Aliento Chamber Players - Schubertiad November 12, 2023

Aliento Chamber Players - Concert Schedule

  4 Main Street
  East Kingston, NH 03827
  (603) 944-7070
  alientochamber at comcast dot net

An allegorial work by Gustav Klimt whose image
is restored from a surviving watercolor study.
The original was destroyed in 1945 as the
retreating Nazis set fire to Schloss Immendorf.

Sunday, November 12, 2023, 4:00pm

Aliento Chamber Players @ The Dance Hall, Kittery

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor D 821

Allegro moderato
Adagio
Allegretto

Dorothy Braker, cello
Nicholas Roy, piano

Schubert was a very social person, and throughout his short life held many performances of his and other friends' works called "Schutertiads." His interests in new music and new instruments came together in 1824 when he met arpeggione virtuoso Vincenz Schuster, and wrote a sonata for the quiet instrument reminiscent of the Viennese tradition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Arpeggione Sonata is graceful and lyrical, famously quite rarely above a piano dynamic level, yet wickedly difficult to perform. Like the Schulhoff, it is composed in a cyclic manner, with melodies that come back throughout the work, tugging at your heartstrings as both youthful and exuberant, tender and sad, while keeping the structure of a truly classical work that keeps the "smile through tears" of Viennese tradition alive.

Ernest Schulhoff (1894-1942)

Duo for Violin and Cello

Moderato
Zingaresca
Andantino
Moderato; Presto Fanatico

Matthew Liebendorfer, violin
Dorothy Braker, cello

A leader in the European avant-garde during the 1920s, Erwin Schulhoff came out of World War I as a prolific composer, his interests turning to the expressionism of the Second Viennese School à la Alban Berg, with whom he corresponded, as well as Neoclassicism, Dada, American Jazz and South American dance. Having been introduced to music school through Antonin Dvo?ák's recommendation, his interest in his native Czech folk music remained a constant. He is one of the voices silenced by the Nazis during World War II, dying of tuberculosis in a concentration camp in Wülzburg in 1942 at the age of 48. The duo for violin and cello is from Schulhoff's strongest period. All of the fascinations with various techniques and melodic influences have combined in a work that is quite demanding both of the performers and occasionally, the audience. The work begins with a pentatonic theme that is heard throughout all of the movements, brought to you in various guises: first, thoughtful, then melancholy, then merry. His studies with Reger and Debussy are quite obvious, but he also dabbles in very experimental tonal clusters that become natural to the ears using sort bursts of beautiful melodic structure. The Zingarese influence is felt in the fast movements, with thumping rhythms that mimic the accordion, and uses of pizzicato, glissando, harmonics and multiple stopping. His use of a walking bass in the slow movement is a nod to his love of the new jazz movement that he has made a part of his oeuvre.
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Violin Sonata in A minor, opus 105

Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck

Allegretto

Lebhaft

Matthew Liebendorfer, violin
Nicholas Roy, piano
Written in 1851, Robert Schumann created this melancholy violin sonata in the key of A minor, as he did with many things in this late stage of his life, to accommodate the constant ringing of the pitch "A" in his ears from intermittent and then constant tinnitus. As he grappled further with mental illness, those pitches became accompanied by hallucinations of voices urging him to create, accompanied by music "…so glorious and with instruments sounding more wonderful than one ever hears on earth". This sonata, written in that last period that mixed auditory disturbance with serious mental illness, reflects not only the constant A in his ears but the halting characteristics of his psyche during this time. The thematic approach is tentative at times, but always full and lush, and the melodic content hints at that glorious sound of his dreams.