Search Results

BRUNO EICHER, VIOLIN Violinist Bruno Eicher is Assistant Concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which he joined in 2001, after serving for four years as Associate Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony and the previous four years as Assistant Concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. His wide-ranging orchestral experience includes performing with the Vienna Philharmonic and State Opera orchestras, the New York Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, under the avid chamber musician, Mr. Eicher has performed extensively throughout Europe and the U.S., as well as South Korea. In New York, as a member of the MET Chamber Ensemble from 2002 to 2014, he performed regularly at Carnegie Hall. A native of Burgundy, France, Mr. Eicher is a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied with Pierre Amoyal and Jean Hubeau. In the United States, he was a student of Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang at the Juilliard School, from which he holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1992, he was the 2nd prize winner of the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. He lives in Manhattan, with his wife, MET Orchestra cellist Kari Docter, and their two children. Mr Eicher plays an instrument made in 2011 by Christophe Landon, a copy of the “Circle” Stradivari.

January 31, 2010 – Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe, piano JOHN WILLIAMS / ANDERSON & ROE Three Star Wars Fantasies January 31, 2010 – Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe, piano In 2006, The Juilliard School celebrated its centennial year, and among its many celebratory events, one concert was devoted to film music. Held in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and dubbed “Cinema Serenades,” the concert featured the premieres of original works composed by six famed film scorers. Among the participants The Juilliard School commissioned: Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings), Marc Shaiman (The Adams Family and Sleepless in Seattle), and Marvin Hamlisch (Sophie’s Choice and The Way We Were). John Williams, a Juilliard alumnus, also agreed to compose a new piece, but he regretfully withdrew from the project just over a month before the event was to take place. The school still wanted to honor this titan of film music, and being in the right place at the right time, we (the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo) were asked-and more importantly, given the legal permission-to compose and perform a piece based on music from the Star Wars trilogies. In composing our Star Wars Fantasy: Four Impressions for Two Pianos, we took motives from John Williams’ iconic score and constructed an entirely new work. At times, we were reverent to our source material; at others, not so much. The first impression is loosely based on the cantina theme heard in “Episode IV: A New Hope.” If you are very perceptive, you may notice other themes hidden within the texture of the music, such as the “force theme,” Darth Vader and Yoda’s themes, and various battle motives. The second impression is a quasi-minimalist, free-flowing treatment of the “force theme” heard throughout all six Star Wars films, while the third impression is a more literal arrangement of the “March of the Ewoks” from “Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.” The fantasy concludes climactically with a final impression combining musical themes from all six movies into a toccata of dramatic cacophony. Although we were strapped for time (we finished the composition on the day of the concert!), we had a blast creating this piece of music. Among our favorite memories: watching all six Star Wars films in three consecutive days while devouring pizza and Chinese food, discussing and debating musical ideas at the most unnatural hours of night, giving the adrenaline-charged premiere in front of a packed house, and of course, joyously revamping music we love into a creation all our own. By Greg Anderson & Elizabeth Joy Roe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 12, 2023 – Gloria Chien, piano, Benjamin Beilman FRITZ KREISLER (1875 — 1962) Three Pieces for Violin and Piano February 12, 2023 – Gloria Chien, piano, Benjamin Beilman Fritz Kreisler, one of the outstanding masters of the violin and, indeed, one of the most individual performing musicians in history, was famous for his sweet tone and the charm and aristocracy of his playing. As a composer Kreisler is known primarily for his arrangements of works by others and his salon-style pieces, almost exclusively for violin, though he did compose several operettas. While he never claimed intellectual greatness for his compositions, many of them have achieved immortality because they stand above the typical virtuoso “lollipops” of this genre. Kreisler is also known as the perpetrator of a rather delightful hoax: he passed off many of his own compositions as works by Vivaldi, Pugnani, Couperin, Padre Martini, Dittersdorf, Francœur, Stamitz, and others. He reluctantly took credit for these pieces in 1935 saying he had done it in order to round out recital programs with established “names” rather than with his own as-yet-unknown name. Many accepted his shady deeds with amused tolerance, but others took offense, notably English critic Ernest Newman, with whom Kreisler was goaded into a public feud on the pages of London’s Sunday Times. The Marche militaire viennoise probably dates from around 1924 when it appeared on a recording in a piano trio version. It was published the following year for violin and piano as well as in the trio version. The charming outer march sections impart a certain Hungarian flavor, which after all was a significant influence in Vienna. The Old Refrain provides a perfect example of Kreisler appropriating a tune by another composer, in this case “Du alter Stefansturm” from Der liebe Augustin (1887) by Johann Brandl, words by Alice Mattulath. Here, as the title divulges, there is a refrain, a lilting tune that returns after each of two verses. In one version published in 1915, Kreisler wrote out the song with text, dedicating his arrangement entitled “Viennese Popular Song, words by Alice Mattullath” to his “dear friend” tenor John McCormack. Kreisler’s Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta was the latest of the present set to be composed, c.1941–42. Following a rhapsodic violin cadenza, Kreisler launches into a lush tune made even richer by the violin’s double stops. Vienna is again invoked by the lilting triple meter in both slow and fast waltzes. The whole concludes with a majestic climax and dazzling feats of violin gymnastics. © Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in F minor, op. 95, “Serioso” March 26, 2017: Jerusalem String Quartet Beethoven’s F minor String Quartet of 1810, the last of his “middle” quartets, is one of a select group of works for which he provided his own descriptive title—other famous instances being his Pathétique Sonata and Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies. He marked his manuscript “Quartett Serioso,” a curious mix of German and quasi-Italian, which apparently meant a work devoid of ostentation whose inner conflicts were expressed by pared-down harmonic, motivic, and formal structures. Unfortunately it could imply that his Harp Quartet, op. 74, written just a year before—and any of his other quartets for that matter—were not “serious,” though surely he meant it as a way to separate his quartet production apart from the proliferation of showy and less weighty quartets by other composers that had begun populating the concert scene. On another front, the work’s “seriousness” has to do with his having written it without a commission because of a personal compulsion, and dedicating it to a friend, cello-player Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz, rather than to a highborn patron. This resonates with his late quartets, which, though instigated by a patron, ended up being composed out of sheer inner necessity. Beethoven had already begun using quartet-writing as the place for exploring his most forward-thinking ideas—which had led to such disappointing critical reception of his Razumovsky Quartets, op. 59—but now this testing ground took a turn toward privacy. He waited an unusually long time before having the Serioso Quartet performed and published. The work received its first performance by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in May of 1814, for which occasion Beethoven apparently revised it. The Serioso was one of several pieces that Beethoven sold to publisher Anton Sigmund Steiner in 1815 in repayment of a debt. The debt must have been substantial because the batch also included the Opus 96 Violin Sonata, the Archduke Trio, the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, and several smaller works. A pivotal work, the Serioso takes a look back to the Razumovsky and Harp Quartets but just as clearly points to the late quartets, though it would be fourteen years before he took up the genre again. Concision and new harmonic relationships are paramount here, and often his compression of both boils down to single notes or pairs of notes. The first movement’s dark, furious unison opening suddenly breaks off, followed by a leaping response characterized by dotted rhythms. The ensuing lyrical elaboration of the opening now pointedly highlights the remote Neapolitan harmony (based on the flatted second scale degree). A prominent pair of half steps in the lyrical passage sets up the somewhat unusual key of D-flat for the lovely second theme. Twice, once at the end of the second theme and once in the midst of the closing theme, explosive ascending scales and daring excursions to remote keys command our attention. It stands to reason that in such a terse movement Beethoven would not repeat his exposition. Instead he shocks the listener again with a crashing major chord that seems to signal a development. Yet this turns out not to be a thorough “working-out” in the classical sense, rather a brief revisiting of the furious opening and the leaping dotted-rhythmic idea, followed by a suspenseful buildup. Beethoven then begins his drastically shortened recapitulation with the fortissimo unison of the transition to the second theme. A coda of the same length as the development balances out this remarkable rethinking of sonata form. The Allegretto ma non troppo begins softly and mysteriously, with a melodic shape similar to the first movement’s opening. Any idea of relaxed, lyrical contrast becomes entangled in a wavering between major and minor and an increasing influx of chromaticism that peaks in the middle section’s fugue. This remarkable interior piece unfolds in two sections before the opening music returns in shortened form. Beethoven continues with a serene coda, but instead of ending peacefully makes a directs link to the ensuing tempestuous scherzo. Beethoven asked that his third movement, a typical place for an irreverent scherzo, be played Allegro assai vivace ma serioso . Propulsive sections with an obsessive dotted rhythm alternate with two trio sections of more lyrical demeanor, which still transmit a restless sense with the first violin’s figurations and unusual harmonic juxtapositions of distantly related keys. A truly slow, reflective introduction prefaces the agitated sonata-rondo finale. Compact once again, the movement features a dancelike but disquieting main theme that Beethoven varies ingeniously on every recurrence. Its last appearance comes to a halt on a hushed major chord that unleashes one of the most talked about endings ever. A lightening quick coda in the major mode rockets forth in unimaginable contrast to the rest of the movement and to the entire piece. In this Beethoven parallels his own Egmont Overture, written just months before, also in a serious F minor with an F major coda, but whereas that ending represents a hard-won victory corroborated by the story, here Beethoven seems simply to be letting go, albeit in breathtaking style. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 19, 2020: Paul Lewis, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Fantasia in G minor, Op. 77 January 19, 2020: Paul Lewis, piano Beethoven was miserable during the summer of 1809 owing to Napoleon’s invasion and occupation of Vienna. The composer wrote of this time: We have passed through a great deal of misery. . . . Since May 4th, I have brought into the world little that is connected; only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected me body and soul. . . . What a disturbing, wild life around me; nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts. The noise and confusion was especially hard to bear because the court and most of his friends had fled the city, communication was disrupted, and he was unable to spend his customary sojourn in the countryside where his creativity was always rejuvenated. Despite his mood and intermittent inability to write anything “connected,” he composed an impressive number of works during the invasion year: the Fifth Piano Concerto, the Harp Quartet, three piano sonatas (opp. 78, 79, and 81a), several lieder, and a number of miscellaneous pieces, among them the present Fantasia, op. 77. Though Beethoven may have begun writing down the Fantasia during this trying time, he may have actually conceived it in December 1808 for the same concert on which he premiered his Choral Fantasy , which begins with a grand piano introduction in improvisatory style. The solo “Fantasia” that he extemporized on that concert might well have been some form of the present work. In any case, he completed the Fantasia in October, after the armistice was signed and presumably during or following a stay in Hungary with his good friends the Brunsviks—Count Franz, who received the dedication, and his sister Therese. Billed in G minor, the remarkably free-ranging Fantasia touches on that key—never to return—with a cascading scale figure and somber chordal phrase. Repeating the gestures in an unrelated key, Beethoven moves on through a kaleidoscopic array of keys and thematic gestures, eventually settling sweetly in the distant key of B major. He then proposes a simple eight-measure theme in that key and treats it to seven variations before a broad coda reintroduces harmonic uncertainty—even a sweet variant of the theme in C major! The boisterous cascade and subdued chordal gesture of the opening return to settle his main B major key once and for all, to which he adds a comical sign-off. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 2022 AT 3 PM IMPRESSIONS OF DEBUSSY AND RAVEL BUY TICKETS KRISTIN LEE, VIOLIN NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS, CELLO “Superb young soloist.” — The New Yorker Michael Brown, piano “Fearless performances…one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” — The New York Times FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Impressions of Debussy and Ravel will showcase glittering musical highlights from La Belle Époque. Three of today’s most charismatic young musicians will perform Claude Debussy’s beguiling violin and cello sonatas in alternation with Maurice Ravel’s ravishing duo for violin and cello — his elegy to Debussy — and Ravel’s kaleidoscopic piano trio. PROGRAM Claude Debussy Violin Sonata in G minor, L. 140 Program Notes Maurice Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello Program Notes Claude Debussy Cello Sonata in D minor, L. 135 Program Notes Maurice Ravel Piano Trio in A minor Program Notes Watch Kristin Lee, Nicholas Canellakis, and Michael Brown perform the first movement of Ravel’s Piano Trio in The Cathedral of Taormina (Sicily):

May 12, 2024: Chee-Yun, violin; Alessio Bax, piano Antonín Dvořák Songs My Mother Taught Me, arr. for violin and piano May 12, 2024: Chee-Yun, violin; Alessio Bax, piano Dvořák composed his Gypsy Songs, op. 55, in the first two months of 1880 for Gustav Walter, an admirer of his songs and a tenor at the Vienna Court Opera. In Walter’s honor, he set the songs in German, in a translation made expressly for this purpose by poet Adolf Heyduk, author of the original Czech poems. Nicolaus Simrock published the songs with German and English words later that year and issued another edition the following year with the Czech added. Some were performed separately in February 1881, but it’s not clear when all seven were first performed as a group. The song cycle has become Dvořák’s most successful. The songs display a number of characteristic Gypsy features, though all of the melodies are original Dvořák. The most famous of the set is No. 4, known in the English-speaking world as “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” but whose first line is better translated “When my old mother taught me to sing.” Here Dvořák gently pits the poignant melody in 2/4 meter against the 6/8 meter of the accompaniment and masterfully alters the music of the second verse enough to create a poignant peak. His expressive simplicity adds a wonderful dimension to the poet’s tearful, loving memories of his mother, carrying on her legacy as he teaches his own child those same songs. “Songs My Mother Taught Me” has taken on a purely instrumental life as well as a vocal one, with myriad arrangements for various combinations. Renowned violinist Fritz Kreisler often played his own transcription for violin and piano, first publishing it in 1914 and making several recordings, perhaps the earliest for a ten-inch single-faced Victor disc in January 1916. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

RADU RATOI, ACCORDIONIST Winner of the 2024 YCA Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, accordionist Radu Ratoi, began playing the accordion at the age of six in his hometown in the Republic of Moldova. A prodigious talent, Radu excelled early on, winning numerous international competitions in the junior category. He has since gone on to achieve an extraordinary record, claiming victory in six of the most prestigious accordion competitions in the world: Coupe Mondiale, Klingenthal Accordion Competition, Trophy Mondiale, Arrasate Accordion Competition, PIF Castelfidardo, and the Moscow Accordion Competition. In total, he has received more than 60 national and international awards. Praised for his originality, versatility, and virtuosity in both classical and contemporary repertoire, Radu has earned several prestigious honors in his homeland. In 2018, he was awarded the "Excellence Diploma"" and in 2022, the esteemed Moldovan National Distinction "Master in Arts"" both presented by the President of the Republic of Moldova. Radu studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he was awarded the Sonning Music Prize, one of Denmark's most prestigious honors. His artistry is defined by the unique way he blends two major musical traditions-the Russian school and the Western European school-into a deeply personal and distinctive style. In 2022, Radu released his debut album, Greatest Organ Works Arranged for Accordion, featuring works by J.S. Bach and F. List. Through his transcriptions of pieces by J.S. Bach, D. Scarlatti, J.P. Rameau, F. Liszt, and others, Radu has expanded and redefined the accordion repertoire. As both a soloist and chamber musician, Radu has captivated audiences worldwide with his musicality, technical brilliance, and charisma. He has performed in some of the world's most renowned concert halls, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Radio Concert House Copenhagen, Victoria Concert Hall, Tivoli Hall Copenhagen, Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall in Yerevan, and Harbin Concert Hall, among others. In 2024, he was appointed as a soloist with the National Chamber Orchestra of Moldova. Radu's groundbreaking contributions to the accordion repertoire and his unforgettable performances continue to set him apart as one of the foremost accordionists of his generation.

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

January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 65 January 19, 2025: THE VIRTUOSO ORGANIST PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN One of the most accomplished organists of his day, Mendelssohn had begun studying organ at the age of eleven with August Wilhelm Bach (not a descendent of J. S. Bach). This was in addition to his lessons in piano, violin, drawing, painting, Latin and Greek (and other languages), music theory, and general studies, as well as gymnastics, swimming, horseback riding, dancing, and chess—all of which showed his prodigious talents. A few of Mendelssohn’s great organ highlights include improvising on the St. Paul’s Cathedral organ when he was in London in 1833 to premiere his Italian Symphony and in 1837 completing his three organ Preludes and Fugues, op. 37. He performed organ works by Bach at the Birmingham Festival, when he also premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 and conducted a performance of his oratorio St. Paul . Then in 1840 he gave a challenging concert of Bach’s organ works at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to raise funds for a new Bach monument. He also began drafting the pieces that would become the six Organ Sonatas, op 65. He completed the first in F minor on December 28, 1844, and the other five by January 1845. Mendelssohn wrote to the publisher Coventry that he considered these sonatas a “kind of Organ-school” and to Breitkopf & Härtel that they represented his personal way of handling the organ. They are all very representative of his adoration of Bach in their use of chorales and fugues. At the same time, in their varied movements, they show Mendelssohn’s interest in contemporary styles of writing, such as song and Lieder ohne Worte (songs without words), while eschewing the usual sonata forms and also refecting his penchant for improvisation. Sonata No. 1 unfolds in four innovative movements—the first full of contrasts including an exordium for full organ, a fugato over organ pedal point, the calm introduction of the chorale Was mein Gott will, das ich g’scheh allzeit alternating with strains of a fugue, the fugue in mirror inversion, the mirror combined with the original, and finally a return to the chorale. The unusual form may have been inspired by a recitative in the same key in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (No. 25), in which Jesus’ agitated utterances alternate with a chorale. The second movement sounds like a song without words, the third like a recitative, and the fourth a fantasia-like movement with virtuosic toccata elements that may have arisen in Mendelssohn’s imaginative improvisations at the organ. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 29, 2017: Peter Serkin, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations BWV 988 October 29, 2017: Peter Serkin, piano A wonderful story, recounted by Bach’s early biographer J. N. Forkel, revealed that the Goldberg Variations were the result of a request by former Russian ambassador and insomniac Count Keyserlingk for some clavier pieces that his young house harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, could play for him during sleepless nights. A great patron of the arts, the count lived in Dresden but often visited Leipzig, where in 1737 he had introduced the ten-year-old Goldberg to Bach, recommending him as a harpsichord student. Goldberg indeed took lessons from Bach, but also from his oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, a great keyboard virtuoso who was working in Dresden. It may be, as some scholars claim, that the elder Bach wrote the monumental work for his son rather than for Goldberg, but Forkel’s account cannot be dismissed because some information for his biography came directly from Wilhelm Friedemann and from Bach’s second oldest son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. In any case, Goldberg, too, became an outstanding virtuoso, and seems to have played the Variations frequently. Bach visited Count Keyserlingk in Dresden in November 1741, having published the Variations that fall, and it is entirely likely that he gave him a presentation copy. The count referred to them as “my” variations, but the work cannot have been an official commission or Bach would have included a formal dedication. For posterity the Aria with 30 Variations will always be known as the Goldberg Variations. In the larger scheme of things, Bach, a master organizer, published the work as part of the series he unassumingly titled Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Exercise), which he issued in installments beginning in 1731. This “exercise” represents the pinnacle of Bach’s art and thus an incomparable peak in the whole of music. His six keyboard Partitas make up Part I, followed by the Italian Concerto and the French Overture as Part II, the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major and various organ chorales as Part III, and, finally, the Goldberg Variations. He may even have included the Art of Fugue as Book V had he lived to see it published. In choosing to compose a large set of variations, Bach stood firmly in the tradition of Corelli, Handel, and Rameau, though he himself had not written a keyboard set since his youth. Aria was also a traditional title for the first movement of such a set—Bach’s Aria is a thirty-two measure theme that also appears in Anna Magdalena Bach’s Clavier-Büchlein of 1725. For the first eight bars the harmony and bass line (the basis for most Baroque variation sets rather than the theme itself) are the same as for Handel’s Chaconne avec 62 variations, which Bach surely knew. Handel’s treatment of the last variation as a simple canon (precise imitation of one line by another) must have sparked Bach’s imagination even before the Goldberg Variations, because he used the underlying progression as the basis for several canons. Versions of these later appeared in his Fourteen Canons (BWV 1087), which he eventually copied into his own print of Part IV of the Clavier-Übung, explicitly connecting these two collections. He probably also knew a set of sarabande variations attributed to the “Eisenach” Bach (1642–1703)—or to J. S. Bach’s older brother—which employ the same progression for the first four measures. Forerunners aside, Bach employed a much longer theme than his predecessors had, giving himself a much fuller range to explore his incomparable canonic and variation techniques. The whole set is carefully organized so that every third variation includes a canon, systematically increasing the pitch interval at which the second line begins its imitation, starting with a canon at the unison for Variation 3 and continuing through the interval of a ninth in Variation 27. (The canons in Nos. 12 and 15 proceed in contrary motion.) In addition Bach sets up a threefold pattern of variation types (beginning with the third variation) of canon, free counterpoint, and duet-style. Before No. 3 he includes two free variations and follows No. 27 with three more free variations before he recalls the Aria. Despite Bach’s organizational and canonic rigors, there is nothing dry and pedantic about the Goldberg variations, which certainly must have kept Count Keyserlingk highly engaged rather than lulled to sleep. Bach juxtaposes variations of contrasting meter, specific rhythmic figuration, or texture, and he makes dramatic or witty variations with equal ingenuity. One of the most striking aspects of his elegant wit appears in the variations with hand-crossings, which appear already in the first variation. Here they require a certain athleticism, since Bach designates this variation to be played on just one of the harpsichord’s two manuals (keyboards). (Because Bach intended the Goldberg Variations for a two-manual harpsichord, transferring them to piano necessitates decisions about how best to distribute the two-manual variations, which pianists solve in many different ways.) Variations 5, 14, 20, and 28 also call for similar leaping hand-crossings rather than the type whose hand-crossings are the result of lines of counterpoint crossing each other—Nos. 8, 11, 17, 23, and 26. Both types require great virtuosity, the latter following in a long line of keyboard pieces known as bicinia or pièces croisées. Bach also includes dance types, such as a gigue for Variation 7 (labeled al tempo di Giga in his manuscript) or, though not so-designated, a highly ornamented sarabande for the slower Variation 13 with its emphasis on second beats. He labels Variation 10 a Fughetta, which though not a strict fugue contains an entrance of the fugue subject in every fourth bar. Variation 24 seems to have roots in the instrumental pastorale, similar to the siciliana in its lilting compound meter and deceptively simple or “rural” atmosphere. Many of the variations focus on a certain keyboard technique or challenge in the manner of the études of much later generations. Variation 8 suggests a study in arpeggios and contrary motion, Variation 23 a variety of virtuosic figures including parallel thirds, and 28, sustained measured trills, often in inner voices. Bach makes a striking gesture with French overture–style dotted rhythms as a kind of grand opening statement for the second half of the set. This variation also serves to bring back the prevailing major mode after No. 15, the first of only three variations in minor, whose canonic unfolding introduces two-note “sighs,” some daring chromaticism, and a curious ending that drifts upward. The last minor-mode variation, the soulful, chromatic No. 25, achieves the greatest weight and depth of the free variations, part of Bach’s scheme of increasing drama as well as technical brilliance as the set progresses. Most of the variations exhibit a two- or three-voice texture, though Bach intersperses four-voice variations at judicious intervals. Of these, two make specific reference to older polyphonic styles: Variation 22, marked Alla breve, employs Renaissance-style counterpoint as in a motet, and Variation 30 shows Bach having some fun in a quodlibet. Literally “as you like it,” the term had been used since the mid-fourteenth century to designate a humorous piece that combined two or more independent melodies, often folk tunes, in contrapuntal style. The Bach family reportedly improvised such pieces at family gatherings. Scholars have found at least six snippets in Variation 30 that appear to be folk quotations, of which the most obvious are phrases from “Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir g’west” (I’ve been away from you so long) and “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben” (Cabbage and turnips have driven me away). Bach’s witty combination of these phrases seems to refer to this “hodge-podge” (another meaning of Kraut und Rüben) having driven the main theme away, necessitating the recall of the Aria. Without any knowledge of quotations or elegant witticisms, however, Variation 30’s old-fashioned demeanor has the musical effect of halting the intensifying brilliance built up by the preceding variations, preparing for the Aria’s return to bring the work full circle. It is unlikely that Bach, his sons, or Goldberg played the set of variations straight through at a single performance. Nevertheless, its organization, carefully considered contrasts, cohesion, and technical challenges have made performances of the entire Goldberg Variations the lofty goal of many keyboard virtuosos—to the delight of the listening public. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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