[Ritz
Chamber Players]
Presents
Ritz
Chamber Players
Sunday,
January 15, 2012, 2 p.m.
University
Auditorium
The Ritz Chamber Players
The Ritz Chamber Players
Program
Trio
No. 3 in G Major for Flute, Violin and Cello (“London”) Franz
Joseph Haydn
Spiritoso
Andante
Allegro
Sonata
for Flute and Piano Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson
Andante
— Allegro — Meno mosso
Slowly
Rondo
“I’m
a Soldier in the army of the Lord” Spiritual Suite for Baritone and
Sextet Lena
McLin
Intermission
Piano
Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major for Piano and Strings, Op. 87 Antonín
Dvorák
Allegro
con fuoco
Lento
Allegro
moderato, grazioso
Finale:
Allegro, ma non troppo
Program
Notes
Trio
No. 3 in G Major for Flute, Violin and Cello (“London”)
Franz
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Composed
in 1794.
Patronage
– the custom of kings, queens, dukes, earls, princes and princesses
retaining musicians and
composers on their house staff – benefited Austrian composer Franz
Joseph Haydn like few others.
He spent his entire early and mid-career in the employment of the
Esterházy family, a family
that “stood at the very top of the powerful Hungarian nobility,”
according to musicologist Karl
Geiringer.
Lucky
for him and for us. Though Haydn’s position in the royal household
was certainly not that
of equals with the family, he was respected as a musician and given
plenty of freedom to create.
And create he did: during his 30 years in their employment, Haydn
composed more than 85
symphonies, at least 40 string quartets, sacred choral works a
plenty, not to mention songs, masses,
oratorios, cantatas, harpsichord sonatas, concertos and a slew of
chamber works for many
various combinations of instruments.
And
this was not the end of his prolific composing. After leaving the
Esterházy estate, north ofVienna,
Haydn was already a household name in music circles throughout
Europe. He would triumph
in public concerts in London and soon became an international “star”
of Classical era music.
The
Trio No. 3 in G Major for Flute, Violin and Cello (“London”) is
among the many works that Haydn
composed after Esterházy, this particular one in 1794 in London.
Originally written for two
flutes and cello, it is now also popular in its present
instrumentation.
The
first movement, marked Spirituoso
(“spiritedly”),
is a typical opening movement in the so-called “gallant” style of
the Classical era. Nothing over-the-top emotionally: rather, it is
stately, elegant
and refined. Imagine a conversation among friends that never gets out
of hand. The slower
second movement (Andante)
is languid and sensual, yet still polished and polite. The Allegro
finale,
by comparison, is an enthusiastic – and cheerfully chirpy –
conclusion.
— Program
note by Dave Kopplin.
Sonata
for Flute and Piano
Coleridge-Taylor
Perkinson (1932-2004)
Composed
in 2003. Premiered in June 2003 by the Ritz Chamber Players.
Coleridge-Taylor
Perkinson was born in 1932 into a musical family in New York City —
his mother
was a professional pianist, organist and director of a local theater
— and he seemed destined
to musical prominence by his very name, given after the London-born
composer Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), the son of a white English woman and a
physician from Sierra
Leone, who became a cultural hero to American audiences (New York
orchestral players described
him as the “black Mahler” on his visit to that city in 1910).
Perkinson
demonstrated musical gifts early, and he was admitted in 1945 to New
York’s prestigious
High School of Music and Art; his mentor there, Hugh Ross, once
introduced him to Igor
Stravinsky. Perkinson began composing while still a teenager, and he
received the LaGuardia Prize
from the school for his choral work And
Behold upon
his graduation in 1949. He entered New York University as an
education major in 1949, but transferred to the Manhattan School of
Music two years later to study composition with Charles Mills and
Vittorio Giannini and conducting with Jonel Perlea. He received his
baccalaureate in 1953 and his master’s degree the following year.
The
life-long influence of jazz on Perkinson’s musical personality was
nurtured at Manhattan by
his classmates Julius Watkins, Herbie Mann, Donald Byrd and Max Roach
— from 1964-65 he
played piano in the Max Roach Quartet and at various times served as
arranger and music director
for such eminent popular artists as Marvin Gaye, Lou Rawls, Barbara
McNair, Melvin Van
Peebles and Harry Belafonte. Perkinson took further advanced training
in conducting at
the Berkshire Music Center (1954), Netherlands Radio Union in
Hilversum (1960-1963), Mozarteum
in Salzburg (1960) and privately with Dimitri Mitropoulos, Lovro von
Matacic, Franco
Ferrara and Dean Dixon, and in composition with Earl Kim at Princeton
University (1959-1962).
He
went on to teach at Brooklyn College and Indiana University; hold conducting positions with
the Dessoff Choirs and the Brooklyn Community Symphony Orchestra;
serve as music director
for Jerome Robbins’ American Theater Lab, Dance Theatre of Harlem
and Alvin Ailey’s American
Dance Theater; and co-found the Symphony of the New World, the first
integrated symphony
orchestra in the United States and serve as both its associate conductor (1965-70) and music
director (1972-73).
In
1998, Perkinson was appointed artistic director of the performance
program at the Center for Black
Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. At the time of his death,
in 2004, Perkinson was
also serving as composer-in-residence for the Ritz Chamber Players of
Jacksonville, Fla. Perkinson
composed his three-movement Sonata for Flute and Piano in 2003 during
his residency
with the Ritz Chamber Players.
“I’m
a Soldier in the Army of the Lord” Spiritual Suite for Baritone and
Sextet
Lena
McLin (b. 1928)
The
distinguished educator, minister of music, performer, composer and
arranger Lena McLin was
born in Atlanta in 1928 to the Reverend Benjamin J. Johnson and his
wife, Bernice Dorsey Johnson,
who directed the music at her husband’s church. “We didn’t
know anything but music,” McLin remembered of her early years.
Lena
was sent to live with her uncle in Chicago when she was 5, Thomas A.
Dorsey, after her mother
died in childbirth. Often called “the father of black gospel music”
for his performancesand
early recordings of both traditional and new gospel songs, his
establishment of the first black
gospel music publishing company, his founding of the National
Convention of Gospel Choirs
and Choruses and his pioneering use of gospel music in two of
Chicago’s most influential churches
– Dorsey was a seminal influence for young Lena, who became
thoroughly grounded in
the spirit and traditions of gospel and occasionally served as an
accompanist for her uncle’s Pilgrim
Baptist Church choir.
McLin
returned to Atlanta to attend Booker T. Washington High School, where
her friends included
Martin Luther King, Jr. She graduated in 1947, received her
undergraduate degree from Spelman
College in 1951 and went for advanced study to Chicago’s American
Conservatory of Music
and Roosevelt University. She taught in the Chicago Public Schools
for 36 years, where she touched
hundreds of students, including Metropolitan Opera baritone Mark
Rucker and soprano Nicole
Heaston; Lyric Opera of Chicago soprano Jonita Latimore; Broadway and
television star Mandy
Patinkin; and R&B artist R. Kelly.
McLin
has also served as Pastor and Minister of Music at the Holy Vessel
Baptist Church in Chicago
since she founded the congregation in 1982; authored Pulse:
A History of Music;
and published
hundreds of arrangements and original compositions ranging from art
songs to orchestral
works and liturgical Masses. McLin’s contributions to education and
musical and American
culture have been recognized with the Outstanding Teacher Award from
the Chicago Public
Schools and honorary degrees from Spelman College and Virginia Union
University. Her “spiritual
suite” for baritone and sextet takes its title and inspiration from
the traditional gospel song
I’m
a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.
Piano
Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major for Piano and Strings, Op. 87
Atonín
Dvorák (1841-1904)
Premiered
on November 23, 1890 in Prague by Hanus Trnecek (piano), Ferdinand
Lachner (violin), Petr Mares (viola) and Hanus Wihan (cello).
Czech
composer Atonín Dvorák felt himself a man of the people, and indeed
he was: his father was
a butcher, and he thought his son would naturally follow in his
footsteps. Luckily, Atonín’s musical
talent was recognized early on and his career path set. He was a
full-time musician in his
late teens, but that is not like being a full-time accountant or a
full-time butcher. He cobbled together
a meager living as a freelancer, playing violin and viola in various
local orchestras in and around
his hometown of Nelahozeves (north of Prague). He supplemented his
income teaching piano
lessons on the side. From there he got a gig playing organ at St.
Adalbert’s in Prague while also
securing an Austrian government stipend directed to impecunious young
artists. The committee that decided who was to receive these
stipends included well-known music critic Eduard
Hanslick, as well as celebrated composer Johannes Brahms. Both men
championed Dvorák’s
career and set him on a path to international success. His first
piano quartet came from the
period right after being awarded that money.
Also
as a result of this recognition, he secured a deal with a publisher,
Fritz Simrock of Berlin, also
Brahms’ publisher, who published Dvorák’s first piano quartet.
Based on the popularity of
that work, Simrock himself asked the young composer to deliver a
second quartet. That was 1885.
It was slow in coming, not completed until 1889.
Dvorák
was enamored with the folk musical tradition. As a youngster, he was
taken with the music
of his native Bohemia, and later on after his career was established,
he made a visit to the United
States and was captivated by the folk music of African Americans he
heard there (his New World
Symphony,
in fact, was inspired by the spirituals he heard in America).
The
opening of the Quartet’s Allegro
con fuoco (Quick,
with fire), though not specifically Bohemian
or Czech in nature, certainly displays a boldness more fitting a
Bohemian dance than a
concert hall. Not to say that this work is all bluster and bravado:
the second movement opens with
the cello’s mournful wail. Each instrument, in turn, spins out a
similar melancholy tune until
they all join in a forceful musical conversation, five mini-themes in
all. The third movement returns
to the dance-infused style of the first movement, though it starts
with a waltz over which an
exotic melody floats in and out. An up-tempo middle section follows
that is more mad dash than
waltz. The finale begins with an upbeat and vivacious dance. Though
there is the occasional menacing
interjection, the cheerfulness prevails in the end.
— Program
note by Dave Kopplin.
— Additional
notes/biographies by Dr. Richard E. Rodda.
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