The 8th Tucson Winter
Chamber Music Festival
March 2001

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20th Century Russian Chamber Music
Stravinsky o L'Histoire du Soldat: Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano
Shostakovich o Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok for Soprano and Piano Trio
Prokofiev o Quintet for Violin, Viola, Bass, Oboe, and Clarinet

Igor Stravinsky
L'Histoire du Soldat: Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano
During the latter part of World War I, Igor Stravinsky found himself cut off from his Russian family estates and music royalties. Needing an income, he decided to create a touring stage work requiring only a few characters and instrumentalists. He chose to base his work on the tales of his Russian compatriot Alexander Afanasiev, who, appalled by the cruelly enforced recruitment for the Russo-Turkish Wars under Nicholas I, wrote a cycle of stories describing the adventures of a deserter and his compact with the Devil.
Stravinsky collaborated with the Swiss poet C. F. Ramuz, who created an acted narration to convey the story. In its final form, the play became a miniature version of the Faust legend. The Soldier, rather casually, makes a series of decisions with the Devil-to barter his fiddle, to try winning the Princess, to gamble away his remaining cash, to cross a forbidden frontier to visit his mother. In the end, the Soldier is cheated and the Devil wins his soul.
L'Histoire enjoyed a successful premiere in 1918. Soon afterward the majority of the cast and musicians succumbed to Spanish influenza, and the tour had to be abandoned. Stravinsky prepared a concert suite of the music, and in 1919 created a five-movement trio for a clarinetist friend.
Stravinsky wrote that jazz, although known to him only through sheet music, was an important influence in L'Histoire: "I borrowed the rhythmic style of jazz not as played, but as written. Jazz meant a wholly new sound in my music, and L'Histoire marks my final break with the Russian orchestral school in which I had been fostered." Stravinsky also drew from a great variety of other musical sources for L'Histoire: Russian folksong, American ragtime, Argentine tango, Viennese waltz, Swiss brass band, and Bach chorale. Yet all of these heterogeneous elements are fused to create a remarkable homogeneity of style.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok for Soprano and Piano Trio, Opus 127
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich completed his late song cycle during a 1967 hospital stay for heart disease. At this final phase in his career, Shostakovich wrote many text-based works with strongly autobiographical overtones. Biographers conjecture that the ill composer, aware of his mortality, sought words to express unequivocally his moral and ethical position, thereby illuminating his earlier instrumental works.
The choice of verses by Russian poet and dramatist Alexander Blok (1880-1921), known as the "Bard of the Revolution" because of his 1918 work The Twelve, was both politically correct and artistically sound. A symbolist and master of lyric verse, Blok created haunting, often achingly depressive, visions. For his cycle, Shostakovich chose individual poems that convey specific human situations: faithfulness (Ophelia's Song); truth (Gamayun); love (We Were Together); loneliness (The City is Asleep); threat (Tempest); anxiety (Secret Signs); death (Music).
The Blok cycle, subtitled "Vocal-instrumental Suite," is structured with a four-movement format. The first two songs, linked by their c minor tonality, resemble an introduction and first movement. The third song, a dialogue between voice and violin, and the fourth, a passacaglia, together form a slow movement. The fifth song functions as a scherzo. The sixth, by referring to the opening two songs, represents a reprise and finale. The seventh is an epilogue. Babette Deutsch and Abraham Yarmolinsky translated the poems from Russian in 1920.

1) Ophelia's Song
Parting with your beloved maid
you swore that you would love, my friend!
That you would keep your oath,
leaving for that dreary land!
There, far from happy Denmark,
your shores are far-veiled.
Big, angry and mumbling waves
wash trees off the cliff.
The sweet warrior will not be back
all clad in silver.
The ribbon and the white plume
will heavily wave in the coffin.

2) Gamayun, the Soothsaying Bird
On the smooth endless waters
which the sunset has clad in purple,
she prophesies and she sings,
unable to spread her confused wings.
She prophesies the oppression by wicked Tartars,
a line of bloody executions,
earthquakes, and famine, and fires,
the might of villains and the undoing of the right,
obsessed by eternal horror.

3) We Were Together
We were together, I remember that.
The night was disturbing; the violin was singing.
You were mine those days.
You were prettier with every day.
Through the quiet murmur of the streams,
through the mystery of the womanly smile,
the lips were longing for a kiss,
the heart was longing for the sounds of violin.

4) The City is Asleep
The city is asleep, and veiled in haze,
and the streetlamps are faintly flickering.
Far away, there across the Neva,
I can see the glow of the dawn.
In this far-off reflection,
in these flame glints
the awakening is hidden
of sad days awaiting me.

5) Tempest
Oh, how madly the evil tempest
is raging and roaring outside my window!
The clouds are rushing and shedding rain,
and the wind is howling, then fading down!
The night is horrible! In such a night
I feel pity for people deprived of home,
and the pity drives me outdoors
there, into the embrace of the damp chill!
There, to brave the darkness and the rain,
sharing the lot of the sufferers.
Oh, how madly the wind is raging,
outside my window, exhausting itself!

6) Secret Signs
Secret signs light up
on a deaf, wakeless wall.
Golden and red poppies
brood over me in my sleep.
I hide away in night cares
and do not remember the stern magic.
At the dawn, azure chimeras
look out from the mirrors of the bright sky.
I run away to the instants of the past,
and close my eyes in fear,
and a maid's golden plait
is on the pages of the chilling book.
The heaven has already lowered above me,
and a black dream broods in my breast.
My forecast end is near,
ahead are the war and the fire.

7) Music
At night, when my disquiet falls asleep
and the city disappears in the mist-
oh, how much music God has,
what sounds exist in the world!
What is the tempest of life to me, when your roses
flourish and blaze for me!
What are human tears, when the sunset
is rosy and florid!
Accept, O Empress of the Universe-
through blood, through tortures, through graves
the foaming cup of the last passion
from your undeserving slave!

Sergei Prokofiev
Quintet in g minor for Violin, Viola, Bass, Oboe, and Clarinet, Opus 39
Theme and Variations
Fearing a difficult artistic climate in post-revolutionary Russia, Prokofiev left his homeland in 1918 for an extended period. Like many of his fellow Russian expatriates, he went to Paris, where he joined the creative group contributing to Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Surrounded by this fashionably modernist set, Prokofiev experimented with polytonality and violently dissonant harmonies in an effort to establish himself with sophisticated European audiences.
In 1924 Prokofiev received a commission from fellow expatriate and impresario Boris Romanoff, who intended to present a circus-theme ballet entitled Trapeze with his touring company. Since Romanoff could afford only a very small number of players, as well as a small commission, Prokofiev chose to maximize his use of the score by arranging it as a concert piece for a chamber group. Prokofiev describes Opus 39: "I proposed a quintet consisting of oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass. The simple plot from circus life served me as a pretext for composing a chamber piece that could be performed as pure music. This explains the impractical rhythms, like the numbers written in 10/8 (3 + 4 + 3), which gave the choreographers a great deal of trouble. Nevertheless the ballet ran in several cities in Germany and Italy with some success."
The six movements of Opus 39 correspond to the six sections of the original ballet. Both the choice of instruments and the harmonic and rhythmic style of Opus 39 suggest the influence of Stravinsky, in particular his L'Histoire du Soldat. Because of its numerous points of dense Stravinsky-inspired polytonal scoring, the quintet emerges as one of Prokofiev's most dissonant works. The complex third variation, written in a 5/4 meter with frequent changes of rhythmic pattern, recalls Stravinsky's Octet for Wind Instruments. Despite its similarities to works of Prokofiev's Russian contemporary, the Opus 39 score, written in "a spirit of quest," contains the energy, subtle wit, and inventively orchestrated lyric lines that are unmistakably Prokofiev.

Festival Musicians

Alla Aranovskaya, First Violin and Leonid Shukayev, Cello are members of the St. Petersburg String Quartet, formed in 1985 after graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory. Soon after, the quartet won first prizes at the All-Soviet-Union String Quartet Competition and the First International Shostakovich Competition for String Quartets. These successes were followed by invitations to tour the USSR and abroad, where the quartet became artists-in-residence at the Musicorda Festival and String Program in Massachusetts, which is now a mainstay of their musical endeavors. They continued to participate in and win international competitions, most notably in Italy and Australia. Extensive touring since 1991 has resulted in hundreds of concerts in prestigious international concert halls, music series, and festivals, a Grammy nomination, and Best Record of the Month honors in Stereo Review and Gramophone for their Sony Classical recordings of the complete quartets of Tchaikovsky, Borodin's Quartets Nos. 1 & 2, and Quartets Nos. 3, 5 & 7 of Shostakovich. Recent recordings include the complete Shostakovich cycle for Hyperion, and Prokofiev's Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 for Delos. In the past few years the quartet has held residencies at the Oberlin Conservatory School of Music and Bucknell University, in addition to extensive touring throughout the US, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, and Holland.

Igor Begelman, Clarinet, exhibits rare virtuosity and imagination on his instrument and has received international honors, awards, and engagements. The Philadelphia Inquirer states that he is "taking the clarinet where few have gone." Equally accomplished as soloist and chamber musician-performing at festivals such as Marlboro, Tanglewood, and Caramoor-Mr. Begelman has received top prizes in competitions such as the First Carl Nielsen International Competition, the Geneva International Competition, the Koussevitsky Competition, the International Clarinet Society Competition, and others. An avid proponent of new music, he has premiered works of Kuerti, Krasotov, Schwartz and other living composers. He came to the US from Kiev in 1989 and received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard.

Bernadene Blaha, Piano, has performed recitals throughout North and South America and has appeared as soloist with numerous major orchestras. She has received top prizes in several international competitions, resulting in two highly acclaimed recital appearances at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center Library. A highly regarded chamber musician, Ms. Blaha has appeared at many festivals, including those in Newport, La Jolla, Banff, and Round Top, among others. Her first solo recording of selected works of Chopin was praised by Piano & Keyboard as having "integrity, with lovely sonorities and total clarity of line." Ms. Blaha is currently on the Keyboard Faculty of the University of Southern California.

Deborah Dunham, Double Bass, has appeared at many American and international music festivals in addition to her work with the Eastman Chamber Ensemble, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and many New England area ensembles. Ms. Dunham has commissioned and performed several works for double bass, most recently Chant by Sheila Silver, and recorded 20th-century music for the New Albion and Mode labels. She currently serves as a chamber ensemble coach at the New England Conservatory of Music and as Music Director of the chamber orchestra at the Community Music Center of Boston.

James Dunham, Viola, was a member of the Cleveland Quartet from 1987 to its final 1995 season, when it received a 1996 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance" on Telarc. He was also a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Sequoia String Quartet. As soloist, chamber musician, and educator, Mr. Dunham's appearances have taken him to major international concert halls, festivals, and institutions. A former teacher at the California Institute of Arts and the Eastman School of Music, he is currently a faculty member at the New England Conservatory in Boston and Chairman of the String Department. His viola is a Gaspar da Salo, circa 1585.

Kevin Fitz-Gerald, Piano, performs frequently in recital and as soloist with orchestras. A frequent guest at summer festivals, Mr. Fitz-Gerald is also on the faculties of Banff, Round Top, and the International Chamber Music Institute at Melbourne, Australia. He has collaborated with international artists such as Richard Stolzman, the Bartok String Quartet, and Camilla Wicks and has won several prestigious competitions, including the CBC National Radio Auditions and the Young Artists' National Piano Competition. Recordings can be found on the Summit, Skylark, GM, and CBC labels. He is Professor of Piano at the University of Southern California.

Nadejda Shabanina, Soprano, is from Rodniki in the Ivanovskaya region of Russia. She is a graduate of the Leningrad Rimsky-Korsakov Music School, where she trained in musical comedy. Later she entered the Leningrad Conservatory and trained for classical singing, receiving certification in opera and concert performance. At this time she became an active teacher and performer in the Leningrad Concert Association. She has since sung in many of the great concert halls of Russia and is regularly featured with the Philharmonic Society of St. Petersburg. Her repertoire includes more than 50 romances from the spectrum of Russian composers, with special emphasis in the vocal works of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich.

Allan Vogel, Oboist, has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "an aristocrat of his instrument, an oboe virtuoso with few equals." He is one of America's leading wind soloists and chamber musicians. Principal oboist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Mr. Vogel has soloed with orchestras throughout the country and has been featured at the Marlboro, Santa Fe, Aspen, Mostly Mozart, and Oregon Bach Festivals. In 1994 he made his debut with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His extensive discography includes recordings for RCA, Angel, Delos, and Nonesuch. Mr. Vogel is on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California and also serves on the advisory board of the American Bach Society.

Peter Zazofsky, Violin, has won a series of prizes culminating in the Gold Medal at the 1980 Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Grand Prize of the 1979 Montreal International Contest. Since then he has enjoyed a career as soloist with major international orchestras, chamber musician, and educator that spans 20 years and 30 countries on 5 continents. In 1985 he received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. His musical activities have been chronicled in magazines and books, and his discography includes works by Mozart, Debussy, Gershwin, Bartok, Prokofiev and others. As first violinist with the Muir Quartet, he has performed many complete cycles of the Beethoven Quartets and has encouraged new works by American composers. He is currently Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Boston University and occasionally serves as jury member for international violin competitions.