Ravinia 2021 - Issue 1

BENOIT ROLLAND (FRIED) Paris for Cabourg in Normandy. Alone, she questioned the sincerity of her feelings and twice changed the wedding date. Her fiancé could stand no more delay and demanded a firm commitment, at which point Marianne broke off the engagement. Her decision devas- tated Fauré, but, as Pauline Viardot observed, the termination of their relationship may have been for the best: “He would have burned her up with his love. She in return could only have offered gentle but shallow affection.” Such personal disappointment only drove the musician deeper into work. Fauré returned to the Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, op. 15, whose composition had been interrupted by, among other things, l’affaire Marianne . Large portions had been written in the summer and autumn of 1876, during his visit with his parents in Tarbes. Completion, however, took three more years of labor. Fauré played piano in the first performance on February 11, 1880, at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique with violinist Ovide Musin, violist Louis van Waefelghem, and cellist Erman- no Mariotti. Sensing a weakness in the final movement, the composer created a new fi- nale in 1883 before the work’s publication by Hamelle. Fauré reintroduced the piano quar- tet in its revised version on April 5, 1885, at the Société with a new group of string players (vi- olinist Lucien Lefort, violist Bernis, and cellist Jules Loeb) joining the composer-pianist. Overall, this piano quartet shows little formal uncertainty, which one might expect in any musician’s second chamber work. The meager tradition of quartets for piano, violin, viola, and cello—the principal contributors includ- ed Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and Saint- Saëns—allowed Fauré considerable freedom to find his own musical path. Movements unfold along relatively traditional structures, but with a casual expansiveness all the com- poser’s own. A haunting, suspenseful string theme in Cmi- nor establishes immediate Romantic intensity in the Allegro molto moderato . Fauré intro- duced a vastly different musical personality Gabriel Fauré Music, earning artist certificates in piano and, his newfound passion, composition in 1945: “I had so much energy that I wanted to do some- thing else after spending hours practicing at the keyboard!” Months later, on November 13, Walker made his piano recital debut at New York’s Town Hall. His concerto debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Or- mandy (as winner of the Philadelphia Youth Auditions) took place two weeks later. These landmark achievements of 1945 all were firsts for an African American musician. The single great tragedy of that year was the death of his maternal grandmother, the 87-year-old former slave Malvina King, who lived with Walker’s family and was a be- loved figure in his life. Lyric for Strings was composed in her memory. Conceived as the slow movement ( Molto adagio ) of his String Quartet No. 1 (1946), this musical elegy was first heard in a radio broadcast performance by conductor Seymour Lipkin and the Cur- tis Institute of Music orchestra under the title Lament . The National Gallery Orchestra and conductor Richard Bales gave the concert pre- miere one year later at an American music fes- tival held in Washington, DC. Walker builds string sonorities unhurriedly and gently in “my grandmother’s piece,” always keeping the individual string parts active and indepen- dent. For a time, Lyric for Strings was the most frequently performed orchestral work by a liv- ing American composer. In 1996—a half century after writing his String Quartet No. 1—Walker became the first Afri- can American composer awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Lilacs , a cycle of songs for voice and orchestra based on Walt Whitman’s elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Countless awards, commissions, and accolades followed over the next two decades, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Koussevitsky Awards, two Rockefeller Fellowships, and election to the Washington (DC) Music Hall of Fame. –Program notes © 2021 Todd E. Sullivan George Walker in his delicate secondary theme, begun by the viola then imitated by violin, cello, and piano. The development lacks almost any semblance of dramatic conflict and forward thrust, pos- sessing instead an effortless, otherworldly aura. The music quickly builds to an agitated state leading to the recapitulation. Fragments of the first theme reappear greatly subdued in the coda. The Scherzo opens with pizzicato string chord soon joined by a nervous piano theme. The composer enhances this playfulness with fre- quent shifts between duple and triple meter, at times juxtaposing the two rhythms. Rhyth- mic momentum continues in the trio. Prin- cipal contrast results from the long, muted string lines. Pizzicatos soon return, and not long after that the piano recommences its jaunty scherzo theme. The Adagio dwells in a state of profound melancholy, an emotion quite familiar to the composer. Fauré intensified this sentiment by tightly integrating his thematic material: most of the melodic ideas are derived from a stepwise line often preceded by an octave leap, both in ascending and descending forms. Both themes in the Allegro molto have a fa- miliar ring since each is constructed of me- lodic, rhythmic, and textural components explored in previous movements. The viola introduces the minor-key first theme, a mel- ody combining dotted rhythms from the Romantic opening movement with a rising melodic ascent found in the Adagio . As in the first movement, the viola begins an expan- sive and lyrical contrasting theme imitated by the other instruments. Passions steadily rise during the development. Fauré inserted a piano cadenza between his two themes in the recapitulation. The piano quartet reach- es a crowning moment with the return of the lyrical viola theme in major. GEORGE WALKER (1922–2018) Molto adagio ( Lyric for Strings ) from String Quartet No. 1 The trailblazing African American pianist and composer George Walker grew up in Wash- ington, DC, the son of Dr. George Theophilus Walker, a physician and émigré from Jamai- ca, and Rosa King Walker, an accomplished pianist from the District. The Walkers en- couraged their two children, George and his younger sister Frances, to study piano. Both siblings went on to break racial barriers as professional musicians and educators. George and Frances lived into their 90s and died within three months of each other in 2018. A precocious learner, young George graduat- ed from Dunbar High School at age 14. He entered Oberlin College the following fall as a piano major, completed his undergraduate studies at age 18, and then enrolled in the graduate program at the Curtis Institute of MIRIAM FRIED, violin Born in Romania, Miriam Fried emigrated to Israel with her family at age 2, where she began taking violin lessons as a child with Al- ice Fenyves in Tel Aviv. While there she had the opportunity to meet and play for many of the world’s great violinists, such as Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, and Yehudi Menuhin. Stern encouraged her to study abroad and, after briefly attending the Geneva Conser- vatory under Fenyves’s brother, she became a student of Josef Gingold at Indiana Univer- sity and later Ivan Galamian at The Juilliard School. While under Galamian’s tutelage, Fried won her first competition, the 1968 Pa- ganini Contest in Genoa. Three years later she claimed the grand prize in the Queen Elisa- beth International Competition in Brussels, becoming the first woman to win the award. Fried has been a regular guest of nearly ev- ery major orchestra in the world, including the Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Vienna, and London Symphony Orchestras; the Cleve- land, Paris, and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Israel, (London) Royal, New York, Los Angeles, Czech, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg Philharmonics. She has recently appeared on recordings by the Grand Rapids Symphony, performing a violin concerto written for her by Donald Erb that she premiered with the same ensemble, and the Helsinki Philhar- monic, playing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. For much of 2015, Fried focused intensive study on Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, creating a series of online lectures and master classes for iClassical Academy. She toured the monumental works from Ravinia to Boston, Israel, Canada, and Europe, and made a new recording of them in 2017. She played first vi- olin for the Mendelssohn String Quartet until it disbanded in 2009 and is currently on the faculty of New England Conservatory. The director of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Program for Piano and Strings since 1994 and the recipient of Ravinia’s inaugural Edward Gordon Award in 2013, Miriam Fried made her first appearance at the festival in 1974. Tonight marks her 30th season performing at Ravinia. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 37