About the Program

Kleine Kammermusik for Wind Quintet Op. 24, No. 2(1922)Paul Hindemith

1.  Lustig(1895-1963)

2.  Wältzer

3.  Ruhig und einfach

4.  Schnelle Viertel

5.  Sehr lebhaft

German composer, violinist, violist, conductor, theorist and teacher, Paul Hindemith was one of the most versatile musicans of the 20th century.  Trained at the Conservatory in Frankfurt, Hindemith performed in several string quartets that emphasized contemporary music.  He left Germany after the Nazis banned his music and eventually came to the United States where he taught at Yale University.  While much of Hindemith’s music was considered modern for the time, there are strong elements of the Baroque and Classical eras in the form and texture of his music.  However, he makes use of an overlying insistence of dissonant tensions, creating drama and intrigue in his music.

The Kleine Kammermusik for Wind Quintet is part of an enormous Kammermusik series, each piece being devoted to a different type of chamber grouping.  Written in 1922, it is one of Hindemith’s masterpieces with an early style that was already sophisticated and controlled.  The melodic feel of the opening harks forward to later works but the rest of the piece is very much of the moment; very individual and for the time, avant-garde.

Towns of Wind and WoodCarl Schimmel

1.  Town Afloat in the Night

2.  Golem Town

3.  Dog Breath Town

4.  Town of Sticks and Cudgels

5.  Thunderhead Town

6.  Town of the Open Casket

7.  Town of the Scent of Daybreak

8.  Town in the Willow of the Moon

9.  Town of the Smallest Cyclone

Prize winning composer Carl Schimmel is the recipient of multiple awards, some of which include Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize, a five-time finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, awards from the MacDowell Colony, Yale University, Duke University, NAWCPI, and ASCAP.  He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in composition from Duke University where he has studied with Sydney Hodkinson, Stephan Jaffe, Anthony Kelley and Scott Lindroth.  He holds a Master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Evan Ziporyn and Ned Rorem.  He has twice attended the Aspen Music Festival (2003 Masterclass with Chrisopher Rouse and Poul Ruders, private lessons with George Tsontakis in 1996).

Mathematical patterns and structures often form the basis of his work; however, he uses math only as a rough framework to create emotional and accessible pieces of music which do not sound inherently mathematical.  He also frequently draws upon poetry and art for inspiration. 

“Towns of Wind and Wood was inspired by Anne Carson’s incredible poem The Life of Towns, on which several of my early orchestral works were based.  The work is actually a set of double variations (there is a theme for the towns of wood and another for towns of wind, although the two are interrelated).  Each town of wind uses one of the five pentachords which contain three or more minor thirds; the towns of wood act as segues and use both pentachords of the neighboring movements.  My tools in the construction of these towns are however relatively arbitrary; it’s good to keep in mind that one’s appreciation of architecture does not necessarily require an engineering degree.” – from composer’s program notes.

Quinteto de Sopro (1988)Osvaldo Lacerda

1.  Moderadamente movido(b. 1927)

2.  Animado

3.  Quasi recitative, um pouco a voutade

4.  Vivo

Brazilian composer Osvaldo Lacerda began piano studies at age nine in his home town of Sao Paolo.  While his mother supported his musical endeavors, his father discouraged them – wishing he would instead become a lawyer.  He was a fairly successful pianist, but became very interested and successful as a composer.  From 1952 to 1962, he studied Composition with Camargo Guarnieri, under whose tutelage his compositional character developed and to whom he owed the beginning of his career. His aesthetic credo is that of a refined nationalism, resulting from his extensive knowledge of the characteristics of Brazilian music combined with solid training in modern techniques of composition.

In 1963, he spent a year in the United States as a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, the first Brazilian Composer to be awarded such a distinguished fellowship. He then took classes of Composition with Vittorio Giannini in New York City, and Aaron Copland in Tanglewood.  He returned to Brazil and founded several musical societies and taught at multiple music schools.

The Quinteto de Sopra  by Lacerda has a relationship to popular music.  Lacerda took melodies which frequently occur in popular music and combined them with modern techniques of classical composition, resulting in this charming composition.  The first and third movements recall melodies of the “serestas” and “modinhas”, while folk melodies of the North-East of Brazil can be heard in the first, second and fourth movements.

Quintet for Winds (1978)John Harbison

1.  Intrada(b. 1938)

2.  Intermezzo

3.  Romanza

4.  Scherzo

5.  Finale

Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Harbison (b. 1938) is distinguished by his exceptional resourcefulness and expressive range. He has written for every conceivable type of concert performance, ranging from the grandest to the most intimate, pieces that embrace jazz along with the pre-classical forms. He is considered to be "original, varied, and absorbing - relatively easy for audiences to grasp and yet formal and complex enough to hold our interest through repeated hearings - his style boasts both lucidity and logic" (Fanfare 1993). Harbison is also a gifted commentator on the art and craft of composition and was recognized in his student years as an outstanding poet (he wrote his own libretto for Gatsby). Today, he continues to convey, through the spoken word, the multiple meanings of contemporary composition.

Born into a musical family, Harbison was improvising on the piano by five years of age and started a jazz band at age 12.  He did his undergraduate work at Harvard University and earned an MFA from Princeton University.  A recipient of many awards, some of his distinguished awards include the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his cantata The Flight Into Egypt, the Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities (1998), the Kennedy Center Friedheim First Prize (for his Piano Concerto), the American Music Center's Letter of Distinction (2000), the Harvard Arts Medal (2000), and the Distinguished Composer award from the American Composer's Orchestra (2002).He also holds four honorary doctorates.

Much of his violin music has been composed for his wife, Rose Mary, and with her he serves as artistic director of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival on the family farm in Wisconsin.

Quintet For Winds was composed in the summer of 1978 for the Aulos Quintet, on commission for the Naumburg Foundation.