Two Rivers Piano and Wind Ensemble: April 29, 2017

Windswept!
PROGRAM NOTES

Paquito D’Rivera

(Born in Havana, Cuba in 1948)

Invitación al danza (Invitation to dance)

D’Rivera’s first teacher was his father, a well-connected classical saxophonist and music educator, who brought him up on recordings by Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. No doubt this is where Paquito first began to understand jazz and improvisation. But perhaps the youngster’s greatest tutelage came from sitting in the orchestra pit along with his father in Havana’s lavish, notorious and jazz-rich Tropicana Club, where he recalls very memorable evenings sitting close by and watching many of the jazz greats who visited there. Still, he always remained grounded in the Classical music of composers like Bach, Mozart and Chopin – music that still informs his compositions to this day.

D’Rivera soon became one of Cuba’s musical wonders, active in both classical and Latin jazz music, and both a composer and performer on clarinet and sax. However, he eventually realized that he would never be able to flourish in Cuba’s anti-jazz ideology (Castro insisted jazz was “imperialist poison”), so in 1980 he defected to the United States. His international reputation has soared since then. He has won 14 Grammy Awards for both performance and composition and has made over 30 recordings. But, as a boisterous yet generous soul, he is most proud for being known – in the words of the National Endowment for the Arts – as “the consummate multinational ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and Mozart.”

Invitación al danza was composed in 2008 and came into prominence on a recording with Yo Yo Ma (“Songs of Joy and Peace,” 2008). This is considered one of D’Rivera’s Classical works, and with his love for Classical music he gave it the same title as a famous work by Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826). But one immediately realizes the work’s extraordinary fusion of styles, from Classical to Jazzy riffs and improvisation, to even a tip of the hat to early Rock-n-roll (listen for the echoes of Louie, Louie by The Kingsmen). Originally written for clarinet, cello and piano, Invitación has invited and inspired all kinds of arrangements. In this case, the French horn takes the place of the cello. Invitación dances easily from gentle swaying to joyful smiling, and slide-steps between some lovely ballroom dancing to downright foot stomping and arm jangling. Invitación al danza is infectiously tuneful and fun, and makes good on its invitation.

Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt

(Born in Koblenz, Germany in 1833; died in Bernburg, Germany in 1894)

Nocturne for Clarinet, Horn, and Piano, Op.75

Voigt followed his father’s vocation of being a military musician after completing his musical studies in Berlin. He rose quickly through the ranks and by 1857, at the young age of 24, became the conductor of the high profile First Guard Regiment in Potsdam, a post in which he served for 30 years. He became well known for his compositions for military bands and ensembles, and as a conductor and music educator. In 1870, in his role as military conductor, Voigt found himself marching to Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, composing and performing music as necessary for any moment, from celebratory evenings when Kaiser Wilhelm visited in the field, to funeral music for fellow soldiers. But there was more to do than perform: Voigt and his military musicians often were tasked with, among other things, burying the fallen. His diaries describe some horrid scenes of death. Finally, in 1871, Voigt arrived in a devastated, occupied Paris now under Prussian rule. Voigt’s role in Paris was to provide music for victorious Prussians and defeated French alike. Performing much of his own military music along with other classics, he was proud, but moreover astonished, when his French audiences applauded and thanked him for his musical craft. Voigt wrote home to his wife “Yes, music is a fine art; it connects the souls of men, and this effect is not granted even to language.”

In 1885, long after those extraordinary times, Voigt had returned to Germany and composed his endearing Nocturne. It’s tempting to imagine this work as a tender musical memorial to those lost Prussians and Frenchmen, but whatever his inspiration, the piece has been loved for generations since. The Nocturne has the air of a quiet operatic duet between two old friends, reminiscing in nostalgia, with an edge of sadness lacing their song, sometimes a flight of fancy from the clarinet, and a brief recitative-like passage mid-way through. The piece ends with both instruments singing the opening phrase in unison above some lovely pianistic filigree, before closing in gentle contemplation. All in all, it is a tuneful, surprisingly enchanting gem, a pacific counterpoint to a military musician’s life work.

Francis Poulenc

(Born in Paris in 1899; died in Paris in 1963)

Trio (for oboe, bassoon and piano), Op. 43

1. Lento – Presto

2. Andante con moto

3. Rondo. Très vif

At the turn of the 20^th Century, Paris was an exciting tumult of new and adventurous artistic ideals. The Parisian salon was the place to be for anyone who was someone, a place where artists and thinkers came to discuss conquering – or at least profoundly changing – the world. Out of this intoxicating brew came a group of musicians called “Les Six” (also known as the “French Six”). Francis Poulenc, a frequent visitor to the salon, rather unwittingly found himself to be part of this group. The group’s general goal, formulated by its founders (first the composer Erik Satie and then the author Jean Cocteau) was to write unabashedly French music. Poulenc himself was mainly self-taught and had an innate and immense talent for music; he had no conservatoire trappings and was urbanely Parisian in the best sense, and he thus embodied the group’s ideals perfectly. As the writer Jean Roy, a chronicler of the “Les Six,” said:

“Francis Poulenc improvised, invented, disregarded conventions …. He was daring, but not provocative. … he showed himself for what he was, with a frankness which is rare, … drawing from a tremendous fund of knowledge that included the fine arts, literature and the music of his predecessors. … His music expresses the way he looked at things… sincerity… his own way of hoping, of praying, of showing confidence.”

From this sense of freshness came Poulenc’s first great chamber work in 1926: his Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, written when he was 27 years old. The work is equal parts silly, lively, beautifully melodic, and fun. Poulenc admitted that parts of his Trio were based, structurally and thematically, on the music of his forbearers – Haydn, Beethoven and Saint-Saens – but in Poulenc’s hands these echoes only add to the delight of the music. Regarding his musical lineage, he wittily remarked that he “wouldn’t like to be thought ‘born of an unknown father.'” What the listener hears in the Trio is anything but a pastiche of the past; instead, this is a splendidly lyrical and playful piece that features each instrument with an uncanny notion of their interplay. The Trio has become one of Poulenc’s most adored works, and rightly so. It is a superb example of the composer’s joyful music-making, and of his own harmonic and lyrical inventiveness.

Ludwig van Beethoven

(Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827)

Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 16

1. Grave – Allegro ma non troppo

2. Andante cantabile

3. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Life was a jolly affair for Beethoven when he moved to Vienna from Bonn in 1792. He was known to be fiery, but he was also a congenial socialite. And as a free-spirited youth, he was taking Vienna by storm as a “wild” piano virtuoso and magnificent improviser. However, he also had an extraordinary composing talent and needed to make it known.

Before tackling the symphonic genre, Beethoven started with a form that bridged the chamber-symphonic barrier: the Piano Quintet. Well acquainted with Mozart’s works, Beethoven used Mozart’s masterful Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, K. 452 (1784) as a model for his own Quintet that featured a piano, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn. Beethoven completed this work in 1797 but he withheld its publication until 1801 and in the meantime also produced a reworked version that took the form of a Quartet for three strings and piano – a clear sign that he was trying to show off his abilities by demonstrating his range as a composer.

The Quintet is a very early Beethoven, and very “Classical” in sound, when compared to his later works. But it is no less Beethoven in spirit, clearly foreshadowing his boldness and compositional cleverness. The very somber and slow Grave opening is as much a statement to the world about the seriousness of Beethoven’s compositional intentions as it is a musical introduction. Soon after the Allegro proper begins, one is reminded of Beethoven’s abiding love for piano – indeed, this Quintet is much like a mini-piano concerto. But even in this particularly early work, Beethoven shows uncanny prowess in his writing for the winds: each instrument is featured especially well through a great deal of musical material, and each is given many moments to shine. One great example is just near the end of the first movement when Beethoven asks the horn to navigate some treacherous arpeggios.

The second movement is rightly titled cantabile (singing), with some meltingly song-like moments for every player, and it seems that it is here where Beethoven truly begins to find his own voice in this great, early masterpiece. The third movement finale is leisurely-brisk and sunny-bright, even allowing for a brief piano cadenza near its end. It is said that at the Quintet’s early performances, the “wild” Beethoven manned the piano himself and often took some extended liberties with this cadenza – to his great delight, though peeving his wind players.