Seo, Korngold, & Fauré

JURI SEO (b. 1981)
Sonata for Marimba and Vibraphone 

1. 1. Fire
   2. Life
   3. Water  

Katalin La Favre, marimba • Luke Rinderknecht, vibraphone

ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897–1957)
String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 34  

1. 1. Allegro moderato
   2. Scherzo. Allegro molto
   3. Sostenuto. Like a Folk Tune 
   4. Finale. Allegro con fuoco

Robin Scott, Itamar Zorman, violin • Dimitri Murrath, viola • Ahrim Kim, cello 

— Intermission —

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845–1924)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15  

1. 1. Allegro molto moderato
   2. Scherzo. Allegro vivo
   3. Adagio 
   4. Allegro molto

Itamar Zorman, violin • Rebecca Albers, viola • David Ying, cello • Julian Martin, piano 

PROGRAM NOTES

JURI SEO

Sonata for Marimba and Vibraphone (2021-2022)

Juri Seo has provided the following program note to accompany her Sonata for Marimba and Vibraphone:

The three-movement shape of Sonata came together gradually. Before the summer of 2021, I had written short passages made of intricate workings of birdsong-like melodies. During my visit to Del Mar, California that summer, I chatted with my friend Joseph Sowa about the piece amid a writer’s block. Joseph gave me images that colored many technical ideas I had in mind, such as visualizing resonances as lights and conceptualizing the duet of wood and metal as two forces that symbolize nature and technology (“… could be a gentle dialogue, rather than a violent one…”). These ideas merged and became the first movement, “Fire,” in which I sought to represent both the delicate and destructive natures of fire. The birdsongs then became a symbol of life’s resilience in the second movement, “Life.” I couldn’t help imbuing them with a sense of grief as I pondered our tainted relationship with nature. The finale, “Water,” is a gestural depiction of water and includes quotations from Ravel’s Jeux d’eau. All themes dissolve in the end, leaving only the ripples. Sonata alludes to many harmonic and formal aspects of the nineteenth-century sonata. It was my response to some of the initial conversations with the commissioner, the arx duo, who longed for large-scale harmonically-driven music for mallet percussion (“…music that happens to be for percussion…”). Sonata became an opportunity to address the relative scarcity of percussion repertory that emerged from the Western tonal tradition and its narrative strategies based on harmonic tension and resolution. The “Fire” movement is in sonata form — with modulations and retransitions and all. The “Life” movement is formally free, developing in sections that become gradually more expansive. The “Water” movement is a rondo. I found rondo the hardest to work with because the well-demarcated themes, characteristic of rondo, seemed antithetical to the fluidity I sought. I decided to transition smoothly between all sections jettisoning the usual playful contrasts. Despite making use of old formal molds, I wanted to include many fascinating materials from recent music. The expanded harmonic language, the rhythmic intricacy available for percussion, and the unique timbres of mallet instruments were among them. The challenge was to minimize the dissonance between material and form. I considered the ramifications of these added resources and carefully modified the structure. In retrospect, I believe it was my way of finding a reflection of nature within music’s infinite capacity for transformation. Sonata was written between July 2021 and February 2022 for arx duo and a consortium of percussionists.

ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 34 (1945)

When the nine-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold showed Gustav Mahler his cantata, Gold, the elder-statesmen declared the young prodigy a “genius.” Within a decade, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, and Jean Sibelius had confirmed Mahler’s verdict, and by the 1920s, Korngold surpassed Strauss as the most performed composer in Austria and Germany, and was made professor at the Vienna Staats Akademie. The 1930s changed everything, of course; although it was not because of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany that Korngold first traveled to Hollywood in 1934, but rather the exciting opportunity to collaborate on the score to Max Reinhardt’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The lush, post-Romantic idiom and artistic integrity Korngold brought to film composition led to a highly lucrative (and permissive) arrangement with Warner Brothers — a shrewd investment in a composer who attracted as many spectators to the cinemas as the directors with whom he worked. Once the outbreak of World War II made a return home impossible, Korngold became part of what musicologist Dorothy Crawford has called the “windfall of musicians” that came to enrich American music after fleeing from Hitler’s Europe. Korngold had composed his second string quartet, Op. 26, in 1934 — the last work he completed before his first departure for California, and thus the last work of his European period. It was perhaps out of nostalgia that Korngold returned to the form for this third quartet, Op. 34, in 1944–45, marking his first concert (i.e. non-film) composition since before the war. Korngold’s decision to weave cinematic melodies into the quartet illustrates at once his confidence in the artistic caliber of his film scores and his belief that his compositions for the stage would have longer staying power than those for the screen. Film buffs may recognize themes from Between Two Worlds, a 1944 World War Two drama, in the Scherzo; from The Sea Wolf, a 1941 Jack London adaptation, in the Sostenuto; and from Deception, Korngold’s last film score, in the Finale. Korngold dedicated the work to German conductor Bruno Walter, another member of the “windfall” of wartime Hollywood expatriates. 

GABRIEL FAURÉ

Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15 (1876-1879)

Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor is among the composer’s earliest chamber music compositions. Having returned to Paris in 1871 following the Franco-Prussian war, Fauré established himself in Parisian musical circles on several fronts. He found work as an organist, first at Saint-Sulpice, then at the Madeleine where he filled in for Camille Saint-Saëns; however, he was more deeply attached to the piano, and maintained his organist posts primarily for income. That same year, he and Saint-Saëns formed the Société Nationale de Musique, an organization committed to the promotion of French music and living French composers. In 1877, the Société premiered Fauré’s first Violin Sonata, Op. 13, which was hailed as his first great masterpiece. It is difficult to consider this piano quartet in isolation from the events in Fauré’s personal life during this period. Throughout the 1870s, Fauré frequented the salon of the celebrated mezzo-soprano and composer Pauline Viardot, where he fell in love with her daughter, Marianne. After a five-year courtship, the two became engaged in July 1877, only to have Marianne break off the engagement after four months, for reasons which remain unknown and which broke Fauré’s heart. Listeners, including those close to Fauré, have frequently heard the quartet’s Adagio movement as an outpouring of the composer’s anguish. On the other hand, his friend and biographer Émile Vuillermoz has denied this association. 

Meanwhile, other events in Fauré’s life may equally have fed into the composition of this first Piano Quartet. It was also in 1877–78 that Fauré traveled to Germany, where he met Franz Liszt and saw productions of Wagner operas for the first time. While there, Fauré presented Liszt with the score to his Ballade, Op. 19, which Liszt claimed to find too difficult to play. Indeed, Fauré’s writing for the piano is always virtuosic, featuring an abundance of musical lines passed between the two hands, testifying to Fauré’s notable ambidexterity — the pianistic writing in this quartet is no exception.