present

Reynolds-Kirschbaum Recital HallMarch 6, 2011

Trio Cavatina

Chamber MusicB I R M I N G H A M

S O C I E T Y

and Jeanne S. Hutchison

Trio Cavatina–winner of the 2009 Naumburg Chamber Music competition–is rapidly emerging as one of today’s outstanding chamber ensembles. Deeply rooted in a strong sense of shared musical values, they met and formed in 2005 during the renowned Marlboro Music Festival.

Within two years of their formation, Trio Cavatina gave notable debut ap-pearances on Kneisel Hall’s “Emerging Artists” Series in Maine, at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and at the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival in Maryland. They were selected to perform at the closing concert of the Chamber Music America Conference in New York City.

Garnering critical acclaim and enthusiastic responses from audiences and pre-senters wherever they perform, the trio has also received immediate re-engage-ments. The 2007-2008 season also brought the trio on their first international tour that included performances in Lithuania on stages in Vilnius and Kaunas.

In addition to the classical and romantic repertoire, Trio Cavatina is committed to collaborating with living composers and to performing 20th century repertoire. They have worked closely with American composer Leon Kirchner.

Trio Cavatina completed the New England Conservatory’s Professional Piano Trio Training Program in 2006-2007.

Trio CavatinaHarumi Rhodes, violin • Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano

Sophie Shao, cello

Trio Cavatina is represented by Marianne Schmocker Artists International

25 Madison St., Huntington, NY 11743MarianneSchmockerArtists@gmail.com • http://TrioCavatina.com

(631) 470-0393

Harumi RhodesA leading young artist of today, violinist Harumi Rhodes has been

performing extensively with some of the most prestigious musicians worldwide. Having just completed her residency at Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society II, she has also joined the Boston, Phila-delphia, Minnesota, and Seattle Chamber Music Societies. Some of her recent solo engagements include performances in the 2007 Vermont Mozart Festival featuring Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Harumi has also participated in several Musicians from Marlboro tours. As an avid supporter of contemporary music, Harumi had a solo violin piece dedicated to her by composer Benjamin Lees. She has also recorded Milton Babbitt’s Sixth String Quartet and most recently performed at Zankel Hall in a tribute to George Perle. Harumi received degrees from the Juilliard School studying with Ronald Copes and Earl Carylss, and the New England Conserva-tory studying with Donald Weilerstein where she received the Gunther Schuller Award.

Ieva JokubaviciuteA 2006 Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellowship recipient, Lithuanian

pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute recently made her Chicago Symphony debut at the Ravinia Festival under the baton of James Conlon and her Brazilian orchestral debut in Rio de Janeiro. Over the last sev-eral seasons, Ieva gave recitals at the Freer Gallery in Washington D.C., in the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago, at Cas-pary Hall in New York City, and in Vilnius, Lithuania. She has re-cently appeared in chamber music concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, as a guest artist on Na-tional Public Radio’s “Performance Today”, in Panama City, Panama, and on tour with Musicians from Marlboro. Ieva regularly appears at the Marlboro, Ravinia, and Bard Festivals, at Prussia Cove in England, and at La Lointaine in France. Earning degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and from Mannes College of Music, her principal teachers have been Seymour Lipkin and Richard Goode.

Sophie Shao A native of Houston, Texas, Ms. Shao began playing the

cello at age six, and was a student of Shirley Trepel, then the principal cellist of the Houston Symphony and professor at Rice University. At age thirteen she enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying cello with David Soyer and chamber music with Felix Galimir. After graduating from the Curtis Institute, she continued her cello studies with Aldo Parisot at Yale Univer-sity, receiving a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale College and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music, where she was enrolled as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. She has collaborated with members of the Beaux Arts Trio, the Guarneri, Juil-liard, Orion, Cleveland, and Mendelssohn String Quartets. Her chamber music collaborations this season takes her throughout the United States and Taiwan. She now resides in Manhattan, and teaches cello at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Vassar College, and Princeton University. Ms. Shao is currently perform-ing with Trio Cavatina during the maternity leave of regular cellist, Priscilla Lee.

Program

CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896)Piano Trio Opus 17 in G Minor Allegro Moderato Scherzo: Tempo di Menuetto Andante Allegretto

GABRIELA ORTIZ TORRES (1964-)Trifolium

• Intermission •

AUGUSTA READ THOMAS (1964-)Moon Jig

… A Circle Around the Sun …

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)Piano Trio Opus 110 in G Minor Bewegt, doch nicht zu rasch Ziemlich langsam Rasch Kraftig,mit Humor

Program NotesClara Wieck Schumann • Piano Trio Opus 17 in G Minor

Within patriarchal society of 19th century Europe, it was commonly thought that a woman’s role was in the home nurturing the family. Clara Wieck Schumann’s creative achievement is all the more astonishing considering these restrictions and attitudes. Yet, rarely is the influence that she exerted over Romantic music fully acknowledged. Not only was she one of the great concert pianists of her day, but she left a body of compositions, mostly for piano, that delighted prominent musi-cians of the time and have become exemplars of musical Romanticism.

Clara persistently reshaped the format and the repertoire of the piano recital and was responsible for first performing recitals from memory—a practice that re-mains in effect today. With a distinguished career spanning more then six decades on the concert stage, Clara Schumann also influenced the tastes of the listening public by introducing audiences throughout Europe to the new Romantic music and to the more serious works of previous eras. As Robert Schumann’s wife and muse, Clara championed the work of this giant of Romanticism and devoted her-self to the interpretation of his works after his death. She was also instrumental in encouraging Johannes Brahms’s compositional career and in giving the first public performances of some of his works.

Under her father’s guidance, Clara Wieck undertook a broad musical educa-tion, which included lessons in composition from an early age. It was customary to play one’s own compositions in recital, and Clara included at least one of her original compositions in her programs. Nevertheless, she increasingly lost con-fidence in her compositional abilities, and with the death of her husband, Clara turned away completely from composition at the age of thirty-six and took up the task of disseminating Robert Schumann’s works.

Composed in 1847, the Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17 is Clara Wieck Schumann’s only work of chamber music, and it is one of the few works that she composed after her marriage.

Gabriela Ortiz Torres • TrifoliumMexican composer Gabriela Ortiz Torres has emerged as an original and vi-

brant force within today’s international music scene. Her musical language seeks to achieve an expressive synthesis of the traditional and the avant-garde. Striking a balance between highly organized structures and improvisatory spontaneity, her music combines art music, folk music, and jazz in highly personal ways.

Written in 2005, Trifolium plays on the fact that a trifolium is a three-leaf clo-ver. The three sections of Ortiz’s work (for piano trio) refer to this botanical genus and create something of a triptych of contrasting rhythmic and expressive ener-gies. Torress incorporates diverse elements (mechanical-quality in the first section and Latin, jazz, and rock feels in the third) that are brought into the fold of the musical clover through her exploration of rhythmic intensities. The dynamic first and third sections are set in contrast by the free fantasy of the middle resulting in quasi-religious mystery at the heart of the work.

Augusta Read ThomasBorn in 1964, American composer Augusta Read Thomas has established her-

self as an integral force in American musical culture (Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony from 1997-2006) and has created a vast body of original work that avoids traditional models while integrating diverse influences. Suggest-ing that Moon Jig and … A Circle Around the Sun … can be programmed together, the following program notes were written by Augusta Read Thomas:

“A Jig (or Gigue) has traditionally been a lively dance with leaping movements, comprised of two sections each repeated. Moon Jig is a kind of cross between Jazz (Monk, Coltrane, Tatum, Miles, etc.) with Bartok, Brahms, and Stravinsky. The piano part starts with (and returns four times with) a low register jig, which is an earthy rather asymmetrical, punchy, rhythmic, walking-bass. The second sec-tion (which is also repeated 4 times) is always led by the strings who play long animated and expressive lines. The work alternates 5 times total between these two sections, and yet as the repetitions proceed, the two musics eventually blend together. This multifaceted merging process results in one long sweep of music rushing to the end in the highest registers of the trio, as if the Moon Jig leaped and reached skyward and its filaments become nimble and luminous like star glow … A Circle Around the Sun ... for piano trio was commissioned by the Children’s Memorial Foundation in honor of George D. Kennedy in thanks for his generous contributions to the Children’s Hospital in Chicago. My favorite moment in any piece of music is the moment of maximum risk and striving. Whether the venture is tiny or large, loud or soft, fragile or strong, passionate, erratic, ordinary or ec-centric ... ! Maybe another way to say this is the moment of exquisite humanity and raw soul. All art that I cherish has an element of love and recklessness and desperation. I like music that is alive and jumps off the page and out of the instru-ment as if something big is at stake. This work’s title refers to Mr. Kennedy. He gives energy to children in need, like a circle around the sun, giving strength and warmth. The music starts with a G (G for George) when, slowly, orbits of sono-rous and fragile notes unfold and spiral outward creating a gracious and vibrant resonance. After 60 seconds, the piece bursts forth with a good deal of energy, like a sun-flare or like children scattering on a playground in all directions and later returns briefly to the opening materials on the pitch G.”

Christopher Zimmerman © 2010

Robert Schumann • Piano Trio Opus 110 in G MinorOne of the great composers of the nineteenth century, Schumann was the

quintessential artist whose life and work embody the idea of Romanticism in mu-sic. Schumann was uncomfortable with larger musical forms, expressing the full range of his lyrical genius in songs and short pieces for piano.

Schumann’s father was a bookseller who encouraged Robert’s musical and lit-erary talents. Robert started studying piano at age 10. In 1828, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig as a law student, although he found music, philosophy, and Leipzig’s taverns more interesting than the law. He also began studies with a prominent Leipzig piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck. His efforts to become a con-cert pianist failed after he developed partial paralysis of his right hand. Schumann

Contributions to the Birmingham Chamber Music Society or gifts in memory of Ted Tibbs should be sent to Dr. Anthony Barnard, Treasurer, 3037 Westmo-reland Drive, Birmingham, AL 35223.

Chamber MusicB I R M I N G H A M

S O C I E T Y

Thanks to these donors for their gifts to BCMS in memory of Ted Tibbs:Tony & Barbara BarnardPatrick CatherJeanne S. HutchisonRobbie JamesBen & Jessica Johnson

Clay & Toni NordanJohn & Anita RanelliRusty & Lia RushtonPaige L. SmithHarrison C. Walker

settled on a career as a composer and musical writer, co-founding the influential Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.

Schumann’s music, with its sharp changes in mood, also reflects his tumultu-ous inner life. Wieck’s highly talented pianist daughter Clara grew up and fell in love with Schumann, to her father’s horror. Despite Wieck’s opposition, Clara and Robert gained the legal right to marry in 1840, a day before Clara’s 21st birth-day. During this period Schumann composed feverishly. Spellbound by a musical thought, he would work himself to exhaustion. He virtually invented the short, poetic, descriptive Romantic piano work, and produced such works in glorious profusion in the late 1830s. He held several musical jobs, teaching at the newly-founded Leipzig Conservatory, eventually becoming town music director in Düs-seldorf, but without much success. On February 27, 1854, he threw himself into the freezing waters of the Rhine. After his rescue, he voluntarily entered an asy-lum. Although he had periods of lucidity, his condition deteriorated, and he died there in 1856, probably of tertiary syphilis. Zoran Minderovic

Upcoming Concerts for 2011

St. Lawrence String QuartetTuesday, October 4Brock Recital Hall

• Presented in Collaboration with the Davis Architects Series •

New York Chamber Soloistswith Yakov and Aleksandra KasmanSunday, November 20 • 2:30 p.m.

Brock Recital Hall

The Birmingham Chamber Music Society is especially grateful to our sponsors, supporters, and benefactors for making the 2010-2011 season possible.

This program is made possible in part by a

grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA) and the National

Endowment for the Arts (NEA)

Pam AusleyAnthony & Barbara BarnardJ. Claude & Francis BennettCharles G. Brown IIIThomas R. Broker & Louise T. ChowTheresa H. BrunoPatrick CatherCharlotte & Stephen ClarksonMary-Jane and Stephen CurryDorothy J. DayMichael J. & Mary Anne FreemanBernard & Maye FreiRobert M. Gambrell, Jr.Wilma GeelsTheodore HaddinJohn J. HaggertyWyatt R. HaskellGregory H. HawleyErnest Hill EstateJane M. HindsMarilyn HodgesStephen F. Humphreys

Jeanne S. HutchisonRobbie JamesW. Benjamin & Jessica JohnsonWilliam & Margaret LindbergMargaret G. LivingstonJohn C. MayerAnthony S. MeyerFrank D. McPhillipsClayton & Antoinette NordanGeorge and Emily OmuraOctavio E. & Dominique PajaroCharles D. PerryAnita Peters RanelliWilliam J. Rushton IIIRusty & Lia RushtonPaige L. SmithJ. T. StephensMildred Allen & Ed TaubHarrison C. WalkerLouise A. WrinkleStephen A.YoderAnonymous (in honor of Rusty and Lia Rushton)

Birmingham Chamber Music Society Supporters

SponsorsJeanne Hutchison, Ben and Jessica Johnson, National Endowment for the Humanities,

Burr & Forman LLP

www.bcmsal.org