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: Sunrise
