THE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETYOF UTICA

presents

CHAMBER ORCHESTRA KREMLINMisha Rachlevsky, director

with guest, Ariel Horowitz, violin

THE MARY KERNAN BUTLER AND MARTHA GILBERT BUTLER MEMORIAL CONCERT

15 March 2015 Museum of Art Auditorium2:30 PM Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute

Chamber Music -- From Three to a Stageful

Program

Sonata in C Major, No. 3 (1804) Gioacchino Rossini Allegro (1792-1868) Andante Moderato

Visions Fugitives, Op. 22 (1915-1917) Sergei Prokofiev (Arranged for string orchestra by Rudolf Barshai) (1891-1953)

Intermission

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28 (1863) Camille Saint-Saens Ariel Horowitz, violin (1835-1921)

Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880) Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pezzo in forma di sonatina: (1840-1893) Andante non troppo Allegro moderato Valse: Moderato. Tempo di Valse Elegie: Larghetto elegiaco Finale: (Tema Russo): Andante Allegro con spirito

This concert is made possible by the Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Family Foundation, Inc., with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with support of

Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature,and by the generous contributions of supporters listed on the back page.

www.kremlinontour.com (in English) www.arielhorowitz.com

Music Director Misha Rachlevsky began his violin studies at the age of five and continued through the well-traveled path of the Russian school of string playing. He left his native Russia in 1973, living and working in several countries before settling in the US in 1976, always active in the field of chamber music. In 1991, in the heady aftermath of Moscow's momentous events, Maestro Rachlevsky accepted the opportunity presented by Claves, to record Russian works and it was agreed that the project should be realized with Russian musicians. Auditions were called and the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin was created. Since then, over 1800 concerts have been performed worldwide, nearly 900 in Moscow. COK has

recorded over 30 CDs receiving widespread international acclaim and awards. Within its vast repertoire, over 20 compositions have been written especially for the Orchestra. Eighteen-year-old Ariel Horowitz cannot remember life before loving music. She is the recipient of many awards and has performed all over the world; the list is far too long for this space. She continues her studies at Juilliard, as a recipient of the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship, with Catherine Cho and Itzhak Perlman. The Violin Channel praised Ariel's artistic philosophy: "If they gave out prizes for attitude, ... we think we may have found the Olympic champion".

THE ARTISTS

PROGRAM NOTES©Misha Rachlevsky

Sonata in C Major, No. 3 (1804) Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

Summer, vacation time. You rent a cottage in the country and take your family there "to get away from it all". Your 12 year old, getting a bit bored already on the second day, powers up the notebook computer, and before you know it, creates a computer game that challenges and entertains the participants, while giving much pleasure to the spectators. Ask for a copy of this program and keep the diskette in a safe place - you never know. After the Second World War, Alfredo Casella found in the Library of Congress a 150-year-old manuscript with this inscription: "The scores of these dreadful sonatas, composed by me on holiday at the home (near Raven-na) of my friend Agostino Triossi when I was at a most infantile age, not even having taken a lesson in counter-point, the whole composed and copied out in three days and played like dogs by Triossi, double bass, Morini (his cousin), first violin, the latter's brother, cello, and myself on second violin, who was, to tell the truth, the least dog-gish." The ease and generosity with which the melodic material unfolds in this and his other sonatas suggests that 12-year-old Rossini did not have to overly exert himself to produce these marvels. A smile is never more than a few seconds away, and there is an unmistakable presence of operatic elements, giving hint of what would one day blossom into magnificent stage works. Today these sonatas are extremely popular both on stage and in the recording studio, performed mainly in string orchestra version. The recording of an inte-gral set of Six Sonatas for Strings is Chamber Orchestra

KREMLIN'S most celebrated disc to date, having won both the Repertoire and Diapason d'Or awards in Paris and Gramophone's Critics Choice award in London.

Visions Fugitives, Op. 22 (1915-1917)Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Years ago I read a cute account of one's visit to a con-cert hall which, in essence, went like this: "On the program there was Bruckner's Symphony No. xx. Musicians gath-ered on stage and the light was dimmed, but still strong enough to glance through the program booklet, which I did. Then, some time later, the majestic melody began unfolding, filling the hall and capturing everybody's at-tention. It was the main theme of the first movement, and it was gorgeous. By that time the poor violins had been playing tremolo non stop for at least 15 minutes". Bruck-ner's symphonies were aptly called "Cathedrals of sound", and to hold the structure, one indeed needed a founda-tion of proportional might. One of the major challenges to the performers of this music is to hold this structure as a whole, without losing sight of its dimension. In day-to-day language, the composition should not feel too long. The challenge of writing and performing miniatures is directly the opposite in nature, as the limited time should not feel insufficient to define the work's emotional char-acteristics. Prokofiev succeeded magnificently, writing Visions Fugitives as a piano cycle of 20 miniatures. The average length of each is about one minute, and some as short as 20 seconds. Barshai transcribed 15 of them for string orchestra. They are great fun to perform and, hope-fully, to hear.

Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28 (1863)Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Maestro Rachlevsky did not include this piece in his commentaries.

Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 (1880) Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

The music of Tchaikovsky creates an illusion that it arrived in this world absolutely effortlessly (like the mu-sic of Mozart, Tchaikovsky's favorite composer). It is indeed so at times, but far not always, and the supremacy of the results of his numerous revisions, from corrections to major rewrites, convincingly illustrate Tchaikovsky's saying that "the muse doesn't come without being called". The Serenade for String Orchestra (the correct Russian title, although in the West it is customarily called "Ser-enade for Strings"), written in a relatively short time in September - October 1880 (simultaneously with the 1812 Overture), was definitely one of those happy instances: " .. it poured from the heart" wrote Tchaikovsky. Another lucky moment was the immediate and unanimous success of this work. The Serenade quickly rose to the top tier of the works Tchaikovsky was scheduling for the concerts he conduct-ed himself, and under his baton was heard in many major European music centers as well as in his 1891 visit to the States, where he conducted it in Baltimore and Phila-delphia. It seems that the composer himself was nearly embarrassed for the affection he felt for this work: (from his letter to Nadezhda von Meck, his pen-friend and pa-troness): "The first movement is my homage to Mozart, it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model. Do not laugh, dear lady, at my zeal for standing up for my latest creation. Perhaps my parental feelings are so warm because it is the youngest child of my fancy".

While the whole composition is heard on a single breath, so to speak, the two inner movements are extraor-dinary. The Waltz is exquisite, and the Elegy is one of the most moving, heartfelt statements in music. Again, from Tchaikovsky's letter to Nadezhda von Meck: "It is often said that good actors never perform for a whole audi-ence. They choose one person in the theater who appears to be a compassionate soul and perform the entire piece with the aim of pleasing only him or her". There are not too many scores that can rival this Elegy as a medium to address "a compassionate soul". Two points about Serenade, which I learned recently, while not being anything significant, are amusing, and I will share them with you. In his letter to Jurgenson, his publisher, Tchaikovsky revealed that he first conceived this work as a symphony, then thought that his sketches could be appropriate for a string quartet or an orchestral suite, and finally decided ("inspired", as he wrote) on Serenade for String Orchestra. And again, from Tchaikovsky's letter to Nadezhda von Mech, written after the Serenade was completed, but did not yet have its official premiere performance: "I wish you could hear my Serenade performed properly. It loses so much played at the piano, and I think that the middle movements played by the violins would win your heart". On the piano? Yes, a very common practice before the invention of the phonograph, and even some time after. In the summer of 1881 von Meck hired an 18-year-old Paris Conservatory student to play four-hand piano pieces with her as well as to give piano lessons to her children. He also did some transcriptions on her request, and the ex-cerpts from Swan Lake became his first published scores. The name of the young man? Claude Debussy.

Program notes by Misha Rachlevsky

THE B# MUSICAL CLUB will present their annual Scholarship Winners Concert on Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 2:30 PM in this Hall. Please come to hear our talented young musicians.

www.bsharpny.org Ph: 737-9109.

HAMILTON COLLEGE will present innovative composer, vocalist and writer Laurie Anderson in The Language of the Future on Saturday, April 11, 2015 at 7:30 PM in Wellin Hall of the Schambach Center.

www.hamilton.edu/college/performingarts Ph: 859-4331.

PLAYERS OF UTICA is staging God of Carnage on April 17-19 and April 23 - 26, 2015. All performances are at 7:30 PM, except April 19 and 23, which are at 2:00 PM, at

Players Theatre, 1108 State St., Utica. www.playersofutica.org Ph: 724-7624.

CMSU will present on Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 2:30 PM, our last concert of the 74th season, the Boston Trio, performing Schostakovich, Musto and Brahms.

www.uticachambermusic.org. Ph: 507-3597 or 896-6102.