CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Lavinia Meijer

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 7:30 PM

Lavinia Meijer, Harp

J. L. DUSSEK Sonata in E-flat Major
FAURÉ Une châtelaine en sa tour, Op. 110
TAILLEFERRE Sonata
GARRETT BYRNES Visions in Twilight
E. WALTER-KÜHNE Fantasy on Themes from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
D. SCARLATTI Sonata in A Major, K. 208
D. SCARLATTI Sonata in A Major, K. 209
FLOTHUIS Pour le tombeau d’Orphée
PAUL PATTERSON Spiders, Op. 48
SALZÉDO Variations sur un thème dans le style ancien

Encores:
PAUL PATTERSON Bugs, Op. 93
J. L. DUSSEK Rondo from Sonata in C Minor, Op. 2

Rising Stars is a project of the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO), supported by the European Commission. For this series, the directors of Europe’s most important concert halls and Carnegie Hall—the only non-European member of ECHO—nominate young soloists or ensembles from their own countries to appear in other ECHO halls. Rising Stars nominees appear at Carnegie Hall in the Distinctive Debuts series in Weill Recital Hall.

Lavinia Meijer was nominated by the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

The Distinctive Debuts series is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for the presentation of young artists generously provided by The Lizabeth and Frank Newman Charitable Foundation.

Additional endowment support for international outreach has been provided by the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.

Program Notes:

By Susan Halpern

JOHANN LADISLAUS DUSSEK Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 34, No. 1
Born February 12, 1760, in Èáslav, Bohemia; died March 20, 1812, in Paris.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Dussek’s Sonata, Op. 34, No. 1, published in 1797.

Dussek, a pianist and composer, was a wanderer who studied with C. P. E. Bach in Hamburg, played for Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, served as music director to Prince Radziwill in Polish Lithuania, played in Paris for both Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, and then spent a decade in London, where he associated with Haydn. At the end of his life, he lived in Paris, where he was house-musician to Talleyrand.

Dussek published Sonata No. 1, his most popular work, in 1797; it has an almost Beethoven-like sound, although Beethoven never wrote for harp. The opening movement has a quick tempo; for contrast, after the first material is presented, Dussek introduces virtuosic passages in the harp’s high registers to achieve a different and rather showy effect. An innovator, he managed to modulate to distant keys in a way that others of his time could not manage on the single-action pedal harp: at the beginning of the first movement’s development section, the work passes through several keys.

Dussek wrote this work before Erard’s double-action harps were available. Single-action harps, mostly built in the first half of the 18th century, produced a more transparent sound and a much shorter resonance than do modern instruments.


GERMAINE TAILLEFAIRE Sonata
Born April 19, 1892, in Saint Maur Des Fossés, France; died November 7, 1983, in Paris.

Composed in 1953, Taillefaire’s Sonata received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on May 2, 1959, by Barbara Keenan, harp.

Tailleferre was the only female member associated with the famous French composers’ group, Les Six. Born Marcelle Taillefesse, she changed her last name to Tailleferre as a young adult in order to spite her father, who refused to support her musical studies. She studied piano with her mother and composed short works of her own before studying at the Paris Conservatory, where she met Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Honegger. There she won several prizes and wrote the Petit livre de harpe de Madame Tardieu for Caroline Tardieu, the Conservatory’s Assistant Professor of Harp.

In the early 1920s, years when she composed many of her important works, Tailleferre spent much time with Ravel. The 1930s, during which she completed works for orchestra as well as operas, were even more fruitful. During World War II, she lived in the United States but returned to Paris after the war. Much of the music she composed after her return, including the Sonata for Harp, which she composed in 1953 (and revised four years later) at the request of the Spanish harpist Nicanor Zabaleta (to whom the work was dedicated), was not published until after her death.

The work has three compact movements. The first, Allegretto, is intricate and good humored, and much like a march. It has frequent complex and demanding technical passages. The second movement, Lento, uses a habanera rhythm, perhaps in deference to the dedicatee’s nationality. The final movement, Allegro gaiement, alternates a lively, jazzy theme with a fanfare passage.


GABRIEL FAURÉ Une châtelaine en sa tour, Op. 110Born May 12, 1845, in Pamiers (Ariège) France; died November 4, 1924, in Paris.
Composed in 1918, Une châtelaine en sa tour, received its Carnegie Hall premiere on May 21, 1998, with Lisa Tannebaum, harp.

Fauré began his musical studies in Paris at the age of 10, and at 15, began a life-long friendship with a piano teacher ten years his senior, Camille Saint-Saëns. Initially, Fauré earned a living as an organist in Rennes and later, at some of the most famous churches in Paris. In 1896, he succeeded Jules Massenet as professor of composition at the Conservatory, where, from 1905 to 1920—when deafness forced his retirement—he was director. Honegger, a contemporary composer, counted Fauré among France’s greatest musicians; nevertheless, it took a long time for his work to become frequently performed in the United States. Copland wrote, “To the superficial listener he probably sounds superficial. But those aware of musical refinement cannot help but admire the transparent texture, the clarity of thought, the well-shaped proportions. Together they constitute a kind of magic that is difficult to analyze but lovely to hear.” Fauré’s music demonstrates his fine melodic invention, his masterful use of counterpoint, and his distinctive harmony, traditional in many respects but nonetheless sprinkled with innovation.

Une châtelaine en sa tour (A chatelaine in her tower), whose title is taken from a line of a Paul Verlaine poem, is among the finest, most lovely late-Romantic works for harp solo. (A “chatelaine” was a lady who either owned or had control of a castle or chateau.) French late-Romantic composers had a special attraction to the harp, and their work brought out its elegance and delicacy. Broken chord figurations and occasional glissandi achieve their effects, and this work, Fauré’s third solo harp composition, with its lyrical subject and restrained expression of emotion, musically illustrates the mood of the Verlaine poem, revealing the inner workings of a woman’s spirit.

In three-part form (ABA), it is flowing and refined with chaste, retiring beauty. Initially, the broken chord accompaniment surrounds the theme; then it appears in harmonics. The middle section has a more fluid, dance-like feel, and it ascends to the emotional apex of the piece, before the return of the initial more restrained section. Fauré saves the ethereal harp sounds for the piece’s conclusion.

GARRETT BYRNES Visions in Twilight
Born December 30, 1971, in Bloomington, Indiana.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Visions in Twilight, composed in 2000.

Visions in Twilight was presented at the Eighth World Harp Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2002, as a required repertoire choice for the third round of the 2004 USA International Harp Competition, and has since received numerous performances around the world.


Garrett Byrnes composed Visions in Twilight for the Turkish harpist Fatma Ceren Necipoglu, who performed its premiere. The rhapsodic composition has several linked sections. In the first section, the harp introduces several moods, techniques, and harmonies, on which Byrnes bases the rest of the piece. In the second section, the music becomes dazzling but has a very hard edge; it becomes calmer in the next part and treats the earlier material more gently. The final part reintroduces the feelings and subjects presented earlier in the work.


E. WALTER-KÜHNE Fantasy on Themes from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene OneginBorn in 1870; died in 1930.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Walter-Kühne’s Fantasy on Themes from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

Walter-Kühne taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1904–17 and at the Smolay Institute from 1891–1911. Famous for her attention to sound production on the harp and renowned for her own large, pleasant tone, she composed many fantasies from operas that still form part of the harp repertory. In this charming work drawn from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, she includes the haunting aria of Tatiana and the famous ballroom waltz.


DOMENICO SCARLATTI Sonata in A Major, K. 208; Sonata in A Major, K. 209Born October 26, 1685, in Naples; died July 23, 1757, in Madrid.

Scarlatti’s sonatas K. 208 and K. 209 received their Carnegie Hall premieres on May 23, 1964, with Lee Luvisi, piano.

Scarlatti, the founder of modern keyboard technique, was one of the greatest keyboard virtuosos of his time. In 1719, he became the staff musician of a young Portuguese princess who married the heir to the Spanish throne. From 1729 until his death, Scarlatti lived and worked in Madrid as a member of the Spanish royal household, writing most of his music expressly for the queen’s pleasure, as either performer or listener.

Although he composed operas and sacred music, we remember Scarlatti for his more than 500 sonatas for the harpsichord that are forerunners of the Classical sonata. For him, “sonata” meant little more than music that was to be “sounded” on an instrument, played rather than sung. He composed all of his sonatas in one form: a single movement divided into two sections, each of which is repeated. Many are rich in colorful echoes of the songs and dances of the Spanish people.

Each of Scarlatti’s brief sonatas deals with one particular idea, a fingering technique, a phrase, or certain instrumental timbre, or unusual harmonies. Ralph Kirkpatrick describes Sonata K. 208 as “courtly flamenco music, rendered elegant and suitable for the confines of the royal palace, as were its players and singers when Goya brought them into his tapestry cartoons a few years later.” In this sonata, Andante è cantabile, the governing idea is the anticipatory beat, which allows for some brief, interesting harmonies. The melody has Spanish flair, evocative of the climate of sunlight and warmth.

Its companion piece, in the same key, Sonata in A Major, K. 209, is a jota, a characteristic Spanish dance, happy and virtuosic. Kirkpatrick says, “Under this dizzying whirl of twirling feet, stamping heels, and shrill village instruments, the inevitable castanets are felt if not actually heard in the built-up crescendos of rhythmic acceleration that culminate in a clattering whirr at the trills.” The second section makes an excursion to the minor mode.


MARIUS FLOTHUIS Pour le tombeau d’OrphéeBorn October 30, 1914, in Amsterdam; died there on November 13, 2001.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Flothuis’s Pour le tombeau d’Orphée, composed in 1950.

Flothuis completed his doctoral degree in 1969 in Amsterdam, and from 1937 until 1942 he assisted the artistic director of the Concertgebouw. From 1945 until 1953, he was music critic of the newspaper Het Vrije Volk. He returned to the Concertgebouw as a program editor in 1953 and subsequently became artistic director (1955–74). From 1974 to 1982, he was professor of musicology at Utrecht University, and from 1980 to 1994, he served as chairman of the Zentralinstitut für Mozart-Forschung in Salzburg.

As a composer, Flothuis was largely self-taught. He composed works of all types, with the exception of opera. Pour le tombeau d’Orphée, which commands a permanent place in the harp repertory, is his first work for the harp. Predominantly a dance work, it consists of what Flothuis called ancient strophic meters. These project a sense of sadness and inevitability.

PAUL PATTERSON Spiders, Op. 48
Born June 15, 1947, in Chesterfield, England.

Spiders was commissioned by the North Wales Festival and was first performed by its dedicatee, Osian Ellis, at St. Osaph’s Cathedral in June 1984. Patterson revised it in 1985 and added an extra movement. In revised form, it debuted at the Wigmore Hall in London by Sioned Williams in 1985. Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

Patterson studied trombone at the Royal Academy of Music before studying composition with Richard Stoker, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Richard Rodney Bennett. The Manson Professor of Composition there, he headed the Composition / Contemporary Music department from 1987 to 1997. He received the Medal of Honor from the Polish Ministry of Culture for his efforts on behalf of Polish music in Britain. Early and sustained musical influences on Patterson’s work were the refined, neo-classic lines of Stravinsky and Hindemith, enhanced by the motivic structures of Bartók.

Patterson has written, “No doubt when hearing this piece all sorts of images will be conjured up of the enchanting world of the spider. The very sight of the harp strings always reminds me of a spider’s web and perhaps the harpist hands and fingers could be likened to that of the spider weaving a complicated web. The idea to write a work called Spiders came to me after a visit to Australia, where a great variety of spiders are to be found in abundance, and where incidentally I was almost bitten by a Red Backed [spider]! Whose favorite spot is to wait under the toilet seat! The movements are named after four of the most deadly spiders! “The “Dancing White Lady” is a fast 7/8 movement with lots of crossed rhythms, where the sight of legs flying in all directions could be visualized. Sharp irregular motives represent the “Red Backed Spider,” who sits patiently for its prey before it strikes with great speed. In the “Black Widow” movement, we enter the mysterious world of timelessness as the spider relentlessly weaves its web. The last movement, a tarantella, is a wild Neapolitan dance in triple time; it is believed to take its name from the “Tarantula,” whose poisonous bite is said causes a “hysterical impulse to dance”!

CARLOS SALZÉDO Variations sur un thème dans le style ancien
Born April 6, 1885, in Arachon, France; died August 17, 1961 in Waterville, Maine.

Composed in 1911, Variations sur un thème dans le style ancien received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March, 11, 1913, with Carlos Salzédo, harp.

Salzedo’s compositions are often based on well known melodies he transcribed for the harp. His early works, published in Paris before World War I, have often been compared to those of Ravel, but in a transformation after his move to the United States, where be served as first harpist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and founded the Trio de Lutece, his work came to be described as “astringent” and “athletic.” Although he was not as innovative as some of his colleagues, he was a committed, passionate advocate of the harp as a teacher, virtuoso, and composer, and he was an important leader in the evolution of the modern concert harp. Salzedo formed the harp department at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924 and founded the Salzedo Harp Colony in Camden, Maine.

Salzedo composed Variations sur un thème dans le style ancien (Variations on a Theme in Ancient Style) in 1911, while principal harpist at the Metropolitan Opera. The demanding work, not published until 1913, highlights his commitment to expanding the boundaries of harp technique. The third of a set called Trois Morceaux, this showpiece follows traditional variation format in which Salzedo created many technical hurdles full of scales and arpeggios, trills, and chords, which the harpist must navigate. An important addition to the solo harp’s repertoire, the theme takes the style of 18th-century French Classical music. The work includes eight variations and a concluding reprise of the theme.



Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Susan Halpern contributes program notes to numerous musical organizations.

Lavinia Meijer, Harp
Lavinia Meijer studied with Erika Waardenburg at the Conservatory of Utrecht and Amsterdam. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Utrecht Conservatory cum laude in 2003 and her master’s degree from the Amsterdam Conservatory cum laude in 2005.

Ms. Meijer has attended master classes with renowned harpists such as Jana Bouskova, Isabelle Moretti, Daphne Boden, Natalia Shameyva, Emilia Moskvitina, Maria Graf, Skaila Kanga, and Susann McDonald.

Beginning at a young age, Lavinia won several prizes, including first prize at the Dutch Harp Competition (1997 and 2004), first prize at the Princess Christina Competition (1997), first prize at the Stichting Jong Muziektalent Nederland (1996, 1998), second prize at the International Harp Competition in Lausanne (1998), third prize at the International Harp Competition in Lille (1999), first prize at the International Harp Competition in Brussels (2000), third prize at the 14th International Harp Competition in Israel (2001), second prize at the Reinl-Wettbewerb in Vienna (2002), and third prize at the Sixth International Harp Competition in the USA (2004). In 2005, she was awarded first prize at the Vriendenkrans contest of the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In 2007, she was awarded a Fellowship from the Borletti Buitoni Trust in London.

Ms. Meijer has been invited to perform as soloist in cities across Europe, Asia, and the United States and has performed harp concertos with renowned orchestras such as the Hague Philharmonic, the Dutch Radio Symphony, and the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra. She has performed at several festivals, including the Grachtenfestival Amsterdam, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and several World Harp congresses (Prague, 1999; Geneva, 2002; and Dublin, 2005). This season, she has been invited to perform at the International Harp Festival in Belgrade. She will also be featured in solo recitals across Europe and in the United States as part of the international Rising Stars series.

As an ambassador for the harp, Ms. Meijer tries to find not only lesser known harp music from earlier composers, but also tries to find composers interested in writing new music for the harp. In April 2007, she performed a world premiere of a harp concerto by Carlos Michans, with the Radio Chamber Philharmonie conducted by Thierry Fischer.

For more information on Ms. Meijer, please visit laviniameijer.com.

ECHO

The European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) gathers the directors of some of the most important concert halls around the world to nurture cultural exchange and encourage the circulation of work. ECHO promotes projects in two main areas: launching the international careers of young artists through its Rising Stars series, and commissioning new musical works by composers collaborating with artists from other disciplines. For Rising Stars, ECHO members nominate young soloists or ensembles from their own countries to appear in other ECHO halls. The nominees appear at Carnegie Hall––the only non-European member of ECHO––in the Distinctive Debuts series. The participating organizations are the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Megaron (Athens), the Festspielhaus (Baden-Baden), Cité de la Musique (Paris), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Symphony Hall (Birmingham), the Philharmonie (Cologne), the Barbican Centre and Royal Festival Hall (London), the Philharmonie (Luxembourg), Carnegie Hall (New York), the Konzerthaus and Musikverein (Vienna), and the Konserthuset (Stockholm). The European Commission has supported ECHO’s programs since 2000.

Lavinia Meijer was nominated by Cité de la Musique (Paris).