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INCANDESCENCE: Blazing Works by Joan Tower, Bartók & the “Kreutzer”

INCANDESCENCE: Blazing Works by Joan Tower, Bartók & the “Kreutzer”

Few artists creating music today embody the passion and fire of Beethoven quite like America’s greatest living woman composer, the incomparable Joan Tower. From our World Premiere of her dynamic To Sing or Dance for Violin and Percussion—featuring Artistic Director Soovin Kim and the exhilarating Sandbox Percussion—to Beethoven’s passionate “Kreutzer” Sonata, this concert will blaze.

CMNW Co-Commission • World Premiere

Joan Tower’s To Sing or Dance was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest with the generous support of the CMNW Commissioning Club, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and Emerald City Music.

This concert is sponsored by Powell’s Books.

Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Premieres Monday, 7/15 • 8:00 pm PT

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SINGLE TICKETS

Program

Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.

JOAN TOWER “To Sing or Dance”

JOAN TOWER (b. 1938) To Sing or Dance (2024) (20’)

CMNW Co-Commission • World Premiere

To Sing or Dance is dedicated to violinist Soovin Kim and Sandbox Percussion.

When I spent some time with the wonderful composer Arvo Pärt, we had a discussion about the origins of music. He felt music came from the voice (or singing) and I had a different idea that it came from the drum (or dancing). Basically, this difference of opinion reflects a longtime split between composers who write mostly for the voice (Pärt, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, etc.) and those that compose mostly for instruments (me, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc.).

When I was asked to write a piece for violin and percussion, that difference became immediately apparent: how to have these two very different instruments in the same space, living fairly comfortably together. What I discovered was that the pitched percussion (vibraphones, glockenspiels, and crotales) were an easier match to join the violin. So right at the beginning, when the percussion starts alone, there is a dialogue between non-pitched and pitched percussion, which eventually invites the violin to join the discussion. And, eventually, the violin starts picking up on some of the rhythms of the percussion as another interaction. Occasionally, I gave solo space to both the violin and the percussion group to let them develop forward into their individual and special DNAs without having to adapt to the other one.

I want to thank violinist Soovin Kim and Sandbox Percussion for taking on this piece.

—© Joan Tower

BÉLA BARTÓK Violin Sonata No. 2, Sz. 76

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945) Violin Sonata No. 2, Sz. 76 (1922) (20’)

I. Molto moderato
II. Allegretto

Béla Bartók’s first two violin sonatas, from 1921 and 1922, respectively, were written for his friend and colleague Jelly d’Arányi, an outstanding violinist and great-niece of 19th-century violin virtuoso, Joseph Joachim. In 1923, d’Arányi and Bartók premiered Sz. 76 in Berlin.

Both sonatas reflect Bartók’s in-depth explorations of 12-tone composition methods pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg. Into the non-tonal language (despite Bartók’s claim that Sz. 76 was written in C Major, the prevailing tonality is the tritone, a highly dissonant and unstable interval), Bartók incorporates the violin techniques of Hungarian folk music—Roma glissandos, non-vibrato, sharp accents, and asymmetrical rhythms. The two-movement structure, in lieu of a standard three-movement sonata format, parallels the Hungarian verbunkos, featuring a slow (lassú) and fast (friss) section played without pause.

The violin parts of both sonatas are unusually challenging, as Bartók explained in a 1924 letter: “The violin part of the two violin sonatas … is extraordinarily difficult, and it is only a violinist of the top class who has any chance of learning them.”

In the Molto moderato of Sz. 76, violin and piano seem to pursue their own individual musical explorations, offset by occasional clashes. For the most part, however, each player traces a solitary path, parallel to but not in conjunction with one other. The Allegretto begins with pizzicato violin, and the two instruments explore the non-tonal landscape together using folk dance rhythms. The primitive vitality of this music is irresistible, propelling itself forward towards a—perhaps ironic?—C Major conclusion.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”)

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”)

I. Adagio sostenuto – Presto
II. Andante con variazioni
III. Finale: Presto

The history of the Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (the “Kreutzer” Sonata), is old and highly mythologized. Beethoven originally wrote the Sonata for a young virtuoso named George Bridgetower, who premiered it with Beethoven to the composer’s great pleasure. Apparently the two later had a quarrel over a romantic interest, however, and Beethoven decided he would rather dedicate the sonata to Rodolphe Kreutzer, the French violinist whom he played one of the Opus 12s with years earlier but hadn’t seen in years.

According to Hector Berlioz, Kreutzer found his sonata “outrageously unintelligible,” but others since have disagreed. Leo Tolstoy took his interest in the sonata to the level of obsession, depicting it as holding a special power to arouse erotic feelings in his story The Kreutzer Sonata.

Beethoven published the “Kreutzer” with the title “almost in the manner of a concerto,” emphasizing the importance of the violinist as well as the sonata’s extreme virtuosity. Indeed, this is the first violin sonata that truly treats both players as equals.

The massive, but three-movement, sonata begins with a legendary and dissonant introduction, immediately showing off difficult techniques in both piano and violin. The sonata does not reach its “key” of A Major (Beethoven didn’t actually give the piece a key) until a suddenly calm section well into the development. Until then, he rapidly moves between related keys with quasi-orchestral textures, created by a liberal use of the ranges of both piano and violin—that is to say lots and lots of notes. The “Kreutzer” Sonata is far beyond any other Beethoven violin sonata in its breadth, its virtuosity, and its incessant development of small melodic fragments.

The equally broad second movement, an Andante theme and variations, is based around a long and complex melody—this is unusual because themes are generally simple so that the variations can build in many different directions. The “Kreutzer” dates from fairly early in Beethoven’s career—1803—but he already shows the incredible talent for creating variations that would be the source of later masterpieces like the Diabelli Variations. After the intensity of the first movement, the variety of this central movement provides a much-needed respite.

The Presto finale was originally composed for the earlier Violin Sonata Op. 30, No. 1, but Beethoven chose to use it for the “Kreutzer” instead. This bouncy movement gives the feeling of perpetual motion with occasional moments of pause. The overall tone is lighter than that of the first movement, leading some to wonder whether Beethoven intended the sonata to end with this movement or added it in a last-minute time crunch. Regardless, it presents a fittingly enigmatic and long-winded conclusion to what certainly represented a giant step in the history of the violin sonata.

—© Ethan Allred

Artists

Gloria Chien Gloria Chien Piano & Artistic Director

Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters.  The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. Chien studied extensively at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She, with Kim, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music.

Chien is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist. Chien received her B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music as a student of Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun.

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Soovin Kim Soovin Kim Violin & Artistic Director

Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.

Kim is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became Artistic Directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.


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Joan Tower Joan Tower Composer

Joan Tower’s (b. 1938) music is noted by a number of defining qualities: driving rhythms and colorful orchestrations influenced by the sounds and sensations of a childhood spent in South America; approachability for listeners and players alike, resulting from her engagement with the performers of her music (often written with specific musicians in mind) and her own performances as a pianist. Early works were serial in conception. In the 1970s she moved toward more tonal, Messiaen-like sonorities. She has written a number of works paying homage to composers such as Beethoven (Concerto for Piano), Stravinsky (Petroushskates), and Copland (Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman). She was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission, Made in America. Its top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition.


Upcoming Concerts & Events

Sandbox Percussion Sandbox Percussion Percussion Ensemble

Described as “exhilarating” (The New York Times) and “utterly mesmerizing” (The Guardian), Grammy-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion is dedicated to artistry in contemporary chamber music. The ensemble was brought together in 2011 by a love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together. Today, Sandbox Percussion captivates worldwide audiences with visually and aurally stunning performances.

Sandbox Percussion’s 2021 album, Seven Pillars, was nominated for two Grammy Awards—Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The ensemble performed the piece more than 15 times throughout the United States and Europe last season, including at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

In the 2023-24 season, Sandbox Percussion performs Seven Pillars at the VIVO Music Festival (Columbus, OH), the New School (New York), APERIO, Music of the Americas (Houston), the Frost School of Music (Miami), Brown University (Providence, RI), and the Peace Center (Greenville, SC), among other venues.

This season, Sandbox Percussion also releases their fourth album, Wilderness, featuring the piece of the same name by experimental composer Jerome Begin. Other season highlights include two performances at the Park Avenue Armory (New York), featuring premieres by Chris Cerrone and Viet Cuong, a performance at the 92nd Street Y with pianist and new-music champion Conor Hanick featuring the New York premiere of two works composed for them by Christopher Cerrone and by Tyshawn Sorey, and an appearance at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Sandbox Percussion will also continue to champion Viet Cuong’s acclaimed concerto for percussion quartet, Re(new)al, including performances with the Des Moines Symphony and with the Albany Symphony, which commissioned the piece.

Besides maintaining an international performance schedule, Sandbox Percussion holds the position of Ensemble-in-Residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The New School’s College of Performing Arts. In 2016, Sandbox Percussion founded the Sandbox Percussion Seminar, introducing percussion students to the leading percussion chamber music of the day.

Sandbox Percussion endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Remo drumheads, and Black Swamp accessories.

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