Tuned In: A Collaborative Faculty and Friends Chamber Recital

Featuring Guest Artists, WWU music faculty and Bellingham Symphony musicians performing a varied program that spans 200+ years.

• From 1795: Ludwig van Beethoven - Sextet, Op 81b for 2 Horns and String Quartet
• From 1911/1914: Nadia Boulanger -  Trois Pieces for Cello and Piano (trans. for Viola)
• From 2017: William C White - Trio, Op. 32 for Horn, Viola and Piano

Featuring guest artists

• Mary Moran, viola
• Andres Moran, horn
• Alex Fang, piano

Assisted by WWU music faculty and Bellingham Symphony Orchestra musicians:

• Gustavo Camacho, horn
• Laura Camacho, violin
• Grant Donnellan, violin
• Rebekah Hood-Sava, cello

About the Program

Trois Pieces

for Cello and Piano (transcribed for Viola and Piano) by Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger together with her equally gifted sister, Lili, created quite a stir in many areas of French music that had typically been the domain of men. Although Lili died in 1918 at age 25, Nadia lived until the age of ninety-two, and became far more influential as a teacher of composition to many of the most renowned composers of the era—Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, and Virgil Thomson, to name just a few of the Americans she taught. Boulanger composed her Trois pièces (Three pieces) in 1911 originally for organ, transcribing them for cello and piano in 1914. The Impressionistic opening piece projects a diaphanous effect whose delicacy was much admired by her contemporaries. The gently rippling piano effects complemented by long lines on the muted cello build toward the center point before ebbing. The second piece also projects an air of intimacy, now with a folklike melody whose tiny, short-short-long melodic units in the cello are instantly imitated by the piano. The vigorous dance character of the final piece provides complete contrast, propelled by its motoric rhythms. The first section broadens into 5/8 time, its unusual metric feel taken up by the slower middle section now in 5/4. A tantalizing hesitancy brings on a vigorous return of the opening music to round off the piece in ebullient style. ~Jane Vial Jaffe (condensed by Gustavo Camacho)

Sextet, Op. 81b

for 2 horns and String Quartet by Ludwig Van Beethoven

Like most of Beethoven’s chamber music with winds, this E-flat sextet for horn duo and string quartet is an early work, probably composed about 1795. Nothing is known about the occasion for its composition or first performance, which is a little puzzling simply because the virtuosity of the horn parts suggests that Beethoven had specific players in mind, performers of rare skill on the natural horns (without valves) of the day. The essential character of the piece is clear: a mini concerto for two horns and strings. The opening movement is a bright and brilliant Allegro con brio in a forthright and compact sonata form, but with already distinctively Beethovenian touches, like launching the development section in G-flat and a coda that is both sly and emphatic. The horn parts fly high and fast, with the emphasis on energy and ebullience, though they also take the lead on the lyrical side as well. That lyrical, almost vocal, side is fully exploited in the Adagio. Its character is that of an operatic love duet, with a dramatic – and structurally important – central interruption for the strings.

The horn calls at the beginning of the jaunty 6/8 Rondo finale inevitably suggest the “hunting” clichés so beloved of the period, but Beethoven expands the instrumental horizon by bringing the strings into the foreground more, although they also repeat the main hunting call theme. Midway through there is one of those great surprises so characteristic of Beethoven, the utterly unexpected insertion of a few bars of hushed oscillation in D-flat into the prevailing E-flat jollity. ~John Henken (condensed by Gustavo Camacho)

Trio, Op. 32

for Viola, Horn and Piano by William C. White

Notes from the composer: This piece was composed for two very good friends, Andy and Mary Moran, whom I first met in the summer of 2005 at the Pierre Monteux School. Andy was attending as a conductor and horn player, Mary as a member of the viola section, which meant I got to sit next to her in orchestra all summer, which I count among the singular delights I’ve been afforded. Andy is now Professor of Horn and Orchestral Director at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; Mary is a musician and staff member with the Central Wisconsin Symphony. The premiere was given at the UWSP School of Music, by Mary and Andy and Janna Ernst on the piano. Shortly thereafter, I travelled to Wisconsin to give further performances (as pianist) both there and in Chicago, and we have since performed it at additional concerts as part of the ARTi Gras Festival in Central Wisconsin.