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Kalistos Inaugural Concert
May 19, 2002 @ 7 pm |
Sunday, 7 pm May 19, 2002
at YWCA, 7 Temple St near central square in Cambridge, MA
for more info please call Chris at 800-896-7340 or email info@kalistos.org
the program featured the following pieces
George Frideric Handel Concerto grosso in D major, Op.6 No.5 [1739]
Osvaldo Golijov Last Round [1996]
Josef Suk Serenade in E flat major for strings, Op.6 [1892]
Gabriela Lena Frank Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout [1999/2002]
mvts 1, 2, 4, 6
(excerpts originally for string quartet, arranged for especially for Kalistos Chamber Orchestra)
Tickets can be purchased at the door at the following prices
$15 Adults
$10 Students
$5 Seniors and Young Person under 14
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Our Non profit Partner for this concert is ROCA. Please support their efforts in our community.
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Program notes
Handel, George Frideric
Concerto grosso in D major, Op.6 No.5 [1739]
 The
baroque concerto grosso is by nature a rather ramshackle sort of thing:
like so many inventions across the arts and sciences, it was originally
not so much a creation in its own right as an ad-hoc assemblage of
pieces and parts stolen from other things-- "things" in this case being
musical forms. Trio sonata, instrumental canzona, sinfonia, polychoral
music, andall kinds of lesser, half-forgotten musical blueprints all
meet in the concerto grosso. The trio sonata might be said to provide
the concerto grosso body, the other forms its various appendages and
its physiognomy. Concerti grossi first began to appear during the last
quarter of the seventeenth century-- thousands and thousands of them,
in a bewildering variety of designs and shapes and sizes. However,
musicians and publishers have always been quick to create rules and
traditions where none existed before, and by the time George Frideric
Handel inherited concerto grosso form in the second decade of the
eighteenth century, it was a well-organized beast that a savvy audience
could feel confident and secure listening to. The sweeping success of
Arcangelo Corelli (aided by the inevitable army of copycat composers)
had seen to that.
There are two large sets of Handel concerti grossi. Six concerti
appeared under the designation Opus 3 in 1734, most of the music having
been composed ten or fifteen years before that. A further twelve
concerti grossi were composed in October of 1739 and published the
following year as Twelve Grand Concertos for strings, Opus 6. The piece
on tonight's program is the fifth in that set, the Concerto grosso in D
major, Op.6 No.5. It was finished, according to a note at the end of
the manuscript, on October 10, 1739.
Handel is rightly said to have generally followed the Corelli concerto
grosso model when writing his own. At the same time, Handel preferred
things not to be too well-ordered in either music or life, and so he
immediately set about twisting some of the accepted patterns and rules
of concerto grosso production all out of shape. He simply threw
whatever that struck his fancy-- different kinds of movements, High
Baroque idioms, more guttural Low Baroque ones-- into one big pot,
boiled it all together, and, by virtue of masterful presentation,
concocted in Opus 6 one of the highpoints of late Baroque large
ensemble music.
The Concerto grosso in D major, Op.6 No.5 is a six movement work.
Things begin as an enlightened baroque audience would expect. There is
an introductory slow movement, bearing the dotted-rhythm imprint of the
still-fashionable French overture, and then a fast, fugal second
movement (Allegro). But, since most concerti grossi follow the sonata
da chiesa format, we would anticipate a slow movement next, and here
Handel throws us a curveball: the third movement of Op.6 No.5 is a
lightning-fast Presto in three-eight meter, the sort of movement that
traditionally ends a piece, not the sort of thing we would expect to
find at its center. With the lugubrious, slow fourth movement (Largo,
in B minor), however, things seem to have fallen back in line, and the
following chirrupy, birdcall-filled Allegro (movement 5) might well be
a boisterous finale. But, alas, Handel's impish guile strikes again,
and there's yet another movement. Inscrutably, ingeniouslyand (perhaps)
ingenuously, he ends the Concerto with a lighthearted Menuet, a happy
little three-step that he describes as Un poco larghetto.
The Concerto is scored for an ensemble of two solo violins (called the
"concertante") and a body of tutti strings-- violins, violas, cellos
and basses (called the "ripieno"). However, the line between
concertante and ripieno is sometimes a blurry one, and the two
concertante violinists are not the only players granted the spotlight
as the Concerto goes along: there are solo passages for viola and cello
as well, though Handel did not make these soloists part of the official
concertante body. Ever playful, Handel teases the performers by making
a phony deployment of the two concertante violin parts at the start of
the piece. In the first movement, the second concertante violinist,
though actually the head of the second violin ripieno section, doubles
the first violins, leaving the leaderless second violins high and dry.
With the Allegro second movement, the second concertante violinist
rejoins the second violin ripieno section. Innocuous though such a
trick may seem to today's accomplished players, heaven only knows what
a ruckus this little switcharoo might have made when the Concerto was
played, in 1740, by a group of unrehearsed, sight-reading amateurs!
Self-plagiarism was always one of Handel's favorite techniques: large
hunks of this Concerto grosso are ripped directly from the composer's
own Overture to the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day and re-arranged to suit
the concerto grosso context. And, while the piece is at heart a work
for just strings, Handel did at some point add two oboe parts to it--
an afterthought possibly encouraged by his publisher, John Walsh,
though Walsh never actually got around to printing the oboe-augmented
version. -Blair Johnston
Osvaldo Golijov
Last Round for String Ensemble [1996]
 Astor
Piazzolla, the last great Tango composer, was at the peak of his
creativity when a stroke killed him in 1992. He left us, in the
words of the old tango, “without saying good bye”, and on that day the
musical face of Buenos Aires was abruptly frozen. The creation of
that face had started a hundred years ago from the unlikely combination
of African rhythms underlying gaucho’s couplets, sung in the style of
Sicilian canzonettas over an accompanying Andalucian guitar. As
the years passed, all converged towards the bandoneon: a small
accordion-like instrument without keyboard that was invented in Germany
in the nineteenh century to serve as a portable church organ and which,
after finding its true home in the bordellos of Buenos Aires’ slums in
the 1920’s, went back to Europe to conquer Paris’ high society in the
1930’s. Since then it reigned as the essential instrument for any
Tango ensemble.
Piazzolla’s bandoneon was able to condense all the symbols of tango.
The eroticism of legs and torsos in the dance was reduced to the
intricate patterns of his virtuoso fingers ( a simple C major scale in
the bandeneon zigzags so much as to leave an inexperienced player’s
fingers tangled). The melancholy of the singer’s voice was
transposed to the breathing of the bandeneon’s continuous opening and
closing. The macho attitude of the tangueros was reflected in his
pose on stage: straight upright, chest forward, right leg on a stool,
the bandeneon on top of it, being by turns raised, battered , caressed.
I composed Last Round ( the title is borrowed from a short story on
boxing by Julio Cortazar) as an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit
to fight one more time. The piece is conceived as an idealized
bandeneon. There are two movements: the first represents
the act of a violent comperssion of the instrument and the second
a final, seemingly endless opening sigh (it is actually a fantasy over
the refrain of the song “My beloved Buenos Aires”, composed by the
legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930’s). But Last
Round is also a sublimated tango dance. Two quartets
confront each other, separated by the focal bass, with violins, violas,
standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bow fly
in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always
attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing,
always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by
transforming hot passion into pure pattern. Osvaldo Golijov
Suk, Josef
Serenade in E flat major for strings, Op.6 [1892]
 Composing
bad or even mediocre music for strings is simpler than composing bad
music for any other instrument group-- any half-wit with manuscript
paper can draw up a translucent background of string sound for their
latest diva-spun pop music ballad. Conversely, the writing of really
fine string ensemble music is one of Western music's most revered, to
some even sacred, tasks. For Beethoven, the string quartet became the
be-all, end-all of music (quite literally, as he wrote his last string
quartet music on his deathbed). Brahms was so intimidated by the
intricacies of string quartet composition that he spent years and years
refining the only three quartets that he passed down to us. The string
orchestra is perhaps a little less demanding on the composer than the
string quartet, but it is in the same arena; composing for it was not a
task for a late nineteenth-century composer to take lightly if he
wished to earn respect for his craftsmanship.
Enter Josef Suk in 1892, barely an adult by modern legal standards and
just graduated from the Prague Conservatory. Suk certainly knew string
instruments. Around the time of his graduation from the Conservatory,
Suk, a gifted and now a thoroughly-trained violinist, joined the
up-and-coming Czech String Quartet, with whom he averaged one public
concert every three to four days for the next forty years! (You do the
math.) That kind of performance schedule is no laughing matter for the
twenty-first-century, globetrotting, Concorde-riding performer; it
could be truly hectic for Suk, who, running between his Czech Quartet
duties and (from 1922) his professorship at the Prague Conservatory,
had to try hard to scrape up enough time to compose his own music. Life
as a professional violinist did, however, afford him an invaluable
familiarity with string instruments and all their riches and
idiosyncrasies.
Suk began composing only in the late 1880s, and that he should sit down
in 1892 to pen a comparatively long string orchestra piece like the
Serenade in E flat major for strings, Op.6 is not at all surprising--
one must test one's wings. That the music should turn out so well, on
the other hand, did turn some heads-- including those of Antonin Dvorak
and Johannes Brahms, who arranged for their own publisher, Simrock, to
print the Serenade in 1896. Thanks to this one fine effort, Suk's lamp
was lit and burning bright, and, all the majesty of his later
achievements notwithstanding, the Serenade remains his best-known work
today.
The Serenade has four movements, which together fill a little under
half an hour. There is a velvety smoothness to the opening Andante con
moto, with its gently gliding violin melody (soon taken over by the
cellos) and the lightly bouncing support it gets from the middle of the
ensemble. The second movement is somewhat quicker-- but not by much, as
the marking Allegro, ma non troppo e grazioso tells us. After the
wonderfully, unapologetically indulgent Adagio third movement (listen
for the solo!), the violins announce the arrival of the finale (Allegro
giocoso) by barking out an effusive grace-note figure that, after being
briefly taken up by the rest of the group, soon gets reshaped into
music that borrows some lyric velvet from the first movement and
applies some heat to it, with results that are energetic and sometimes
a little bit strident. -Blair Johnston
Gabriela Lena Frank
Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout [1999/2002]
(excerpts originally for string quartet, arranged for string orchestra)
 Leyendas:
An Andean Walkabout draws inspiration from the idea of mestizaje as
envisioned by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas,
whereby cultures coexist without the subjugation of one by the other.
As such, this piece mixes elements from the western classical and
Andean folk music traditions. "Toyos" depicts one of the most
recognizable instruments of the Andes, the panpipe. The largest
kind is the breathy toyo which requires great stamina and lung
power, and is typically played in parallel fourths. "Tarqueada"
is a forceful and fast number featuring the tarka, a heavy wooden duct
flute that is blown harshly in order to split the tone. Tarka
ensembles typically play in casually tuned 4ths, 5ths, and
octaves. "Himno de Zampoñas" features a particular type of
panpipe ensemble that divides up melodies through a technique known as
hocketing. The characteristic sound of the zampoña panpipe
is that of a fundamental tone blown flatly so that overtones ring out
on top. "Chasqui" depicts a legendary figure from the Inca times the
chasqui runner, who sprinted great distances to deliver messages
between towns separated from one another by the Andean peaks. The
chasqui needed to travel light. Hence, I take artistic license to
imagine his choice of instruments to be the charango, a high-pitched
cousin of the guitar, and the lightweight bamboo quena flute, both of
which are featured in this movement. "Canto de Velorio" portrays
another well-known Andean personality, a professional crying woman
known as velorio. Hired to render funeral rituals even sadder,
the velorio is accompanied here by a second velorio and an additional
chorus of mourning women (coro de mujeres). The chant Dies Irae is
quoted as a reflection of the velorio's penchant for blending verses
from Quechua Indian folklore and western religious rites.
"Coqueteos" is a flirtatious love song sung by gallant men known
as romanceros. As such, it is direct in its harmonic expression,
bold, and festive. The romanceros sang in harmony with one
another against a backdrop of guitars which I think of as a vendaval de
guitarras ("storm of guitars"). -Gabriela Lena Frank
OSVALDO GOLIJOV
Born in La Plata, Argentina, Osvaldo Golijov lived there and in
Jerusalem before moving to the United States in 1986. He studied with
George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his
doctorate, and with Lukas Foss and Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood, where
he received the Koussevitzky Composition Prize. He now lives in Newton,
Massachusetts, and teaches at the College of the Holy Cross.
He has won two Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards for chamber music
composition, in 1993 for Yiddishbbuk and in 1995 for The Dreams and
Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Other recent awards include the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center Stoeger Prize for Contemporary Music,
the BMW prize for music theatre composition awarded by the jury of the
Munich Biennale, and the Paul Fromm Award. He has received commissions
and grants from the Koussevitzky, Guggenheim, Barlow, Wexner, and Fromm
Foundations; Chamber Music America; Meet The Composer; and the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Golijov's music has been performed internationally from Washington's
Kennedy Center to Tokyo's Suntory Hall, and at festivals including
Tanglewood, Spoleto USA, Oregon Bach Festival, and Germany's Munich
Biennale. His music can be heard on the Elektra/Nonesuch label, which
recently released a CD of The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,
recorded by the Kronos Quartet and David Krakauer. His 1996 premieres
were Last Round, an hommage to Astor Piazzolla, commissioned by the
Contemporary Music Group of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
(UK), and Oceana, premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival.
Current projects include new works commissioned for the Kronos Quartet,
Dawn Upshaw, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a chamber
opera for Boston Musica Viva.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gabriela Frank
Praised by the Raleigh-Durham Spectator as a "splendidly realized
pianist," by the Washington Post as a composer of "unself-conscious
mastery," and by the Albany Times Union as an artist of "high
inspiration," Gabriela Lena Frank's musicianship has brought her
increasing attention from press and audiences alike. Her fusion of
Latin American folk music with classical strains has been received with
acclaim in concert venues across North and South America, including
guest appearances with such notable groups as the Illinois Symphony,
the Dogs of Desire, the Mallarme Chamber Players,and ModernWorks of New
York city. Ms. Frank's current projects include music for the Albany
Symphony, the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition,
Musicorda Summer Music Festival, the Chiara Quartet, Musica Auralis, as
well as numerous other chamber ensembles and individual performers. She
has been recognized with awards and commissions from ASCAP, the
Theodore Presser Music Foundation, the Society of Composers Inc., the
National Federation of Music Clubs, The California Association of Music
Teachers, the International Alliance of Women in Music, the Banff
Centre for the Arts, the International Music Council of the UNESCO, the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.
In addition to presenting concerts, Ms. Frank enjoys talking with a
wide variety of audiences on both contemporary and Hispanic music,
including HASTA (Hispanic Americans Striving Towards Achievement), a
Latino prison group at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facilities outside
of Detroit, Michigan, where she is a regular volunteer. Currently, she
is in the process of recording a CD entitled Compadrazgo of classical
Hispanic composers influenced by the music of the Quechua/Aymara
Indians of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. In the Summer of 2001, she
will record the complete piano music of Pulitzer Prize winnning
composer Leslie Bassett.
Born in Berkeley, CA in 1972, Ms. Frank holds degrees from Rice
University and is presently a doctoral candidate a the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor where her teachers for composition have included
William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Evan Chambers, and
Michael Daugherty. Her piano studies are with Logan Skelton.
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