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

April 3, 2016: Sean Lee, violin JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Adagio and Presto from Sonata No. 1 in G minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1001 April 3, 2016: Sean Lee, violin Though we find precedents for Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin in works by Johann Jacob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Paul Westhoff, Bach’s contributions totally eclipsed these and remain unsurpassed to this day in invention and magnificence. Trained as a violinist in his youth by his father, Bach knew the capabilities of the instrument and expanded greatly upon them. The autograph manuscript, dated 1720, presents three sonatas in alternation with three partitas. The sonatas represent the serious Italian sonata da chiesa (church sonata) form with four movements in a slow, fast, slow, fast pattern; the partitas resemble the sonata da camera (chamber sonata), a series of dance movements, which if Bach had been writing in the French style would have been called a suite. Throughout the unaccompanied violin works and in those for solo cello, Bach showed his mastery at creating a many-voiced texture with what is essentially a single-line instrument, often by the use of double stops or rolled chords, but even more often by implying several melodic lines by artful figuration. He counted on the ability of the ear to pick out and hold onto notes in one register and string them together over time as an independent voice; one can often hear such implied voices in counterpoint, occurring in two or more registers. Bach’s elaborate ornamentation in the G minor Adagio makes a fitting opening to the Sonata and indeed to the entire set of sonatas and partitas. He was not content to simply write out a few chords and a figured bass and leave the rest up to the performer. Rather, his ornamentation is carefully notated, though the Adagio gives a free, improvisatory impression. The Presto closing movement runs along in constant sixteenth-note motion and single-voice texture until the concluding chords of each half. This lighter style provides wonderful contrast to the weightier preceding movements. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 6, 2018: Kerry McDermott, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola MARK O’CONNOR F.C.’s Jig May 6, 2018: Kerry McDermott, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola Mark O’Connor has long embraced both folk and classical music, influenced by such giants as folk fiddler Benny Thomasson and jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli as well as classical icons Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Yehudi Menuhin, and Pinchas Zukerman. He has produced some forty-five feature albums—mostly of his own compositions—that have greatly influenced succeeding generations. O’Connor’s multiple Grammy-winning recordings include Appalachia Waltz with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, which was released in 1996 and topped the Billboard classical music charts for a year. The O’Connor Band, which he formed with family members and friends, received the 2017 Grammy Award for “Best Bluegrass Band” with its album Coming Home. His Fiddle Concerto, released on the Warner Bros. label in 1995, has been performed over 250 times, making it the most-performed modern violin concerto composed in the last half century. He has since gone on to write three other violin concertos, one of which is a double concerto that he premiered with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the Chicago Symphony in 2000. At age thirteen O’Connor was the youngest person ever to win the Grand Master Fiddler Championships—competing against amateurs and professionals of all ages—and he is still the only person to have also won national titles on guitar and mandolin. Winner of a record-breaking six Country Music Association Musician of the Year awards, O’Connor has played with a number of influential bands, including the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers. In his twenties he appeared on over five hundred albums with all of Nashville’s greatest artists. A dedicated educator, O’Connor has taught at string camps and universities across the country. In 2009 he released The O’Connor Method (2009), based on traditional American tunes, which has been hailed by the New Yorker and teachers across the country for filling a gap in the education of classical violin players. O’Connor’s F. C.’s Jig (short for “Fiddle Concerto’s Jig”) is a duet for violin and cello arranged from the third movement of his popular Violin Concerto. He and Yo-Yo Ma recorded this captivating arrangement on the album Appalachia Waltz. Colorful episodes alternate with the lively refrain, along the way incurring delightful metric hiccups. The piece is heard here in its equally engaging version for violin and viola, maintaining its witty and virtuosic interplay from start to finish. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

2024-2025 ARTIST ROSTER RAFAEL FIGUEROA, CELLO JOHN MUSTO, PIANO STEVEN ISSERLIS, CELLO MICHAEL BORISKIN, PIANO MODIGLIANI QUARTET JAMIE BERNSTEIN, HOST EDWARD ARRON, CELLO ERIN BOURIAKOV, FLUTE PAUL LEWIS, PIANO DENIS BOURIAKOV, FLUTE PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN AMY BURTON, SOPRANO SOOHONG PARK, PIANO CONNIE SHIH, PIANO JEEWON PARK, PIANO QUARTETTO DI CREMONA ZVI PLESSER, CELLO ERIKA BAIKOFF, SOPRANO CARTER BREY, CELLO

2018-2019 ARTIST ROSTER EDWARD ARRON, CELLO MICHAEL BROWN, PIANO BARRY CENTANNI, PERCUSSION TIMOTHY COBB, DOUBLE BASS DAVID J. GROSSMAN, DOUBLE BASS PAUL HUANG, VIOLIN CHELSEA KNOX, FLUTE SEAN LEE, VIOLIN MIHAI MARICA, CELLO KEN NODA, PIANO WEN QIAN, VIOLIN SHERYL STAPLES, VIOLIN JASON VIEAUX, GUITAR PINCHAS ZUKERMAN; AMANDA FORSYTH; ANGELA CHENG ELAINE DOUVAS, OBOE MAURYCY BANASZEK, VIOLA THE CALIDORE STRING QUARTET INN-HYUCK CHO, CLARINET EMERSON STRING QUARTET WENDY BRYN HARMER, SOPRANO PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN PIERRE LAPOINTE, VIOLA QIAN-QIAN LI, VIOLIN ANNE AKIKO MEYERS, VIOLIN GARRICK OHLSSON, PIANO DOV SCHEINDLIN, VIOLA ARNAUD SUSSMANN, VIOLIN GILLES VONSATTEL, PIANO JOEL NOYES, CELLO PASCUAL MARTÍNEZ FORTEZA, CLARINET ALESSIO BAX, PIANO NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS, CELLO LUCILLE CHUNG, PIANO DAVID FINCKEL, CELLO MING FENG HSIN, VIOLIN FRIEDRICH HEINRICH KERN, GLASS HARMONICA KRISTIN LEE, VIOLIN MATTHEW LIPMAN, VIOLA EILEEN MOON-MYERS, CELLO CYNTHIA PHELPS, VIOLA EMILY DAGGETT SMITH, VIOLIN DANBI UM, VIOLIN SARAH CROCKER VONSATTEL, VIOLIN KEVIN ZHU, VIOLIN YOOBIN SON, FLUTE

ADAM COCKERHAM, THEORBO, BAROQUE GUITAR Adam Cockerham Theorbo, Baroque guitar Adam Cockerham has appeared as a continuo player and accompanist with leading ensembles in New York and San Francisco. A specialist in seventeenth-century Italian opera, he has participated in numerous modern premieres with organizations including the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik and Ars Minerva. He earned his doctorate from The Juilliard School.

2007-2008 ARTIST ROSTER David Chan, violin Jerry Grossman, cello Warren Jones, piano Shirien Taylor, violin Karen Dreyfus, viola Thomas Hampson, baritone John Novacek, piano Nancy Wu, violin Rafael Figueroa, cello Soovin Kim, violin Dov Scheindlin, viola

MICHAEL BROWN, PIANO Michael Brown has been described as “one of the most refined of all pianist-composers” (International Piano) and “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” (The New York Times). His unique artistry is reflected in his creative approach to programming, which often interweaves the classics with contemporary works and his own compositions. Winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Mr. Brown is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing regularly at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. His engagements have taken him across four continents, with regular appearances with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic, the Seattle, Grand Rapids, North Carolina, Maryland and Albany Symphonies and recitals at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Louvre. He was also selected by pianist Sir András Schiff to perform on an international solo recital tour, making debuts in Zurich’s Tonhalle,and New York’s 92nd Street Y. Mr. Brown has appeared at the Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia and Bard music festivals and performs regularly with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis. As the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons, Mr. Brown will make multiple soloist appearances with the orchestra, as well as compose a newly commissioned symphony in 2019. Other commissions have come from the Maryland Symphony Orchestra, Bargemusic, Concert Artists Guild, Shriver Hall, and Norton Building Concerts; for Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe, pianists Adam Golka, Roman Rabinovich and Orion Weiss; and a consortium of gardens including Wave Hill, Longwood, and Desert Botanical. A prolific recording artist, Mr. Brown’s most recent releases include performances as a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Brandenburg State Symphony and a solo album of works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Bernstein and Brown. Mr. Brown was First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a recipient of the Juilliard Petschek Award, and is a Steinway Artist. He earned dual bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. His mentors also include pianists Richard Goode and Sir András Schiff. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th century Steinway D’s, Octavia and Daria.

LINO GOMEZ, SAXOPHONE Saxophonist Lino Gomez enjoys an extremely diverse career in the orchestral, chamber, and commercial music fields. A former member of both the American and the New York Saxophone Quartets, his other chamber music credits include performances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Chamber Players and recordings with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a frequent guest artist, as both saxophonist and clarinetist, of the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, American Symphony, American Composers and New York Pops orchestras. He has performed solo roles with all of these ensembles, including performances of Eino Tanberg’s “Concerto Grosso” with the NY Philharmonic and the USA premier of Tan Dun’s “Red Forecast” with the American Composers Orchestra. Lino’s many commercial music credits include feature film soundtracks, radio andtelevision commercials, and Broadway shows. He is a former member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live band.

JON MANASSE, CLARINET Among the most distinguished classical artists of his generation, clarinetist Jon Manasse is internationally recognized for his inspiring artistry, uniquely glorious sound and charismatic performing style. Jon Manasse’s solo appearances include New York City performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Hunter College’s Sylvia & Danny Kaye Playhouse, Columbia University, Rockefeller University and The Town Hall, fourteen tours of Japan and Southeast Asia – all with the New York Symphonic Ensemble, debuts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Osaka and acclaimed concerto performances with Gerard Schwarz and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, both at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and at the prestigious Tokyu Bunkamura Festival in Tokyo. With orchestra, he has been guest soloist with the Augsburg, Dayton, Evansville and National Philharmonics, Canada’s Symphony Nova Scotia, the National Chamber Orchestra and the Alabama, Annapolis, Bozeman, Dubuque, Florida West Coast, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Jackson, Oakland East Bay, Pensacola, Princeton, Richmond and Stamford symphonies, under the batons of Leslie B. Dunner, Peter Leonard, Matthew Savery, Alfred Savia, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Richard Westerfield, Michael Morgan and Leif Bjaland. He also presented the world premieres of James Cohn’s Concerto for Clarinet & String Orchestra at the international ClarinetFest ’97 at Texas Tech University and, in 2005, of Steven R. Gerber’s Clarinet Concerto with the National Philharmonic. Of special distinction was Mr. Manasse’s 2002 London debut in a Barbican Centre performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Gerard Schwarz and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Jon Manasse’s current season is highlighted by a quartet of subscription concerts with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, a return to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, another collaboration with the American String Quartet, as well as duo-recitals with pianist Jon Nakamatsu at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and in New York City, Boston, Des Moines and Saratoga, CA. An avid chamber musician, Jon Manasse has been featured in New York City programs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Walter Reade Theatre (on Lincoln Center’s “Great Performers Series”), The Sylvia & Danny Kaye Playhouse and Merkin Concert Hall; at the Aspen Music Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Colorado Springs Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival and France’s Festival International des Arts, as well as the chamber music festivals of Bridgehampton, Cape and Islands, Crested Butte, Georgetown, St. Bart’s, Seattle and Tucson. He has also been the guest soloist with many of the leading chamber ensembles of the day, including The Amadeus Trio and Germany’s Trio Parnassus and the American, Borromeo, Colorado, Lark, Manhattan, Moscow, Orion, Rossetti Shanghai and Ying String Quartets, and has collaborated with violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jon Nakamatsu. Jon Manasse is also principal clarinetist of the American Ballet Theater Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. As one of the nation’s most highly sought-after wind players, has also served as guest principal clarinetist of the New York Pops Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and New Jersey, Saint Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, under the batons of Gerard Schwarz, Zdenek Macal, Jerzy Semkow, Robert Craft and Hugh Wolff. For several seasons, he was also the principal clarinetist of the New York Chamber Symphony. Mr. Manasse has been a guest clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic in concerts conducted by Valery Gergiev and André Previn, and, during the 2003-04 season, served as the principal clarinetist of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, performing under the batons of Artistic Director James Levine and, among others, Andrew Davis, Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Jurowski. Jon Manasse has six critically acclaimed CDS on the XLNT label: the complete clarinet concerti of Weber, with Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra; the complete works for clarinet and piano of Weber, with pianist Samuel Sanders; recording premieres of 20th Century clarinet works; “Clarinet Music from 3 Centuries,” including Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (with the Shanghai Quartet), as well as music by Spohr, Gershwin and James Cohn; James Cohn’s Clarinet Concerto #2; and the concerti of Mozart, Nielsen and Copland, with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2007, his recording of Steven R. Gerber’s Clarinet Concerto with Vladimir Lande and the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony was released on the Arabesque label. Soon to be issued is his debut CD with pianist Jon Nakamatsu, a harmonia mundi usa album of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas. Jon Manasse is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with David Weber. Mr. Manasse was a top prize winner in the Thirty-Sixth International Competition for Clarinet in Munich and the youngest winner of the International Clarinet Society Competition. Currently, he is an official “Performing Artist” of both the Buffet Crampon Company and Vandoren, the Parisian firms that are the world’s oldest and most distinguished clarinet maker and reed maker, respectively. Since 1995, he has been Associate Professor of Clarinet at the Eastman School of Music; in the fall of 2007 Mr. Manasse joined the faculty of his alma mater, The Juilliard School. Jon Manasse and his duo-partner, the acclaimed pianist Jon Nakamatsu, serve as Artistic Directors of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, an appointment announced during summer 2006.

January 29, 2023: DANISH STRING QUARTET FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828) String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D. 804, Op. 29 (“Rosamunde”) January 29, 2023: DANISH STRING QUARTET Schubert wrote his first string quartets—seven or eight of them not counting lost or incomplete works—between 1812 and 1814 while he was a student at the Kaiserlich-königliches Stadtkonvikt (Imperial and Royal City College), Vienna’s principal boarding school for non-aristocrats. Already an excellent violinist and pianist, Schubert had begun playing viola in his family’s string quartet from about 1811 on during school vacations—with his brothers Ignaz and Franz on violin and his father on cello. Then, between 1814 and 1816, during his so-called “song years,” he wrote only three more quartets, followed by a hiatus of four years until he began writing a string quartet in C minor. He abandoned this work after writing just one movement, known as the Quartettsatz, and a few bars of a slow movement. Finally, in the spring of 1824 he took up quartet writing again with the A minor Quartet, which along with his next quartet in D minor, “Death and the Maiden,” are some of the best in the repertoire. Two events impacted Schubert’s writing of the A minor Quartet, which he completed very quickly in February and March 1824. One was that he met violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who led the quartet that had premiered Beethoven’s recent quartets. When the Schuppanzigh Quartet premiered the A minor Quartet on March 14 that year, it was the first public performance of any of Schubert’s quartets. Dedicated to Schuppanzigh, the work received only minimal though at least not negative notice in the press, and Schubert immediately began composing the D minor Quartet, but that work was not performed until two years later, and he gave up on his idea of writing a third quartet to publish in a set of three. He later did compose the G major Quartet as a separate work, but only the D minor was published during his lifetime—many of his works remined unpublished for decades. The other life event was his health having taken a turn for the worse. Schubert had contracted syphilis in late 1822, and this recent intensification brought extreme dejection as he realized his time was limited. Surely the poignantly beautiful A minor Quartet shows some of that despair. On March 31, shortly after the premiere of the work, he poured out his misery in a letter to his friend Leopold Kupelweiser: I find myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair continually makes things worse and worse instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the felicity of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain at best, whom enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating variety) for all things beautiful threatens to forsake, and I ask you, is he not a miserable, unhappy being? “My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it nevermore.” I might as well sing every day now, for upon retiring to bed each night I hope that I may not wake again, and each morning only recalls yesterday’s grief. The quote in that letter is from his 1814 song “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” words by Goethe, and it seems more than coincidence that the first movement of the A minor Quartet begins much like the song that deals with Gretchen’s forlorn state—a restless opening accompaniment figure topped by the violin’s lyrical outpouring of the main theme. The repetition of the theme in the major mode does not banish the mood, nor does the major-mode second theme. Schubert’s development section is a masterpiece of thematic and harmonic construction, exploring several minor keys in a dramatic arc, and the recapitulation takes some unexpected harmonic turns, ending in the minor mode. Schubert borrowed the theme of the slow movement from his incidental music to Wihelm von Chézy’s ill-fated play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (Rosamunde, princess of Cypress), which closed after only two performances in December 1823. Schubert employs the tender, memorable theme—originally the entrance music for a shepherdess and her flock—not as the subject for variations but for a simple A-B-A-B-coda form in which the coda expressively combines the music of the two sections. Schubert would return to the Rosamunde theme yet again in his B-flat major Impromptu. The characteristic long-short-short rhythm was a favorite with many composers, but it seems especially striking that Beethoven uses it so memorably in the Allegretto of his Seventh Symphony, which Schubert greatly admired. The Menuetto opens with another self-reminiscence, in this case from his song “Die Götter Griechenland” (The gods of Greece) where it sets Schiller’s words “Schöne Welt, wo bist du?” (Beautiful world, where are you?). It soon swings into a lilting dance rhythm, though still tinged with melancholy. Schubert carries the opening motive into the trio section, which provides major-mode though short-lived contrast. The finale gives the impression of a rustic peasant dance, though it does not project the kind of exuberance of, say, the last movement of Mendelssohn’s A minor Italian Symphony. Schubert constructed an ingenious sonata-rondo form in which the main theme does not return in complete form as a refrain. Instead the first part returns before the development section and the second part recurs after. The A major tonality of this movement, as customary in Schubert’s hands, is a very fluid affair; he eventually ends solidly in the major home key in some delightful delicacy topped off with two emphatic cadential chords. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, Carter Brey, Rafael Figueroa, and Zvi Plesser, cellos WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, arr. for four cellos by Douglas Moore September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, Carter Brey, Rafael Figueroa, and Zvi Plesser, cellos After a long search for a comic opera subject, Mozart was thrilled with Beaumarchais’s play Le mariage de Figaro, ou La folle journée (The Marriage of Figaro, or The crazy day), especially knowing that Lorenzo da Ponte would do justice to the libretto. Mozart counted on the audience being intrigued since the play had been banned throughout the Hapsburg Empire for its “subversive” elements. After the censors had been convinced the that portions had been altered sufficiently, The Marriage of Figaro opened on May 1, 1786. Despite rival cabals, the opera won a certain acclaim, but its full ascendancy as “the perfect comic opera” began with the Prague production the following year. All of the action takes place on the marriage day of Figaro and Susanna, servants to Count and Countess Almaviva. The main plot concerns the Count’s flirtations with Susanna in connection with the droit du seigneur (his supposed right as a noble to have his way with her on her first night of marriage) and her clever foiling of his advances. The eventual humiliation of this member of the aristocracy by his “inferiors”—even in its toned-down guise—greatly appealed to the rising middle class audience. Mozart’s extremely well-known Overture admirably sets up the intrigues and feverish activity of the wedding day beginning with the merest rustle. A theme for winds and horns—now paired cellos—follows immediately, and suddenly a glorious cap to both opening phrases bursts onto the scene. The second theme group shows the same quick mood changes, building to a climax with no real development section before the reprise begins with the hushed busy theme of the opening. Mozart had at one time composed a middle lyrical contrasting section before the recapitulation, but ripped the sheet out of the finished score, preferring to keep the moods of humor and gaiety uninterrupted. This afternoon’s four-cello version of Mozart’s popular Overture was arranged by cellist Douglas B. Moore, professor emeritus at Williams College where he taught and often chaired the music department from 1970 to 2007. He also appeared with orchestra and at festivals across the United States and has published more than forty original arrangements for from two to eight cellos. Yo-Yo Ma, Maximilian Hornung, the Boston Cello Quartet, and the Vienna Philharmonic Cellos on a televised New Year’s concert are just a few who have featured his cello arrangements. Taking into account the expansive range and agility of his instrument, Moore considers his multiple-voice cello arrangements especially well-suited to pieces originally for orchestra or band. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes