Protégé Recital Series: Claire Wells

With roots in Eugene and international recognition for her musical voice, vivid imagination, and dynamic presentations, violinist Claire Wells has expanded her performance footprint throughout Europe. Since she was a Protégé Artist two years ago, Claire won the Susan Wadsworth Young Concert Artists International Auditions and Young Concert Artist Jacobs Fellowship and has performed at dozens of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Many have witnessed her exuberant finesse on CMNW stages, both as a Protégé in 2024 and at last summer’s festival. Claire will perform alongside three-time YAI Piano Fellow Pualina Lim in this special recital of Debussy, Prokofiev, Brahms, and Bartók, sure to entertain and melt hearts.

Irving Levin Performance Hall at All Classical Radio
Sunday, 10/4 • 4:00 pm

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SINGLE TICKETS

Program

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

CLAUDE DEBUSSY Violin Sonata, CD 148

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Violin Sonata, CD 148 (1917)

I. Allegro vivo
II. Intermède: Fantasque et léger
III. Finale: Très animé

During World War I Claude Debussy, suffering from a debilitating form of cancer, embarked on a project of composing six sonatas for various combinations of instruments. He completed three (the Cello Sonata of 1915; the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp of 1915; and the Violin Sonata of 1916–17), but was unable to finish the others before his death in 1918. His feelings toward the Violin Sonata were mixed at best: “I only wrote the sonata to be rid of the thing . . . [It] will be interesting from a documentary point of view and as an example of what is produced by a sick man in a time of war.”

Since then, however, audiences have found far more interest in the Sonata than Debussy anticipated. Having recognized that public taste moved in a traditional direction during the dire wartime years, Debussy adapted accordingly. A primary influence here is the music of César Franck and his “cyclic” form, in which melodies from early movements are recalled later in the work. The Allegro vivo opens with an austere introduction that evolves at moments into a tempestuous fury, with abstract fragments entering, receding, and returning throughout the movement. The enigmatic Intermède is at times jaunty and at others unsettling, using repeated notes as a constant canvas on which to interject pointed interruptions or beautiful melodies. The acrobatic Finale uses darkly mysterious chromatic scales, as well as melodies that seem to go in circles, fragmented, but recognizable.

—© Ethan Allred

SERGEI PROKOFIEV 5 Mélodies, Op. 35bis

PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) 5 Mélodies, Op. 35bis (1920)

I. Andante
II. Lento, ma non troppo
III. Animato, ma non allegro
IV. Andantino leggiero e scherzando
V. Andante non troppo

In 1920, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev set out for the United States with high hopes for what awaited him across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, his travels got off to a rough start. Not only had one of his suitcases been stolen, but the highly anticipated Chicago premiere of his opera Love for Three Oranges fell apart.

That December, eager for a change of scenery, Prokofiev journeyed to California to perform a series of piano recitals. He found himself astonished by California’s varied landscape and mild weather. As he wrote from Los Angeles, “I’m as ecstatic about California as it is about me.”

Filled with inspiration, Prokofiev put the finishing touches on Five Songs without Words for Voice and Piano, which would later become 5 Mélodies, Op. 35bis. Echoing Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, each song explores a different facet of the beauty of melody, radiating the contentment Prokofiev felt during his Californian sojourn.

—© Ethan Allred

BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100 (20’)

I. Allegro amabile
II. Andante tranquillo – Vivace
III. Allegretto grazioso, quasi Andante

Characterized by gracious melodies and an easy partnership between violin and piano, the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major offers some of Brahms’s most idiomatic writing for the violin. The score is littered with his constant reminders: dolce, teneramente (tenderly), espressivo, sempre dolce. Even the tempo indication for the first movement spells out clearly the mood Brahms wishes to project: Allegro amabile – “Fast, [but with] love.” The movement begins with a graceful, flowing melody for piano, its phrases always answered by the violin. The violin soon picks up this melody and later shares the equally relaxed second subject with the piano.

The second movement combines the slow movement and the scherzo. The Andante tranquillo gives way to a tautly sprung Vivace, and these sections alternate through the movement. The music comes to a quiet close, then Brahms ends with a quick joke: a seven-bar fragment of the scherzo jumps up to bring the movement to its real close.

The violin has the stirring main theme of the concluding Allegretto grazioso. Alternating episodes grow more impassioned as the movement proceeds, but the noble main idea carries the music to its close.

—© Eric Bromberger

BARTÓK Violin Rhapsody No. 2, Sz. 90

BARTÓK (1881–1945) Violin Rhapsody No. 2, Sz. 90 (1928)

I. Lassú: Moderato
II. Friss: Allegro moderato

Bartók dedicated years to a systematic study of Hungarian and Romanian folk music. Working as an ethnomusicologist with his countryman Zoltán Kodály, Bartók identified folk melodies and regional characteristics, preserving them with wax-cylinder phonographs. He assimilated the folk-musical language so thoroughly, it was impossible to identify where the folk music ends and his original composition begins.

In 1928, Bartók wrote two Rhapsodies based on Hungarian Romanian Transylvanian folk-dance melodies. He orchestrated No. 2 in 1929 and revised it in 1944. Rhapsody No. 2 has two movements, following the Hungarian czárdas dance’s traditional pairing of a lassú (slow) and a friss (fast). Cummings in Allmusic commented: No. 2 “is more serious in its lightness, bolder in its good-naturedness” than No. 1.

The first movement, Lassú, Moderato, begins in a melancholy, improvisatory manner. The violin presents exotic, meandering melodies replicating folk fiddling, with expressive slides and double stops. The faster second movement, Friss, Allegro moderato, a vigorous, rhythmically syncopated dance with folk motifs, highlights the soloist’s technical capabilities. Bartók dedicated the work to Zoltán Székely, a renowned Hungarian violinist.

—© Susan Halpern

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