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Anne Louise-Turgeon, piano
duo for violin & violoncello
Cathy Robinson, violin
Keith Robinson, cello
duo for violoncello & piano
Pansy Chang, cello
Elizabeth Parisot, piano
The world I grew up in, living in Brooklyn always close to Ebbets Field and the Children's Museum, consisted of all those things kids did as first generation Americans. There was the Grand Army Plaza, where I learned to roller skate on cobble stones, and the Parade Grounds where I scruffed my knees regularly playing baseball, and Prospect Park where I belly wopped in the winter time on a Flexible Flyer, and the Botanic Gardens where I had a plot and grew kohlrabi and radishes. To that heady mix there was, as well, music. My parents, Isidor and Leah, were born in Galicia, Poland; came to the United States early in the twentieth century, met, married, settled in Brooklyn, and when I arrived June 29, 1924, there was an upright Worthington piano in the apartment and my brother Jack who practiced on it daily. When my younger brother Gabriel arrived in 1929 I was already deeply involved in music. When I was three I heard my first children's concert at Carnegie Hall led by the debonair Ernest Schelling. During the height of the Depression I used to sit next to the fountain of the Sculpture Court at the Brooklyn Museum while the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Orchestra performed. On Saturday nights I would occupy an empty box overlooking the stage at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) as some musicians from the pit orchestra ate hero sandwiches and drank Chianti as the Salmaggi Opera Company performed Italian repertoire. On Friday afternoons at school we would hear Walter Damrosch take us on musical journeys over the airwaves. When we finally got our Atwater Kent radio, Sunday afternoons belonged to the New York Philharmonic. Heard and loved were not only the great masterpieces but composers D'Indy, Weinberger, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sullivan, Ambroise Thomas.
One day, when I was six, I was brought to the Brooklyn Community Music School, just down the street from BAM and suddenly my musical education in the guise of the Dalcrose method began. This musical world competed with growing up a city boy, never knowing how desperately poor we were, going (on scholarship) to the Ethical Culture School, where learning ancient Greek history was essential, moving, one step ahead of the landlord, to seven apartments the first decade of my life, and having the extraordinary sense that everything was possible. At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down. I hardly knew it then, but I had at a very early age made a giant step to becoming a composer.
In the fifties, when emerging composers were forced to choose between rigor and accessibility, Ezra Laderman found a way to choose both. His music appeals immediately to the listener because his primary impulse is lyric. Laderman's themes for stringed instruments, and even for piano, have the shape and breadth of sung phrases. His impeccable dramatic sense for deploying them is based on two principles of construction. One of them, developing variation, leads him to transform his material constantly into new shapes and energies. The other, informed by the classical sonata, leads him to recapitulate expository material in the same key, creating large-scale gestures of departure and return. The tension between these two principles is a creative springboard for Laderman, as it has been for great composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the hallmarks of Ezra Laderman's art is his commitment to continuing musical traditions. Among his most personal and lasting contributions to the repertory are symphonies and concertos, string quartets and sonatas. The solo and duo pieces on this album belong to genres that have a distinguished history too, and Laderman has invested in them the same imagination and profundity that characterize his music for larger ensembles.
The four-movement Piano Sonata No. 2, which was composed in 1956, reconsiders motivic material from his 1952 first piano sonata. The first three notes of the first sonata are transposed up by the interval of a sixth, but the contour is the same. In the second sonata, though, these first three notes are the beginning of a four-note motive which, after a repetition, is unfurled by the right hand into a long cantabile line. As the line reaches its first peak in the second bar-on G, a note continually reasserted in this introductory section as an arrival point-the left hand begins a virtually exact imitation an octave lower. Marked Adagietto - with tenderness and simplicity, the introduction is only sixteen measures long, but it is packed with transformations of this four-note motive, D-B-E-F, trailing in every direction.
In the body of the first movement, marked Molto Allegro, Laderman breaks this four-note motive, now transposed down a third, into the outer notes of each hand's part. In doing so he invites new notes into prominence in the left hand while in the right hand maintaining D and B, the first two notes of the piece. This flow is faster and more mercurial than many first movements of sonatas; it has the obsessions and rhythmic deceptions of a finale or even a scherzo. In fact, Laderman marks the music scherzando at one point. The lyrical Adagietto introduction spilled outward from small intervals into every register of the keyboard; the Molto Allegro does the same in a more systematic way, with the tops and bottoms of rapid figurations wedging apart to new points of arrival. Capped by two headlong plunges to the instrument's depths, the body of the movement gives way to a return of the Adagietto music, now marked with mystery. The opening music returns in the right hand, rhythmically decompressed, the tune bathed by the left hand's accompaniment: a series of alternations between A and G sharp which glide between the lowest and highest registers of the piano.
In the Romanza, the slow second movement of the sonata, Laderman deepens existing relationships among pitches. The three notes which opened the work are twice re-ordered: once to begin the slow, strokes in the right hand-marked bell-like, another for the faster melody below them. The arrivals on the note G in the first movement Adagietto prefigured a more important role for this pitch in the Romanza. In the first and last thirds of the movement, collections of notes that comprise the G major scale give way to harmonically more stable passages in G minor. These changes in modality are like moments of light and shadow that pass over the music. A third harmonic component, D flat major, is also derived from the first movement introduction. There it was employed as the bass when the tune paused on G. Here it is the underpinning to much of the movement: D flat major can be found in the harmonic mix wherever the key of G minor has not taken root.
The different tempi in the Romanza may be even more interesting than how these harmonies interact. The music opens with a beautiful stillness. It seems at first that the faster line in the left hand decorates the bell-like right hand chords. But after only two bars these chords are replaced with filigree to accompany the left hand line. When the music moves to G minor several bars later, this filigree material is halved in speed so that it is suddenly more substantial, a partner in the musical line. After a reprise of the movement's opening material, a new section solidifies a new relationship between different speeds: The right hand embroiders an arching melody over the bass, as a concerto soloist would over an orchestra. Laderman engineers a return to the opening material just as this melody reaches its climax. The relationships among the tempi are re-enacted, but as the recapitulation progresses the discrepancies among them resolve, the two hands increasingly synchronized in a series of the bell-like chords. The issue of tempi resolved, Laderman confronts the harmonic issues in the movement. Chords drawn from the G major collection of notes, with D flat major arpeggios lying underneath, battle with G minor triads. The minor mode wins out, and the movement concludes peacefully.
With the third movement Scherzo furioso, the sonata leaves behind for awhile issues spelled out by D, B, and E; the final pitch of the sonata's initial four-note motive, F, becomes the center of attention. The music rushes forward in the key of F minor, with the D flat from the previous movement now used as a counterweight and dissonance. Throughout the first movement notes spiraled out from small spaces; here the reverse process sets in, as individual phrases bound up from a low C and home in around a higher target pitch. The phrases become more insistent and explode in a barrage of C major arpeggios, and then everything repeats. The process is reminiscent of the scherzo movement of Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata, except that the Barber has a music box quality while the Laderman is ferocious. A second theme arrives after a brief respite, one which offers fresh rhythmic complexities. The bass continues to provide pulse, now as an augmented version of the first theme. A shattering climax leads to a middle section drawn from the mid-point of the first movement Molto Allegro. Here Laderman inverts the counterpoint, so that what had been the bass line in the Molto Allegro becomes the tune. The principle of inversion takes root, so that the roles of the hands are reversed time and again in the recapitulation.
The finale is a return home. Almost all of the ideas from the first movement are taken apart and reassembled, with material from the Adagietto sections participating in a more complicated relationship with the Molto Allegro passages. An introductory passage presents a simplified version of the Adagietto, with all canonic imitation eliminated. Next, Laderman dresses the Adagietto tune in tonal clothes, G major and then C major. Perhaps drawn from the left hand music from the concluding Adagietto, the accompaniment here is broad and comfortable. This music alternates with new versions of the Molto Allegro music, with the broad theme getting the last word.
The Piano Sonata No. 2 was first performed by Susan Wong at a student recital, and premiered publicly many years later by Walter Poncé. Both pianists owe a debt of gratitude to Eugene List, who commissioned but never performed the work.
Laderman composed his Duo for Violin and Cello, also in four movements, in 1955, just before he began work on the piano sonata. It was premiered by Isidore Cohen, violin, and Jackson Wiley, cello, at Carnegie (now Weill) Recital Hall in 1956. The Duo is one of the most successful works in this difficult genre. As an ensemble, a string quartet is so balanced and rich in tone that during the nineteenth century composers came largely to disregard the string trio and its thinner sound. The composer of a string duo has an even heavier burden both to navigate among a variety of textures and to allow the players to project a full composite tone.
Like its great predecessors by Ravel, Kodaly, and Martinu, Laderman's Duo accomplishes this double objective. It does so from the opening bar, with strikingly vital, brisk double stops and open strings on G and D in violin and cello playing off each other. Partly masked by this macho opening are the motives of almost much that follows: the upward leap, downward leap, and upward step in the violin, and the more measured three-note rise and one-note fall in the cello. The first movement is a sonata form with two contrasting themes. Most remarkable about their contrast is how the themes nevertheless employ the same material. Both motives unfold simultaneously in the first theme; in the second they succeed each other as individual phrases in a long, sweet melody. Bridging the themes is a passage that alternates quick bow strokes with series of plucked notes, a texture that Laderman would develop to great effect in his String Quartet No. 6, thirty years later.
The cello's motive at the beginning of the Duo is further developed in the fourth movement and in the brief third movement (labeled Interlude) that runs directly into it. But the slow second movement is a departure, regardless of whether all its music can be derived from the opening materials. Much of it is stately but sad-a dirge, perhaps. A brief outpouring wells up from the movement's middle, drawn from the cello's motive, though in this context it is more romantic than rugged.
Throughout the string duo Laderman recognizes his two instruments as complementary. They may not always play the same music at the same time, but they always work together. String instruments differ essentially from a keyboard instrument in how they produce and sustain tones. Until Elliott Carter's Sonata for Cello and Piano, written fifty years ago, composers tended to ignore this difference when writing chamber music.
Ezra Laderman's 1984 Duo for Cello and Piano, commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation, begins with wonderful drama because he pits the instruments and their idiomatically different kinds of music against each other. Describing this opposition, the composer writes:
The work begins with the cello and piano doing very different things: the cello linear, disjunct, with short phrases of varying lengths; the piano vertical with chords of fifths, intercutting and establishing the phrase lengths. The two instruments don't make contact until the forty-third measure; only their resonance overlaps. I have used adjectives like dispassionate, aloof, mocking, to describe the first part of the work.
Constructing the Duo in three connected sections, Laderman broadens its expressive vocabulary after establishing this “mocking” stance. He commented:
Midway through this first section and just before its restatement where the roles of the two instruments are reversed, there is a moment where a glimmer of compassion interrupts and anticipates what lies ahead. The second section juxtaposes two disparate qualities: one of growing lyricism that bring the Duo on to a single plane, and the other, frenzied, distraught, filled with anxiety. The two phrases alternate with ever increasing tension. Expanding and evolving their separate states, eventually subsiding, the section slowly releases itself from this duality. There is a short phrase, taken by the piano, that anticipates the final section. It happens twice. The second time, it leads directly to the Presto. Now the duo speaks as one. The movement has a single thrust which is interrupted at its penultimate moment with the recalling of the second movement's lyricism. The qualities now have a cohesiveness, the meter steadfast, the propulsion constant, the attitude positive.
Cellist Stephen Kates and pianist Margot Garrett offered the world premiere of the Duo on the Tuesday Matinees series at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.
Anne Louise-Turgeon holds Master's and Doctoral Degrees from Yale University School of Music where she was awarded the Dean's Prize. Her teachers have included Claude Frank, Peter Frankl and Boris Berman at Yale, and Marietta Orlov at the University of Toronto. Dr. Louise-Turgeon has performed in Australia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands, and Russia. She gave her European debut at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, and her New York debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. She has recorded for the Marquis Classics/EMI and Vanguard Classics labels, as a member of the Duo Turgeon, with her husband Edward Turgeon. Louise-Turgeon has won prizes in numerous international competitions, including Sydney and Cleveland International Piano Competitions, and the International Schubert Competition for Piano Duos. She has been heard on National Public Radio's Performance Today, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the one hour TV documentary “Two Pianos-One Passion,” on PBS stations nationwide.
Cathy Robinson is a founding member of the Miami String Quartet, which is currently in residence at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She has performed throughout the United States and Europe as a member of the quartet, which has won numerous awards since its inception in 1988. Those awards include First Prize of the 1992 Concert Artists Guild Competition, Grand Prize of the Fischoff Competition, as well as prizes in Evian, France and London. She has recorded with the Quartet on the BMG, Pyramid and Audiophon labels. She received her Bachelor of Music Degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and her Master of Music Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her teachers include Ivan Galamian, David Cerone, and Isadore Tinkleman. Solo appearances include performances with the Deerfield Beach Symphony, the West Palm Beach Symphony, and the Greenville Symphony.
Keith Robinson, a founding member of the Miami String Quartet, has been active as a chamber musician, recitalist, and soloist since his graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music. A member of the Thouvenel and Montani Quartets, he subsequently helped found the Miami Quartet in 1988, the same year they won the grand prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Solo appearances with orchestras include the Palm Beach Symphony, the Midland-Odessa Symphony, the Miami Chamber Symphony, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. In 1989, Mr. Robinson won the P.A.C.E. “Classical Artist of the Year” award, which promoted him throughout south Florida as a recitalist. Along with other members of the Miami String Quartet, he serves as an Artist-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. The Miami Quartet is also Quartet in Residence at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival at Kent State University. Mr. Robinson plays on an Italian instrument labeled Joseph Antonius Rocca (1839), but is more likely a Stephano Scarampella (1870).
Pansy Chang, cellist, has performed in North American, Europe, and Israel as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. She has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, on Bob Sherman's “Listening Room” (WQXR, New York) and in both the Yale Spectrum Series and the Yale Faculty Artist Series in New Haven. Concerto appearances include performances with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, the Oregon Symphony, and regional orchestras in the Washington, DC and Portland metropolitan areas. In 1992 Ms. Chang was awarded a Fulbright Grant for study in the United Kingdom, and was a semi-finalist in the 1993 Leonard Rose International Cello Competition. Ms. Chang is presently a member of the Oregon Symphony, and also enjoys performing with the Portland band, Pink Martini. Principal teachers include Aldo Parisot, William Pleeth, Eleonore Schoenfeld, Evelyn Elsing, and Susan Kelly.
Elizabeth Parisot, pianist, received her D.M.A. degree from the Yale School of Music in 1973, and has served on the faculty of the School since 1977. She has appeared in solo and chamber music concerts throughout the world, performing at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, Kennedy Center and The National Gallery in Washington DC, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Hispanic Institute in Madrid and the Jerusalem Music Center in Israel. With her husband, the famed Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot, she has toured extensively, joining him in sonata performances as well as in chamber music with other renowned artists. She has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker and Ralph Kirshbaum. Ms. Parisot has recorded for the Musical Heritage Society, Serenus, Phonodisc, and Delos International record labels.
Recording Engineer: Eugene Kimball
Cover Design: Oberlander Design
1 Adagietto-Allegro [5:17]
4 Adagio expressivo-Allegro assai [5:03]
Anne Louise-Turgeon, piano
Duo for Violin and Violoncello
5 Allegro con brio [4:42]
7 Interlude (Adagio) [1:01]
Cathy Meng Robinson, violin • Keith Robinson, cello
Duo for Violoncello and Piano
9 Allegro- Andante- Presto [19:34]
Pansy Chang, cello • Elizabeth Parisot, piano
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