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TR271
Temple University Wind Symphony
Arthur D. Chodoroff, conductor; Karel Husa, guest conductor
Karel Husa (b. 1921)
Karel Husa, Pulitzer Prize inner in Music, is an internationally known composer and conductor who was Kappa Alpha professor at Cornell University from 1954 until his retirement. An American citizen since 1959, Husa was born in Prague on August 7, 1921, studying at the Prague Conservatory and Academy of Music, and later at the National Conservatory and Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. Among his teachers were Arthur Honeggar, Nadia Boulanger, Jaroslav Ridky, and conductor Andre Cluytens.
Husa was elected associate Member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974, and to the American Academy of arts and Letters in 1994. He has received honorary doctorates from Coe College, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Ithaca College, Baldwin-Wallace College, St. Vincent College, and Hartwick College; and has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Czech Academy for the Arts and Sciences, the Lili Boulanger Award, Bilthoven (Holland) Contemporary Music Prize, a Kennedy Center-Friedheim Award, and the Sudler International Award. His Concerto for cello and Orchestra earned him the 1993 Grawemeyer Award. In 1995, Husa was awarded the Czech Republic's highest civilian recognition, the State Medal of Merit, First Class.
His String Quartet No. 3 received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and, with over 7,000 performances, his Music for Prague 1968 has become part of the modern repertory. Another well-known work, Apotheosis of this Earth is called by Husa a “manifesto” against pollution and destruction. His works have been performed by major orchestras all over the world. Two works were commissioned by the New York Philharmonic: the Concerto for Orchestra premiered by Zubin Mheta, and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra written for concertmaster Glen Dicerow and conducted by Kurt Masu8re; ahd the Concerto for “Trumpet was commissioned by the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Sir Georg Solti for performance in Chicago and on tour with principal trumpeter Adolph Herseth. Among his recent compositions are the String Quartet No. 4(an NEA commission for the “Colorado Quartet) Cayuga Lake (for Ithaca College's centennial celebration), and Les couleurs fauves for wind ensemble (written for Northwestern University).
Much of Husa's music is available on recordings issued by CBS ;Masterworks, Vox Louisville, Phoenix, Crystal, CRI, Everest, Grenadilla, Sheffield, and other labels.
Music for Prague
The first performance of Music for Prague 1968 was given at the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, D.C. in 1969. The work was commissioned and premiered by the Ithaca College “Concert Band with Kenneth Snapp, conductor. Since that time, it has received over 7, 000 performances in both its original version for concert band and the composer's adaptation for symphony orchestra.
About Music for Prague 1968, Karel Husa wrote the following:
Three main ideas musically bind Music for Prague 1968. The first and most important is an old Hussite war song from the 15th century, “Ye Warriors of God and His Law,” a symbol of resistance and hope for hundreds of years, whenever fate lay heavy on the Czech nation. It has been utilized also by many Czech composers, including Smetana in My Country. The beginning of this religious song is announced very softly in the first movement by the timpani and concludes in a strong unison (Chorale). The song is never used in its entirety.
The second idea is the sound of bells throughout; Prague, named also the City of “Hundreds of Towers,” has used its magnificently sounding church bells as calls of distress as well as victory.
The last idea is motif of three chords first appearing very softly under the piccolo solo at the beginning of the piece, in flutes clarinets and horns. Later it appears at extremely strong dynamic levels, for example, in the middle of the Aria.
Different techniques of composing as well as orchestration have been used in Music for Prague 1968, and some new sounds explored, such as the percussion section in the Interlude, the ending of the work, etc. Much symbolism also appears: in addition of the distress calls in the first movement (Fanfares), the unbroken hope of the Hussite song, sound of bells, or the tragedy (Aria), there is also the bird call at the beginning (piccolo solo), symbol of the liberty which the City of Prague has seen only for moments during its thousand years of existence.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Concerto for Trombone - Variations for Oboe on a Theme of Glinka - Concertstuck for Clarinet
Rimsky-Korsakov's three works for solo instruments and military band, the Concerto for Trombone (1877) Variations for Oboe on a Theme of Glinka (1878) Concertstuck for Clarinet (1878), date from his years as Inspector of the Imperial Russian Naval Bands (1873-84). Not only do these works testify to the growing expertise in Imperial Russian military music performance (doubtless as a result of the newly-established St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories), but they also give us some insight into Rimsky's ever-evolving compositional thinking.
The composer acknowledged as much, writing in his memoirs that they were “written primarily to provide the [military band] concerts with solo pieces of a less hackneyed nature than the usual: secondly that I myself might master the virtuoso style so unfamiliar to me, with its solo and tutti, its cadences etc.” And in many ways these three pieces constitute “experiments” in that combination of ensemble sonority and solo virtuosity that earmark Sheherazade (1888) as a masterpiece of orchestral wizardry.
Posterity has shown that the Trombone Concerto is perhaps the least engaging of these three works. The reasons for this are unclear, but it may well have to do with the fact that Rimsky often placed the solo line in the trombone's middle register. May modern editors, convinced that this is Rimsky at his most unimaginative, have sought to enliven the solo writing with freely-interpolated octave transpositions. Indeed, only in the infamous stacattissimo section in the “Finale” do we begin to detect the composer's distinctive touch, the virtuosic solo set against a sensitive ensemble blend.
In turn, the works for Oboe and Clarinet represent a significant advance on the Trombone Concerto. Rimsky chose Glinka's 1827 song, Chito krasotka molodaia [Why are you crying, pretty one?] as a poignant theme for his piece for Oboe - a series of 12 variations with Finale. This structure afforded Rimsky an excellent opportunity to explore the subtle nuances of texture and sonority. Most notably, the fourth variation, in essence an extended accompanied cadenza, reveals Rimsky's acute sensitivity in portraying solo work against a scintillating accompaniment.
Although often listed as a concerto, Rimsky's piece for Clarinet better falls under thee rather nondescript title “Concertstuck.” The work is played without interruption (solo cadenzas provide the linking material), and movements 1 and 3 use the same melodic material. As with the Oboe variations, the piece is testimony to Rimsky's subtle mix of timbre, and from our vantage point it is difficult to see why Rimsky, dissatisfied with this work, withdrew it from performances after only a few rehearsals.
The public reaction to these works proved less than enthusiastic. Writing about the first performances Rimsky noted, “the soloists gained applause, but the pieces themselves went unnoticed…the audiences were still in the stage of musical development where no interest is taken in the names of composers, nor indeed in the compositions themselves: and in fact it never occurred to a good many to speculate on whether a composition had such a thing as a composer!: His lifelong disappointment with the lack of interest shown in these works in performance may well explain why he never assigned them opus numbers, nor did he sanction their publication. They first appeared in 1950, and constitute volume 25 of the Soviet Collected Works Edition.
Rimsky-Korsakov notes by David Cannata
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Athletic Festival March, Op. 69, No. 1
Although Sergei Prokofiev spent many years after the Russian Revolution in exile from the USSR, he possessed a longing to return to his native land. After a number of prolonged visits in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the composer finally returned to Russia permanently in 1936. Whatever satisfaction this gave him was balanced by an inevitable lack of artistic freedom, for his arrival in the USSR coincided with heavy crackdowns in all levels of society. Musically, it was a time of “social realism” rather than formalism. Prokofiev had responded to this idea in 1934 when he wrote the new kind of “light-serious” or “serious-light” music was needed for the “new mass audience that the modern Soviet composer must strive to reach.” He had tried to exemplify this in his Lieutenant Kije suite (1934), based on his own film music. As with Shostakovich, however, Prokofiev did not succumb completely to Soviet dogma and for this he, and many others, paid a high price. In 1948, in Zhdanov's infamous dictum, Prokofiev's entire oeuvre was deemed “alien to the Soviet people.”
One way in which Prokofiev attempted to uplift and glorify the Soviet people was through the march, a genre that can be found throughout his works. The most famous example is undoubtedly from the opera Love for Three Oranges, a parody of the nineteenth-century Meyerbeerian-Verdian ceremonial march, pompous yet full of wrong notes. The there is the third movement of Piano Sonata No. 9, in the style of the “Oranges” march with dotted rhythms and a clunky bass line. The Soviet musicologist V. Zuckerman has noted that “The march belongs to that category of Prokofiev's works in which, while using a popular idiom, he does not sacrifice those elements of his individual style which are so clear to him, particularly his characteristic pungency.”
Prokofiev began composing marches for wind band in the mid-1930's, precisely during the period when he retuned to the Soviet Union. His first was Athletic Festival March or March for the Spartakiad from 1935, in which he imagined a festival march for millions of young Soviet athletes. The composer himself had been interested in athletics from his youth. In this work, he is not only writing in the triumphant, positive vein for the glory of Soviet Russia, but also in the festive tradition of much nineteenth-century Russian music by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. Here Prokofiev has interspersed a basic march theme with more tuneful “Russian” melodies and has kept dissonance to a minimum. The form, in keeping with Prokofiev's style, is clear cut, using rondo elements and exact reprise.
Prokofiev notes by Stephen Willier
Arthur D. Chodoroff, Conductor
Arthur D. Chodoroff, conductor, is Professor of Music, Chair of the Department of Instrumental Ensembles and Orchestral Studies, and Director of Bands in the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University. A native of Philadelphia, Mr. Chodoroff is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Temple University.
Professor Chodoroff is active as a guest conductor and adjuduicator throughout much of the eastern and southern United States. A past-president of the Eastern Division of the College Band Directors National Association, he has received awards from Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) and the Temple University College of Music alumni Asso0ciatioin. Mr. Chodoroff is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda honorary music society; Phi Beta Mu Bandmasters Fraternity; and holds honorary membership in the Kappa Kappa Psi Band Fraternity. He was selected as one of the ten outstanding music educators in the nation for 1986-87 by the School Musician Director/Teacher magazine. In April, 1995, he was awarded the Citation of Excellence in higher education teaching by the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. Mr. Chodoroff has also recorded with the Temple University Wind Symphony as part of Toshiba-EMI's Masterpiece Series.
Jonathan Blumenfeld, Oboe
Jonathan Blumenfeld was born in New York City and is a graduate of Haverford College and The Curtis Institute of Music, where he was a student of former Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Oboist John de Lancie. He also attended Temple University where he studied with current Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Oboist Richard Woodhams.
Before joining The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1986, Mr. Blumenfeld was Principal Oboist with the Savannah Symphony (1981-84) and played with the Concerto Soloists (1984-86). He has also participated in the Tanglewood, Blossom, and Spoleto Festivals.
Mr. Blumenfeld is currently on the faculty of the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University.
Eric Carlson, Trombone
Eric Carlson joined The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1986 as Second Trombone. Before joining the Orchestra, he held similar positions with the Baltimore Symphony for six years, and with the North Carolina Symphony for three years. His primary teachers were Edward Kleinhammer and Arnold Jacobs, both former members of the Chicago Symphony.
Mr. Carlson has taught at the Peabody Conservatory of music in Baltimore and at the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Anthony M. Gigliotti, Clainet
As a child growing up, he sat and listened to his father practicing and the beautiful bel canto style of playing made an indelible impression on him. The “American sound” that he passionately espouses is a combination of the best of many schools of playing. Singing through the mediums of the clarinet is what it's all about!
A native Philadelphian, Anthony Gigliotti began his musical studies with his father, and later entered the Curtis Institute of Music as a pupil of Daniel Bonade. After this Gigliotti played with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Little Orchestra Society before joining the Philadelphia Orchestra as principal clarinet in 1949. He appeared on many occasions as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and has made solo recordings with them.
As a founding member of the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet, he has played concerts throughout the world and made many recordings plus a series for P.B.S. called “200 Years of Woodwinds.” His work as a consultant to the Selmer Company has resulted in the manufacture of the 10G Clarinet which he plays. Also, he designed a mouthpiece ligature, clarinet swab, and a barrel which are marked world wide. For many years he was a faculty member of the Grand Teton Orchestral Seminar; taken part in the International Music Festival in Valencia, Spain; taken part in the Newport Chamber Music Festival; has performed and given master classes in South America, Europe, and the Far East including Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Mainland China. He is currently active teaching in seminars throughout the world and sharing his love of music with everyone.
Anthony Gigliotti retired from the Philadelphia Orchestra after 47 years as principal clarinet and is on the faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music and the Esther Boyer college of Music at Temple University. Many of his former students are teaching in universities and playing in orchestras throughout the world.
Temple University Wind Symphony
The Wind Symphony is the premiere wind band of Temple University's Esther Boyer college of Music. Comprised of undergraduate and graduate students, the Wind Symphony has previously recorded as one of six American university bands selected for the Masterpiece Series produced by Toshiba-EMI. The Esther Boyer College of Music integrates conservatory-level training with a challenging and diverse academic curriculum, combined with the cultural resources offered by the Greater Philadelphia region.
Jeffrey Cornelius, Dean, Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Acknowledgements: Blair Bollinger, Richard Brodhead, David Cannata, Rachel Citrino, Tai Ling Gigliotti, Irene Petratos, Heidi Sarver, Eric Schweingruber, Glenn Steele, Stephen Willier
Temple University Wind Symphony - Arthur D. Chodoroff, Conductor - Karel Husa, Guest Conductor
Piccolos
Andrea Pindar*
Kerry Clinton
Flutes
Laura Rozsitch, principal*
Amy Dickinson*
Anna Hernandez
Cathleen McTamney*
Jill Wolfangle
Yong Clark
Oboes
Ruth Ann Shinn, principal*
Matthew Kull
Nancy Warren*
Leonard Bass, contrabassoon
E-flat Soprano Clarinet
Dania Hegvik*
B-flat Clarinets
Yi He, principal*
Sung Jin Son*
Brian Farias*
Melanie Aubrey*
Christopher Kosmaceski*
Kara Morgan*
Dana Wierzbicky*
Scott Collins
Melba Gonzalez
Alto Clarinets
Barbara Coady
Anthony Costa
Bass Clarinets
Shin Takao*
William Wenglicki
Contra Alto Clarinet
Anthony Costa
Contra Bass Clarinet
William Wenglicki
Alto Saxophones
Kathleen Mitchell, principal*
James O'Brien
Tenor Saxophone
David Zagorski
Baritone Saxophone
Theodore Stout
Cornets
Anthony Bonsera, Principal*
Kevin Strang, asst. principal*
Heather Muthler*
Christopher Gerhart
Trumpets
Joseph McNichols*
Paul Chepolis'
Scott Michaudj
Timothy Russell
Horns
Michael Thronton, principal*
Suzanne Rice, asst. principal*
Lyndsie Wilson*
Christopher Griffin*
Andrew Clark
Trombones
Paul Bryan , co-principal*
Steve Stauffer, co-principal*
J. Matthew Bohning*
Rod MacGillivray, bass*
Euphoniums
Paul Bryan*j
Steven Stauffer*
Michael Zanders
Tubas
Martin Hacker*
Shane Pettit*
Michael Norton*
Sting Bass
Chang-Min Lee
Timpani
James Lee Wyatt, III
David Nelson
Percussion
Daniel Cunning, principal*
Christopher Blickley*
Joel Chodoroff*
Shawn Robinson
Jamie Shapiro
* = Rimsky- Korsakov personnel
© 1997 Temple University Wind Symphony
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