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Program Notes for Friday, April 13, 8:00pm   2012

Program Notes by Jan Jezioro
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu barely escaped from Paris during the German invasion of 1940, a genuinely life-saving flight, as he had been blacklisted by the Nazi's for his connections to the Czech resistance, arriving in New York in March, 1941. Deeply moved by a retaliatory Nazi extermination in 1942 of all of the several hundred inhabitants of a small town outside of Prague, Martinu composed his somber Memorial to Lidice in 1943, and he then composed his dirge-like Symphony No. 3, a work full of the composer's despair during the early months of 1944, while living in a cottage a friend had lent him in Ridgefield, Connecticut. During the summer of that same year Martinu composed a very different kind of work, the Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, H.300, a work once described by the composer-critic Virgil Thomson as "a gem of bright sound and cheerful sentiment that does not sound like any other music," but which does reflect the composer's familiarity with French music of the 1920s, including that of his longtime teacher Albert Roussel.

Igor Stravinsky composed his sole Violin Concerto for the Russian-American violinist Samuel Dushkin in 1931, but when Stravinsky and Dushkin started touring together in1932, they often found it difficult to line up orchestras for Stravinsky to conduct for Dushkin's performances in the Violin Concerto.  Stravinsky decided that it would be easier for the two of them to tour as recital artists, and he composed the Duo Concertant, written for violin and piano, for use in their recital programs. In an interview Stravinsky gave in Budapest, he mentioned that he was inspired in composing the work by the 'Eclogues' of Virgil, the greatest poet of ancient Rome. The composer gave the five movements of the neoclassical work titles that evoke the musical forms and idioms of antique times, including the songlike 'cantilene,' the pastoral 'eclogue', and the dancelike 'gigue. The final, tragic 'dithyrambe' movement has been described as "the most lyrically beautiful music Stravinsky ever wrote."

Born in the Soviet Union in 1936, David Finko pursued an unusual dual career as both a composer and a ship designer. Following in his father's footsteps, Finko became a naval architect, designing nuclear submarines, a career that he followed until he immigrated to America in 1979. While still in the USSR, Finko had developed a close working relationship with the Russian viola virtuoso Alexey Ludevig, composing several works, including a virtuosic one movement concerto for him. Finko composed his Sonata for Viola (Lamentations of Jeremiah) for Ludevig, who premiered the work in 1969, and the deeply soulful work has since been transcribed for solo violin.

The contemporary American composer Paul Schoenfield achieved a remarkable popular success with his immediately accessible 1986 chamber work, Café Music, a piece that has enjoyed numerous live performances, including a pair of appearances on previous different 'A Musical Feast' programs, as well as innumerable airplays on public radio stations. Among the many works that Schoenfield has composed since, one of the most engaging is his 2010 work, Six Chassidic Songs, for flute and piano, a work that is ultimately derived from piano music that the composer improvised at Hasidic gatherings in the mid-1980's.