Zhou, Ravel, & Dvořák

Zhou, Ravel, & Dvořák

MAURICE RAVEL
Introduction and Allegro, M. 46
Isabelle Jamois, flute • Frank Tao, clarinet • Renée Jolles, Janet Ying, violin • Phillip Ying, viola • Keiko Ying, cello • June Han, harp

ZHOU LONG
Illusion                 
Todd Palmer, clarinet • Renée Jolles, violin • Jeffrey Zeigler, cello • Tao Lin, piano

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 65
Ian Swensen, violin • David Ying, cello • Pei-Shan Lee, piano

PROGRAM NOTES

ZHOU LONG 

Illusion (2007)

Zhou Long has provided the following note to accompany Illusion:

Commissioned by Network for New Music with support from the Philadelphia Music Project, an Artistic Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts. First performed by the Network for New Music: April 20, 2007 in the Marshall Auditorium, Roberts Hall, Haverford College, Haverford, PA; April 22, 2007 in the Presser Recital Hall at Settlement Music School, Philadelphia, PA. The inspiration of Illusion came from ancient guqin music Xuan Mo (Abstruseness Silent), the piece that relatively influenced by the Taoism.

The Illusion opens with spacious atmosphere by low tones and high harmonics in slow tempo. Followed by the low string pizzicatos imitating the guqin, which symbolizes stillness and deepness. But the rhythm gradually becomes more and more active. In the middle section, a fast repetitive rhythm, which represents fast drum rolls on dagu (large drum) and bangu (piccolo drum); a series of chords, which is based on the combination of major triad and perfect fourth, creating the tinkling sound of the chime stones; an active staccato motive, which is used as a transition between the small sections. All these materials form the main structure of the piece. The ending of the piece returns to the opening atmosphere.

MAURICE RAVEL 

Introduction and Allegro, M. 46 (1905)

Since the early nineteenth century, the powerful, Paris-based Érard company had sold harps equipped with a complex pedal system that allowed the instrument to play all the chromatic notes of the scale. In the 1890s, the rival Pleyel firm came out with a new cross-strung harp, replacing the pedals with specific strings for every pitch. To spur sales of this new harp, in 1904 Pleyel commissioned Claude Debussy to compose music demonstrating its capacities, resulting in his two Dances for Harp and String Orchestra. Érard was motivated to compete and to reaffirm the primacy of the double-action pedal harp, and the directors of the organization asked Maurice Ravel to write something showing off their instrument. 

In June 1905, the composer wrote to the critic Jean Marnold that he had finished up the assignment after “a week of frantic work and three sleepless nights,” a rare rapid pace of writing for the patient and painstaking Ravel. He maintained that the resulting Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet, and Strings was essentially a concerto for the harp. Certainly, the idiomatic cadenza that occurs partway through the Allegro puts the instrument at the center of the composition. But for much of the time, the piece retains the interactive intimacy of mixed-instrument chamber music. 

Perhaps the most pleasurable aspect of Ravel’s writing in the piece is his willingness to beg the other members of the ensemble to imitate the idiosyncrasies and advantages of a harp’s sound. The strings pluck across the high and low ranges of their instruments. The two winds play staccato, breathy arpeggios that almost sound like strumming, and as they flutter up and down, they create the same glimmer that a harp provides to a group. The work is as much a showcase for Ravel’s skills as an orchestrator as it is an advertisement for a single instrument, though it does make a good argument for the harp’s technical and harmonic flexibility. In the end, Érard (and so, in a sense, Ravel) won the contest that spurred the commission. Today, cross-strung instruments are something of an oddity, and even when Debussy’s rival piece is programmed, performers tend to play it on a pedal harp!

Program Note by Nicky Swett

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 65 (1883)

Dvořák composed his third piano trio at a crossroads between personal tragedy and professional triumph. On one hand, his mother had died in December 1882, and Dvořák remained heartbroken as he broke ground on the new trio six weeks later. On the other hand, his compositional work was beginning to receive critical attention and acclaim where it mattered the most, in Viennese musical circles. While this success might have brought him pride and encouragement, it also brought him a degree of personal insecurity.

While Dvořák had already made Czech folk idioms a core component of his musical style (consider the Slavonic Dances which had made him famous in 1878), he also perceived shifting tastes and xenophobia among certain Viennese musicians and audiences. In the early 1880s, members of the Vienna Philharmonic had objected to premiering works by Dvořák in consecutive seasons, and in 1884 Dvořák continued to feel as though “Viennese audiences seem to be prejudiced against a composition with a Slavic flavour.” His publisher, Simrock, compelled Dvořák to adopt some Germanicizing touches, such as noting his forename as Anton in favour of the Czech Antonín (they compromised on the ambiguous abbreviation “Ant.”). And Simrock, alongside the prominent critic Hanslick, entreated Dvořák to compose a German-language opera.

Composed amid these tensions, Dvořák’s trio does not contain the idiomatic gestures to Bohemian folk materials that program annotators never tire of highlighting in descriptions of his chamber music – although these materials would return manifoldly in Dvořák’s next trio, known as the “Dumky”, a decade later. Instead, the trio has been generally received as “Brahmsian”, reflecting Dvořák’s debts to the composer who offered him essential support and promotion early in his career. Nevertheless, this trio led Hanslick to declare that Dvořák had arrived at the “pinnacle of his career”, worthy of consideration “among the world’s greatest modern masters.”

Program Note by Peter Asimov