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Darkness & Light Vol. 4
The Composers
Leó Weiner
Hungarian composer and educator Leó Weiner was born in Budapest and studied in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris. He returned to Hungary in 1908 to take up the post of professor at the National Academy of Music, a position he held until the year of his death. A greatly influential teacher whose disciples included Antal Dorati, Louis Kenmer, Janos Starker, and Sir George Solti, Weiner is regarded as a seminal figure in the creation of the Hungarian national performing tradition. Weiner was disinterested in politics and, on the eve of WWII, chose to remain in Budapest despite the looming danger posed to Jews by Hungary's Nazi German ally. During the war, he was drafted into a forced labor battalion but, provided with protective papers, found refuge in the so-called "international ghetto" established by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. In December, 1944 together with thousands of Budapest's remaining Jews - Weiner was driven from the protected house to the central ghetto, from which he was liberated by the Soviet army in late January, 1945.
Weiner's music is revealed in a series of highly accomplished compositions that won for their creator the honor and lasting respect of the Hungarian nation. One such work is the brief and compelling Romance, op. 14, composed in 1921.
Robert Starer
The late Robert Starer was born in Vienna and received the greater part of his music education in Palestine, where his family fled after the German-Austrian Anschluss of 1938. After service in the British Royal Air Force during WWII, he came to New York for postgraduate coursework at Juilliard. Starer taught at Juilliard from 1949 to 1975 and at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1963 to 1991. He became an American citizen in 1957 and in 1994 was elected to the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters. A prolific composer, Starer's works include three symphonies, three operas, several ballets, and many chamber music compositions. Interpreters of his music include Roberta Peters, Leontyne Price and Janos Starker. The recording of his Violin Concerto (Itzak Perlman with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa) was nominated for a Grammy. He was also the author of the distinguished memoir Continuo, A Life in Music (1987), and a novel, The Music Teacher (1997).
Song of Solitude was composed for cellist Steven Honigberg, whom Mr. Starer performed with in his song cycle, Nishmat Adam, presented at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's chamber music series May 25, 1995. Song of Solitude was premiered by Mr. Honigberg November 17,1996.
Copyright Bret Wech 2002
Robert Stern
Robert Stern was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1934. He was educated at the
University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music and the University of
California at Los Angeles. His teachers have included Louis Mennini, Kent Kennan, Wayne Barlow, Bernard Rogers, Lukas Foss and Howard Hanson. In addition to many composition awards including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music and ASCAP, Mr. Stem has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Yaddo and the Alfred University Summer Place. Mr. Stem is presently teaching at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst.
Terezin is a musical setting of poems and drawings created by children in the Nazi "model" ghetto of Theresienstadt near Prague, Czech Republic. These remarkable documents, given birth under incredible obstacles, were collected in a book called I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The music was sketched during July 1967 at the MacDowell Colony and completed at Amherst, MA in the fall of 1967. Terezin was premiered the next February at the University of Massachusetts. The score is dedicated to the memory of the children of Terezin.
The composer writes: The poetry from I Never Saw Another Butterfly offered a unique and imposing challenge - that of doing justice to an extraordinary human document. Initially I was confronted with a difficult choice, for I could not include all the poems in the cycle. Ten or so suggested setting but musical and dramatic considerations dictated reducing the number to the present six. I sought to balance those poems that were quasi-descriptive against those that were more introspective in nature. My main concern in the settings lay in resisting the temptation to lapse into the hypertheatrical gesture. It is too easy to be seduced by highly-charged poetic images and even easier, in this case, by the poignancy of children's poetry set against the background of a concentration camp. Since over-dramatic music would annihilate such a text, maximum compositional control was necessary. In addition to the poems, I selected three striking drawings from the volume upon which to base the three instrumental interludes.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was one of the most gifted prodigies in musical history. Admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and virtually every other great musician of the early part of this century, he grew up as a féted wunderkind in the rich milieu of the final years of Imperial Vienna, before becoming a major operatic and symphonic composer.
As he was Jewish, the rise of Nazism resulted in his eventual exile to Los Angeles where he became a pioneer of film scoring, winning two Academy Awards. A post-war return to Europe was unsuccessful, and he died in Hollywood aged only 60, believing himself forgotten.
Korngold is most closely associated with large-scale works - operas and film scores in particular - but throughout his career, he produced equally fine works on a smaller scale. Three piano sonatas, a number of piano miniatures, songs and chamber works for various groups make up this section of his output. Each bears hallmarks of his own individual style, bursting with original harmonic thinking and a fund of melody.
Nowhere is his gift for small-scale composition more apparent than in the Six Characteristic Studies suggested by the story of Don Quixote, which Korngold composed in 1908 when he was eleven years old. In fact, the first study, Don Quixote's Dreams of Heroic Deeds, was written a year earlier. It was originally a short, one-movement cantata entitled Der Tod (Death) - already an unusual subject for a small child to attempt.
Throughout the set, the musical language is astonishing. The diffuse chromatic harmony is liberally spiced with 7ths, 9ths and 11ths. Each study in this suite reveals an innate sense of the dramatic, and the contrast between movements is breathtaking for one so young.
The Don Quixote suite was privately published by Korngold's father, the formidable music critic Dr. Julius Korngold (together with the young Korngold's first piano sonata and the ballet Der Schneemann). Oddly, while Der Schneemann and the D minor Piano Sonata were subsequently published by Universal Edition, the Don Quixote pieces were never published in Korngold's lifetime and do not appear to have been performed, except by the composer himself at his early recitals.
Copyright Brendan C. Carroll 1998
(Brendan Carroll is the author of The Last Prodigy - the definitive biography of Korngold, published by Amadeus Press.)
Benjamin Lees
Benjamin Lees was born January 8, 1924 and spent his early years in San Francisco, moving to Los Angeles with his family in 1939. Following military service in WWI he attended the University of Southern California. Later he began four years of intensive study, privately with the composer George Antheil. A Fromm Foundation Award in 1953 and the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships took him to Europe, where he remained for seven years. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and Queens College, New York. His works have been performed by major orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburg Symphony. Mr. Lees large-scale work, Symphony No.4 "Memorial Candles", was recorded on the Naxos label while the Violin Concerto can be found on the Vox label. His symphonies No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5 were recently recorded in Germany with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz. His honors include two Guggenheim Fellowships, Sir Arnold Bax Medal (London), Fulbright Fellowship, and Composer's Award from the Lancaster Symphony.
Piano Trio No.2 "Silent Voices" (1998)
This work represents a small gesture of remembrance to those whose voices were forever stilled by pogroms and genocides of the past. I have tried to blend the elements of drama, grief and lyricism into a very compact musical statement in the hope that this will be communicated to the listener.
The Artists
Steven Honigberg, heralded as a "sterling cellist" by The Washington Post, has emerged as one of the outstanding cellists of his generation. Mr. Honigberg gave his New York debut recital in Weill Hall and has since performed to critical acclaim throughout the United States in recital, in chamber music and as a soloist with orchestra. A member of the National Symphony Orchestra, he has been featured numerous times as soloist with that ensemble. He won rave reviews for the 1988 world premiere of David Ott's Concerto for Two Cellos performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Maestro Rostropovich, with repeat performances on the NSO's 1989 & 1994 United States tours. Mr. Honigberg is acclaimed for his explorations of important new works, such as Lukas Foss' Anne Frank (1999), Benjamin Lees' Night Spectres (1999), Robert Sterri's Hazkarah (1998), Robert Starer's Song of Solitude (1995) & David Diamond's Concert Piece (1993), written for and premiered by Steven Honigberg. Mr. Honigberg graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with a Master's degree in Music, where he studied with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. Other mentors include Pierre Fournier and Karl Fruh. Voted "Best New Chamber Music Series" of 1994 by The Washington Post, Steven Honigberg has been The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's chamber music series director since its inception. Mr. Honigberg is founder of the Washington DC based Potomac String Quartet, which released a CD (volume one) - the complete string quartets of David Diamond. Steven Honigberg performs on the "Stuart" Stradivarius cello made in 1732.
Carol Honigberg performs as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States and Europe. A recent tour with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra included performances in Prague, Warsaw, Berlin and Leipzig. She performs frequently on WFMT's live recital programs and on the Dame Myra Hess Series from the Chicago Cultural Center. Her recent recordings include Across 3 Continents which includes 20th century solo piano works; three volumes of Darkness and Light, music from the chamber music series at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas and variations for cello and piano with cellist Steven Honigberg. Carol Honigberg is currently on the faculty of Roosevelt University in Chicago. Her teachers included Rudolph Ganz and Marguerite Long in Paris. She received her Master of Music degree from Northwestern University.
Colombian-born soprano Paulina Stark began her career in opera, performing such roles as Mimi, Marguerite, Manon and Violetta with the Houston Grand Opera. She was a frequent soloist with the Houston Symphony under the baton of Sir John Barbirolli, who also conducted her European debut with the Hallé Orchestra in England, and with Lawrence Foster, who invited her to perform under his direction with the Opera Nationale de Monte-Carlo in Monaco. She has been guest artist with the Jerusalem Symphony under the direction of Sergiú Comissiona, the Dallas Symphony with Eduardo Mata, the Houston Symphony with Lukas Foss, and many other orchestras in a wide range of repertoire from oratorio to contemporary works. Currently Professor of Voice at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Ms. Stark has also taught at the New England Conservatory and at the Vocal Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She did her undergraduate work in Romance Languages at Smith College and Rice University, earned an M.A. in French from Rice University and did graduate studies in music at the University of Houston and the University of Texas. She has recorded a wide range of repertoire on Centaur, Opus, Gasparo, CRI, and New World Records.
Joseph Holt enjoys a wide ranging musical career as soloist, chamber music performer, educator, conductor and arranger. Since 1990 his appointments include pianist with The United States Army Chorus, Artist Member of the Chamber Artists of Washington, Adjunct Professor at The American University, a Baldwin Concert Artist and pianist/associate conductor for the Choral Arts Society of Washington. Prize winner in the Wolf Trap Brahms Competition, the Washington International Competition for Pianists, and the William C. Byrd Young Artist Competition, he was also selected to participate in the 1989 La Gesse Piano Festival held in France. Dr. Holt holds a Bachelor of Music degree with distinction from the Eastman School of Music, a Master's of Music degree from Shenandoah Conservatory, and a Doctor of musical arts degree in chamber music from The Catholic University of America. His primary instructors include David Burge, Nelita True and Marilyn Neeley.
Violinist George Marsh has been a member of the National Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Mr. Marsh has performed as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, the Catholic University Orchestra, and several other orchestras in his native midwest. As a chamber musician, he is a founding member at the Chamber Artists of Washington; he has also performed with the Vaener String Trio, the New England Piano Quartet, the Washington Chamber Society, and the Alexandria Chamber Ensemble. Recital performances include concerts at the Phillips Collection, the Organization of American States, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Mr. Marsh has received numerous awards, including first prize in the 1985 Washington International Bach Competition. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied with Paul Makanowitzky. Mr. Marsh plays a 1758 J.B. Guadagnini, the "ex Joseph Silverstein.
Recording Engineers
Chris Willis (Weiner)
Ed Kelly (Starer & Korngold)
David Hadaway (Terezin)
Antonino D'urzo (Lees)
Producer
Steven Honigberg
Editing and mastering
Charlie Pilzer/Airshow
Cover Art
Personnage 1962 by Maryan (1927-1977)
The David and Alfred Smart Smart Museum of Art The University of Chicago; Gift of Robert A. Lewis in Memory of Martha A. Schwarzbach
Cover Design
Tracy Pilzer
Recorded
Korngold and Starer - Harmony Hall, Fort Washington, MD, March 1998
Stern - Sage Hall, Smith College, Northhampton, MA, March 2000
Lees - St. Luke's Church McLean VA, April 2000
Weiner - Bennett Gordon Hall Ravinia, December 2001
(c) 2002 ALBANY RECORDS
ALBANY RECORDS U.S.
915 Broadway, Albany, NY 12207
Tel: 518.436.8814: Fax: 518.436.0643
ALBANY RECORDS U.K.
Box 12, Warton, Carnforth, Lancashire LA5 9PD
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WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL.
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