Ravinia 2021 - Issue 4

PAVILION 7:30 PM TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 MIRÓ QUARTET DANIEL CHING, violin WILLIAM FEDKENHEUER, violin JOHN LARGESS, viola JOSHUA GINDELE, cello WALKER Molto adagio ( Lyric for Strings ) from String Quartet No. 1 KEVIN PUTS Home * (in one movement) D9OσK String Quartet No. 12 (“American”) Allegro ma non troppo Lento Molto vivace Finale: Vivace ma non troppo There will be no intermission in this program. * First performance at Ravinia 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 Jamaica, and Rosa King Walker, an accomplished pia- nist from the District. The Walkers encour- aged 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 gradu- ated from Dunbar High School at age 14. He entered Oberlin College the following fall as a piano major. In his junior year, Walker be- came organist at Oberlin’s Graduate School of Theology. Completing his undergradu- ate studies at age 18, Walker enrolled in the graduate program at the Curtis Institute of Music, earning artist certificates in piano and, his newfound passion, composition in 1945: “I had so much energy that I wanted to do something 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 Ormandy (as winner of the Philadel- phia 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 stu- dent orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music George Walker under the title Lament . The National Gallery Orchestra and conductor Richard Bales gave the concert premiere one year later at an American music festival held in Washington, DC. Walker builds string sonorities unhur- riedly and gently in “my grandmother’s piece,” always keeping the individual string parts active and independent. For a time, Lyric for Strings was the most frequently performed or- chestral work by a living American composer. Walker concentrated on developing his career as a concert soloist over the next few years. In 1950, he became the first African Ameri- can instrumentalist signed by major con- cert management, National Concert Artists, which arranged an extended European tour four years later. Walker entered the Eastman School of Music in 1955, and one year later became the first African American musician to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts from that institution. Although the degree was in pia- no performance, Walker submitted the newly composed Piano Sonata No. 2 as his doctoral project. He received a Fulbright Fellowship and John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1957, allowing two years of study at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger and Robert Casadesus. After returning to the US, Walker combined his performing career with academic ap- pointments at Smith College (1961–68; the first tenured African American professor) and Rutgers University (1969–92; chairman of the Department of Music), in addition to several visiting professorships. Composition also came to occupy more of his time. In 1996—a half century after writing his first major work, the String Quartet No. 1—Walk- er became the first African American com- poser 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. Highlights include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Award, Fromm Foundation commission, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Koussevitsky Awards, Legacy Award from the National Opera Association, two Rockefeller Fellow- ships, and election to the Washington (DC) Music Hall of Fame. KEVIN PUTS (b. 1972) Home American composer Kevin Puts made a stun- ning debut as an opera composer with a stage adaptation of the acclaimed film Joyeux Noël ( Merry Christmas ; 2005). The film recounted events surrounding Christmas 1914, both the horrors of World War I and an unofficial truce when two stars of the Berlin Imperial Opera, German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and Danish mezzo-soprano Anna Sørensen, perform for troops on both sides of the conflict. Written to RAVINIA MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 54