Donald F. Cook Recital Hall M.O. Morgan Building

Saturday, 8 February 2003 at 8:00 p.m.

Winds of Change Leslie Newman, flute

Kristina Szu~or, piano

Six Pieces for Flute and Piano Song of the Ashugi Lullaby Dance In the Azerbaijan Mountains At the Spring Noctume

Black Anemones

Canzone

*Piao

Fikret Amirov

Joseph Schwantner

Samuel Barber

Chan Ka Nin

*Canadian premiere. Commissioned with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council

Passacaglia for solo flute, op 48 #2

Sonata for Flute and Piano Allegro giocoso Grave Allegro vivace

Suite Paysanne Hongroise

intermission

Ernst von Dohnanyi

Jindrich Feld

Barto k-Arma

This concert is being recorded for future broadcast on CBC's In Performance

ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL CC>NSEIL DES ARTS DE L '" C>NTARIO

Leslie Newman made her professional debut with the Toronto Symphony Orche~stra at the age of 18, performing Carl Nielsen's Flute Concerto under the baton of Andrew Davis. She has appeared in recital in New York, Montreal, Chicago, Washington D.C., Taipei, and London's prestigious Wigmore Hall, where her two performances were broadcast live by the BBC's Radio 3. Festival appearances include Banff, Bogota, Salzburg, Sorrento, and the Stratford International Flute Festival. Her debut CD of Russian and Czech flute sonatas, released by CALA/United, was described by Gramophone Magazine as an .. .immensely worthwhile contribution to the catalogue.

At the invitation of Andrew Davis, Leslie was again featured as soloist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on their tour to the 1988 Winter Olympics Arts Festival in Calgary. Since then, she has recorded four concerti with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, and has performed all the major flute concerti with orchestras throughout Canada. As a recitalist and chamber musician, she features regularly on CBC Radio in Canada and the BBC's Radio 3 in the United Kingdom. She has been invited to play guest Principal Flute with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle, the Halle Orchestra with Kent Nagano, the Bournemouth Symphony and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

A native of Alberta, Leslie won first prize in the Canadian National Competitive Festival of Music at the age of just 17. Upon completion of her bachelor of music degree from the University of Toronto she was awarded a prestigious Canada Council Grant. This enabled her to study with the late Thomas Nyfenger at Yale University, where she gained her master's degree along with the honour of being named outstanding performance major. While still a student at Yale, Leslie won top prize in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's National Young Performers' Competition. She continued her studies with Julius Baker at the renowned Juilliard School.

Leslie currently lives in Toronto. Her upcoming engagements include concertos in Montreal, Edmonton, and the Oregon Bach Festival, as well as recitals in Washington, D.C., and across Canada.

Pianist Kristina Szutor is a native of British Columbia who now lives in Newfoundland where she is associate professor at Memorial University's School of Music. She holds a masters degree from the Juilliard School of Music and a doctorate in piano performance from the University of British Columbia. She has concertized throughout Canada and in New York, Switzerland and Spain, and she can be heard frequently on CBC radio, both locally on Musicraft, as well as nationally on shows like Two New Hours and Take Five. While she regularly performs a wide variety of traditional solo and chamber repertoire, she has a special flair for 20th century music and has in recent years been very active in premiering and commissioning new works. Her CD of solo piano music entitled Bookends in Time for example features works from the first and last decades of the 20th century and includes a newly commissioned work as well as three premiere recordings. She can also be heard on Newfoundland composer Michael Parker's CD entitled Lyre. Recent commissions include a new work for solo piano by composer Marjan Mozetich entitled At the Temple and a new work for flute and piano entitled Piao by Chan Ka Nin commissioned together with flutist Leslie Newman. Recent concerts include several with Leslie Newman in venues reaching from Winnipeg to Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NOTES

Fikret Amirov was born in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan on 22 November, 1..g22. His father was a well-known singer and player of the tar, an instrument which resembles a long­necked lute. The young Amirov himself also studied the tar at the Kirovabad Music College, and composition at the Conservatory in Baku. His studies were interrupted by the war, in the early stages of which he was badly wounded. (He entitled one of two symphonic poems he composed after demobilisation In memory of the heroes ofthe Great Fatherland Wary. As well as his work as a composer, Amirov was always very active in musical administration, having been at various times artistic director of both the Kirovabad and Baku Philharmonic Orchestras, director of the Azerbaijani Theatre of Opera and Ballet and secretary to the Azerbaijani Composers' Union. In 1958 he was made a People's Artist of the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic, and seven years later he was awarded the title National Artist of the USSR. It has been said that Amirov's music "combines the traditions of Azerbaijani folk music with those of Russian and European art music"; even the titles of the Six Pieces for Flute and Piano seem to bear this out.

Joseph Schwantner was born in Chicago in 1943, and has· ~eld teaching positions at Eastman, Yale and Juilliard. His Black Anemones comes from a larger work for soprano and orchestra, called Magabunda. This 4-movement piece uses as text 4 poems by the Colombian poetess, Agueda Pizarro. Black Anemones is the 3rct song in the cycle, and was transcribed for flute and piano by Schwantner himself. The text is hauntingly evocative, and beautifully mirrored in the twisting, weaving lyricism of the music.

Black Anemones .... Agueda Pizarro

Mother, you watch me sleep and your life is a large tapestry of all the colours of all the most ancient murmurs, knot after twin knot, root after root of story.

You don't know how fearful your beauty is while I sleep.

Your hair is the moon of a sea sung in silence.

You walk with silver lions and wait to estrange me deep in the rug

covered with sorrow embroidered by you in a fierce symmetry

binding with thread of Persian silk the pinetrees and the griffms.

You call me blind, you touch my eyes with black anemones.

I am a spider that keeps spinning from the spot in my womb,

weaving through eyes the dew of flames on the web.

Another transcription by the composer for flute and piano is Samuel Barber's Canzone. In a letter dating from July, 1926, Barber wrote, "It takes some courage to go into an art which shows you as you are, and no doubt many wonderful souls have shrunk from the ordeal and refused to put their real emotions into art form for others to know." This reworking of the exquisite flute solo from the 2nd movement of his Piano Concerto, op. 38, is a testament to Barber's willingness to share the poignancy of his inner life through his music.

Chan Ka Nin has received an impressive collection of national and international awards for his compositions, including two Juno Awards for Best Classical Composition. This piece was ~~~ssioned by Kristina Szutor and Leslie Newman, and received its world premiere at the

Ilhps' Collection in Washington, D.C. Chan Ka Nin describes his piece in the following way:

"The title Piao means "floating". The composer is fascinated by the Chinese word because different images of "floating" are conjured up when Piao is used in conjunction with other words. When used with "water" it designates endless drifting; when used with "air", it describes non­directional falling, like a leaf; when used with "earth", it could suggest the appearance of spirits; when used with "time" it signifies the passage of time; when used with "sound", it suggests music from a distance; when used with "joumeys", it means aimless wandering. All these connotations seem to suit the sound of the flute, which can be airy, light, dark, mysterious, haunting and agile. Throughout this piece, the piano reiterates contrasting loud chords as if to give anchor to the fleeting sound of the wind instrument. Instantaneous thoughts are constantly guided and interrupted by the etemal truth."

Ernst von Dohnanyi was a towering figure in Hungarian music life. He was bom in 1877, and by the age of 23 had established himself as the greatest Hungarian pianist and composer since Liszt. He obtained his formal education at the Budapest Academy, where Bartok, his friend from early school days, was also a student. In 1898 he made his London debut with a performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, thus laying the foundations for world fame as a pianist. He used this new position to reintroduce neglected works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert into the repertoire, and was also one of the first world-famous pianists to perform chamber music regularly. Dohnanyi was named director of the Budapest Academy in 1934, at a time when he was also conducting the Hungarian Radio Orchestra. From 1939 much of his time was devoted to fighting against growing Nazi influences. He managed to keep all the Jewish members in his orchestra until two months after the German occupation of Hungary, at which point he was forced to disband the organisation. After the war Dohnanyi left Europe and, after a brief time in Argentina, settled in Tallahassee, Florida, where he became pianist and composer-in-residence at the Florida State University. The Passacaglia for Solo Flute is the last piece the composer wrote before his death. Written in 1959, it is a set of20 variations on an 8-bar theme. Dohnanyi gives a nod to modemism by using all twelve tones in his theme. However, here any influence of serialism ends, for the Passacaglia is a tonal work which stays true to the lush romantic style that was Dohnanyi's trademark.

The flautists' repertoire has been considerably enhanced by the Czech composer Jindfich Feld. In 1954 he composed a Flute Concerto, which was performed by Jean-Pierre Rampal, and three years later came the Sonata for Flute and Piano, which was later given an altemative string orchestra accompaniment. There is also a duo for flute and bassoon, a trio for flute, violin and cello, two dances for flute and guitar, a concert fantasy for flute, string orchestra and percussion, and an American Sonatine for flute and piano. Both of Feld's parents were violinists, so it was perhaps not surprising that he himself learned to play the violin and the viola. He studied at the Conservatory and Academy of Music in his native Prague, and for his graduation piece composed a Concerto for Orchestra, which perhaps was inspired by his great admiration for Bartok. In 1972 he was appointed professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory and he has also acted as visiting professor at the Universities of Adelaide, Australia and Indiana, USA.

Bela Bartok was bom in 1881. His early musical studies were under the tutelage of his mother, who brought up the family after his father's death in 1888. When he was 13, Bartok entered the Gymnasium at Bratislava, where Ernest von Dohnanyi was an elder schoolmate. Following in the footsteps of Dohnanyi, he later attended the Budapest Academy, where he proved himself a gifted pianist and composer. Bartok was deeply influenced by Hungarian peasant music. For two years (1912-14) he practically gave up composition to devote himself to its collection, arrangement and study, until the onset of WWI forced an end to his expeditions. The Suite Paysanne Hongroise (Hungarian Peasant Suite) was originally written for piano. It was transcribed for flute and piano by Paul Anna, a Hungarian pianist who studied with Bartok at the Franz Liszt Academy.

Programme notes for Feld and Amirov by Peter Avis. All other programme notes by Leslie Newman