Winter Moonlight - March 16 2024

György Sándor Ligeti

(Born in Diciosânmartin (renamed Târnăveni in 1941) in Transylvania, Romania (then part of Hungary) in 1923; died in Vienna, Austria in 2006)

Sechs Bagatellen (“Six Bagatelles”)

Allegro con spirito

György Ligeti was one of the 20th century’s great composers, and one of its most innovative. Though his music was typically in the avant-garde camp, its modernism was nonetheless molded to be accessible — dissonance, in Ligeti’s hands, could be quite beautiful. His path to recognition, though, was difficult. Like most Eastern European composers, there came a time when he had to reckon with the Soviet Union. Even in Hungary, Ligeti suffered Soviet bans on his music in the early 1950s to such a degree that he reimagined his composing aesthetic entirely, partly as a renewal and partly in protest.

As a result of particularly harsh censorship in 1951, Ligeti said that he then “began to experiment with very simple structures of rhythms and sonorities — as if to build up a ‘new music’ from nothing.” One of the first results was his set of 11 bagatelles for piano, Musica ricercata, completed in 1953. Bagatelles, in a musical sense, are musical “trifles” — very short pieces with entertainment as their goal. Musica ricercata’s “new music from nothing” began with a first movement using only two pitches. Each successive movement added one pitch, until by the final movement, the entire chromatic scale was being used. In 1953, Ligeti arranged six of these bagatelles for wind quintet, featuring flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon. These six works are full of energy, surprises, humor, beauty, and vivid colors. Our concert tonight opens with the first of them.

This first bagatelle, Allegro con spirito (fast and in a spirited manner), is a comically manic, and ingeniously economical, little jewel. Ligeti uses only four notes for the entire, brief work: C, E, E flat, and G, spread across several octaves. The flute and oboe take the lead in the first bars with a short, rhythmic one-measure motive — a hyper-jiggling of two notes, E flat and C. Shortly, a G is added, and the motive branches out somewhat. But rather than sounding particularly melodic, the motive sounds almost like the flute and oboe are shouting above extremely terse little punctuations by the clarinet, horn, and bassoon. Several bars later, the clarinet takes the same motive but changes one pitch (E to E flat). The movement careens across the bars, with the motive becoming more of a conversation, spreading between the upper winds, while the horn and bassoon peck away at a lengthy run of dry, repeated notes like crazed woodpeckers. This meteoric one-minute work requires an exceptional cast of virtuosic players to perform it: Ligeti demands breakneck articulation and wild leaps in intervals from the instruments. Most impressive is the way in which just five wind instruments using a mere four notes can sound like an entire orchestral wind section. The wildness of the short motive begins to stretch longer, panting, faltering, until, wryly, the last note is pecked out in a whisper by the bassoon as though everyone is exhausted.

Darius Milhaud

(Born in Marseille, France, in 1892; died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1974)

La Cheminée Du Roi René, Op. 205

1. Cortège (“Procession”)

2. Aubade (“Morning love song”)

3. Jongleurs (“Jugglers”)

4. La Maousinglade (Name of a village near Aix-en-Provence)

5. Joutes sur L’Arc (“Jousting on the Arc River”)

6. Chasse à Valabre (“Hunting at Valabre”)

7. Madrigal nocturne (“Night-time song”)

French composer Darius Milhaud grew up near Aix-en-Provence, where, centuries earlier, “Good King” René of Anjou (1409–1480), who was also count of Provence, retired. René’s reputation for being a chivalric “man of the people” still lingered in Provence in Milhaud’s time. In 1939, the director Raymond Bernard made a film that takes place in Provence called Cavalcade d’amour and asked Milhaud to provide some of the music. Milhaud then repurposed that film music into a suite of seven movements for wind quintet titled La Cheminée Du Roi René (“The Hearth of King René”). The title is derived from an old Provençal proverb that plays on the words “hearth,” “chimney”, and “promenade”: King René loved strolling through his lands in search of sunny spots on winter days, and La Cheminée leads us through an imagined day that includes one of those strolls. Milhaud’s seven-movement work has become one of his best-loved pieces. Including hints of late medieval music-making, it’s a lyrical and quirky kind of fantasy piece.

The first movement, Cortège, introduces us to René by representing a royal procession as it makes its way through the town and its environs. The music here is calm and good-natured, as René himself was said to be. It begins with a delightfully lyrical oboe theme, replete with medieval-sounding musical ornamentations. The horn and bassoon provide the initial accompaniment and the harmonies they provide are often written in different keys (this is called bitonality — something Milhaud loved to do), making for some quirky and delightful musical moments.

Aubade, the second movement, is the beginning of the royal court’s imagined day. An aubade is a predawn courtly love song rooted in the songs of French troubadours. Medieval courtly love emphasized nobility and chivalry, and Milhaud imbues his aubade with the dawn’s sense of gentleness and sweetness.

In the third movement, Jongleurs, the royal procession finds amusement with a quintet of jugglers. Milhaud wonderfully uses the five distinct voices of the winds to evoke the sense of things being tossed about with great skill, flipping up in the air, with the separate winds often playing in lines contrary to each other.

The fourth movement, La Maousinglade, is a reflective movement named for the village near Aix where Milhaud still had a house. The writing is gorgeous, especially when the bassoon dives deep into its register about midway through, creating an especially rich sound for the quintet.

The fifth movement, Joutes sur l’Arc, is a reference to René’s love for jousting; he held elaborate tournaments by the River Arc in Provence and wrote a well-known volume on the rules of the sport. But rather than trying to musically capture the sport itself, Milhaud focuses on the hubbub of the spectacle and the air of excitement and animated chatter coursing through the spectators by trading themes between the instruments.

The sixth movement, Chasse à Valabre, depicts a hunting outing in Valabre, a part of René’s estate. But the effect is comical, not noble. At the beginning, the horn is given its typical pride of place as the hunting horn, but it begins to get bogged down at about one minute into the movement. Everything seems to get off-kilter — the tempo slows down and the meter changes, and the horn and bassoon get stuck in a kind of plodding motive. To bring the hunt to a close, the flute, oboe, and clarinet take over the heralding.

The seventh movement, Madrigal nocturne, brings the day’s adventures to a close with a lovely, wistful nighttime serenade. At about one minute, some polyphony (separate melodic lines in harmony) between all the instruments creates a beautiful and spirited moment. Then, the last bars drift off into the night with tenderness.

Franz Ignaz Danzi

(Born in Schwetzingen, Germany, in 1763; died in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1826)

Wind Quintet in G minor, Op. 56, No. 2

1. Allegretto

2. Andante

3. Menuetto — Trio

4. Allegro

Franz Danzi was a highly respected cellist, composer, and teacher during a long career that witnessed Mozart’s last years and all of Beethoven’s working years. He was also a mentor to the German opera composer Carl Maria von Weber. As a composer in his own right, Danzi contributed to nearly every genre of the day and often with impressive works. Perhaps most important, he was one of the first composers to take a keen interest in the wind quintet genre and was influential in getting it established in the concert hall. Danzi wrote nine excellent wind quintets between 1820 and 1824, and they have become an extremely important foundation of the repertoire. His first three quintets were published together as Opus 56 in 1821 and have remained deservedly popular. Tonight’s concert presents the second of these quintets; it is a wonderful example of lyrical beauty and classical clarity.

The opening movement, Allegretto (not too fast), begins with a kind of halting set of introductory bars, as if Danzi has abandoned the melody and left it lingering unresolved several times — the effect is catchy. After a few bars the oboe arrives with a light and airy little melody, which soon launches into some wonderfully brisk sequences of virtuosic upward runs in the clarinet and flute, and later the bassoon arrives. The entire movement features this kind of virtuosity and lightness, and displays Danzi’s uncanny craft in treating the five winds as equal voices.

The second movement, Andante (moderately slow), is flowing and gently lyrical. Especially deft is Danzi’s use of all the winds to make a cohesive melody. The beautiful songfulness of the themes become even richer as Danzi often divides the melodic line among the five instruments, but in such a seamless way that it sounds more like the melody is changing color, not instruments. An especially lovely moment occurs at about one minute into the movement, with the clarinet burbling arpeggios as the oboe sings above.

The Menuetto — Trio movement is a sort of hybrid of Mozart’s classical dance movements and Beethoven’s scherzos: though light-hearted like the former, it is written in a bristling fast tempo like the latter. Danzi adds his own cleverness by delaying the natural ending to the first theme of the opening Menuett, as though the quintet has decided to keep playing the last two bars of the theme several times too many. The middle Trio section features the flute flitting gracefully about like a butterfly. The return of Menuett ends the movement.

The final movement, Allegro (fast), is romping fun with more virtuosity, and includes some delightful outbursts from the horn. A particularly great display of woodwind pyrotechnics occurs at about two minutes into the movement, when all the winds except the horn launch into a daring dash of a long string of 16th notes, something like a gale wind. The closing section keeps the energy moving quickly forward, until the final five bars, when Danzi recaptures the light classical touch with a few solid, ending chords.

Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda

(American; born in 1975)

Three Nature Walks

1. Autumn Woods

2. Winter Moonlight

3. Cherry Blossom Path

Raised in northern Virginia, composer Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda studied music composition at George Mason University. She received her bachelor’s degree there in 1998, after being named the music department’s Most Outstanding Musician in 1997. Since graduation, she has taught privately and performed with many professional ensembles throughout the Washington, D.C. area. Since 2014, she has been the instrumental music director at Oakcrest School,
in Vienna, Virginia.

Three Nature Walks was commissioned by the Patagonia Winds woodwind quintet and premiered at the 2015 National Flute Association convention in Washington, D.C. It consists of three movements that Ms. Molnar-Suhajda describes as “brief vignettes inspired by the countryside surrounding the DC area.”

The first movement, Autumn Woods, is marked to be played Semplice (in a simple manner). The horn begins the walk with a kind of call to nature. One imagines looking up into the splendid colors of the trees as the quintet plays motives that continually rise up. The clarinet soon initiates a repeated oscillating motive — a motive that will take several guises throughout the entire piece — which feels as though this walk has reached one of the region’s many brooks or streams. Soon after, at about one minute, the music arrives at a lovely moment as the horn sings above the other winds as they burble upward and then downward softly underneath. This burbling section trades back and forth with the calmer opening music, bringing a sense of inner jubilation and contentedness.

The second movement, Winter Moonlight, is marked Con delicatezza (with delicateness). Here, Molnar-Suhajda evokes the beauty of moonlight on snow, and the clearness of a dark sky and brilliant moon. The movement begins with a new oscillating motive in the flute, oboe, and bassoon, and then the clarinet sings a quiet serenade. All feels aglow, especially at about a half minute into the movement when the clarinet continues into a new and beautifully lyrical melody. This melody is then shared among the entire quintet. It’s a moving love song to the night.

The final movement, Cherry Blossom Path, is marked A piacere (at pleasure – meaning the performers are free to play the rhythms loosely). This movement is a fantasia of sorts, musically celebrating one of the world’s greatest shows of beauty when millions of cherry blossoms bloom around the nation’s capitol. The bassoon begins with a solo rhapsody that is indeed at pleasure. Soon the rest of the quintet joins the walk with flurries of falling cherry blossoms, represented by trills. A new oscillating motive in the oboe and clarinet is added to the bassoon, as though the walking has stepped up. Especially delightful are the extended solos played by each member of the quintet. The final bars then slow down, ending quietly, happily surrounded by a world of pink and white blossoms.

William Grant Still

(Born in Woodville, Missouri, in 1895; died in Los Angeles, California, in 1978)

Miniatures for Woodwind Quintet

1. I Ride an Old Paint

2. Adolorido

3. Jesus Is a Rock in the Weary Land

4. Yaraví

5. A Frog Went a-Courtin’

In 1955, when most African American citizens in some Southern states were forbidden from even drinking out of the same water fountains as their white neighbors, composer William Grant Still achieved musical breakthroughs. He was the first African American to conduct the New Orleans Philharmonic, and indeed the first African American to conduct any major orchestra in the Deep South. He was also an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Still made the songs and the “blues” of African Americans the soul of much of his music, and he achieved a certain greatness in doing so. This was no small task in the pre–civil rights era in the United States. Thus, he is commonly referred to as the dean of African American music.

Still especially loved folksongs. In 1948 he wrote his delightfully popular Miniatures, a suite celebrating a spiritual and four traditional folksongs. First written as a trio for flute, oboe, and piano, Still rearranged it in 1963 for wind quintet. This is a wonderful concert piece — Still had an uncanny talent for arranging songs
and spirituals.

I Ride an Old Paint is a cowboy song from the western United States that was used to lull cattle to rest. It begins with a rapturous cadenza in the oboe. Soon the bassoon plays an ostinato that evokes the hoof steps of a Paint horse (a good-natured, speckled work horse used in cattle driving), and the flute then plays the folksong outright.

Adolorido originated in Mexico. Despite its upbeat feel, the title generally translates as “I’m sore,” and the lyrics belie the singer’s pain from a broken heart. Still has the quintet play the song as a kind of chorus, and treats the catchy tune with a short set of fun variations.

Jesus Is a Rock in the Weary Land is a spiritual, possibly originating in the Sea Islands along the coast of Georgia in the southeastern United States. It’s a beautiful tune, and one that has attracted dozens of artists to sing it. Still makes it a very bluesy song, first being sung in earnest by the clarinet. A low, rocking motive in the accompanying bassoon and horn evokes a very world-weary soul.

Yaraví is a Peruvian genre of folksong, developed centuries ago by Incan natives who, after the Spanish conquests, incorporated Spanish and Moorish musical influences into their traditional songs. A yaraví, sometimes translated as “a lament,” typically evokes a sense of melancholic beauty, and Still’s arrangement is one of this work’s most beautiful movements.

A Frog Went a-Courtin’ was originally an old Scottish song, but Still would have known it as an American folksong. It’s a silly children’s tune about a frog who’s riding a horse to court his love, “with a saber and pistol by his side.” The oboe plays the tune first over a steady rhythmic accompaniment in the horn, bassoon, and clarinet. But as the tune continues, Still gives it just the right touch of exaggerated swagger and fun: The tempo picks up and the volume increases as the flute and the oboe then share the tune in a duet until the song’s comical and abrupt ending.

Norman Hallam

(Born in Coventry, England in 1945)

Dance Suite for Wind Quintet

1. Waltz

2. Bossa Nova

3. Quickstep

4. Charleston

Norman Hallam is a celebrated English musician and composer. Although childhood polio left him wheelchair dependent, it never stopped him from becoming a great clarinetist. His performing career was spent almost entirely as a clarinetist with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, from which he retired in 1999, and as the clarinetist in the Canzona wind quintet from 1976 to 1986. He found his gift as a composer as well while studying at the Birmingham Conservatory and then the Royal Academy of Music. Among his finest works are his Clarinet Concerto (1998) and his very popular Dance Suite for Wind Quintet, composed in 1980 for Canzona to perform.

The Dance Suite for Wind Quintet revels in the joy of ballroom dance and, as Hallam said, as an “entertainment vehicle” for him and his colleagues in Canzona. For this work, Hallam wrote four original tunes set in popular styles from the 1920’s through the 1950’s — these are jazzy, ballroom-dance styles, with lots of syncopations and liveliness, making this work a great audience favorite.

The first movement, Waltz, is written in the typical three beats to a bar, but this is not the waltz of the Viennese ballrooms in Europe. Hallam’s Waltz uses a quicker set of steps, with the swinging feel of the smoky ballrooms of Harlem and Chicago in the 1920s. Featuring a happy-go-lucky melody, and bluesy riffs abounding, the quintet glides us jauntily across the dance floor.

The next dance, Bossa Nova, originated in Brazil in the 1950’s and it quickly migrated throughout the Western world. Most famous is its “bossa nova beat,” a syncopated ostinato (repeating figure); here, this figure is immediately played by the bassoon. Above this, the oboe plays a slightly lazy yet sensuous tune. A nice touch is the “stacked up” jazzy chord that ends the movement.

The Quickstep comes next, a dance that originated in the 1920s and was specifically meant to be danced to ragtime tunes. Hallam makes this a light-hearted dance tune, with a tempo easy to sway and step to, with delicious melodies from each of the quintet winds. A comical little set of musical “hops” — a quick series of short little rhythms — occur after about two and a half minutes; these are then set aright to end the dance properly.

The finale, Charleston, is a dance that came from Charleston, South Carolina, and has its roots in the African American juba dance. A juba is a dance that enslaved African Americans used to choreograph mock combat and to relay secret messages with hand and body slaps (a kind of Morse code). By the time it became popular as a ballroom dance in the early 1920’s, it had morphed from a simple set of steps into the dance we now know, with twisting feet and athletic kicks and hops. The movement’s opening measures, with its flurries of jazzy little riffs, bring us immediately into a ballroom filled with flappers and their gents. The melody then steps out, happy and filled with joie de vivre. A fun section arrives at about one minute, when a muted horn has a long, virtuosic solo. Soon after, the tempo picks up and the dance toe-taps its way to the final bars.