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James Yannatos
Symphony No. 4
(Tiananmen Square)
Concerto for Piano & Orchestra
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
William Doppmann, piano
James Yannatos
James Yannatos was born and educated in New York City, attending the High School of Music and Art and the Manhattan School of Music. Subsequent studies with Philip Bezanson, Nadia Boulanger, Luigi Dallapiccola, Darius Milhaud, and Paul Hindemith in composition and William Steinberg and Leonard Bernstein in conducting took Yannatos to Yale University (B.M., M.M.), the University of Iowa (Ph.D.), Aspen, Tanglewood, and Paris.
While composition is the dominant theme of James Yannatos' career, he has consistently resisted the tendency towards specialization, believing it necessary for a composer to explore and participate in music as broadly as possible. He has earned his living first as a violinist, then as a teacher and conductor.
He has been Music Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra since 1964 and has led that group on tours to Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. He has appeared as guest conductor-composer at various festivals in North America and Europe and with the Boston Pops, Moscow, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Baltimore, and San Antonio Symphonies, and the Cleveland, Leningrad, and American Symphony Chamber Orchestras. He was also the co-founder and Music Director of the New England Composers Orchestra.
Yannatos has received commissions for orchestral, vocal, and instrumental works. His compositions range from solo vocal (Sounds of Desolation and Joy) to large choral-orchestral (Trinity Mass) and have been performed in Europe, Canada and the United States in concert, radio and television. His Symphony No. 3 for strings, Prisms, and Symphony No. 5 (Son et Lumière) were premiered in the USSR by the Lithuanian State Orchestra and the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra. His Piano Concerto was premiered in 1993 by the Florida West Coast Symphony with William Doppmann, piano. Recently, he conducted The Cleveland Chamber Orchestra in his Concerto for Bass and Orchestra, and the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra in his Symphony No. 3: Prisms. Yannatos has published four volumes of Silly and Serious Songs, based on the words of children. He has also written music for television, including Nova's City of Coral, and Metromedia's Assassins Among Us..
He has received innumerable awards as a composer including the Artists Foundation Award of 1988 for his Trinity Mass.
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
William Doppmann, who performed the Barber piano concerto with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in 1988, asked me to write him a concerto. The only guidelines given were that it be a substantial piece which would show off the piano in various ways.
I started to think of ways to approach this formidable task in the summer of 1992, started to compose the work in the fall of 1992, and finished it in the spring of 1993, completing the orchestration that summer.
My own guidelines included writing a piece that
-linked the past to the present, musically and pianistically
-presented both piano and orchestra in a mutually dependent partnership, and
-played with the notion of transformation and renewal in the cycles of the seasons and in the linkage and development of musical ideas.
From the past, the four-movement concerto grosso in which the soloist was also an integral part of the ensemble served as a loose model. Motivic and thematic elements from a variety of past sources (Vivaldi, Albinoni, doxology, Mozart) as well as from my own work served as musical material to be integrated into an expressive and richly associative narrative work.
Movement I (Broad and Expressive) evolves from a simple motive in the piano (example I) extended by the bassoon and oboes and later by the flute and piano. A shift in tempo introduces a short contrasting section before the return of the original tempo and the conclusion of the movement.
Movement II (Rondo Capriccioso) is introduced by scherzando passages with juxtaposed broader statements in the piano (ex. 2). The main section (part I) of the movement begins with a motive in the flutes (ex. 3) flowing into the main theme (ex. 4). Motive and theme then play out through various transformations, climaxing in the strings. The piano begins part 2 with a variant of the principal theme (ex. 5), which is developed with shifting metrical and tonal juxtapositions. The woodwinds and strings replay the variant in a stretto against the brass and piano to conclude the movement.
Movement III (Fantasy) is an extended three-part song form beginning with short cadenzas in the piano introducing the Aria (ex. 6). The Toccata is based on a wedge-like motive (ex. 7) on various tonal planes. The Aria returns to complete the circle.
Movement IV (Finale is through-composed, based on a single motive (ex. 8), and recycles motives and themes from the previous movements in a shifting tonal and rhythmic flow; after a climax, there is a brief evocation of the Aria from movement III. The coda introduces a theme from Mozart's Jupiter symphony in the strings against figures in 3/8 in the piano and winds (ex. 9). The piece concludes with a broad statement of the main theme of movement II.
The Piano Concerto was recorded in a performance in Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1994 with William Doppmann as soloist.
Symphony No. 4 "Tiananmen Square"
I was transfixed by events in Tiananmen Square - excited by the students' quest for (greater) freedom and appalled by the brutal response by the government. As a musician I felt impelled to speak out in the only way I could.
I spent the summer of 1989 immersed in the rhythms and cadences of Chinese folk tunes from a collection by Yuen Ren Chao given to me by his daughter, Rulan Chao Pian, my colleague in the music department. Elements of these tunes were chosen to serve as my musical materials for the six-movement symphony I planned to write. Sketches were made that summer and the work was completed and orchestrated by January of 1990.
The emotions I originally felt - anger, frustration, helplessness, sadness were transformed during the composition of the piece into a more positive, hopeful, even joyous vision of what could be - what will be. The tragic elements became a subplot in the drama; the energy, hope, and vision of the students became the central image.
Each movement is a tableau, self-contained but referential, thematically and emotionally, to the whole. Movement I serves as an overture, alternating between the chaos of multi-pentatonic tone clusters and clear folk tunes (A and C) or folk-derived themes (B) based on the pentatonic scale. (Theme A was also used by Puccini in Turandot.)
The Closing section combines A with D, derived from the Chinese national anthem.
Movement II, a scherzo-like rondo, continues without a break, alternating between chamber and large orchestral textures. It leads right into movement III, a static, evocative "tone poem" in two parts.
Movement IV, a scherzo, is based on a folk tune (E), but rhythmically modifies it (F).
The trio section is also based on a folk tune (G), but transformed (H). Movement V is an extended two-part structure; its closing section is reminiscent of movement III, but more complex in texture and varied in color.
Movement VI is also in two parts. In the first section, the brass theme (A) sounds against an active sostenuto figure in the low strings, dissolving into string-woodwind pentatonic lyrical passages. The climax is reached through fast passages in the strings and winds. Part two refers to movements V and III and concludes with thematic elements from theme A.
The piece is dedicated to the young people of China, Burma, and Tibet.
Symphony No. 4 (Tiananmen Square) was recorded in a performance in Prague, Czech Republic in 1992.
William Doppmann
Beginning piano lessons at age five in Louisville, Kentucky, William Doppmann made his solo debut with the Cincinnati Symphony at the age of ten. Mr. Doppmann continued intensive study at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music through his high school years and was the veteran of over 500 performances by the time he entered college. During his sophomore year at the University of Michigan, Mr. Doppmann won two of America's most coveted awards for young artists, the Walter W. Naumburg Award in New York and the Michaels Memorial Award in Chicago, becoming the only musician ever to have won both prizes in a single season.
Mr. Doppmann has performed with countless orchestras worldwide, including the Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Honolulu, and Tokyo Symphonies. His international festival performances include Cleveland's Blossom Festival, Chicago's Ravinia Festival, Rudolf Serkin's Marlboro Festival, the Hong Kong International Festival and the Kuhmo Chamber Festival in Finland. As a recitalist in major cities of the United States, Canada, and Europe, Mr. Doppmann has consistently enjoyed high praise from critics. He has recorded on the Columbia, Nonesuch, and Delos labels. As a composer, Mr. Doppmann was a 1987 Guggenheim Fellow and 1988 recipient of the University of Michigan's distinguished Citation of Merit. His works are published by G. Schirmer in New York and GunMar Press in Boston.
Mr. Doppmann's principal teachers include Ilona Voorm, pupil of Béla Bartók; the Viennese-American virtuoso Robert Goldsand, a protégé of Moritz Rosenthal; and Benning Dexter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, a student of Rachmaninoff's mentor and cousin, Alexander Siloti.
James Yannatos
Concerto for Piano & Orchestra
Prelude (5:08)
Rondo-Capriccio (10:40)
Fantasy (8:02)
Finale (7:43)
William Doppmann, piano
Symphony No. 4 (Tiananmen Square)
Many People (4:52
Coming Together (5:40)
In Thought (2:29)
In Action (5:39)
In Memorium (5:39)
Past Strife - Future Hope (6:10)
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
James Yannatos, conductor
Total Time = 61:56
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