Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118

Johannes Brahms maintained a close relationship with Robert and Clara Schumann for most of his life. As a young man, the Schumanns supported his compositional efforts and regularly programmed his works alongside their own. After Robert was committed to an asylum, Brahms would pass him messages from Clara and vice versa. The Six Pieces for Piano were published in 1893 as a set. Brahms dedicated this work to Clara Schumann, his lifetime friend and collaborator. He would only publish one more work for solo piano before his death in 1897.

The first of the six pieces is titled Intermezzo, as are the second, fourth, and sixth pieces in this set. Normally an intermezzo would appear in between two larger sections of music, so it is curious that Brahms would begin the set with this formal device. The third and fourth pieces are titled Ballade and Romanze, respectively. The term ballade comes from a type of old French poetic verse that evolved to suggest a single-movement piano piece reminiscent of the romantic songs that grew from this poetic form. Similarly, a romanze is a relatively short piece of music that reflects personal sentiments rather than a precise formal layout.

David Fulmer (b. 1981)
I have loved a stream and a shadow (With glitter of sun-rays, Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back to heaven…)

American conductor, composer, and violinist David Fulmer studied composition with Milton Babbitt and violin with Robert Mann at The Juilliard School. In 2016 he won the Koussevitzky Award and a Guggenheim Scholarship. Fulmer has served as Music Director of the Hunter Symphony since 2017 and has appeared as guest conductor for orchestras all around the world.

The title for this work is inspired by the American expatriate and poet Ezra Pound. He was immensely influential for writers like Ernest Hemmingway and Robert Frost. (Unfortunately, Pound was also a collaborator with the Fascist government in Italy under Mussolini as well as the Salò Republic, or the Nazi puppet state in Italy that was established towards the end of the Second World War.) The line “with glitter of sun-rays, nor with stars stretched, nor looking back to heaven…” comes from a 120-section poem called The Cantos, which he wrote over the course of nearly four decades. In total, the poem is nearly 800 pages long. Fulmer’s work is incredibly free in terms of its rhythmic and harmonic content, but it is broken down into three distinct sections labeled I., II., and III.

Todd Moellenberg
Leg of Lamb (after Bernadette Mayer)

Todd Moellenberg is a pianist, composer, and poet based in Los Angeles. He regularly interprets the works of Ligeti, Stockhausen, Grisey, and Boulez. Moellenberg completed a DMA in contemporary piano performance at UC San Diego under the tutelage of Alex Karis. His research focused on repetition and fixation in the music of Ravel, Barraqué, and his own compositions. Moellenberg draws heavily from avant-garde musical and poetic traditions in his original compositions.

This work is inspired by the poem “Leg of Lamb” written by the NYC-based poet Bernadette Mayer. In this poem, Mayer explores the nature of poetry, comparing it to a prism that scatters and reorganizes words rather than light. Similarly, the music in this piece repeats, but each repetition is refracted and reorganized such that the material always sounds fresh. The complex rhythms of this piece demonstrate Moellenberg’s academic interest in 20^th century modernist composers.

Rebecca Saunders (b. 1967)
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Rebecca Saunders is a London-born composer who lives and works as a freelance artist in Berlin. In 2019 The Guardian ranked her work Skin (2016) as the sixteenth greatest piece of art music written since the year 2000. Saunders completed a PhD in music composition at the University of Edinburgh in 1997. She has won several composition prizes worldwide, including the Busoni Prize and the Hindemith Prize. Saunders has composed works for world-renowned ensembles including the Arditti Quartet and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

This work for solo piano was commissioned by the Welsh College of Music and Drama. The piece is full of equally spare and dense harmonic structures. Saunders calls on the pianist to use extremely precise pedaling. Rather than the focus be on technical virtuosity, Saunders requires that the performer accentuate the subtle differences in texture and dynamics throughout the piece.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Gaspard de la nuit
I. Ondine
II. Le Gibet
III. Scarbo

Maurice Ravel is a defining figure of early 20^th century French art music. Though he is often lumped together with other composers like Debussy as an Impressionist, Ravel and his followers were quite resistant to the term. His later music bears the influence of jazz, which he explored in depth towards the end of his life. Ravel was a relatively slow composer, and his piano output is nowhere near as prolific as some of his contemporaries. The keyboard works he did publish are demanding, beautiful pieces of music.

Gaspard de la nuit is one of the most difficult pieces of piano music written in the early 20^th century. “Gaspard” is derived from the original Persian word referring to a man in charge of royal treasures. The three movements of the piece are based on fantasies from a collection of poems written by Aloysius Bertrand titled Gaspard de la nuit – Fantasies á la manière de Rembrandt et Callot. The first movement, titled Ondine, is about a sea nymph who tries to seduce her observer into visiting her kingdom at the bottom of a lake. The second movement, Le Gibet, presents the viewer with a desert sunset. The corpse of a hanged man is illuminated by the deep golden rays of the sun. The third and final movement, Scarbo, depicts a night goblin pirouetting and disappearing into the darkness, only to reappear suddenly.