NOVA Chamber Music Series
Fry Street Quartet, music directors
Libby Gardner Concert Hall
concert program
with notes by Jeff Counts
Seven Fantasies,
op. 116
Johannes Brahms
(1833-1897)
Viktor Valkov piano
When Robert Schumann introduced Brahms to the world in his 1853 article “Neue Bahnen” (New Paths), he mentioned hearing music from the 20-year-old younger man’s piano sonatas. According to Schumann, these early works were actually “veiled symphonies” in their scope and scale and, in them, he heard the marks of future genius. We know now how right he was about Brahms, but the road to that genius did not include as much solo piano music as either of them would have predicted. In fact, after the three sonatas of 1852-1853, Brahms composed relatively little unaccompanied music for his instrument. This changed right near the end of his days with a quartet of solo piano suites (Op. 116-119) that included the Seven Fantasies we hear today. This Opus 116 set comprises three Capriccios and four Intermezzos, and they all display a concentrated brevity when compared to the youthful extravagance of the sonatas. The Fantasies (and perhaps all the late keyboard works in this reflective moment of 1892-1893) were likely dedicated not to Robert, but to Clara Schumann. She called them a “true source of enjoyment, everything, poetry, passion, rapture, intimacy…”
The Time Before We Became Strangers
Jessica Rudman
(b. 1981)
Lisa Byrnes flute | Katie Porter clarinet
Stephen Proser horn | Sam Elliott trombone
Alex Martin violin | Andrew Keller bass | Gabriel Gordon conductor
Connecticut-based composer Jessica Rudman was once described as a “new music ninja,” and she liked the phrase enough to include it in her bio. Who wouldn’t? Rudman almost certainly found in these words a colorful, subversive shorthand for her desire to draw listeners into her compositions and encourage them to be moved even if they “may not understand everything that is happening.” The Time Before We Became Strangers was written in 2015 for the New York contemporary music collective Ensemble Mise-En, a group that seems kindred in their free-spirited approach to artistic diversity. About the music, Rudman writes, “At the time I wrote the piece, I was also working on a large dance project, and both the rhythmic and theatrical aspects of ballet have influenced this smaller composition. To me, the music depicts a vignette: two strangers meet, have an intense relationship, and part ways almost as if their whole involvement was imagined during a brief moment where they pass by one another on the street.” Rudman recently joined the faculty here at the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory
D’un soir triste
Lili Boulanger
(1893-1918)
Alex Martin violin | Walter Haman cello | Viktor Valkov piano
The list of prominent female composers grows longer with each generation, which brings a sharp focus to the cruel stretches of music history when you could count them on one hand. Lili Boulanger was born into a musical family in the dark ages of 1893. She and her older sister Nadia (known less today as a composer herself than a composer-whisperer who nurtured the minds of some of the 20th century’s most important male creators) were provided the finest educations and the freedom to explore them thoroughly. Lili, always sick, died very young at 24, but her slim catalogue of highly personal pieces placed her firmly on another of musical art’s most prestigious, if heartbreaking, lists — the “what might have been” list. D’un soir triste (Of a Sad Evening) was one of the last two works written in Lili’s own hand, and the manuscript shows her weakened state in those final months. Nadia later supplied many of the final touches, but her little sister’s deep understanding of symbolism and impressionism are impossible to ignore. Lili left no programmatic instructions for how to interpret this moonlit world of regret, but you won’t need it. What might have been, indeed
On a Poem by Miho Nonaka: Harvard Square
Shawn E. Okpebholo
(b. 1981)
Mercedes Smith flute
Nigerian-American composer Shawn Okpebholo won the 2016 Flute New Music Consortium Composition Competition with his work for solo flute On a Poem by Miho Nonaka: Harvard Square. This composition, writes Okpebholo, was “composed for and premiered by my friend, Caen Thomason-Redus. It was not my intention to, necessarily, text paint each word of the poem; rather, I tried to evoke the essence of the poem’s meaning. In one word, Nonaka describes her poem as being about ‘resonance.’ A natural term in the music world, the word ‘resonance’, figuratively speaking, can also mean evoking images, memories and emotions, which she beautifully achieves in Harvard Square. This composition is for the virtuoso flutist, utilizing various extended flute techniques. For example, the composition begins with the flute playing bamboo tones, a way for the modern western flute to, by using nontraditional fingerings (which I notated in the score), sound like a shakuhachi flute, a Japanese bamboo flute.” Miho Nonaka is a bilingual poet from Tokyo who, in addition to creating her own stunning work, has translated Louise Glück into Japanese.
Desert Portal
Laura Kaminsky
(b. 1956)
I. processional
II. a day in the desert
Rebecca Allan visual artist | Kendall Fischer choreographer
Lisa Byrnes, Mercedes Smith flute | Katie Porter clarinet
Sam Elliott trombone | Walter Haman cello
Keith Carrick, Eric Hopkins percussion | Gabriel Gordon conductor
Kendall Fischer, Fiona Gitlin, Sarah Lorraine, Tawna Waters dancers
Longtime Fry Street Quartet collaborator Laura Kaminsky is one of American music’s keenest observers of both humanity and the natural world it fitfully inhabits. From a chamber opera that examines the transgender experience to a string quartet that confronts the challenges of global sustainability, Kaminsky and Fry Street have been making powerful statements about Earth and life together for years. This is why, when Kaminsky’s work Desert Portal had to be postponed in 2020, it made sense that its premiere would end up on the Nova Chamber Music Series. From Kaminsky herself:
“Desert Portal was commissioned by Arizona State University in celebration of the inauguration of the Institute for Humanities Research Desert Humanities Initiative. The work, to include musicians and dancers from the ASU community, was conceived as a way to engage the audience celebrating the Institute’s opening. It never premiered because of the onset of the pandemic. We are thrilled that it is now having its birth on the Nova Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City, yet another part of the country grappling with the challenges of climate change. It is dedicated to Laura and Herb Roskind, Elizabeth Langland and Jerald Jahn, and Jeffery Meyer.” Regarding the structure of Desert Portal, Kaminsky states that it is “in two movements, as follows: I. processional: coming together; II. a day in the desert, unfolding as ‘desert wind, pre-dawn,’ ‘birds awakening,’ ‘flash flood,’ ‘evaporation,’ ‘parched,’ ‘wildlife, twilight,’ ‘disappearance of light’ and ‘night movements.’”
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