NOVA Chamber Music Series

Fry Street Quartet, music directors

Connect With Beauty

music by Dohnányi • Xenakis • Crumb • Brahms

Libby Gardner Concert Hall
10.23.2022 | 3pm
pre-concert discussion at 2:30pm

concert program
with notes by Jeff Counts

Kathryn Eberle violin | John T. Posadas viola
Walter Haman cello

I. Marcia
II. Romanza
III. Scherzo
IV. Tema con variazioni
V. Rondo

If Ernő Dohnányi appears to occupy a slim, non-linear sliver of European music history, somehow between late-Romanticism and Nationalism, it is not necessarily because of anything he did himself, but because of those who followed. in the first decades of the 20th century, Dohnányi was the heart, soul, and brain of Hungarian musical life, wielding influence as a superstar pianist, conductor, educator, composer…you name it, he had a hand in it. His concert music was conservative, relatively speaking, and is perhaps best described now as a continuation along the path left by his peer Johannes Brahms when he died in 1897. Unlike his famous student Bartók and others (like Kodály) who sought to moderate the Germanic influence on their culture, Dohnányi did not overtly seek inspiration in folk idioms. He was quite comfortable within the guardrails of his absolutist formal training and displayed an easy, reverent mastery of its tenets. The Serenade for string trio dates from 1902 and, with one foot firmly in each of its surrounding centuries, it is both coal and diamond. Antique structure and contemporary chromaticism co-exist perfectly in all Dohnányi’s chamber music, and the Serenade is a perfect example of his confident precision as a composer.

Laura Ha violin | Jason Hardink piano

Dikhthas (Duality), for violin and piano, was written in 1980 as part of a Beethoven Festival in the city of Bonn. According to the composer’s inscription in the score, “This piece is like a personage made up of two natures, it is like a dual entity (dikhthas). Indeed these two natures contradict each other although sometimes they merge in rhythm and harmony. This confrontation is realized in a variable dynamic flux which exploits the specific traits of the two instruments.” If the phrase “variable dynamic flux” sounds like the product of a particularly prodigious intellect, that’s because it is. Born in Romania to Greek parents, Iannis Xenakis’ origin story destined him for leadership in the post-war avant garde. He trained as a civil engineer in Athens, but fled Greece for France after years fighting in the resistance against Nazi occupation. In Paris, Xenakis put his fiercely analytical mind to work as an architect while simultaneously cultivating his distinct compositional style through a love of mathematics, design principals, and game theory. The second inscription in the score of Dikhthas comes from a Le Monde reporter who heard an early performance. “If occasionally the instruments seem to meet, to be in accordance,” observed Jacques Lonchampt, “then very quickly the tension starts up again…and the fire spreads out everywhere. A strange score…”

- Pause -

Melissa Heath soprano | Jason Hardink piano

I. Night
II. Let it be forgotten
III. Wind Elegy (W.E.W.)

In 1947, the same year Xenakis was exiled to Paris, a 17-year-old George Crumb made his first foray into composing for voice. He was fresh out of high school, at the very beginning of his march toward iconoclastic greatness, and the influence of Debussy was clearly upon him. Crumb (who died just this past February) rarely let his juvenilia see the light of day, claiming that the music of his youth caused him “intense discomfort” when set against the ethereal and wholly original sound he developed after the 1960s. The Three Early Songs were a notable exception. Crumb wrote them for his wife-to-be Elizabeth May Brown, and the folk-like quality of each suited her voice neatly. Other sopranos (most prominently, Jan DeGaetani) took an interest in them much later, but only after Liz rescued the score from its imposed obscurity. The first song comes from Robert Southey’s poem “Night,” in which the heavenly serenity of a moonlit darkness is considered. Two poems by Sarah Teasdale follow. In “Let it be Forgotten,” we are reminded that “time is a kind friend” who will “make us old” if we allow our troubles to pass from memory. Finally, “Wind Elegy” mourns the loss of someone beloved whose name is carried on “the wind in the pines he planted.”

Erin Svoboda-Scott clarinet | Anne Francis Bayless cello
Frank Weinstock piano

I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Andantino grazioso

That the clarinet would become a predominant fascination for Brahms in his December years could not have been predicted, even by him. In fact, in 1890, Brahms made it clear to everyone that he intended to stop composing altogether. He even went so far as to say so legally in his will, but the cosmos had other plans. On a visit to Meiningen in 1891, Brahms heard Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the court orchestra there, and believed he was listening to the greatest living wind player. Brahms was so moved by what he heard, he rescinded his retirement with immediate effect by composing the Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano. It was not the only work the composer wrote for his newfound muse, and clarinetists the world over have Mühlfeld to thank for the Clarinet Quintet, as well as the Opus 120 Clarinet Sonatas. Freshly inspired and motivated, Brahms dashed off the Trio within months of hearing Mühlfeld play, but in his famously humble-to-a-fault way, referred to the Trio as the “twin sister of an even bigger folly.” He was talking about the Quintet, of course (also written quickly in 1891), but it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be a woodwind enthusiast to agree that Brahms was wrong about both twilight masterpieces.

45 Years of NOVA

artists

45 years of NOVA

To commemorate NOVA Chamber Music Series’ 45th Anniversary, we have asked each of NOVA’s former music directors to reminisce about their experiences leading the organization.

Russell Harlow was there from the start — he served as NOVA’s founding music director from 1977–86.