Author name: Administrator

– by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson I draw inspiration for concert programming from a lot of sources – concerts, recordings, books, film, TV and news sources. A famous film, Bob Fosse’s 1972 screen adaptation of the musical “Cabaret”, inspired tonight’s concert in our “Revolutionary and Banned” Festival. There are a lot of things I love about this movie. It’s amazingly stylish and yet touching. The music is fabulous of course, and Joel Grey as the Emcee is a force of nature and irresistibly chilling. I also love the ways it tells the story of Weimar Berlin’s brilliance, tolerance, and decadence all standing bravely in the face of rising Nazi-ism, but finally crumbling and vanishing. The opening shot of the movie is a reflection a mirror of the cabaret where we see a colorful scene of people laughing and having a great time on the town. The closing shot is the same mirror, but the cabaret audience is quiet and grave, the colors are muted and the scene is peppered with Swastika-clad officers. Classical music during this inter-war period of history has a similar story, and this is what I try to tell in tonight’s concert. Four cabaret songs, starting with one that extols the virtues of love and passion and ending with one mocking Hitler, frame a trio of classical pieces written in these heady and turbulent years. The wonderful mezzo Tracy Cowart acts as the Emcee and Rieko Aizawa as her back up band. Friedrich Hollaender’s song “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Lieber eingestellt” opens the program. Most listeners will recognize it from the famous German movie “The Blue Angel” in which the astonishing Marlene Dietrich sings it dressed in undergarments and top hat, backed by a beer swilling girl band. The literal translation of the…

by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson We all want to make our mark on the world! Strangely enough this lofty sounding goal is easily achieved whether by an act of kindness, raising children well, constructing a building or creating something of beauty. Unfortunately, making one’s mark as a composer seems more difficult since time filters out all by the best and perhaps the most infamous of musical works. The works on tonight’s program serve to illustrate four different struggles  – four composers straining at the reins of musical convention, and attempting to make their mark on musical history. Robert Schumann was a brilliant composer, writer and proponent of the ideals of the Romantic era. He struggled with mental illness for much of his life, and often found ways to express his complicated character in artistic ways. He had names for both sides of his bipolar character: Florestan and Eusebious, the extroverted and inverted aspect of his personality. His Piano Trio in D minor represents one of his first tries at writing music for small ensemble. From the start, it’s clear that this is no ordinary piece of chamber music  – it is an invasion of the Big into the world of chamber music.  With yearning string lines interwoven over a thrumming, churning piano part, this piece poses more like a symphony than a trio. The rhythmic drive is constantly propulsive throughout most of the trio even if the music seems expansive.  A galloping scherzo pit unison strings against the piano in imitation, while the contrasting section divides the imitation further into three parts of elegantly scalar material. The only part of this trio that counteracts all of the frenetic, overt action is the third movement, basically a written-out improvisation fore the three instruments.  It’s with this movement that we hear…

by CMSCVA Artistic Director James Wilson Recently I was reminiscing about the bygone days when Baroque music was usually heard in concert as the stately first piece on an orchestral music program…something nice and familiar that would prepare the ears for the more complicated music of Brahms or Beethoven. Never mind chamber music programs! Baroque rarely entered into that picture except for the occasional pre-Christmas Brandenburg set or Vivaldi concerto. Not to date myself, but that was in the early 1980’s. Then the early music movement began and thing started to change, or rather divide. A Cold War Berlin was no more divided than the Baroque scene in the 80’s, with period practice proponents on one side and the conservatory-trained traditionalists on the other. But these were great years for the historic performance movement. Anyone who has listened to the early recordings of Musica Antiqua Köln or the Smithson Quartet knows what I mean. These days, I like to think of the whole performance practice world as a musical Wild West. It seems a whole lot of people (including myself) who perform on modern set-up also perform Baroque and Classical music on gut string with a period bow. Sometimes it’s to a startlingly bizarre effect. Anything goes, especially in Europe where the style often seems to be “the more eccentric the better.” As a proponent of tolerance, I think this is OK. I like to hear people’s individual personalities coming through in the music, even in such a scholarly world as early music. However, things get more complicated when faced with the ever-increasing historical mashups – things such as performances on modern violin with Baroque bow, Bach sonatas with piano but without vibrato, or contemporary compositions that include the instruction “play in Baroque style.” Confusing stuff indeed. So into this…