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

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2016 AT 3 PM Philip Setzer, violin; David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano BUY TICKETS DAVID FINCKEL, CELLO “His playing has great warmth and expressiveness coupled with a noble, aristocratic restraint.” — Strings Magazine WU HAN, PIANO PHILIP SETZER, VIOLIN FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS On October 30 , New York City’s “Musical Power Couple,” cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han , will join Emerson Quartet violinist Philip Setzer for an afternoon of favorite piano trios. Shostakovich ’s youthfully ardent C-minor trio, composed at 17, was inspired by his first love, Tanya. Beethoven ’s Trio in E-flat, Op. 1, No. 1, was the publishing debut of the supremely confident 25-year-old genius who already sensed his power to permanently alter the musical landscape. The program will conclude with the 30-year-old Schubert ’s profound Trio in E-flat Major, the soulful outpouring of the still-young composer who knew he was nearing the end of his much-too-short life. “It’s hard to imagine a piano trio playing on a higher level of technical accomplishment and musical expressivity…” – Dallas Morning News PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven Trio in E-flat, Op. 1, No. 1 Program Notes Dmitri Shostakovich Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8 Program Notes Franz Schubert Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 100, D. 929 Program Notes Wu Han, Philip Setzer, and David Finckel discuss the two Schubert piano trios: Wu Han, Philip Setzer, and David Finckel perform Schubert’s Trio in B-flat, mvt 1:

TIMOTHY COBB, BASS Bassist Timothy Cobb joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Bass, The Redfield D. Beckwith Chair, in May 2014, after serving as principal bass of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and principal bass of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra since 1989. He has appeared at numerous chamber music festivals worldwide, including the Marlboro Music festival, through which he has toured with the Musicians from Marlboro series. A faculty member of the Sarasota Music Festival, he is helping to launch a new bass program for the Killington Music Festival in Killington, Vermont. Mr. Cobb also serves as principal bass for Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, an invited group of musicians from around the world who donate their time biannually and perform to promote international harmony. Mr. Cobb has been designated a UNESCO Artist for Peace from his affiliation with the World Orchestra. He has an ongoing collaboration with actor Stephen Lang, for whom he recorded a solo bass sound track for Mr. Lang’s animated short film The Wheatfield , which depicts a human drama from the Battle of Gettysburg. The two were invited to Gettysburg in July 2013 on the 150th anniversary of the battle to perform in the Salute to the States event held there, and they will continue to collaborate for future events. Mr. Cobb serves as bass department chair for The Juilliard School as well as on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Purchase College, and Rutgers University. He is also a distinguished visiting artist for Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. A native of Albany, New York, Timothy Cobb graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Roger Scott. While at Curtis, Mr. Cobb was a substitute with The Philadelphia Orchestra and in his senior year became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti. Mr. Cobb can be heard on all Metropolitan Opera recordings released after 1986, as well as on a recording of Giovanni Bottesini’s duo bass music with bassist Thomas Martin on the Naxos label.

PAUL WATKINS, CELLO Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as cellist and conductor. Born in 1970, he studied with William Pleeth, Melissa Phelps, and Johannes Goritzki, and was appointed principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1990 at the age of 20. He made his concerto debut at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Yakov Kreizberg. He now performs regularly with all the major British orchestras (including seven appearances at the BBC Proms) and many overseas orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin. A member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, Mr. Watkins joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. He is a regular participant at festivals and chamber music series, including New York’s Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, and regularly performs with the world’s finest musicians, including Menahem Pressler, Jaime Laredo, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, and Vadim Repin. Highlights of recent seasons include solo recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and Queens Hall, Edinburgh, his debut at Carnegie Hall performing Brahms’s Double Concerto with Daniel Hope, as well as the premiere of a new concerto written especially for him by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Recent releases under his exclusive Chandos Records contract include Britten’s Cello Symphony, the Delius, Elgar, and Lutoslawski cello concertos, and discs of Martinu’s and Mendelssohn’s music for cello and piano, and an ongoing series of Britsh sonatas with his brother Huw Watkins. In 2009, he became the first ever Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra, and also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra from 2009 to 2012. Since winning the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, he has conducted all the major British orchestras, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Swedish and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Prague Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, and the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras.

October 17, 2021: Roman Rabinovich, piano CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Hommage à Haydn October 17, 2021: Roman Rabinovich, piano Debussy composed his Hommage à Haydn at the request of Jules Écorcheville for a special issue of the Revue S.I.M. (Société Internationale de Musique) to celebrate the centennial in May 1909 of Haydn’s death. Five other composers also accepted the commission—Paul Dukas who wrote his Prélude élégiaque, Reynaldo Hahn his Thème varié sur le nom de Haydn, Charles-Marie Widor his Fugue sur le nom d’Haydn, and Vincent d’Indy and Maurice Ravel who both wrote pieces called Meneut sur le nom d’Haydn. The pieces were published in the January 15, 1910, issue of the Revue S.I.M. They were not premiered, however, until March 11, 1911, when nineteen-year-old pianist Ennemond Trillat performed them at a Société concert at the Salle Pleyel. Each composer was given the same assignment: Write a short piano piece using the letters of Haydn’s name as a five-note motive. This was an age-old practice to honor an important person, and in cases where there was no musical equivalent for a letter it could be skipped or be replaced by a substitution note. Here the composers were all given H (B natural in German nomenclature, A, Y (using D as the substitution), D, N (using G as the substitution). The substitution notes, given by the commissioner were obtained by “putting the letter’s alphabetical order over the diatonic series of the sound scale.” As a fascinating historical note, two of the other most important French composers of the day—Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré—declined to participate, presumably because, as Saint-Saëns wrote to Fauré, they would be the laughingstock of Germany for the wrong use of letter-note correspondences. Debussy’s Hommage à Haydn begins with a “soft and expressive” “Valse lent” (slow waltz) in which he presents a bass melody with a distinctive dotted-rhythmic pattern and then highlights his H-A-Y-D-N motive in the upper melody line of the right hand. The second section of the piece shifts to a lively, light character with the motive sped up in the first notes of the right hand. After an even more animated section Debussy concludes with a brief reminder of the expressive opening and a final fast but quiet flourish. This afternoon’s celebration of Haydn makes the perfect occasion to include Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn alongside Debussy’s tribute. Ravel writes a contemplative minuet with Impressionistic harmonies, presenting the motive six times, which he labels in the score. The motive begins the piece as the first five notes in the top line of the pianist’s right hand, migrates to the bass, and appears in inner voices in reverse order and inverted in reverse order (D-G-G-C♯-B). The final utterances appear in the top of the piano’s right hand and in a slow descent from the middle register to the bass. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

RUPERT BOYD, GUITAR RUPERT BOYD, CLASSICAL GUITARIST “Remember the name Rupert Boyd. While there may never be another classical guitarist like Segovia, this young Australian left his audience with the impression that someday there may not be the likes of him again, either.” - The Washington Post At the age of 22, Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd left Australia for the first time, bound for New York City with just a suitcase and a guitar, and not knowing a single person in North America. He has subsequently become regarded as one of the finest guitarists of his generation, having been described by Gramophone as “a very fine musician” and by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, and has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall, to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia. Recent concert highlights include performances for the Moab Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Caramoor, Strathmore, Festival Napa Valley, the Austin and Cleveland Classical Guitar Societies, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was also recently named New Artist of the Month in Musical America for his work as a performer and curator. Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover. Boyd Meets Girl’s debut album reached #3 on the Billboard charts, has to date received over 4 million streams on Spotify, and garnered the following review in Gramophone Magazine : “they play like one, with a harmony of purpose as sure as their intonation.” Their follow-up album, Songs of Love & Despair , released in 2022 was also praised by Gramophone as “beguiling… fascinating… enchanting”. In 2024, Boyd Meets Girl gave the world premiere performances of ANAHATA, a cello and guitar double concerto composed by the Grammy- nominated Clarice Assad, and commissioned for the duo by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The Australian Guitar Duo’s debut album Songs from the Forest was described as “wonderfully entertaining” by Classical Guitar Magazine . Rupert Boyd also has three solo albums, with his most recent, The Guitar , being described as “an utterly exceptional recording” by Classical Guitar Magazine , and “a must-have album of 2019” by This Is Classical Guitar . Fantasías was selected by American Record Guide as “Critic’s Choice” of 2016, and Soundboard described the eponymous work on Boyd’s debut recording Valses Poéticos as “one of the best recorded performances of this work on guitar.” Rupert Boyd also recorded music for an episode of the wildly popular podcast Radiolab. Rupert Boyd holds a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) from the Australian National University School of Music, a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music and an Artist Diploma from the Yale University School of Music. His major teachers have been Timothy Kain, David Leisner and Benjamin Verdery. In addition to winning the Andrés Segovia award from the Manhattan School of Music, Rupert Boyd was also a winner of the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition and winner of the Eisenberg-Fried Concerto Competition. Rupert Boyd exclusively plays on D’Addario Strings, and lives in New York City, where he is co-artistic director of GatherNYC, a revolutionary Sunday morning concert series at the Museum of Arts and Design. www.rupertboyd.com

November 14, 2021 – Schumann String Quartet WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) String Quartet in C, K. 465 (“Dissonance”) November 14, 2021 – Schumann String Quartet One of Mozart’s most earthshaking developments upon moving from his native Salzburg to Vienna in 1781 was meeting Joseph Haydn and hearing the older composer’s Opus 33 Quartets. Their profound influence spurred Mozart to compose his six so-called “Haydn” Quartets—the first three between December 1782 and July 1783 and the second three between November 1784 and January 1785. Mozart dedicated them to his friend as “the fruit of a long and arduous labor,” saying, “During your last stay in this capital you yourself, my dear friend, expressed to me your approval of these compositions. Your good opinion encourages me to offer them to you and leads me to hope that you will not consider them wholly unworthy of your favor.” Mozart’s highly unusual dedication to a composer and not to an aristocrat or intended performer shows the extent of his admiration. Haydn had expressed his approval on a visit to Vienna in February 1785, when he heard Mozart, his father Leopold, and two friends play the quartets. He famously told Leopold: “I tell you before God as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” Haydn’s Opus 33 Quartets, which the composer himself had said were written “in an entirely new manner,” influenced Mozart particularly in their new equality of part-writing for the four individual instruments and in their treatment of thematic elaboration as an integral part of the whole. Mozart’s famous C major Quartet, completed on January 14, 1785, crowns his entire set of Haydn Quartets with its contrapuntal exploration and brilliance. The work received the nickname “Dissonance” in the 1780s because of the clashing pitches (cross-relations) in its slow introduction, resulting from Mozart’s bold approach to counterpoint. The public did not originally appreciate these dissonances—the irate Hungarian Prince Grassalkovics tore up his performers’ music, an Italian publisher returned the Haydn Quartets to Mozart’s original publisher Artaria saying they were full of mistakes (presumably the Dissonance Quartet’s introduction loomed large as a culprit), and French encyclopedist François-Joseph Fétis even printed a revised introduction. Haydn himself may have had misgivings about the opening, but stated, “Since Mozart wrote it this way, he must have had good reason to do so.” His less than enthusiastic endorsement seems surprising from the composer whose Creation famously opens with Chaos—in the same C minor key—which employs similar dissonances before bursting brilliantly into C major at “Let there be Light!” But, we have to remember, he wrote the oratorio over ten years after the Dissonance Quartet. Could he, in turn, have been influenced by the younger composer? The disquieting intensity of Mozart’s slow introduction grips the listener, heightening the sense of release into the sunny main body of the movement in C major. His singing first theme with its propulsive undercurrent arrives by means of imaginative counterpoint at his more forthright second theme with its cascading fast notes. And, assuaging any thirst for a more typically lyrical second subject, he offers another more lilting theme in this new key area. His charming main idea with ingenious variants serves as the basis for the exposition’s closing, for the movement’s development section, and for the coda. Following the tender melody that opens the intimate slow movement, Mozart introduces a little turn figure—in dialogue between violin and cello—that he invests with great significance as the movement proceeds. He also creates a second theme out of simple repeated notes. But what is most remarkable is how he treats his “recapitulation.” Proceeding without a development section—a common enough procedure for a slow movement—he begins what seems like an ornamented version of his main theme, but injects a bit of development as he progresses into the “dialogue.” Similarly he incorporates some development into the recap of his second theme, producing poignant dissonances. Nor can he resist introducing a lovely new violin melody toward the end against the little turn figure. In the minuet Mozart plays with contrasts—soft and loud, chords and unisons—and delights in injecting frequent sinuous chromatic elements. The compelling melody of the minor-mode trio begins hesitantly then soars—presented by the violin in the first half and by the cello when it returns in the second. The exuberant sonata-form finale gets much of its propulsive energy from the quick repeated notes of the outset, which Mozart treats in myriad inventive incarnations. He also outdid himself with touches of humor—Haydnesque surprises—but also dramatic modulations, a tender almost Schubertian passage, and spurts of virtuosity, which make this a fitting conclusion to the six Haydn Quartets. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

JAVIER GÁNDARA, HORN Javier Gándara has been a member of the Met Opera Orchestra since 1999. He began his professional career at age sixteen, when he won a position in the Puerto Rico Symphony while attending high school at La Escuela Libre de Música in San Juan. Javier later graduated from The Juilliard Schoo, where he studied with Ranier De Intinis. He has held positions with the Orquesta del Principado de Asturias, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta de Euskadi, and the Oregon Symphony. He is on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, The New School, and Juilliard Pre-College.

December 15, 2019: Benjamin Luxon, narrator; Benjamin Beilman, violin; Chris Coletti, trumpet; Demian Austin, trombone; Inn-Hyuck Cho, clarinet; Frank Morelli, bassoon; David J. Grossman, bass; Ian Rosenbaum, percussion; Anni Crofut, dancer-choreographer IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) December 15, 2019: Benjamin Luxon, narrator; Benjamin Beilman, violin; Chris Coletti, trumpet; Demian Austin, trombone; Inn-Hyuck Cho, clarinet; Frank Morelli, bassoon; David J. Grossman, bass; Ian Rosenbaum, percussion; Anni Crofut, dancer-choreographer Exiled in Switzerland against a backdrop of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, and personal hardship, Stravinsky had to think creatively. Early in 1918 he and writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz hit on the idea of a little traveling theater production that could tour cheaply. As a novelist rather than a playwright, Ramuz suggested fashioning a “story” rather than a play, held together by narration. They agreed that Stravinsky would compose music that could be performed separately as a concert suite. The composer showed Ramuz some Russian tales by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev, and Ramuz began modeling his narration on The Runaway Soldier and the Devil. The story was to be “read, played, and danced” by a troupe consisting of the Narrator, actors in the roles of the Soldier and the Devil, a silent dancing Princess, and a small mixed chamber group. Working separately, Stravinsky began composing his ingenious musical numbers, drawing on Russian folk idioms and parodying popular modern dances, occasionally imparting touches of international flavor. He achieved novel sonorities by including a high and low instrument of each family—violin and bass, clarinet and bassoon, trumpet and trombone—along with various percussion instruments played by one player. The first performance of Histoire du soldat took place in Lausanne on September 28, 1918, conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Its great success augured well, but the tour had to be canceled owing to a sweeping flu epidemic. Ansermet also conducted the first performance of the Suite, in London on July 20, 1920. Stravinsky’s memorable music has always attracted instrumentalists because each individual part is extremely rewarding to play. As a full theatrical production, Histoire is most often performed at festivals and on college campuses where its special demands can be met more easily than by regular dance companies. Organized as a series of tableaux, the action takes place during the dance and mime scenes, which the narration connects. Part One begins with a jaunty introductory march as the Soldier heads home on leave (The Soldier’s March). In Scene One, the Soldier stops to rest by a brook and plays a fiddle tune (Little Tunes Beside the Brook), based on a Russian street song fashioned into one of Stravinsky’s signature ostinatos (repeating patterns). The Devil, disguised as an old man with a butterfly net, sneaks up on the Soldier and convinces him to trade his fiddle for a magic book that foretells the future. When the Devil finds he can’t play the fiddle, he tempts the Soldier with images of luxury to come home and teach him. After three days, the Devil magically whisks the Soldier back to his home village. A reprise of the Soldier’s March introduces Scene Two, in which the Soldier comes to the eerie realization that he has been gone three years, not three days—even his mother thinks he’s a ghost, and his fiancée is now married with two children. He berates himself and wonders what to do (Pastorale). The Devil, now dressed as a cattle merchant, reappears to remind the Soldier that he can make a fortune by using the magic book (Closing Music). Scene Three begins as the Soldier, having accumulated great wealth but finding it meaningless, throws the book aside. Disguised as an old woman, the Devil sells him back his fiddle, but the Soldier can’t make it sound and hurls it into the wings. To a reprise of Little Tunes Beside the Brook, he tears the book into pieces. A modified reprise of the Soldier’s March opens Part Two as the Soldier trudges along aimlessly. He finds himself in another country, where a king has promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who can cure her illness (Scene Four). Arriving at the palace—accompanied by the Royal March, replete with Spanish flavor—the Soldier meets the Devil, dressed as a virtuoso violinist. While waiting to see the Princess, the Soldier purposely loses his money to the Devil in a card game (Scene Five), all the while plying him with drink until he falls unconscious. The Soldier recovers his fiddle and plays the triumphant Little Concert over the Devil’s insensible form. In the Princess’s chamber, the Soldier plays three dances—Tango, Waltz, and Ragtime—to which she dances as she is restored to health (Scene Six). The Devil enters undisguised, and the Soldier makes him dance to exhaustion (The Devil’s Dance). The Soldier and the Princess drag him off, then embrace to the music of the Little Chorale, based on that most famous of Lutheran chorales, “A Mighty Fortress.” The Devil interrupts with a dire warning (The Devil’s Song) that the Soldier must not cross the border to his native village or he will be reclaimed—much like Orpheus. The Great Chorale, accompanying the Narrator’s moralizing, completes Stravinsky’s “Mighty Fortress” parody, which imparts a sense of mock grandness with its delightful sprinkling of dissonance. Eventually the Soldier and the Princess decide to visit his native village (Scene Seven). As they cross the border, the Devil, again in possession of the fiddle, repossesses the Soldier, who follows him unresisting as the Triumphal March of the Devil resounds. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 12, 2024: Lucille Chung, piano Robert Schumann Scenes from Childhood, Op. 15 for piano May 12, 2024: Lucille Chung, piano Schumann was at his best when composing miniatures for piano, which he grouped together under various picturesque titles such as Davidsbündlertänze, Fantasiestücke, Noveletten, and Kreisleriana. Perhaps the most purely conceived works of this type, distilled to their essence, are the thirteen Kinderscenen (Scenes from Childhood), op. 15. He described them in a letter to Clara Wieck in March 1838, two years before their marriage, while they were still fighting parental disapproval: Whether it was an echo of what you said to me once, “that sometimes I seemed to you like a child,” anyhow I suddenly got an inspiration, and knocked off about thirty quaint little things, from which I have selected twelve [sic] and called them Kinderscenen. They will amuse you, but of course you must forget that you are a virtuoso. They have such titles as “Fürchtenmachen” [Bogeyman’s coming], “Am Kamin” [By the fireside], “Haschemann” [Catch me if you can], “Bittendes Kind” [Entreating child], “Ritter vom Steckenpferd” [Knight of the hobby-horse], “Von fremden Ländern” [Of foreign lands], “Kuriose Geschichte” [A strange story], etc., and I don’t know what besides. Well, they all explain themselves, and what’s more are as easy as possible. Unlike the later Album für die Jugend, which are written for children, Schumann said that the Kinderscenen are really addressed to adults, “reminiscences of an adult for adults.” Their unassuming front masks an incredible attention to detail, unity, and poetic content. They are connected not only by programmatic content, but by thematic unity: nearly all the pieces seem to stem from the thematic shape of the five-note opening of Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of foreign lands and people). Often the first ascending sixth is left out, leaving a four-note falling figure related to the “Clara motto” that Schumann often used in his compositions. Theorist Rudolph Reti went so far as to call the Kinderscenen a theme with variations, the “theme” comprising not only the opening figure of the first piece but two of its subsequent motives as well. While some of his conclusions stretch credibility to the limit, there is no doubt that the miniatures are bound together as a definite structural unit by more than their program. Each of the thirteen little pieces is a simple example of ternary or binary form. Schumann’s titles, whether added before or after the pieces’ completion (a matter of some discussion), are brought out in the music by a wealth of details. Bittendes Kind (Entreating child) is left still entreating by an unresolved chord (dominant seventh) at the close; the famous Träumerei (Reverie) compresses a whole world within the rise and fall of the opening four-bar phrase; Schumann chose the key of G-sharp minor to intensify Fast zu ernst (Almost too serious); Fürchtenmachen (Bogeyman’s coming) is illustrated by unexpected tempo changes and accents; Der Dichter spricht (The poet speaks), a typical Schumann epilogue, contains a “recitative” (a free unmetered declamation), and ends peacefully. It was perhaps this final piece that Schumann did not include in his original count of twelve, as it is not based on a simple child’s subject, but is rather the poet’s comment or reflection after the child has gone to sleep. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano MORITZ MOSZKOWSKI (1854–1925) Suite for two violins and piano, Op. 71 February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano For a time Moszkowski led the life of a touring piano virtuoso, until a nervous disorder curtailed his performing. He was fortunate, however, to excel in many pursuits. He had been teaching since he was seventeen at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst in Berlin and continued there for twenty-five years. At some point he became a respectable violinist and often played first violin in the Akademie orchestra. He also achieved success as a composer—his Spanish Dances for piano duet won the public’s favor and made him a fortune, but he also composed orchestral, stage, and chamber works in addition to his large body of piano music. As a conductor he began earning recognition in Germany and in England in the 1880s. When Moszkowski left the Neue Akademie in 1897 it was to settle permanently in Paris with his wife. There he taught such famous pupils as Wanda Landowska and Thomas Beecham. Beginning about 1910, however, he went into as a decline as the result of changing musical tastes, lost investments because of World War I, worsening health, and the deaths of his wife and daughter. He died a recluse, in poverty, though old loyal friends had tried to help with a benefit concert in America. The proceeds arrived the year he died, too late to help him. Moszkowski’s Suite, op. 71, dates from c. 1900, while he was still in his zenith. It might be called a sonata for violin duo and piano except that it does not contain a full-fledged sonata-form movement. Its four movements, however, follow the tradition of “serious,” though not heavy, concert music as opposed to the light, popular salon style that he cultivated in many of his piano pieces. The lush, dramatic first movement comes the closest to sonata form, with its contrast of themes—one full of counterpoint, interplay, and running passages and the other introduced chordally by the piano followed by give and take between the two violins. Moszkowski develops these ideas, but stops short of a full recapitulation, giving just enough to recall the opening. The second movement, Allegro moderato, gives the impression a minuet, romanticized by sweetly resolving tensions and pleasing harmonic excursions. The “trio” appears twice and even maintains a presence in the final return of the “minuet,” which is condensed and altered to give a sense of closure—almost like a farewell scene. The piano introduces the lovely slow movement with a low melody, which gives way to a poignant canon between the two violins. The fact that the dynamic level never rises above an impassioned piano (p) makes the vivacity of the finale particularly pronounced. The last movement barrels along in the manner of a tarantella (a fast dance named for Taranto in southern Italy and not for the tarantula or a dance to cure its bite). A slower “trio” provides contrast before the tarantella returns. A brilliant coda rushes headlong to the end, with the violins in perpetual motion, egged on by the “boom-chick” of the piano. By Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 24, 2017: Danbi Um, violin; Michael Brown, piano JENÖ HUBAY (1858-1937) Scènes de la Csárda No. 3, op. 18, “Maros vize” (The waters of Maros) September 24, 2017: Danbi Um, violin; Michael Brown, piano Hungarian violinist and composer Jenő Hubay studied with his father and then with the great Joachim before traveling to Paris, where he became a close friend of Vieuxtemps. Hubay taught at the Brussels Conservatory, Budapest Conservatory, and Budapest Academy of Music, and continued to almost annually. He and many of his pupils, including Eugene Ormandy, Zoltan Székely, and Joseph Szigeti helped to shape European violin playing. Between 1879 and 1920 Hubay composed fourteen Scènes de la Csárda , following the model of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. As was typical of the time Hubay grouped them all together as Gypsy music whether their tunes were true Magyar folk music or melodies by Hungarian composers that had become Gypsy fare. Subtitled “Maros vize” (The waters of Maros), No. 3 begins like a fantasia with the violin sounding dramatically improvisatory, accompanied by imitations of cimbalom tremolos in the piano. An expressive melody, another dramatic pronouncement, and a virtuoso cadenza bring on a lively version of Miska Borzó’s “Slowly Flows the Bodrog” (1859), which Brahms also used in a varied version in his Hungarian Dance No. 1. Dazzling virtuosity pervades Hubay’s treatment of the tune, followed by yet another exuberant theme that brings the scene to a spirited conclusion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes