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RECITAL 1995--PROGRAM NOTES
Ludwig van Beethoven: Ten National Airs with Variations
Albert Roussel: Deux poèmes de Ronsard
Astor Piazzolla: Histoire du tango
Daniel Pinkham: Missa Domestica
- Intermission -
Robert DiDomenica: Variations on a Tonal Theme
Walter Gieseking: Variations on a Theme of Grieg
Beethoven, writing to his friend and publisher Simrock, declared "I believe a folk-song hunt is better than the man-hunts of our much-vaunted heroes." Beethoven's enthusiasm for folk-song hunting, arranging and varying was encouraged by the ample pocketbook of the Scottish music-lover George Thomson, whose commissions from Beethoven included the sixteen folksongs with variations "for Piano with the accompaniment of a Flute or a Violin" opp. 105 and 107. Thomson stipulated that the "accompaniment" be optional. Beethoven, apparently incapable of writing anything completely superfluous, responded with a flute part decidedly subservient to the piano part, yet sufficiently independent that a performance is unsatisfactory without it. The thing thus created, neither fish nor fowl, is ignored by flutists not interested in the role of "accompanist," and ignored by pianists because of the need for another instrumentalist. But these pieces were written in the same year as op. 106, the Hammerklavier sonata, and they are of interest if only for the sometimes startling ways they juxtapose the charm of the tunes with the sonorities and procedures of Beethoven's late piano style.
The works of the Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard have long attracted the interest of French composers, not least in 1924 when the Revue musicale published a Tombeau de Ronsard including, in addition to Roussel's contribution, songs by Caplet, Honegger, Aubert, Dukas, and Ravel. Instead of the customary piano, Roussel partners the voice with the flute. This is the dusky, sinuous flute of Debussy and Ravel, whose commentary--improvisatory, oblique, and mercurial--is the perfect foil for the melancholy of Ronsard's texts.
Rossignol mon mignon, qui dans cette saulaie
Vas seul de branche en branche à ton gré voletant,
Et chantes à l'envi de moi qui vais chantant
Celle qu'il faut toujours que dans la bouche j'aie.
Nous soupirons tous deux; ta douce voix s'essaie
De sonner l'amitié d'une qui t'aime tant,
Et moi, triste, je vais la beauté regrettant
Qui m'a fait dans le coeur une si aigre plaie.
Toutefois, Rossignol, nous différons d'un point,
C'est que tu es aimé, et je ne le suis point,
Bien que tous deux ayons les musiques pareilles:
Car tu fléchis t'amie au doux bruit de tes sons,
Mais la mienne, qui prend à dépit mes chansons,
Pour ne les écouter se bouche les oreilles.
Ciel, aer et vents, plains et mons découverts,
Tertres vineux et forèts verdoyantes,
Rivages tors et sources ondoyantes,
Taillis rasés et vous, bocages verts,
Antres moussus à demi-front ouverts,
Prés, boutons, fleurs et herbes rousoyantes,
Coutaux vineux et plages blondoyantes,
Et vous rochers, écoliers de mes vers!
Puisq'au partir, rongé de soin et d'ire,
A ce bel oeil adieu je n'ai su dire,
Qui près ou loin me détient en émoi,
Je vous suppli', ciel, aer, vens, monts et plaines,
Taillis, forèts, rivages et fontaines,
Antres, prés, fleurs, dites-le-lui pour moi.
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Nightingale, my friend: in this willow-grove
You flutter at will from branch to branch;
Your song is the envy of me--I go, singing
Of her whose name must forever be on my lips.
Longing fills us both; your sweet voice aspires
To sound the love of her who loves you so;
And melancholy I go, grieving the beauty
Who left in my heart such a bitter wound.
Nonetheless, nightingale, in one way we differ--
It's that you are loved, and I am not,
Though we both sing similar strains:
For your beloved melts at the sound of your song,
While mine, vexed by my voice,
So as not to hear, stops her ears.
Sky, air and winds, plains and bare mountains,
Azure hills and verdant forests,
Twisting riverbanks, and flowing springs,
Close-trimmed copses, and you, bosky woodlands,
Mossy lairs with half-hidden openings,
Fields, buds, flowers, and dewy grasses,
Purple shores and golden beaches,
And you, cliffs--students of my verse!
Since, when at parting, racked by pain and anger,
I could not bid this fair eye farewell that
Near or far, ensnares me in anguish,
I beg you, sky, air, winds, hills and plains,
Thickets, forests, shores and fountains,
Dens, meadows, flowers--say it for me.
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One of Astor Piazzolla's last recordings is emblazoned with the legend "Tango + Tragedy + Comedy + Kilombo (Whorehouse) = New Tango." It was Piazzolla's life work to bring the tango from the 19th into the 20th century, and from the bordellos and dance halls of Argentina into the concert halls of Europe and America. He his among the astonishingly varied group of composers who were enabled by the teaching of Nadia Boulanger to become more authentically themselves. Boulanger--doyenne of high European art--encouraged Piazzolla not to become another "European" composer, but to apply to the tango the lessons of his study with her. Piazzolla's Histoire du tango is his only work for flute and guitar--the instruments associated with the first flowering of the form, in Buenos Aires, in 1882.
The long and fruitful career of Daniel Pinkham, a native of Lynn, has been centered in Boston--with the exception of a stay in France, to study with (who else?) Nadia Boulanger. While Piazzolla's leisurely, loose-limbed forms betray their origins in a time and place where the pace of life was slow and the nights long, Pinkham's music is informed by a brevity and economy at once Yankee and French. In fact, with his Missa Domestica we may repent the indulgences of the Histoire du tango in shorter time than most any movement of Piazzolla. But Pinkham knows how to draw much expression from few notes and, like Roussel, knows the expressive potential of an artfully placed triad. Missa Domestica was conceived for the lustrous mezzo-soprano voice of D'Anna Fortunato.
As a flutist, Robert Di Domenica has performed with groups ranging from the Modern Jazz Quartet to the Metropolitan Opera. As a composer, he has been a serialist since his studies in the early 1950s with Schoenberg student Josef Schmid, though his innately lyrical style also reflects his love of Italian opera. These parallel careers collude in his Variations for solo flute: the theme dates from 1946, when it was transcribed by a sharp-eared colleague, without Di Domenica's knowledge, as Di Domenica was improvising; the Variations date from 1961, when the Greek-American flutist John Perras requested a brief piece for an upcoming tour. The central variation is a Greek dance, in lively 7/8 time, in honor of the dedicatee. The individual variations, unlike the clearly differentiated variations of Beethoven or Gieseking, sometimes flow seamlessly together, lending the music the character of a free fantasy.
The German pianist Walter Gieseking is widely remembered as an unsurpassed interpreter of Debussy and Ravel. Virtually unknown is the fact that he was also the composer of a small but polished body of chamber music, which Gieseking himself never mentions in his autobiography, apart from a works list in an appendix. Gieseking's father was an amateur flutist, which may account for the Sonatine he wrote for the instrument in 1937. This work caught the attention of the Greek-American flutist, Lambros Dimitrios Callimahos, whose ambitious solo career was taking him throughout Europe and America. In Salzburg he met Gieseking, and encouraged him to write again for the flute. The result was that early in 1939 Callimahos, as part of the first flute recital ever heard in Carnegie Hall, gave the world premiere of these Variations, performing with none other than Gieseking himself. The theme is from the first of Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces for piano.
With the advent of World War Two Callimahos, a formidable linguist and polymath, became a master cryptologist for the United States Army, where his work was crucial to the deciphering of German and Japanese codes. He never returned to concert stage. Gieseking was accused of cultural collaboration with the Nazi regime, and while he was later cleared by an Allied Court in Germany, the accusations have continued to cloud his reputation, and have perhaps had a chilling effect on interest in his compositions. So this substantial addition to the flute repertoire, which stretches to the utmost the capabilities of both flutist and pianist, is another minor casualty of the Great War--or as Beethoven might have put it, the Great Man-Hunt. We hope you will agree it is time it should be heard again.
--Notes and translations, Fenwick Smith
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