Just to the right of today on the
calendar is the first entry in the Gabriel Lefkowitz and Friends
Concertmaster recital series at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Tomorrow
(Wednesday) and Thursday at 7:00, Gabe and pianist Kevin Class will
perform Bartok's Rumanian Folk Dances
and finish with
Cesar Franck's landmark Violin Sonata.
Principal French Horn Jefferey Whaley will join Gabe and Kevin in
Brahms' Horn Trio, op. 40, to close out the first
half.
Bela
Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances
are based on some of the many folk tunes that Bartok encountered in
Transylvania in his quest to catalog them all.
Different musical modes give
each dance its own compositional palette. Starting with the
Poarga Romanesca, the work accelerates to a delirious conclusion.
The titles of the movements have always eluded me, as they were in
Hungarian. Here they are translated, with
each movement's mode indicated.
Joc
Cu Bâtă
= Stick Dance =
Dorian and Aeolian modes
Brâul
= Sash Dance =
D Dorian
Pe
Loc = In One Spot =
Aeolian and Arabic
Buciumeana
= Dance from Bucsum =
Mixolydian and Arabic
Poarga
Romanesca = Romanian Polka =
D Lydian
Măruntel
= Fast Dance
= Mixolydian and Dorian
One
of the most remarkable things to me about the Brahms Horn Trio is
that I DON'T HAVE TO PLAY IT. My closest involvement with this work
is to have turned pages for a pianist years and years ago. And no,
there won't be three French Horns on the stage (Gabe and Kevin did
not take up the horn while we weren't looking). It is just an
identifying title, to differentiate the work from the typical piano
trio comprised of violin, cello and piano. The presence of the horn
makes for some soaring lyrical lines contrasting with some boisterous
marziale
passages.
The
trio was written in 1865 as a memorial to Brahms'
mother, who had passed earlier that year.
A work
that best embodies the Romantic ideal, Franck's Violin Sonata was written
in 1886
as a wedding gift to the great Belgian violinist Eugène
Ysaÿe
et ux. The
work is quite metamorphic in nature in that much
of the material grows from the small lyrical fragments that open the
work, and tunes from earlier movements reappear in later movements.
This
sonata stands alone as an uncategorizable masterpiece of the solo
violin repertoire.
Tickets
for this concert will be available at the KMA
door for $20.
-----------------------------------***************************-------------------------------------
Ok, so everyone's just dying to know
the Obscure Lyrics Quest answers, I can tell by all of the comments,
lol...
1)
“They say in the darkest night, there's a light beyond.”
A:
I didn't mean to start with a trick question, it was just randomly
chosen (and we hadn't rehearsed this yet when I posted the blog), but
this line comes from Art Garfunkel's 1973 single, All I Know.
You REALLY would have needed to know this song well, because we
played it as an instrumental....
2)
“I was so hard to please.”
A:
Hazy Shade of Winter”
3)
“Dogs in the moonlight”
A:
Paul Simon's “Call Me Al.”
4)
“I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand.”
A:
The Dangling Conversation.
5)
“The old men lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset.”
A:
Old Friends.
6)
“You better get your bags and flee.”
A:
Keep the Customer Satisfied.
7)
“Why don't you show your face and bend my mind?”
A:
Cloudy. This is also a trick question, WE DIDN'T PLAY THIS
TUNE...
8)
“Gazing from my window to the streets below”
A:
I Am a Rock
9)
“I can snatch a little purity.”
A:
Paul Simon's Loves me Like a Rock
10)
“And the moon rose over an open field.”
A:
America
11)
"I'll play the game and pretend."
A:
Homeward Bound
No comments:
Post a Comment