Download Emma Schmiedecke, Cello - Program Notes

Date du récital/Date of recital : March 17, 2017
Nom/Name: Emma Schmiedecke
Classe de/Class of: Matt Haimovitz
These program notes are written by the student performing, and are presented by the
student in partial fulfilment of the requirements of their course.
Ces notes de programme sont écrites par l'étudiant-interprète et sont présentées en tant
que réalisation partielle des critères de leur cours.
Two Pieces pour violoncelle et piano (1899)
Drei Kleine Stücke pour violoncelle et piano, Op. 11 (1914)
Two Pieces for Cello and Piano (1899)
Drei Kleine Stücke for Cello and Piano, Op. 11 (1914)
Anton Webern (1883 - 1945)
These pieces by Anton Webern, presented together in one performance, give
evidence to a composer who, in only fifteen years, matured drastically from young
student to explorative composer who would become a champion of the German twelvetone system. The Two Pieces for Cello and Piano (no opus number) were written when
Webern was just fifteen, still a student at the Klagenfurt Gymnasium, and are one of his
first compositions. Given that Webern himself was a cellist and his mother a pianist, we
can surmise that they were composed for a performance by and among family. Though
each piece is marked langsam and each is under three minutes in length, they give us a
glimpse into the romantic Webern, a composer who started his work in earnest and with
sincerity, not yet having discovered the angular elements of modernism. Despite the two
pieces’s delicate natures, they offer interesting and twisting harmonies for and between
both the cello and piano; the two pieces (the first in G Major, the second in F Major)
compliment each other so well that it is hard to imagine performing one without the other.
The pieces were not performed in the 20th century again (after they may have been
performed in the Webern home) until they were rediscovered in the 1960’s after decades
of being lost, and were given this performance in 1970 by none other than the great cellist
Gregor Piatigorsky.
Drei Kleine Stücke for Cello and Piano, Op. 11 and written in 1914, shows us a
much different Webern, a composer who is now leaning towards a darker ambiance and
static composition style, making these three songs among his best known instrumental
miniatures. With a total performing time of just over four minutes (the last song is only
about 30 seconds!), they are composed in “melodic cells” of just a couple of notes at a
time, often alternating between the piano and cello. Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern’s
mentor and teacher, wouldn’t officially declare the twelve-tone system “invented” until
1921, but we can see the already burgeoning technique in these songs as the twelve notes
of the chromatic scale are used as musical ideas.
Noir Vignettes pour violoncelle et piano
*première mondiale de la version violoncelle
Noir Vignettes for Cello and Piano (2014; cello version, 2016)
*world premiere of the cello version
Stacy Garrop (née/b. 1970)
Inspired by the film noir genre of the mid-1940’s coming out of the United States,
a movement born out of the triumphant yet pessimistic aftermath of World War II, Noir
Vignettes for Cello and Piano by Stacy Garrop exemplifies these moody, dark, and often
anxiety riddled “black films.” Originally written for double bass and piano in 2014, upon
further reflection on the piece, the composer felt that the bass, with its subterranean tones
and at times barreling sound, was not the most appropriate instrument to fully personify
the subtle nuances of the film noir genre; thus, the piece was rewritten for cello and piano
and premiered by cellist Emma Schmiedecke in March 2017. In the notes accompanying
the piece, Ms. Garrop states that each of the piece’s four movements - Murder at
Midnight (languorous, with snaking phrase lines), Loaded Gun (quick and elusive),
Femme Fatale (sexy and alluring), and Last Cigarette (jazzy, with its snap pizzicati and
lilting triplet rhythms) - are meant to typify a different aspect of the film noir, such as the
flawed male lead (often a detective), the dubious yet irresistibly provocative female
character (the femme fatale), the twisting and turning plot lines, the inevitability of death
in the form of homicide or other questionable means, and even the trademark play
between shadow and light in the film’s shooting. It is a seductive piece in its own right,
providing small glimpses into a film noir story that has yet to meet its likely inescapable
fate of trench coats, cigarette smoke, and murder.
Cello Sonata (1915)
Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)
Probably one of the most well known pieces in the cello repertoire and one of the
most influential pieces of the 20th century, Claude Debussy’s Cello Sonata is a
masterpiece jam-packed with both historical and cultural significance and musical
direction. It was originally intended by Debussy to be the first of a series of “six sonates
pour divers instruments”, but only three were completed before his death in 1918 (the
cello sonata, the sonata for violin, and the sonata for flute, violin, and harp.) It is quite a
short work, with most performances ranging between 11 and 14 minutes and is composed
in the eighteenth-century monothematic sonata style (I. Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e motto
resolute, II. Sérénade: Modérément animé, III. Finale: Animé, léger et nerveux), with the
final two movements connected by an attacca. Some overarching themes throughout the
piece are the use of pentatonic scales, left-hand pizzicati, and flautando and spiccato
bowing. It is a demanding piece for the cellist in the amount of mental and physical
agility needed to effortlessly switch between these multiple techniques. The piece is
often given the character assignment of Pierrot, as well as illustrating his personality and
romantic explorations, from the Italian commedia dell’arte, yet there is no evidence that
Debussy himself was inspired by this, gave the piece this identity, or communicated this
to his friend and French cellist Louis Rosoor, one of the first performers and champions
of the work.
Romanza pour violoncelle solo
*première canadienne
Romanza for Solo Cello (2016)
*Canadian premiere
Matthew Kennedy (née/b. 1986)
American composer and University of Hartford professor Matthew Kennedy’s
music can be described as having a certain clarity and simplicity through which to
explore grand philosophical questions.
Romanza was written in 2016 for and
commissioned by cellist Emma Schmiedecke after their collaboration on Kennedy’s
Pierrot piano quintet Textures and Lines (2016) and was premiered in October 2016 at the
University of Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut. It is a short piece at only six and a half
minutes, yet one with varied peaks and valleys in its phrases, exploring a struggle
between a want for connection and its denial. Mr. Kennedy has described this piece as a
relationship between the performer and the audience, how the cellist is trying to come as
close to the audience as possible yet can never obtain the intimacy with them that he or
she wants due to the fundamental separation that is at the base philosophy of our concept
of performer and observer. In his own notes accompanying the piece, Mr. Kennedy states
that Romanza is “a study in desire - eros, pathos, and philia - all intensified when the
distance between oneself and the object of ones attention seems to grow further as time
inevitably passes.” He then goes on to describe the specific moments of “clarity, lament,
and momentary ecstasy”, perhaps referring to when, at two climaxes in the piece where,
through rapid bow strokes and high pitched notes resembling a cry, the cellist comes as
close as they can to reaching the audience before retreating back in to the ethos from
which they came. In the piece’s conclusion, in which the cellist repeats the same three
notes ad libitum until the sounds literally dies away, this retreat evokes a feeling of
dutiful yet regretful resolve in the player that they have done all they can to reach and
touch their audience. It is a solemn piece, not sad in nature but instead carrying a sense
of mourning for that which cannot be accomplished.
Sonata in C Major for Cello and Piano, Op. 119 (1949)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953)
As are many of the cello repertoire staples of the 20th century, Sergei Prokofiev’s
Cello Sonata was written for Mstislav Rostropovich after he heard the cellist give a
performance of Nikolai Miaskovky’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in A minor, Op. 81.
He
approached Rostropovich with the proposition of writing a sonata for him, one which he
gladly accepted. In 1948, one year before he started working on the sonata, much of
Prokofiev’s music had been banned by the Zhdanov Decree in Russia.
However, he
continued to compose; along with the cello sonata, he also wrote the symphonic suite
Winter Bonfire, Op. 122 and the Pushkin Waltzes, Op. 120 in 1949, despite not knowing if
his music would ever again be allowed to be performed. Despite the ban on his music,
the sonata received its public premiere on March 1, 1950 in the Small Hall of the
Moscow Conservatory with Rostropovich on cello and Sviatoslav Ricter at the piano. To
illustrate the hostile and suffocating censorship of music in communist Russian in the
1950’s, Richter notes in his memoirs the process that he, Rostropovich, and Prokofiev
had to go through to be able to play the piece:
Before playing it in concert, we had to perform it at the Composer's Union, where these
gentlemen decided the fate of all new works. During this period more than any other, they
needed to work out whether Prokofiev had produced a new masterpiece or, conversely, a piece
that was 'hostile to the spirit of the people.' Three months later, we had to play it again at a
plenary session of all the composers who sat on the Radio Committee, and it wasn't until the
following year that we were able to perform it in public…
The sonata was finally published in Moscow in 1951, two years before Prokofiev’s
death.