Musicians
|
Alexander Timofeev debuted as a pianist and composer at 19, performing his Piano Concerto
(2003) with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Moldova. He won First Prizes at Niš International Piano Competition, Serbia (2006) and the Margaret Guthman Piano Competition, Atlanta (2006), and received Third Prize at the 2007 MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition (Toronto). As a composer, his accolades include the Audience Choice Award and Commission at the American Composers Orchestra's 2017 Underwood New Music Readings; he is the finalist of the 2021 Organ Taurida International Composition Competition, and 2018 International Competition of the Moscow Conservatory for Young Composers ‘New Classics’ (Russia); winner of the 2016 Richard Weerts Composition Competition (USA); finalist of the 2016 Thailand International Composition Festival Competition; and Commissioned Composer for the 2019 NJMTA conference. His compositions have been broadcast on WQXR, Pro TV (Romania) and Tele-Radio Moldova. Alexander Timofeev completed his doctoral studies in piano performance at the University of Maryland, College Park (2012). He holds a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music (2008) and B.M. degree from Rowan University (2006). His teachers included Veda Zuponcic, Douglas Humpherys, Larissa Dedova, Zlata Tkach, Lawrence Moss, Harold Oliver, Victor Levinzon, Aliona Vardanean, and Mikhail Sechkin. Dr. Timofeev is currently Artist-in-Residence and 3/4-time faculty at Rowan University. |
|
Joshua Elmore is the principal bassoonist of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Joshua has performed with many orchestras around the World including The Chineke! Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Charleston Symphony, and performed a side-by-side collaboration at Carnegie Hall with The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Before joining the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Joshua completed his professional studies certificate at the Colburn School in Los Angeles as a student of Richard Beene. Joshua was a Kovner Fellow graduate of The Juilliard School where he studied under Judith LeClair and appeared often as principal bassoon of The Juilliard Orchestra. Joshua has been a member of The New York String Orchestra Seminar and was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Music Academy of the West, and the National Orchestra Institute where he recorded a Grammy-nominated orchestral album with NAXOS. Originally from Cleveland, Joshua began his official bassoon studies with Mark DeMio before joining the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a student of Barrick Stees. During his high school years, Joshua was principal bassoonist of the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony and was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, and regularly rehearsed and performed in Severance Hall. Joshua was a member of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) where he toured China and Europe with Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, and Christoph Eschenbach. Joshua has also performed on NPR’s From The Top and was selected to receive the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. In 2022, Joshua served as the Principal Bassoon for the Gateways Music Festival for their Carnegie Hall debut as the first All-African American Orchestra to perform at the Hall. |
|
Stas Chernyshev, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, is recently appointed principal clarinetist of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He is the founder and artistic director of Fort Worth Performances for Autism, and a co-director of Opus Nova Chamber Music Series. Mr. Chernyshev is a prize winner of many international competitions, and has appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as well as in Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Russia, South Korea, Japan. A devoted chamber musician, Mr. Chernyshev has collaborated with Grammy-winning ensemblesEighth Blackbird and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, commissioned new works for his instrument. He has been featured on WQXR -New York’s classical music station and WHYY’s television program - On Stage at Curtis. Mr. Chernyshev holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, and a Master’s degree from St. Petersburg Conservatory, Russia. He is an alumnus of Ensemble Connect (formerly Ensemble ACJW), a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute, and ArtistYear, a program of the Curtis Institute of Music.
|
|
Ann Hung, born in Taipei, Taiwan, began her musical studies at a young age, starting with piano at age five and clarinet at age nine. Dr. Hung is an active performer in the Dallas and Fort Worth area who regularly performs in the realms of both the orchestral and chamber music. She has shared the stage with the Fort Worth Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the faculty of the Juilliard School. Dr. Hung is always pushing the boundaries of her repertoire and skills, such as collaborating with jazz musicians and commissioning new composers. As a proponent of new music, she has avidlycommissioned new works including a wind quintet with her quintet Opus Now premiering in Symphony Space in NYC. One of the new works that Dr. Hung commissioned is included in a recently released album “Stained Glass Story” by Eldad Tarmu. Dr. Hung is currently teaching in Lewisville ISD, Burleson ISD as private lesson instructor and often plays with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. She is the associate director of the Fort Worth Performances for Autism and co- founder of Opus Nova Chamber Music Series.
|
Program Notes
Claude Debussy: Clair de lune
The universally loved “Claire de lune” (French for "Moonlight") is the third movement of a suite for solo piano entitled, Suite bergamasque, which Debussy began composing in 1890, when he was twenty-eight years old. It's a relatively early work, giving us some insight into his development as a composer. When the suite was published in 1905, Debussy had revised it somewhat. Its four movements—after their titles (or original titles)--allude to dances of the distant past, but the more relevant association is with the work of the symbolist poet, Paul Verlaine. Debussy left no doubt that his creative life was heavily influenced by both literature and painting—even expressing some regret for not having become a painter rather than a musician. And while the “impressionism” of painting is clear as a metaphor for much of his musical work, it is basic to understanding his musical psyche to appreciate the influence that the “symbolist” poets—Verlaine, Malarmé, and others—had in his style. Beginning during his student years Debussy had composed a series of melodies (songs), many of which were set to texts by Verlaine, whose poetry Debussy later used for many of his major compositions. Suite bergamasque takes it name from an allusion in Verlaine’s poem, "Claire de lune," and, of course, the title of the poem is also the title of the evergreen third movement of Debussy’s suite. The movement has no other meaning than that of a delicate evocation of the idea in the title.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Nocturne Op. 19 No. 4
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nocturne in C-sharp minor was first published in 1873 as part of his 'Six Pieces on a Single Theme', Op. 19. This intimate composition, although less well-known than some of his grand orchestral works, provides a window into the composer's soul, reflecting the era's fascination with night-time meditations. Tchaikovsky revisited the piece later in his career, reiterating its significance in his musical repertoire.
The nocturne's debut failed to garner the immediate accolades that many of Tchaikovsky's works received, yet it has since claimed its rightful place as a jewel in the crown of piano literature. The enduring appreciation for the piece can be attributed to its subsequent rediscovery by notable pianists who have championed its performance and recording, thus contributing to its prominence in the classical canon. Tonight you will hear a version for bassoon and piano arranged by I. Kostlan.
Piazzolla: “Spring” from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Ástor Piazzolla has created a musical genre and style that began with the traditional elements of the Argentine tango, but has infused it with much of advanced twentieth century “classical” techniques. The result almost obscures its popular roots. Jazz, Stravinsky, Bartók, dissonance, counterpoint, ubiquitous chromaticism, and varied orchestration—they all are incorporated into Piazolla’s musical take on the tango. Piazzolla was born in Argentina, but moved with his parents in 1924 to New York City, living in Greenwich Village, immersing himself in the musical culture and atmosphere of the great city. Jazz, classical music, the blues—all were his métier—all the while his family exposed him to traditional Argentine music at home, including the sound of the bandoneón (the indigenous Argentine accordion, rather like a concertina). He moved back to Argentina in 1936, and there ensued a long and remarkable career as composer of tangos. But, by the early fifties he was immersed in the study of Stravinsky and Bartók, studying composition with Ginastera, listening to lots of jazz, and composing “classical” music. In 1953 he won a major prize with a symphony that he had composed, and was off to Paris to study with the famed Nadia Boulanger. There, she disabused Piazolla of dreams of becoming another Bartók, and insisted that he must acknowledge his brilliance in the tango, and to follow it for his success. And so he did, but not without taking with him his deep engagement with the techniques of jazz, blues, and complicated contemporary art music. All of these elements fuse into his signature style: “Nuevo Tango.” You might flippantly call it Stravinsky and Bartók meet Carlos Gardel.
Typically, his works are performed by a small tango group, generally, but not always, consisting of bandoneón, violin, electric guitar, double bass, and piano. “Spring,” or “Primavera Porteña,” was composed in 1970 (two of the other “seasons” were written separately and earlier) for solo piano, and then for the small tango group, and like so many of his works, has been rescored for larger ensemble. It is quite representative of his “new tango” style of jagged melodic motifs—often repeated motorically, walking bass lines with a tango thump just before beat four, harmonic chromaticism, and some traditional counterpoint. There are three distinct sections—after Vivaldi’s, but there is none of the latter’s pictorialism. Rather than anything specifically seasonal in this “primavera,” it, like the other three, is generally representative of the city of Buenos Aries. Tango traditionalists were originally horrified by his style of tango, but he now is universally popular—at least with progressives.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata (“Moonlight”) in C sharp minor, Op.27, no.2
The year 1801 marked not only the dawn of a new century, but also a significant new approach on Beethoven’s part to matters of form and structure in the piano sonata. The bold use of unusual and exotic keys, quasi-programmatic elements, irregular forms and unorthodox ordering of movements all contributed to heralding a new note in Beethoven’s sonatas. The composer called each of his two sonatas Op. 27 quasi una fantasia. In these works, the improvisatory impulse, free flights of fancy and avoidance of conventional forms are carried further than ever before. In Eric Blom’s words, these sonatas “show the composer emancipating himself from the classical sonata pattern and doing it as drastically as possible by substituting pieces in a freely chosen form for the traditional first movement that was always the most important part of a sonata, though not invariably in what we now call sonata form.”
While the first of the two Op. 27 sonatas may be one of Beethoven’s least-known, its sister, the Moonlight, is surely the best-known. The subtitle, as many people are aware, was not given by Beethoven. It came from the German critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab (l799-l860), who once commented that the first movement made him think of “a vision of a boat on Lake Lucerne by moonlight.” In point of fact, the composer never saw the Lake of Lucerne, and in any case, the mood ascribed to the sonata fits only the first movement. Furthermore, Beethoven never even heard of the appellation “Moonlight” Sonata, as it was not affixed until five years after his death. The work was very popular in Beethoven’s lifetime, though the composer himself did not have a particularly high regard for it, and was annoyed that the public afforded it greater status than many of his other works.
The musical and structural (as opposed to the romantic and fictitious) elements of the sonata are considerable. The Moonlight is written in a rarely-used key, especially for the period - C-sharp minor. Mozart did not write a single work in this key, and Haydn did so only once. Also, most unusually, all three movements are based in the tonality of C-sharp: minor for the outer movements, major for the central one, at least to the ear. (The Allegretto is technically in D-flat major, the enharmonic equivalent of C-sharp major, and easier to read than C-sharp major; the latter would require seven sharps in its key signature!) Like the two previous sonatas, this one is an experiment in form, with Beethoven attempting to build a successful structure with the main weight at the end, not the beginning, of the sonata.
The opening movement in each of the two previous sonatas had been in slow or moderate tempo, while the finale was not only fast but also the most substantial movement. In the Moonlight, this approach is carried to extremes. In addition, each movement inhabits a single emotional world without contrasts: the unbroken placidity of the first movement gives way to the blithe, innocent charm of the second, which in turn is succeeded by the tempestuous upheavals of the third.
In September 1831 Mendelssohn arrived in Munich as one stop on his two-year grand tour of Europe. There he composed and premiered his G minor Piano Concerto, and also visited with Heinrich Barmann and his two clarinet-playing sons, Carl and Heinrich Jr. In October Mendelssohn made an arrangement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, Op. 18, No. 1, for two clarinets, basset horn, and bassoon for a musical party at the Barmanns, and it succeeded so well that he was inspired to write two original concertpieces for clarinet, basset horn, and piano for Heinrich Sr. and Carl the next year, published posthumously as Op. 113 (F minor) and Op. 114 (D minor).
Both works are disposed in three movements (fast-slow-fast) and require a masterly technique that serves as testimony to the highly developed skills of the Barmanns. The opening Presto of the Concertpiece No. 2 is the most dramatic movement in either work; the Andante is animated by an incessant, wide-ranging broken-chord accompaniment; and the closing movement is a scintillating showpiece for the paired clarinets.
Felix Mendelssohn: Concert Piece No. 2 in D minor, Op. 114
In September 1831 Mendelssohn arrived in Munich as one stop on his two-year grand tour of Europe. There he composed and premiered his G minor Piano Concerto, and also visited with Heinrich Barmann and his two clarinet-playing sons, Carl and Heinrich Jr. In October Mendelssohn made an arrangement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, Op. 18, No. 1, for two clarinets, basset horn, and bassoon for a musical party at the Barmanns, and it succeeded so well that he was inspired to write two original concertpieces for clarinet, basset horn, and piano for Heinrich Sr. and Carl the next year, published posthumously as Op. 113 (F minor) and Op. 114 (D minor).
Both works are disposed in three movements (fast-slow-fast) and require a masterly technique that serves as testimony to the highly developed skills of the Barmanns. The opening Presto of the Concertpiece No. 2 is the most dramatic movement in either work; the Andante is animated by an incessant, wide-ranging broken-chord accompaniment; and the closing movement is a scintillating showpiece for the paired clarinets.
Mikhail Glinka: Trio Pathétique
Glinka’s Trio pathétique, scored for the unusual combination of clarinet, bassoon, and piano, dates from 1832, when the twenty- eight-year-old composer was studying in Milan and still emulating Italy’s operatic composers. The work’s published title is a bit misleading: though cast in the unsmiling d minor, the trio is an exuberant work. Indeed, the Allegro moderato’s second theme, in less severe B-flat major, is utterly cheerful. The ensemble’s palette of timbres has much to do with its character, with clarinet and bassoon evoking bell-like laughter in their upper registers. The work proceeds attacca into the bright-eyed scherzo and then into the warm Largo, both brimming with operatic lyricism. The finale, marked Allegro con spirito, serves as an epilogue, reprising earlier musical ideas.
Under the spell of bel canto Italian opera, Glinka produced a Trio pathétique markedly less despairing than the literature’s more famous Pathétiques (Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in c minor, op. 13, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony). Perhaps Glinka had an unrequited love on his mind while at work on the trio—he wrote on the autograph manuscript, “I have known love only through the pain it brings.” If so, the work’s optimistic character convincingly conceals his heartache.