of Technology’s Cork School of Music and an Artist Diploma from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, France, where he was awarded the Prix Salabert for composition. He has since written for leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists such as the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Vanbrugh Quartet, the Fidelio Trio, and Finghin Collins. In 2017 he composed Language for contemporary violin specialist Miranda Cuckson, exploring the inner workings of different human languages, and in Waves (2016–18) he “attempted self-cure for tinnitus” as one of his projects for the Irish Chamber Orchestra. His many fruitful collaborations with that ensemble began in 2015 with his luminescent Nimbus for string orchestra. Based dually in France and Ireland, Perkin serves as composer-in-residence with the Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading new-music ensemble. His first major work for that group, Grey Area (2017–19), forges a novel combination of the world of street skateboarding with contemporary music. In Alta, another inventive work of 2019, Perkin collaborated with Finnish northern lights specialist Unto K. Laine to incorporate recorded sounds of the aurora borealis. Emerging from the pandemic in 2021, the Luminosa Orchestra premiered his Visualization, in which musicians “bathe” everyone in the vicinity in “invisible music,” inspired by the sonic meditations of Pauline Oliveros. Most recently, in July 2022, his hybrid new symphony Children in the Universe for ensemble and halo track was premiered by the Crash Ensemble at the Galway International Arts Festival. Perkin composed Freakshow in 2016 for the Fidelio Trio on a commission from the leading Welsh music festival Gwyl Gregynog to mark the centenary of the Dublin Easter Rising of 1916, when close to 2,000 activists were arrested and imprisoned in the Welsh camp Fron-Goch for six months. Perkin explained: “Freakshow is inspired by the research of Welsh journalist and broadcaster Lyn Ebenezer, whose book Fron-Goch Camp 1916 explains how the camp became known as the ‘University of Revolution’ because leading figures such as Michael Collins were imprisoned there. “One anecdote in particular fired my imagination: the story of the Circus of Rats which acts as a portal to the absurd world of this macabre Suite. One of the prisoners at Fron-Goch used to go to great lengths to catch these rats and to put on a show for his fellow inmates. From an oblique compositional perspective and through a macabre lens, I decided to write a set of miniatures dedicated to the stars of the ‘Freakshow.’ “Building on themes of captivity and spectacle, the seven movements in the work explore seven different stories. One such story is that of the two-headed nightingale, conjoined twins who were sold to the circus when they were very young, then went on to learn five languages, dance, and play music. They eventually went on to tour the globe and achieve stardom due to their famous waltzes and vocal duets. I conveyed this musically by composing a warped waltz that shifts slightly out of and back into time.” Other stories include The Living Skeleton as the third movement and The Gentle Giant, a tribute to the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, as the fourth. The fifth movement deals with the Ovitz family, Hungarian Jewish actors/traveling musicians most of whom were dwarves and who were horrifically experimented on by Nazi “doctor” Josef Mengele. The sixth features Li Yeng, “The Basket Lady of Weijing Province,” a famed contortionist who dazzled audiences on world tours from 1880 to 1910 with the Circus of the Electric Antlers—an avant-garde troupe far ahead of their time in using psychedelic mushrooms and loudly amplified tape loops of electric guitar. The suite concludes with The Armless Fiddler, the story of Carl Unthan, who had no arms and instead played the violin with his toes. Says Perkin, “What I really enjoyed in this piece was composing for instruments in a slightly different way than I usually would, being sarcastic, macabre, humorous, something a bit different to how I usually write. How do you make a violin sound sarcastic? Sul pont, pizz, arco? It’s not really that simple; it’s more based on the gestures, the musical gestures, there’s something deeper to it than just an effect. That’s something I really explored in this piece.” Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 24, 2019: Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violins; Sarah Crocker Vonsattel, violin; Kristin Lee, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; Tim Cobb, bass; Gilles Vonsattel, harpsichord JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Double Violin Concerto in D Minor BWV 1043 March 24, 2019: Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violins; Sarah Crocker Vonsattel, violin; Kristin Lee, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; Tim Cobb, bass; Gilles Vonsattel, harpsichord An accomplished violinist as well as keyboard player, Bach wrote at least six concertos for one or more violins and a number combining violin with other types of solo instruments. He intended the solo parts for himself or for his qualified students or professional colleagues, including several of his own sons. The celebrated “Double” Concerto is in fact a concerto grosso, in which a small solo group (concertino)—here two violins—is contrasted with a larger group (ripieno or tutti). Accordingly Bach titled his manuscript: Concerto à 6, 2 violini concertini, 2 violini e 1 viola di ripieni, violoncello e continuo di J. S. Bach. It was once thought that Bach had composed the work between 1717 and 1723 in Cöthen where he composed the Brandenburg Concertos, but scholar Christoph Wolff has convincingly suggested that he composed this Concerto as well as the A minor Violin Concerto, BWV 1041, around 1730 to 1731 in Leipzig where he directed the Collegium Musicum. This music society, founded at the University in 1702 by then student-of-jurisprudence Georg Philipp Telemann, was made up primarily of students under professional leadership. Bach directed the group from 1729 until the early 1740s (with a short interruption from 1737 to 1739). The Collegium presented public community concerts, one of the first organizations to do so in Germany, and ultimately led to the Leipzig Gewandhaus, which remains the most important musical organization of that city. During Bach’s tenure with the Collegium he constantly needed to produce all manner of music for their weekly performances: overtures, duo and trio sonatas, sinfonias and concertos, including keyboard concertos, which he often performed with his sons and pupils as soloists. A longtime admirer of the works of Antonio Vivaldi, Bach employed the concerto form he standardized in the eighteenth century—three movements: fast, slow, fast. He also availed himself of Vivaldi’s ritornello form (in which a refrain alternates with episodic excursions), though adapted in his own way, and with his particular contrapuntal leanings. All three movements of the Double Concerto make use of or allude to ritornello form. The opening Vivace’s first tutti statement occurs as a fugal exposition, an unusual feature for concertos in general, but a device Bach also used in the finale of the above-mentioned A minor Concerto. In the Largo, ma non tanto, one of Bach’s most beautiful and heart-stirring slow movements, the soloists dominate. The way in which the solo parts intertwine, often weaving lovely chains of suspensions, continues to create a fascinating and moving effect no matter how many times one has heard the work. The opening theme, begun by the second solo violin, recurs in the manner of a ritornello, yet there are no “tuttis”—the accompaniment provides a continual soft rhythmic background, only to come briefly to the fore for cadential reinforcement. The finale, Allegro, begins with a rhythmic cascade of close imitative counterpoint and unfolds in a free ritornello structure. Of special interest are the episodes in which, reversing their roles, the solo violins play broad four-part chords while the orchestra provides the motivic interest. The movement’s rhythmic drive creates a hypnotic momentum. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 18, 2026: Benjamin Beilman, violin; Jonathan Swenson, cello; Orion Weiss, piano JENÖ HUBAY (1858-1937) Carmen Fantasie based on themes from the opera of George Bizet for violin and piano January 18, 2026: Benjamin Beilman, violin; Jonathan Swenson, cello; Orion Weiss, piano Hungarian violinist and composer Jenő Hubay studied with his father and then with the great Joseph Joachim before traveling to Paris, where he became a close friend of Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps. Hubay taught at the Brussels Conservatory, Budapest Conservatory, and Budapest Academy of Music, and continued to tour almost annually. He and many of his pupils, including Eugene Ormandy, Zoltan Székely, and Joseph Szigeti helped to shape European violin playing. Seventeen-year-old Hubay was in the audience when Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen had its first performance in Paris on March 3, 1875, and after the performance he apparently began writing his Carmen fantasie brillante from memory. He featured his new work, completed in 1877, to a receptive audience when he made his Paris debut in 1878. He dedicated it to Vieuxtemps, whose own virtuosity he aptly captured. Bizet’s memorable Carmen themes have attracted many other arrangers, and the fantasies for violin by Sarasate and Waxman have become the most famous. Hubay’s work, however, might be called the most “fantastic” of these displays since it presents Bizet’s themes as motives and touchstones for his dazzling display rather than telling a story in chronological order. Hubay begins with the ominous fate motive and includes Micaela’s Act III aria, “A tu parle a mon mère”; Carmen’s ultra-famous Habanera, Escamillo’s Toreador Song, “Avôtre tost”—not included in the other fantasies; and the March of the Toreadors; as well as a remarkable cadenza that also touches on the Danse bohème. Unlike the opera, Hubay’s Carmen fantasie brillante concludes triumphantly. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 7, 2024: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI LE NUOVE MUSICHE: The Baroque Revolution (1550 - 1660) April 7, 2024: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI This afternoon’s program offers an overview of great composers who lived in different European regions and straddled the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, a time when sixteenth-century compositional forms and techniques coexisted with those of the new century. The musica nova (new music) stemmed from Monteverdi's seconda prattica (second practice), which appeared in the world of instrumental music as well opera. The new music could be completely unknown or reappear like an old friend, who changes over time while maintaining characteristic features. The selections are ordered chronologically starting with three Renaissance pieces, collected in the first edition of Capricci in musica a tres voci (1564) by Vincenzo Ruffo (1508–1587) and here arranged in a small suite. Ruffo, from Verona with a musical career in Northern Italy, was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cathedral of Milan. The following year he dedicated his collection of Capricci , the earliest known instrumental pieces to bear that designation, to Marc’Antonio Martinengo, Marquis of Villachiara. He also sought to introduce himself to the local nobles, who were voracious consumers of instrumental music. La Gamba and La Disperata are joined by La Piva , a fast dance of popular origin that stemmed even from the fifteenth-century and which, although apparently absent from the choreographic world of the sixteenth century, appeared sporadically in instrumental music collections. The cameo appearances here of the Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo (Representation of soul and body) and the Ballo del Granduca (Ball of the grand duke) from the intermedii of La Pellegrina by Emilio de’Cavalieri (c.1550–1602) recall the invention par excellence of the new century, namely opera. The second of these had an incredible circulation and, by belonging to the cycle of intermedii , represents that exceptional moment of artistic ferment and experimentation that would lead to the birth of opera. The first belongs to a composition that vies with Peri’s Euriydice for primogeniture in the new musical genre. A very prevalent dance between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the gagliarda , built on a basic scheme of five dance steps on six beats of music (in modern terms, 6/4 with the fourth note elongated), which could also be varied in a very virtuoso way choreographically. It was usually preceded by a pavane , a dance of slower, processional character. The gagliarda was very popular both as dance music and as a purely instrumental form. The Earle of Peembrookes Galiard , by the London composer and soldier Tobias Hume (1569–1645) appeared in the collection Poeticall Musicke (1607) together with Start ; this collection constitutes the first repertoire composed for lyra viola (a kind of viola da gamba), the real protagonist of Hume’s songs. Other gagliards are offered during the program with more specific connotations: the Gagliard Battaglia (Battle gagliard) by German composer Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654) and the closing Gallarda Napolitana by the blind Neapolitan composer Antonio Valente (c. 1520–c. 1580). The famous anonymous Greensleeves to a Ground reminds us of another element very present in the musical practice of the time throughout Europe—namely the composition on a basso ostinato (a ground, in English), on which the other parts propose a series of variations. We will return to other variation forms later in the program. Another important presence is that of the canzona , a term that developed largely in Italy around the seventeenth century. It is described by Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) as “a series of short fugues for ensembles of four, five, six, eight, or more parts, with a repetition of the first at the end.” Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) dedicated himself on several occasions to this type of instrumental composition. The Canzon we hear this afternoon appears in his collection Il primo libro delle canzoni a 1–4, bc, accomodate per sonare [con] ogni sorte de stromenti (The first book of canzonas for one to four voices, basso continuo, accommodated to play [with] all sorts of instruments), published in Rome in 1628. Frescobaldi’s edition was prepared by his pupil Bartolomeo Grassi who, as he explained in the afterward of the work, gave each of the thirty-seven canzonas a dedicatory name inspired by the names of gentlemen from Lucca. We hear the Canzon terza, a due canti, which means that it is essentially a three-voice fugue with two instrumental upper voices and an instrumental bass voice (played by a sustaining bass instrument doubled by keyboard that also supplies harmonies, or basso continuo). We then proceed to the ciaccona , whose presence is already attested to in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century. Traditionally accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and castanets both in Spain and in Italy (and especially in Naples), the ciaccona was often introduced in theatrical performances of the commedia dell’arte. The Italian variant is more exuberant than the Spanish, with a faster tempo and multiple nuances. The Ciaconna by Andrea Falconiero (also known as Falconieri) (1585–1656) is from his collection Il primo libro di canzone, sinfonie, fantasie, capricci, brandi, correnti, gagliarde, alemane, volte, 1–3 vn, va, or other insts, bc (First book of canzone, sinfonias, fantasies, etc., for 1–3 violins, violas, or other instruments, and basso continuo) (Naples, 1650). In this piece the three instrumental parts launch into a passionate back-and-forth. One of the earliest known references to the lively guaracha , likely of Spanish origin, stems from the Mexican singer, viol player, and composer Juan García de Zéspedes (1619–1678). He includes one—as well as uses the term—in his mid-seventeenth-century song/carol Convidando está la noche (Inviting is the night). Its distinctive rhythms foreshadow the song form that later became popular in Caribbean colonies. We turn now to a later incarnation of the variation form, the folia . Though the folia originated in Portugal as a dance or dance song—often for guitar—it wasn’t until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that the harmonic pattern and melody became somewhat standardized. In Italian sources the earliest use of folia was by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (also known as Kapsperger) (c.1580–1651), who wrote four books of works for the theorbo or chitarrone (bass fretted lute) (1604, 1616, 1626, and 1640). The form is also represented on this program by Diferencias sobre la Folía (1660) by an anonymous Spanish composer. Falconiero appears again on the program in another variation form closely related to the ciaccona or chaconne —the passacalle (also called passacaille , passacaglia , and other variants) from the above-mentioned collection. Falconiero’s Passacalle consists of thirty-two variations on the stepwise descending four-note bass line. We can compare this with the Passacaglio by virtuoso violinist and composer Biagio Marini (1594–1663) from his collection Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale (For all sorts of musical instruments) (Venice, 1655). In this set of variations some delightful harmonic crunches appear over the ground bass. Based mostly in Cremona, Tarquinio Merula (1595-1665) was one of the most progressive composers of the Venetian School in the generation after Monteverdi. His Chiaccona from his Canzoni overo sonate concertate per chiesa e camera (Concerted songs for church and chamber) (Venice, 1637) begins in lilting style, becoming remarkably virtuosic as the vriations progress. To close the program we are treated to Valente ’s Gallarda Napolitana (mentioned above) from his Intavolatura de cimbalo (Naples, 1576), which was one of the earliest publications of the Naples school of keyboard composition that flourished in the late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth centuries. For this piece and other variations types such as folías and ciacconas, writes Jordi Savall, “both composition and successful performance require a succession of freely virtuoso elaborations over a preexisting bass line, pattern, or melody,” which in the performance by Hespèrion XXI leads to delightful creative moments. Finally a word about the viola da gamba, which in different sizes and different combinations is the protagonist of the evening. Born around the fifteenth century, the viola da gamba has conquered a particular space for its ability to propose itself in consort, in homogeneous ensembles, or mixed with different instruments, and then for the possibilities as a soloist, pushed to virtuosity. Today’s program, in addition to letting us experience the musical richness of early seventeenth-century instrumental pieces, also enables us to hear all the different shades of the viola da gamba’s voice. Text curated by Francesca Pinna in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali, Università degli Studi di Pavia, sede di Cremona; adapted by Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

KRISTIN LEE, VIOLIN A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.” Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony,West Virginia Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center,the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season. She has also appeared in chamber music programs at Music@Menlo, La Jolla Festival, Medellín Festicámara of Colombia, the El Sistema Chamber Music festival of Venezuela, the Sarasota Music Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg- Vorpommern of Germany, the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, among many others. In addition, Lee is the co-founder and artistic director of Emerald City Music, a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Recent highlights include performances presented by the San Francisco Symphony with Itzhak Perlman, Amarillo Symphony, Chamber Music Sedona, a tour with the Silk Road Ensemble, Parlance Chamber Concerts, Moab Music Festival, Lyra Music Festival, Olympic Music Festival, North Carolina New Music Initiative, and the Leicester International Music Festival. Upcoming performances include Music in the Vineyards, Olympia Symphony Orchestra, and tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica, as well as return performances at Music@Menlo, the Highlands Chapel Series, and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival. Reflecting on both her personal journey and her professional journey, Kristin Lee has developed a new project, Americana, which showcases a broad spectrum of illustrious composers and the American musical styles which influenced them, as well as their own musical styles which influenced generations of composers to come. As a foreign-born citizen of America, Lee was compelled to select this unique collection of composers and works to express her pride of the country she now calls her own, and offers recital programs that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history. Kristin Lee is a principal artist with Camerata Pacifica, sitting as The Bernard Gondos Chair. She is also concertmaster of the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, Florida, and is a member of Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, a hybrid chamber-jazz ensemble that explores the very foundations of group improvisation and spontaneous composition. Lee’s performances have been broadcast on PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center,” the Kennedy Center Honors, WFMT Chicago’s “Rising Stars” series, WRTI in Philadelphia, and on WQXR in New York. She also appeared on Perlman in Shanghai, a nationally broadcast PBS documentary that chronicled a historic cross‑cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory. She made the world premiere recording of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, which won a Juno Award and is available on Naxos. Lee’s many honors include awards from the 2015 Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation.She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School– in the Pre-College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007. Born in Seoul, Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman after he heard her perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony Orchestra. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Donald Weilerstein, and served as an assistant teacher for Perlman’s studio as a Starling Fellow. She is a member of the faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and has served on the faculties of the LG Chamber Music School in Seoul, Korea, El Sistema’s chamber music festival in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival.

JON DEAK, COMPOSER Jon Deak was born in Hammond, Indiana, on April 27, 1943. He was educated at Oberlin College, the Juilliard School of Music, the University of Illinois, and, as a Fulbright Scholar, at the Conservatorio de Santa Cecilia, in Rome. Last year he retired from his longtime position as Associate Principal Bassist and Creative Education Associate of the New York Philharmonic. He recently served as Composer-in-Residence with Colorado Symphony under the Meet the Composer Residencies Program, which includes the Colorado Children’s Chorale and Denver Public Schools. Jon Deak is also Resident Composer of the Apple Hill Chamber Players (New Hampshire) and the Grand Teton Music Festival (Wyoming). His training includes work in the visual arts, and he was active in the “performance art” movement in New York’s Soho district. His compositions have been performed at music festivals worldwide and by such institutions as the New York Philharmonic, National, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Seattle, New Jersey, Atlanta and Colorado Symphonies, Rochester Philharmonic and major chamber groups around the country. Recent commissions include a string quartet concerto for the Manchester Quartet performed by both the National and New Jersey Symphonies and a work for the 150th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic. His Concerto for Contrabass and Orchestra (“Jack and the Beanstalk”) was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize by the National Symphony. Jon Deak has become particularly noted for his successes in bringing new music to young people. His interest in children is such that he now teaches a composition class in the public school that his own children attend in New York City. An avid wilderness mountaineer, he has led climbing expeditions into the Canadian Rockies, Alaska and the Himalayas. He was Chairman of the New York Philharmonic Artistic Advisory Committee, which helped select Kurt Masur as the Philharmonic’s Music Director. He also participated in Leonard Bernstein’s historic Freiheitskonzert (freedom concert), in what was then East Berlin on Christmas Day, 1989, an event which he regards as one of the musical highlights of his life.

December 15, 2024: THE VIRTUOSO FLUTIST. DENIS BOURIAKOV, FLUTE. A RECITAL FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA, with Erin Bouriakov, Flute. Musicians From The New York Philharmonic. Michael Parloff, Conductor. François Devienne (1759-1803) Flute Concerto No. 7 in E minor December 15, 2024: THE VIRTUOSO FLUTIST. DENIS BOURIAKOV, FLUTE. A RECITAL FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA, with Erin Bouriakov, Flute. Musicians From The New York Philharmonic. Michael Parloff, Conductor. Versatile musician François Devienne held numerous orchestral and chamber music positions as bassoonist and flutist, and he was accomplished enough on both instruments to have performed frequently as concerto soloist in his own works and those by others. Devienne also composed prolifically—concertos (flute, bassoon, and horn), sinfonies concertantes (works for more than one soloist with orchestra), comic operas, and hundreds of chamber works. Devienne was also a member of the military band of the Paris National Guard, which involved teaching children of French soldiers. He served as an adminstrator of the organization’s educational facet, which in 1792 became the Free School of Music of the National Guard—changed to National Institute of Music the following year and the Paris Conservatory two years later—and thus Devienne was one of the founders of the fledgling Paris Conservatory. He also authored an important method book for flute and is renowned for raising the level of works for wind instruments in the late eighteenth century. Devienne’s operas were performed at the Théâtre Montansier and at the Théâtre Feydeau (whose orchestra and that of the Théâtre Favart merged to become the orchestra of the Opéra Comique). Devienne’s most successful opera, Les visitandines received more than 200 performances between 1792 and 1797. He died much too young in 1803 at Charenton, a Parisian home for the mentally ill. Fortunately, though many of his manuscripts have disappeared, most of his hundreds of works were published. His music consistently favors a single melodic line with subordinate accompaniment and rarely thematic development or counterpoint, and his instrumental music contains plentiful opportunities to showcase the performer’s technique. Of Devienne’s twelve flute concertos, No. 7 in E minor, composed c. 1787, is often considered the best. At the time, concertos began with an orchestral exposition before the soloist entered, but Devienne allows the flute to enter the action earlier than normal: after the first theme in the minor home key, the flute enters by doubling the violins on the gentler second theme in the parallel major. Then, to avoid a predictable solo exposition beginning with the first theme, Devienne ingeniously puts the flute’s entrance into the spotlight with yet a third theme. These three themes form the basis of the movement, which grows ever more dazzling. The long flowing lines of the slow movement over sparse accompaniment suggest the style of gentle aria for one of Devienne’s operatic heroines. The most unusual feature of the movement is the introduction of a cadenza (extended improvisatory-sounding passage for the soloist), which is more typical in a fast movement. The finale unfolds as a lively rondo in the charming refrain alternates with contrasting episodes that become more intricate and viruosic as the movement progresses. The final return to the refrain builds to a dazzling conclusion. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes