July 17, 2025

PRE-CONCERT RECITAL Arboreto Salvatico for Two Cellos

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA
Born: 1962
Music for Two Cellos Composed: 2003

At first glance, music for two cellos might seem I. Il Pino

rare—it features two lower-range instruments that II. Il Tasso
must do without the harmonic richness of piano
III. La Sequoia
accompaniment. But there is a surprising amount of
music for two cellos, and composers have responded Giovanni Sollima trained first in Sicily and then in
to its challenges in varied ways. This concert offers Germany and Austria, where he studied cello with
music for two cellos, composed by quite different Antonio Janigro, and he has made his career as a
composers in three different centuries. composer, cellist, and recording artist. Sollima is
an eclectic composer, and there have been many
Sonata in G Major for Two Cellos, Lv. 4, No. 4 influences on his music, including minimalism, jazz,
and world and ethnic music. Sollima has led a two-
JEAN-BAPTISTE BARRIÈRE track career: he is at once a “classical” performer and
Born: 1707 a daring experimenter who has made some haunting,
Died: 1747 surrealistic performance videos.
Composed: 1737-1740
Sollima’s Arboreto Salvatico (“Forest Arboretum”)
I. Andante was inspired by the work of the Italian novelist
II. Adagio Mario Rigoni Stern (1921–2008), famed for his close
III. Allegro prestissimo observation of the natural world. Each of Sollima’s
three movements was inspired by a specific tree—
Born in southwestern France, Jean Barrière learned
pine, yew, and sequoia—and his music requires
to play the viol as a young man, but he was soon
extended techniques as well as individual virtuosity.
attracted to its successor, the modern cello—a
much more powerful and flexible instrument. Barrière
Variations on a Theme by Rossini
became so good a cellist that at age 24 he moved
to Paris, where he was named a member of the (arr. for two cellos)
Académie Royale de Musique in the court of Louis XV. NICCOLÒ PAGANINI
Unfortunately, Barrière—by all accounts one of the Born: 1782
finest cellists of his era—died just a month after his Died: 1840
40th birthday. Composed: 1818

Many of Barrière’s cello sonatas employ a second Rossini composed his opera Mosè in Egitto (Moses
cello as the continuo line, but in the Sonata in G in Egypt) in 1818 and then expanded it into a grand
Major, Barrière treats the two instruments as equally opera as Moïse et Pharaon (Moses and Pharaoh) in
important, though the first cello more often has the 1827. For a production of the original version in Naples
leading melodic line. Published in Paris in 1740, the in 1819, he added a prayer of the Israelites, led by
Sonata in G Major is in three brief movements: a Moses at the end of Act III: Dal tuo stellato soglio.
poised Andante, a brief Adagio, and then a blistering
(and fun) Allegro prestissimo that requires two first- The great violinist Niccolò Paganini wrote a brief
class performers. set of variations on this melodic prayer for violin
and orchestra, and those variations have also been
frequently performed in an arrangement for cello and
piano by Pierre Fournier. At this concert, however,
they are heard in an arrangement for two cellos by
the German composer-cellist Thomas Werner-
Mifune (1941–2016).
Program Notes
This is a very pleasing arrangement: the two cellists The music itself bears some relation to Debussy’s
exchange melodic and accompanimental lines two books of piano preludes, published in 1910 and
throughout so that both get to share the spotlight, and 1913: these six brief pieces are harmonically spare and
there is much brilliant writing for each along the way. subdued in mood. Each has an evocative title—the
epigraph—and all except the third end very quietly.
Just as the Preludes are evocations of moods and
CONCERT moments, the Épigraphes may be thought of as
impressions of faraway places or particular moments.

Six Épigraphes Antiques The six pieces: To Invoke Pan, God of the Wind of
Summer, which Debussy asks to have performed “in
CLAUDE DEBUSSY the style of a pastorale”; For a Tomb without Name,
Born: 1862 with outer sections in a very free 5/4 meter; That the
Died: 1918
Night Might Be Propitious, with a quietly shimmering
Composed: 1914
beginning that gives way to bright flashes of sound;
For the Dancer with Miniature Cymbals, which features
Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d’été
arpeggiated chords at the beginning and bright
(To invoke Pan, god of the summer wind) sounds later; For the Egyptian, which Debussy asks to
Pour un tombeau sans nom have performed “without stiffness”; and To Thank the
(For a nameless tomb) Morning Rain, where the steady patter of sixteenth
Pour que la nuit soit propice notes echoes the sound of the rain—Debussy brings
(That the night may be favorable) back the main theme of the opening piece at the close.
Pour la danseuse aux crotales
(For the dancer with crotales) Program note by Eric Bromberger
Pour l’Égyptienne
(For the Egyptian) Music for 8
Pour remercier la pluie au matin (Co-Commission by the SCMS Commissioning Club)
(To thank the morning rain) JOHN NOVACEK
Born: 1964
Debussy’s Six Épigraphes Antiques are unfamiliar to Composed: 2025
most audiences, and the music performed on this
concert has an especially complex history. In 1897–98, I. Step-to
Debussy wrote a collection of pieces to accompany II. Coconino
a reading of his friend Pierre Louÿs’ Chansons de III. Heirloom Stomp (Thinking of Jelly Roll)
Bilitis. Louÿs—a photographer, poet, and author—had
published Chansons de Bilitis in 1894. The Chansons, Music for 8, for double string quartet, is the result of
purportedly Greek poems in the manner of Sappho, a joint commission from the Seattle Chamber Music
were actually the work of Louÿs himself. They tell of the Society, The Schubert Club, Colorado College Summer
experiences of a Greek maiden “born at the beginning Music Festival, and Festival Mozaic.
of the sixth century preceding our era, in a mountain
village on the banks of the Melas forming the eastern I think of the work as belonging to the category of
boundary of Pamphylia.” Divertimento, or Dance Suite, and indeed I hear/see the
first movement ‘Step-to’ as a mini-ballet. Following a
Debussy doubted that the recitation of these poems brash opening flourish (thereafter a recurring motto)
needed music and wrote brief backgrounds for two reiterating the step up of the interval of a 2nd, all four
flutes, two harps, and celesta to accompany some of violins enter one after another, their one-upmanship
them; he also wrote some brief piano pieces as part of emphasizing the sense of ‘stepping-to’ as a sort of
this. In 1914, only four years before his death, Debussy provocative challenge. For the most part however, this
rewrote these earlier pieces for piano four-hands and is a good-natured - if spiky - neoclassical piece in
published them as the Six Épigraphes Antiques. compact sonata-form that ultimately settles into an
off-kilter waltz. It leads directly to…

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‘Coconino’ - a term originally derived from the and Winds, K. 452: the two works share the same
Hopi language, and one that has acquired various instrumentation (oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and
contemporary applications in the Southwestern US, piano), the same key (E-flat Major), and the same
geographical, sociological, geological. (It even denotes pattern of movements. Beethoven greatly admired the
one of the sandstone strata in the Grand Canyon.) wind music of Mozart, but he was taking a real chance
Some of my most treasured memories are of taking- here by inviting direct comparison with music that
in the star-packed skies, desert terrain, ancient Mozart himself had called “the finest of my works,” and
ruins (Anasazi, et al) of Arizona, New Mexico, the Four many have felt that—however attractive Beethoven’s
Corners, Northern Mexico. I consider this my ‘Desert quintet might be—it does not match the Mozart, which
Nights’ piece, its unhurried nocturnal dance (hints of is one of the glories of the chamber music repertory.
the tango) enclosing a middle section that rises to an
unabashedly romantic climax. Beethoven recognized that performances by this
combination of performers might be rare but that there
The final ‘Heirloom Stomp’ is my humble tribute to that was a ready supply of string players eager to perform
key figure of early New Orleans jazz, Jelly Roll Morton. (and to buy!) new music, and so he arranged his wind
The series of records Morton made in 1926 in Chicago quintet as a piano quartet: when the Quintet for Piano
with his Red Hot Peppers are merely some of the best and Winds was published in 1801, that first edition
ever made. I particularly appreciate his compositions’ also included parts for violin, viola, and cello, so that
3rd strains (ie, tunes), where a series of solos and the music could be performed in either version. The
polyphonic ensembles build to an almost unbearably music is essentially the same in the two versions: both
exciting close. I challenged myself to write a raggy have the same movement markings, the same number
showpiece for octet that, while exhibiting some of of measures, and the same key. Most of the changes
these trad-jazz markers, contends with post-modern result from arranging music originally intended for
intrusions of the waltz and even a brief old-school five players for the new ensemble of four players. The
development section. prominent piano part is identical in the two versions,
but at some points Beethoven adds doublestops to the
Program Note by John Novacek string parts to complete the harmony. He also makes
use of the greater flexibility of the strings: for example,
a fairly simple passage originally written for the horn is
Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16 greatly embellished when it is given to the viola in the
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN revised version.
Born: 1770
Died: 1827 If the quartet version loses some of the contrast of
Composed: 1801 wind sonorities that so distinguished the original,
it compensates for this with greater flexibility and
I. Grave — Allegro ma non troppo at some points greater detail. In any case, this
II. Andante cantabile arrangement marked the end of Beethoven’s interest in
III. Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo the piano quartet form. He had written three while still
a teenager in Bonn, but after this arrangement he never
Virtually unknown to audiences, Beethoven’s Piano returned to the form.
Quartet in E-flat Major is quite authentic: it is an
arrangement—by the composer himself—of his Quintet Those who know the wind quintet version will
for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 16, originally rediscover familiar pleasures in a slightly different
composed in 1796. As a young man, Beethoven wrote form here. A dignified slow introduction leads to a
a great deal of chamber music for winds. In Bonn, sonata-form movement of Mozartean grace with a
Archduke Maximilian Franz maintained a wind octet distinguished part for piano. The lyric slow movement
that serenaded him at mealtimes and played at court features exchanges between piano and strings, while
functions, and the teenaged Beethoven had written the good-natured rondo-finale offers the pianist what
music for these players. After he moved to Vienna in is virtually a solo part, complete with opportunities for
1792, Beethoven continued to write for winds, often in cadenza-like improvisation.
combination with piano.
Program note by Eric Bromberger
The major work from these years was the Quintet
for Piano and Winds, which was—as everyone
quickly saw—modeled on Mozart’s Quintet for Piano