Southeast Iowa Symphony Piano Trio
thanks you for joining us this evening. We would like to
send a special thanks to Indian Hills Community College and
David Sharp for making this concert possible!
Southeast Iowa Symphony
Piano Trio
Please try to join us for other upcoming musical events
presented by Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra
Kidsymphony! presents Peter and the Wolf on
Saturday, November 8, 2014 at 11:00 AM
Bridge View Center in Ottumwa
SEISO’s Holiday Concert on
Saturday, December 13, 2014 at 3:00 PM
IWC Chapel Auditorium in Mt. Pleasant
Southeast Iowa Symphony’s Winter Series Concert
featuring world acclaimed guest artist
Spencer Myer performing Brahms Piano Concert No. 2
Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 3:00 PM
Bridge View Center in Ottumwa
We would love to see you there!
Presents
“Not the Usual Suspects”
St. John Auditorium, IHCC
October 23, 2014 7:00 PM
Musicians
Piano-Susan See
Susan Troutman See is the resident piano instructor at Iowa
Mennonite School in Kalona, Iowa and also maintains a
private studio in Washington, Iowa. She is an educator,
collaborative pianist, performer, and presenter. She has
been recognized twice for excellence in teaching by the
Belin-Blank Center of The University of Iowa and has
contributed reviews and articles to Clavier Companion and
Pan Pipes. She credits her students as her most important
teachers.
to reinvent it. Throughout his life, he played with the best of
classical and jazz musicians and composed more than 1000 works.
He is revered as one of South America’s greatest musical figures
and a major composer of the 20th century.
“Magic Hour” from Swing Shift
Kenji Bunch (1973) is a native of Portland, Oregon who
has received international acclaim for his unique style of “New
American’ music. He is the Artistic Director of Portland, Oregonbased new music group fEarNoMusic. A multi-faceted musician
with a deep interest in vernacular American music and
improvisation, he also plays bluegrass fiddle and is a frequent guest
performer, recording artist, and arranger.
Violin-Charlene King
Charlene King is a resident of Ottumwa and in her eleventh
season as Concertmaster for the Southeast Iowa Symphony.
She frequently plays for Quad City Symphony and Ottumwa
Symphony and various surrounding community groups. She
is very involved in chamber music and is a member of the
SEISO String Quartet, Encore Trio and founder of
Dragonbow Strings.
Cello-Donna Nelson
Donna Nelson currently plays Principal Cello with the
Southeast Iowa, Ottumwa, and Oskaloosa Symphony
Orchestras. She formerly played in the Lincoln and
Omaha Symphonies. She also enjoys playing piano and
french horn. During the day, she is an HTML formatter
and mother of two awesome teenagers.
If we have time, we would also enjoy
presenting to you……
Hiccup de Tango
Cameron Wilson (1964) is a Canadian composer who is
known for combining pop with classical in a comedic way. He
lists Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington as important influences. His work blends humor and sensitivity with his
philosophy that “If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good.”
Sonata in B minor for Piano Trio
Jean-Baptiste Loeillet (de Gant) (1688-1722) There were at
least four composers of this time period christened with some form
of the name, Jean-Baptiste Loeillet. All family members sharing
this name were from a well-established line of Flemish musicians.
Musicologists are still sorting out the puzzle, but most likely the
Trio Sonata in B Minor was written by Loeillet de Gant. He wrote
several books of sonatas in the Italian style after Corelli and his trio
sonatas served as models for later composers such as Haydn and
Mozart. Composers from this period used several instruments and
even voiced interchangeably so it is very likely that this Sonata was
not originally scored for violin, cello and harpsichord. The writing
is surprisingly modern in that the bass voice is given an equal role
and this sonata shows a depth of interest and contrapunctual
complexity that was unusual for his time.
“Not the Usual Suspects”
Program Order
I. First Impressions
Edgar Meyer
ed. David Sharp
II. Piano Trio No. 1 in D Major, Op. 5
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
- Allegro molto moderato
- Presto
- Larghetto (grazioso, molto tranquillo)
- Allegro vivace assai
~~Intermission~~
III. Soir-Matin for Piano Trio, Op. 76
- Soir
- Matin
Mel Bonis
IV. Sonata in B minor for Piano Trio
- Largo
- Allegro con spirit
- Adagio
- Allegro
Jean Baptiste Loeillet
Oblivion and La Muerte Del Angel
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was born in Mar del Plata,
Argentina to poor Italian immigrants who moved the family to
New York in 1924. At the age of 8, his father presented him with
his first bandoneon which eventually became his vehicle to join
one of the greatest tango orchestra of that time, the Anibal Troilo
Orchestra. To advance his musical abilities, he began studying
with Alberto Ginastera and Raul Spivak,. His love of tango and
exposure to jazz musicians Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, as
well as studying classical music with influences by Bach and
Rachmaninoff contributed to his emerging compositional style.
In 1954, he won a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia
Boulanger where he at first tried to hide his tanguero past and
bandoneon work, thinking his destiny was in classical music.
Boulanger encouraged Piazzolla not to ignore the tango form but
V. Pieces for Piano Trio
- Oblivion
- La Muerte del Angel
VI. Magic Hour from “Swing Shift”
Astor Piazzolla
Kenji Bunch
“Not the Usual Suspects”
We have ventured off the main path to introduce some little
known composers from the piano trio repertoire whose musical
offerings are often obscured from performance by the masters
such as Beethoven, Mozart, Brahams, Schubert, Ravel and many
others. We feel these “unusual suspects” deserve to be
investigated by audiences for their intriguing and insightful
compositions and we would like to offer them to you as persons
of interest. We hope you will enjoy these works and continue to
include these suspects in your pursuit of musical enrichment!
Program Notes
“First Impressions”
Edgar Meyer (1960- ) Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, composer
and double bass musician Meyer has been hailed by The New
Yorker magazine as “the most remarkable virtuoso in the
relatively un-chronicled history of the his instrument.” Equally at
home with classical, folk, and bluegrass music, he is currently the
visiting Professor of Double Bass at the Curtis Institute of Music
in Philadelphia.
Piano Trio No. 1 in D Major, Op. 5
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) was an Italian composer
best known for his comic operas. His mother was Italian and his
father, German. Ferrari was his mother’s maiden name, which he
added to his own surname when he was nineteen years old. His
first love was painting, like his father and his study took him
beyond Italy to Munich. It was there that he decided to focus on
music, which became the greater gift. Until World War I, his
operas were among the most performed in the world. This was a
very tumultuous time for someone who had divided his time
between Venice and Munich. Although he was widely known as a
master of comic opera in that time period, he also wrote a few
instrumental works including the Op. 5 Piano Trio in D Major
completed when he was only 22 years old. It is not often heard,
but the melding of Italian operatic writing and German
Romanticism into this sonata is reason enough for this piece to
deserve a place in the standard repertoire.
Soir-Matin for Piano Trio, Op.76
Melanie Helena Bonis (1858-1937) was a prolific French
composer who wrote more than 300 works for piano, organ,
chamber groups, orchestra, and choral music. Her parents did not
encourage her musical genius but reluctantly allowed her to attend
the Paris Conservatoire after being praised by Cesar Frank. At the
time, she was the only woman permitted to study at the
conservatory and she used the pen name of Mel Bonis on her
compositions to disguise her gender. Her life magnifies the strife
of women in the world of music at that time.
When she fell in love with classmate Amedee Hettich, she set
his poems to music. The romance met with opposition from her
parents who forced her to withdraw from the conservatory and
pursue a more acceptable life in society. Because of the gender
prejudices of the times, by the time of her death, she and her music
had fallen into obscurity. Camille Saint Saens was once heard to
say after hearing the Soir-Matins for the first time, “I didn’t know
that a woman could write music like that.”
The title, Soir-Matins translates to Evenings-Mornings. Her
works radiate sensitivity and explore color through sound
influenced by the music and art of Paris, and yet, the listener will
hear something not heard in the works of other French composers
of the time.