Wolfgang David, Violin
David Gompper, Piano
Sunday, February 23, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.
Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts
200 N Main, Fairfield, Iowa
MUSIC
POETRY
2010
PRESS
NARRATION
ABOUT US
COMEDY
PROGRAM
Bartók: Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin & Piano
Mozart: Sonata in e-minor, K. 304
Gompper: Star of The County Down
INTERMISSION
Dangerfield: Dreams of Fin
Ravel: Sonata for Violin & Piano in G Major
In the space of a few short years, Wolfgang David has ensconced himself on the international stage, both as a recitalist, and as a guest soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras. He has been well received by the press—the Washington Post writes that he has “scaled the heights of music-making,” while The Strad praises his playing for being as “emotionally wide-ranging as one could hope for,” and Thomas Frost, Senior Executive Producer at SONY Classical, foresees for him “a significant international concert and recording career.”
Admitted to the University for Music in Vienna at the age of eight, David studied there for many years with Rainer Kuechl, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He subsequently continued his studies at the Musikhochschule in Cologne with Igor Ozim, and at the Guildhall School of Music in London with Yfrah Neaman.
The winner of many competitions and prizes, David has performed in major halls such as Konzerthaus and Musikverein Hall in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, Cerritos Center in Los Angeles, the Wigmore Hall in London, and Philharmonie in Cologne. He has concertized in over 30 countries and tours regularly throughout Europe, the United States, South Africa, and South Korea. In 2006 David recorded an album of compositions by the King of Thailand Bhumibol Adulyadej with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) under the baton of Emmanuel Siffert.
Highlights of his career have included concerts at the Great Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York in the presence of Secretary General Kofi Annan, and a concert in Bangkok, given for the Queen of Thailand.
Wolfgang David performs on a violin built in 1715 by Carlo Bergonzi, Cremona, on exclusive loan to him from the Austrian National Bank.
David Gompper works professionally as a pianist, a conductor, a composer, and a pedagogue. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and at the University of Michigan, and has for the past 17 years been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa.
Gompper’s compositions are performed widely, with several receiving their premiere in London’s Wigmore Hall, others at the Moscow Conservatory and at the ZKM Institute for Music and Acoustics in Karlsruhe Germany. He recently completed several new compositions: Ikon for violin and piano; Ikon II for violin and chamber orchestra; L'Icone St. Nicolas for the Manhattan Sinfonietta; and The Animals, a 28’ song cycle on words by Marvin Bell (premiered earlier this month by Stephen Swanson). His Violin Concerto, premiered in Quito, Ecuador last April, will be one of four works recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) in December 2009 for a release on Naxos in early 2011. Gompper is also recorded on the Capstone, the Centaur, and the Albany labels. For additional information, including a complete discography, consult Gompper’s website: http://www.davidgompper.com/
As a duo David and Gompper have issued three CDs to date.
Tickets $15 general. $12 students, seniors 65 yrs,
IA Course participants, children (under 12 yrs free).
Tickets at the door, or call 641-472-7634.
PROGRAM NOTES
Rhapsody for violin and piano no. 1 (1928)—Born in a village in Transylvania, in an area whose inhabitants included a substantial Romanian minority, the young Béla Bartók was able to establish direct contact with the wandering musicians – especially violinists of gypsy origin – who went from village to village playing music of mixed origins that was characterized by extremely free rhythmic and melodic performance practices. Thus, on the one hand, the violin became the protagonist of some of the composer’s most complicated and difficult works – the two sonatas for violin and piano are a case in point – but on the other, it was used in some of his works to evoke a more relaxed, cantabile musical language of gypsy derivation. The First Rhapsody for violin and piano, composed in 1928, belongs to the latter category; each consists of a slow introductory movement, languorous and extemporaneous in character, followed by a more lively dance section. Most of the thematic material is drawn from the Romanian folk heritage, although references to Magyar music are not lacking. Bartók dedicated the Rhapsody to his friend, the violinist Joseph Szigeti; the two musicians frequently performed together as a duo.
Violin Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K. 304 was composed in 1778 while Mozart was in Paris. The piece was composed during the same period that Mozart's mother, Anna Maria Mozart, died, and the sonata's mood reflects this. It is the only work Mozart wrote whose home key is E minor.
Star of the County Down is the final offering of Three Irish Fiddle Tunes. The collection as a whole leads off with Finnegan's Wake and Music in the Glen. Star of the County Down is a fantasia, a genre that has a rich heritage of its own. The principal melody is present virtually from the initial to the final measures, and the rhythmic vamping and contrapuntal interplay between violin and piano in the opening strain is but a harbinger of things to come. The two instruments continually trade off portions of the melody and do so in a manner reminiscent of protracted figure/ground exchanges.
Dreams of Fin was conceived as an extension of Finnegan's Wake by David Gompper. Gompper states that in writing Finnegan's Wake, his "intention was to effect a transformation of the foot-stomping dance tune by leading it through a labyrinth of rhythmic manipulations, and into a series of playful excursions." I see his work also as an interpolation of the wake of the so-named character in James Joyce's Ulysses. The joyous dance-like melody of Finnegan's Wake sets a mood contrary to what most of western society views as a somber occasion. Dreams of Fin attempts to make a further interpolation where the material then becomes an extension of Gompper's work, beginning precisely where Finnegan's Wake ends as though one has passed through the ether to the realm of the dead, into what Edgar Alan Poe once referred to as the "Dream World." I thusly reordered the intervals of the primary motive from Gompper's work and applied my own musical syntax to create a new motive. The use of sul tasto in the violin and una corda in the piano provides a veiled view of the "other world," moving out of the shadows only at the moment of greatest beauty, marking the final acceptance of Finnegan's transition into the "Dream World."
Joseph Dangerfield has lived and worked professionally in Germany, Russia, Holland, and New York. He is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including the Aaron Copland Award (2010), the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra's Composition Prize (2010), the Henry and Parker Pelzer Prize for Excellence in Composition (2005), the Young and Emerging Composers Award (2002), and ASCAP Standard Awards. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the Russian Federation and the Netherlands (2009-10), where he served as composer-in-residence with the Ensemble Studio New Music at the famed Moscow Conservatory, and lectured at Maastricht Conservatorium. He has been a resident in the Leighton Studios of the prestigious Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and the Yaddo Colony in New York.
Recordings of his works are available on the Albany Records label, and many are published by European American Music and PIP Press Music Publications.
The Sonata for Violin and Piano was written between the years 1923 and 1927. The first movement opens with a single line in the piano reminiscent of the opening of L'enfant et les sortilèges, and alternating with the violin to present the main musical ideas. The second movement takes its inspiration from the American Blues, and the final movement, a Perpetuum mobile, tests the limits of the violinist's virtuosity.
Ravel dedicated the Sonata to Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, a violinist of great merit. Georges Enescu gave the premiere in Paris in May 1927, with Ravel himself at the piano.
The French composer Maurice Ravel, who took his training at the Paris Conservatoire, was one of the most original and sophisticated musicians of the early 20th century. His instrumental writing explored new sonorities, which he developed at the same time as his great contemporary Debussy, and his fascination with the past and with the exotic resulted in music of a distinctively French sensibility and refinement.
Design and copyright 2011 Freddy Niagara Fonseca
Fairfield Creates Foundation
