PROGRAM NOTES​​​

 

Astor Piazzolla: Suite del Ángel (arr. Catalyst Quartet)

(1962-65, 20 minutes)

 

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was almost single-handedly responsible for taking what was once a regional folk dance, the tango, and making it famous all over the world. Piazzolla’s family moved to New York when he was three. He grew up listening to his father’s tango records, while also encountering the city’s wide range of jazz and classical music. At eight he received his first bandoneon, the large button accordion on which he became a virtuoso. After his family returned to Argentina in 1936, Piazzolla found employment in a dance orchestra while continuing his classical studies. Eventually he won a scholarship that allowed him to study in Paris with famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He took to heart her advice to use his classical and jazz training to revitalize the tango, creating what came to be known as “nuevo tango.” Although his early efforts won the scorn of traditionalists, he continued to experiment, forming groups with which he recorded and performed all over the world, working with jazz musicians like Gerry Mulligan and Gary Burton, and composing for orchestras and film. As his international fame grew in the 1980s, he continued to concertize and wrote for musicians like Mstislav Rostropovich and the Kronos Quartet.

 

Piazzolla wrote four works that have since been dubbed the Suite del Ángel or “Angel Suite,” although they weren't originally conceived of by the composer as a collection. The Suite was performed and recorded by the Quinteto Nuevo Tango, directed by Piazzolla himself, with its mix of bandoneon, guitar, and more. But the music has since been heard in a number of other arrangements, ranging from solo piano to violin and guitar and wind quintet. This concert's string quartet arrangement, based on Piazzolla's recordings, is by the members of the Catalyst Quartet.

 

The opening movement, La Introducción del Ángel (Introduction of the Angel), begins slowly and is elegantly mesmerizing, characterized by wistful themes and something like a “walking bass” line that helps to move the music forward. Soon, though, the pace picks up to become a rather furious tango, before returning to the slower opening music.

 

The following La Milonga del Ángel (Milonga of the Angel), slow and sensuous with more than a hint of sadness, is the sentimental heart of the work. As the piece progresses the main melody becomes more harmonically complicated and emotional. In 1993, some three decades after it was composed, this movement became the title track of an album by Piazzolla.

 

The furious third movement, La Muerte del Ángel (The Death of the Angel), was originally one of two songs Piazzolla wrote in 1962 for a play by Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz, El Tango del Ángel. The play has been described as “the story of an angel trying to heal the broken spirits of humans in a Buenos Aires home, only to die in a knife fight.” That knife fight is the setting for this movement, which begins as a three-voice fugue. Its rhythm and tempo get faster before the actual knifing, depicted in glissandi or slides.

 

A stately rhythm, almost in the manner of a processional, opens the final movement, La Resurrección del Ángel (Resurrection of the Angel). After a couple of minutes in this vein, the music becomes more upbeat, rhythmically playful, and colorfully ornamented. The melody of the second movement Milonga reappears, and a brief return to the slower opening music leads into the fast-paced conclusion of the Suite.

 

 

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op. 10

(1895, 30 minutes)

 

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 of an English mother and a physician father from Sierra Leone descended from African-American slaves. After studying the violin as a youth, he turned increasingly to composing when he entered London's Royal College of Music at age 15. By his early twenties, his compositions had won much attention, in particular Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (1898), the first of what eventually became three cantatas based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Song of Hiawatha. His interest in his mixed-race heritage led to his becoming the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London. During the first of his three tours of the United States, in 1904, he was hailed as a cultural hero by African Americans, earning the nickname the “African Mahler,” and was received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. Coleridge-Taylor became fascinated with the idea of integrating traditional African music into his own works, including the Four African Dances and the Overture Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was just 37 when he died of pneumonia in 1912.

 

The Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp minor was composed as the result of a challenge issued by Coleridge-Taylor's composition teacher at the Royal College of Music, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. After a performance there of the Clarinet Quintet by Johannes Brahms, Stanford supposedly said to his students that no one could now write such a composition without being influenced by Brahms. Coleridge-Taylor, then just nineteen years old, took on the challenge, and within two months he had composed his Clarinet Quintet. On looking through the score, Stanford told his prize student, “you’ve done it, me boy!” A couple of years later, in 1897, Stanford took the score with him on a trip to Berlin, where he showed it to the famous violinist Joseph Joachim. Stanford had already written Joachim about the Quintet, which he described as “the most remarkable thing in the younger generation that I have seen.” Joachim apparently loved it, and performed it privately with friends.

 

Although Coleridge-Taylor's work is not performed as often as it might be, it is regarded by many as a masterpiece in the genre, worthy of standing alongside the Clarinet Quintets of Brahms and Mozart. Interestingly, after the Clarinet Quintet, Coleridge-Taylor wrote very little chamber music of any ambition, and his one major chamber work subsequent to it, the String Quartet in D minor of 1896, is sadly lost.

 

The Clarinet Quintet's Allegro energico first movement, in 6/4 time, opens with a lively, powerful theme from the cello, over syncopated viola and pizzicato violins, to which the clarinet soon adds its voice with a new tune. The rhythms throughout this movement are lively, and the textures full. While the clarinet remains prominent, the five instruments remain close to equals here, often performing as a richly-textured ensemble.

 

For the poignant Larghetto second movement, the strings play with mutes much of the time, as the clarinet takes much of the melodic lead. The main theme has the quality of a folk song. Coleridge-Taylor's use of irregular phrase lengths – that opening melody, for instance, features phrases of five and four bars – gives the music additional character. Later, the main theme appears in the upper voice of the cello to lovely effect. Some have noted the influence of the music of Antonín Dvořák, Coleridge-Taylor's favorite composer, in this work, and this movement in particular might call to mind the famous slow movement of Dvořák's “New World” Symphony No. 9.

 

The strings, particularly the cello, take the lead for the outer sections of the Scherzo third movement, which features a double time signature of 3/4 and 9/8. That lively, rhythmically intricate music frames a central section featuring a shapely melody from the clarinet over string pizzicati.Dvořák once again comes to mind in the Finale, to some extent in the melodic material but even more so in the rhythmic drive of much of the music. A powerful main theme is introduced by the clarinet over propulsive strings. In the central section, the irregular phrasing and syncopation from earlier in the work make a return. Toward the end of the movement, an idea from the Larghetto reappears as the music temporarily calms, before the work's exciting conclusion.

 

The Catalyst Quartet recorded this work, with clarinetist Anthony McGill, for the first album in its Uncovered series, featuring music by historically important Black composers. The other two volumes feature works by Florence B. Price, George Walker, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and William Grant Still.

 

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David Bruce: Gumboots

(2008, 23 minutes)

 

Born in 1970, David Bruce has forged a unique path in contemporary classical music with a series of colorful and imaginative works, encompassing chamber compositions, orchestral music, and opera. He has formed ongoing relationships with some of the world's leading artists, including Daniel Hope, Nicholas Daniel, Dawn Upshaw, and Avi Avital, and his music has been heard on many of the world's most famous stages. Bruce's music has attracted numerous awards and prizes, including the Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize (2008) and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Competition (1994). He studied at Nottingham University, the Royal College of Music, London with Tim Salter and George Benjamin, and completed a PhD in Composition at King's College, London under the supervision of Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Complementing his work as a composer, Bruce runs the sheet music website 8notes.com and has a popular YouTube channel where he discusses composing and music.

 

Chamber music has been one of Bruce's major interests, including three commissions from Carnegie Hall: Gumboots (2008), Steampunk (2011) and That Time with You (2013). The first of these, Gumboots, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall Corporation for clarinetist Todd Palmer and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. They gave the work its first performance in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on October 23, 2008. In 2008, David Bruce wrote a note about Gumboots, which we reproduce here with his permission.

 

“There is a paradox in music, and indeed all art – the fact that life-enriching art has been produced, even inspired by conditions of tragedy, brutality and oppression, a famous example being Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, written while he was in a prisoner of war camp. Gumboot Dancing bears this trait – it was born out of the brutal labour conditions in South Africa under Apartheid, in which black miners were chained together and wore Gumboots (wellington boots) while they worked in the flooded gold mines, because it was cheaper for the owners to supply the boots than to drain the floodwater from the mine. Apparently slapping the boots and chains was used by the workers as a form of communication which was otherwise banned in the mine, and this later developed into a form of dance. If the examples of Gumboot Dancing available online are anything to go by, it is characterised by a huge vitality and zest for life. So this for me is a striking example of how something beautiful and life-enhancing can come out of something far more negative. Of course this paradox has a far simpler explanation – the resilience of the human spirit.

 

“My Gumboots is in two parts of roughly equal length, the first is tender and slow moving, at times 'yearning'; at times seemingly expressing a kind of tranquility and inner peace. The second is a complete contrast, consisting of five, ever-more-lively 'gumboot dances,' often joyful and always vital.

 

“However, although there are some African music influences in the music, I don't see the piece as being specifically 'about' the Gumboot dancers; if anything it could be seen as an abstract celebration of the rejuvenating power of dance, moving as it does from introspection through to celebration. I would like to think, however, that the emotional journey of the piece, and specifically the complete contrast between the two halves, will force the listener to conjecture some kind of external 'meaning' to the music – the tenderness of the first half should 'haunt' us as we enjoy the bustle of the second; that bustle itself should force us to question or reevaluate the tranquility of the first half. But to impose a meaning beyond that would be stepping on dangerous ground – the fact is you will choose your own meaning, and hear your own story, whether I want you to or not.”

 

Program notes by Chris Morrison