Download Program Notes July 9, 2015

and among his students were Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger.
He was a founder of the Société Nationale de Musique and eventually
became director of the Paris Conservatory. In retrospect, he has come
to be regarded as a transitional and unique figure in French music.
Fauré’s Piano quartet in c minor was perhaps his best known
chamber music work and was considered in the front rank of such
works, being regularly performed in the days when piano quartets
were frequently heard in concert. It dates from 1879, not long
after Fauré had visited Wagner and listened to his music. Impressed
though he was, he refused to fall under Wagner’s spell and set off on
his own path. No better example can be found than this work.
The opening movement, Allegro molto moderato, is bold and
sweeping over a wide range, powerfully rhythmic and very original,
and it is clearly a challenge to Franck and the other French
Wagnerians. He is deliberately seeking to expand the language
of romanticism without going in the same direction as Wagner.
Fauré, unlike Brahms or Schumann, never resorted to having the
strings treated as a choir against the piano. He recognized and
accepted the basic difference in sound and character between the
piano and string instruments and never tried to make the piano sing
long sustained melodies. Using opposing arpeggios, chords and runs
against the singing of a single instrument or a group of them, and
giving the piano an equal role in a rich contrapuntal texture, Fauré
created a dazzling variety of tonal effects.
—from Edition Silvertrust
Join us for our first Young Artist Concert of 2015
Monday, July 13 at 7pm
Riley Center for the Arts, BBA
..and don’t miss our Led Zeppelin Tribute
Monday, July 13 at 7pm
here at the Arkell.
The Out on the Tiles Band along with MMF Strings
reunite in a concert to raise funds
for MMF’s Education Outreach progams.
Tickets for these and other events are available
at the door, at mmfvt.org or by calling 802-362-1956.
Program Notes
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Suite for violin, clarinet and piano, Op. 157b Darius Milhaud
One of the more prolific composers of the twentieth century, Darius
Milhaud was born to a Jewish family in southern France during the
last decade of the nineteenth century. He learned the violin as a
youth, and studies at the Paris Conservatoire from age 17 gave the
young composer opportunities to work with some of the most
prominent French composers and theorists of the day.
After serving as an attaché at the French delegation in Rio de
Janeiro during the First World War, in 1919 he returned to France,
where he composed, performed, and taught ceaselessly during the
1920s and 1930s, only abandoning his homeland in late 1939 after all
hope of resisting the German advance vanished. Settling in the United
States, he accepted a teaching position with Mills College in Oakland,
California, and continued to compose prolifically. Beginning in
1947 he combined his American teaching duties with a similar
position at the Paris Conservatoire, remaining at both institutions
until 1971, when his poor health forced him into retirement. He died
in Switzerland three years later.
The early decades of the twentieth century saw composers looking
for principles governing new harmonic resources. Milhaud explored
the simultaneous use of multiple keys each appearing in different
elements of a piece. He called this ‘polytonality’ and its use became
a distinguishing mark of much of Milhaud’s music. Composed in 1936,
his Suite for violin, clarinet, and piano relies, somewhat ironically, on
the concept of the traditional instrumental suite, with its multiple
movements of contrasting topics or moods. Set in four movements,
he elaborates on several distinct musical ideas and draws on his
wide-ranging stylistic interests along the way. The first movement,
bearing the title Ouverture, immediately establishes a piquant Latin
feel (reflecting, as do other of his pieces, the influence of his residence
in Brazil two decades earlier). The second movement, Divertissement,
utilizes intricate and playful imitative textures, as well as his signature
polytonal techniques. The third movement, Jeu, is a boisterous folk
dance based on a hearty and relentless rhythm. The fourth movement,
Introduction et final, begins with a somber introductory passage held
in check by the intermittent tolling of a repeated octave in the lowest
register of the piano and ends in a kind of jazzy cowboy tune that
brings the movement and the suite to a close.
—from Jeremy Grimshaw and others
Fantasie in f minor, Op. 49
Frédéric Chopin
A child prodigy, Chopin was born in 1810 in what was then the
Duchy of Warsaw. He grew up in Warsaw, which after 1815 became
part of Congress Poland, and there completed his musical education
and composed many of his works. At the age of 20 left Poland, less
than a month before the Russian suppression of the November 1830
Uprising, and settled in Paris as part of the Polish Great Emigration.
He supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few
public performances. From 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship
with the French woman writer George Sand. For most of his
life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at
the age of 39.
Composed in 1841, this is one of Chopin’s largest compositions
for solo piano, typically lasting well over ten minutes in performance.
It is unusual not only in its length but in form. The piece starts off
with a slow march-like theme that appears only once in the piece.
There follow three main groups of themes, each preceded by a sort
of bridge passage that serves as a refrain. This bridge is made up of
arpeggios that rise upward and gradually increase in tempo. The
mood imparted by the first group of themes is one of intensity
and passion, of drive and excitement. Its chief theme is stormy
and somewhat melancholy, and is the most dominant melody in
the work. The mood of the second theme group is subdued and has
an air of religiosity about its solemnity, while that of the third is a
mixture of triumph and happy defiance. The refrain closes the
piece, leaving the listener in awe at the many moods and colors
encountered in this somewhat enigmatic work.
­—Robert Cummings
Scherzo No. 3 in c-sharp minor, Op.39
Frédéric Chopin
The scherzo begins mysteriously, in almost Lisztian vein, in a variety
of keys that highlight the ambiguity of the main key. Only when the
fierce main theme announces itself in the forte octaves does the key of
c sharp minor assert itself. These passages are technically challenging
as they require an excellent octave technique in order to give them
the correct character and effect. The highly energetic first section is
followed by a contrasting chorale-like subject, which is interspersed
with delicate falling arpeggios. After the return of the main octave
theme, we again hear the chorale-like theme but this time in the key of
E Major and then pianissimo in e minor. From this air of mystery, the
scherzo grows in tempo and dynamics, unleashing a flurry of octaves
down the keyboard and into the coda. This coda is a real finger-buster,
and brings the work to a rhetorical ending in C-sharp Major.
—Intermission—
Andante spianato et grande polonaise brilliante in E-flat Major, Op.22 Frédéric Chopin
Chopin started writing the Grande polonaise brillante in E-flat Major
in 1830; it preoccupied his attention in his final months in Warsaw
and he completed it in Paris in 1831. It is an ebullient piece for
piano and orchestra though, as this evening, often the piano part
is played on its own. After receiving an invitation to perform in
Paris, Chopin wrote the Andante spianato (spianato means ‘even’ or
‘smooth’) as an introductory piece, joining both movements with a
fanfare-like section. The combined work was published in 1836,
dedicated to Madame d’Este. The 2002 film The Pianist concludes
with the polonaise, and the final coda is a waterfall of tumbling
notes that leaves the listener in awe at the performer’s technique
and keyboard skills.
Quartet for piano and strings in c minor, Op. 15
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Fauré was born 1845 in the village of Pamiers, Ariège,
Midi-Pyrénées. At an early age he was sent to study at the famous
École Niedermeyer, a Parisian school that prepared church organists
and choir directors. He studied with several prominent French
musicians, including Charles Lefèvre and Camille Saint-Saëns. For
most of his life, Fauré worked as a church organist and teacher,