April 6 American Goodies concerts at 2pm & 730pm
Stephen Beus piano
Abigel Kralik violin
Lisa Shihoten violin
Luosha Fang viola
Coleman Itzkoff cello
Vadim Lando clarinet
Randall THOMPSON Suite for oboe, clarinet, and viola ▪ 1940
▪ one of his favorite pieces, the scrumptious trio is distilled Americana, folk-flavored with echoes of old Western tunes and Yankee hymn themes
Born in New York City, Thompson earned his doctorate at the Eastman School of Music and taught at the Curtis Institute, University of Virginia, and Harvard University. He is best known for his choral works.
Marion BAUER Concertino Op. 32b ▪ 1943
▪ 3 short movements in a late Romantic idiom, with intense harmonies for oboe, clarinet, and string quartet ~ commissioned by the League of Composers
Born in Walla Walla, Washington, Bauer was Nadia Boulanger’s first American pupil. They traded lessons—English for music, and vice versa. She taught and lectured widely, including at Juilliard, and was the first woman faculty member at New York University. Most importantly, Bauer was a tireless promoter and supporter of American and modern music, exerting great influence in the development of American music in the first half of the 20th century.
Charles Griffes became her close friend after they met in 1917. Although their friendship was short (he died in 1920), their mutual respect and influence ran deep. After Griffes’s death, Bauer programmed his music on numerous lecture-recitals and helped to organize concerts of his music. She wrote that he “was one of the first to put into American piano music something of the elusive charm and color of French Impressionism.”
Charles Tomlinson GRIFFES Two Sketches on Indian Themes ▪ 1918 or 1919
▪ the first is based on a “Farewell Song of the Chippewa Indians” and the second is from a Hopi festival, being his impression of a Native American dance ~ by the most gifted of the American impressionists, for string quartet
Griffes was born in Elmira, New York. He studied in Berlin; and upon returning to the U.S. in 1907, he became the director of music studies at the Hackley School for boys in Tarrytown for 13 years, until his death at age 35 from influenza during the pandemic. Although the post gave him financial stability, it was “grim and unrewarding.”
Howard HANSON Concerto da Camera in C minor Op. 7 ▪ 1917
▪ penned in one fantasy-like movement for piano and string quartet by the 20-year-old, expressing a wide range of emotions and with audacious virtuosity
Born in Wahoo, Nebraska to Swedish parents, Hanson was Director of the Eastman School of Music for 40 years. During his tenure, he presented over 1,500 different compositions by more than 700 composers. John Gladney Proffitt notes that he “was the leading practitioner of American musical Romanticism.... Hanson dedicated his professional life to the encouragement, creation and preservation of beauty in music, believing it to be an art form possessing unique power to ennoble both performer and listener and, by extension, mankind.”
We are grateful to Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music for providing a copy of the music for our performances.
Charles Wakefield CADMAN Piano Trio in D Major Op. 56 ▪ 1914
▪ an Elysian post-Romantic work by the “Most Popular Composer of 1930” ~ its use of ragtime elements in a classical composition is a first, anticipating the music of composers like Gershwin and Milhaud
Cadman did not teach. Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he was for a time the music editor and critic of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and became a foremost expert on American Indian music. After he moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s, he helped found the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and wrote film scores, earning a reputation as one of Hollywood’s top film composers of the period.