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One World. Many Voices.

Monday Oct. 29 2007 7:30 pm     Tuesday Oct. 30 2007 7:30 pm

Program Notes
 

Marko Tajcevic (Tai-CHEV-its) was a Serbian composer born in what is now Croatia, and he studied music in Prague and Vienna as well as in his native country. He returned home and in 1923 he had his first success as a composer with a set of songs which were performed on a concert called “Our Folklore” which he organized with three other composers. In addition to being a composer, he was a teacher (at the Lisinski Music School, which he helped found, and at the Belgrade Academy of Music), a choral conductor, and a music critic. He also wrote a widely used theory textbook and some musicological works.

As a composer, Tajcevic worked carefully and slowly, and so his output is small. His fifty-four compositions include works for solo voice, choir, piano, and some pieces for strings, woodwinds and chamber orchestra. He most typical works are miniatures, small, carefully crafted songs, choir works or piano pieces. His Seven Balkan Dances are probably the best-known example of this kind of piece. These seven short movements, first written for piano solo, are also typically nationalistic, steeped in the folk music of the Balkans. Even though the music reminds us of other central European composers who used the native musics of the region (Bartok, Kodály, Janácek, etc.), there is a simplicity and a straightforwardness that comes through that seems to be wholly Tajcevic.

A protege of the late Maestro Robert Shaw, Tyler White was born in Atlanta, Georgia and was raised in Manhattan, Kansas. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in composition from  Cornell University, studying with Pulitzer Prize winners Steven Stucky and Karel Husa. National and international recognition for his compositions has come through awards from ASCAP, BMI, The American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, Vienna Modern Masters, among others, and through commissions from the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and other ensembles. In 1999 his opera O Pioneers!, the first-ever operatic treatment of Willa Cather's novel, was premiered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and televised on Nebraska Public Television. In 2003, White's Elegy "for the orphans of terror" was recorded by the Sofia Philharmonic on the inaugural volume of ERMMedia's "Masterworks of the New Era" CD series. He is currently Director of Orchestral activities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Notes on Abu Ghraib from the composer:
The title of this piece refers to an important episode in our country's history. Abu Ghraib, while inscribed on our nations' consciousness by photographs and reports, has been absorbed into the nation's bloodstream, its long term effects yet to be known. [My piece is not a protest or moral lesson. These would require little bravery. Instead it seeks music in a moment when words can fail.]

There are two movements, separated by a pause: Scene I. Prayer I; Scene II., Prayer II. Each Prayer begins with the violoncello playing alone.

Scene I, in its harmonic details, investigates infection and wrongness. Then, in a less rebarbarative language, Prayer I begins a tentative plea for help beyond ourselves.

Scene II is based on an Iraqi song which I was hired to transcribe back in 1962, for a collection called Lullabies of the World (I was asked to transform its bent pitches and asymmetrical rhythms into "American family-sing form.") This song is shown to have connections to two of our well-known hymns. Prayer II again suggests that by entering a difficult meditative world we may find courage to face our own Shadow.

Stephen Albert was born in New York City in 1941. He first studied composition at the age of 15 with Elie Siegmeister, and enrolled two years later at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers. Following composition lessons in Stockholm with Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Albert studied with Joseph Castaldo at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, and in 1963 he worked with George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania. He won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his symphony RiverRun, and from 1985 to 1988 served as composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony, after which, until the time his death, he was professor of composition at the Juilliard School of Music. He received commissions from the Chicago, National, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Seattle symphonies, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Library of Congress, and he was much awarded and honored (including two Rome Prizes). He had also taught in the Lima, Ohio public schools (under a Ford Foundation grant as composer-in-residence). Albert died tragically in a car accident December of 1992 at the age of 51. 

The works of James Joyce provided Albert with a potent creative stimulus; Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses served as springboards for his symphony RiverRun, vocal works To Wake the Dead, TreeStone, Flower of the Mountain, and Sun's Heat. His last works included the Cello Concerto, commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony for Yo-Yo Ma (and recorded by them on the Sony Classical label), and Symphony No. 2 for the New York Philharmonic, which was completed in short score at the time of his death (and received its premiere in November 1994). Albert’s music is contemporary in sound, yet firmly rooted in traditional compositional techniques, drawing inspiration from the rich emotional palette of 19th-century music, while remaining thoroughly modern. Albert’s Wind Canticle, for clarinet and orchestra, was composed in 1991 on a commission by the Philadelphia, Toledo and Seattle Symphony Orchestras with a grant from the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program. Clarinetist David Shifrin premiered the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was Albert’s last concerto. Albert’s publisher, G. Schirmer, notes that this “sweetly lyrical” piece is “cast in an extended sonata form.” The low chalumeau register of the clarinet is featured, which matches well with Albert’s “dark tonal palette.” It is also striking how little the clarinet shows off; this is not a typical, virtuosic concerto, but rather a thoughtful, reflective work.

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