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with Robert McDonald & Pamela Pyle
Nocturne, Kwei Fei's Lament & Lantern Dance
On this disc Daniel Avshalomov performs the music of three generations of his family - works by his grandfather, Aaron, his father, Jacob, and his brother, David - a manifestation not often met with these days.
One should not be misled by the fact that Aaron, with the longest list of the most substantial works, is here represented by the slightest pieces. This is just what was available for viola and piano. But his orchestral and stage works are well-known in the family; the refractions will be evident.
We start with the most recent composition:
Torn Curtain, Suite for Solo Viola with piano accompaniment (1990-91)
Written for my brother Dan in resonance with Eastern Europe and Russia 1989-90.
This work started with a hint from Dan that he might favor a solo piece written for him. A prologue-soliloquy came to me almost immediately; then a number of tunes that felt Roumanian, Hungarian, Russian, Czech. I accepted the expressive mold into which they fell, and wrote out the first movement sketch as a series of purely melodic episodes. Parts of the suite unabashedly echo composers going back as much as a century- but I handle the shaping and sequencing of melody and structure in my own way.
As I worked to clarify the forms, I became aware that the emotions flowing through these tunes paralleled my personal reactions to what was then going on in Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain began to shred, revealing great damage and pain in the social and cultural fabric of those regions. By grasping unconsciously for old melodic roots I sought to express solidarity with the new struggle which those former subject peoples now address. This music, however, is not based on their indigenous musics, nor on art musics connected to those roots. It can be better heard as an attempt to travel as a musical visitor along their beaten tracks, wearing a borrowed old cloak of their style to keep my American self warm. These are songs of empathy and powerless compassion - from a stranger.
Then there are the images. From my reading of reports and analyses from within the region, I began to imagine vignettes that ran parallel to some of the movements I finally wrote. I did not shape the musical forms to the unfolding of visual sequences, but listeners may find the descriptions I have appended illuminating.
As for the Viola, I chose to write for it heroically, with my brother's particular strengths in mind: a big, warm tone, technical mastery, a wide expressive range, and a strong and intelligent musical personality. His performance of the work thoroughly vindicated this choice.
This movement has the shell of a sonata form, but with fresh melodic episodes replacing a development section; developed returns of earlier sections, in reversed order, replace the recapitulation. It forms a lopsided arch: ABCDEFED_BA.
Three notable features: (1) The Viola alone intones a solemn, dramatic prologue (A). (2) The arch is crowned in the F section by a free, passionate cadenza for the two instruments (imagine whirling religious zealots). (3) The opening soliloquy returns at the end, with virtuoso piano accompaniment. The ending is blunt, stoic.
Image: An itinerant bard playing old songs and dances, trying to revive a dying melos from a distance.
A clear ABA form, with the second A varied. The Viola offers several dry, solemn phrases, in a baroque-dance dotted rhythm, with crunched arpeggios on the beats. The piano gives bittersweet falling answers, with subtler rolled arpeggios; at the cadence, it establishes a wistful romantic mood. Now the Viola sings a high, sad, old-fashioned love tune, rising to a long held note under which the pianist pounds up to the climax; it then winds the mood down, turns, and repeats the starting dance, dream-like, the instruments now trading roles. A gentle ending.
Images: An old peasant dances alone, a simple clump-shoe dance, awkward but dignified. He recalls an old romance. (A hapless, lovelorn youth laments an unattainable beauty.) He dances again, remembering a partner long dead.
Incident (in the Town Square)
A sneaky little scherzo, over before you know it. Fast polymeters - fives and sevens and nines - establish a busy theme built on repeating cells, interrupted and resumed. The interruptions consist of a low knocking noise in the piano, and an odd
repeated tritone in the Viola, which slides by quarter-tones later. Things get more violent; the Viola emits squealing cries over crashing hand-clusters in the piano.
Images: This little fellow, a smuggler, a con man, politically powerless but canny; he likes jazz. Things are coming unraveled for him. The jig is up. Angry striking miners from up-country have come to the main square in the Capital to restore order and put down the hooligans. The Security Police are going door to door. He's scampering coolly down side streets to avoid them. At intersections, he hears distant sirens. His shoes are shiny, good Spanish leather. He skitters and turns, he grins, he's almost free; he tiptoes, turns the corner, and BAM! - they get him.
This movement is the closest to my own compositional voice (example: my 1973 String Quartet). An anguished, yet ultimately hopeful nocturne, tracing pain, worry, prayer, release, resignation, with a glimmer of hope at the end. (The form again is ABA.)
The pianist establishes dream bells, high, tiny, distant, dissonant, pulsing slowly. The spirit is being pulled thinly to waking. The violist spins a slow, writhing melody over a plodding, rising bass line in the piano. Tune and harmony turn, arrive at a destination, the soundscape widens, and you are motionless in the open space of a sanctuary.
A simple quiet melody like a priest's chant is answered by an explosion of massive bells in the piano, and the Viola roars the chant again in choral harmony. At the tragic crash of the cadence, anxieties are released like fluttering bats. The two instruments intertwine in threads of repeated notes and spinning triplets, then the voices separate, one winding down, the other floating up. The rhythm slows, the tension relaxes, evaporates, and a point of return is reached. The second part of the opening melody recurs, the plodding accompaniment now going back down the hill. Distant, faint echoes of the bells are heard, and finally a lullaby reassures for a while, cut off by a brief stinging echo of the middle outburst. A bitter-sweet cadence gives rest.
Images: The tortured individual spirit in an officially godless collective, seeking solace in the practice of ancient, banned religion. Hope as the only illusion left to provide any warmth to the soul.
Dance It Away (Rondo Finale)
This movement rarely lets up: a varied rondo of rustic dance tunes, with virtuoso touches, like a klezmer or gypsy band. The rondo motif is taken from the first movement; another subject brings back the scherzo theme. Towards the end, the violist gets some high-and-fast bits. The momentum spills over in a Jewish-sounding extension, and this hits the top a - sped-up, rhythmic, accompanied reprise of the opening prologue from Movement I, which spins into a fast, crazed coda on the rondo tune and a splashy end.
Images: Even under tyranny, people can still toss back a schnapps, clear a circle, take out a fiddle, sing an old song, show off some footwork. Life's a struggle, we've got trouble, let's dance it away. In the middle, up jumps the little smuggler fellow, who, with the door-knocking motif as his drummer, dances a step, brags to us how he escaped with his life. One tune returns as a goose-step march of the old State Police, but we thumb our nose at them. The dance speeds up. Manic energy gets us through it - this time.
Over the years I've felt glimmerings of pre-destiny in that the Sonatine, my first-published work, dedicated to my wife Doris, was somehow intended for Daniel long before he was born. He has played it now and then since he was fifteen, and one of the sweetest occasions was a surprise bon-voyage performed at Tully Hall midday recital before we sailed to Europe on sabbatical.
The piece gained a certain currency after its premiere, March 16, 1947, at a League of Composers concert in the Museum of Modern Art Auditorium - that catacomb where many a new work was garbled by the periodic rumblings of the adjacent subway. Emmanuel Vardi was the violist and Alvin Bauman the pianist. It was reviewed by Virgil Thomson in the Herald Tribune as "a sweet and lyrical piecehalf Jewish, half-Chinese" (reflecting my background). Abram Loft had played it earlier, also with Bauman, at Columbia University where we were teaching colleagues. Vardi gave it again a month later at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In London, during World War II, Norbert Brainin performed the Sonatine at Morley College just before he settled back to the violin and began his fabled career as primarius of the Amadeus Quartet. At Bennington College Louise Rood played it with Lionel Nowak. After World War II Francis Tursi played it at Eastman School where he taught it to a succession of students. At the Juilliard, Milton Katims did likewise. With Primrose, the reigning virtuoso of the '40s, I had an amusing exchange of notes; for all his professed admiration of the work he never, to my knowledge, played it in public.
The Sonatine then went into hibernation for three decades, from which it began to stir in the 1980s. The original publication by Music Press had by then gone out of print. In 1994 we re-issued it at Howlet Press in Portland.
Works for viola were relatively scarce. For one thing, its throaty voice doesn't appeal to all composers; for another, the technical proficiency of viola players before the 20th century was rarely an inducement to write for them. In our day the standard, both technical and artistic, has risen dramatically and we can now ask of the viola anything that we might of the violin or the cello. In addition, we get that unique spectrum of sound which ranges from the sombre and gruff through mellowness and vibrancy into lyricism without loss of power.
In the period when I wrote Evocations and the Sonatine it was usual to describe such abstract works by structure and detail. I still incline to do this. The first movement of the Sonatine is clearly modeled on Ravel's charming piano piece so titled. It is bi-thematic, without development; a brief re-transition recalls the exposition fairly literally. The second movement can be
outlined: A B C B A. It was written first, a couple of months earlier, as a lullaby for the infant daughter of a fellow-student. In making an instrumental movement of it I added a C section for the piano to sing. The third movement is a headlong seven-part Rondo, with shifting meters, which picks up and develops the previous movement's C section enroute to the work's peroration.
I was pleased to find, after nearly fifty years, that there seemed nothing to change in diction or form - reminding myself of Frank Wigglesworth's outburst as I finished conducting a fuzzy rehearsal of a work of his, "Gad, Jascha, there's no music like one's own!"
Evocations was begun in the summer of 1947 while I was studying with Copland at Tanglewood. Its original medium was the clarinet. Following tradition, I made an alternate version for both these works - viola for clarinet, and vice versa. Evocations has an orchestral setting which serves only the clarinet. The title implies that each of the three movements is meant to evoke a distinct state of being: the first, exuberance and mischief, the second, grief, the third, suppleness and grace. There is some carryover between movements.
The setting for chamber orchestra calls for strings, piano, percussion and piccolo. This environment is not intended for the viola. For the clarinet it is in the nature of a concerto, although there are no cadenzas, nor are there any development sections. Instead, developing recurrence is what takes place. Thus, while the outline of the first movement is A B A C A, the reappearance of the elements does not bring mere repetition but transformation. The thematic material of all three movements is treated in this way. The second movement is a three-part song form, and the last is a five-part Rondo.
Evocations is dedicated to David Oppenheim, whose beautiful playing first made me love the clarinet. The first performance was given by Herbert Tichman at the Brooklyn Museum with a pick-up group led by Robert Cornman. The event suffered from the hazards ever-present in those days: insufficient rehearsal, children cavorting around the fountain, and the ebb and flow of a non-paying audience. Broadus Earle, the concertmaster, sternly warned me about letting my music be presented in so risky a fashion. But fledgling composers were glad to get a hearing whatever the circumstances.
In that regard, I had submitted the score to the National Jewish Music Council competition, whose impressive list of judges included Marc Blitztein, Isidore Freed, Bernard Hermann, Erich Leinsdorf and Leonard Bernstein. I was pleasantly surprised when my work received the Award in the chamber-orchestra category.
The occasion of its true premiere, January 18, 1953 was, like the Sonatine, also at the Museum of Modern Art; it more than made up for the wobbly trial run in Brooklyn. For starters, it was conducted by Stokowski, with some of the best free-lances in the City, the soloist again being Herbert Tichman. Reviewing it in the Herald Tribune, Peggy Glanville-Hicks wrote, "Evocationsseemed the most substantial work of those playedThe slow movement, which was heard twice, has a poise and tranquillity that bespeak the presence of that deeper spring from which a real creative gift draws life. Avshalomov's style is both eloquent and austere."
I remember vividly the post-concert party at Stokowski's apartment in Gracie Square. He was then married to Gloria Vanderbilt and recently enough that he submitted willingly to her bossy ways. For his part, dressed in a silk smoking jacket, his silvery mane gleaming, he kept urging us to "have both some of the hot and some of the cold" buffet. Paul Bowles, whose Songs from Morocco were also on the program, showed up with a striking young Arab sheikh, in flowing striped robes and not a word of English. Bowles told us that they had recently bought an island off Ceylon; our host, unimpressed, asked "is it a large island?" When we were seated at tables Peggy Glanville-Hicks began telling us of her travels in Spain disguised as a man. Stoky, ever alert for mischief, leaned over and asked, "what was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you?" We never heard the reply because at that moment a waiter came by with "some of the hot" and we, typical musicians, ravenously fell to.
Further orchestral performances of Evocations were few, partly because of vagaries in my notation of the bar-lengths. There was one at "Yaddo," in Saratoga, under Dean Dixon, after which I made some revisions. A number of performances with piano did take place, however. Then, Evocations followed the Sonatine into hibernation. After the same three decades of obscurity it was revived in 1986 by David Shifrin and David Oei in a beautiful performance at the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland.
Nothing substantive has been changed in Evocations since I wrote it, but experience did show me how to simplify the barring - which should ease the way for performances ahead. And, of course, some special variants for the viola are the result of Daniel's fine Italian hand. Other than that, these smooth-faced children of my youth now sally forth into the world again without any of the character-lines my own visage has earned in the intervening years.
(1895, Nikolaevsk-on-Amur / 1965 N.Y.C.)
Born in Siberia and educated partly in Switzerland, Aaron's creative life was lived essentially in China - from 1918 to 1947. He became enthralled by Chinese music and theater as a child in Nikolaevsk where there was a large Chinese settlement. Escaping the Russian Revolution, he passed through China enroute to San Francisco where he married and lived a year. In 1918 he returned to China with his wife, Esther nee Magidson.
Largely self-taught as a composer, he produced in the course of forty years a trunk-full of works: five operas, six ballets, three symphonies, three concertos and many small things. All of them were a fusion of Chinese elements scales, color, legend - with western instruments and forms. As early as 1933 his Peking Hutungs was presented by Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Throughout his years in China he supported himself as a bookman; for fifteen years he was head of the Shanghai Municipal Library (reminding us of Mussorgsky's years in the Ministry of Forestry).
In 1947 he emigrated to the United States. Although virtually all his works were presented in China, some under the
patronage of the Soong sisters (Mme. Chiang Kai Shek and Mme. Sun Yat Sen), and he influenced many emerging Chinese composers, his fame there did not transfer to a career here. Nonetheless his name was known: both Copland and Hanson, when I first met them, instantly asked me if I were related to the Avshalomov in Shanghai. His works were conducted by Monteux, Rodzinski and others; Koussevitzky commissioned his Second Symphony. But most of Aaron's energies in his latter years were spent in futile efforts to have his stage works presented in the U.S. - first hoping to import his Shanghai company, then trying to organize one here.
Anyone interested in hearing some of his larger works is referred to CRI CD 667. The pieces by Aaron in the present recording include two which he wrote for the Er-hu, the two-string Chinese 'violin,' and the Lantern Dance from his opera, Yang Kwei-fei. These have all been adapted for our violist Daniel by Jacob.
Born in New York City, raised there and in Portland, Oregon, with both his father and paternal grandfather composer-conductors, his mother a poet, teacher and amateur singer, David was bound to become a musician. He studied piano and percussion, learned the joys of madrigal singing at home, played in the Portland Junior Symphony under his father's strict baton, and sang in choirs. He started composing choral music as a self-taught teenager - like his grandfather.
Attending Harvard on scholarship, encouraged by Aaron he followed his heart and took a music degree. He played timpani, sang in the Chapel Choir, tried his hand at conducting, and graduated magna cum laude in 1967.
Conducting studies followed, starting with Chapple at the University of Washington in Seattle. There David wrote his first orchestral work, Siege, transcribing it for band and leading its first performance. During the Vietnam conflict his studies were interrupted by four years' volunteer military service in the U.S. Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants in Washington, D.C. He polished his scoring for symphonic winds, learned choral arranging, and in his off-hours conducted a local chorus, and took conducting classes at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore under Leo Mueller.
Back in civilian life, in 1972, he studied at the Aspen Music Festival - conducting with Morel and Blomstedt, and composition with Charles Jones, his first formal lessons in this craft. His Allegro for pitched percussion quartet took first prize at the Festival competition.
Resuming his graduate studies in Seattle he earned his Doctorate in orchestra conducting in 1975 with a dissertation on the Five Pieces for Orchestra by Schoenberg.
Work in composition was continued with Verrall, Bergsma (his father's classmate) and Suderberg, producing his String quartet in 1973 (his closest brush with serialism), and Life's a Dreamboat for concert band. Concurrently he served as Music Director of the Bremerton Symphony for two seasons. In 1976 he moved to Missoula, Montana, to conduct the Symphony Orchestra and teach at the University.
In 1978 after summer conducting study at Tanglewood under Schuller, Bernstein and Ozawa, David moved to Los Angeles where he held posts with several local orchestras and toured in China with one of them. Guest-conducting in the Pacific Northwest included stints with Jacob's Portland Youth Philharmonic, both at home and on tours in Japan and Eastern Europe.
In 1980 David founded the Santa Monica Chamber Orchestra, leading and managing it for nine years. This period brought two new vocal works, on his mother's poems - Father the Tree; A Mind of Winter. In 1982 David married Randi Grafman, a psychotherapist; they live in Santa Monica with their two sons, Jesse and Zachary, who sing, play violin and piano, and improvise gleefully.
In 1989 David put aside his baton, and in short order produced Concerto con Timpani, Variations on a Beethoven Theme for solo cello, a Threnody for String Orchestra, several songs, and the work recorded on this disc, Torn Curtain.
In these years he has worked as an editor, writer, composer for educational videos and audiotapes, as author/designer of interactive multimedia, and as CD-ROM producer. These activities underwrite his composing today.
His latest opus, for male chorus and band, is Principles, a secular oratorio on texts by Thomas Jefferson. It is slated for performance in Washington, D.C. in 1997. His sketchbooks overflowing, he is now at work on a cello sonata.
In David's music can be heard the influence of both his father and grandfather, as well as echoes of the full range of musics heard while growing up in postwar America. Besides music, he shares the family's enthusiams for books and the out-of-doors.
(b. 1919, Tsingtao, China) Curriculum Vitae
STUDIED with Aaron Avshalomov, Ernst Toch, Bernard Rogers, Aaron Copland and at Reed College and Eastman School of Music
TAUGHT at Columbia University 1946-54; summers at Reed College, Tanglewood, Northwestern University, University of Illinois, Aspen School of Music
CONDUCTED U.S. Premieres of: Bruckner - Mass in D; Tippett - A Child of Our Time; Handel - The Triumph of Time & Truth; Sessions - Divertimento; Bloch Festival, Newport OR; Aaron Avshalomov 90th Anniversary Celebrations, Beijing, Wuhan & Shanghai; Portland Youth Philharmonic 1954-1994; Six International Tours
AWARDS: Ditson Fellowship in Composition; Bloch Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; N.Y. Music Critics-Circle Award; Naumburg Recording Award; Ditson Conductor's Award; Governor's Arts Award; American Symphony Orchestra League Award; Portland First Citizen
COMMISSIONS: Symphony, The Oregon; The Thirteen Clocks; Phases of the Great Land; Glorious th'Assembled Fires; Symphony of Songs
SERVICES: Ford Foundation Composers Project; Avshalomov Lecture Series 1958-1971; National Humanities Council, 1968-74; National Arts Endowment, Music Planning Section 1977-79; Pro Musicis Foundation
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES: Who's Who in America; Who's Who in Music; Baker's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; International Encyclopedia of Music; Mussiken Hvem, Hvad, Hvor, Copenhagen
Daniel Avshalomov is the violist of the American String Quartet, now in its third decade of world-wide esteem. The Quartet is heard in over eighty concerts each season - in North America, Europe and the Orient. Their performances are broadcast widely and have been recorded on five labels. For ten years the ASQ served as Quartet-in-Residence at the Peabody Conservatory, and since 1984 has filled a similar role at the Manhattan School of Music, where Daniel is also on the solo faculty.
He began his training in Oregon and, after a year's study abroad, took his B.M. and M.M. degrees at Juilliard, where he served an unprecedented five years as principal violist of the orchestra and was the first violist in the School's history to be awarded the Loeb Prize for Outstanding Achievement.
Before joining the Quartet Daniel was principal violist for the orchestras of the Spoleto, Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals, as well as for the Brooklyn Philharmonia and the American Composers Orchestra. He performed as solo violist with the Bolshoi Ballet on its American tour, and was a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble.
Outside the ASQ Daniel has appeared with orchestra and in recital on both coasts and in the Midwest. As a featured artist with such groups as the Da Camera Society, Marin Music Fest and La Musica di Asolo, he has shared the stage with Norbert Brainin, Claude Frank, Maureen Forester, Bruno Giuranna, Isaac Stern, and the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Tokyo String Quartets.
Pickwick Records issued his recordings of Debussy Sonate for flute, harp and viola with the Chesis/Cutler Duo. His essays and criticism appear in musical journals; he has prepared editions of contemporary viola works for publication; and he speaks publicly about music from time to time. For balance, he climbs mountains.
His instrument is by Andrea Amati (Cremona, 1568).
Robert McDonald concertizes widely as a recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with orchestras throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and the Orient. He has received many prizes, both in the U.S. and abroad, including the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy.
He has been a participant at the Caramoor and Marlboro Festivals and has toured nationally with Music from Marlboro. He has been a guest artist with the Juilliard, American and Orlando String Quartets, and is the recital partner of some of the leading musicians of the day, including Isaac Stern, Elmar Olveira, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Midori.
Graduating magna cum laude from Lawrence University, Mr. McDonald continued his studies at the Curtis Institute with Serkin, Lipkin and Horszowski, at the Juilliard School with Beveridge Webster, and at the Manhattan School with Gary Graffman.
He is a member of the piano faculty at the Oberlin College-Conservatory, and during the summer months is the director of the keyboard program at the Taos School of Music in New Mexico - where he and Daniel Avshalomov have been frequent collaborators.
Pianist Pamela Viktoria Pyle is an active soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Performances throughout the United States have included Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, and Wolftrap and the National Museum in Washington, DC. International engagements have included concerts throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Japan.
An avid chamber musician, Miss Pyle has appeared with violinists Robert McDuffie and Chee Yun, members of the Juilliard and American String Quartets, and members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She also performs regularly with renowned Norwegian soprano Anne-Lisee Berntsen. Miss Pyle's solo appearances have included concerts with the Lake George Chamber Orchestra; William and Mary Symphony Orchestra; Arlington Symphony and Mount Vernon Symphony Orchestras.
Miss Pyle has been featured frequently on radio stations WNYC and WQXR in New York City and WGBH in Boston. During the summer Miss Pyle is a regular performer at the Aspen Music Festival, and has been heard at the Scotia Festival of Music in Canada and the Casals Series in Puerto Rico.
As a Petschek scholarship recipient Miss Pyle earned the Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, and graduated with honors from the New England Conservatory.
3. Incident (In the Town Square) (1:38)
4. In the Web (Night Prayer) (9:01)
5. Dance It Away (Rondo-Finale)
6. Allegro giocoso (6:21)
8. Allegro con grazia (6:22)
9. Allegro appassionato (5:40)
11. Allegro con brio (5:36)
12. Nocturne/Kwei Fei's Lament (6:14)
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