SUN, NOV 13, 2022 at 3:30 PM
POULENC TRIO
Alexander Vvedenskiy, Oboe
Bryan Young, Bassoon
Irina Kaplan Lande, Piano
Lia Purpura, guest poet
Venue
Second Presbyterian Church, 4200 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Free concert. No tickets or reservations required.
Covid-19 Safety Policies
Masks are encouraged, but not required for attendance.
Proof of vaccination is not required.
These policies are in place for the fall 2022 concerts and are subject to change.
Second Presbyterian Church, 4200 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Free concert. No tickets or reservations required.
Covid-19 Safety Policies
Masks are encouraged, but not required for attendance.
Proof of vaccination is not required.
These policies are in place for the fall 2022 concerts and are subject to change.
PROGRAM
TRIO FOR OBOE, BASSOON AND PIANO, FP 43
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
I. Presto
II. Andante
III. Rondo
SUITE IN THE OLD STYLE *
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), arr. Mikhail Krutik
I. Pastorale
II. Ballet
III. Minuet
IV. Fugue
V. Pantomime
* with poems by Lia Purpura from her book, It Should Have Been Beautiful
JAUNTY
André Previn (1929-2019)
INTERMISSION
TRAINS OF THOUGHT
Viet Cuong (b. 1990)
Commissioned and written for the Poulenc Trio
THE GADFLY SUITE, OP. 97A: VIII. ROMANCE
MOSKVA, CHERYOMUSHKI, OP. 105: A SPIN THROUGH MOSCOW
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), arr. A. Trofimov for oboe, bassoon and piano
FANTAISIE CONCERTANTE SUR DES THÈMES DE "L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI"
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), arranged by Eugène Jancourt and Charles Triébert
TRIO FOR OBOE, BASSOON AND PIANO, FP 43
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
I. Presto
II. Andante
III. Rondo
SUITE IN THE OLD STYLE *
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), arr. Mikhail Krutik
I. Pastorale
II. Ballet
III. Minuet
IV. Fugue
V. Pantomime
* with poems by Lia Purpura from her book, It Should Have Been Beautiful
JAUNTY
André Previn (1929-2019)
INTERMISSION
TRAINS OF THOUGHT
Viet Cuong (b. 1990)
Commissioned and written for the Poulenc Trio
THE GADFLY SUITE, OP. 97A: VIII. ROMANCE
MOSKVA, CHERYOMUSHKI, OP. 105: A SPIN THROUGH MOSCOW
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), arr. A. Trofimov for oboe, bassoon and piano
FANTAISIE CONCERTANTE SUR DES THÈMES DE "L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI"
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), arranged by Eugène Jancourt and Charles Triébert
ABOUT THE TRIO
The Poulenc Trio is the most active touring piano-wind chamber music ensemble in the world. Since its founding in 2003, the trio has performed in 45 U.S. states and at music festivals around the world, including the Ravello Festival in Italy, the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico, and the White Nights Festival in Russia, where the group toured and premiered two new works with violinist Hilary Hahn.
The New York Times praised the trio for its “elegant rendition” of Piazzolla’s Tangos. The Washington Post said the trio “does its namesake proud” in “an intriguing and beautifully played program” with “convincing elegance, near effortless lightness and grace.” A recent performance in Florida, for which the Palm Beach Post praised the group’s “polished loveliness” and the Palm Beach Daily News said the “potent combination” of oboe, bassoon and piano had “captured the magic of chamber music,” was rebroadcast on the nationally syndicated radio program, Performance Today. The trio has garnered positive attention in full-length profiles in Chamber Music magazine and the Double Reed Journal.
The Poulenc Trio has a strong commitment to commissioning, performing and recording new works from living composers. Since its founding, the trio has greatly expanded the repertoire available for the oboe, bassoon and piano, with no fewer than 25 new works written and arranged for and premiered by the group, including three triple concertos for the trio and full orchestra.
The Poulenc Trio launched a pioneering concert series called Music at the Museum, in which musical performances are paired with museum exhibitions, with special appearances from guest artists and curators. As part of the series, the trio has collaborated with the National Gallery in Washington DC, the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Hermitage State Museum in Russia.
The trio is deeply engaged in musical and educational outreach programs, including "Pizza and Poulenc," an informal performance and residency series for younger audiences. The trio regularly conducts masterclasses, most recently at the University of Ohio, San Francisco State University, Florida State University and the University of Colima in Mexico.
LIA PURPURA, writer
Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays) and King Baby (poems). Her honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist (for On Looking, essays), National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley, and Ohio State University Press awards in poetry. Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays, and elsewhere. She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a member of the core faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop and teaches in graduate programs throughout the country. She lives in Baltimore, MD.
The Poulenc Trio is the most active touring piano-wind chamber music ensemble in the world. Since its founding in 2003, the trio has performed in 45 U.S. states and at music festivals around the world, including the Ravello Festival in Italy, the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico, and the White Nights Festival in Russia, where the group toured and premiered two new works with violinist Hilary Hahn.
The New York Times praised the trio for its “elegant rendition” of Piazzolla’s Tangos. The Washington Post said the trio “does its namesake proud” in “an intriguing and beautifully played program” with “convincing elegance, near effortless lightness and grace.” A recent performance in Florida, for which the Palm Beach Post praised the group’s “polished loveliness” and the Palm Beach Daily News said the “potent combination” of oboe, bassoon and piano had “captured the magic of chamber music,” was rebroadcast on the nationally syndicated radio program, Performance Today. The trio has garnered positive attention in full-length profiles in Chamber Music magazine and the Double Reed Journal.
The Poulenc Trio has a strong commitment to commissioning, performing and recording new works from living composers. Since its founding, the trio has greatly expanded the repertoire available for the oboe, bassoon and piano, with no fewer than 25 new works written and arranged for and premiered by the group, including three triple concertos for the trio and full orchestra.
The Poulenc Trio launched a pioneering concert series called Music at the Museum, in which musical performances are paired with museum exhibitions, with special appearances from guest artists and curators. As part of the series, the trio has collaborated with the National Gallery in Washington DC, the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Hermitage State Museum in Russia.
The trio is deeply engaged in musical and educational outreach programs, including "Pizza and Poulenc," an informal performance and residency series for younger audiences. The trio regularly conducts masterclasses, most recently at the University of Ohio, San Francisco State University, Florida State University and the University of Colima in Mexico.
LIA PURPURA, writer
Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays) and King Baby (poems). Her honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist (for On Looking, essays), National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley, and Ohio State University Press awards in poetry. Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays, and elsewhere. She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a member of the core faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop and teaches in graduate programs throughout the country. She lives in Baltimore, MD.
PROGRAM NOTES
POULENC:
"Above all, a composer should not aim to be fashionable. If you are not fashionable today, you may not be unfashionable tomorrow." —Francis Poulenc
Poulenc was born in Paris on January 7, 1899 and attained both a distinct musical voice and success at an early age. During the 1920s, he was one of the leading spirits of the group of young French composers known as "Les Six." Their music was often light, witty, satirical and urbane. They were in sympathy with and influenced by Stravinsky and "Neo-Classicism," and in opposition to the cerebral music of Schoenberg and of what they considered to be the religio-musical excesses of their countryman Olivier Messiaen. Poulenc, in particular, often juxtaposes passages of wit and irony with lush, sentimental outpourings.
Poulenc composed orchestral, chamber music, ballets, concertos, film scores, and opera, as well as powerful choral and sacred music. He is an acknowledged master in the field of French art songs, with over 130 to his credit. Indeed, melody was the most important element to him. Norbert DuFourcq writes: " . . . he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and exhausted." Of his own work, he wrote, "I know perfectly well that I’m not one of those composers who have made harmonic innovations like Igor (Stravinsky), Ravel, or Debussy, but I think there’s room for ‘New’ music which doesn’t mind using other people’s chords. Wasn’t that the case with Mozart-Schubert?"
The Trio is one of Poulenc’s most popular chamber works. It is in the spirit of an eighteenth century divertissement, light and witty, yet spiced with dissonances. It is eminently logical, combining and contrasting the two members of the double reed family with the percussive quality of the piano. Poulenc took the advice of Ravel (with whom he had been studying) and based the opening Presto on a Haydn Allegro, and the closing Rondo’s refrain begins as a near perfect quote of a well-known Beethoven melody until it makes a surprising turn into the fresh vocabulary of Poulenc's own distinctive language. Poulenc hinted that he patterned this movement after a piano concerto by Saint-Saëns. The Andante is gracefully Mozartean, though any suggestion of parody is dispelled by alluring shifts of tonality and chromaticism. The work is dedicated to Manuel de Falla, whom Poulenc had met at the home of his teacher, Ricardo Vines, in 1918. David Ewen writes, "One is sometimes reminded of a chase, sometimes a dialogue . . . the main musical discourse is entrusted to the piano, while the bassoon is relegated to the role of a discreet commentator and the oboe is allowed to intensify the more lyrical flights. The very heart of Poulenc is in this adroit little work."
SCHNITTKE:
Perhaps the most important Russian composer since Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke began his musical education in Vienna where his father, a journalist and translator, had been posted. In 1948 the family moved to Moscow, where Schnittke studied piano and received a diploma in choral conducting.
In 1985, Schnittke suffered the first of a series of serious strokes. Despite his physical frailty, however, Schnittke experienced no loss of creative imagination or productivity. Beginning in 1990, Schnittke resided in Hamburg, maintaining dual German-Russian citizenship. He died after suffering another stroke in 1998 in Hamburg.
Schnittke’s early music showed the strong influence of Shostakovich; later he was noted above all for his hallmark “polystylistic” idiom. Schnittke wrote in a wide range of genres and styles. He was a prolific composer of scores for the Soviet film industry, and thematic material from three of these scores forms the basis for Suite in the Old Style, a perfect example of his neo-classical style.
Schnittke originally composed the suite for violin and piano, and later made a version for chamber orchestra which has been widely performed.
"Pastorale" and "Ballet" are from a comedy film about a dentist's amorous adventures. "Pantomime" and "Minuet" are from scores for animated children's films. The Fugue comes from a documentary about a sportsman's double life ("Sport, Sport, Sport"). The entire score reflects the varied sound world and fertile creative imagination of Alfred Schnittke.
PREVIN:
André Previn was born to a Jewish family in Berlin and emigrated with them to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazis. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943, and grew up in Los Angeles. An Oscar winner, Previn toured and recorded as a jazz pianist, and was conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1985-89. In the UK, where he was knighted in 1996, Previn is particularly remembered for his performance on the Morecambe and Wise comedy show in 1971, which involved his conducting a spoof performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto. At a concert in Britain afterwards, Previn had to interrupt the concerto to allow the audience time to stop giggling as they remembered the sketch. It is still considered one of the funniest comedy moments of all time.
Andre Previn composed his Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon in 1994 on a joint commission from the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the National Endowment for the Art and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Music for this combination of instruments is unusual but by no means unique; French composers in particular loved the sound of woodwinds, and in some ways Previn's Trio shows virtues that might be thought typically French: clarity, careful attention to the character of the individual instruments, and a sense of play and fun. Yet if the impulse behind this music might be thought French, here it has an American accent: Previn's Trio is full of energy, jazz rhythms, and the open harmonies that have, since the time of Copland and Harris, distinguished American music.
The third movement, "Jaunty," changes meter almost by measure. Previn treats the two wind instruments as a group and sets them in contrast to the piano, which has extended solo passages. The leaping opening idea reappears in many forms, including inversion and near the end the tempo speeds ahead as Previn specifies that the music should be played with "Jazz phrasing": these riffs alternate with brief piano interludes marked "simply." Gradually the movement's opening theme reasserts itself, and the Trio rushes to its blistering close, once again on a unison B-flat. —Eric Bromberger
CUONG:
Described as “show-stealing” (Baltimore City Paper) and a “dazzler” (Broad Street Review), Viet Cuong's music has been performed in venues across the USA, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, and Japan. He has been a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow in Princeton University’s doctoral program, and holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, where he received the Presser Undergraduate Scholarship, the Peabody Alumni Award, and the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. He is among the youngest composers to receive residencies from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and Yaddo.
Cuong’s works have been performed at the Aspen Music Festival, International Double Reed Society Conference, Bowdoin Music Festival, the US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, Midwest Clinic, CBDNA conferences, and the GAMMA-UT Conference. Viet was a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Walter Beeler Memorial Prize from Ithaca College, Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composers Competition, Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association Grant, National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project, and the Prix d’Été Composition Competition.
The composer writes about Trains of Thought: “As I was writing the piece, it began to take on quite a similar atmosphere to my older piece named ‘Pulse Train’ . . . so much, that I chose to continue this theme of trains that aren't actually locomotives, yet still evoke the feeling of a moving train. I hope that this will be an intriguing yet engaging piece for audiences. The piece basically has a consistent tempo for the entire duration, but the colors, registers, and even harmonies vary widely. My goal was to unify these different elements through a consistent, intense rhythmic drive. In addition, I thought (even more than I usually do) about a listener's expectations and how to successfully set up these expectations and manipulate them. Both of these ideas touch on the ‘train of thought’ concept. Ideas often meander aimlessly in one's mind, and one's stream of consciousness can end up somewhere very unexpected. However, different thoughts are usually connected through some sort of common thread. I hope this makes some sense!
The only ‘extended techniques’ I used were some pretty heavy use of bisbigliando (timbral trills), which I notated as quarter-tones, and very spare dampening of the strings in the piano with the fingers.”
The composer's website is https://vietcuongmusic.com
SHOSTAKOVICH:
In a musical career spanning half a century, Shostakovich engrossed himself with a staggeringly diverse range of genres and styles. Beyond the fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets, the lesser-known works of Shostakovich offer intrigue and interest likewise. With the reappraisal of Shostakovich in recent times, his light music is beginning to enjoy unprecedented popularity in concert halls and record catalogues.
“Romance” was the most famous movement of “The Gadfly Suite,” probably Shostakovich's best-known film score. The film, which was based on the novel of the same name by Ethel Lilian Voynich, was set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisings. The story centers on the illegitimate son of a cardinal who joins the fight to unite Italy.
When caught, he faces the firing squad as a willingly martyr. It is a story of faith, disillusionment, revolution, romance, and heroism. A best seller, it exerted a huge cultural influence, and was compulsory reading in the Soviet Union; indeed by the time of Voynich's death, “The Gadfly” is estimated to have sold 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union alone. “Romance” was used in the BBC/PBS TV series, “Reilly, Ace of Spies.”
“A Spin Through Moscow” is the first of the four dance-like movements of the orchestral suite from the comic operetta, “Moscow, Cheryomushki,” written in a bewildering variation of styles, from the Romantic idiom to vulgar popular song. The satirical plot deals with one of the most pressing concerns of urban Russians of the day, the chronic housing shortage and the difficulties of securing livable conditions. “Cheryomushki” translates to “bird-cherry trees,” the name of a real housing estate in southwest Moscow.
ROSSINI:
This “Concert-Fantasy,” composed in 1856, is from a delightful collection of opera-inspired arrangements dating from 19th century Paris and the salon music of that time. It contains works by the opera composers Rossini and Donizetti, who were the delight of the Parisian audiences, in potpourri arrangements by the oboe and bassoon virtuosi (and Conservatoire professors) of the day Charles Triébert, Henri Brod and Eugène Jancourt. These works were not only “tuneful” but enabled the performers to show off their ample virtuosity very well. The rousing Fantaisie Concertante, based on tunes from Rossini’s ”An Italian Girl in Algiers,” is such a work.
POULENC:
"Above all, a composer should not aim to be fashionable. If you are not fashionable today, you may not be unfashionable tomorrow." —Francis Poulenc
Poulenc was born in Paris on January 7, 1899 and attained both a distinct musical voice and success at an early age. During the 1920s, he was one of the leading spirits of the group of young French composers known as "Les Six." Their music was often light, witty, satirical and urbane. They were in sympathy with and influenced by Stravinsky and "Neo-Classicism," and in opposition to the cerebral music of Schoenberg and of what they considered to be the religio-musical excesses of their countryman Olivier Messiaen. Poulenc, in particular, often juxtaposes passages of wit and irony with lush, sentimental outpourings.
Poulenc composed orchestral, chamber music, ballets, concertos, film scores, and opera, as well as powerful choral and sacred music. He is an acknowledged master in the field of French art songs, with over 130 to his credit. Indeed, melody was the most important element to him. Norbert DuFourcq writes: " . . . he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and exhausted." Of his own work, he wrote, "I know perfectly well that I’m not one of those composers who have made harmonic innovations like Igor (Stravinsky), Ravel, or Debussy, but I think there’s room for ‘New’ music which doesn’t mind using other people’s chords. Wasn’t that the case with Mozart-Schubert?"
The Trio is one of Poulenc’s most popular chamber works. It is in the spirit of an eighteenth century divertissement, light and witty, yet spiced with dissonances. It is eminently logical, combining and contrasting the two members of the double reed family with the percussive quality of the piano. Poulenc took the advice of Ravel (with whom he had been studying) and based the opening Presto on a Haydn Allegro, and the closing Rondo’s refrain begins as a near perfect quote of a well-known Beethoven melody until it makes a surprising turn into the fresh vocabulary of Poulenc's own distinctive language. Poulenc hinted that he patterned this movement after a piano concerto by Saint-Saëns. The Andante is gracefully Mozartean, though any suggestion of parody is dispelled by alluring shifts of tonality and chromaticism. The work is dedicated to Manuel de Falla, whom Poulenc had met at the home of his teacher, Ricardo Vines, in 1918. David Ewen writes, "One is sometimes reminded of a chase, sometimes a dialogue . . . the main musical discourse is entrusted to the piano, while the bassoon is relegated to the role of a discreet commentator and the oboe is allowed to intensify the more lyrical flights. The very heart of Poulenc is in this adroit little work."
SCHNITTKE:
Perhaps the most important Russian composer since Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke began his musical education in Vienna where his father, a journalist and translator, had been posted. In 1948 the family moved to Moscow, where Schnittke studied piano and received a diploma in choral conducting.
In 1985, Schnittke suffered the first of a series of serious strokes. Despite his physical frailty, however, Schnittke experienced no loss of creative imagination or productivity. Beginning in 1990, Schnittke resided in Hamburg, maintaining dual German-Russian citizenship. He died after suffering another stroke in 1998 in Hamburg.
Schnittke’s early music showed the strong influence of Shostakovich; later he was noted above all for his hallmark “polystylistic” idiom. Schnittke wrote in a wide range of genres and styles. He was a prolific composer of scores for the Soviet film industry, and thematic material from three of these scores forms the basis for Suite in the Old Style, a perfect example of his neo-classical style.
Schnittke originally composed the suite for violin and piano, and later made a version for chamber orchestra which has been widely performed.
"Pastorale" and "Ballet" are from a comedy film about a dentist's amorous adventures. "Pantomime" and "Minuet" are from scores for animated children's films. The Fugue comes from a documentary about a sportsman's double life ("Sport, Sport, Sport"). The entire score reflects the varied sound world and fertile creative imagination of Alfred Schnittke.
PREVIN:
André Previn was born to a Jewish family in Berlin and emigrated with them to the United States in 1939 to escape the Nazis. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943, and grew up in Los Angeles. An Oscar winner, Previn toured and recorded as a jazz pianist, and was conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1985-89. In the UK, where he was knighted in 1996, Previn is particularly remembered for his performance on the Morecambe and Wise comedy show in 1971, which involved his conducting a spoof performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto. At a concert in Britain afterwards, Previn had to interrupt the concerto to allow the audience time to stop giggling as they remembered the sketch. It is still considered one of the funniest comedy moments of all time.
Andre Previn composed his Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon in 1994 on a joint commission from the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the National Endowment for the Art and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Music for this combination of instruments is unusual but by no means unique; French composers in particular loved the sound of woodwinds, and in some ways Previn's Trio shows virtues that might be thought typically French: clarity, careful attention to the character of the individual instruments, and a sense of play and fun. Yet if the impulse behind this music might be thought French, here it has an American accent: Previn's Trio is full of energy, jazz rhythms, and the open harmonies that have, since the time of Copland and Harris, distinguished American music.
The third movement, "Jaunty," changes meter almost by measure. Previn treats the two wind instruments as a group and sets them in contrast to the piano, which has extended solo passages. The leaping opening idea reappears in many forms, including inversion and near the end the tempo speeds ahead as Previn specifies that the music should be played with "Jazz phrasing": these riffs alternate with brief piano interludes marked "simply." Gradually the movement's opening theme reasserts itself, and the Trio rushes to its blistering close, once again on a unison B-flat. —Eric Bromberger
CUONG:
Described as “show-stealing” (Baltimore City Paper) and a “dazzler” (Broad Street Review), Viet Cuong's music has been performed in venues across the USA, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, and Japan. He has been a Naumburg and Roger Sessions Fellow in Princeton University’s doctoral program, and holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, where he received the Presser Undergraduate Scholarship, the Peabody Alumni Award, and the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. He is among the youngest composers to receive residencies from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and Yaddo.
Cuong’s works have been performed at the Aspen Music Festival, International Double Reed Society Conference, Bowdoin Music Festival, the US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, Midwest Clinic, CBDNA conferences, and the GAMMA-UT Conference. Viet was a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award, Walter Beeler Memorial Prize from Ithaca College, Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composers Competition, Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association Grant, National Band Association Young Composer Mentor Project, and the Prix d’Été Composition Competition.
The composer writes about Trains of Thought: “As I was writing the piece, it began to take on quite a similar atmosphere to my older piece named ‘Pulse Train’ . . . so much, that I chose to continue this theme of trains that aren't actually locomotives, yet still evoke the feeling of a moving train. I hope that this will be an intriguing yet engaging piece for audiences. The piece basically has a consistent tempo for the entire duration, but the colors, registers, and even harmonies vary widely. My goal was to unify these different elements through a consistent, intense rhythmic drive. In addition, I thought (even more than I usually do) about a listener's expectations and how to successfully set up these expectations and manipulate them. Both of these ideas touch on the ‘train of thought’ concept. Ideas often meander aimlessly in one's mind, and one's stream of consciousness can end up somewhere very unexpected. However, different thoughts are usually connected through some sort of common thread. I hope this makes some sense!
The only ‘extended techniques’ I used were some pretty heavy use of bisbigliando (timbral trills), which I notated as quarter-tones, and very spare dampening of the strings in the piano with the fingers.”
The composer's website is https://vietcuongmusic.com
SHOSTAKOVICH:
In a musical career spanning half a century, Shostakovich engrossed himself with a staggeringly diverse range of genres and styles. Beyond the fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets, the lesser-known works of Shostakovich offer intrigue and interest likewise. With the reappraisal of Shostakovich in recent times, his light music is beginning to enjoy unprecedented popularity in concert halls and record catalogues.
“Romance” was the most famous movement of “The Gadfly Suite,” probably Shostakovich's best-known film score. The film, which was based on the novel of the same name by Ethel Lilian Voynich, was set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisings. The story centers on the illegitimate son of a cardinal who joins the fight to unite Italy.
When caught, he faces the firing squad as a willingly martyr. It is a story of faith, disillusionment, revolution, romance, and heroism. A best seller, it exerted a huge cultural influence, and was compulsory reading in the Soviet Union; indeed by the time of Voynich's death, “The Gadfly” is estimated to have sold 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union alone. “Romance” was used in the BBC/PBS TV series, “Reilly, Ace of Spies.”
“A Spin Through Moscow” is the first of the four dance-like movements of the orchestral suite from the comic operetta, “Moscow, Cheryomushki,” written in a bewildering variation of styles, from the Romantic idiom to vulgar popular song. The satirical plot deals with one of the most pressing concerns of urban Russians of the day, the chronic housing shortage and the difficulties of securing livable conditions. “Cheryomushki” translates to “bird-cherry trees,” the name of a real housing estate in southwest Moscow.
ROSSINI:
This “Concert-Fantasy,” composed in 1856, is from a delightful collection of opera-inspired arrangements dating from 19th century Paris and the salon music of that time. It contains works by the opera composers Rossini and Donizetti, who were the delight of the Parisian audiences, in potpourri arrangements by the oboe and bassoon virtuosi (and Conservatoire professors) of the day Charles Triébert, Henri Brod and Eugène Jancourt. These works were not only “tuneful” but enabled the performers to show off their ample virtuosity very well. The rousing Fantaisie Concertante, based on tunes from Rossini’s ”An Italian Girl in Algiers,” is such a work.