PROGRAM

Quartet Number 1 (1929)
2nd Movement: Andante Moderato
Florence Price (1887-1953)

String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 20, Number 3
1st Movement: Allegro con spirito
2nd Movement: Minuetto: Allegretto 
3rd Movement: Poco adagio
4th Movement: Finale: Allegro di molto
 Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Woman Holding a Balance (2021)
Anna Clyne (b. 1980)

Testimony (2019)
Charlton Singleton (b. 1971)

NOTES

Price – Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, Florence Smith Price was the first African American to have a symphony played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A member of the Chicago Black Renaissance, many of her works were never published in her lifetime. A box of her manuscripts was discovered in a dilapidated house in 2009, and her music has been enjoying posthumous fame ever since. 

Haydn - an Austrian composer, has been credited with creating the modern form of chamber music, bringing to it a conversational style where each instrument participates in playing the melodic line. The first movement opens with a jagged leaping figure, is unique in its frequent stops especially in the development section.  The minuet is unusually serious, paired with a beautiful trio section, returns to the original melody and then ends in a mournful key, marked “perdendosi” (dying away).  The third movement opens with a rising hymn-like figure in the first violin, followed by a contrasting line of sixteenth notes in the cello. The fiery finale has Gypsy undertones and features sudden stops like the first movement – it also has a twittering motif, heard in the first violin part, has the last word in the cello’s lowest register.

Clyne – Grammy nominated Clyne is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, and visual artists around the world. She was the most performed living female British composer in 2022. Originally from England, Ms. Clyne now lives here in the Hudson Valley. Woman Holding a Balance, written in response to a sculpture called Dutch/Light, follows shifting harmonic colors that reaches a melodic section, before returning to the stillness of the opening music.

Singleton – began studying piano in Awendaw SC at the age of three, then went on to study organ, violin, cello, and trumpet; he received a Bachelor of Arts from South Carolina State University. Singleton is Director of the Charleston Jazz Orchestra, and a member of Ranky Tanky which promotes Gullah music from the Southeastern United States. Singleton spoke about his music “Growing up in the church (my father is a retired African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor) I was surrounded by incredible harmony and rhythm. Testimony is written from my prayer Band experience, and rhythms in African American churches – the ‘Gullah Clap’ (on beats two and four) and the ‘Half Clap’ (on beat one only).”

Concert 10-25-23

Haydn 2

Piano Pop Vol. 82

Don't Need to Sleep (Pure Piano)

Heigh Ho

Music from the musical ballet, The Miracle of the lady in Blue.

MARIAS SPIRIT TRAVELS

INSTRUMENT X - Volume 1

Fauré Nocturno Em Mi Bemol Maior Op. 36 16.02.2024(1)

Moods for piano want to evoke a certain feeling of peace, serenity and contemplation by combining simple melodies, certain intervals and rhythms. The sustain pedal is used almost continuously to create a rich pallet of sounds. The intention is to slow down and find tranquility.

Mood 1 For Piano - "8"

Built with Soundpaint's Tenor Sax, 8Dio's Solo Trumpet, Spitfire Audio's Bass from Chamber Strings and The Crow Hill Company's Small String Gestures and Shimmer Guitar.

Image by Dominik Turk from pexels.com

#crowhillcompany

Smokey Room Inspirations

Also not much of a fan of this one looking back, I mustve been lazy with these.

Remember Me

Promenade

Robert Schumann Symphony n°1 in B flat major, Op.38, "Spring" (1841)
Stereo recording in Detroit (Paradise Theatre) on March 22, 1958 - LP Mercury MG 50198 ; SR 90102. 

Paul Paray was one of the first conductors to go back to Schumann's own original orchestrations of these four symphonies. Before that, many a conductor had tweaked and fiddled with the scores to "enhance" the melodic lines -- and also to "heavy them up" in that stereotypically Germanic manner. Perhaps it took a Gallic conductor like Paray to treat Schumann's delicate-yet-vibrant scores like a watercolor rather than an oil painting. (Paray, hearing one of Schumann's symphonies performed with a doctored score, was quoted as saying to the conductor after the concert, 'Nice piece. Who wrote it?').

Robert SCHUMANN "Spring" Symphony, Paul PARAY/Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Cercle Paul Paray

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