Today’s musicians, who are colleagues and friends, are here performing together for the first time as a ’cello chamber group. Brant Taylor, one of their number, has offered the suggestion that “the ‘cello is particularly well-suited to this type of ensemble, because the range of the instrument is extensive enough to cover the full treble and bass ranges. The piano is the only other instrument of which this can be said. The sound of multiple ‘cellos is very full and ‘orchestral’.”Bryan Kelly, born in Oxford in 1934, studied with the well-known British composers Herbert Howells and Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music, and briefly with the great French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He has composed extensively, and if he is perhaps known best for choral music written for Anglican worship, he has written for every standard orchestral instrument. He also appears regularly as a solo pianist, accompanist, and lecturer. His Three Spanish Pieces are heard today not in transcription, but in their original form, for four ‘cellos.
From Holberg’s Time is the full title Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) gave to the music we usually call the Holberg Suite. The dedicatee is question was Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), the extraordinary Scandinavian literary figure of the Enlightenment (the 18th Century philosophical movement characterized by rationalism), claimed by both Norway and Denmark as one of the founders of their literature, and the father-figure of Scandinavian drama. Grieg, in his own time, was a major founder of Norwegian musical nationalism.
Grieg subtitled today’s music “suite in olden style”, since he chose Baroque dance forms for the movements of the work and said he modeled them on the French harpsichordists who were Holberg’s contemporaries. There are also hints of German and Italian forms, but the harmonies involved are definitely 19th Century. Written in 1884 to honor the bicentenary of Holberg’s birth, the suite originally was for piano solo, but Grieg orchestrated it for string orchestra the following year.
Werner Thomas Mifune is well-known for his transcriptions for various number of ‘cellos, and in his arrangement which we hear today very little is altered from Grieg’s string orchestra version of the music aside from some registral changes.
Harold C. Schonberg, in his excellent book “The Lives of the Great Composers” (published by W,W, Norton & Company), wrote, “When Grieg came to maturity, it was as a short, quiet, exquisite man who specialized in short, quiet, exquisite pieces of music.” Indeed, Grieg is most (perhaps, too) often described as a “miniaturist.” Debussy termed Grieg’s music “bonbons wrapped in snow.”
What sort of person was this diminutive Scandinavian man? A contemporary. Ernest Closson, spoke of him as “small, thin, and slightly built. His is a child’s body, always in movement; his motions are short and quick, strangely jerky and angular, and with every step he takes his whole body shakes as though from a limp. He is all nervous sensibility; his energy is striking. His head, which seems too large for his body, is intelligent and very fine, with its long grey hair brushed backwards; his face is lean, his chin clean-shaven, his nose short and arched. And his eyes – what eyes! They are grey-green: one can imagine in them a corner of his native Norway, with its sad fjords and its light mists. His look is serious, and infinitely gentle; he has a particular expression which seems at once morbid, uneasy, and childishly naïve. The total impression his countenance gives is one of kindness, gentleness, uprightness, sincerity, and modesty. He has a sort of horror at the flattering inquisitiveness which the crowd shows towards a celebrity. There is not the least pose about him, and his behavior is that of an ordinary person; he never thinks of himself as being the object of people’s gaze and never seems to be proclaiming: ”Here I am: take a good look at me!”
Adolph Brodsky was the man who gave the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. Brodsky’s wife told of a (largely first) meeting between three composers, Grieg being one of them. Brahms was rehearsing one of his piano trios with Brodsky at the latter’s home, and was invited to stay for dinner, not being told that Tchaikovsky, whom he had never met, was also invited. When Tchaikovsky arrived, the rehearsal was still in progress, and at its end he was somewhat obviously uncomfortable, since he was not particularly fond of what he had heard.
Quoting Frau Brodsky: “The situation might have become difficult, but at that moment the door was flung open and in came our dear friends – Grieg and his wife, bringing, as they always did, a kind of sunshine with them. They knew Brahms, but had never met Tchaikovsky before. The latter loved Grieg’s music, and was instantly attracted by these two charming people.” At dinner, Nina Grieg was seated between Brahms and Tchaikovsky, but – again quoting Brodsky’s wife, “she started from her seat, exclaiming: ‘I cannot sit between these two. It makes me feel so nervous.’ Grieg sprang up, saying, ‘But I have the courage,’ and exchanged places with her. So the three composers sat together, all in good spirits. I can see Brahms now taking hold of a dish of strawberry jam, and saying he would have it all for himself and no one else should get any. It was more like a children’s party than a gathering of great composers.”
…back to program notes.
