Piano Quintets with the Main Street Chamber Players of Fairfax, Virginia
We are always reminded of what a rare and wonderful situation we have at Main Street Music Studios when talking to our colleagues from around the world. Not only are we colleagues who teach together, but we are also good friends who play music together as the Main Street Chamber Players-and we have been doing that for almost 10 years! Our unusual instrumentation requires us to be adventurous in our programming, which has become a hallmark of our concerts. Championing the works of women and BIPOC composers, as well as composers whose works are not in the canon of chamber music has become a passion of ours, and we are very happy to bring this concert to the Classical Cape May Series.
To prepare you for the concert, here is some information about the pieces we’ll be playing for you.
Variations for Cello and Piano by Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875-1912) lived only 37 years, but it was a life that was quite varied. As a young child, Coleridge Taylor showed a great deal of musical talent. He studied violin and composition at the Royal College of Music where he was a student of the eminent choral composer Charles Villiers Stanford. His impressive career included Sir Edward Elgar championing his work and eventually meeting America’s President, Theodore Roosevelt. He is best known for The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30, a set of three cantatas inspired by the 1855 poem by poet Henry Charles Wadsworth. The Variations for Cello and Piano, a lesser-known work, is an example of Coleridge Taylor’s interest in his African-American heritage. The simple melody introduced in the piano is infused with harmonies derived from African American folk music and spirituals. The seven variations cover a gamut of emotional and artistic expression.
Coleridge Taylor’s paternal grandparents were African-American slaves. In 1900, Coleridge Taylor became the youngest member of that year’s Pan-African Congress, a series of meetings where Black leaders from around the world gathered to discuss shared political platforms and strategies for achieving African liberation and unity, particularly in the face of colonialism and racial discrimination.
~Kenneth Law
Three Pieces For String Trio by Harold Levin
My string trio "Three Pieces" (2021) began its life in 2014 as a single movement duet for viola and string bass. It was entitled “Before.......and after.” After moving to Virginia in 2019 to join the Main Street Music Studios and Chamber Players, Barbara, Kenneth, and I started exploring works for the combination of viola, cello, and bass - not a common instrumentation, particularly considering the absence of a soprano “voice.” At about that time, I decided to expand the duo to three movements and added a cello part.
That result is the present three movement composition. Each movement is about 5 minutes in length and the interval of the perfect fourth plays a prominent role. As in all of my compositions, I have tried to create gratifying parts for all players. I have also attempted to explore the special lower sonorities of these instruments.
~Harold Levin
“D’un matin de Printemps” by Lili Boulanger
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was the younger sister of the famed pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger, who taught composition and theory lessons to hundreds of musicians over a period of about 70 years. Unfortunately, Lili did not have the long and productive life of her sister—she was in poor health for most of her twenty-four years. A child prodigy, Lili began attending classes with Nadia at the Paris Conservatory at the age of three. She studied piano, violin, cello, and harp as well as composition, and her teachers included Paul Vidal, Georges Caussade, and Gabriel Fauré.
Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Grand Prix de Rome with her cantata, Faust et Hélène. Several years before, the jury had refused to give this prize to her sister Nadia because she was a woman. Evidently, the quality of this work was so overwhelming that the jury unanimously awarded Lili first prize. Interviews with Nadia reveal that Nadia felt that it was her younger sister who was the greater musician and composer in the family; it was the death of Lili which caused Nadia to decide to focus the rest of her life to helping composers rather than turning out second-rate compositions (in her view). Lili’s works number more than fifty.
~Laura Kobayashi and Susan Gray
Piano Quintet in C Minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was, among many other things, a perfectionist. He took time to develop his voice as a composer, and was very deliberate about what works received public performance and shaped his reputation. The C Minor Quintet, surprisingly, is one of the works that did not make the final cut. Vaughan Williams composed the quintet in 1903 but continued editing it for another two years before its premiere in London’s Aeolian Hall. It continued to be performed until 1918 when the composer returned from World War I with a growing reputation as an orchestral composer and proceeded to purge his catalogue of several earlier transitional works, including the Quintet. Removed from publication, the Quintet sat dormant for more than 80 years before Vaughan Williams’ widow, Ursula, gave permission for a performance of the work to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death and subsequently allowed it to re-enter publication. Musically the Quintet is unique in its instrumentation: piano with a string quartet of violin, viola, cello, and double bass – a feature it shares with Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet.
The Quintet opens on four fiery falling chords that are immediately inverted and expand into a viola melody. This idea is transformed by the rest of the ensemble into a powerful statement over a sustained pedal note in the double bass. The opening four-note motif returns in the second movement in the form of echoes in the piano over a hymn-like melody in the quartet. This motif continues into the fantasia finale that is, structurally, a theme and variations, but brings to mind an Elizabethan fantasy for viols.
~Notes from the Linton Chamber Music Series
