Download the PROGRAM - Rockport Music

8
Tuesday
july
8 PM
RISING STAR SERIES
donald sinta
saxophone quartet
Dan Graser, soprano saxophone
Zach Stern, alto saxophone
Joe Girard, tenor saxophone
Danny Hawthorne-Foss, baritone saxophone
“THEN AND NOW”
QUARTETTSATZ IN C MINOR (1820)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)/arr. Dan Graser
PHANTOMS (2012)
Natalie Moller (b. 1990)
ADAGIO FOR STRINGS, FROM STRING QUARTET, OP. 11 (1938)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)/Arr. Michael Warner
RECITATION BOOK, V: FANFARE/VARIATIONS ON “DURCH
ADAMS FALL” (2006)
David Maslanka (b. 1943)
:: intermission ::
QUATUOR POUR SAXOPHONES, OP. 109 (1932)
Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)
Première partie: Allegro—Più mosso
Canzone variée
Thema: Andante
Variation I: Même movement
Variation II: Con anima
Variation III: À la Schumann: Grave
Variation IV: À la Chopin: Allegretto
Variation V: Scherzo: Presto
Finale: Allegro moderato—Più mosso
SUITE (1993)
Michael Nyman (b. 1944)
Here to There (arr. Graser)
The Promise (arr. Graser)
Songs for Tony
SPEED METAL ORGANUM BLUES (2004)
Gregory Wanamaker (b. 1968)
First Prize winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and
is represented by Concert Artists Guild. concertartists.org
33RD SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 77
WEEK 5
the program
Notes
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
QUARTETTSATZ IN C MINOR
Franz Schubert (b. Himmelpfortgrund, Vienna, January 21, 1797;
d. Vienna, November 19, 1828)/arr. Dan Graser
Composed 1820; 9 minutes
Franz Schubert began to compose a new string quartet in C minor in 1820. He completed the
stunning first movement and finished 41 bars of an Andante movement before he inexplicably
left off and never returned to the work. It was discovered among the scores that came to
light after his death in 1828. The manuscript eventually came into the possession of Johannes
Brahms, who edited the work for its publication in 1867 as Quartettsatz (quartet movement).
Its first public performance took place in Vienna on March 1, 1867.
Donald Graser, the soprano saxophonist of the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet, arranged
Schubert’s Quartettsatz for the ensemble. A member of the faculty of Grand Valley State
University, Graser frequently gives masterclasses and clinics at universities and conservatories
in the U.S. and abroad.
PHANTOMS
Natalie Moller (b. 1990)
Composed 2012; 7 minutes
Composer Natalie Moller was a candidate for a master’s degree in composition at the
University of Michigan when she was named a winner of the Donald Sinta Quartet 2013
National Composition Competition. The Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet performed the
premiere of Moller’s competition-winning composition, Phantoms, in France at the
Versailles Conservatory, on April 4, 2013, followed by performances in Paris on April 5 and 8.
A week later, April 16, the U.S. premiere took place at the University of Michigan.
Donald Sinta
Donald Sinta, the Arthur F. Thurnau
and Earl V. Moore Professor of
Saxophone at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, has earned an international
reputation for his many achievements.
In 1969 he was the first elected chair
of the World Saxophone Congress.
An avid supporter of new music, he
has premiered more than 40 works by
American composers, and his recording
American Music for the Saxophone is a classic.
Before joining the UM School of Music,
he was on the faculties of the Hartt
School of Music and Ithaca College.
He is currently director of the All-State
Program at Interlochen and the Michigan
Youth Ensembles. On April 11, 2014,
the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet
took part in a concert staged by the
University of Michigan Symphony Band,
an evening of musical celebration
honoring Professor Sinta.
78 :: NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Phantoms begins with quiet clusters of tones in a lower register, from
which soft melodic fragments emerge. A fluttering of tremolos leads
to increasingly agitated activity, as the four instruments separate into
their respective voices. Their elaborated plaints, led by the soprano,
culminate in a defiant final wail at the extremes of their ranges on an
open fifth.
ADAGIO FOR STRINGS FROM STRING QUARTET, OP. 11
Samuel Barber (b. Pennsylvania, 1910; d. New York City, 1981)
Composed 1938; 9 minutes
The revered conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), who rarely
performed works by American composers, met Samuel Barber in Italy
in 1933, and after getting to know the young composer expressed an
interest in his music. It took Barber several years to create scores that
he considered suitable for the Maestro’s review.
In the spring of 1938, Barber submitted to Toscanini his newly completed
Essay for Orchestra along with the Adagio for Strings, Barber’s own
adaptation for five-part string orchestra (adding double basses) of the
second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11. Toscanini’s decision to
perform both the works signaled a major new chapter in Barber’s
career. On November 5, 1938, Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a radio
broadcast from Rockefeller Center featuring both the Essay and the Adagio. That single
performance brought Barber instant renown. In addition, Toscanini took Barber’s music
on an international tour and the Adagio for Strings has been constantly in the public ear
ever since.
Many composers and arrangers have adapted the Adagio for Strings for other instruments
(Barber himself created a choral piece based on it, setting it to the text of the Agnus Dei
from the Latin mass). In 1997 the trumpet player Michael Warner, founding director of the
Spokane British Brass Band, created this arrangement for saxophone quartet.
RECITATION BOOK, V: FANFARE/VARIATIONS ON “DURCH ADAMS FALL”
David Maslanka (b. New Bedford, Massachusetts, August 20, 1943)
Composed 2006; 11 minutes
The composer David Maslanka has written more than 130 works for a wide variety of instruments
and voices in many genres. Particularly known for his compositions for wind instruments, he
has written a number of works for solo winds, four wind quintets and five saxophone quartets.
About his 2006 composition Recitation Book, Maslanka writes:
A recitation book is a collection of writings, often of a sacred nature, used for readings
by a community. The music of this piece draws on old sources for each movement—
Bach Chorales, a Gesualdo madrigal, Gregorian chant. A number of old variation
techniques are employed throughout the piece. Recitation Book was composed for,
and premiered and first recorded by, the Masato Kumoi Saxophone Quartet of Tokyo.
David Maslanka
Maslanka based the last of the Recitation Book’s five movements, Fanfare/Variations on
“Durch Adams Fall,” Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorale in D minor, BWV 637, from the
Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book). Although the entire Recitation Book has earned a devoted
following, the Movement V has acquired a particularly prominent place in the concert repertoire
as a stand-alone piece, challenging to performers and popular with audiences. The complete
title of Bach’s chorale hymn, “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt menschlich Natur und Wesen,”
translates as “Through Adam’s fall human nature and essence are thoroughly corrupted.”
Saxophones de la Garde
Républicaine
QUATUOR POUR SAXOPHONES, OP. 109
Alexander Glazunov (b. Saint Petersburg, August 10, 1865;
d. Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, March 21, 1936)
Composed 1932; 22 minutes
In 1928 the prominent Russian composer Alexander Glazunov, director of the Leningrad
(formerly St. Petersburg) Conservatory, left his homeland for a tour; his brief visit turned
into permanent exile and he spent the last eight years of his life in Paris. The Communist
authorities in the Soviet Union, suspicious of his connections to Western influences, effectively
erased him from its rolls of composers, particularly when it became clear that he was
composing for that bourgeois instrument—the saxophone.
Glazunov became enamored with the saxophone through a quartet of soloists in the military
concert band of the “Garde Républicaine,” whose principal soprano saxophonist was Marcel
Mule, whom Glazunov particularly admired. On March 21, 1932, Glazunov wrote to his friend
Maximilian Oseevich Steinberg, “I have an idea to write a quartet for saxophones….There
33RD SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 79
are great saxophone soloists in the band of the National Guard.” On June 2 he wrote again
to Steinberg:
Notes
I have completed the composition for four saxophones…Movement I, Allegro B-flat
major in 3/4 with rhythm: a bit of American! Movement II, Canzone Variée. The theme
is built only on harmony; the first two variations are strict classical medieval style.
Next follows a variation with trills à la Schumann (akin to his Symphonic Etudes), a
variation à la Chopin, and Scherzo. The Finale is in a fairly playful style.
on the
program
by
Sandra Hyslop
I am afraid that this composition will fatigue performers due to its length. I talked to
one of them, and he assured me.
In December Glazunov looked forward to a run-through of the Quartet: “I still worry about
how matters will stand with ‘breathing,’ because the number of rests are few, and I wish to
achieve full consonance.”
The Quartet, published as Op. 109 and bearing the dedication “To the Artists of the Quatuor
des Saxophones de la Garde Républicaine,” was premiered in April 1933. Glazunov wrote to
Steinberg: “The performers are such virtuosi that it is impossible to imagine that they play
the same instruments as we hear in jazzes [sic]. What really strikes me is their breathing
and indefatigability, light sound, and clear intonation.” Thus inspired, Glazunov wrote his
Saxophone Concerto for Marcel Mule the following year.
SUITE
Michael Nyman (b. Stratford, London, March 23, 1944)
A 1948 portrait of Marcel
Mule (1901-2001),
the French saxophonist so
admired by Alexander
Glazunov
Composed 1993; 8 minutes
The British composer and pianist Michael Nyman, who has written prolifically in many genres
of music, is widely known beyond the concert hall for his film scores. His music for Jane
Campion’s 1993 film The Piano has been particularly successful. Dan Graser created saxophone
quartet arrangements of two of the score’s tracks, “Here to There” and “The Promise.”
Nyman has written about “Songs for Tony:”
I began writing a saxophone quartet on New Year’s Eve 1992. In the early afternoon
of January 5, 1993, I was informed that my friend and business manager, Tony Simmons,
had died after a long and heroic fight against cancer….The first song is a transcription
of an actual song, “Mozart on Mortality,” which I wrote for the Composers Ensemble
in the spring of 1992.…The second song is adapted from the music for The Piano. This
film was the last major deal that Tony negotiated on my behalf. The third song, a
soprano sax solo, is based on a tune I composed some years ago, but was saving for
a special occasion.
SPEED METAL ORGANUM BLUES
Gregory Wanamaker (b. 1968)
Composed 2004; 1 minute, 4 seconds
Gregory Wanamaker, professor of composition at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam,
has wide-ranging music interests. He says of himself that he studies sounds from around
the world, “to draw from a variety of musics,” to inform his continually evolving voice. Speed
Metal Organum Blues was commissioned by the Prism Saxophone Quartet in honor of the
group’s 20th anniversary. According to Wanamaker, “The title refers to the fast-paced
succession of open fifth ‘power chords’ found in speed metal music—and the strange notion
that this music may have actually evolved from 13th-century organum (doubtful, but funny to
think about: Monks on speed!).”
80 :: NOTES ON THE PROGRAM