Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Music Mountain #12, recorded 8/16/09

PROGRAM NOTES

STRING QUARTET # 1, OPUS 20
By Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)

Considered Argentina’s foremost 20th century composer, Alberto Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires and began a very successful musical career at a young age. He achieved international recognition with a performance of his Second String Quartet by the Juilliard Quartet in 1958, in Washington, D.C. Ginastera described his career in composition as consisting of three distinct periods. The first, what he called Objective Nationalism, lasted from 1937 to 1948; and in it, he relied extensively on and quoted directly from Argentine folk music, especially the music of the Pampas, or Argentine cowboy music. In the second period, Subjective Nationalism (1948-1956), Ginastera was inspired by folk rhythms and melodies but does not actually quote them.

In his third, or Neo-Expressionism period (1957-1983), Ginastera embraced what has been called dodecaphonic serialism. From this time come his operas Bon Rodrigo and Bomarzo. Themes of the latter include sex, violence, and hallucination; Newsweek called it the topless opera and it was banned in Buenos Aires for five years.
The String Quartet #1 that we hear today is a Subjective Nationalism composition. The rhythms and melodies of the Gauchos are evoked by the first movement. Also, listen for similarities to the music of Bartok. The second movement evokes a dance called Malambo, performed in the Pampas. In the dance, two men accompanied by guitars compete with each other in an aggressive display of dancing skill. The dance can go on for hours. The third movement contains a beautiful solo for cello, an instrument for which he often composed. His wife, Aurora Natola-Ginastera, a noted cellist, premiered many of his cello pieces. The final movement brings us back to the high energy of the first movement with themes that evoke the strumming of guitars and the Latin American folksong tradition.

The String Quartet # 1 was first played at Music Mountain by the Manhattan String Quartet on Sunday, July 28, 1985

ARRANGEMENTS OF THREE SONGS FOR STRING QUARTET
By Scott Flavin ( 1967...)

MORIRE?
By Giacomo Puccini ( 1858-1924)

Puccini had an ingenious way of recycling his music. Morire? Is one such example. Morire? was written for a Red Cross benefit but later used as an additional aria for the tenor in La Rondine. La Rondine was not the success Puccini hoped for. But he triumphed the following year (1918) with Il Trittico.

The original name of the song is actually a question: To Die?. When Puccini used the music from it as an entrance aria for Ruggero in La Rondine It was set to a totally different text: Parigi e la citta dei desideri. (Paris is the city of the desired ones) .....Dave Wilson

FASCINATIN RHYTHM/ I GOT RHYTHM
By George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Born Jacob Gershowitz. There Is a very good account of his personality in S N Behrman’s People in a Diary. Gershwin began playing professionally at age fifteen, and was a song-plugger before making numerous player piano rolls and writing tunes. He accompanied singers in vaudeville and by the time he was in his twenties he was collaborating with his brother Ira. In 1924 George and Ira collaborated on Lady Be Good. Among its tunes is Fascinatin Rhythm. This was the same year that he composed Rhapsody in Blue. I Got Rhythm is from Girl Crazy and was the song that introduced Ethel Merman to Broadway, making her a star. Also in the cast, as co-star was the overshadowed Ginger Rogers. Girl Crazy opened on October 14, 1930. Gershwin conducted on opening night. The band during the 272 performance run was the Red Nichols Band with Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey and Gene Krupa who would keep the audience enthralled with jam sessions during intermission. - Dave Wilson

SCHEIDEN UND MEIDEN
By Gustave Mahler (1860-1911)

This song is from Volume Three of Mahler’s Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youths Magic Horn). In these songs, which evoke the enchantment of childhood, there is none of the modernist side of Mahler’s music, as found in his symphonies. (Though parts of the symphonies strongly suggest, as Leonard Bernstein has said, the conflict between the innocent child and the tragic adult.) Each of the songs, based on folk tales and with a folk-song sounding quality, is like a vignette, a moment of childhood recreated.
- Dave Wilson

PIANO QUINTET # 1 IN C MINOR, OPUS 1
By Ernst von Dohnanyi ( 1877-1960)

Halsey Stevens writes of Dohnanyi that before he was seventeen years old he had written a good deal of chamber music, including the Piano Quintet, Opus 1, in C Minor, by whose Brahmsian flavor Bartok (who was four years younger and a great admirer) was deeply impressed. Donald Tovey takes a less cheery view of the work. He writes that noble though it is in themes, it probably owes much of the impression it first made to the fact of the composers taking the piano part at the first performance on, or shortly after, his debut as one of the greatest pianists of his generation.

Dohnanyi presumably wrote the Quintet while a student at the Budapest Academy of Music, where he studied piano with Stefan Thoman and composition with Hans Koessler. Although his chief inspiration came from Brahms (who praised his early works) his distinctive melodic inventiveness and contrapuntal skill came to minimize the Brahmsian influence. He had unerring mastery of form and a rich natural sense of harmony. In later life he was internationally acclaimed as composer, pianist and conductor. He ended his career as professor of piano and composition at Florida State University.

The Dohnanyi Piano Quintet was first played at Music Mountain on Sunday, June 26, 1932 by the Gordon String Quartet and Muriel Kerr, piano.