PROGRAM NOTES
Last Dance was curated by Crier Jae Cosmos Lee
OSVALDO GOLIJOV (b. 1960) Last Round
Tango, the melding of musical influences from Africa, Europe, Cuba, and South American folk traditions, was forever transformed by the Argentinian composer, Ástor Piazzolla, whose unique style brought such a different soundscape to the traditional tango scene that it became known as nuevo (new) tango. Piazzolla’s influences ranged widely, including the jazz he heard in New York City, where he emigrated with his family for a period of time in his youth, and a large dose of classical. The later genre was taken so seriously by Piazzolla that he studied at length and composed a symphony that won him an opportunity to study with the esteemed pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger, at the Paris Conservatory. It was during his time with Boulanger that the varied pieces of Piazzolla’s experiences coalesced, and with her encouragement, he turned back to tango, bringing all of his influences along with him.
Last Round was written in honor of Piazzolla, a few years after he died from a stroke. It unfolds in two movements. The first begins with nine players flared out into a semi-circle around the bass, per Golijov’s score instructions, and (in the composer’s words) “represents the act of a violent compression of the instrument”—Piazzolla’s bandoneon, a small accordion-like instrument. In the second movement, the rest of the ensemble joins for what Golijov described as “a final, seemingly endless opening sigh,” which is a fantasy over the song, “My Beloved Buenos Aires,” composed by Carlos Gardel, a legend in the world of tango for whom Piazzolla worked at one time. Broadly, Last Round is also symbolic of the very act of tango. Golijov writes of the dance between the two groups of performers: “The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in a crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.”
TREVOR WESTON (b. 1967) Juba for Strings, arr. Weston
Juba refers to a dance that emerged as enslaved people of African descent found ways to retain and express their cultural heritage in the face of forced erasure. Deprived of drums, enslaved communities in South Carolina developed a rhythmically complex style of percussive dance that utilized stomping, hand clapping, and body patting. It is often considered the foundation upon which tap dance would be built. Later, early 20th century African American classical composers, such as Florence Price and R. Nathaniel Dett, would integrate Juba into their works.
In his Juba for Strings, Trevor Weston takes the listener on a remarkably evocative musical journey through time and place. Opening the work is a melodic line derived from a flute melody from Burundi, Africa. We hear the rhythmic stamping of feet and fiddle idioms. We feel the atmosphere of a South Carolina summer with the intense humidity hanging in the air. Honoring both the instrumental and choral traditions, African-American religious singing is also woven into the work, as Weston musically recalls the wide vibrato vocal style of “visceral emotional expression” he first heard in a Baptist church in Oakland, California.
In his own words, the composer remarks:
“Juba for Strings honors the lives and contributions of African and African American forced laborers who cultivated various crops during slavery. The work makes a musical journey from Africa to the United States through traditional African music and traditional folk music by African Americans: fiddle music, Long-meter hymns and Gullah music. The physical contributions by the aforementioned laborers are often forgotten. Similarly, the musical contributions of African Americans are often unmarked and forgotten although the world enjoys these contributions daily. Juba for Strings employs traditional performance practices from the African American Musical tradition. Some of these musical gestures might sound familiar although they are not always associated with the Black community. This work highlights the musical contributions by African Americans and celebrates the lives of those who helped create our American economy, industry, and culture.”
DINUK WIJERATNE (b. 1978) Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems, arr. Wijeratne
In this mashup, centuries in the making, the Sri Lanken-born Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne was inspired to weave together a quatrain by 12th century polymath, Omar Khyyam and a 19th century English poem within a framework inspired by modern pop music. In the composer’s own words, he wanted to create a “kind of ‘collision of old and new,’ where the beauty and meaning of vintage poems might inspire the kind of loops, grooves, and catchy tunes heard in Pop.” Absent here are vocals. Wijeratne strips away the text, making each song purely instrumental and thereby emphasizing the underlying emotional urgency.
As the work opens with “A Letter from the After-life,” we hear a wordless melody set against a repeating syncopated rhythm. This tender and reflective mood picks up intensity as the work progresses. Finally, fragments of Schubert float to the surface and become recognizable as two quotes from his Death and the Maiden string quartet. Wijeratne comments on the inclusion of the Schubert melodies, “Ironically, they struck me as being Pop-like and so I allowed them to emerge as though improvised; then to be improvised upon.”
The text of Khyyam’s quatrain, “A Letter from the After-life,” translated in the 19th century by Edward Fitzgerald, reads:
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell”
Sorrowful longing permeates the second movement, which is built on the 19th century poem, “I Will Not Let You Go” by Robert Bridges. While the words are unsung, the incipit of the poem is printed above the opening melody: Ends all our month long love in this? Can it be summ’d up so, quit in a single kiss? I will not let thee go. Fluttering strings call up uncertainty, yearning hope, and nervousness, before a surge of urgent feeling propels the music forward with increasing conviction. In a sudden twist, the music reverts to introspection as the piece concludes.
GEORGE ENESCU (1881-1955) Octet for Strings in C major, Op.7, arr. Popper-Keizer
Remarkably advanced from an early age, George Enescu began composing when he was around 5 years old. Just two years later, he moved away from his home in Romania after earning special early admittance to the Vienna Conservatory as a violin and composition student. Due to his mother’s poor health, he lived for most of those years with one of his teachers, Joseph Hellmesberger. This ended up giving him extraordinary access to numerous personal insights about composers of previous generations, such as Beethoven, who, as he recalled, was not yet “lost in the night of time—but an artist who still lived in the memory of old people.” It was there that he also had the opportunity to meet Johannes Brahms. After completing his program in Vienna, a year early, Enescu enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied composition with Gabriel Fauré and became acquainted with Maurice Ravel. A robust career followed, with Enescu spending most of his time between France and Romania, where he gained the support of the royal family and built opportunities for cultural enrichment by founding a symphony orchestra and an opera company. Enescu also continued to tour as a virtuoso violinist and conductor, and taught a handful of students, including Yehudi Menuhin.
With such an active schedule, Enescu’s compositional output was limited—with just over 30 published works—but broad in scope, covering every major genre including opera, choral, solo, chamber, and symphonic. One of Enescu’s earlier works, written in 1900 when he was still a teenager, was the Octet for Strings, a sweeping work almost symphonic in its proportions. Envisioned as a cyclical work, Enescu infuses each movement with elements of the work’s main theme. The Octet begins with a prolonged introduction in unison across all the string parts before launching into the main portion of the energetic, expansive, opening. The second movement, as Enescu instructs, is “very fiery,” bursting with tumultuous passion. In the third movement, the tempo slows, but the intensity of feeling remains, uttered through lush melodies and growing to a nearly Wagnerian level of sustained unresolve, drawing straight into the fourth movement without pause. In the finale we are plunged into a lively waltz that swells and sways as we ride on its waves toward an exhilarating conclusion.
