University of Florida Performing Arts

Presents

Trio Cavatina

Sunday, April 15, 2012, 2 p.m.

Squitieri Studio Theatre

A part of

www.primaverafestival.us

Trio Cavatina

Harumi Rhodes, violinPriscilla Lee, cello

Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano

ProgramPiano Trio in E Minor Op. 90, (“Dumky”) Antonín Dvorák

Lento Maestoso – AllegroPoco Adagio – Vivace non troppoAndante – Vivace non troppoAllegroLento Maestoso – Vivace

Big Sky for Piano Trio Joan Tower

INTERMISSION

Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65 Antonín DvorákAllegro ma non troppoAllegro graziosoPoco AdagioFinale: Allegro con brio

Program NotesPiano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 (“Dumky”)Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)Though Czech composer Antonín Dvorák was steeped in the classics and ultimately became an international sensation, his heart and soul was in the music of his native land. He was born in the small village of Nelahozeves in 1841, now in the Czech Republic, just north of the city of Prague. In spite of his international reputation and many extended visits abroad, he considered Prague and its environs his home. He died there in 1904.Dvorák’s first lessons were supplied by the village schoolmaster, and in short order he was gigging at the local churches and with the Nelahozeves village band. Still, music didn’t seem to be his destiny when he quit school at age 12 in order to study the family business: both his father and grandfather were town butchers. When he left his native village for nearby Zlonice a year later to pursue an apprenticeship, the call of music – and a strong champion in a Zlonice music teacher, Antonín Liehmann – sealed his fate.Dvorák’s progress was slow and steady. First, he had to learn German, since German was the language of the university and music conservatory system. Dvorák slowly mastered German,

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which helped him gain entrance to the Prague Organ School. There he was trained to be a traditional church musician. It was during this period that he developed into quite a violist, too, and started gigging around Prague with various orchestras, eventually becoming principle violist in an ensemble that would become the Orchestra of the Prague Theatre. It was during his time that he began to compose. Still, his main source of income was neither performing nor composing; at this point, he was teaching to make ends meet.He eventually found some success with his cantata The Heirs of the White Mountain in 1873, though the next year a publisher rejected a work and he went into a slump. He slowly recovered, got married and applied for an Austrian State Stipend that was extended to artists of Austrian birth. (He was eligible since his birthplace was at the time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)Again, he found champions, first in music critic Eduard Hanslick and later in Johannes Brahms, already household names in international music circles. They were among the distinguished judges who award the stipends. Dvorák applied from 1874 to 1878 and received a stipend each year; ultimately it was Brahms who helped Dvorák find an international publisher. Dvorák was now to become more than just a regional composer.Indeed, he was soon celebrated throughout Europe, with frequent visits to the major music capitols of Vienna, London, Paris and Berlin. As a result of his international acclaim, he was cajoled to move to the United States to become the director of the National Conservatory in New York City. During this so-called “American period” (1892-95), the Czech composer found inspiration in the folk music of the U.S., especially African-American music. Dvorák’s most popular work, his symphony From the New World, sprang from this period in the U.S.It was during a 40-concert “farewell” tour of his native land that Dvorák premiered his Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 (“Dumky”). It is a unique work in many ways, most notably in its formal construction. Rather than a typical four-movement work, this Trio is in six parts, each a dumka, a melancholy folk ballad of Ukrainian origin that is common among the various countries of Eastern Europe. Generally speaking, the dumka alternates between a slow, mournful beginning and a joyful, almost manic answering section.The first dumka, marked “Lento maestoso” (slowly, with majesty), indeed begins almost as if we have interrupted a group of mourners at a funeral. After a brief introduction by all three instruments, the cello and violin take turns in a somber moment. The next section is a wild contrast, upbeat, almost delirious. This again gives way to the somberness from before. The second section returns again and ends on a cheery note. The second dumka (“Poco adagio,” meaning rather slowly) is generally more somber overall, though a contrasting dance section (“Vivace ma non troppo,” meaning lively, but not too much) does make an early appearance and prevails in the end. The third, marked “Andante,” begins on a more hopeful note, almost like a church processional. Notice especially the uncharacteristic single line melody in the piano. Again, a contrasting second section (Vivace ma non troppo) takes us away for a moment, but in this dumka, the opening music prevails in the end.The fourth dumka (“Andante Moderato,” meaning moderate walking tempo), as its tempo suggests, begins with a deliberateness of a walk in the cold morning air. Here a contrasting upbeat section briefly emerges several times, each a little more energetically, though the movement ends quietly. The fifth movement (“Allegro,” meaning brisk), too, is at turns moody and contemplative, at other moments bouncy and joyous. The finale follows the dumka pattern, though Dvorák accentuates the melancholy side of things until very near the end, when a dance section emerges to close the work.

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Big Sky for Piano TrioJoan Tower (b. 1938)American Joan Tower is among the most celebrated musicians of our day. She was the first woman, and one of only two, to win the University of Louisville’s prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. She is also a multiple Grammy-award winner for her 2008 Naxos recording Made in America, a founding member and pianist for the celebrated Da Capo Chamber Players and recipient of numerous composition commissions by orchestras, ensembles and soloists worldwide. Her catalogue of works is extensive: works for orchestra, band, chamber ensembles and solo instrumentalists, among others. Her music has been recorded and released by a wide assortment of classical labels such as Naxos, Koch, Summit, D’note Classics, Albany Records, Centaur and Virgin Classics. She received her doctorate in music from Columbia in 1968 and has been on the faculty at Bard College since 1972.Big Sky was commissioned by the La Jolla, (Calif.) Chamber Music Society for their Summer-Fest La Jolla 2000 music festival. Dr. Tower wrote for the La Jolla premiere of the work: “As a young girl—and like many young girls—I had an obsession with horses. When I was growing up in South America, my father bought me a racehorse. This was in Bolivia, where horses, even racehorses, were very cheap. I loved this horse and took very good care of it in our makeshift garage/stable … Big Sky is a piece based on a memory of riding my horse Aymara around in the deep valley of La Paz, Bolivia. The valley was surrounded by the huge and high mountains of the Andes range, and as I rode I looked into a vast and enormous sky. It was very peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful. We never went over one of these mountains, but if we had, it might have felt like what I wrote in this piece.”

Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)Unlike the “Dumky Trio,” written at a time when Dvorák’s international reputation was assured, the Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65, was written while the composer was still trying to define himself outside his homeland. The F-minor trio was also underway when his mother died, December of 1882. His publisher, Simrock, was pressuring him to be more international in his approach (read: “Germanic”): write an opera in German and present it in Vienna … spell his name as Anton, rather than the more ethnic Antonín, drop the “Bohu díky” (Czech for “thanks to God”) that appeared on the final pages of his autograph scores.Unlike the “Dumky” Trio, the Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65 doesn’t immediately bring to mind the folk music of Bohemia. Rather, one might be more inclined to think of the chamber works of Brahms (Brahms’ F minor Piano Quintet comes to mind, a work that Dvorák undoubtedly knew). The opening movement of the Trio is always in control, yet ardent and passionate. Aficionados – and Brahms was certainly among them – were inspired by Dvorák’s harmonic surprises, not to mention his ability to write and develop a stirring melody. His command of rhythm seemed a birthright. Indeed, the second movement might be heard as a tribute to Czech rhythm. Notice the combined pulse of two and three, presented simultaneously in the opening, and again towards the end. This could be a dance section of a dumka. The middle of this movement, marked by florid piano arpeggios and spritely melodic snippets for the violin and cello, is another opportunity for Dvorák to impress his international audience with his compositional acumen.The third, slow movement is rich with tuneful moments, with violin and cello doing the bulk of the heavy lifting while the piano generally takes on a less prominent role (though piano is featured at the end as a transition to the coda).

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The finale is a romp, this time based on the Czech furiant, a dance with a somewhat irregular pattern of accents, Here, in Dvorák’s hands, we get the impression of two different tempos at once, one slow and one fast, not to mention shifting accents that obscure the underlying triple meter.

About Trio CavatinaPianist Ieva Jokubaviciute, violinist Harumi Rhodes and cellist Priscilla Lee formed Trio Cavatina in 2005 at the renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Deeply rooted in a strong sense of shared musical values, Trio Cavatina has rapidly emerged as one of today’s outstanding chamber ensembles whose committed music-making prompted Harris Goldsmith to describe the trio, in his 2008 Musical America article, as offering “potent, intense interpretations.”As the winner of the 2009 Naumburg International Chamber Music Competition, Trio Cavatina made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2010 with scintillating performances of two monumental Beethoven trios, Leon Kirchner’s second trio and the world premiere performance of Faces of Guernica written for them by Richard Danielpour. They also made their San Francisco debut earlier that season at Herbst Theater (San Francisco performances) as well as their Philadelphia debut as one of the youngest ensembles to perform on the prestigious Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concert series. During the summer of 2010, the Trio gave concerts and appeared in mixed programs at the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, Newburyport Chamber Music Festival and at Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley.Within only two years of their formation, Trio Cavatina made its New York City and Boston debuts on the New School’s Schneider Concert Series and at Jordan Hall, respectively. They also gave notable debut appearances on Kneisel Hall’s “Emerging Artists” Series in Maine, at Union College in Schenectady, New York, at Merkin Hall in New York City, at the Brattleboro Music Center in Vermont and at the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival in Maryland. They were also selected to perform at the closing concert of the Chamber Music America Conference in New York City. Garnering critical acclaim and enthusiastic responses from audiences and presenters wherever they perform, the trio has received immediate re-engagements, most notably at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. where they returned in the fall of 2008 in a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and twice in the 2009-10 season to celebrate the anniversaries of Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. The trio embarked on their first international tour in 2008, which included performances in Lithuania on stages in Vilnius and Kaunas.In addition to their command of the classical and romantic repertoire, Trio Cavatina is committed to collaborating with living composers and to weaving 20th century repertoire into their programs. They have worked closely with American composers Leon Kirchner and Richard Danielpour and premiered a new work written for them by David Ludwig in the fall of 2010 in Chicago.Trio Cavatina completed the New England Conservatory’s Professional Piano Trio Training Program in 2006-07.

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