|
Lawrence Golan
Indian Summer
The Music of George Perlman
The Music of George Perlman
The following program notes were recorded during a luncheon meeting between George Perlman, Lawrence Golan, and Lawrence's father, Joseph Golan on June 19, 1996 in the historic Fine Arts Building, a Chicago landmark built in 1885 where Mr. Perlman has been teaching violin for the better part of the 20th century.
Although he refused to divulge the exact year, Mr. Perlman acknowledges that he was born several years ago..."before the flood." [The general consensus among former Perlman students is that at the time of this recording's release (1997), he was 99 years old, placing his year of birth around 1898.] George Perlman was born in Kiev and at age four moved to Chicago where his principal violin teachers included Leon Samatini, Adolph Weidig, and Leopold Auer, with whom he studied for one year.
In addition to dozens of arrangements, editions, and collections, George Perlman has written several original pieces for violin, many of which are of a pedagogical nature. Perhaps his most popular composition, the Israeli Concertino of 1973 is a symbol of Mr. Perlman's pride and interest in his Jewish faith and heritage. The premiere performance of this piece with orchestral accompaniment was given by Lawrence Golan on June 2, 1980.
Published in 1969, Elegy and Habañera, a song for the dead and Spanish dance, was actually inspired by an event that took place during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. While teaching in Decatur, Illinois in 1917, Mr. Perlman was associated with a brilliant young pianist named Myra Howe. Upon being invited to lunch at the Howe's home, Mr. Perlman was informed by the pianist's mother that Myra was a psychic. His first inclination was that both Myra and her mother were meshuganes (Yiddish for crazy people). Myra then conducted an automatic writing for Mr. Perlmanclosing her eyes, holding out a pen, and proceeding to write down five pages of what appeared to be a continuous stream of random letters. By now the young Mr. Perlman was convinced that she was meshugah. However, after closer examination, the letters turned out to tell a detailed story taking place in Aragon, Spain in 1492. As the story goes, a beautiful young woman named Paquita was the object of all the town's men's desiresall except for her childhood friend, a morano named David. (At that time, one who secretly practiced Judaism, which was illegal and punishable by death, was called a morano.) Because David did not swoon over Paquita, but was instead in love with a young Catholic girl named Anita, Paquita became spiteful. One summer day, David and Anita were apprehended at a festival and taken to Torquemada's prison. David admitted to being a practicing Jew and Anita admitted that she was a Catholic in love with a Jew. David was burned at the stake while Anita was taken to the plaza and put on the rack. Shortly thereafter, Paquita entered a convent and was never seen or heard from again. After relaying this story to him, Ms. Howe told Mr. Perlman that he was actually David and that this was the tragic end to one of his own previous lives. As it turned out, the Myra Howe automatic writing was just one of several events, including a seance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and an encounter with Harry Houdini, that fueled Mr. Perlman's lifelong interest in psychic phenomenon and belief in reincarnation.
Although the Indian Concertino of 1954, an excellent student composition for young violinists, was obviously inspired by the rhythms and harmonies of native American music, the idea to write it, oddly enough, occurred to the composer while he was sitting in synagogue.
Like the Israeli Concertino, both Suite Hébraïque (1929) and Ghetto Sketches (1931) are symbolic of Mr. Perlman's pride and interest in his Jewish faith and heritage. Yiskor, the first movement of Suite Hébraïque, represents a prayer for the dead and was dedicated to the memory of the composer's father. The second movement is a dance of the Rabbis' wives.
Concertino, another very successful teaching piece, was written in 1938. The most lighthearted of the Perlman compositions, A Clown's Greeting to a Dummy, written in 1939, has a great story behind it about a famous actress of the time...but Mr. Perlman refused to tell it"maybe next time," he said. [He didn't tell it the next time either!]
Finally, the touching Indian Summer of 1938 was inspired by a cartoon. For decades, once a year each autumn, as the leaves were changing colors, the first page of the Chicago Sunday Tribune's graphic section featured a cartoon by John T. McCutcheon called Injun Summer in which an old man and his grandson are sitting underneath a large tree whose leaves have turned colors and are starting to fall. The grandfather tells the young boy that Indian Summer is when homesick Indians come back to play. He says that the distant colorful haze in the sky is actually the spirits of Indian warriors dancing around. When they get tired and rest in the trees, he says, their war paint sometimes rubs off on the leaves and that's why they change colors. Shortly after Mr. Perlman wrote his musical interpretation of Indian Summer, he brought his most famed prodigy, a seven-year-old virtuoso wunderkind to the home of John T. McCutcheon to perform the piece for the cartoon's originator. That little boy, one of the most talented students Mr. Perlman ever had, who would later go on to become the Principal Second Violinist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was Joseph Golan.
Lawrence Golan, Violin
Born in 1966, Lawrence Golan began studying violin at an early age with his father, and later with his father's former teacher, George Perlman. He went on to earn Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Indiana University where he studied with Yuval Yaron and Josef Gingold, and in 1995, under the tutelage of James Buswell, he became the first violinist ever to receive a Doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Lawrence began his professional career at the age of sixteen when he played in the Ravinia Festival Orchestra in Illinois for the ballet companies of Hamburg and San Francisco. Since then his musical engagements have included everything from playing in back-up bands for artists such as Dionne Warwick, Johnny Mathis, and Frank Sinatra to recording motion picture soundtracks in Hollywood, California; and from performing the Bach Double Violin Concerto with his father, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim to appearing as soloist at a Jimi Hendrix festival in Portland, Maine. In 1989 Lawrence joined the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, with which he played one season as Principal Second Violin before accepting the position of Concertmaster of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Director of String Studies at the University of Southern Maine.
Golan's varied orchestral career has taken him virtually all over the world. Highlights include performances in London and Moscow conducted by Leonard Bernstein, the Evian Music Festival in France under the direction of Mstislav Rostropovich, a European tour with Sergiu Celibidache, which included concerts in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Milan, Geneva, and Basel, and two performances at New York's Carnegie Hall as a member of a nationally selected orchestra assembled and conducted by Sir Georg Solti.
As a violin soloist, in recital and with orchestras, Golan has performed extensively in New England including appearances in Boston, Massachusetts; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Burlington, Vermont; and throughout the state of Maine. A British music critic in attendance at a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert which was recorded for public radio and broadcast on over 500 radio stations nationally and abroad, wrote in the London Sunday Times of the "immensely vital and vivid performances of Bach's D Minor Concerto for two violins" and that Joseph and Lawrence Golan "were soloists of great forthrightness."
Having studied at the Hartt Conductor's Institute as well as the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors, Golan is also active on the podium. He has been Music Director and Conductor of the University of Southern Maine Orchestra, the Community Orchestra of the Portland Symphony, and has guest conducted orchestras in Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, New York and Vermont.
Golan's debut recording, available on Entrata Records, features his own Fantasia for Solo Violin (1993), and also includes works by Bach and Ysaÿe. In addition to the Fantasia, published by Ludwig, Lawrence Golan has composed a comprehensive scale system for violin which is available through Mel Bay Publications.
Martin Perry, Piano
A native Californian, Martin Perry attended the Juilliard School where he was a student of Adele Marcus. Now a resident of Maine, Mr. Perry's New England performances have included the complete piano works of Charles Griffes and Alan Hovhaness (with whom Mr. Perry shares an Armenian heritage) and the U. S. premiere of Vivian Fine's Concertante for Piano and Orchestra. He has appeared twice as soloist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and appears often with principal players from the orchestra in chamber music concerts throughout New England. Mr. Perry has also worked extensively in musical theater, and his recording of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, Marry Me A Little, is available on compact disc from RCA Red Seal. Mr. Perry now divides his time between Maine and New York, where he has joined forces with Kathryn Lewis to form the prize-winning duo-piano team of Lewis and Perry.
Producer: Joseph Golan
Engineer: John Etnier
Recording Location: Corthell Concert Hall, University of Southern Maine, Gorham;
October 27 & 28, 1996
Cover Photo by
Niobe S. Burden
Digital Manipulation by Daniel J. Eosco
Lawrence Golan: Indian Summer
The Music of George Perlman
Lawrence Golan, Violin
Martin Perry, Piano
Israeli Concertino (12:07)
Hora-Hatikvah (2:43)
Nocturne (4:52)
Fantasie-Recitative (4:32)
Elegy and Habañera (5:55)
Indian Concertino (6:55)
An Indian Story (2:40)
Chant to the Moon (2:33)
Indian War Dance(1:42)
Suite Hébraïque (9:54)
Yiskor: Hebrew Prayer (3:20)
Dance of the Rebbitzen: Traditional Dance (3:07)
Chassidish(3:27)
Ghetto Sketches (11:42)
Hebräisch (4:59)
A Birdling Sings: Lied von a Voegele (3:43)
Hebrew Chant and Dance: Hush! the Rabbi Dances (3:00)
Concertino (10:26)
Moderately fast (3:08)
Slowly (3:43)
Quickly (3:35)
A Clown's Greeting to a Dummy:
Humoresque Americaine (1:39)
Indian Summer (3:19)
Total Time = 62:08
|
