Program

Short Intermission

Program Notes

Gust of Embers*

Icicles, snow flakes, frosty windows, icy winds...

A long cold winter yearns for a warm soft spring...

Gust of Embers won 2009 Athena Chamber Music Composition Competition. It was written at MacDowell Colony, NH, in January 2008.

Mountain Song*

Mountain Song is in six movements, each inspired by different landscapes. The outer movement has “lifting spirits” and employs the montuno style of rhythm combined with five note-scales for a unique flavor, while movements in-between provide contrasts employing colors and more dense chromaticism. It can be performed in any combination of movements.

L'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale)

Toward the end of World War I, Stravinsky was facing the harsh realities of economic deprivation: payments from his German publishers were being held back, and the Russian Revolution had cut off his income from the family estate. 

As [Stravinky] explained it: “Ramuz and I got hold of the idea of creating a sort of little traveling theater, easy to transport from place to place and to show in even small localities.” Thus out of necessity came the chamber-sized neo-classic orchestra. As for their first project, Stravinsky recalled, “We were particularly drawn to the cycle of legends dealing with the adventures of the soldier who deserted, and the Devil who inexorably comes to carry off his soul.” Armed with the fool-proof dramatic stuff of the Faust story, the two created The Soldier’s Tale, “to be read (Narrator, Soldier, Devil), played, and danced (Princess).”

Stravinsky’s own trio arrangement of the work seems to have evolved as something of a sentimental/economic compromise, having been made for the benefit of Werner Reinhart, an amateur clarinetist who had “paid for everybody and everything, including the music” involved in the work’s first production, in Lausanne in September 1918.

In his Chronicle, Stravinsky explains that he had considered using the piano in his original scoring, but decided against it for a number of reasons. His motive for the transcription [as a] Suite in trio form has clearly afforded the music the opportunity for extensive exposure. Either in its original version for seven musicians or the trio arrangement, the music itself has a raw, biting edge that slices away any and all vestiges of Romanticism, exposing a sardonic heart that beats with constantly shifting rhythmic accents, is propelled by obsessive ostinatos (a device to which the composer was dedicated throughout his life), and sets up dissonances that crackle abrasively within an essentially diatonic harmonic structure. 

— Edited from the LA Philharmonic website.  Original notes written by Orrin Howard.

Violin Sonata in A Major

The marriage of violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and Louise Bourdeau in 1886 inspired Franck’s [only] Violin Sonata. Like Franck, Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was born in Liège. A composer himself, he became a champion of the newest French music. (In addition to Franck’s Sonata, the Concerto and Poème by Chausson and Debussy’s String Quartet are dedicated to [Ysaye.]) Although 64 years old in 1886, Franck was still known primarily as an organist – at the important church St. Clotilde and the lavish public arts palace the Trocadéro, as well as professor of organ at the Conservatory. The recognition that he gained in the last years of his life, and then increasingly afterwards, was due in large part to the fervent supporters such as Ysaÿe. The violinist played Franck’s Sonata many times on his wide-ranging tours, telling his listeners that he played it “con amore,” [with love], since it was a wedding present.

— Edited from the Los Angeles Philharmonic website. Original notes by John Henken

*Performers' Note

Both Gust of Embers and Mountain Song are newer works that have not yet been recorded for this instrumentation. This recital is in preparation for their first recorded public performance this summer at the International Clarinet Association Conference, ClarinetFest.