Events

Ludwig van Beethoven
b. December 17, 1770 in Bonn, Germany; d. March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

Overture to Fidelio, Op. 72c
Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b

Beethoven spent more time writing the overture to Fidelio than Rossini and Donizetti spent on entire operas, overtures included. But then Beethoven did write a total of four overtures to his only opera, which itself underwent several revisions.

To make a potentially interminable story short: Beethoven was dissatisfied for various reasons, practical and aesthetic, with the first three versions of the overture. All three are today referred to as “Leonore,” after the opera’s protagonist – and the working title of the first version (1805) of the opera itself – a woman who, disguised as a man, Fidelio, rescues her husband, Florestan, from political imprisonment and imminent death.

Leonore No. 1 was regarded by the composer as too slight to bear the burden of the drama that was to follow; No. 2, in his estimation, possessed the right ideas but too roughly worked-out; and No. 3 was too grand to be anything but self-sufficient. So Beethoven shelved them all and started from scratch to produce in 1814 what we know as the Fidelio Overture: a compact, energetic curtain-raiser that, unlike its three predecessors, avoids themes from the opera proper.

As far back as the early 1920s Arturo Toscanini was already a champion of the terse, until then rarely-encountered No. 1 (every conductor programmed the gigantic, symphonic No. 3 and the Fidelio Overture). No. 2, on the other hand, has had to wait until very recently, for the occasional revival of Leonore, i.e., the first version of Fidelio, to arouse more than passing interest. Like Leonore itself, the present overture doesn’t represent a final destination, but a way-station, although one decidedly worth visiting.

Leonore No. 2 is hugely dramatic, mirroring the intensity of the darkest events of the opera it was once intended to precede. It is largely derived from the scene that opens the second act in both versions of the opera: a depiction of Florestan’s dungeon, to which we are led via dark, descending octaves and dissonant harmonies. The theme of Florestan’s aria, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen” (In the springtime of my life), follows and serves as the springboard for a free-form tour of the opera’s action, capped by roughly the same tumultuous finale as that of No. 3.

Paul Lansky
b. June 18, 1944 in New York City.

Shapeshifters (Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra). Premiered April 10, 2008, with Quattro Mani, Justin Brown conducting the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra commissioned the work and recorded it for Bridge Records.

Paul Lansky’s early musical studies were at the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. He subsequently attended Queens College, where he studied composition with George Perle and Hugo Weisgall, and Princeton University, where he worked with Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim and others. He played French horn with the Dorian Wind Quintet in 1966-67. He has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1969, where he is now William Shubael Conant Professor of Music. Until the mid-1990s, most of Lansky’s composition concentrated on computer music, and he became recognized as one of the pioneers in the field. In 2002, he received a lifetime achievement award from SEAMUS (the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States). In 2000 he was the subject of a documentary, My Cinema for the Ears, which was made for European Television’s ARTE network and directed by Uli Aumueller. He has received awards and commissions from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Guggenheim, Koussevitsky and Fromm Foundations, Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest, ASCAP and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among others.

Lansky’s recent instrumental music eschews attempts to “break new ground;” instead he approaches tonality and harmony in a new way, referencing various musical traditions from the range of music history. Many of his works relate to jazz and popular music, and interestingly, Radiohead used a sample from Lansky’s first computer piece, “mild und leise,” as a basis for their 2000 song, “Idioteque.”

Mr. Lansky has provided notes for Shapeshifters:

Shapeshifters, for two pianos and orchestra, was commissioned by the Alabama Symphony and Justin Brown for the wonderful piano duo Quattro Mani, Susan Grace and Alice Rybak. It is in four movements: “At Any Moment,” “Florid Counterpoint,” “Confused and Dazed,” and “Topology,” and is about 27 minutes long. The title, Shapeshifters, denotes a kind of homage to music’s ability to change and morph itself in uncanny and unusual ways. The idea was inspired while composing a moment about 2/3 of the way through the first movement when an interruption of a sudden B minor chord changes everything in horns and strings. What had been a good day is now overcast and gloomy, like that phone call out of the blue telling you something you may not have wanted to hear. In the other movements shapeshifting occurs in different ways. In the second movement twisting contrapuntal lines evolve into a kind of Spanish lament. In the third movement the music exhibits a kind of collage mentality, switching back and forth between different kinds of materials rather than evolving a thematic idea. In the final movement, “Topology,” the music evolves from a kind of frenetic and percussive texture to full-blown dance music. Shapeshifters is not a concerto in the romantic tradition. Here the pianos move back and forth between being articulate soloists and being members of the orchestra. At heart, however, all I really care about is that the listeners and performers enjoy themselves, and that the music speaks for itself.

© 2008 Susan Halpern

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius
b. January 29, 1862 in Bradford, England; d. June 10, 1934 in Grez-sur-Loing, France.

Prelude to Irmelin. Sir Thomas Beecham led the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Irmelin Prelude, which was performed as an interlude during a performance of Delius’ opera Koanga at Covent Garden on Sept. 23, 1935. The complete opera Irmelin, from which themes from the prelude were taken, was not staged until May 1953, almost 20 years after Delius’ death.

The cosmopolitan nature of music can summed up in the life and work of Frederick Delius. He is considered an English composer, although he spent much of his life in France and first established himself as a composer in Germany and Norway.

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, to German parents who christened him Fritz Theodore Albert Delius, he later anglicized and shortened his name to Frederick Delius. In 1884 he moved to Solano Grove, Florida, near Jacksonville, to manage an orange plantation. There Delius studied composition with Thomas F. Ward, of whom he said: “[He] showed wonderful insight in helping me to find out just how much in the way of traditional technique would be useful to me … and there wasn’t much. A sense of flow is the main thing, and it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you master it.” Aside from Ward’s tutelage, and time spent studying in Leipzig, Delius was essentially self-taught. While in Leipzig, Delius met the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, whose music and friendship Delius described as “a breath of mountain air.”

While visiting Grieg in Scandinavia, Delius became acquainted with the legend of Princess Irmelin, who spurns 100 suitors while awaiting her “perfect” husband, along with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Princess and the Swineherd. These two narratives formed the basis for Delius’ first opera, Irmelin, which he began composing in 1890. Although Delius completed Irmelin two years later, he was unable to mount a production or even interest a publisher in it, and it was not staged until almost 20 years after his death.

In 1931, paralyzed and blind, Delius revisited the music of Irmelin and created an orchestral prelude based on some of its themes, which he dictated to his friend and amanuensis, Eric Fenby. The dreamy magical quality of the Irmelin Prelude is captured in the sensuous flow of music Delius learned from his youthful studies with Ward.

© 2010 Elizabeth Schwartz

Graham Fitkin
b. April 19, 1963 in Cornwall, England.

Circuit (for Two Pianos and Orchestra). Commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for Kathryn Stott and Noriko Ogawa with the orchestra. It was premiered at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 21 March 2002.

Circuit is a single span of music lasting around twenty minutes. Written over the winter of 2002-03 for Kathryn Stott and Noriko Ogawa, it was premiered in March 2003 at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. This exuberant and virtuosic work is possibly Fitkin’s most complete affirmation yet of his interest in the piano, gloriously exploiting both its percussive and its lyrical sides and reveling in the freedom that the medium of two solo pianos and large orchestra gives him. In Circuit, Fitkin constructs a grid-like plan for the work, the piece being based on five separate musical blocks that are juxtaposed throughout the piece. Each different block contains its own system and rules, which are initially strictly adhered to. However, the system of one block begins to affect its neighboring music and as the piece progresses there is an increasing standardization of rules. On another level, there is certainly also a ghost of a traditional three-movement concerto plan, telescoped into a single movement – an assessment which it is more than likely that the composer himself would disagree with. Either way, the piece is a stunning accomplishment.

© 2009 Laurence Crane

The duo piano team Quattro Mani has gained high praise from both critics and audiences for their concerts and recordings. Formed in 1989, Quattro Mani has performed throughout the USA and Europe. The duo’s special interest in twentieth century repertoire has led to dedications and collaborations with many composers, including George Crumb, Joan Tower, Paul Lansky, Poul Ruders and Frederic Rzewski. Pianists Susan Grace and Steven Beck bring together two distinguished careers. Each has earned recognition as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States and abroad. Both artists share a special interest in the vast repertoire for two pianos and the unique collaboration involved in its performance.

Following the release of Quattro Mani’s debut CD, A Game of Go, Fanfare wrote: “Grace and Rybak play all of this music with power and intelligence, shaping large expressive phrases. Quattro Mani’s blistering performance forms the beating heart of an arresting recital.” Quattro Mani’s next CD – a recording of George Crumb’s music for two pianos – was issued by Bridge Records, and was immediately nominated as “Best Chamber Music CD of the Year” by the International Critics Committee of the Cannes Classic Awards. This CD received Fanfare’s “Critics Choice” and highest ratings from France’s Repertoire as well as from ClassicsToday.com. About Quattro Mani, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Crumb writes: “The duo piano team Quattro Mani is one of the very finest I have heard. Susan Grace and Alice Rybak are wonderful artists and their performances are both technically and musically superb.”

Quattro Mani has been featured on three recent critically acclaimed discs: The Music of Poul Ruders, Vol. 4 (BRIDGE 9143) and Complete Crumb Edition, Vol. 8 (BRIDGE 9155) which was chosen as one of the ‘Top 10 CD’s’ by Amazon.com. Their most recent disc, Harmony for a New World (INNOVA 603) was awarded an ‘Editor’s Choice’ from The Village Voice. Two releases are scheduled for this Spring: A disc of works written for Quattro Mani by composers George Crumb, John Noveck, Paul Lansky, Lance Hulme, Stephen Jaffe and Jed Distler; and Quattro Mani’s first orchestral recording, featuring duo piano concertos by Poulenc, Milhaud and Bartok.

For the upcoming Austin Symphony concerts featuring Paul Lansky’s ‘Shapeshifters’ and Graham Fitkin’s ‘Circuit’, pianist Susan Grace of Quattro Mani will be joined by the stellar young virtuoso, Steven Beck. Mr. Beck has just returned from Europe, where he recorded Peter Lieberson’s Piano Concerto No. 3 for Bridge Records. He will be playing in Austin in place of Alice Rybak, due to a health emergency.

STEVEN BECK is a graduate of the Juilliard School and made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra. He has also been a soloist with the New Juilliard Ensemble, Sequitur, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, the Virginia Symphony, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra of Denmark. He has made festival appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Greenwich Music Festival, the Monadnock Music Festival, the Woodstock Mozart Festival, and the Wellesley Composers’ Conference. He has worked with Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, and George Perle, and premiered works by Charles Wuorinen and Louis Karchin. Mr. Beck is a member of the notorious Knights of the Many-Sided Table, counter)induction, Talea, Pleasure is the Law, and the new music ensemble Future In Reverse (FIRE). His recordings are on the Albany, Bridge, Boston Records, Monument, Mulatta, and Annemarie Classics labels.

SUSAN GRACE has performed solo and chamber recitals, and has appeared as soloist with orchestras in the United States, Europe, the former Soviet Union, China and India. She has, in addition, performed in numerous series and festivals, including the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Grand Teton Festival, Music at Oxford, and the Helmsley Festival in England. Ms. Grace and her husband, Michael, have toured with a concert titled Piano Music and Painting; these programs, which include slides of the paintings upon which the piano compositions performed are based, have been presented recently on numerous series, including those at Florida International University, Bucknell University, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, South Dakota State University, the Loveland Civic Music Association, and the University of Lueneburg, Germany. These programs have also been chosen for presentation at national meetings of the College Music Society and the American Musicological Society. Ms. Grace and her husband have presented numerous lecture/concerts sponsored by the American Embassy on American piano music in India. As a collaborative artist, Ms. Grace has performed with cellist Janos Starker, violinists Martin Chalifour, Glenn Dicterow and Jose-Luis Garcia, clarinetist David Shifrin, soprano Martile Rowland and many other internationally known musicians.Ms. Grace is Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in Music at Colorado College, Music Director of the Colorado College Summer Music Festival and Artistic Director of the New Music Symposium.