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PROGRAM NOTES November 14th , Sunday 2 PM

Cello Sonata
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
"Of all the musicians who ever lived, Claude Debussy was one of the most original and most adventurous; at the same time, unlike many original adventurers, he was a consummate master within the limits of his exquisite style" writes William W. Austin in the opening paragraph of his authoritative book Music in the 20th Century. Debussy is best known for his sweeping orchestral pictures such as Nocturnes and La Mer, and music critics were quick to use the term "Impressionism," to describe his music. Debussy himself disliked having the term, derived from a perceived resemblance to the works of artists like Monet and Renoir, applied to his compositions. In a 1908 letter to his music publisher Jacques Durand, the composer wrote: "I am trying to make something new – realities, as it were: what imbeciles call 'impressionism.'"  Encouraged by Durand, Debussy composed the sonata for cello and piano as the first of a planned series of six sonatas for diverse instruments in honor of 18th century French musicians. Debussy was already suffering the effects of the cancer that would eventually kill him, when he composed the piece in a few days during late July and early August 1915, while staying at Pourville, on the coast of Normandy. The composer died in Paris, while the city was under German attack in March 1918, having completed only two of the other planned sonatas: the sonata for harp, flute and viola, and the sonata for violin and piano. Modeled after the monothematic sonatas of the 18th century, the brief three-movement Cello Sonata is typical of Debussy's music in its use of whole tones, modes and pentatonic scales, while extended cello techniques such as playing in harmonics and left hand pizzicato continue to challenge cellists.

Sonata in A Major
Philippe Gaubert (1879 – 1941)
Flutist Barry Crawford says of Gaubert, "In the Sonata of 1917 Gaubert takes the unusual step of prescribing specific qualities of sound in certain passages. At the beginning of the first movement the flute is to play 'avec une sonorite très claire,' and at the beginning of the second 'avec une sonorite calme et penetrante.' The opening theme of the Sonata is followed immediately by a pair of graceful arabesques built on the whole-tone scale, an exotic device made more familiar by its deployment in L'après-midi d'un faune. Throughout the work, Gaubert's many meticulously notated manipulations of tempo, phrasing, and dynamics, and his free elaboration and development of his melodic material, give this Sonata, despite its clear forms, a feeling of improvisational freedom and spontaneity. Borrowing a successful device of Cesar Franck, Gaubert brings the work to a satisfying close by paraphrasing, at the end of the last movement, the beginning of the first movement. The piece is dedicated 'à la memoire de mon cher maître Paul Taffanel,' who had died in 1908. Gaubert had published several works with flute in the intervening years, but perhaps he felt that this fine sonata was his first effort to be fully worthy of his mentor, collaborator and friend."

Vocalise
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Published in 1912 as the last of Rachmaninoff's Fourteen Songs, Op. 34, the Vocalise was written for either soprano or tenor voice, and piano. Instead of using a text, the singer chooses one vowel on which to sing the long legato lines of the piece. Vocalise was very well received initially and has also enjoyed continuing popularity, leading to a bewildering variety of arrangements of the piece for solo instruments as different as the clarinet, the accordion, the trumpet and the double bass, as well as groups of instruments as diverse as the piano trio or 24 cellos.
About the theremin cello, Jonathan Golove writes: "The theremin cello represents the first attempt to harness the human potential to shape and manipulate electronic sound by means of the technical apparatus of the modern player of bowed string instruments, a technique with centuries of development behind it, but still bound up with the artifacts of a pre-technological age.  I came to the project of learning to play the theremin cello for a performance of Edgar Varese's Ecuatorial at the University at Buffalo in 2002, the first time that work was heard with the instrument for which it had been conceived since its 1934 premiere. There were three points of contact:  David Felder, artistic director of the Slee Sinfonietta, who had programmed the work, Olivia Mathis, a musicologist and scholar of both Varese and Theremin, and Floyd Engels, who had built beautiful replicas of this ingenious but largely forgotten invention."
Golove also notes that "As a modern player of both acoustic and electric cello, I was intrigued by the formidable challenge offered by Varese and by the instrument. I have come to feel that the significance, as well as the potential, of the theremin cello far exceeds that of the few, rather impressive uses to which it was put during the inventor's time in New York, the most salient of which are Leopold Stokowski's inclusion of one in the Philadelphia Orchestra's low string section and Varese's composition of two solo parts in Ecuatorial. The works heard on today's program come from the repertoire of the great pioneer virtuoso of the more widely known space-controlled theremin, Clara Rockmore."

Hebrew Melody
Joseph Achron (1886-1943)
Born in Lithuania, Achron began playing the violin at the age of five, and went on to study violin playing for four years at the St Petersburg Conservatory under the renowned Russian violin pedagogue Leopold Auer. Achron joined the music committee of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1911, and the story goes that after attending his first meeting, he was so inspired that he went home and immediately composed the Hebrew Melody, Op. 33, for violin and piano; the work remains his most popular composition. Drafted into the Russian army during World War I, Achron played concerts for frontline troops. After performing over 1000 concerts in Russia between 1918 and 1922, Achron moved, first to Berlin, and then in 1924 to America. After a decade as an active musician in New York, Achron moved to Los Angeles, where he performed and composed for movie studios while also promoting new music. Arnold Schoenberg, his good friend, wrote that "Joseph Achron was one of the most underrated modern composers. The originality and profound elaboration of Joseph Achron's ideas guarantee that his works will last."

Café Music
Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947)
The composer writes that "the idea to compose Café Music first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray's Restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Murray's employs a house trio which plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music -- music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray's. For example, early 20th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway styles are all represented. A paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement. Café Music was commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) and received its premiere during a SPCO chamber concert in January 1987." The infectiously bouncy rhythms of the three movement work for piano, violin, and cello have earned it continuing popularity, making it one of the most frequently requested works of contemporary chamber music on classical radio stations throughout the country.

-    Program Notes by Jan Jezioro