Four Centuries of Great Music February 5, 2023 Chamber Music That Must Be Programmed Episode 5

Today on 4 centuries of great music Is the 5th episode of the series which I am calling Chamber Music Works that need to be programmed

We are opening today with contemporary, British, female composer Natalie Klouda.  Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych Natalie Klouda

Natalie Klouda is a British violinist and composer. Her early training was at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where she was greatly influenced by Yehudi Menuhin. A project to write compositions for his 80th Birthday engaged her passion for both chamber music performance and composition.

As a chamber musician Natalie has performed in major venues across Europe and in the USA and was a founding member of the award winning Finzi Quartet

In describing her work Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych Natalie Klouda wrote
“I was commissioned to write this work in 2014, my first piano trio for the Monte Piano Trio. It was to be premiered alongside three giants of chamber music composition, Clara & Robert Schumann and Brahms. A tremendous task so I decided to shine a mirror straight back at them for inspiration. It was a great privilege to spend time investigating their world and journeys from the immensely magical to the deeply haunting. They led such extraordinary lives for the time, but the independence of spirit and incalculable drive that Clara must have had to fulfil so many talents and duties is almost unfathomable especially in 1800 Europe. The piano trio format was an ideal canvas for exploring their intense three-way multidimensional relationships. Three instruments and three performers bringing to life three perspectives, experiences and the delicate balance of individual personalities. It seemed natural that there should also be three movements, each “owned” by an individual’s perspective.

As the piano was Clara’s, Robert’s and Johannes’ primary instrument, so the voice of their dedicated movement is always from the piano. The other two personalities are represented by the violin and cello respectively. Importantly just as individuals propose different levels of self obsession or selflessness, so the focus varies allowing the violin and/or cello to appear more prominent.

As with their own musical writings I experimented with ciphers as well as musical quotations which all combine into a sound world which I was drawn into upon my discoveries about these extraordinary people and musicians.”

The work is in three movements
Natalie Klouda: Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych (2014)
Natalie Klouda: Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych: Explorations – Clara
Natalie Klouda: Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych: Reflections – Johannes
Natalie Klouda: Piano Trio No. 1 Fantasy Triptych: Vexations – Robert

Next is Darius Milhaud’s La cheminée du roi René, Op. 205
La cheminée du roi René, Op. 205, is a suite in seven movements for wind quintet, composed in 1939 by the French composer Darius Milhaud.  The suite is an adaptation of the music that the composer wrote for Raymond Bernard's 1939 film Cavalcade d’amour.  Milhaud was fascinated as a child by the castle and the court of René I, count of Provence, which were situated in Aix-en-Provence, where he grew up.  So he shaped this suite to represent the events that may happen at the court of René I.  All the movements are very short, with an alternation between "nonchalant" and very rapid tempi: a collection of medieval miniatures. The shortest movement is less than a minute in length, while the longest is only three minutes long. This gives the impression of a single piece, even more so because the musical atmosphere changes so little between different movements.   The movements are Procession, morning love song, jugglers, sarabande, jousting on the River Arc, hunting at Valabre and nocturnal madrigal


Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: I. Cortege
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: II. Aubade
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: III. Jongleurs
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: IV. La Maousinglade
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: V. Joutes sur l'arc
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: VI. Chasse a Valabre
Darius Milhaud: La Cheminee du roi Rene, Op. 205: VII. Madrigal - Nocturne


Let’s close this first hour of Four Centuries of Great Music highlighting chamber music works which need to be programmed with Carlos Chavez: String Quartet No. 2

Written in 1932, this quartet is in 4 movements: Allegro Moderato, Scherzo,  Largo, Liberamente and Moderato
Particularly in the first two movements, the quartet shows the influence of Debussy and Stravinsky on Chavez compositions during this period.


Carlos Chavez: String Quartet No. 2  I. Allegro Moderato
Carlos Chavez: String Quartet No. 2  II. Scherzo
Carlos Chavez: String Quartet No. 2  III. Largo, Liberamente
Carlos Chavez: String Quartet No. 2. IV. Moderato


Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10
Hungarian pianist, conductor and composer Ernő Dohnányi was born in 1877 in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary but is now Slovakia.  His initial music training was from his father, an amateur cellist, and a local organist.  When he was seventeen he moved to Budapest and enrolled in the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music.  At the age of 20, Dohnányi made his concert debut in Berlin in 1897 and soon began a career as a concert pianist.   But at the same time, he began composing, completing his first symphony in 1901. On his compositions he used the germanic form of his name. Ernst von Dohnányi

Serenade in C major, Op. 10, for string trio, is an early 20th-century five-movement suite it was written in 1902 during a concert tour to London and Vienna and premiered in Vienna in 1904, year of its first publication.  

Dohnányi’s Serenade for String Trio (violin, viola and cello) is one of the exemplars of the form, a multi-movement suite packed with musical riches. Following tradition, the Serenade begins with a lively march the soon features a rustic tune full of Hungarian flavor. The march appears again at the conclusion of the finale. A slow second movement marked Romanze follows evoking the traditional serenade with guitar-like pizzicato and a lyrical song in the violin which is interrupted briefly by a passionate outburst. The third-movement marked scherzo is bristling fugue theme and a tuneful trio theme that eventually combine in the scherzo reprise.  The 4th movement marked Tema con variazioni begins with a melancholy, hymn-like theme which provides the basis for a brooding set of variations as the second slow movement  of the piece.  The rollicking Rondo finale closes with work and as mentioned previously, the opening march cleverly remerges to close the Serenade.

Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10  I. Marcia. Allegro
Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10  II. Romanza. Adagio non troppo, quasi andante
Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10  III. Scherzo. Vivace
Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10  IV. Tema con variazioni
Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C Major, Op. 10  V. Finale. Rondo

Next is George Walker’s String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric”
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1922, George Walker studied piano and composition at Howard University, the Oberlin Conservatory, and the Eastman School of Music, in addition to Curtis Institute of Music and American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. In 1945, he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy as the winner of the Philadelphia Youth Auditions.

Inspired by his composition studies and frustrated with a lack of opportunities as a performer, he turned to composing and to teaching.

While working at Smith College and, later, Rutgers University, he composed dozens of pieces for strings, piano, voice, and orchestra, fulfilling commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His music travels confidently between the sometimes-competing strains of serialism and tonalism in 20th-century US American concert music, and he drew heavily from Black performance traditions. Walker died in 2018 in Montclair, New Jersey, leaving a legacy of firsts: He was the first Black person to graduate from the Curtis Institute, the first Black person to receive a doctorate from Eastman, and the first living Black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, which was awarded to him in 1996 for the work Lilacs, for voice and orchestra.

George Walker finished his String Quartet No. 1 “Lyric” in 1946 while he was a student at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, just one year after he had finished his Artist Diploma at the Curtis Institute, where he had studied composition with Samuel Barber’s teacher Rosario Scalero. The abrupt and dissonant opening gesture of the first movement quickly gives way to a harmonic lushness The opening movement continues inquisitively, alternating between showcasing Walker’s artful counterpoint and his capacity to weave rhapsodic melodies. The surprisingly hushed ending serves as a transition to the opening bars of the second movement.  This middle movement, remains one of his best remembered works and is often performed alone as the Lyric for Strings.
In this movement the four instruments enter one by one until they have built the lush bed on which the aching melody in the first violin floats. After a dramatic climax in the middle of the movement, the quartet slowly makes its way back to the opening theme, coming to rest on a rich F-sharp Major triad. The stormy opening of the third and final movement comes as a bit of a surprise, then, and its dramatic, rhythmically charged melodies pass between each performer before an acrobatic flourish in the first violin cues the tutti chord that closes the piece.

George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 Lyric  1. Allegro
George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 Lyric  2. Molto adagio
George Walker: String Quartet No. 1 Lyric  3. Allegro con fuoco



We are going to close today’s four centuries of great music with two of the Five Folksongs in Counterpoint for String Quartet by Florence B. Price  III. Drink to me only with thine eyes and IV. Shortnin' bread