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.

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

L'invitation au château, FP 138

In 1947 composer Francis Poulenc was commissioned to write incidental music for a new satirical play by the French playwright Jean Anouilh, Invitation to the Castle (French: L'Invitation au château). The score was published the following year. It was the second collaboration of the Parisian artists, the first being Léocadia in 1940 shortly after the Nazi occupation of Paris, which was scored for the interesting combination of clarinet, bassoon, violin, doublebass and piano. L'Invitation au château was a much simpler undertaking, with playwright writing: "That is what is happening. I do not think I want to make it into a play with incidental music, I should not like to have needed music to get atmosphere. I imagine that to express happiness or its illusion in music you would only need to write a very curious waltz, returning all the time to suggest the dance, just one theme occasionally in a minor key when things are going badly, that is all." (https://audienceaccess.co/bio/HRT-44984) No. 7 is a extended version of this "curious waltz" that reappears throughout the score.    

—Julie A. Linder

*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.