Repertoire
Mirror in the Mirror Arvo Pärt
Piano Trio in E
flat, Op. 70 #2 Beethoven
Le Grand Tango Piazzolla
Piano Trio 11 in E minor, Op. 67 Shostokovich
Program notes:
Arvo Pärt, born in 1935, grew up in Estonia
and currently lives in Berlin.
He began his career working for Estonian Radio and writing for film. In
the 1960s he began a long period of self-imposed silence during which his
exposure to plainchant and music of the Eastern Orthodox Church brought about a
change in his musical language. When he began composing again, a new
style of writing, using the simplest means, emerged. Part wrote, "I have
discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. Just one
note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence comforts me." Regarding
“Mirror in the Mirror,” Arvo Part wrote, "It was here that I discovered
the triad series, which I make my simple little guiding rule.”
Ludwig van
Beethoven (1770 - 1827) was born in Germany
and moved to Vienna
at the age of 23 to continue his career in composition. He pursued his
studies, first with Haydn, then with the infamous Salieri, as well as others.
1802 was a year of crisis for Beethoven, when he realized that the
impaired hearing he had noticed for some time was incurable and sure to worsen.
He expressed bitter unhappiness over his affliction but came through with
a strengthened determination and entered a new creative phase, generally called
his middle period. The middle-period works, including Beethoven's Piano
Trio in Eb maj. Op. 70 2, are characterized by a heroic tone. The powerful and
expansive compositions from this period firmly establish Beethoven as the
greatest composer of his time.
The word "tango" conjures up images
of Buenos Aires, of a dimly-lit dance floor, the smoke of a cigarette curling
up into the air, a beautiful woman in the arms of a man surrendering to a
rhythm that is at once love and dream, pain and reality. From its lowly
beginnings, the tango 's essence has changed from epoch to epoch. Early
in the 20th-century, Parisian’s acceptance of this morally suspect lower-class
dance transformed its image and tango was accepted by the upper class.
Over time the dance waned in popularity until 1955 when Argentinean composer,
Astor
Piazzolla, gave the form new vitality. Piazzolla (1921 - 1991)
developed his deep love for the tango in Buenos
Aires. Because of his classical training, his
deeply rooted identity with tango created a stylistic conflict that eventually
lead him into an obsessive search for a personal style. For a period, he
composed a series of works clearly different from the conception of tango but
Piazzolla eventually returned to tango and to his instrument, the bandoneon. What was once a choice
between sophisticated music or tango, became sophisticated music and tango but in the most efficient way: to work the structure
of sophisticated music with the passion
of the tango. His personal revolution generated hatred among the orthodox
tangueros, and became the target of
very mean criticism. In 1982 he wrote “Le Grand Tango” for cello and
piano, dedicated to Russian cellist Mtislav Rostropovitch who premiered it in
1990 in New Orleans.
Dmitri
Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) The best-known composer of the
Soviet era was born in St. Petersburg and died
in Moscow.
Many artists have claimed to be products of the Bolshevik Revolution, but
Shostakovich stands alone in terms of his celebrity and artistic achievement.
He is recognized by the world press as one of the outstanding composer of
our time. Unlike other Soviet composers who benefited from political
fortune rather than artistic merit, Shostakovich remains an international
phenomenon whose music is performed often. The E minor Piano Trio (1944) is one
of Shostakovich's most concentrated, powerful and greatest works.
