AFC’s program “Sunrise,” coming up this weekend, was originally slated for our 2019-20 season, a year where we were experimenting with pairing chamber music programs with full-group orchestral counterparts. Some explored similar music and concepts; in this case, riffing off of Sarah Darling’s program “Sunset” (which will close out this season in May), the temptation to offer a contrasting opposite was too hard to resist.
“Sunset” features some pretty gnarly and epic music: Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy, in his avant garde element, Ottorino Respighi’s heart-wrenching song “Il Tramonto,” Witold Lutosławski’s high-modernist Musique Funèbre, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ iconic Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. There’s a bit of a death (Respighi / Lutoslwski) and transfiguration (Eastman / Vaughan Williams) theme going on, the sort of deep thoughts and images that crop up later in the day. With “Sunrise,” then, I tried to evoke a freshness, a sort of ideal morning (as in the one described in this Billy Collins poem); perhaps even a longing for an early spring, if last weekend’s nor’easter didn’t render that wish a bit too ironic.
The one limitation I set for myself was to not program Josef Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet, as much as I love it; noses would’ve wrinkled, there’s only enough room for one “Sunrise” in this town, etc. In its place there’s Luigi Boccherini’s quintet “L’ucceliera,” “the Aviary,” a piece chock full of notated bird calls, plus a brief cameo by some shepherds and hunters, who are clearly lost. Boccherini’s music is so often pictorial, describing a scene or a slice of life, even when that image isn’t as explicit as it is here or in pieces like his famous Night Music of Madrid. This programmatic quality gives Boccherini license to mess around with form, and to ground his music in a realness that still manages to coexist with its inherent lightness. “L’ucceliera” also skirts the edges of the ridiculous, a quality that I love and which, speaking from past experience, makes it rather a gas to prepare and perform.
Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation for string quartet is also pictorial, in its own way, simultaneously taking a more objective stance – from the landscape architect’s point of view – while also delving into a deeper emotional space. The piece was commissioned by Dumbarton Oaks – a friend and frequent presenter of AFC (including this coming April) – and is inspired by the gardens that surround the museum. Caroline writes: “Plan & Elevation, refers to two standard ways of representing architecture — essentially an orthographic, or “bird’s eye,” perspective (“plan”), and a side view which features more ornamental detail (“elevation”). This binary is also a gentle metaphor for one’s path in any endeavor — often the actual journey and results are quite different (and perhaps more elevated) than the original plan.”
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet is in some ways a bit of a stretch for the Sunrise theme, full-bodied in scale and grounded in the crepuscular key of F-sharp minor—although it isn’t rooted there, and uses that platform to jump off into sunnier A major and glowing B major. Its slow movement in particular elicits all of the feelings I associate with an idealized morning: a sense of serenity and coziness, as though taking in a breathtaking view with the perfect cup of coffee clasped between one's hands (again, that Billy Collins poem). The other movements could also be said to be a bit caffeine-fueled: allegros energico and agitato for the first and fourth, and a vital scherzo for the third.
The other way in which the image of a sunrise applies, if you’ll excuse the extension of the metaphor, is in the shedding of some light on this brilliant yet little known piece and composer. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was of mixed race, his father from Sierra Leone and his mother English, and although he died quite young, at the age of 37, he was very prolific. Describing a composer’s style or vouching for their greatness is something I suppose I shy away from, for the sake of avoiding clunky and inapt comparisons; Coleridge-Taylor’s music sounds like nobody else's. All I’d say is if clarinet quintets were whiskeys, I’d reach for this one at least as often, if not more, than the other more mainstream malts.
—Michael Unterman, AFC cellist and curator of Sunrise
Curator Corner: Emergence
Zenas Hsu has been busy over the last months, weeks, days and hours - designing “Emergence” and arranging the Britten First String Quartet for the group, as well as all of the preparation that goes into any A Far Cry week! We caught up with him for just long enough to get some insight into his vision.
Was there a particular piece or concept that inspired this program?
I think the concept has evolved over time, but it began as a personification of how we emerge from a tumultuous time of isolation and struggle. In contrast to where we are, the three pieces on this program are filled with optimism, but in the flavor of quiet, earnest, and unassuming optimism. I was heavily inspired by the way Lei Liang describes his take on his Mongolian influences in his music as music that plays with the relationship of convergence and divergence, of voices and roles that interchange at different times, yet meld together somehow by inspired chance. In this current world we are struggling to find consensus, struggling to be heard as individuals, while struggling to understand inclusivity and equity. In my mind this program acoustically reflects the aspirations and idealization of aspiring towards achieving that, in an optimistic way.
How did you get to know Lei Liang's music?
Liang was the resident composer of Yellow Barn in 2014, during which I had the pleasure to hear and play his music. I was immediately fascinated by not only his work but the way he viewed his work - a constant re-exploration of the music tradition and how music inevitably touches and is touched by his reality, from striving to write freely his own melodies from folk traditions instead of simply inserting existing ones (like the ones in "Verge" inspired by his childhood experiences of listening to traditional Mongolian song), to transforming the beauty of the natural world into music in pursuit of recognizing the fragility of it, to exploring the relationship of tradition, history, and re-invention. I remember vividly being transfixed by the first notes of a piece by Liang for solo harpsichord, "Some Empty Thoughts of a Person from Edo", which transformed the sounds of the baroque instrument into the reflective plucking of a koto or kayagum, and the magical nature of an evening featuring the contrapuntal evolution between interchanging attacca movements of Bach's Musical Offering and Liang's Garden Eight.
What was it like to arrange the Britten?
When I was a guest Crier, I inevitably learned about the way A Far Cry operates - democratically, each Crier having the opportunity to not only voice their opinions and aspirations, but from ground up the way A Far Cry operates. One thing that was so inspiring to learn was that every single AFC program originated from the hands of a Crier curator.
I run an annual pre-K and K-12 educational festival called Chamber Music by the Bay in the San Francisco bay area in California with some musician friends. One year we programmed Britten String Quartet No. 1. In the second movement, we shared how we passed the fortissimo outbursts in the beginning around the four instruments, and demonstrated this by hopping out of our seats whenever we had the surprise interjections. I think later that week I began to toy with the idea that this piece would be a wonderful string orchestra arrangement, from the shimmering kaleidoscope of sounds in the first movement, the grandness of open harmonies in the third, to the playful hockets found in the fast movements. It represents in my mind the very process that defines A Far Cry - a collective that shares and passes to each individual empowerment.
Embedding Justice & Equity at A Far Cry
Embedding Justice & Equity at A Far Cry
We grieve for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who lost their lives to overt police brutality. We grieve for Ahmaud Arbery, who lost his life to an act of senseless, unjust violence. We grieve for their families and communities. We grieve for the countless Black Americans whose lives, liberty, and happiness have been denied by systemic racism. It is time, it is hundreds of years past time, to make changes. In our world, this also means addressing systemic racism in classical music.
A Far Cry was founded on the belief that things work best when every voice is heard and treated with love, trust, and respect. This must include Black voices. Embedding justice and equity is forever work, and we recognize that there is hard and urgent work for us to do.
With this statement, every member of our organization commits to becoming actively anti-racist and to holding ourselves accountable for keeping justice and equity front and center in our pursuits. This means always examining and challenging our policies and practices through this lens, and defining explicit goals for how we will translate our commitments to embedding justice and equity throughout every layer of our institutional culture. We pledge to listen, educate ourselves, ask the hard questions, take action, learn from our mistakes, try again, and find ways to make true change from within.
As we continue on this road, we follow the example of artists and arts organizations who have long dedicated themselves to this work and are effecting change in our field. A few who we know directly are listed below—please take a look and join us in support of their missions:
~A Far Cry
Criers, Board, Staff
Updates from AFC on COVID-19 Response
UPDATE March 19, 2020
Dear A Far Cry Family,
For the health of our community, A Far Cry has ceased rehearsing and performing during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, due to ongoing closures at our performance venues, we have to cancel our Memory Tour, March 28 concert at St. John's Church, "Memory," and May 29 concert at Jordan Hall, "Mexico, Lindo y Querido." Please know that we will keep you closely informed about any future events this Spring (including the STL GLD Project at the Gardner Museum and our annual Spring Soirée). For now, we are taking things one step at a time.
Regarding Ticket Policies:
To be totally honest - we've never had to develop a Pandemic Ticket Policy before! We say this not to make light of the situation, but to let you know that we are working hard to adapt as new information dictates and provide the best options possible for your purchase. With our season finale canceled as of yesterday afternoon, we are unfortunately no longer able to offer exchanges per our usual ticket policy. We are grateful to those of you who have inquired about donating your tickets for a tax-deductible donation, which goes a long way in supporting our organization.
With that, we understand that these are extenuating circumstances, so please be in touch with us at boxoffice@afarcry.org or 617-553-4887 to discuss ticketing options. Given the high volume of incoming communications, it may take us longer than usual to respond, and we thank you for your patience!
In this time of uncertainty, social distancing, and illness, we need a sense of place and community now more than ever. Our audience, we musicians, and folks we've never even met are hungry for connection, beauty, and healing, so we will be with you, every step of the way, doing our darnedest to make sure that every one of us has music in our lives and no one has to feel alone.
To this end, we Criers have gotten together and pledged to keep the music alive, whether it's a live-streamed solo concert from one of our living rooms, an individually curated playlist, a behind-the-scenes Q&A, or a brand new youtube video. We welcome your requests as our collaborators in this venture.
Here are a few treats to get things started:
1. The livestream of our recent concert, "A Stradivari Serenade," which features two pieces from our canceled "Memory" program. Catch the Elgar at minute 4:55 and the memorized Tchaikovsky at 1:18:25. Did you know that we played these pieces on $90 Million worth of instruments this past February?!
2. Our first "A Far Cry Sessions" on Facebook featuring Criers Jesse Irons and Sarah Darling. Even our Executive Director Grace Kennerly got in the game!
Follow us on social media for regular content, keep an eye out here for e-news featuring your weekly digest of A Far Cry offerings, and visit our website for the full cumulative listing of your "Daily Dose" of AFC! Next up on Facebook Live, we have appearances by the Lewis Family (tune in TONIGHT!), and Michael Unterman (tune in on Saturday).
Thank you for continuing to make music with us and we can't wait to share our music with you in person during better times ahead.
With Love and Music,
The Criers
UPDATE March 11, 2020
Dear A Far Cry Family,
After carefully monitoring the developments of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and in light of New England Conservatory's recent COVID-19 Health Alert, it has become clear that we must cancel Friday's production of "Sunset" entirely.
Our one and only rehearsal of this music reinforced our conviction that this beautiful program and repertoire must be performed. We are determined to feature "Sunset" on a future season, and hope to make it a reality. This morning, we recorded a portion of "Il Tramonto" featuring mezzo-soprano Krista River. We share it with you now as a token of our appreciation and love during this challenging and uncertain time. And, keep an eye out on social media for some musical treats from our Criers over the coming weeks. In this time of "social distancing," we feel that music is more important than ever!
Under our usual ticket policies, we are offering all subscribers and single ticket buyers the option to exchange their "Sunset" tickets to another concert of the same or lesser value this season. We are grateful to those of you who have inquired about donating your tickets for a tax-deductible donation, which is also an option.
On that note, we understand that these are extenuating circumstances so please do not hesitate to be in touch with us at (617) 553-4887 or email boxoffice@afarcry.org and we'll be happy to talk through ticketing options with you.
Thank you all for your patience and understanding. Shared experiences are fundamental to the performing arts, and we will continue finding ways to share our music and gratitude in the midst of this evolving situation.
With Love and Music,
A Far Cry
UPDATE March 9, 2020
Dear A Far Cry Family,
We have recently learned from New England Conservatory that effective today, NEC is temporarily suspending access to Jordan Hall concerts for all visitors from outside their campus community due to a COVID-19 health alert. During this time, only NEC undergraduates and graduate students, faculty, and staff may attend scheduled concerts.
What this means:
As of now, we are proceeding with our upcoming concert, "Sunset," on Friday, March 13 at NEC's Jordan Hall. However, unless you are a member of the NEC campus community as outlined above, you will not be permitted to attend this concert in person.
We remain in close contact with NEC and are hopeful that a livestream of the concert will still be possible. We will continue to keep you closely updated with plans. Should Friday’s performance be cancelled entirely, we will notify all ticket holders by email at least 2 hours prior to the performance. Updates will also be posted to our website, social media, and outgoing voicemail.
Additional Information and Ticket Policies
General Health and Safety Tips: For the health and wellbeing of everyone, please follow the guidelines as outlined by the CDC (visit the CDC website for more information on health safety practices) to determine risk, prevent exposure, and enhance hygiene. If you are feeling unwell, exhibiting symptoms, or have been in contact with someone exhibiting symptoms, we encourage you to take care and please stay home.
Livestream: A Far Cry is proud to offer a livestream of its Jordan Hall productions, and we are hoping this will remain a possibility for "Sunset." Be on the lookout for further updates as soon as we have more information.
Ticket Policies: Subscribers and single ticket buyers may exchange tickets to another concert of the same value within a given season. All exchanges must be made 48 hours in advance of the concert for which you are exchanging tickets. You may also donate your tickets for a tax deductible donation. Please call us at (617) 553-4887 or email boxoffice@afarcry.org to discuss exchange and donation options.
Support AFC: As a cancellation or stall in ticket sales will have a dire financial impact on A Far Cry and all arts organizations, we encourage you to consider donating your tickets if you cannot attend. If you have not yet purchased a ticket and we are able to livestream the concert, we hope you will consider tuning in and purchasing a ticket anyway (or making a donation) to support AFC.
We appreciate your understanding and support, and wish you and the entire performing arts community good health and well being.
Sincerely,
A Far Cry
CANCELED EVENTS
Friday, March 13, 2020 | “Sunset” at NEC’s Jordan Hall
Tuesday, March 24, 2020 | AFC at Thomasville Entertainment Foundation (Tour)
Thursday, March 26, 2020 | AFC at Wake Forest University (Tour)
Saturday, March 28, 2020 | “Memory” at St. John’s Church
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 | AFC at the Kennedy Center (Tour)
Friday, May 29, 2020 | “Mexico, Lindo y Querido” at NEC’s Jordan Hall
Through the night
A note from Sarah Darling, who curated last week’s canceled “Sunset.” We wish you all health and strength in this challenging time.
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Hello, from interesting times.
The picture you're seeing is the view right in front of me as I write. My two lovely cats cuddling with each other - they've now moved on to some extreme grooming. One grabs the other's head with its paws as an invitation, the other gets right in there with that raspy tongue and starts to work. I've been spending the last few days in their company pretty much all of the time. At times I also feel like I'm a cat; lethargic at moments, adrenaline-filled at others. Predictably, it seems to have a lot to do with the news cycle.
We're all resting at home now; the hatches are battened, and it feels like we're just waiting, with as much hope as we can muster. Like every musician, my immediate employment was canceled days ago, and now I'm using the time to re-think, re-organize (there is still so much to do) and try to strike the right balance between apprehension and preparedness. It's been incredibly heart-warming to see communities springing up online in conjunction with the new reality. So many folks are there for each other in so many different ways, and all of those efforts are really just getting started.
Yesterday night, I went for a walk on Metropolitan Hill in Roslindale. Once you get up the hill, you can look out and see the city glistening in the distance like a tiny, multifaceted jewel. The night was calm and clear and quiet; the silence was shared. And the inestimable value of that jewel, the thousands and thousands of unique lives that illuminated it, was impossible to miss. It felt like all around me a slow hibernation was in process; folks drawing their doors shut one by one to protect themselves and especially each other.
I found myself thinking, again, about the A Far Cry program that was supposed to go up on Friday night. I'd started dreaming up this program years ago and it had finally come to fruition - well, almost. I'd fallen in love with Respighi's incandescent "Il Tramonto" - a work for mezzo and string quartet based on a Shelley poem that follows a loving couple through tragedy and a long grief that follows. I'd never heard a composer explore that space before and Respighi just made it impossible to turn away. So, I thought - maybe run with this, and make a program that follows this arc all the way. I started with the tragedy of Tramonto and followed it with the darkness of Lutoslawski's "Musique Funebre." The idea was to head into intermission wrestling with that darkness.
After we returned to the stage, it would be time for a change. The next work was going to be a short one by Thomas Tallis: "O Sacrum Convivium" - and from there, to transition into Vaughan Williams' infinitely comforting, transcendent, "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis." We'd emerge from the long night into a more complete understanding, a more compassionate vision, and see the first rays of the sunrise.
Man, nerd that I was and still am, I used to love putting the Tallis Fantasia on my Walkman back in high school (the mid-90s!) and walk down the busy hallways between classes listening to it. It felt equal parts ecstatic and illicit. There's something about the piece that embraces whatever your present reality is and deepens it. A little bit of extra vision.
Well, Friday has come and gone, and instead of moving forward with that sweet sound in our ears, instead it feels like we're entering the long night. On Friday night, instead of A Far Cry playing a stream from Jordan Hall, I played some Bach from my living room instead. We'd already said our farewell to the program by releasing some rehearsal footage of Tramonto from a couple of days before.
There's uncertainty and fear about what comes next, as much as we're resolved to do what we can to help. I just don't know what the next days will bring. I can't offer much, but I hope that in some small way the trajectory of this crazy program might just help a little. We're in the tough part, and we don't know how much tougher it's going to get, but there is no doubt that the sun is waiting on the other side of it to shine again.
Ahhhh, what the heck, Trevor Noah said it better. <3
Sending love to you all. And please stay home!
Sarah
We wind the clock back to 1929, Berlin...
We wind the clock back to 1929, Berlin, right before the Nazis would fully control the Weimar Republic. At the turn of the century and after the end of the first World War, the city of Berlin established itself as one of the cultural epicenters of Europe during a golden age that brought together writers, architects, painters, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, playwrights, thinkers, and of course, composers and musicians. By this juncture, the young and charismatic Wilhelm Furtwangler was leading the Berlin Philharmonic, Erich Kleiber was conducting at the Opera House, and bright minds such as Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, and Alexander Zemlinsky arrived to a city already brimming with great composers such as Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Juon and Paul Hindemith. Anyone who wanted a career in music would spend time in Berlin during those years, as Carl Flesch was teaching violin and Artur Schnabel was the piano professor at the Berlin Academy Music, which housed every young virtuoso from Bronislaw Huberman, Igor Stravinsky, and Vladimir Horowitz to Fritz Kreisler, Claudio Arrau and Nathan Milstein.
The energy was bustling, and ideas abounded. A young composer named Kurt Weill and his librettist, Bertold Brecht, would write a piece called the Three Penny Opera that would take Berlin by storm. In the early part of the 1920's, Weill's Quartet No. 1, Op. 8 would get its premiere by the Amar Quartet, of which Paul Hindemith was the violist. In between composing, Kurt Weill would privately tutor composition students both at the Academy and the University, who were often disciples of his friend, Paul Juon. We say that the music world is small now, but the musical community in Berlin then was even more tight knit. Everyone who was someone knew one another.
I imagined this program as a house concert that the Amar quartet would have put together during Hindemith's last season as its violist. They would play Hindemith’s own works as well as Weill's, and give homage to Paul Juon, who came before them and was the composition professor at the Academy of Music for over 20 years in Berlin.
When the Nazis finally made their imprint on Berlin in the 1930's, Hindemith and Weill fled to the US, and Juon eventually retired to Switzerland. Kurt Weill's heritage was Jewish, and Hindemith's wife was Jewish. Although Paul Juon was a Russian born of Swiss heritage and his music was not labeled as degenerate by the Nazis, he left Germany after witnessing the demise and death of his friend and colleague, the composer Franz Schreker.
During the first two installments of A Far Cry’s “Entartete Musik” chamber series, we honored composers who perished in Terezin and Auschwitz for being Jewish, along with others whose music was considered “degenerate” by the Nazis. During this third and final installment, we examine German composers whose works were labeled “degenerate” (Hindemith and Weill), and a Swiss-Russian (Juon) who defended his Jewish friend, as well as the ways in which all of their works helped cement Berlin as a musical capital during the 1920s.
-Jae Cosmos Lee, AFC Violinist and program curator of Berlin
Shostakovich and Mahler Program Notes
PROGRAM NOTES
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) :: Requiem
Success may come slowly, but recognition can happen overnight. That was the case for Tōru Takemitsu. He was nearly thirty years old when Igor Stravinsky happened to hear the Requiem. Afterward Stravinsky publicly praised the work, effectively launching the international phase of Takemitsu’s career.
Takemitsu heard Western music for the first time as a teenager in the aftermath of World War II. A military officer played a recording for him of a French chanson. What he heard captivated his imagination, driving him to pen and paper. He began to teach himself how to compose, receiving only occasional lessons. Debussy was very influential on the young Takemitsu, as was another French composer, Olivier Messiaen. As a result of these inspirations, Takemitsu’s early music expresses a unique blend of chromatics, tonalities, and space. Later he would return to exploring the traditional music of his homeland, revealing music of brilliantly interwoven textures featuring Japanese instruments alongside Western.
Requiem is Latin for “rest,” and opens the chant Requiem aeternam dona eis (give them eternal rest) intoned at a Catholic mass for the dead. Takemitsu intended it as a more universal plea, perhaps emphasized by the fact that he utilizes no verbal text. In a 1965 letter to the program annotator for the New York Philharmonic, Takemitsu expresses, “I titled [it] ‘requiem’...we are bereaved of our people in the war—not only Japanese, our world. I think, music must be a form of prayer.” More specifically, the work also nods at a specific loss, that of composer Fumio Hayasaka. One of the undisputed masters of Japanese cinematic music, Hayasaka provided the soundtracks to many of Akira Kurosawa’s films. He also served as a mentor for the young Takemitsu.
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) :: “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5
Mahler lived a relatively short life, something that isn’t typically discussed. Within the limit of his fifty-one years he penned dozens of works and nine (or ten, depending on categorization technicalities) symphonies, each one massive in scope (as he said himself, containing an entire world). Perhaps even more astonishing is that he also spent his entire professional career as a composer working on his music almost only in the summers, since he was otherwise occupied with his obligations as director of the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler was in his early twenties when Richard Wagner, and then Franz Liszt, died. Therefore the musical world he inherited was one of grand scale story—both explicitly through the art of opera, and implicitly through the romantic era’s obsession with program music, or music that conveyed a narrative using instruments only (no lyrics, no singers). Symphonic form, proper, had been largely avoided in the later half of the19th century, and replaced with tone poems or other large impressionistic instrumental works. Though Mahler chose to return to the symphony, proper, as his preferred structure for musical expression, he often infused narrative, and Mahler’s symphonies can be grouped, in part, by whether or not they included programmatic elements.
The Symphony No. 5 is an example of one of the non-programmatic symphonies, and yet it is brimming with deeply felt emotions that were reactions to facing death and love in succession. Having survived a hemorrhage that almost claimed his life, Mahler would have certainly had a profound feeling of gratefulness to meet and marry Alma Schindler one year later. Reflecting this astounding reversal of fortune, the Symphony No. 5 opens with the punctuating brass announcement of a funeral march, and releases into a luxurious declaration of passion in its slow movement, which has become famous on its own as the Adagietto.
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) :: Symphony No. 14, Op. 135
Every work of art emerges from its context. In some cases, it’s a reaction against its context. In others, it’s an affirmation. Either way, the product is an extension of the creator’s experience.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s context was Soviet Russia. In his experience, the government was always watching and listening. At any moment, you could anger the authorities and be punished in a variety of ways: public ridicule in a government sanctioned newspaper, the banning of your music, or in extreme cases simply be taken away in the night, never to return to your life as you knew it. In that environment, secrecy was key. This shroud of mystery provokes Shostakovich’s biographers to argue about his motivations. Did he really believe Soviet policy? Did he just pretend to comply with whatever the government said so that he could live as undisturbed as possible? It’s impossible to know. Shostakovich kept no diary, other than what he revealed emotionally in his music. Even then, the truth of his music lies far beyond our reach, because as Michael Mishra has wisely cautioned, “any answers, as obvious as some of them may appear to be, remain speculative.”
As the 1960s began, Shostakovich faced an increase of alarming health crises including diphtheria, a bout with polio, bone fractures, and heart problems. He also faced an emotional crisis when he succumbed to building pressure to join the Communist Party in 1960. Those wrought feelings emerge in what is arguably his most famous, and personal, string quartet: No. 8. Shostakovich wrote to Isaak Glickman:
I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself. The title page could carry the dedication: “To the memory of the composer of this quartet.”
Shostakovich’s compositions from that point onward were preoccupied with death (physical, and likely emotional/spiritual as well), including his Symphony No. 14, written in 1969 and inspired by Modest Mussorgsky’s The Songs and Dances of Death. Though he deliberately labeled it as a symphony, it’s really more of a large-scale song cycle. A master of orchestration, Shostakovich made the very specific choice to write for extremes, scoring the work for soprano, bass, strings and percussion. The pairings, compliments, and contrasts he found within that ensemble are sharp and arresting to the ear. At just under an hour, the length invites the listener into total absorption. The selection of the poets appears to have layered meaning, reflecting the composer’s own state of being. Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke all died young—the oldest was barely 51—from extreme health failures and/or under political duress.
Shostakovich observed, “Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of that fear, people create poetry, prose and music; that is, they try to strengthen their ties with the living and increase their influence on them. How can you not fear death? I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question. The most important of them is the Fourteenth Symphony.”
Given the subject matter, the Symphony No. 14 can feel daunting, or overwhelmingly morbid. However, it is vital to remember Shostakovich’s intent: “I want listeners to this symphony to realize that life is truly beautiful. My symphony is an impassioned protest against death, a reminder to the living that they should live honestly, conscientiously, nobly, never committing a base act.”
-Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot
Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
Why we are playing Shostakovich 14
A Far Cry’s democratic programming process is a tribal business; like Survivor, but for classical music. Here’s the story of how one of our more improbable programs came to be.
March 1997: Little Mikey Unterman (age 10) goes to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (with parent) perform Shostakovich’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. He is spellbound and flabbergasted.
mid-2010s: Older Michael Unterman (of ages) remembers that performance, makes internet searches, and finds out that the Mussorgsky inspired Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony, also a song cycle. He listens and decides this is a piece A Far Cry must play, he says it’s: one of the most important pieces for strings (plus two vocal soloists and three percussionists) AFC has yet to undertake.
August 2016: At AFC’s summer retreat, Michael unveils his infamous “Shosty Sandwich,” a program proposal in which the Shostakovich Symphony No. 14 is “sandwiched” between two pieces of Mahler, the Adagietto from his 5th Symphony, both to open and close the concert. He argues that the first Adagietto will open the audience up to the emotional intensity of the Shostakovich, then soothe them back to a hopeful place on the other side. Members of AFC raise concerns that Michael may be playing some kind of prank. The program is voted off the island.
2016-2018: “Shosty Sandwich” languishes in AFC’s programming “Vault.” And yet it nags at the Criers. They open the Vault, only to have their eyes accidentally land upon it. There is a rumbling in their gut.
August 2018: The Criers reach for the “Shosty Sandwich,” but they ask, first, for a taste-test. They worry it might not sit well, after all this time. Brave volunteers convene to listen to the program through from start to finish. Michael feels a little queasy. He worries the format might feel like a tease: the promise of a second Mahler bear hug on the other side of the biting and morbid Shostakovich.
He suggests instead opening with Takemitsu’s Requiem for strings; which teases out the darker tones of the Shostakovich, almost a charcoal darkness, while the Mahler accesses a more emotional and vividly colorful landscape, sort of Klimt-like. The Shostakovich is somewhere in the middle; expressionistic, like Edvard Munch or Max Beckmann.
All three of the pieces orbit the theme of death: the Takemitsu as an elegy to a mentor, the film composer Fumio Hayasaka; and the Mahler, written shortly after a near-death experience that influenced the whole of the 5th Symphony (it opens with an extended funeral march). On the mission of his 14th Symphony, Shostakovich said: “it's useless to protest against death as such, but you can and must protest against violent death,” which his symphony does through poetry by Lorca, Apollinaire, Kuchelbecker, and Rilke.
September 2018: The Criers give the green light.
Virtue and Virtuosity Program Notes
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) :: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051
The story goes like this: In 1721, Bach sent a manuscript of orchestral works to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, inscribed with an elaborate dedication to the nobleman. These six pieces were pragmatically titled Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (“concertos with several instruments”), which would be christened with the snappier nickname “Brandenburg” over a century later by Philipp Spitta, a Bach biographer. Why did Bach send them? No one knows for certain. Bach was happily employed as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen when he met the Margrave in Berlin. In fact, evidence shows that the reason he was in the city was on business to check on a new harpsichord for Leopold. One thing we do know is that a handful of years lapsed between their meeting and the mailing. During those years, devastating change swept through the composer’s household: out of town on duty with musicians and the Prince, Bach returned to find his wife had died several days before and was already buried. Not only was he heartbroken, but he was left to care for their several children alone. Perhaps Bach remembered meeting the Margrave and saw him as a potential ticket out of town. The concertos may have been intended as a kind of musical CV. Whatever his motivation, they were sent and met with silence. No reply. The Margrave never thanked Bach, nor apparently even had them performed.
It appears the musical material of the Brandenburg Concertos was not new, but rather re-workings of pre-existing works. For one thing, it was commonplace practice for Bach, and his contemporaries, to recycle old material. Additionally, it would have been bad form for the composer to send brand new music to one nobleman when employed by another. Regardless, Bach—the habitually thorough craftsman—once again took an existing genre and pushed it to its maximum potential. In this case the Brandenburgs are “concerto grossi,” or “big concerts,” an orchestral form popularized by Italian composers where a smaller group (“concertino”) of soloists are in conversation with the whole of the ensemble (“ripieno”). Each of the six concertos are completely unique, differing especially in instrumentation. Brandenburg No. 6 stands out from the pack because of what it lacks—violins! Because of this, No. 6 has a prominent richness of sound that adds its own layer of drama to the performers’ pyrotechnics.
Luciano Berio: Selections from Duetti per due Violini
Many people have an awareness of the history of music, but Berio was keenly mindful of existing within it. In 1968 he wrote Sinfonia for the New York Philharmonic’s 125th anniversary, which drops musical quotes from compositions by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Mahler, to name a few. Rendering, written between 1989-90, juxtaposes fragments of an unfinished Schubert orchestral work against Berio’s newly composed music. The primary questions he seems to be ruminating over are about influence, and the artist’s eternal apprenticeship to the past.
The Duetti per due Violini were written between 1979-1983 and display Berio’s respect for friends and colleagues by acknowledging that artistic creation is a communal undertaking. There are thirty-four of them, each named for a different person, and linked to a personal memory, interaction, or lesson learned. Since they were also meant to function as pedagogical tools, one part is often a bit easier than the other. Berio wrote his own program note for the Duetti. A portion of it follows.
“It can happen that a violinist friend tells a composer, one night, that other than those of Bartók, there are not enough violin duets today. And it can happen that the composer immediately sets himself to writing duets that night until dawn...and then more duets in the moments of leisure, in different cities and hotels, between rehearsals, traveling, thinking of somebody, when looking for a present...this is what happened to me and I am grateful to that nocturnal violinist whose name is given to one of these Duetti. Thus behind every duet there are personal reasons and situations.” He continues, “These Duetti are for me what the vers de circonstance were for Mallarmé: that is, they are not necessarily based on deep musical motivations, but rather connected by the fragile thread of daily occasions.”
(Reiko Yamada – AFC Commission Premiere)
Dear A Far Cry,
Back in 2007, while still a young, naive, ambitious and optimistic composer, I felt compelled to write a multi-sectional 15-part string orchestral piece for my absolute favorite (and young, and ambitious) ensemble, without even the promise that it would be performed. I was teaching piano and music theory in private music schools at the time, working six and sometimes seven days a week.
It is the existence of the one and only A Far Cry, together with an invitation for a six-week residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico that made this piece possible. The title, "New Shadows in the Raw Light of Darkness", was offered by a fellow resident artist at the Wurlitzer foundation, the poet Clark Smith. When the score was complete, I sent it to AFC and, moving on to the next project, tried to forget about it.
I was on the subway in Tokyo when, a while later, I received news that AFC would premiere my piece at Jordan Hall. This was late on a hot, humid summer night and the subway car was filled with tired drunk Japanese working men and women. I started giggling and hopping around and my fellow passengers, irritated by my behavior, made it clear that it was highly unacceptable by Japanese standards. I didn’t care. From that moment until the premiere, with dreamy eyes and dreamy ears, I imagined over and over again the perspective of each Crier as they would play in beautiful Jordan hall. On the day of the premiere, I wore the best dress I owned and, watching the Cries moving together as one on the stage, I could not believe how fortunate I was.
Four weeks ago, which is to say twelve years after that premiere, I received the exciting news that AFC would once again performing the piece. I pulled out the score that was buried deep in my “past projects” folder and took a look at it, measure by measure, part by part, and began to blush. I felt as if I was reading my teenage diary. I spent the next two days in a state of panic and eventually decided I needed to revise the score, despite the limited amount of time at my disposal.
My younger self, in the original score, was proclaiming her love and admiration for AFC in each section, taking every opportunity to showcase the exceptional skills of each player. From chorale-like writing to Grosso Fugue like section to Romantic style Waltz (with an additional twist of irregular meter), my efforts systematically crushed any hint of subtlety or sophistication. While revising the piece, I tried to correct some of those mistakes; yet I continue to my younger self’s boundless admiration for AFC, and therefore retained some of the naive, ambitious and optimistic elements in which I expressed this feeling in the original piece.
Dear A Far Cry, thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to enter in a dialogue with the young and precious composer that I was. I hope you like this slightly revised score, and that you appreciate the composer I have become after all these years.
With everlasting admiration,
Reiko Yamada
Hiroshima, September 10, 2019
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) :: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Do you know the name Franz Clement? Fashionable 18th century concertgoers did. So did Haydn, and, of course, Beethoven. Clement was the young Viennese violin prodigy they noticed appearing on stages across the European continent at an impressive pace. As an eight year old he gave his first public concert. A year later, he was touring in England. Clement’s father would have clearly remembered Mozart, and likely wanted his son to follow in those footsteps. Incidentally, when he was eighteen he became the assistant of Mozart’s former assistant (who famously completed the unfinished Requiem) Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who had studied with Antonio Salieri. A legitimate talent, Clement was praised for the “clarity, elegance, and tenderness of expression” in his performances. He also had a remarkable ability to commit music to memory. Legend has it that he was able to successfully compose a piano reduction of Haydn’s Creation entirely in his head (and it was so well done that it’s the piano version Haydn published).
When he was twenty-two years old, he was appointed as the music director of the Theater an der Wien, just one year after it opened, and was eventually promoted to artistic music director. And, like most instrumental soloists of his day, he also composed a number of works, including 6 violin concertos. In 1805 Clement’s own Violin Concerto in D Major was premiered (with Clement as soloist) on the same program as the premiere of Beethoven’s 3rd, Eroica, Symphony. The following year he premiered the violin concerto (also in D Major) that Beethoven had written for him.
Unfortunately, the premiere was something of a flop. Stories abound that Beethoven finished the work so last-minute that Clement ellentially had to sight-read his part due to lack of rehearsal time. (This is par for the course Beethoven, since he had a pattern of depriving ensembles of precious rehearsal time.) Though Beethoven might not have given Clement proper time, he did write a piece that catered to the violinist’s beautiful style of playing. A publication in Leipzig reported that Clement “...played with his usual elegance and luster.”
After that evening in 1806, the concerto was effectively shelved until a teenage Joseph Joachim decided to study and perform the piece under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn in London, 1844. From that moment onward, Beethoven’s one and only concerto moved from the sidelines into the spotlight, and has become a standard work in the repertoire.
Sadly, Franz Clement did not fair so well. The Romantic era blossomed, standards shifted, and his style of performing fell out of fashion. He died in poverty and obscurity.
-Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot
Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
Hurry To The Light
Hurry To The Light
for Women's Voices and String Orchestra
A choral cycle of the women in The Odyssey of Homer, as translated by Emily Wilson
Homer's The Odyssey is a tale that I've read some half a dozen times over the years. Recently it provided part of the inspiration for my Clarinet Concerto: Adrift on the Wine-dark Sea (the other source of inspiration was Melissa Fleming's book A Hope More Powerful Than The Sea, which tells the harrowing true story of another Mediterranean odyssey made by Syrian refugee Doaa al-Zamel). So when A Far Cry's Sarah Darling suggested Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey as a text source for our collaboration with the Lorelei Ensemble, I felt both the comfort of familiarity and some anxiety. The latter was caused by the daunting question of which of the twelve thousand lines of The Odyssey to set to music? Of the many characters who appear in The Odyssey, whose story should I tell? After much discussion with Sarah and Lorelei's artistic director Beth Willer, we decided to tell the story of the women in The Odyssey. I am very grateful to my friend and fellow composer, Thomas Stumpf, for his invaluable aid and advice in selecting the right text for this project.
As Emily Wilson tells us in her insightful introduction, "The Odyssey is a poem in which certain females have far more power than real women ever did in the society of archaic Greece. Most obviously, the goddess Athena, guides Odysseus through all his wanderings... only through female divine power can his patriarchal dominance over his household be regained." Odysseus' faithful wife Penelope, though trapped in her home by suitors and her husband's long absence, still has "the power to choose... to marry one of her suitors." Penelope's fidelity is an important point in the narrative, as Wilson points out, "if Penelope remarries, Odysseus will lose not only a person he loves, but also, perhaps more important, all his economic wealth and social status." Other examples of the power of women in The Odyssey come through, for the first time perhaps, in Wilson's translation. In clearing the misogynistic dust left by previous English translations, primarily made by men, Wilson's careful and accurate word choice transforms the power of the Sirens from that of sexual magnetism to that of keepers of divine knowledge. Previous translations of The Odyssey interpreted the archaic Greek word for 'mouth' as 'lips', thus giving a sexual connotation to the song that came from 'the lips of the sirens'. Wilson's translation, "All those who pass this way hear honeyed song, poured from our mouths", gives the sense that the Sirens are not tempting sailors with physical pleasures, but with a look behind the veil of the unknown:
The music brings them joy,
and they go on their way with greater knowledge,
since we know everything the Greeks and Trojans
suffered in Troy, by gods' will; and we know
whatever happens anywhere on earth.
It is with these subtleties in mind that I proceeded to set this text to music. The women whose voices are brought front and center in this work all have influence, or agency, over Odysseus. Even though we never hear his words in my setting, Odysseus is always there, listening. In movement I we learn about Penelope's deceptive tactics to keep the suitors at bay. Having convinced the suitors that she will choose a husband once she completes weaving a shroud for her father-in-law, she proceeds to unweave it at night thereby prolonging the completion of her weaving. Here I used the ancient Greek text from The Odyssey, much as it may have been heard by listeners hundreds of years ago. In movement II Circe advises Odysseus as to the best way home and warns him of the many dangers he will face (even brave Odysseus must've thought twice about making the journey after hearing what Circe had to say about it!). In movement III we return to Penelope's chambers where Athena has sent a Phantom to bring Penelope news of her son, Telemachus. In movement IV the Sirens tempt Odysseus and his crew with knowledge beyond the reach of mortals. In movement V Odysseus' deceased mother, now a shade in Hades, continues to lovingly council her son on the cruel ways of the world. Movement VI, the only 'dialogue' between Odysseus and Penelope, is an instrumental interlude that emulates the verbal sparring in Book 23 between the long separated couple. Finally, in movement VII, Penelope accepts Odysseus and the two reconcile. Though The Odyssey does not end here, this felt like a natural ending for my musical work.
In setting this text I sought to bring out as many colors, instrumental and emotional, as possible. The poetic rhythm of both the ancient Greek (the six beat Dactylic Hexameter) and that of Wilson's English translation (the five beat Iambic Pentameter) both supply much of the rhythmic underpinning of this work. In the end, I strived to keep in mind that this story is an epic tale of adventure, both in its fantastical god like flourishes and its very humbly human emotions, and to imbue my work with these sensibilities.
This work is dedicated to the fabulous musicians of A Far Cry and Lorelei Ensemble to whom I am exceedingly grateful for this opportunity to collaborate.
Kareem Roustom
© Layali Music Publishing, BMI
