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While the 19th century hardly produced any music for viola and orchestra other than Berlioz' Harold In Italy and a handful of lesser works, the 20th century has added many works for that combination to the repertory. We can list concertos by Bartók, Hindemith, Walton, Berio, and Penderecki, and added to these must be viola concertos by many distinguished American composers. Besides the three concertos recorded on this disc, there are works by Jacob Druckman, Morton Gould, Alan Hovhannes, Ezra Laderman, Peter Lieberson, Thea Musgrave, Quincy Porter, Gunther Schuller, Paul Schonfeld, David Stock and Joan Tower to mention only a few. The explosion of music for viola and orchestra is also reflected in the chamber music field, with sonatas for viola and piano being almost as numerous as those for violin and piano. This love of the viola is certainly due to the fact that the 20th century has produced so many viola virtuosos who have patterned their careers after the great viola virtuoso William Primrose and like him have commissioned a plethora of works for the instrument.
This recording however, brings together three composers who are related in two special ways. First, both Adler and Harbison were students of Walter Piston and in several ways show the impact which Piston's works have had on them. Second, all three composers were violists at one time in their lives and have a special love and affinity for the instrument. Therefore the coupling of these three works provides an opportunity to evaluate the influence Piston and his compositions had on the many composers who studied with him during the 35 years he taught at Harvard University. Further these three works demonstrate the devotion of the three composers to the viola and the affirmation that even today the concerto form can still be vital.
There is one more special relationship which adds to the interest of this CD, and it is that the Piston Concerto was dedicated to Joseph DePasquale, the renowned principal violist of the Boston and then the Philadelphia orchestras. Randolph Kelly was a student of Mr. DePasquale at the Curtis Institute, and therefore considers it a great honor to be able to do the first recording of a work dedicated and premiered by his revered teacher.
Latvian National Symphony Orchestra
The year 2001 marked the 800th anniversary of the Latvian capital of Riga and also the 75th anniversary of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra. It was founded in November of 1925 by Arvids Parups as an orchestra for Radio Latvia and grew in size and reputation throughout Europe until in 1930 it had grown to a membership of 65 and was renamed Radio Symphony Orchestra of Latvia. The function of the group was expanded through the 30s and 40s to include collaborations with the Latvian Opera as well as the Ballet. After the Second World War, the orchestra toured Europe and the Soviet Union and in 1986 it was renamed State Symphony Orchestra and finally, in 1990, it became known as the Latvian National Orchestra. Its permanent conductor at the present time is Olori Elts, an Estonian who studied with the famous Finnish teacher Jarma Panula. The orchestra now records regularly and has a lengthy season of concerts in Riga as well as frequent tours throughout Europe.
Aleksandrs Vilumanis
Aleksandrs Vilumanis was born in 1940 into a family of musicians. His father was a famous opera singer and a professor at the Latvian State Conservatory. Young Aleksandrs also studied at the Conservatory and while still a student he began his professional conducting career conducting a production of Il Trovatore at the Latvian National Opera. After his graduation, he continued as conductor of the National Opera and also twice has been the resident conductor of the Maryinsky Theater of St. Petersburg in Russia. During the 90s he was busy conducting festivals in Sigulda and Cesis, concerts of the Latvian National Symphony in University Hall, and very active with the Opera especially introducing several new Latvian operas with the National Opera. Some of these new works have been videotaped and broadcast all over the continent and Britain. Next season, Vilumanis will again be back in St. Petersburg to conduct several ballets.
Randolph Kelly
Randolph Kelly has enjoyed a distinguished and multifaceted career as principal violist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was hired by André Previn in 1976, and has since played under the direction of Lorin Maazel and Mariss Jansons. Previn once wrote that Mr. Kelly “...transformed his section into what I believe is the best viola section of any orchestra in America.”
One highlight of Kelly's tenure with the Pittsburgh Symphony was performing the world premier of a viola concerto written for him by Samuel Adler. This piece was commissioned by the orchestra for their 2000-2001 season.
In addition to his orchestral career, Mr. Kelly's virtuosity as a soloist and chamber musician has been celebrated around the world. He has recorded and toured extensively with the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. In reviewing a performance of theirs, the German Press Passaver Neve stated, “Randolph Kelly is in a class of his own. He has a richness of tone such as one seldom hears...” Additionally, Mr. Kelly has been invited to perform as a guest artist at chamber music festivals in Japan, Australia, Europe, Taiwan, and Russia.
As a soloist, Randolph Kelly has appeared on some of the most prestigious concert stages in the world. He performed the New York premier, in Carnegie Hall, of Sir Michael Tippet's Triple Concerto. He made his European solo debut when Lorin Maazel invited him to play the Walton Concerto with the National Orchestra of France. James DePriest conducted the Oregon Symphony when Randolph Kelly played the Bartok Viola Concerto. The review in The Oregonian stated, “...guest soloist Randolph provided the evening's highlight... it was a breathtaking performance.”
In addition to his rigorous performing schedule, Kelly has recorded a wide range of music for the Albany, Naxos, and Music Masters labels. He also appeared on National TV, performing Don Quixote as part of a series entitled Previn and Pittsburgh.
Randolph Kelly is a graduate of the Curtis Institute, where he worked closely with the esteemed violist Joseph DePasquale. He is committed to performing new music, and he generously volunteers his time to educational programs, in an effort to bring a wide range of musical experiences to young audiences.
Walter Piston
Walter Piston was born in Rockland, Maine in 1894. During the First World War, he served in the U.S. Navy and played the saxophone in the Aeronautics Division Band. His main instrument however was the violin and the viola. Upon his separation from the Navy, Piston went to Harvard University graduating in 1924. He then went to France to study with Dukas and Boulanger for two years. From 1926 until his retirement in 1960, he was a member of the Harvard faculty and from 1951 to 1960, Piston was the Walter W. Naumburg professor of music. Piston received the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and in 1961 and three times was named winner of the New York Music Critics Circle Award. Besides eight symphonies, a ballet, numerous concerti, and many chamber works, Piston wrote books on harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. Nicholas Slonimsky once wrote: “Walter Piston has reached the stardom of the first magnitude. He has not exploded into stellar prominence like a surprising nova, but took his place inconspicuously, without passing through the inevitable stage of musical exhibition or futuristic eccentricity.” Piston died in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1976.
Walter Piston analyzed his Concerto for Viola and Orchestra in the following manner:
I: The orchestra strings, with touches of winds, anticipate the principal subject, marked con moto moderato e flessibile. The theme logically belongs first to the solo viola (calmo, 3/4, with C as the tonal center, that is also retained for the finale). The theme has a slight rhythmic syncopation. Piu animato, the solo ventures into a series of different melodic and rhythmic patterns, played mostly staccato. This section assumes the place of the second theme.
But it is the principal subject that leads into the development. With the exception of a few passages, the scoring remains light and transparent.
The reprise is free, and there is the customary cadenza for the solo instrument. But the violist has had — long before this traditional place for a display of virtuosity — ample opportunity to reveal his instrumental skill and interpretive taste. The half tone step (from A flat to G) with which the solo viola concludes the movement, retains its role as a chromatic building stone throughout the Concerto.
II. A neo-romantic sentiment prevails in the middle movement. An unusual direction adagio con fantasia guides the interpretation. The orchestral strings play with mutes. The solo viola enters in the second bar, quasi improvisando (as though in an extemporaneous performance). Motivic analogies to the opening movement are revealed.
Contrast of tone color, and subtle nuances in the specific weight of solo and accompaniment, emerge as the essential elements of this adagio.
III. The final movement, allegro vivo, is brilliantly orchestrated. It begins with festive fanfares in trumpets and horns. The main subject is once again punctuated by syncopation, which may be viewed as one of Piston's many style characteristics.
The refrain of the finale is repeated in rondo fashion; in other words, we hear several returns of the theme. Another cadenza of the viola, to be played with much freedom, amounts to a veritable compendium of complex devices for the solo violist. Eventually, the percussion, too has its say.
The instrumentation of the Concerto calls for: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals harp, and strings.
The score gives the duration of the Concerto as 23 minutes.
John Harbison
John Harbison was born in 1938 and educated at Harvard where he studied with Walter Piston and at Princeton where he studied with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. Next he went to Germany to spend some time at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Besides his compositional studies, Harbison spent a great deal of his younger years active as a jazz pianist, and after he was appointed to the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, he became deeply involved in the performance of Baroque music, especially that of Schütz. He has had an extraordinary career as a composer winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989. He has composed works ranging from opera with the very successful production of The Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan Opera and the Chicago Lyric to symphonies, concerti, chamber and choral music and many songs. John Harbison has also served as composer-in-residence for the Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Besides his prolific compositional output, he is also active as a conductor throughout the world.
For the premiere of the Viola Concerto, Harbison supplied the following notes:
The viola was my instrument of choice, the one I picked out as a very young concertgoer. It had a commanding awkward size, a somewhat veiled slightly melancholic tone quality, and it seemed always in the middle of things, a good vantage point for a composer (which I already wanted to be). It was frustrating to put up with beginning on the violin and I was told I could switch when my hands got bigger. When it was clear I would never have large hands I insisted on switching anyway and my first summer as a violist was spent in an informal chamber music group playing Haydn quartets. That summer in Princeton, New Jersey, I remember as my happiest, the company of my friend John Sessions in the quartet, the wonder music we were exploring, and the possibilities of the instrument I had always wanted to play.
I never became an outstanding violist — I developed more virtuosity on the tuba, made much more money as a jazz pianist. But as a decent quartet and orchestra player I learned music as a violist, it fulfilled its promise as the right place to be and the beautiful `viola notes' in Mozart and Haydn, the subtle variants and reharmonizations, taught me a great deal about comparison.
When it came to writing a concerto for viola I wrote a piece for the violist I never was, the true soloist, and for the instrumental timbres I felt to be most typical of the instrument, its tenor and alto voice, rather than its rather unnatural treble. I also accompanied the soloist with chamber music partners from among my favorite instruments, often in duet or trio with the viola. The orchestral passages follow out this concept — they continue these conversations, without the kind of bombast that could make the wonderful voices of the viola seem outmanned upon re-entry.
The piece moves from inwardness to ebullience and from an ambiguous and shifting harmonic language to a kind of tonality. Within this broad scenario there was room for the kind of paradoxes I enjoy; a first movement in which nothing seems capable of repetition followed by one with literal repeats, a third movement of great formal and metrical simplicity followed by a finale filled with intricate metrical modulations.
Samuel Adler
Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1928 and came to the U.S. in 1939. He was educated at Boston University and Harvard studying with Walter Piston, Randall Thompson, Paul Hindemith, and at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland and conducting with Serge Koussevitzky. While serving in the U.S. Army, Adler founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra for which he was awarded the Army Medal of Honor. After his separation from the Army, he moved to Dallas, Texas where he was active as a conductor and teacher besides being composer-in-residence with the symphony orchestra there. He taught at the University of North Texas from 1956 to 1966 then becoming Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music (1966-1995). Adler has composed more than 400 works including five operas, six symphonies, 12 concerti, and a great deal of choral and chamber music. He has also published books on choral conducting, sight-singing, and orchestration. His works have been performed and recorded by many of the major ensembles of the world, and in 2001, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1967, he has been a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School.
For his Viola Concerto, Adler has provided the following commentary:
The Concerto for Viola and Orchestra was begun in December 1998 and completed in February 1999 on a commission from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for its principal violist Randolph Kelly. This is the tenth concerto I have composed, and each of them is a very different entity since each solo instrument suggests a certain “personality” to me. The viola has a very special significance in my life since it was my major performing instrument in both chamber music situations as well as in the orchestra. To me, the major attribute of the viola is its ability to convey a most beautiful lyricism. Certainly it can do all the other exploits of the violin and cello, but its very volatile lyric sound has always had a great appeal for me. Of course in this work, besides lyric lines, the soloist is asked to perform all kinds of other gestures and to explore the upper as well as the lower extremes of the viola's range.
The Concerto is in three movements and is about 20 minutes in length.
I. Gently flowing — The first movement begins with a song-like theme played by the solo viola to a sparse accompaniment, first by the upper strings with pizzicato cellos and basses, then continued by the winds and muted trumpets. This main theme is quite a lengthy one and is repeated and varied several times, finally reaching a climax that leads to a more agitated section. This second portion of the movement is characterized by snappy grace notes and acts as a development section, since the opening theme constantly tries to intrude and develop itself. The lyric principal theme wins out and returns again, accompanied as before by shimmering strings and with some hint of the middle section material this time trying to intrude on its serenity. The movement, however, comes to a quiet, almost ethereal close.
II. Slowly and freely — The second movement is a meditation beginning with a short viola cadenza that repeats twice towards the end of the movement. In between the cadenzas, both the orchestra as well as the soloist develop several pastoral-like melodies that in many ways resemble the two themes of the first movement, but in this calm setting emphasize a striving for inner peace. This is finally achieved by a coda settling on a soft a flat minor chord in first inversion.
III. With verve and drive throughout — To me, music is the translation of the energy a composer feels stemming from the time in which he/she lives. I feel a tremendous invigorating energy in our world today and have, as in this movement, tried to capture its strength and its restlessness. From the very beginning the music explodes and the opening phrase that the viola plays is the catalyst that in one form or another runs all the way through and invites contrasting themes after each time it appears. This gesture is not a melody but rather a rhythmic fragment that is recognizable throughout the movement. The soloist here acts as a protagonist and the orchestra as the antagonist, constantly in dialogue and bringing the work to an excited close. It should be noted that some of the contrasting melodies throughout the last movement recall themes of the first movement once again. In other words this Concerto is quite cyclical in construction.
My sincerest thanks go to Mariss Jansons, the Aaron Copland Fund , Albany Records, Duquesne University (with special thanks to Dr. Edward W. Kocher and Kathleen Ingold), and John Harbison. I would also like to thank all of those individuals in Sun Valley, Idaho who donated their time and money including: Mr. and Mrs. William Bohrer, Mr. and Mrs. Debard, Ms. Lisa Holley, Mr. Richard D. Farrer, Mrs. Phyllis Parvin, Mrs. Feli Funke-Riehle, Mr. James O. Moore, Dr. and Mrs. William Brydon, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace W. Mills, Mrs. Carolyn Olbum, Mrs. Gloria Browning, Mrs. Peggy M. Hollitz, Mrs. Sheila McBroom, Mrs. Katharine Henry, Ms. Margot Van Horn, Mr. Gary F. Hoffman, Mr. and Mrs. Adam H. Koffler, Ms. Gay Bawa Odmark, Mrs. Joyce Dwyer, Mrs. Alin Shether, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Marcus, Mrs. Patricia Beattie, Mr. Jim Geier, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Stoll, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Christensen and a very special thank you to Mrs. Rae DeVito for all of her tireless effort and support. Thanks also to Emily Freeman Brown for her invaluable input. I would also like to thank my wife Paula Kelly and my two sons Joshua and Patrick for their enduring patience and support.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this CD to Samuel Adler, without his constant loyalty and support this recording would have never happened. I owe you my deepest respect and thanks, both as a musician and as a friend.
— Randolph Kelly
Cover Photograph: David Medley
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