Clancy Newman - Program and Notes

Saturday, January 28, 2012
2:00 PM
Bethel United Methodist Church Hall, Lewes DE

This engagement of Clancy Newman with Noreen Cassidy-Polera is a Delaware Performing Arts Presenters Initiative project, made possible through funding by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts.

Ernest Bloch, born in Geneva in 1880, began playing the violin at age nine and soon began composing as well. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Bloch spent the next several years traveling, studying composition with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt before going to Paris, then home to Geneva. He lectured at the Geneva Conservatory from 1911 to 1916 but had to leave this position during World War I.

Now married with three young children, Bloch learned that dancer Maud Allan was seeking a music director for her upcoming American tour. He eagerly accepted the position and arrived in New York in July 1916. The Allan venture failed, however, stranding the Blochs in a foreign land.

Bloch’s music had begun receiving notice, meanwhile, and performances by the Flonzaley Quartet and Boston Symphony Orchestra brought him to the public’s attention. His Schelomo: Rhapsody for Violoncello and Large Orchestra was premiered  by Hans  Kindler,  principal cellist of  the Philadelphia Orchestra, at an all-Bloch concert in Carnegie Hall on May 3, 1917. This success gained the composer international recognition and Bloch was honored with the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award the following year.  He became an American citizen in 1924.

Bloch held several teaching appointments in the United States, with George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions among his pupils.  In 1920, Bloch was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925.  Though his administrative and teaching duties limited his time for composition, he completed a number of important works before resigning the Cleveland position in 1925 to become director of the San Francisco Conservatory.  Among these are two violin sonatas, the Baal Shem Suite, Three Nocturnes for Piano Trio,  Piano Quintet No. 1, Concerto Grosso No. 1, several brief pieces for string quartet, and the suite of “three sketches” for cello and piano which he titled From Jewish Life and dedicated to Hans Kindler.

From Jewish Life is one of Bloch’s most fervent expressions of affection for his paternal Judaism.  It was among a number of compositions whose inspiration can be traced to the singing that he heard at an Orthodox service in a synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side soon after arriving in America in 1916. In the keening vocal idiom, the impassioned manner of performance, the gapped scales and the brooding emotion of traditional Jewish religious song, Bloch found the manifestations of “an inner voice, deep, secret, insistent, ardent” which he attempted to embody in these “three sketches.”  However, to this we should add Bloch's own assertion: "It is neither my purpose nor desire to attempt a reconstruction of Jewish music, nor to base my work on more or less authentic melodies … I am not an archaeologist; for me the most important thing is to write good and sincere music.”

In 1941 Bloch moved to the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon, and lived there the rest of his life. He died in 1959 at the age of 78. The Ernest Bloch Memorial has been erected in his honor at Oregon’s Newport Performing Arts Center.

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the son of a prosperous banker. His family was influential in cultural circles, and he and his sister Fanny were educated in an environment that encouraged both music and general cultural interests. The extensive acquaintance of the Mendelssohns among artists and men of letters brought them an unusual breadth of mind and stimulus to natural curiosity.

Much of Felix’s childhood was spent in Berlin, where his parents moved when he was three to escape the Napoleonic invasion. Mendelssohn studied music from Goethe's much-admired Carl Friedrich Zelter, who praised the young student to the aging poet. The choice of a career in music was decided during this time, and was followed by further education and a Grand Tour of Europe that took Mendelssohn from Italy to Scotland. His professional career began in earnest with his appointment as general director of music in Düsseldorf in 1833.

Felix Mendelssohn was the consummate wunderkind. As a teenager he was already famous as a pianist, violinist, composer, and conductor.  He had found his mature style, and many of his early works are part of the standard repertoire. During his lifetime he was the world’s most famous and popular composer, especially in England. A particular favorite of Queen Victoria, he had great affection for England and wrote Elijah and other works for performance there. His command of the language was so accomplished that he suggested improvements to the librettist of Elijah.

Mendelssohn wrote several works for cello, not surprising since his brother Paul was a cellist. The Cello Sonata in D Major, composed in 1843, was dedicated to music patron Count Mateusz Wielhorski, a Russian/Polish diplomat as well as a fine cellist whose accompanying partners included Clara Schumann. Mendelssohn performed the composition in London in 1845 with cellist Carlo Alfredo Piatti.

This sonata is almost a concerto in scope, and presents great challenges in both the cello and piano parts. It also presents numerous examples of Mendelssohn’s passion for quicksilver tempos, melodic genius, and his love for hymn-like melodies in slow movements.

The slow third movement is of particular interest because it mirrors Mendelssohn's passion for the music of J.S. Bach, a predecessor at the Gewandhaus concerts at Leipzig. The movement consists of a chorale in Bach's typical style, played by the piano in rich arpeggios. Between the  phrases of the chorale, the cello plays recitative-like passages.

It had to be one of the most productive holidays ever spent. During a summer retreat in 1886 at Hofstetten, near Lake Thun in Switzerland, Brahms composed three of his best-loved chamber-music masterpieces: his Cello Sonata in F Major, op. 99; the radiant Violin Sonata in A Major, op. 100; and the passionate Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 101.

After his first cello sonata, Brahms wrote all four of his symphonies before beginning a second sonata. Although a product of his middle years, this F-Major work is marked by a youthful boldness and symphonic approach to the piano writing, while never sacrificing a generous, easy lyricism. It is such a whirlwind of concentrated energy that, apart from the intricate and flawless compositional technique, it might pass for the work of a composer far younger than the fifty-three-year-old Brahms.

The sonata unfolds with a bristling energy, a jolting explosion in the piano answered by a triumphant cry from the cello. The opening Allegro vivace’s central theme comprises these shouting fragments, rather than a continuous melodic line. Remarking on its unusual rhythms and bold melodic leaps, Schoenberg would later write: “Young listeners will probably be unaware that at the time of Brahms’ death, this sonata was still very unpopular and was considered indigestible”—a useful reminder to contemporary listeners that although this work fits well within common practice, Brahms was considered a “progressive” composer in his time.

The F-Major cello sonata was composed for Robert Hausmann, a close friend and cellist of the Joachim String Quartet. Hausmann served Brahms as the prototypical performer-muse, directly inspiring Brahms’ cello writing over the last decade of his career. By all accounts, Hausmann played with a remarkably burnished tone and ample technique. Brahms’ writing  suggests that Hausmann had no trouble  negotiating the cello’s  highest  registers, nor  rising above the piano’s fortissimo chords. The first performance of this sonata was given in November 1886 in Vienna, by Robert Hausmann with Brahms at the piano.

It is interesting to note that despite the mastery Brahms had achieved in writing for the cello by this time, he still was not satisfied. On hearing Dvořák’s cello concerto of 1895, he reportedly exclaimed, “Why on earth didn’t I know one could write a violoncello concerto like this? Had I only known, I would have written one long ago!”

Clancy Newman writes: “In 2008, the A. N. Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation commissioned me to write a piece for their cello competition. It had to be ‘approximately 5 minutes in duration, arranged for cello and set to piano accompaniment,’ and it was to include ‘typical elements of the cello; that is, a lyrical expressive mood, melodic content, virtuoso finger work, and articulation.’ The result of this commission was From Method to Madness.

At the time, I was enjoying the exploration of a new compositional method I had recently discovered.  The first half of the piece obeys the rules of this method very strictly; at a certain point, however, the music cannot be contained by the rules any longer, and it overflows into a jazzy, Latin sounding tune.  From there, it continues to approach the boiling point, ending in a frenzy that recalls nothing of the serene discipline of the opening measures.

I thought it might be interesting to add that the performances of From Method to Madness that I do with Noreen Cassidy-Polera in January 2012 will be my very first time performing the piece … however, they will not be hers; she played it with one of the contestants in the competition (in fact, the eventual winner).  Strangely, the contract I signed barred me—and anyone not competing in the competition—from performing the piece for several years.  Thus it will be up to Ms. Cassidy-Polera, with her superior experience, to show me how the piece should go.”