Protégé Spotlight: Isabelle Durrenberger & Yutong Sun

Violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger and pianist Yutong Sun share stunning works by five women composers, including Amy Beach, Florence Price, Dora Pejačević, Katherine Balch, and Maria Theresia von Paradis.

Chamber music is meant to be up-close and personal—our Spotlight Recitals are exactly that! These casual noontime concerts feature CMNW’s rising-star Protégé Artists with repertoire they have chosen to share for their special spotlight performance. Over the course of 60–75 minutes in the intimate 200-seat Lincoln Recital Hall, experience superb chamber music by some of the world’s most exciting early-career artists!

The Protégé Spotlight Recital series is sponsored by Linda & John Hardham.

PSU, College of the Arts, Lincoln Recital Hall
Tuesday, 7/22 • 12:00 pm PT

Program

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

DORA PEJAČEVIĆ  Violin Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 43 (“Slavic”)

DORA PEJAČEVIĆ (1885–1923) Violin Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 43 (“Slavic”)

The Sonata for Violin & Piano in B-flat Minor, Op. 43 (“Slavic”), written in 1917, is one of the first works in Croatian music which unquestionably commits itself to the national style. There is an obvious attempt at integration of folklorisms (augmented seconds, a double pedal tone in the fifth, simple dance melodies) in a personal musical language. Folk music elements appear in a stylised form, with no attempt at folkloristic regionality. The scintillation of grotesqueness and humour in the final movement forms a pleasing balance here to the dramatic first movement and the lyrical central movement of the sonata.

—© Muzicki Informativni Centar

KATHERINE BALCH “Iaspis” (2013)

KATHERINE BALCH (b. 1991) Iaspis (2013)

An iaspis is a type of sparkling quartz.

—© Katherine Balch

AMY BEACH Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 34

AMY BEACH (1867–1944) Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 34

I. Allegro moderato
II. Scherzo. Molto vivace
III. Largo con dolore
IV. Allegro con fuoco

A very fine concert pianist, Amy Marcy Cheney Beach’s (or Mrs. H.H.A. Beach as she was also known) compositions are well within the traditional European vein, despite the fact that she was one of the first Americans fully trained in the United States. Unlike some of her contemporaries (Arthur Foote) and the next generation of composers (Arthur Farwell and Charles Ives) who started to incorporate folk songs and elements of African-American and Native American music, Beach was not interested in creating a nationalistic American style. Her work is close to Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin.

Along with her Gaelic Symphony, Quintet, and Mass in E flat, the Sonata for Piano and Violin is considered one of Beach’s most important works. It was first performed in 1897 with the composer at the piano and violinist Franz Kniesel, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. Comparisons with Brahms are inevitable: the music is autumnal, serious, and conceived within the “classical” four-movement sonata form with no descriptive titles or programmatic references (I. Allegro moderato, II. Scherzo: molto vivace, III. Largo con dolore, IV. Allegro con fuoco). This is pure music for music’s sake. The two instruments are true partners, sharing the material in equal measure. Richly lyrical and emotional, Beach’s sonata at times contains the same rhythmic ambiguity prevalent in Brahms.

The first movement starts with an ominous passage in octaves on the piano, setting a dark, somber tone. A second movement, light in mood, is a playful scherzo with a lovely contrasting middle section. An extended piano solo begins the highly emotional third movement. The final movement’s momentum surges forward dramatically, with brief interludes of repose and one little “token” contrapuntal passage. This is music that impresses with its musicality and lyricism rather than with technical display. Anyone familiar with the violin sonatas of Brahms, Cesar Franck, and Schumann will find the neglect of this work inexplicable.

—© Mona DeQuis

MARIA THERESIA VON PARADIS “Sicilienne”

MARIA THERESIA VON PARADIS (1759–1824) Sicilienne

In 1924, Schott published a Sicilienne credited to the blind eighteenth-century keyboard virtuoso Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824) as “revised and edited” by violinist Samuel Dushkin. Dushkin claimed that he had discovered this piece as a keyboard work, and had recast it for violin and piano. However, no such work survives among primary manuscript sources for von Paradis, and it is fairly certain that Dushkin composed this little violin encore himself. The doubtful pedigree of the Sicilienne has hardly prevented its popularity; it has a generous, graceful and arching melodic line which shifts gently from major to minor over a simple, cradle-song rocking accompaniment. Violinists often program it as an encore, or in the middle of a concert which is made up of longer, more ambitious pieces; the Sicilienne provides a break for the ears. But it also pays off in musical satisfaction. Nathan Milstein made a famous recording of the Sicilienne in the 1950s, and the popularity of the melody has since leant itself to rearrangement on other instruments.

—© Ryan Linham

FLORENCE PRICE “Elfentanz”

FLORENCE PRICE (1887–1953) Elfentanz

Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence Price (1887-1953) almost immediately faced obstacles to her musical training; the city’s white instructors refused to work with her, leaving her mother in charge of her artistic development. Throughout her life, she was plagued by such discrimination; in a letter to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky (conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the time), she writes explicitly of her “two handicaps…sex and race.” Despite this, she became a nationally acclaimed composer. Her songs were championed by famed contralto Marian Anderson, while her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—the first orchestral work by an African American woman to be performed by a major American orchestra. Many of her works languished in manuscript form, forgotten for over half a century. After being rediscovered in a dilapidated home (Price’s former summer house) in 2009, they are happily now gaining appreciation through publication and performance. Elfentanz (“Dance of the Elves”) is one of several short pieces originally written for violin and piano. It opens with a spritely theme made effervescent by pervasive offbeat rhythms, capturing the whimsy of the title. A lushly romantic middle section follows, with soaring melodies and yearning harmonies. The impish music tiptoes back in, however, and the work closes with a playful pizzicato wink.

—© Anya B. Wilkening

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