Program 

 Program is subject to change

 Program Notes 

by Joseph Gusmano

Erwin Schulhoff: Suite No. 3 for the Left Hand

Schulhoff composed this suite for left hand in 1926. At that time, he was living in Prague and would eventually join the faculty at the Prague Conservatory in 1929. Schulhoff was among the first of his generation to actively incorporate jazz and ragtime rhythms into his compositions. This affinity for American music, his Jewish background, and his communist leanings made Schulhoff very unpopular with the Nazi Party in Germany. When they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, they arrested and deported the composer to Wülzberg prison, where he died from tuberculosis.

Suite No. 3 for Left Hand features many of Schulhoff’s trademark compositional practices. Rather than write serial or free atonal works like many of his modernist contemporaries, he employs a mix of triadic, quartal (chords built in fourths rather than thirds), and modal harmonies.

H. Leslie Adams: Etude in A-flat minor from Book 2 No. 2

Adams was born in 1932 in Cleveland, Ohio, and is a prolific composer of vocal, orchestral and chamber music. His musical life began as he accompanied student choirs and a youth choir at Antioch Baptist Church. Adams studied at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music before studying composition privately with Robert Starer and Vittorio Giannini in New York City. He draws influence from Western art music, gospel, spirituals, jazz, and Afro-Cuban music. Though Adams is best known for his vocal music, he has a considerable amount of purely instrumental music.

The Etude in A-flat Minor comes from his Twenty-Six Etudes for solo piano, which he composed over a ten-year period, beginning in 1997. The piece presents a number of challenges to the performer including mixed and irregular meters and double-octave passagework, as well as relatively chromatic and contrapuntal melodies. This etude also uses modal harmony, as the main theme is in Ab Dorian.

Clara Schumann: Romanze in A minor, Op. 21 No. 1

Here is the first of the Drei Romanzen composed by Clara Schumann in 1853, one year before her husband Robert was committed to a sanatorium after attempting suicide. At this point in her life, she and her husband had cultivated a close relationship with a young Johannes Brahms, who would often visit Robert in the sanatorium and compose pieces for Clara as a way to distract her. Clara had studied composition with her father as well as with Felix Mendelssohn, and she premiered many of her husband’s works for solo piaNo. Unfortunately, Robert’s failing health and the task of raising their children often got in the way of her compositional efforts.

The first romanze of Op. 21 begins in A Minor with a somber theme in the right hand, then
modulates to the key of F Major with a brighter, more animated theme. Eventually Schumann modulates back to A Minor, by way of D Minor, and presents the first theme again, this time in both hands. This work demonstrates a careful use of dissonance grounded in functional tonal harmony, as well as a mastery of virtuosic Romantic piano technique.

Johannes Brahms: Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118 No. 2

This Intermezzo is the second movement of Brahms’ Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118, his penultimate solo piano work. In total, the set includes four intermezzos, a ballade, and a romanze. Completed in 1893, Brahms dedicated the work to Clara Schumann. Clara and her husband Robert were earlier supporters of Brahms’ music, and the trio developed a very close, lifelong friendship.

Unlike his previous piano works, opus 118 is gentle and introspective in character, focusing on subtle melodic and harmonic development rather than technically complex figurations and cadenzas. A mature composer at the time of the piece’s composition, Brahms was able to methodically spin out the many melodic and harmonic possibilities of a relatively small musical motive. Though he was often ridiculed as being far too conservative with his harmonic language by contemporaries like Liszt and Wagner, the Intermezzo in A Major still features some relatively stark shifts in tonal centers.

Liszt/Schubert: Soirees de Vienne No. 6

Composed in 1852, Soirées de Vienne is the sixth of nine Valse-Caprices that Liszt wrote, inspired by waltzes written by Franz Schubert. Liszt transcribed and quoted Schubert more than any other composer, which is significant given the sheer number of transcriptions and concert paraphrases that Liszt composed during his lifetime. This movement is based on Schubert’s Valse sentimentale, Op. 50, No. 13, though the tempestuous introduction is Liszt’s original music.

Liszt contorts Schubert’s music to fit his acrobatic piano technique, transposing and ornamenting the original melody to cover the full range of the keyboard. He is able to contrast furious passages in double octaves with gentler, but no less demanding, passages in chromatic thirds. The silences in this piece are often as dramatic and compositionally rigorous as the flurries of notes that Lizst executes. Liszt internalizes and maintains the soothing character of Schubert’s original waltz while elevating the material into a fresh and technically challenging piece of piano repertoire.

Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

Perhaps the most famous piece of Mussorgsky’s output, Pictures at an Exhibition was inspired by the water color paintings of Viktor Hartmann, an artist, architect, designer and close personal friend of the composer. After Hartmann died suddenly of an aneurysm, an exhibition of 400 of his works was put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky donated two pieces that Hartmann had gifted to him and then attended the exhibition itself. This experience inspired him to compose Pictures at an Exhibition, which follows his journey through the exhibition. Each movement of the suite is meant to represent one of Hartmann’s paintings, with the exception of the Promenade, which appears in variation throughout the piece. This movement is meant to be transitional music representing Mussorgsky walking through the exhibit. The suite was originally conceived for solo piano, but it has been orchestrated a number of times, most famously by Maurice Ravel

 About the Artist 

Dominic Cheli, piano

Dominic Cheli’s playing has been described as “spontaneous yet perfect, the best of how a young person can play.” (Symphony Magazine). His rapidly advancing career included his Walt Disney Concert Hall Debut with legendary conductor Valery Gergiev where Dominic was described as “mesmerizing, (he) transfixed the audience…his fingers were one with each key.” (LA Times). He gave his Carnegie Hall Recital Debut in 2019 and has had a busy performing and recording career ever since. He recently recorded his second CD on the Naxos label of the music of Liszt/Schubert, and a third CD of the music of Erwin Schulhoff on the Delos Label featuring his collaboration on Piano Concerto No.2 with Maestro James Conlon. He also recently completed work as a composer, audio editor and performer on the documentary Defying Gravity (2021).

A native of St. Louis, Dominic has performed with orchestras all across the country and abroad including the San Diego Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Colburn Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Adrian Symphony, and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (Germany). He has worked with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, James Conlon, Kesho Watanabe, Gerard Schwarz, Yaniv Dinur, Markus Huber, Rossen Milanov, Arthur Fagen, Bruce Kiesling, Matthew Aucoin, and many others. Dominic recently debuted at several major festivals across the United States including the Ravinia Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Virginia Arts Festival. Upcoming engagements include appearances with the Seattle Symphony, a re-invitation to the Ravinia Festival, his debut at Alice Tully Hall, and recitals in Philadelphia, Washington D.C and New York City.

In July 2017, Cheli’s first album, featuring the music of Muzio Clementi and released by Naxos, was hailed as “definitive performances, that match splendid playing with an appreciation of Clementi’s diverse, classically based style.” Also in 2017, Dominic was named 1st prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York City.

With a fascination and appreciation for the benefits of technology especially in our new virtual age, Dominic was appointed LIVE Director of Tonebase Piano in 2021. As a result, he is the host and presenter of numerous virtual lectures, performances and workshops each month to the 4,000+ subscribers on the platform. His mission is to share personal knowledge and invite guests to democratize high-level music education, allowing everyone to learn from and be inspired by the best!

Committed to engaging with his surrounding community, Dominic regularly performs at high schools, retirement homes, and gives both masterclasses and lectures for his younger audiences. Upon invitation, he has performed with Paul Coletti at ViolaFest in Los Angeles for younger students, and “Baby Got Bach” with Pianist Orli Shaham at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC. Dominic has performed as an artist for Project: Music Heals Us, a non-profit organization that presents interactive classical music performances to diverse audiences in order to provide encouragement, education, and healing with a focus on elderly, disabled, rehabilitating, incarcerated and homeless populations.

In his spare time, Dominic enjoys cooking and training for Ironman triathlons.