GVO Newsletter - March 2008

[David Yoon]

		The Greenwich Village Orchestra e-Newsletter -  March 17th, 2008 In this Issue Welcome to the 2007-2008 season of the Greenwich Village Orchestra! This newsletter will regularly bring you insights into the music-making and activities of the GVO. In this issue, we discuss the upcoming "Enduring" concert on March 30th at 3:00PM. For more information, please visit our website at www.gvo.org. Maestro Barbara Yahr Upcoming Concert - Enduring Sunday, March 30th, 2007 3:00 PM Tickets: $15.00 (suggested donation) for general admission $10 for seniors and students (with valid school ID) Location Washington Irving Auditorium 40 Irving Place (between 16th and 17th) New York, NY 10003 map Program: Sibelius Valse Triste Hindemith Clarinet Concerto - Gary Dranch Nielsen Symphony No. 4, The Inextinguishable From the Podium Our March 30th program is comprised of works by three composers, Sibelius, Hindemith and Nielsen all of whom were born in the 19th century and lived and worked well into the 20th. Although they are all well known composers, much of their music remains unfamiliar to us. One Dane, one Finn and one German all rooted in the great musical traditions of the 19th century who were able to write music that still sounds new to our 21st century ears. What has always drawn me to these composers is their relationship to dissonance: both in terms of musical style and the dissonance of their times. They are tonal composers, not going the way of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system but composers who wrote music that used dissonance freely. Although perhaps disturbing to the most traditional listeners, their music does not deny tonality, but rather uses it to express something about their world. We begin with the most well known work on the program, Sibelius's Valse Triste'. Taken from the incidental music to Kuolema, this hauntingly beautiful piece is one of the composer's most popular short works. Hindemith was a prodigious talent. He played violin, viola and piano at a professional level and could get by on just about every other instrument in the orchestra. Composing seems to have come easily to him and he wrote constantly. My old teacher Max Rudolf was a contemporary of Hindemith. They were students together in Frankfurt and Max remembered that Hindemith was always writing music, be it sitting at a café, standing in the street car, where ever it was, he was scribbling something in a music notebook. The music he wrote is sharp edged, non sentimental. The romantic composer, Richard Strauss, reportedly asked the young Hindemith: "Why do have to write this way? You have talent." Hindemith replied: "Herr Professor, you make your music and I'll make mine." Hindemith was a practical craftsman who wanted nothing to do with politics but the world would infringe on him when the Nazi's came to power. Although he was a child from a Protestant and Catholic background, he came under attack because he had continued to play music with Jews and was a member of an international group of composers. He was not deported, but his music was officially banned. In reaction to this, the great conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwangler wrote an article defending Hindemith's music and the evening following its publication, Furtwangler received a 20 minute ovation before he was able to begin the performance. Furtwangler was later relieved of his conducting post and Hindemith was eventually put on leave from his teaching post at the Hochschule. Try as he might to remain 'just a musician,' controversy followed Hindemith. Eventually, he moved to Switzerland and finally to the U.S. Nielsen was born into a musical but economically impoverished family. He was the 7th of 12 children and his musical gifts were apparent early on.. He studied in Copenhagen and made his living first as a violinist, eventually leaving his post as orchestral musician to concentrate on composition. During World War I, he composed one of his most important works, the Fourth Symphony, known as "The Inextinguishable." It is a piece which reflects the state of the world; in short, a piece about conflict. It begins with a leap in to the maelstrom – swirling lines are heard from all parts of the orchestra as though surrounding us with the chaos and complexity of the world. Before long, a theme emerges in the clarinets that is simple, life affirming and very moving. The conflict between these ideas continues throughout the work comprised of 4 movements which are played without pause. In the first movement, the 'chaos' theme is developed while alternating with the 'calm' theme which, by the end of the movement is transformed into a heroic statement heard in the brass. The second movement develops the sense of tranquility with a return to 'simpler times' This is really chamber music written for the different wood wind families placed in an orchestral setting. The music has a graceful, lilting quality and seems to assure us that there was a time when there were no worries, no violence, no war. The mood is broken with the start of the third movement. This is a declarative recitative in which the strings cry out and express the pain, and the human response to the horrors of the years of this works composition: 1914-16. The punctuations in the timpani and low pizzicato echo the distant sound of canon fire. The section develops into a dialectic between a theme resembling gun fire and Nielsen's solemn prayers for humanity. The bridge to the fourth movement is a blast of string playing which ushers in a finale befitting the programmatic title of the symphony. The finale's exuberance is notable for it's parts written for two timpanists resulting in what Alex Ross referred to in his recent New Yorker article on Nielsen Symphonies as a 'timpani duel" . For me, the prominent timpani parts are more like a riveting drum solo, (or duo) in a very tight rock band; the other players in the band, are really into it this timpani riff and do their best to join in. These are not the ominous timpani of the war, but an explosion of joy which reaffirms the theme of the symphony. As Nielsen put it: " Music is life, and, like life, inextinguishable." Interview with the soloist - Gary Dranch: BY: I love the Hindemith concerto but it is new to me- when did you first discover this amazing work? GD: Wallace Shapiro, who was principal with the Goldman Band and the Little Orchestra Society, was my teacher during my teen years up until the time I left New York to study at the Eastman School of Music when I was seventeen. Mr. Shapiro was a real Hindemith enthusiast, and he inspired me to begin learning this concerto. I later performed the work during my junior year at Eastman for the Woodwind Jury, with Professor Maria Luisa Faini playing the orchestral piano-reduction part. I remember her saying "hop-hop" as her right hand traversed the keys at break-neck speed imitating the piccolo part in the Scherzo 2nd movement--it was rollicking fun to play with an accompanist like that! BY: I know you particularly love music of the 20th (and 21st?) century. What about this music speaks to you- and has this been true since your student days? GD: I was fortunate to be a freshman at Eastman for their 50th Anniversary Year. Many composers were commissioned to write works specifically for that occasion. I wanted to be involved with the performances. I knew I'd stand a better chance of participating if I volunteered to play in contemporary ensembles like the "Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble". I offered to play bass clarinet parts for the world premieres of works by such composers as Peter Maxwell Davies and Gunther Schuller. In the former, "L'Homme Armé" fascinated me by its clever use of medieval motets and its cantus firmus theme. Conductor Bruce Hangen had to beat four against five: four beats with his left hand against five beats in his right hand! Wow! I was still seventeen when, again at the Eastman School, I was introduced to the strict contrapuntal devices employed by Hindemith in his "Ludus Tonalis" for piano which literally "blew me away!" It wasn't until I pursued my doctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that I really became immersed, fanatically, in contemporary music performance. It was there that I was exposed to the "Illinois Experimental Music Studio", and interacted with the likes of Sever Tipei, Zack Browning, Scott Wyatt, Pauline Oliveros, Salvatore Martirano, Herbert Brun, Paul Martin Zonn (my thesis advisor), and countless others. I became "radicalized" and was attracted by the notion of being somewhat of an "enfant terrible." Case-in-point, I recall delighting in outraging the very prim-and-proper professor of flute, who stared into my practice-room window, making horrible grimaces, while I practiced my kazoo part for a contemporary work, "To Hiroshima with Love." For my doctoral recitals, I collaborated with composers and media planners, performing multi-media works with synthesizers or electronic tape, and involving theatrical and aleatoric devices. This was, after all, the '70's when it was all-the-rage. During my post-doctoral "phase" at New York University, I was involved in several contemporary music ensembles, performing works of composers Elliott Schwartz, Eugen Wendel, and Leo Kraft at The Loeb Center and The Atrium at CitiCorp. More recently, I became interested in expanding the solo clarinet repertoire. I premiered several concertos for clarinet and also commissioned some others. The culmination of these efforts was the release of my solo CD in November 2006 entitled "The 20th Century Clarinet Concerto" on MSR Classics label. BY: You're a full time working dad of twins who also manages to maintain a professional level of clarinet playing---how do you do it? GD: Egads. I've become a professional night-owl whose best work happens after the kids are in bed (but not asleep!), which keeps getting later and later. I have to be very strict about my time, and my family understands the difference between "our time" and "my time". I'm very strict about not having intrusions into my private workspace. I have to be very pragmatic about the projects which I undertake, and have scaled back to some extent on others. I do long-term planning for projects with a hard-nosed appreciation for the precise amount of time I require for preparing a program to my very stringent standards. I seem to derive some perverse satisfaction from imposing extreme challenges on myself and testing myself to my limits. Fulfillment is achieved on those rare occasions when I am satisfied that I met those standards. Maestro Barbara Yahr For more information: Greenwich Village Orchestra Greenwich Village Orchestra P.O. Box 910 New York, NY 10113
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