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Writer's pictureClexical

AMAZING WOMEN







AMAZING WOMEN

Monday, October 28 at 2pm & 7:30pm


Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church

152 West 66th Street (west of Broadway) ~ Limited Seating


Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ pay by check or cash (exact change)

If you’d like to attend the concerts, ticket reservations are advised: call 212-799-1259

or email admin@jupitersymphony.com

For more info visit jupitersymphony.com


Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center, a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2010 Concert Artists Guild Competition ~ “working wonders at the keyboard” Chicago Tribune ~ “of compelling artistry and power” Seattle Times


Jennifer Frautschi, violin

Two-time Grammy nominee and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant ~ “stole the show with a commanding, incisive and absolutely riveting performance” The Washington Post


Maya Kilburn, violin

Winner of numerous competitions at the regional and national levels, including 3rd prize at the Eisemann International String Competition ~ currently studying with Donald Weilerstein and Catherine Cho at Juilliard on a Kovner Fellowship


Natalie Loughran, viola

Won First Prize and Audience Prize at the Primrose Viola Competition, and awarded a Special Prize at the Lionel Tertis Viola Competition


Christine Lamprea, cello

First Prize winner of the Sphinx and Schadt competitions, winner of the 2013 Astral Artists’ Auditions and recipient of an award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts ~ praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer for her “supreme panache and charmingly effortless phrasing”


Vadim Lando, clarinet

Winner of the CMC Canada, Yale and Stonybrook competitions ~ “consistently distinguished...vibrant, precise, virtuosic playing” The New York Times


PROGRAM


Amy BEACH Theme and Variations for flute and strings Op. 80

~ a haunting, exotic theme precedes 6 variations, written with contrapuntal deftness, adventurous harmonies, and imagination


Marguerite CANAL Violin Sonata

~ sublime late-Romanticism reflecting the many facets of the melodist’s personality: reserve and passion, lyricism and poetry


Germaine TAILLEFERRE 3 Dances from La nouvelle Cythère

~ Pavanne, Nocturne, and Galop for clarinet and piano—based on movements from her ballet suite, in a stylish combination of Neoclassicism with a ready wit and energy


Luise Adolpha LE BEAU Piano Quartet in F minor Op. 28

~ exemplary Romanticism by the prize-winning German composer admired by Brahms, Liszt, and Berlioz


For more info visit jupitersymphony.com


The one thing the 4 women on this program had in common was the significant number of challenges they had to overcome, in their pursuit of a career in music, because they were women. Although they succeeded in varying degrees, it was not without difficulty.


Amy BEACH  Theme and Variations for flute and strings Op. 80 ▪ 1916   ~ a haunting, exotic theme precedes 6 variations, written with contrapuntal deftness, adventurous harmonies, and imagination

Commissioned by the San Francisco Chamber Music Society, the piece for flute and string quartet premiered on the West Coast on 28 September 28 1916. The theme is from Beach’s partsong, “An Indian Lullaby” Op. 57 No. 3, which she had composed in 1895.

Beach (1867–1944) was the first successful woman composer in America, the first woman American composer to write a symphony, and the most performed composer of her generation. Born in Henniker, New Hampshire, her name was registered as Amy Marcy Cheney. She studied with well-known piano teachers, but was self-taught in composition as her musical education was curtailed. Her early feats included improvising duets before the age of 2, playing by ear in full harmony at 4, and giving public recitals at 7. Her parents allowed her to make her debut at age 16 and to solo with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age 18, but they opposed a professional career. That same year, in 1885, she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent physician 24 years her senior, and was known as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, as it was the custom in her day to take on her husband’s name. He limited her performances to one a year but encouraged her to compose. After Dr. Beach’s death, she toured in Europe as Amy Beach to revive her concert career and promote her compositions. Returning triumphantly to Boston in 1914, she devoted herself to concert tours, composing, and championing women composers. She gathered numerous honors and was twice received at the White House. When Beach died in 1944 in New York City, almost all of her 300-plus works in all genres had been published and performed. Her song Ecstasy sold so well that she bought the grounds for her summer house on Cape Cod with the royalties.


Marguerite CANAL  Violin Sonata ▪ 1922   ~ sublime late-Romanticism reflecting the many facets of the melodist’s personality: reserve and passion, lyricism and poetry

Written while at the Villa Medici in the grand lyrical tradition of César Franck and Gabriel Fauré, the Violin Sonata is a marvel wherein the violin sings like a human voice. In the words of the music writer Thomas May, the Sonata “conveys a sense of Canal’s individuality: her distinct gifts for poignant melody; for expressing deeply felt emotion through exquisitely crafted, well-balanced textures; and for a radiant poetry all her own. …the first movement establishes a mood of gentle contemplation. The eruption of nervous energy in the second—unusually marked “Sourd et haletant” (Subdued and breathless)—makes an especially startling contrast; a middle section of troubled calm only intensifies that effect. Canal’s background as a singer and songwriter is especially evident in the soulful third movement, while the bravura finale weaves together the threads of agitated passion, melancholy, and liberating song heard throughout the Sonata.”

Canal (1890–1978) was born in Toulouse to a highly cultured family—her mother was a talented pianist and her father adored music and also introduced her to poetry. At age 13 she studied with Paul Vidal when she entered the Paris Conservatoire, where Gabriel Fauré was the director. An outstanding pupil, Canal won first prizes in harmony, piano accompaniment, singing, counterpoint, and fugue. In 1917 she became one of the first women to conduct an orchestra in France—several concerts at the Trocadéro, and then at the Palais de Glace for the benefit of the wounded in World War I. In 1919 she was appointed teacher of solfège at the Paris Conservatoire, and she also won 2nd prize for her cantata, Le Poète et la fée (“The Poet and the Fairy”). The following year, she won the Prix de Rome for Don Juan, another cantata, and was congratulated by Camille Saint-Saëns. She was the second woman (after Lili Boulanger) to win the coveted prize, giving her the option to spend the next 10 years composing at the Villa Medici. She left her teaching position for Rome, but stayed only till 1925, when she returned to France and got married to Maxime Jamin, who also was her publisher. During her most productive years in the 1920s, Canal wrote songs, many of great beauty and sensitivity that reveal her love of the sea and children; chamber music; song cycles, including Amours tristes, set to her own verse and poems of other poets; and piano pieces. She later wrote her unfinished opera Tlass Atka (Le Pays Blanc), inspired by Jack London’s novel Burning Daylight, and an unfinished Requiem. Personal setbacks, including her divorce, had led to dimmed inspiration and diminished artistic output. (Her husband was a jerk who prevented the publication of her subsequent work.) She resumed teaching at the Conservatoire in 1935 until her retirement, and she continued to compose into the 1940s, but then chose to pivot to teaching. After her retirement, she suffered from poor health and lived out her life in a retirement home in Cépet. She is buried in the Cimetière Saint-Martin du Touch in Toulouse.






Germaine TAILLEFERRE  3 Dances from La nouvelle Cythère ▪ 1929   ~ Pavanne, Nocturne, and Galop for clarinet and piano—based on movements from her ballet suite, in a stylish combination of Neoclassicism with a ready wit and energy

In 1924 Seigei Diaghilev, the Russian promoter of the arts who revitalized ballet, commissioned Tailleferre to write music for a ballet based on Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s widely read account, Le Voyage Autour du Monde. The French navigator had discovered the island of Tahiti in 1768, during the reign of Louis XV. The ballet was to be called La Nouvelle Cythère (Cythère is the mythical home of Venus, the goddess of love) in honor of the warm welcome which he and his crew received from the native women of the “enchanting” island. Both the exotic subject and the 18th century milieu appealed to Tailleferre, persuading her to accept the commission. The work was scheduled for premiere during the 1929 season of the Ballets Russes; unfortunately, the death of Diaghilev led to the cancellation of the entire season.

Tailleferre—the only female member of “Les Six”—was born in the outskirts of Paris in 1892. She first studied piano with her mother and composed an opera at age 8. In 1904 she began studying at the Paris Conservatoire, where she was a piano prodigy with a phenomenal memory and won prizes in counterpoint and harmony. However, her father was against a music career for women (he likened it to prostitution) and forced her to attend a convent school. By the time she was 14 he disowned her and she was forced to support herself by teaching private music lessons, and later she worked as a milliner as well. It was years before she was allowed to return to the Conservatoire. In revenge, she changed her father’s family name of Taillefesse to Tailleferre. At the conservatory, she studied with Debussy, Ravel, and Charles-Marie Widor; and met Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger in 1912. Her classmate Francis Poulenc raved about her: “How kind and gentle she was!… What a charming and precious contribution her music makes!” Erik Satie declared her his “musical daughter” after hearing her play Jeux de pleine air, her piece for 2 pianos. She also began to be seen with the artistic set in Montmartre and in Montparnasse, including Picasso and Modigliani. Tailleferre officially became a member of Les Six in 1920 with Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Louis Durey. Her 2 marriages ended in failure. Her first marriage in 1925 to an American caricaturist was a disaster, as her husband expected her to be French cook. Her second husband, a French lawyer whom she married in 1932, was also unsupportive and abusive. During World War II the Nazis burned her musical manuscripts to heat her house, which they had seized during the invasion of France. She also suffered a miscarriage and consistent financial instability. In the 1950s, she received a commission to write “pocket operas” for radio broadcasting, and composed four short opera bouffes that would imitate other composers’ styles using the “pastiche” principle. Later in her career, Tailleferre worked as an accompanist for a children’s music class at École alsacienne, a private school. Her final famous work, the Concerto de la fidelité for coloratura soprano and orchestra, was performed at the Paris Opera the year before she died. Although in her later years she suffered from severe rheumatism that made writing difficult, Tailleferre continued to compose and teach until a few weeks before her death in November 1983. She is buried in Quincy-Voisins near Meaux.

For a detailed account of Tailleferre and her compositions see http://www.classicalmusicnow.com/tailleferre.htm






Luise Adolpha LE BEAU  Piano Quartet in F minor Op. 28 ▪ 1883   ~ exemplary Romanticism by the prize-winning German composer admired by Brahms, Liszt, and Berlioz

The fine Piano Quartet premiered on 1 December 1883 with Le Beau playing the piano part at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to great acclaim. It was dedicated to Franz Lachner, with whom she had recently completed composition studies.

For much of her life Le Beau had to work against all odds as she kept hitting brick walls. Why? Because she was a woman composer. But she did what she was born to do—compose beautiful Romantic music. It has been reported that Le Beau could sing before she could speak. Born in Rastatt in 1850, the prodigy was fortunate to have supportive parents. Her father, especially, gave her the best education possible and even tutored her in subjects not offered to women in schools, and he also taught her the piano. She wrote her first piece at the age of 8. In 1866 she studied music theory with Wilhelm Kalliwoda, and in 1868 she made her debut performing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G minor with the Baden Court Orchestra, which was followed by a tour to Basel, Heidelburg, and Augsburg. Le Beau then studied the piano with Clara Schumann, but after 12 lessons, they parted ways because of aesthetic differences. In 1873 she sought the advice of Hans von Bülow, who urged her to move to a larger city to expand her artistic opportunities. Eventually she went to Munich and studied composition with Josef Rheinberger and Franz Lachner. Le Beau spent 12 productive years in Munich, where she tutored girls in piano and music theory, continued to perform her own compositions, performed recitals, and wrote some of her best works, including the Piano Quartet. She also worked as a critic beginning in 1878, writing reviews for Allgemeine Deutsche Musik-Zeitung in Berlin. In 1884 Le Beau met Brahms and Eduard Hanslick in Vienna, and was politely congratulated on her compositions. Liszt called her Piano Fantasy “brilliant and idiomatic.” In the ensuing decades until her death in 1927 in Baden-Baden, even as her compositions won several prizes and she was acknowledged by major critics such as Hanslik and lauded by her contemporaries such as Brahms, Liszt, Berlioz, and Joachim, Le Beau continued to be confronted time and time again with tremendous skepticism about her abilities as a woman composer. Her autobiography reveals her resignation to this fate: “It is difficult to come to terms with such circumstances when one has dedicated her entire life to a profession, but one must be satisfied with the consciousness of having helped to build the temple of art according to one’s best knowledge and with honest intentions. I also feel satisfied that I, even with the disregard of all my musical interests, am completely free in thought and deed. I have attained this highest and most worthy goal of humankind, all of the successes of the world could not replace that for me.”

Le Beau also once wrote, “Just do not limit, then, the training of girls. Rather, teach them the same things that are taught to boys. Grow accustomed to a system that has this same fundamental condition for every education, and then see what [girls] can do after acquiring technical skills and intellectual independence, rather than entrench yourselves against female capabilities by limiting the education of women!”





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