2011 Anniversary Brochure - Paxos Festival Trust

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Concert 2 Saturday 10 September at 8.30 Loggos Schoolhouse Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): String Quartet No.63 in Bb Major, Sunrise, Op.76, No.4 Haydn’s Opus 76, a set of six string quartets, is a prime specimen of the radical inventiveness, even mischievousness, for which he stands out among composers. It was commissioned by the Hungarian Count, Joseph Erdödy, while Haydn was employed at the court of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, and includes many of his best known quartets, including the famous Emperor—number three in this set. This one, number four, begins with a memorable rising violin figure over a sustained B-flat chord, which gives the piece its nickname—‘sunrise’. A similar figure is then played over a more dissonant sustained chord, before the music bursts into a radiant string texture. Other inventive features include the passing of material from instrument to instrument, false starts, abrupt changes in dynamics, and surprising phrase lengths. Though full of sunshine, the piece is not without its dark moments; the second movement, for example, reflects the same artistic maturity and profound themes as The Creation, Haydn’s great oratorio, which he wrote at roughly the same time as this piece. Jules Massenet (1842-191): ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs Massenet’s opera Thaïs tells the story of Athanaël, a Cenobite monk living in Egypt during the time of the Byzantine empire, who manages to convert the beautiful courtesan Thaïs to Christianity and a life of chastity, only to regret his decision when he realises that he is in love with her. The opera ends tragically, with Athanaël visiting Thaïs in her convent years later and finding her on her deathbed. He loses all of his belief in eternal life and contempt for this world, realising that ‘nothing is true but life and the love of human beings.’ It premiered at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, with the American soprano Sybil Sanderson as Thaïs – a role that Massenet had written especially for her. The Méditation is the entr’acte between the two scenes of the second act. Athanaël has arrived from his monastery to attend a feast in Alexandria, held by his old friend Nicias, now a wealthy sensualist and Venus-worshipper. Thaïs is the star attraction. Athanaël comes to her room late at night and, after resisting her attempts to seduce him, attempts to persuade her that if she abandons the life of the flesh her spirit will live eternally. She remains unconvinced, but later, while alone, begins to contemplate the mysterious things Athanaël has told her. The Méditation is played while she deliberates, before resolving to follow Athanaël into the desert and give up earthly things. Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Viola Sonata Impetuoso Vivace Adagio In her prime Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was widely recognized as England’s leading female violist, performing with artists such as Heifetz, Thibaud, Suggia, Casals, Szigeti, Rubinstein and Schnabel. Her compositional output is small, but shows her to have been a highly gifted composer. She wrote a selection of chamber works, including short pieces for the viola and piano that she wrote to perform herself, as well as solo piano music, choral works, and a number of English songs to the poetry of Yeats, Masefield and Housman. Sadly, only twenty works were published in her lifetime, and at the time of her death in 1979, all of these were long out of print. Her music is striking not only for its passion and power, but also for its lyricism and influences from French impressionism and English folk song. Arguably her best known work, the Viola Sonata is a powerful and expansive example post- Romantic sonata. In 1919 Clarke entered the piece into a composition competition run by Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge- a great American patroness of the arts. The distinguished competition jury was unable to decide between two works for the $1,000 first prize- one was the Clarke Sonata, the other Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola. In the end the Bloch Suite won the competition when Coolidge herself was asked to make the deciding vote, but the fact that a woman had composed such a brilliant work caused quite a stir, and it was even speculated that “Rebecca Clarke” was in fact a pseudonym for Bloch himself. 28 Clarke inscribes the sonata with a quotation from the 1835 poem La Nuit de mai, by Alfred de Musset: Poète, prends ton luth; le vin de la jeunesse Fermente cette nuit dans les veines de Dieu. Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Auf dem Strom, D943 Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth Ferments tonight in the veins of God. This piece is a setting of a poem by Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860). Rellstab originally offered his poems to Beethoven, who died before setting any of them but passed them on to Schubert, having made some preliminary markings. The younger composer’s tribute to Beethoven is clear in this song, which quotes from the Funeral March of the Eroica Symphony. Perhaps Schubert imagined the lover in the poem, saying farewell to his beloved as he disappears down the river, as Beethoven himself, saying goodbye to the world. The piece was among those performed in the only concert he attended that was entirely dedicated to his own works, given on the anniversary of Beethoven’s death, March 26, 1828. Schubert died only later that year, and, at his own request, was buried beside Beethoven in the village cemetery of Währing. Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937): Mythes Op.30 La Fontaine d’Aretheuse Narcisse Dryades et Pan Szymanowski composed these three pieces in 1915, dedicating them to Zofia Kochańska, the wife of the famous violinist Pawel Kochański, with whom the composer himself premiered the piece. His and Kochański’s intention was to create a new style of expression on the violin, and indeed the violin writing of this piece was carefully studied by the greatest twentieth-century composers including Bartok, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. The subjects are, of course, taken from Greek mythology. Arethusa, one of the Nereids, was the nymph of the famous fountain in the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse. Narcissus was a beautiful and vain youth who ignored the advances of the nymph Echo, who died of grief. As a punishment, he was caused to fall in love with his own reflection in a still pool. Pan was the god of flocks and shepherds, who wandered around the valleys of Arcadia leading the dances of the Dryads (nymphs) on his shepherd’s flute. Here are Szymanowksi’s own words concerning the mythical subjects of the piece: ‘This is not meant to be a drama, unfolding in scenes one after another, (each) of which has anecdotic significance - this is rather a complex musical expression of the inspiring beauty of the Myth. The main ‘key’ of the ‘flowing water’ in Arethusa, the ‘stagnant water’ in Narcissus (the still and clear surface of the water in which the beauty of the (ephebe) Narcissus is reflected) - these are the main lines of the piece ... In the Dryads one can imagine the content in an anecdotic sense. Hence the murmuring of the forest on a hot summer's night, thousands of mysterious voices, all overlapping in the darkness - the fun and dancing of the Dryads. Suddenly the sound of Pan's pipe. Silence and anxiety. An atmospheric, dreamy melody. The appearance of Pan, the Dryads’ amorous [word illegible], their ambiguously expressed fear = Pan skips away - the dance begins anew - then everything calms down in the freshness and silence of the breaking dawn. In all, a musical expression of the dreamy tension of a summer night....’ Michail Palaiologou (1981- ): Kaonas The work Kaonas takes its title from the Greek word for seagull (in the dialect mostly used in the Greek islands of the Ionian sea). It is a set of five miniatures for tenor, piano and string quartet. The poems used are all Kantsones composed by Spyros Bogdanos, the current mayor of Paxos. Each miniature is composed based on a different poem and while in none of the poems is presented in whole, each conveys the vivid images and emotions drawn by the poet. Kaonas is commissioned by the Paxos Festival Trust. 29 29
Concert 3 Tuesday 13 September at 8.30 Loggos Schoolhouse Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, Arr. Harold Gretton) In 1904 the musicologist Pierre Aubry approached Ravel with an urgent request. He was giving a lecture on Greek folksong and needed examples that could be performed to his audience. A mutual friend, Michel Dimitri Calvocoressi, produced French translations of five folk songs from Chios, for which Ravel produced piano accompaniments in only thirtysix hours! Calvocoressi then produced three more translations for Ravel to set. The final version of the cycle, published in 1906, selected the five favourite songs from the total eight Ravel and Calvocoressi had produced. As always, Ravel found a way to express his own personal compositional style, full of intriguing modal harmonies and intricate rhythmic patterns, while retaining the distinctive Mediterranean flavour of the tunes. Since many of the accompaniment figures seem to mimic traditional plucked and strummed instruments, an arrangement for guitar seems natural. Calvocoressi’s French texts are still under copyright and cannot be reproduced here, but the attached translations by Peter Dayon are available. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Carnival of the Animals XIII: 'Le Cygne' (The Swan), Arr. Harold Gretton Saint-Saëns composed La carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) in 1886. It is a suite of fourteen pieces, each depicting a different zoological exhibition (it would be wrong to say ‘each depicting a different animal’, since ‘Aquarium’, ‘Aviary’, and ‘Pianists’ are not animals), along with a Finale. Saint-Saëns refused to publish most of it during his lifetime, concerned that it would give him a reputation as a trivial composer. Today, however, it is his most popular piece and generally taken as a demonstration of the composer’s genius rather than his triviality. Le Cygne (The Swan) is the only movement Saint-Saëns did publish during his lifetime. It is probably the most famous of them all, often performed on its own, and a core piece in the cello repertoire (commonly played also on the double bass). The rippling figures on the piano – or here, on the guitars – represent the swan’s paddling feet beneath the surface of the water, while the serene melody depicts her/his graceful gliding over the surface. It became especially famous when used by Michael Fokine as the score for his 1905 ballet, The Dying Swan, performed many times by Anna Pavlova. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Concerto for 2 Mandolins, Strings and Continuo in G, RV532 Vivaldi composed over 500 concertos, many of them, including this one, for the girls at the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi worked as a violin teacher, as well as a conductor and composer, from 1703 until 1740. The date of this composition and its circumstances are unknown. It is the only concerto Vivaldi wrote for two mandolins and is somewhat less famous than his solo mandolin concerti (one in C major, RV425, was used by François Truffaut in his 1968 film The Bride Wore Black, while one in D major, RV93, appears in Todd Solondz’s film Happiness (1998) – both with rather unfortunate associations). Having two instruments to play off each other, however, suits Vivaldi’s style – full of exuberant contrasts, echoes, intertwining, and untwining – wonderfully. 30 30 Guillaume Lekeu (1870-94): Nocturne, No. 3, extract of Trois poémes The brief life of the Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu, cut short by typhoid fever at the age of 24, was full of artistic promise. He won the Prix de Rome twice, was taught composition by César Franck and Vincent d’Indy, and was an admired friend of the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who commissioned a violin sonata from him. Lekeu began writing songs at the age of 17. His first two songs were settings of poems by Alphonse Lamartine (1790-1869), but after this Lekeu only set his own poems. This Nocturne is the last of a set of three poems (‘Sur une tombe’ and ‘Ronde’ are the others). The score is inscribed with lines from Victor Hugo’s exuberant love poem, Écoute-moi, Madeleine! (Listen to me, Oh Madeleine!), which are as follows: …Le printemps… A cette nuit, pour te plaire, Secoué sur la bruyere Sa robe pleine de fleurs The Springtime… Tonight, to please your eye, Has shaken upon the heather, Its robe of flowers! But this is the only mention of night in Hugo’s bright, clear, and joyful poem; what Lekeu meant by transforming it into this mysterious and brooding nocturne (some have called it a landscape seen with the eyes of the soul) is unclear, though undoubtedly the result has a strange kind of opaque beauty. Johannes Brahms (1833-97): Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 This quintet was begun sometime in 1862. Like almost all of Brahms’ great works, it had a somewhat tortuous birth. He originally conceived it as a string quintet with two cellos. He sent the first three movements of this version to his mentor Clara Schumann and his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, in August 1862. Both were impressed but felt that something was missing. Brahms transformed the material into a Sonata for Two Pianos (eventually published as Op. 34 bis), and performed this version with Karl Tausig in 1864. Clara Schumann, however, remained unconvinced by the material in this form, finding that it felt too much like an arrangement. In the summer of 1864, Brahms recast the material as a quintet for the ensemble seen here tonight, suggested to him by the conductor Hermann Levi, who remarked: ‘You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music.’ Thus has it remained. Many of Brahms’ works take fairly strict classical forms and scale them up to gigantic proportions, whereby they take on a surprising character: this piece is typical in this respect. 31
Page 1 and 2: PAXOS MUSIC FESTIVALS...... THE FIR
Page 3 and 4: Welcome to our celebrations for the
Page 5 and 6: I met John Gough the very first yea
Page 7 and 8: The Early Years 1986 - 2004 John an
Page 9 and 10: So many memories! Most importantly
Page 11 and 12: The master classes in Paxos in 2006
Page 13 and 14: GSMD at the September Festivals 200
Page 15: Concert 1 Thursday 8 September at 8
Page 19 and 20: minor but to B flat major. The moti
Page 21 and 22: John Bacon (tenor) England-based Ca
Page 23 and 24: Pal Banda and Zsuzsa Berenyi Pal wa
Page 25: The 2011 Paxos September Festival i

2011 Anniversary Brochure - Paxos Festival Trust

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