"From Quartets to Craigslist" Concerts Conclude Chamber Music Festival

(Quotes in this article are from Jeff O’Kelly’s program notes in the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival Program unless otherwise noted.)

“From Quartets to Craigslist,” the last concert series of the 12^th annual Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, is as diverse, era-hopping, and ambitious as its name implies.

 It begins, as all concerts have this season, with a “feline-canine” song, in fact, three of them, from the modern composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and the Festival’s own Composer-in-Residence, Gabriel Kahane

 “The Cat and the Mouse by Copland was written in 1920 when Copland was studying composition with Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) in Paris. It was first heard as part of a recital of student works. In attendance was music publisher Jacques Durand who immediately approached the composer and arranged for its publication, thus bringing Copland to the attention of many European musicians before his name was widely known in the United States.

“The piece is clearly programmatic with slower chordal passages suggesting the stalking cat and fast scurrying figures the mouse. A series of fortissimo chords near the end suggest the cat’s final pounce and victory, but a ghostly echo of the mouse’s music bring the piece to a taunting close.”

 This piece will be performed by Jon Kimura Parker at the piano.

 Although Barber’s  The Monk and his Cat was written in 1953, as part of the Hermit Songs, the song series is based on a collection of poems written between the 8th and 13th centuries by anonymous Irish monks, translated into English by modern poets including W. H. Auden (1907– 1973) who translated The Monk and his Cat.

 The song is in the style of a gentle waltz and tells of the simple pleasure its two protagonists take in each other’s company and their respective vocations. The Hermit Songs were premiered in 1953 at the Library of Congress with soprano Leontyne Price and the composer at the piano. Gabriel Kahane will sing The Monk and his Cat, and his father, Jeffrey Kahane, will perform at the piano.

Gabriel Kahane provided the following notes on Django: Tiny Variations on a Big Dog, written this year:

 “Django is my father’s dog. He (the dog) was found alongside a desolate stretch of California’s I-5. He (again, the dog) is obsessed with Ligeti and is known to howl in ecstasy when he hears pygmy rhythms banged out on the piano. It should be noted, in case it’s not quite clear, that my father is the pianist at this performance, and that the piece is dedicated lovingly to him in appreciation of the peerless musicianship he has offered to me as a model for my own endeavors.”

 Then the concerts hearken back to the 18^th and Josef Haydn (1732–1809), with his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 74, No. 2, Hob. III:73, performed by the Miró Quartet, with Daniel Ching and Tereza Stanislav on the violin, John Largess on viola and Joshua Gindele on cello.

 “The Op. 74 quartets were written in 1793 and premiered a year later during Haydn’s second visit to London with violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon — who played such an instrumental role (pun intended) in the composer’s English success — taking the 1st violin part.

 “The first movement is in sonata-allegro form but, as in several of his other quartets, is essentially monothematic. The inner movements are the usual slow movement and Menuetto. The B-flat Major Andante grazioso consists of a theme with three variations and a short coda based on the theme. Haydn’s surprise here is a two-bar phrase strategically inserted before the return of the theme and its variants to create a “false start” effect. The second variation is in B-flat minor (rather outside the comfort zone of many amateur players of the day) and — yet another surprise — omits the false start.

 “The Menuetto begins regularly enough but moves in some rather unexpected (if momentary) harmonic directions while the central Trio surprises with its change to the ‘warm’ key of D-flat Major.

 “The finale is a headlong tour-de-force in Sonata-Rondo form. Here all sorts of delights await the listener in passages of syncopated accompaniments and masterful counterpoint while the frequently virtuosic writing for the 1st violin must have delighted Salomon and ensured the quartet’s success with its first London audience.”

 Then the concert fast-forwards to the New World with Kane’s Craigslistlieder, written in 2006.” Craigslistlieder is an eight-movement song cycle that sets anonymous classified ads from craigslist.org, the much-trafficked advertising website. Kahane will talk about this work from the stage” during the concert performance, as well as sing the piece from the piano.

 Short Stuff – Étude No. 4  by another young American composer, Nico Muhly (b. 1981), is next on the playlist.

“Vermont-born Muhly studied English Literature at Columbia University and music at The Juilliard School, earning degrees in both in 2003 and 2004. He has written works for several major American orchestras and worked with several nonclassical musicians including Björk and Antony of  ’Antony and the  Johnsons.’ He has also worked on several films and composed the score for the 2008 Academy Award-winning film The Reader.  Short Stuff (2009) was composed for pianist Jeffrey Kahane.”

The composer has provided the following remarks:

Short Stuff is a true miniature. Rather than trying to cram a bunch of material into a small length of time, I started with a three-note cell and allowed it to grow into an aggressive little machine. The piece is punctuated by a series of rests, which I find to be challenges to the performer: what are you going to do with your hands when there’s nothing to do?”

 Jeffrey Kahane also performs the next piece, by musical prodigy Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) — Songs Without Words.

“The growing popularity, availability and affordability of the piano transformed the musical life of Europe. In an increasingly industrialized and wealthy society, larger portions of the upper and middle classes had the resources to indulge in hobbies and entertainment. The piano’s supremacy was established early in the 19th century and it became an indispensable accoutrement in any well-to-do home, just as some degree of skill on the instrument became indispensable for certain family members… The age of amateur musicians was beginning, and they demanded new music which would charm them without overtaxing their attention spans or technical abilities.

 “Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words met such a demand although some are beyond the abilities of all but the most talented amateurs – unwed daughters or otherwise! Op. 38, No. 6 sometimes bears the nickname Duetto because its melodic phrases are traded back and forth between different registers of the piano.

 “The main challenge here is for the pianist to play the melody and most of its accompaniment in the same hand. Op. 67, No. 2 features a staccato guitar-like accompaniment with the “sung” melody on top. Here the pianist must clearly distinguish between staccato and legato articulation, often in the same hand. Op. 67, No. 4 is the well-known Spinning Song — a real finger-twister which tests the pianist’s ability to articulate every note clearly, but all with a very light touch at a rapid tempo.”

 Jeffrey Kahane is joined at the piano by OICMF Artistic Advisor Jon Kimura Parker, as they perform Slavonic Dance for Piano, Four Hands Op. 46, No. 8.

If a composer could be said to be a “bridge” between the Old World and classical composition and the New World and the emergence of new resources, Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) is the most likely candidate. Fourteen years before his two-year stay in the U.S. as direction of the National Conservatoire of Music, Dvořák composed Slavonic Dance.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) … recommended Dvořák’s music to Brahms’ own publisher, Fritz Simrock. The latter, pleased with Dvořák’s first offering (the Moravian Duets for soprano, contralto and piano) asked for more, specifically something with a dance-like character. The result was the first set of Slavonic Dances(1878) for piano duet.

 “They proved to be immensely popular and brought Dvořák much wider recognition in Europe than he had previously enjoyed. A second set (Op. 72) followed in 1886 and, at Simrock’s request, both sets were orchestrated by the composer.

 “The melodies of the Slavonic Dance are entirely Dvořák’s own although they are based on characteristics of primarily Bohemian folk music absorbed by the composer in his youth. The last dance of Op. 46 is a Furiant — a lively dance form often used by Dvořák which features frequent alternations of major and minor keys and shifts of meter.

 The first part of the “Quartets to Craigslist” concert concludes with Phantasy Quintet for Bass Clarinet and String Quartet in F minor, Op. 93 (1932) by York Bowen, a British composer who died in 1961.

 “York was born in London to a well-to-do family and received first musical instruction from his mother, almost immediately showing a talent for the piano. At the age of fourteen he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy where he studied composition and piano. He received numerous prizes during this period and by 1907 was appointed as a professor at the Academy.

 “After service in World War I, he resumed a career of teaching, composition and performing (mostly chamber music). His music, largely in a late romantic style, received considerable praise before the war.

 “After the war his style remained largely unchanged leaving him out-of-step with the new sense of angst which permeated European art at that time. He continued his triple-career of teaching, composing and performing until his death in 1961, but by that time his compositions were largely ignored outside of England and have remained unexplored if not entirely forgotten until recently when, thanks largely to the efforts of the York Bowen Society, there has been a small but enthusiastic resurgence of interest.

 “Although Bowen’s music is often referred to as ‘romantic’ in style, the Phantasy Quintet shows definite impressionistic influences in its harmonic language and fluid instrumental writing. It does not strictly adhere to well-established musical forms, but generally moves from slower to faster music with a short coda to end the piece which reprises the opening thematic material. The bass-clarinet part is freely (“phreely”?) rhapsodic and seems to suggest that it is the main character in an unspecified narrative.”

 Owen Kotler, clarinetist, will join the Miró Quartet, playing the bass clarinet, in this composition.

Following intermission, “From Quartets to Craiglist” audiences will hear Dvořák’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 87, performed by

 “While clearly speaking in his own musical voice, the twin influences of Czech folk music and Johannes Brahms on Dvořák’s music are so well known that it is easy to forget that Richard Wagner was also an important influence. This is probably a consequence of the relative unfamiliarity (outside the former Czechoslovakia) of Dvořák’s operas where the Wagnerian strain is most readily found.

 “In the E-flat Major piano quartet Dvořák emphasizes harmonic instability in ways that reveal Wagner’s influence. This of course, is not to say that the music sounds like Wagner, but it adds complexity to a work which is already quite experimental in its details of structure and texture.”

Festival musicians Chee-Yun, playing the violin, Aloysia Friedmann, playing viola, Anne Martindale Williamson cello and Jon Kimura Parker on piano will perform this 38-minute tour de force.

 Pamela Loew and Linda Henry sponsor the Aug. 28 performance of “From Quartets to Craigslist.” Max Gellert sponors the reception.

On Saturday, the Festival’s concluding concert is sponsored by the Anders Foundation. Trisha and Jonathan Loop sponsor the reception.

Tickets for all OICMF events continue to be available through waiting lists, which are re-established two to three hours prior to each concert. “Though ticket-seekers may still be disappointed, we have very productive wait lists,” says OICMF Executive Director Victoria Parker.” Call  376-2281.