Upcoming Concert Programs
(subject to change)
Concert Programs
Oct. 21 at 2 p.m.
Oct. 28 at 2 p.m.
Marine Chamber Ensembles
2 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 21
John Philip Sousa Band Hall
Marine Barracks Annex
7th and K St, SE, Washington, D.C.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
Duet in G for Violin and Viola, K. 423
Allegro
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro
SSgt Sheng-Tsung Wang, violin
SSgt Tam Tran, viola
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George Fenton
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Five Parts of the Dance (1992)
Introduction
I
II
III
IV
V
MSgt David Haglund, trumpet
GySgt Glenn Paulson, marimba
GySgt AnnaMaria Mottola, piano
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John Mackey |
Breakdown Tango (2000)
MSgt John Norton, clarinet
SSgt Sheng-Tsung Wang, violin
SSgt Charlie Powers, cello
GySgt AnnaMaria Mottola, piano
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William Bolcom |
Virtuosity Rag (1982)
MSgt David Haglund and SSgt James McClarty, trumpet
MSgt Mark Questad and SSgt Douglas Quinzi, horn
SSgt Preston Hardage, trombone
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Bedrich Smetana |
String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, From My Life
Allegro vivo appassionato
Allegro moderato à la Polka
Largo sostenuto
Vivace
MGySgt Claudia Chudacoff and GySgt Erika Sato, violin
MSgt Christopher Shieh, viola
MSgt Diana Fish, cello |
Program Notes
Duet in G for Violin and Viola, K. 423
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
The origin behind Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1783 duos for violin and viola is a warm story of a friend helping a fellow composer in a time of despair. Michael Haydn, the younger brother of Franz Joseph Haydn, was commissioned by Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg to compose a set of violin and viola duos. It was a common practice at the time to compose a collection of six works but Michael Haydn became seriously ill and was only able to complete four duos by the required deadline. Needless to say, this delay upset the impatient Archbishop and he threatened to cut off Haydn’s salary. Mozart was in Salzburg at the time visiting his father and learned firsthand of Haydn’s difficult predicament. After just a couple of days, Mozart completed the remaining two duos and gave the manuscripts to Haydn to submit as a full set of six works to the Archbishop. Although Mozart made every effort to match Haydn’s compositional style, the distinction between the composers is unmistakably clear. It came as no surprise that the last two duos (in the keys of G and B-flat, respectively) received more glowing praise and admiration than the previous four. While the viola plays a supportive and accompanying role in Haydn’s duos, Mozart treats the viola as an equal voice, showcasing both instruments as soloists in the musical dialogue of his duos.
Five Parts of the Dance (1992)
George Fenton (b. 1950)
George Fenton is an Emmy award-winning composer, with dozens of television and film scores to his credit. He is perhaps most famous for his film scores for Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons, and Blue Planet. His works for chamber ensembles include arrangements of some of his scores, as well as Five Parts of the Dance for trumpet, marimba, and piano. Fenton uses this combination of instruments to create a rich mix of harmony and texture and to highlight the broad range of music found in contemporary dance. A short introduction for solo trumpet prefaces the five movements. Sound color in all the movements is important. In the second movement, the blues harmonies and improvisatory feel create a mood in the direction of “cool” jazz. Movement IV, with its meshing of the sounds of the trumpet and marimba, is particularly striking, as is the final movement, where sound colors, syncopations, and cross-rhythms combine to create an African feel.
Breakdown Tango (2000)
John Mackey (b. 1973)
Although John Mackey was born into a family of musicians (his father was a trumpet player in a Navy band), he did not receive formal musical instruction until he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music at age eighteen. After receiving his undergraduate degree, he attended The Juilliard School of Music in New York City where he studied with John Corigliano, the award-winning composer for the 1997 film The Red Violin. After graduating, Mackey served as the music director of the Parsons Dance Company from 1999 to 2003. Early in his tenure, he was commissioned to compose a score for the ballet Promenade. The ballet includes a piece called “Dementia” that Mackey renamed Breakdown Tango for stand-alone performances. According to the composer, the piece “has a virtuosic beginning and ending, with a peculiar tango sandwiched in the middle.” The tango has received much praise, with Gramophone magazine writing that “one would be hard pressed to find a better piece than Breakdown Tango.” Perhaps most intriguing is the description in The Clarinet of the work as “an appealing, and at times wonderfully trashy piece.”
Virtuosity Rag (1982)
William Bolcom (b. 1938)
Celebrated American composer William Bolcom has been honored as the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and receives commissions from the world’s great orchestras and opera houses. He is also a prolific composer of songs and chamber music. Among these are cabaret songs and piano music that evoke ragtime and early popular song albeit with a modern sensibility. It is from this section of his oeuvre that we have the Virtuosity Rag for a slightly unusual brass quintet: two trumpets, two horns, and bass trombone. He says it was written in for a brass group of “aging firemen-hippies out of Spokane, WA. They wanted a rag, so I wrote one with one hand, while the other was doing something else.” It has the sound of an amusing standard and is reminiscent of the ragtime revival of the late 1960s.
String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, From My Life
Bedrich Smetana (1824–84)
Bedrich Smetana’s first string quartet, subtitled From My Life, was composed in 1876. It is a tribute to his musical genius that Smetana could have written music of such sublime beauty and expressive content despite, or perhaps as a result of, tremendous personal misfortune. He experienced constant financial difficulties and had to flee his homeland as a result of his political activism. He lost three daughters in the first six years of marriage, and his wife and first love died shortly thereafter. His second marriage fell into estrangement and mutual hatred. He was often assailed by critics and public alike. At age fifty, with his deafness now total, he suffered the loss of speech and memory, and eventually a premature death at an insane asylum in Prague.
In an April 1878 letter Smetana described the movements of his first string quartet as follows:
- The first movement depicts my youthful love of art, my romantic moods, an indescribable longing for something intangible which I could not express in words and a foreboding of unhappiness to come;
- The second movement is like a Polka and reminds me of the happy days of my youth when I was a passionate lover of dancing. The middle ‘trio’ section brings back memories of the aristocratic circles in which I used to move many years ago;
- The Largo sostenuto recalls my first love and happiness with the girl who later became my first wife;
- The Finale describes my joy in discovering how to treat elements of Bohemian national music in my work until the terrible catastrophe of deafness suddenly struck, leaving me with the outlook of a sad future, only a passing hope of recovery, a brief reminder of my love of art, and finally a sensation of nothing but pain.
One of the most famous moments in the finale is the interruption of the music by a low tremolo and a very high, piercing E, which was the pitch Smetana heard incessantly before becoming deaf.
Marine Chamber Ensembles
2 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 28
John Philip Sousa Band Hall
Marine Barracks Annex
7th and K St, SE, Washington, D.C.
*Member, Marine Band
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