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Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
Mendelssohn String Quartet
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
James Yannatos, conductor
James Yannatos:Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
The Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra was written for the Mendelssohn String Quartet during my sabbatical leave from Harvard, February-June 1995. My guidelines included writing a piece that (1) presented the Quartet and its individual players in a solo role while preserving the integrity and intimacy of the quartet; (2) was direct, graceful, and upbeat for quartet and orchestra; (3) linked past tradition to present practice; (4) used a principal theme in a narrative-like development throughout the piece in various transformations and formal situations; and (5) used other known motives (Bach, Beethoven) in a musical collage.
The 22-minute work is comprised of three connected movements played without pause: fast, slow, and fast. The first movement, in A major, transforms and develops the principal theme in the Quartet and then the orchestra. It also appears weaving through contrasting motives and themes derived from Bach chorales and the Beethoven Quartets Op. 135 and 74.
The second movement, in D flat-C sharp major is based on a three-part song form (ABA) with an extended cadenza juxtaposing the Beethoven Op. 135 with a new theme. Section B (poco piu agitato) introduces a variant of the principal theme (movement I), the Beethoven Op. 74, II, and a short repeat of the new theme before the return of section A and the cadenza.
Movement II in D major is a Rondo. In section A, a variant of the principal theme in the quartet is introduced by a lively flourish in the orchestra. The theme from the second movement in augmentation returns in section B. The work concludes with a coda and the Doxology “Praise God...”
Walter Piston:Symphony No. 3
Walter Piston was a member of the first group of American composers to make an international name for themselves and to develop a uniquely “American” style of art music. Born in 1894, he was in the same generation as other talented American composers like Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, Virgil Thomson, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland. Unlike Gershwin and Copland, who consciously sought to incorporate elements of the American vernacular — especially jazz — into their music, Piston took a more academic approach. “If...composers will increasingly strive to perfect themselves in the art of music...” he said, “the matter of a national school will take care of itself...the composer cannot afford the wild-goose chase of trying to be more American than he is.” To “perfect himself in the art of music,” Piston concentrated on traditional forms and was well trained in the traditional classical European teachings of counterpoint and harmony (indeed, his books Counterpoint and Harmony have become standard pedagogical resources in America). But his music nonetheless has a distinctly individual and American voice.
The Third Symphony is dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitsky and was completed in 1947 on a commission from the Koussevitsky Music Foundation. It has four movements, in the general framework of slow, fast, slow, fast. The music has a very classical and traditional key scheme, structure, and developmental method. But the harmony and instrumentation are fresh, and there is a wide range of expressive material, from the somber seriousness of the first movement to the wild second movement, to the joyful, perhaps even frivolous finale.
It is particularly appropriate for the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra to perform the works of Piston, as he was closely associated with Harvard throughout his life. He attended Harvard as an undergraduate, joined the faculty in 1926, and became a full professor in 1944, remaining at Harvard for many years. While on the faculty his students included such talented and influential composers as Elliot Carter and Leonard Bernstein. As composer, writer, and teacher, Walter Piston's effect on 20th century music has been profound.
James Yannatos: Prisms: Symphony No. 3
Prisms: Symphony No. 3 for Strings was commissioned by Joel Spiegelman in 1989 for concerts he was to conduct in the former Soviet Union with the Lithuanian State Symphony. Subsequently, the piece was performed and broadcast on Russian television with the Sverdlovsk Chamber Orchestra under the baton of the composer himself, James Yannatos. It was also performed by the American Symphony Chamber Orchestra.
The work, in four contrasting movements played without pause, is based on the notion of the prism. I wanted to translate light to sound, the prism's refraction of light into music that was transparent with a wide spectrum of sound, tonally organized, but delineated spatially and temporally by the refraction of tonality into polytonal and polyharmonic units. As light shifts and changes, so would the sound shift within and between specific tonal areas.
Movement I (C Major) is through composed. In the opening measures there is movement by the fifth (C, G, D, A), while in the closing measures the same fifths are superimposed as sustained pedals.
Movement II (E Major/C Major) is in three parts: A, B, A coda. The movement opens with a variant of the Prelude from Bach's E Major Partita for violin. Each instrumental group (violin, viola, etc.) gravitates around a different central tone, in a specific and separate register, creating polyharmonic lines. The B section is a choral (Praise God from whom All Blessings Flow), introduced and developed with interjections of the A section.
The coda quickly dissolves from high (B, E, A, D) to low (G, C).
Movement III (E/A/D Major) is an Aria in three parts: A (Aria), B (Fantasia Section), C (Short recapitulation).
Movement IV (Toccata) is in two parts: A, B A (coda). Pedals in the violins contrast with the rhythmic ostinato in the lower strings. The B section is a choral fragment (Ode to Joy) in the lower strings, set against Praise God, etc. in the upper strings. In the coda, a fragment of the Aria (Movement III) is set against various ostinati to conclude the work.
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 form 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.
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra traces its history back to the night of March 6, 1808, when six Harvard men first formed the Pierian Sodality, an organization dedicated to the consumption of brandy and cigars as well as the serenading of young ladies. Its midnight expeditions “were not confined to Cambridge, but extended to Watertown, Brookline, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Boston, etc....wherever, in short, dwelt celebrated belles.” An entry in the Sodality's record book for June 29, 1840 reads:
It has come to pass in the reign of Simon the King, that the Pierians did meet in the tabernacle. And lo! a voice was heard saying, Let us go serenading - and they lifted up their voice as one man and they said, Let us go. And behold we went to the city of the Philistines, and did serenade their daughters, and came home about the third hour. And the fame of the Pierians did wax exceedingly great, and did reach all the places round about Cambridge.
The early Pierians had so much spirit that in the 1830s the Faculty of Harvard College publicly admonished the Sodality “for absenting themselves from Cambridge for a whole night, serenading.” Administration censure was so great, in fact, that in 1832 the Pierian Sodality was reduced to one man: Henry Gassett. According to Time magazine (March 29, 1943), “He held meetings with himself in his chair, paid himself dues regularly, played his flute in solitude...and finally persuaded another flautist to join in duets. Gradually they elected other members. The Sodality played on.”
The Sodality not only played on, but profoundly influenced the development of music in Cambridge and Boston over the next 50 years. The Harvard Glee Club and the Boston Symphony, for instance, both owe their existence to the early Pierians.
By the turn of the century, the Pierian Sodality could at last justly refer to itself as the Harvard University Orchestra. It had grown into a more serious musical organization and had become the largest college orchestra in America. Soon it deemed itself ready for its first out-of-state tour, the Centennial Tour of 1908, which took the orchestra through New York state, and which was so successful that other tours quickly followed. The orchestra gradually built an international reputation and played for some of the most respected people in the United States.
It was not until November of 1936 that members of the Pierian Sodality agreed to assist the Radcliffe Orchestra in some of its larger concerts. Joint concerts became more frequent in the late Thirties and in 1942 the Pierians suggested that the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra be formed. Since during the war years the Sodality's membership was depleted, and since the Radcliffe Orchestra lacked certain instruments, both groups benefited from the merger.
It is said that around 1950 the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra stopped making history and started making music with a degree of seriousness never before seen at the University. Since then the orchestra has toured around the world and continued to improve in quality and reputation.
Mendelssohn String Quartet
The Mendelssohn String Quartet has established a reputation as one of the most imaginative, vital and exciting quartets of its generation. The ensemble serves as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Delaware, and as the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University. The winner of the 1981 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, the Mendelssohn Quartet has toured North America, Europe and Russia appearing at such distinguished venues as Carnegie Hall, the Concergebouw and Wigmore Hall in London. The Mendelssohn String Quartet has a strong commitment to contemporary music and has given the world premieres of works commissioned by and for them by composers such as Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas, and Mario Davidovsky. The Quartet's recordings appear on the Musical Heritage Society/Music Masters, Nonesuch, and Laurel record labels.
All recordings taken from live performances, recorded and edited by Thomas Stephenson.
Prisms was recorded October 31, 1998; Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra was recorded November 1, 1997; and Symphony No. 3 was recorded March 5, 1999.
Cover art by Arthur L. Loeb
Cover Design:Bates Miyamoto Design Service
Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
Mendelssohn String Quartet
Nicholas Eanet, Nicholas Mann, violins
Dov Scheindlin, viola • Marcy Rosen, cello
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
James Yannatos, conductor
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