Zlatomir Fung & Benjamin Hochman: Protégé Premiere

With his Portland premiere, Oregon-raised 22-year-old cellist Zlatomir Fung — the first American in four decades and the youngest musician ever to win First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition — launches our 2021/22 season. Fung, 2021/22 CMNW Protégé Artist, is praised for his boundless virtuosity and exquisite sensitivity and is certainly among the greatest musical talents today. Benjamin Hochman, internationally recognized pianist and winner of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant, will join him for an exciting program of works by Mendelssohn, Perkinson, Bartók, and beyond. Portland audiences will hear this powerhouse duo just one week before Fung’s Carnegie Hall debut!
2021/22 CMNW Protégé Project Artist

“…building an international reputation as one of the outstanding young string soloists of his generation – praised for his virtuosity, maturity, and profound musicality.”

— The Violin Channel

Learn more about Zlatomir Fung
Learn more about Benjamin Hochman

Thank you to Howard Pifer III & Ellen Macke for their generous sponsorship of this concert!
Learn about how you can help make the music happen as a sponsor HERE.

The Old Church
Sunday, 10/10 • 4:00 pm

Program

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

PROGRAM NOTES: Learn about the music in the Protégé Premiere concert

Zlatomir Fung & Benjamin Hochman: Protégé Premiere

What makes a prodigy? Whether in music, sports, mathematics, chess, or some other area, prodigal ability always emerges from an environment that nurtures and develops ability from early childhood. Felix Mendelssohn had the added advantage of growing up in a musical family. Both of his siblings also showed musical skill, which afforded young Felix opportunities to write music for a wider variety of instruments. The Variations Concertantes were composed for his brother Paul, an accomplished cellist.

“Concertantes” refers to more than one soloist, and Mendelssohn’s Op. 17 showcases the virtuosity of both cello and piano. The primary theme has the sweet simplicity of a folk song or hymn. Each instrument takes turns executing the variations, which become more elaborate and demanding as the music progresses. In the seventh variation, Mendelssohn moves into a tempestuous minor key, and ranges into distant harmonic realms far from its origins. Op. 17 concludes with a restatement of the original theme followed by a heroic peroration that pays homage to Beethoven.

In the late winter of 1849, Robert Schumann “discovered” the French horn. As was his habit when he composed, Schumann tended to focus on a particular genre or instrument. The expressive timbre of the horn and its ability to sound long melodic lines captured Schumann’s imagination. The Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70, is one of several works Schumann created for the valve horn (notes played via finger valves instead of solely through the embouchure). Not long after he finished Op. 70, Schumann gave his publisher permission to issue arrangements for cello/piano and violin/piano. 

Although Schumann wrote Op. 70 with amateur players in mind, and its technical demands correspond to the skills of a talented nonprofessional, there is nothing amateur about this music, particularly the Allegro section. In contrast to the languid Adagio’s sustained melodies sung by the cello, the Allegro explodes in a burst of fire.

“The Adagio is one of the most romantic (and frankly, in my opinion, erotic) partnerships between two instruments imaginable,” says cellist David Finckel. Like two lovers in animated conversation, the soloists take turns expressing their passion as the music builds to a rapturous conclusion.

The music of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, whose mother named him for the Black English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, reflects the composer/conductor’s versatility. He wrote and arranged music for theatre, film scores, classical works, jazz, and popular music, including his arrangements for Marvin Gaye’s platinum-selling 1976 album, “I Want You.”

In 1973, Perkinson wrote Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite for cellist Ronald Lipscomb, who premiered it at Alice Tully Hall in New York. In his own comments, Perkinson wrote, “The common denominator of these tunes is the reflection and statement of a people’s crying out.” Each of its four movements has a distinct flavor: the Fuging Tune fuses Bachian counterpoint with 18th-century fuging tunes (block chord harmonies built on a tenor melody) made popular during the American Revolution by composer William Billings. Song Form utilizes the structure of a typical theatre tune in two contrasting sections (AABA). The slow melodies unfold, punctuated by blue notes and sighing figures.

Calvary Ostinato features a repeating bass line – the ostinato – over which Perkinson layers material based on the melody of the Black spiritual “Surely He Died On Calvary.” In the concluding Perpetual Motion, Perkinson uses a classical technique, modo perpetuo, to emphasize a droning central note around which the cellist executes colorful riffs and exclamations.

Like Perkinson, Béla Bartók infused the flavor of folk and vernacular music of his country into many of his compositions, including the two Rhapsodies for Violin and Piano he wrote in 1928. Although inspired by folk music, the melodies in Rhapsody No. 1 are almost entirely Bartók’s own inventions. That they sound like authentic folk music is a tribute to Bartók’s deep knowledge of indigenous Hungarian sounds, like distinctive off-beat rhythmic accents and non-Western scales. 

The First Rhapsody has two sections, a lassú and a friss, which Bartók borrowed from the Hungarian folk dance known as the csárdás. The pianist maintains the lassú’s emphatic rhythmic tread while the cello features a modal melody full of spicy accents. Bartók sets off the folkloric rhythms and melodies with sophisticated harmonies that verge on expanded jazz chords.

The primary melody of the friss is based on a pre-existing folk tune that sounds remarkably like the beginning notes of the American Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” Its delightful rollicking quality has the feel of a children’s game. The music picks up intensity as the tempo accelerates into a wild-eyed but joyous conclusion.

For most of his life, César Franck concentrated on his work as organist at St. Clothilde and professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where his students included Vincent d’Indy, Henri Duparc, and Ernest Chausson, among others. For this reason, Franck did not create a large body of work, but a few of his compositions have entered the standard repertoire, particularly his Sonata for Violin and Piano, which proved so popular it has been arranged for several other instruments, including this concert’s version for piano and cello.

The opening melody of the Allegretto recurs in later movements, and serves as a unifying device. It is also beautifully lyrical, incorporating lush romanticism with a dazzling array of harmonies. (As a composition teacher, Franck was always urging his students to modulate – move – to other keys). The tempestuous Allegro whirls the music about, scattering fragments of the original melody. The Recitativo-Fantasia reprises the primary theme in an introspective, almost improvisatory manner, as if the instruments are ruminating to themselves. In the concluding Allegretto poco mosso, Franck returns to the original key of A major and presents yet another singable melody. Echoes of fragments from the previous movements are interspersed among the phrases of this new tune, which Franck presents in canon, one instrument following the other. Ultimately old and new combine in an upwelling of abiding joy.

—© Elizabeth Schwartz

MENDELSSOHN Variations Concertantes, Op. 17

SCHUMANN Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR PERKINSON Lamentations: Black/Folk Song Suite for Solo Cello

BÉLA BARTÓK Rhapsody for Cello and Piano

FRANCK Cello Sonata in A Major (Arr. Jules Delsart)

Concert Program

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