The Crossroads of World War I and Music
CENTENARY WEEKEND:
THE CROSSROADS OF WORLD WAR I AND MUSIC
Weekend Series Commemorates World War I
And Reflects Its Impact on History, Culture, and Music
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –
February 27, 2015
PHOTOS
Link
PRESS CONTACT
Amy Iwano
Executive Director
University of Chicago Presents
773.702.8068
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CHICAGO – The University of Chicago Presents will gather distinguished musicians and scholars in a weekend interdisciplinary series on the University campus from April 10th through April 12th. Centenary Weekend: The Crossroads of World War I and Music will explore the effects of the Great War on composers and their music, reflecting a world forever changed. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of World War I, Centenary Weekend offers music, lectures, and lecture-demonstrations with virtuoso artists and esteemed University of Chicago scholars from the Departments of Music, Humanities, and English. Glenn Watkins, a senior scholar, musicologist, and author of Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War, provides an overview essay for the series program book.
Beginning Friday evening in Mandel Hall, moving to Fulton Recital Hall on Saturday afternoon, and finishing with events through Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon in the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, the Pacifica Quartet, and guest artists including Alexander Fiterstein, Arnaud Sussmann, Orion Weiss, Anna Polonsky, will perform master works by Elgar, Poulenc, Debussy, Prokofiev, Bartók, and more. A salon evening Spring Lieder Lounge in partnership with Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago will feature baritone John Brancy and pianist Peter Dugan, exploring the work of World War I British composers and poets. There will be post-concert receptions Saturday afternoon and evening.
The Pacifica Quartet, Don Michael Randel Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, conceived of the idea to honor the significance of the time, its impact on music, and the millions who gave their lives. UChicago Presents taps into the estimable scholarship and historic venues of the University to make the weekend a significant contribution to the Centenary milestone and Chicago’s spring cultural season.
Centenary Weekend: The Crossroads of World War I and Music ______
THE ARTISTS
The Pacifica QuartetJohn Brancy, baritone
Simin Ganatra, violinPeter Dugan, piano
Sibbi Bernhardsson, violinAlexander Fiterstein, clarinet
Masumi Per Rostad, violaMichael Maccaferri, clarinet
Brandon Vamos, celloTim Munro, flute
Anna Polonsky, piano
Maria Luisa Rayan, harp
Arnaud Sussmann, violin
Orion Weiss, piano
To read about the artists:
FRIDAY / APRIL 10 / 7:30 PM / MANDEL HALL
Tickets $35/$5 students
Crossroads I: Passing from the Romantic Era
6:30 PM Pre-concert lecture with Seth Brodsky, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Music
Fiterstein, Polonsky, Sussmann, Weiss
GRANADOS Selections from Goyescas, Op. 11, for piano (1911)
ELGAR Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82 (1918)
POULENC Sonata for Piano Four Hands, FP 8 (1918)
BERG Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, Op. 5 (1919)
STRAVINSKY L'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale): Suite for violin, clarinet
and piano (1918/1919)
Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, violinist Arnaud Sussmann, and pianists Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss present a program that shows the passing of an era, from the Romantics of the late nineteenth century through the pivotal years of World War I.
Spanish composer Enrique Granados premiered his suite for piano Goyescas in 1911, which became his most famous work. It is a set of six pieces based on paintings of Goya and was so successful that he developed it into an opera as the War ensued. Austrian composer Alban Berg was a member of the Second Viennese School of music and served in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1915-18. Expressing the changes wrought in all aspects of life, the concert concludes with the trio version of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, written in response to the events of the Great War.
SATURDAY / APRIL 11 / 1:30 PM / FULTON RECITAL HALL
Tickets $15/$5 students
Crossroads II: Sonatas in a Time of War: Clarke and Janáček Sonatas
Bernhardsson, Per Rostad, Polonsky, Weiss
JANÁČEKViolin Sonata (1914)
REBECCA CLARKEViola Sonata (1919)
Sibbi Bernhardsson and Masumi Per Rostad of the Pacifica Quartet perform works near the opening and close of the war: the Janáček Violin Sonata and the Rebecca Clarke Viola Sonata. Celebrated pianists Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky are their collaborators.
Like many of his countrymen composers, Janáček was fascinated by the raw and immediate emotional intensity of traditional folk music. "...in the 1914 Sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head.” The finale features as its first theme a stately chorale heard first in the piano. Its return at the end of the movement in the violin, with piano tremolos (reminiscent of the very opening) roiling below, marks “the Russian armies entering Hungary” on September 26, 1914, the composer himself explained.
Born to a German mother and an American father, Rebecca Clarke became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians when she was selected for Henry Wood’s Queens’s Hall Orchestra in 1912. Her style cuts across a range of twentieth century influences – Impressionism, Neo-classicism and most notably post Romanticism.
2:30 PM Lecture with Steven Rings, Associate Professor, Dept. of Music
3:15 PM Reception
Admission to the lecture and reception is free to ticket holders
SATURDAY / APRIL 11 / 4:00 PM / FULTON RECITAL HALL
Tickets $15/$5 students
Crossroads II: Sonatas in a Time of War: Debussy’s Late Sonatas
Ganatra, Munro, Per Rostad, Polonsky, Rayan, Vamos, Weiss
DEBUSSYViolin Sonata (1916-17)
DEBUSSYCello Sonata (1915)
DEBUSSYSonata for viola, flute and harp (1915)
Members of the Pacifica Quartet, flutist Tim Munro, pianists Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss, and harpist Maria Luisa Rayan will perform Claude Debussy’s three sonatas, composed in the later years of his life. Debussy, the leading figure of French music after the turn of the century, died in Paris, 1918, at the age of 55 from colon cancer as his beloved city succumbed to the bombing by Germans during the spring offensive.
SATURDAY / APRIL 11 / 7:30 PM / LOGAN CENTER PERFORMANCE PENTHOUSE
Post-concert reception
Tickets $35/$5 students
Crossroads III: Shropshire Lads: WWI Poets and Composers of Great Britain
Presented in partnership with Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago
Spring Lieder Lounge with John Brancy, baritone, Peter Dugan, piano, and
John Wilkinson, speaker
Presented in partnership with Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, the salon evening features performances by 2013 Marilyn Horne Song Competition Winner baritone John Brancy, pianist Peter Dugan, and University of Chicago professor and poet John Wilkinson. The evening’s program will include George Butterworth’s famously beautiful settings of poetry from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, as well as songs by Ivor Gurney and Gerald Finzi, among others.
SUNDAY / APRIL 12 / 1:00 PM / LOGAN CENTER PERFORMANCE HALL
Tickets $15/$5 students
Crossroads IV: Lecture-Demonstration on Bartók Quartet No. 2
Pacifica Quartet with Steven Rings, Associate Professor, Dept. of Music
The Pacifica Quartet and UChicago Associate Professor Steven Rings explore the music and historical background of Bartók’s Quartet No. 2.
During WWI, ethnomusicologist Bartók’s abilities to travel were curtailed and he devoted his energies to composition. His second quartet is fundamentally modernist, and according to musicologist and Bartók biographer Halsey Stevens, “the whole direction of Bartók’s later writing might be deduced from this one work.” In parallel to the times, the first movement is highly chromatic, in sonata form, and has a brooding, restive mood. The second movement, a rondo, draws heavily on Bartók’s knowledge of folk music with a medley of furious dances. The final movement is disarmingly simple and has an air of resignation.
SUNDAY / APRIL 12 / 3:00 PM / LOGAN CENTER PERFORMANCE HALL
Tickets $25/$5 students
Crossroads V: Pacifica Quartet and Friend Commemorate
2:15 PM Pre-concert lecture with Lynn Hooker, Assoc. Professor, Indiana University
Pacifica Quartet, Maccaferri, Polonsky, Weiss
PROKOFIEVOverture on Hebrew Themes for string quartet, clarinet and piano,
Op. 34 (1919)
BARTÓKQuartet No. 2 (1917)
ELGARPiano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84 (1918)
Pacifica Quartet and friends Anna Polonsky, Orion Weiss, and Michael Maccaferri commemorate and conclude Centenary Weekend: The Crossroads of World War I and Music in a defining program of Prokofiev, Bartók, and Elgar, composers whose lives – and music – were dramatically altered by the Great War.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Seth Brodsky is Assistant Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. His scholarly and critical work pursues music of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as the role of unconscious processes in the making and hearing of music. Read more: http://music.uchicago.edu/page/seth-brodsky
Lynn Hooker, UChicago MA’94, history and theory of music, is Associate Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. She researches music and modernism, gender in music and dance, and national, transnational, and global identities as seen through music. Read more: http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/faculty/hooker.shtml
Steven Rings is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Chicago Department of Music. His research focuses on transformational theory, phenomenology, popular music, and voice. Read more: http://music.uchicago.edu/page/steven-rings
Glenn Watkins is Earl V. Moore Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Michigan. His book, Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (Univ. of California Press, 2003) investigates the variable roles of music during World War I. Read more: http://www.music.umich.edu/faculty_staff/bio.php?u=gwatkins
John Wilkinson is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. He is an English-language poet and recent critical writings have focused on poets of the first-generation New York School and on contemporary English and North American poets. Read more: http://english.uchicago.edu/faculty/wilkinson
Centenary Weekend is supported, in part, by the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation and the UChicago Nicholson Center for British Studies.
ABOUT UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESENTS
Now in its 71st year of bringing the world's best artists to Chicago, The University of Chicago Presents offers 29 unique performances in seven distinct series in the 2014/15 season, from early music to classical, contemporary, and jazz. This season celebrates the richness that music has to offer with unrivaled musical experiences that bring passion and virtuosity to the stage.
VENUES
Mandel Hall: 1151 E 57th Street, Chicago
Fulton Recital Hall: 1010 E. 59th Street (in Goodspeed Hall), Chicago
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts: 951 E 60th Street, Chicago
TICKETS
Tickets are $15 - $35 / $5 all students (with ID)
Weekend pass for $98
Visit the UChicago Arts Box Office at Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th Street
Call 773.702.ARTS (773.702.2787)
Online ticketsweb.uchicago.edu
BOX OFFICE HOURS
Regular hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 12 pm - 6 pm and through concert intermission; 1-4 pm on concert Sundays.
Concert information online at chicagopresents.uchicago.edu
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