Late Notice Again

Greetings. Let's not mention recitals passed. (There have been some.) Since yours truly has become a genuinely busy person, things have gone undone. It's a shame, but it's a fact. 
Anyway, this Sunday we are performing in Frankfort, and the image above tells you what you need to know. I'm quite nervous. St. Peter's is a beautiful place, with wonderful acoustics. The church has been very kind and generous to SYSO, (I'm SYSO's music director), and they have also had musicians from The Music Connection, where I teach, give a Christmas program there. Reasons enough to want to play well, to keep a good relationship growing. Then add in the nature of the program, which is, with one exception music written by cellists with show-off intentions. The one exception is a violin piece by that absolute one-hit wonder, Czardas, by Monti. So I'm definitely nervous. And I hope to see you there.
DEF 

Thusday June 14 @ Crete Creative Gallery & Art School

Short notice, yes.
Thursday June 14 at 7:00 PM we will be playing salon-style pieces for an art event in downtown Crete, IL at the Crete Creative Gallery and Art School. I wish I could say more about the artist beyond the fact that I'm using her image (without specific permission, so I'll gladly remove if asked.) If you go, you will find that the building in the picture is the building that holds the gallery. Her name is Sabine Betschart, and she is from Switzerland. I don't want to over-step, so let's say she is a photographer/image creator. The person that invited us to play is extremely enthusiastic about Sabine's work, and I trust her. So there you go. I hope you'll consider checking it out.

PS
We know we've been pretty quiet. Both of us got crazy busy in the season just passed. Summer will be our time.
Peace,

DEF

Here We Go Again

I guess this says it all. We've got other repertoire in the works, but we can't put it all on one program. (We learned a lesson from our marathons last season.)

If you try to get a computer translation of Soirs etrangers, you will come up with some amusing ones, depending on the service you try. Whatever the title, it's a group of five character pieces about foreign places. One is the Canadian Steppe. Who knew?

The Part piece is the most difficult incredibly easy piece I've ever encountered. Like Mozart, not hard to play, but incredibly challenging to play well. Its title means something like Mirror in the Mirror. It's the last piece he wrote before leaving his homeland. Reflective. (See what I did there?)

Piazzolla - yes, I spelled it wrong in the graphic! - was all the rage thirty years ago. One of the things for which he is noted is that he made the tango into a concert kind of piece. This piece is dedicated to the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. I saw him play it once, and was shocked to find that he played something different than the published version of the last pages. I never did find out what it was he played. We will play it as it's published.

We hope to see you at the end of the month. More soon.

DEF

The Asbury Church Ego Stomp

Our last performance was quite a blow to the ego of yours truly. One of the principle reasons that I wanted to play in Kankakee was that I wanted to give the musicians of the Kankakee Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra, all of whom I adore and work with every Sunday, the chance to see me play. They see me snatch some cellist's instrument and demonstrate a bowing or a technique or one of their hot licks, and I sit in with them in one section or another at some rehearsals, but they have always had to take it on faith that I can play more than that.

Well, it turns out that my snake-bit relationship with Kankakee continues. We drew four, count 'em, four people, aside from our friend that ended up taking videos and pictures. After intermission, there was but one kind soul still there. So we played the Ropartz to her. I must say I wasn't able to get my mind right. I had a lot of stuff swirling through my head as we played. As we were leaving, we ran into four or five people that had heard me play in church that morning. They were looking forward to the recital "next week." Oh well.

I've chosen to share video of the second movement of the sonata despite a small camera mishap at the outset. Of what we have, I think it's fairly representative of the day, and if I keep claiming that it's gorgeous music and we have to win you over one person at a time, it will take generations longer than I will live.

We're working on some new repertoire. The cello sonata of John Ireland is one work, and it's not even the most obscure. Poem by Jurgis Karnavicius anyone? And Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Part, I'm discovering, is the most difficult "easy" piece ever. We should have some summer dates soon.

Until then.

DEF

Asbury United Methodist Church, Kankakee

Time flies. This coming Sunday, April 30, at 3:00 we will be performing again. Though it's been a while since our last performance, a lot has gone on for us. One thing worth mentioning is our visit with local composer Rob Ryndak. He comes from a jazzy kind of space. Mindy took it in stride, I was less comfortable. Sooner or later we'll devise a program that includes a couple of his pieces. It would help if our cellist got some improvising chops. Speaking as that cellist, I can only offer, by way of excuse making, that we classical musicians - orchestra musicians in particular - live in horror of making discordant sounds. Rather than do that we, I, will freeze like a deer in headlights. Not a good thing to do in music, which is, after all, a time art. Stay frozen long enough and even a violist will notice that something's amiss.

Back to our coming performance. As I said already, the date is Sunday April 30. The time is 3:00. Admission is free. (But we do hope you'll consider dropping a bit of the old spendable encouragement into our donation box.) For me the exciting bit is the venue. We will be playing at historic Asbury United Methodist Church in Kankakee.

As you can see, it's a very beautiful place. Having played there before in chamber orchestra and chamber music concerts, I can tell you it's a great place for music.

Another reason I'm excited is due to the fact that I have been the strings coach for the Kankakee Valley Youth Symphony for quite a long time, and I may - if they show up - get a chance to play for those young musicians. (They just finished another successful season this last Sunday.) While I've grabbed someone's cello to demonstrate something many times, and have done sectionals where I played along with or for them, I've always felt it was important that they hear me playing for real. I feel that these young musicians should get the chance to see whether or not I try to practice that which they've all heard me preach. This Sunday is the day.

Our program is the same one we played in March at the Southbridge Church. Faure, Ravel, Debussy, and Ropartz. In March we played the big work first and the short works after intermission, the way they did back in the old days. This time we are trying it the other way, saving the Ropartz sonata for the second half. We'll see how it goes. The short pieces are samples of what was in the air at a point in time, and the sonata shows a thoroughly professional composer of the era making a larger work from the same things in that air. At least that's how I'm thinking right now.

Please consider coming.

DEF

PS

Here's a sample of what's on the first half. A song by Faure.

Au bord de l'eau

March 18 Preview mp3s

We had a nice run-through of our program yesterday at Southbridge Church. What a nice place to play! It takes some getting used to, playing in such a nice acoustic when you're used to a rehearsal space. Here are a couple things we ran through while getting acclimated to the room and playing around with a Zoom5 audio recorder. I haven't managed to figure out a better way for you to hear them, so here are links to mp3s from our Drive. These are both on our March 18 program.

Ravel: Piece en forme de habanera - You can hear kids running around out front at the beginning of this one. They were quite curious about us.

Debussy: Nuits d'etoiles

They are both our "transcriptions" of songs.
I'll do better at the concert - at least I think/hope so. Hope to see you there.

DEF

Program Notes 3/18/17

Our next concert is around the corner (tomorrow actually, 6PM Southbridge Church 15500 73rd Ave Orland Park, IL 60462), and I would like to take the opportunity to post Program Notes. Happy Reading!

Joseph-Guy Ropartz (1864-1955) is an often forgotten and neglected French composer. Ropartz studied composition under Francoise Clement Theodore Dubois and Jules Massanet. Modern composers of the time, such as Debussy, can be heard in Ropartz's music, but perhaps the largest influence of his music is Cesar Franck, with whom he studied organ. Franck's use of cyclic forms and chromatic harmonies can be heard in much of Ropartz's music. He was also influenced by Sacred music, being a devout Catholic. He identified himself not as a Frenchman, but as a Celtic Breton, associating himself with the Breton cultural renaissance of time. Ropartz set many works of Breton writers to music. He often said he was the son of a country "where the goblins populate the moor and dance by the moony nights around the menhirs...where spirits of the unburied dead appear all white above the waters of the Bay of the Departed." Rene Dumesnil wrote in his literary work Le Monde," There is with Ropartz a science of folklore and its proper use, which one admires; but more often than the direct use of popular motifs it is an inspiration drawn from the same soil which nourishes the work, like sap in trees."  During the course of his lifetime, Ropartz composed a numerous amount of works including 5 symphonies, 3 violin sonatas, 2 cello sonatas, a vast amount of chamber works such as string trios, a piano trio, and string quartets, as well as choral music and other instrumental works.

Ropartz's second cello sonata was written in 1918, when the composer was about 54 years old, during which he worked as director of the Nancy Conservatory, before taking up the position as conductor of the Strasbourg the next year. The first movement of the cello sonata opens with a very short Lent intro, then transitioning into a sweeping Ardent where the lyrical cello line is brought forth in a romantic style with sweeping piano underneath. Brief pauses in the momentum almost harken to the music of Debussy, but the original idea reappears, finally slowing down towards the end of the piece with the original theme presented as if in a memory. The second movement, Lent et Calme, begins with a introspective and reflective dialogue between the cello and piano. The movement gains complexity as the texture thickens and polyrhythm becomes a common technique. This movement ends in a bloom of C major sonoroties with the cellist sustaining the tonic, and the piano softly supporting with two struck chords at the end. Based on a folk dance from Brittany, the third movement of this work begins with a very short Tres Lent section having the piano arpeggiate up a B7 chord. It quickly turns to an ostinato bass pattern in the lively Assez anime, in which the cello chimes in the the main theme. Throughout this movement the cello and piano exchange the ostinato pattern and the main theme, until the work ends with a triumphant Tres Vif in the parallel key of A Major.

Contemporaries of Guy Ropartz, compositions by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), and Claude Debussy (1862-1918) are also featured on this program. Both Ravel and Debussy are both regarded as impressionist composers, however both rejected that term. Ravel considered himself a classicist, using more traditional forms from earlier musical periods (such as Baroque). He pulled inspiration from many different nationalities of music. He drew on French composers such as Rameau and Couperin, to his contemporaries, Faure and Debussy. Piece en Forme de Habanera was written during a time when he was writing two other works with a Spanish influence, Rapsodie espagnole and the opera, L’Heure espagnole. Piece was written originally as a vocal study for low voice, however it has been transcribed for many instruments including flute, violin, and cello.

One of the biggest influences of this period of French music was Gabriel Faure. He is regarded as the bridge between Romanticism and the modernism of the late 20th century. Although he used traditional forms, Faure was known for his innovative harmonic progressions and melodies. Much like Guy Ropartz, Faure was a working composer, first a Professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1905 became the director of the Conservatoire, where he remained until ill health forced him to resign. Faure’s output of works is vast, spanning over 100 songs, plus scores of piano music, sonatas for both violin and cello, as well as many other works including his well-known Requiem. This program features two works originally composed for cello and piano: Elegie (1880) and Sicilienne (1893). Les Berceaux (1879) and Au Bord d’leau (c.1875) are both originally written as vocal works, both part of two bigger cycles of Art Song.

Along with Ravel, Claude Debussy is one of the most prominent composers of what is known as Impressionist music. Although he disliked the term for his compositions, impressionist music has a tendency to focus on the moods and emotions aroused by the subject, rather than a detailed “tone-picture.” Impressionist music focuses on “color” via texture and harmonic usage, of which Debussy frequently used chromaticism and non-traditional scales and tonalities. Nuit d’Etoiles (1880) and Les Cloches (1885) are originally composed for voice, while Reverie (1890) is originally a piano composition. All three pieces evoke emotions of dream, sorrow, and reflection of years gone by.

-MS