We’re excited to announce “Women’s Work” – our 2022-2023 concert season featuring music that has long been overlooked simply because it was written by women. Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre and Florence Price possessed rare musical talent, but they had to fight for their creative lives. Thanks to their perseverance, a career that was once impossible has become a viable life for women like Missy Mazzoli and Helen Grime.
Diving into the Dvořák and Smetana trios we will be performing in January has been enormous and wonderful. Associating Smetana, the so-called father of Czech music, and Dvořák, who made that music world famous, is natural. Yet, these two pieces are very different.
Smetana’s trio is an elegy to his daughter, Bedriska, who died from scarlet fever at four-and-a-half. The trauma of loss is evident from the very beginning of the piece and colors all three movements.
Dvořák’s F-minor is something else, an ambitious work that may have been a response to the C Major trio written by Dvořák’s mentor, Brahms. It signals a new more mature period in Dvorak’s compositions.
The pieces share an unmistakable Bohemian folk style, but through that shared language say different things. Smetana mourns knowing he has to carry on; Dvořák searches and dances.
Here’s a little Hungarian folk music by Bartok that we recorded this summer. This movement is one of a group of Hungarian folk melodies that we will share in coming posts. (Click on the photo link above to listen to a little Bartok filmed during lockdown.)
Let’s spend some time together at home!
Join us Friday, August 28 @ 8 pm.
Cellist, Stephen Harrison and pianist, Gwen Mok perform Beethoven Sonata for Piano and Cello in G minor, Op. 5, No. 2
To watch this program follow this link at 8PM Friday, August 28.
The San Francisco International Piano Festival continues its partnership with Old First Concerts in a program celebrating the chamber music of Beethoven.
MUSICIANS
Eunseo Oh, violin;
Stephen Harrison, cello;
Gwendolyn Mok, piano;
Allegra Chapman, piano;
Sarah Yuan, piano
PROGRAM
Sonata for Piano and Cello in G minor, Op. 5, No. 2
Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 30, No. 3
Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 109
Our decades of vagabonding summers came to a sudden halt with Covid-19. Like you, our plans for adventure remained only plans. No music festivals in stunning places, no flying as a family somewhere tropical… (I don’t have to tell you!) But we had to get away a little, even if it meant just a drive north to Calistoga. It was so nice to get out of our house! And we found a nice patio to record on with our son doing the recording over his phone. No multiple camera angles, no acoustic engineering – just a slice of our musical lives in Covid times. At the time, getting music out of the Stanford library was impossible and even the chance of getting into my studio had been suspended, so we went with what we had available, an edition of Handel’s violin sonatas with continuo. What a fun discovery!
Over the past 200+ years some of these sonatas have become recital repertoire for violinists, usually with piano accompaniment. (It is amazing how many of the big name solists recorded a select few. You can find recordings online by Milstein, Stern and Szeryng, etc.)
But, of course, that is not how they were heard in Handel’s time. The first edition score (available on imslp) shows two lines, one the treble line and the other the bass. The little numbers over the bass line are what is called figured bass, used by accompanying keyboard players to “manufacture” an accompaniment with chords whose notes are “stacked” in a certain order. For example, a G minor chord whose notes are G-Bb-D might be played with any one of those notes as the lowest note of the chord, as in Bb-D-G, depending upon those little numbers. And it would not have been unusual to have no keyboard at all, just as we are playing it here.
Music has been a great tool to keep us from going crazy in lockdown, so we thought we’d share. We are sure the musicians among you have found music to be tremendous solace. We know you are stuck at home too – or, at least, close to home.
These won’t be the last “stuck at home” videos we will send out. We hope you enjoy!
Calistoga recordings
Georg Friedrich Händel – Sonata in G minor, Op.1, No. 10, 1732
Movement 1:
Movement 2:
I am old enough to realize that recordings I would have called the gold standard when I was younger have evolved in my mind to become beloved “historical” versions. Why? Because of better recording technology? For me, that is a small part of the transition. It’s more about changes in performance style. The movement to authenticity in performance has had a tremendous influence on how we expect to hear the great composers, whether we realize it or not. Over the next few months I thought it might be fun to compare recordings, some of them videos of live performances, to illustrate changes in style.
Many in our audience will remember the days of Tower Records, the Wherehouse, etc., places where I spent hours rifling through records deciding exactly how to spend my allowance or high school earnings. One of my earliest purchases was a 1950s recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Henryk Szeryng. I remember thinking that some of the movements I was hearing had to be the playing of two violins. That’s how astonishing Szeryng’s voicing of the double-stopping was!
I still love the way he plays the Chaconne with all that lush sound and vibrato, but it sounds so romantic to my ears now. The playing is full and very sustained. Rachel Podger, one of the most popular and historically informed violinists on the scene today, plays Bach very differently. And she uses a baroque bow, too, which has its own unique characteristics. She is more interested in resonance than sustaining, and the improvisatory nature of her playing feels almost emancipated. I hope you find your own joys in both performances.
Henryk Szeryng plays the Chaconne by Bach:
Rachel Podger plays Bach:
Stay tuned for more musings,
Stephen
We recently had the opportunity to offer a “driveway” concert. Appropriately socially distanced, we offered Bartok from the garage!
Ives Collective Salon concerts take place in a private home with a small audience. They aim to illuminate chamber works with commentary by a moderator and the musicians plus audience Q&A. This concert, from October 2019, is moderated by Dr. Derek Katz. The musicians are: Susan Freier, violin; Stephen Harrison, cello; and Robin Sutherland, piano.
The concert on Oct. 13 by the Ives Collective brought together three imaginative chamber pieces and fabulous musicians from around the world. Japanese pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi and violinist Hrabba Atladottir, a native of Iceland who studied in Berlin, joined Artistic Directors Stephen Harrison and Susan Freier in an astonishing performance featuring works by Zoltán Kodály, Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, and Erich Korngold.
Hrabba Atladottir
The concert at Old First Church began with Kodály’s charming Intermezzo for String Trio. Described by Harrison as a “palate cleanser” for the rest of the afternoon, the piece lasted no more than six minutes and was an enjoyable and fitting opening. Over a bed of lively pizzicato, it alternated sweeping melodies and harmonies possibly inspired by the folk music of Hungary. These gestures suggested much of the rest of the program, especially in its plucked accompaniment, melodies that grow out of a handful of notes, and inspiration from beyond the concert hall. Probably written around 1905, this was the oldest work on the program yet fit surprisingly well with Vasks’s Piano Quartet, written nearly a century later.
The Piano Quartet is comprised of six movements that emerge from stunningly simple piano chords, and the musicians seemingly created intensity out of nothing. The work layers and repeats material endlessly, then moves between its vastly different movements without pause to sustain its intensity. “Danze” featured a rhythmic dance that grows more anxious and frantic between its pizzicato and call-and-response sections, nearing a vigorous fever pitch before being rescued by the deep cello melody of “Canti drammatici” (Dramatic Songs). Its close intervals and unhurried pace were reminiscent of Gregorian chant, with something intensely primal about the sound emanating from Harrison’s cello that captured one’s soul. “Quasi una passacaglia” continued in earnest, with a nearly ominous low-bellied piano melody and whispering strings, contrasted by bringing the strings and piano to stratospheric heights. The energetic fervor of the passacaglia dissolved with another hauntingly beautiful song from the cello that was then passed up through the strings, reaching a wonderfully optimistic climax. The spell was finally suspended with the “Postludio,” which highlighted violinist Atladottir’s impeccable intonation and purity of tone.
Keisuke Nakagoshi
Clearly the focal point of the afternoon, Vasks’s Piano Quartet received a much-deserved standing ovation from the audience. The sincerity and emotion of the performers was evident and created an enchanting experience. If this was an audience member’s first listen — certainly possible, as the work was composed in 2001 and is relatively unknown — then it surely became an instant favorite.
The concert finished with Korngold’s Suite for Two Violins, Cello, and Piano Left Hand, Op. 23, composed in 1930. A fascinating composer perhaps best known for his film scores, Korngold’s expressiveness and clear sense of melody were on display here. Nakagoshi’s virtuosic performance of the opening cadenza gave the impression of two hands and immediately established his preeminent role within the piece. Afterward, the Suite moved seamlessly between energetic and insistent themes, a romantic waltz, childlike and carefree ditties, to a triumphant final proclamation. Effervescent violin lines from Atladottir and Freier further enhanced the performance. The effect was a luminous and intriguing performance by a very unique group.
The Ives Collective programmed a fascinating series of works and managed to connect them with their sensitivity and superb playing. Atladottir and Nakagoshi brought brilliant virtuosity to their performances, turning these chamber pieces into an enchanting and intimate afternoon.
Catriona Barr is a musicologist and music teacher based in San Francisco. She holds a B.M. from Peabody Conservatory and a M.M. from King’s College, London.