CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Ensemble ACJW
The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute

Weill Recital Hall
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Ensemble ACJW
Jennifer Holloway, Mezzo-Soprano

DAVID LANG Cheating, Lying, Stealing
BERIO Folk Songs
DVOŘÁK Serenade for Winds in D Minor, Op. 44

The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education—is made possible by a leadership gift from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Major funding has also been provided by Mercedes and Sid Bass, The Irving Harris Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Kovner Foundation, Martha and Bob Lipp, Mr. and Mrs. Lester S. Morse Jr., Judith and Burton Resnick, Susan and Elihu Rose, and The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, with additional support from Mr. and Mrs. Nicola Bulgari, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Susan and Ed Forst, The William Petschek Family, and Suki Sandler.

Program Notes:

DAVID LANG (b. 1957)
Cheating, Lying, Stealing

It is difficult to categorize the music of David Lang, one of the founders and artistic directors of New York’s legendary music festival, Bang on a Can. His music is quite varied: sometimes comic, sometimes harsh or abrasive, and frequently soothing.

Lang’s provocatively titled Cheating, Lying, Stealing incorporates small amounts of musical material that—characteristically of the composer—are varied intricately. Lang’s own words best explain his intentions:

A couple of years ago, I started thinking about how so often when classical composers write a piece of music, they are trying to tell you something that they are proud of and like about themselves. “Here’s this big gushing melody, see how emotional I am.” Or, “Here’s this abstract hard-to-figure-out piece, see how complicated I am—see my really big brain. I am more noble, more sensitive—I am so happy.” The composer really believes he or she is exemplary in this or that area. It’s interesting, but it’s not very humble.

So I thought what would it be like if composers based pieces on what they thought was wrong with them? Like, “Here’s a piece that shows you how miserable I am.” Or, “Here’s a piece that shows you what a liar I am, what a cheater I am.” I wanted to make a piece that was about something disreputable. It’s a hard line to cross. You have to work against all your training. You are not taught to find the dirty seams in music. You are not taught to be low-down, clumsy, sly, and underhanded. In Cheating, Lying, Stealing, although phrased in a comic way, I am trying to look at something dark. There is a swagger, but it is not trustworthy. In fact the instruction in the score for how to play it says “Ominous Funk.”

Composed in 1993, Cheating, Lying, Stealing, receives its Carnegie Hall premiere this evening.


LUCIANO BERIO (1925–2003)Folk Songs
Folk Songs does not fit the average perception that Berio’s work is avant-garde. In this song cycle, he is most relaxed and definitely not radical, instead enriching the folk tradition with his own contemporary experimentation. It is difficult to find a common link for these selections beyond understanding how they functioned as a superb vehicle for their dedicatee—Berio’s wife, American singer Cathy Berberian. The songs range across continents and genres—some not that “folksy” at all.

The importance of the vernacular and dialect in art reinforced Berio’s fascination with folk music. Pieces that dealt with the raw material of the folk tradition became an enriching strand in his work. In a 1985 interview, Berio explained his inclination for folk music:

“My links with folk music are often of an emotional character. When I work with that music, I am always caught by the thrill of discovery … I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realized: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music—a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient, popular music making which is so close to everyday work and music.”

The first two selections of Folk Songs, “Black is the Color” and “I Wonder as I Wander,” are ironically not folksongs at all. John Jacob Niles, a Kentucky folksinger and scholar, composed the two using Elizabethan modes. Berio’s setting opens with a fiddling viola, rhythmically independent of the voice. In the second song, Berio creates harmonics in the viola, cello, and harp to simulate a hurdy-gurdy sound.

The third song, “Loosin yelav,” describes the rising of the moon. It takes its origin from Armenia, the country of Berberian’s ancestry. In the French song “Rossignolet du bois,” the nightingale advises an inquiring lover that the way to a girl’s heart is to ask for the apples in her garden even when she demands the sun and the moon. A sustained chord colored by the striking of automobile spring coils bridges this song with the next one, the traditional Sicilian “A la femminisca,” sung by fishermen’s wives as they gather at the docks in anticipation of their husbands returning from sea.

Like the first two songs, “La donna ideale” and “Ballo,” come not from the anonymous folk tradition, but were composed by Berio for Berberian in 1949 when she was studying voice in Italy. The folk poem, “The Ideal Woman,” in Genoese dialect, says that if you find an attractive woman nobly born, with good manners and a good dowry, do not let her escape. “The Ball,” another old Italian poem, attests that the wisest of men lose their heads over love, but love can fend off many extreme conditions. The sad Sardinian “Motettu de tristura” speaks to the nightingale: “How you resemble me as I weep for my lover ... When they bury me, sing me this song.”

The two that follow come from the Chants d’Auvergne of Joseph Canteloube, originally in Occitan. “Malurous qu’o uno fenno” poses the eternal marital paradox: A single man finds he cannot live without a wife, yet he who has a wife cannot live with her either and wishes he had none. “Lo fiolairé” is introduced by a cello with an improvisatory figure much like the one heard at the opening of the cycle. In the song, a girl at her spinning wheel bestows two kisses on a shepherd who only asks for one. The final song, “Azerbaijan Love Song,” is one Berberian heard on an old record from the Asian republic of Azerbaijan. All of it is sung in Azerbaijani except one Russian verse that compares love to a stove. Berberian learned the song by rote, transcribing the sounds without understanding what the words signified.

Composed in 1964, Folk Songs received its first Carnegie Hall performance in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on April 26, 1979, with George Manahan conducting the New Music Consort: Judith Bettina, soprano; Susan Deaver, flute; David Stanton, clarinet; Lois Martin, viola; Madeleine Shapiro, cello; Alyssa Hess, harp; and Claire Heldrich and Gary Schall, percussion.


ANTONÍN DVOØÁK (1841–1904)
Serenade for Winds in D Minor, Op. 44

Until he was over the age of 30, Dvořák was unknown as a composer outside the small circle of musicians in the provincial capital of Prague with whom he played his first chamber music compositions. Finally in 1875, his talent came to the attention of the already-famous Johannes Brahms who launched Dvořák on his career with a generous grant from the Imperial government in Vienna and a profitable arrangement with a major publisher in Berlin.

Brahms warmly praised this Serenade, writing to his friend, renowned violinist Joseph Joachim: “Take a look at Dvoøák’s Serenade for Winds; I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do ... It would be difficult to discover a finer, more refreshing impression of really abundant and charming creative talent. Have it played to you; I feel sure the players will enjoy doing it!”
Like Brahms, Dvoøák wrote two serenades, but not for a conventional instrumental body. Brahms excluded violins from his second Serenade; in Dvoøák’s Serenade for Winds, the composer omitted the violas, too. (The low strings—cello and bass—were most likely retained because suitable bass wind instruments were not always available.) Dvoøák conducted the first performance of his Serenade at a concert devoted entirely to his own works, on November 17, 1878, in Prague.

The music has a classical style, simple form and much charm. In Mozart’s day, serenades began with a procession of musicians playing a little march; it is in the same vein that Dvořák wrote his first movement, Moderato alla marcia. As was traditional, Dvořák called the second movement, a minuet, though it is more akin to the scherzos of later composers. Several of the melodies have the style similar to such Czech folk dances as the souseská (“the neighbor’s dance”) and the furiant, used in the Trio. The slow movement, Andante con moto—which is actually not very slow—is a lyrical interlude. In the rousing Finale, Allegro molto, the folk dance spirit becomes evident again, and a bit of the opening march returns before the brilliant ending.

Composed in 1878, Serenade for Winds in D Minor, Op. 44, received its first Carnegie Hall performance on December 24, 1964, with Alexander Schneider conducting Ronald Roseman and Leonard Arner, oboes; Charles Russo and James Douglas, clarinets; Elias Carmen and Loren Glickman, bassoons; James Buffington, Earl Chapin, and Anthony Miranda, horns; David Soyer, cello; and Julius Levine, double bass.

—Susan Halpern
Susan Halpern contributes program notes to numerous musical organizations.
© 2008 The Carnegie Hall Corporation