All three composers whose works are featured on this program
bravely incorporated new aspects of music to the concert hall:
George Gershwin brought jazz, Alberto Nepomuceno brought the
beauty of the Portuguese language, and Nepomuceno’s student
Heitor Villa-Lobos brought Brazilian ‘choro’ music into the
fold. This concert features Sacramento’s own Natsuki Fukasawa
as the Gershwin piano soloist and is guest conducted by the
Brazilian Evandro Matté.
Trinity College Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology Eric A.
Gaim writes that Nepomuceno’s Batuque uses “diverse
themes from Brazilian folklore, including the song ‘Sapo Jururu’
from the Northeastern Bumba meu boi (a dramatic
processional dance that celebrates the death and resurrection of
a bull) and the batuque (a Central African dance of
Bantu origin).” Batuque evokes Samba-Carnival in an
orchestral setting.
The orchestra leader Walter Damrosch heard Rhapsody in
Blue and the very next day asked Gershwin to write what
became his piano concerto, simply called the Concerto in F.
Gershwin poured hours of uninterrupted writing time into it for
nearly three months, orchestrating the concerto himself (unlike
the Rhapsody). The concerto again uses influences from
jazz, but goes deeper into what was then being called “An
Experiment in Modern Music.”
In Heitor Villa-Lobos’s sixth of ten
Chôros, he used not only the full
orchestra for the first time but also a series of
Brazilian percussion instruments. Among them are wooden
tambi and tambu instruments, a friction drum
called the cuica, and a roncador, which is
essentially a lion’s roar. The piece celebrates Brazilian
choro music—one of Brazil’s earliest musical traditions.
About the Artists
Steinway Artist Natsuki Fukasawa’s music career
has taken her throughout the United States as well as Europe,
Scandinavia, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Japan, and China,
performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center and
Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall. Fukasawa has won many accolades
and international prizes, including rave reviews in Strad and
Fanfare magazines, and Best Chamber Music Recording of the Year
from the Danish Music Awards.
Fukasawa’s performance highlights include a tour of Italy
performing Gershwin’s Concerto in F as well as Beethoven’s Third
and Fourth Piano Concertos, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1,
Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, Dohnanyi’s Variations on a
Nursery Song, Mozart’s A-Major Concerto, K. 488,
Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, and Ravel’s Concerto in G
with orchestras in California. She is the pianist for the
soundtrack of the recently released film We Had to Go –
Remembering Internment, and three compact discs, including a
live solo recording, Year in Prague, one with violinist
Igor Veligan titled Voices from Eastern Europe and
another with bassoonist Scott Pool titled Vocalise. Most
recently she was featured in the documentary film by La Casa
Films and Arts titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji.
Evandro Matté is distinguished as a multifaceted
artist. He is artistic director of the Porto Alegre Symphony
Orchestra (OSPA), the SESC’s International Music Festival in
Pelotas, the Theatro São Pedro Orchestra, and the Zaffari
Community Concerts. For his cultural contribution to the
development of French arts in Brazil, in 2019 he was made a
Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry
of Culture. An innovative leader, Matté conducts orchestras and
numerous social projects with a special mission to elevate the
music and musicians of Brazil. He is frequently invited to
collaborate as a guest conductor, and has led orchestras in
Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, China, Czech Republic, Croatia,
Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the United States.
Luciano
Berio: Laborintus II
text by Edoardo Sanguineti
with Sam Nichols, electronics, and Pierpaolo Polzonetti, narrator
About the Program
Italian composer Luciano Berio pioneered electronic elements in
his scores, and in his homage to the 12th-century poet Dante
Alighieri, he laid a musical fabric (which includes recorded
audio) against a collection of poems called Laborintus
by Edoardo Sanguineti, which is spoken throughout the music. The
result is Berio’s Laborintus II. Sanguineti’s text is
thematically Dante-esque and incorporates the poetry of T.S.
Elliot and Ezra Pound alongside his own. Berio said his,
“Laborintus II is a theatre work; it can be treated as a
story, an allegory, a documentary, a dance. It can be performed
in a school, in a theatre, on television, in the open air, or in
any other place ….” In this performance these texts will be read
by Professor Pierpaolo Polzonetti, and the electronic music
section will be performed by music faculty Sam Nichols.
This program features Philip Glass’s popular first concerto for
violin, with his iconic sound: open, full of motion, and yet
without a lot of tonal changes. The soloist is Chase Spruill,
who is a champion of Glass’s violin music. This contrasts with
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony: regal and full of dueling themes,
and which also features one of his best waltzes.
Philip
Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
with Chase Spruill
Philip Glass’s First Violin Concerto was his
first piece written for the concert hall. Unlike many of his
previous works—operas, film scores, and more—the piece is
thrilling on its own without added audio-visual elements. The
piece features a moving first movement, a romantic second, and a
rousing finale that fades gently away like a wonderful memory. As
the composer said in a biography, “I composed the piece in 1987
thinking, let me write a piece that my father would have liked. .
. . A very smart nice man who had no education in music
whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls.
They’re the people that keep the whole business going.”
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth is—to borrow a phrase from
Star Wars—a duel of fates. He half-attempted suicide only a year
before by wading into the ice-cold Moscow River, hoping to catch
a fatal illness. Tchaikovsky struggled with how he was viewed by
the public (which he feared suspected his homosexuality), and his
Fifth Symphony might reflect this struggle.
Winner of the Concerto Competition to be announced.
About the Soloists
Violinist Chase Spruill has an international
reputation as a performer of contemporary music, interpreting
minimalist masters such as Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and
Henryk Gorecki. In 2020, BBC Music Magazine hailed his debut solo
album of the music of British composer Michael Nyman, saying
“Spruill plays with great spirit … and a great sense of
presence,” and called him “an engaging and convincing advocate.”
Also in 2020, Capital Public Radio called him, “a breathtaking
performer” while MusicWeb International said, “Spruill plays with
fire and yet sensitivity … and with absolutely secure rhythmic
foundations.”
He was a core faculty member with the nationally celebrated
Community MusicWorks organization in Providence, Rhode Island,
from 2012 to 2017, and was a visiting professor of violin and
orchestral studies at Wheaton College from 2015 to 2017.
Dedicated to exploring potential intersections between music and
social justice, Spruill returned to his hometown
of Vacaville to develop and run the music program at the new
school Sierra Vista (K–8) where he remains on faculty. He’s
collaborated with other notable artists such as the Kronos
Quartet, composer and electric guitarist Steven Mackey (B.A.
music ‘78, UC Davis), and the BAFTA-nominated composer Brian
Reitzell, releasing music from the critically acclaimed
television series Hannibal. His recordings appear on the
Philip Glass record label Orange Mountain Music and on Supertrain
Records.
…an engaging and convincing advocate… Spruill has an
energetic approach… plays with great spirit … and a great sense
of presence…”
