Four Centuries of Great Music February 23, 2024 February Birthday Anniversaries

FCGM-02-23-25 February Birthday Anniversaries

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I a celebrating the anniversaries of the birthdays of 4 women composers all born in the month of February: Grace Williams, Ruth Gipps, Grażyna Bacewicz and Alice Shields

Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano (1931) 31:17
Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello and Pianoforte I. Poco adagio – Allegro con brio – Poco adagio 10:18
Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello and Pianoforte II. Allegro scherzando – Poco lento – Allegro scherzando 7:18
Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello and Pianoforte III. Andante: Tranquillo e semplice 7:49
Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello and Pianoforte IV. Allegro molto: Quasi una tarantella 5:52

London Chamber Ensemble
David Owen Norris, piano; John Anderson, oboe; Bruce Nockles, trumpet; Gordon Mackay, violin; Roger Chase, viola and Joseph Spooner, cello
Grace Williams: Chamber Music
Naxos Recordings


Grace Williams was born on February 19, 1906 in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales, United Kingdom  and is generally regarded as Wales's most notable female composer, and the first British woman to score a feature film.  She began her studies in music  at the University College of South Wales and Cardiff University and continued them at the Royal College of Music, London studying with Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams (no relation).  Today we will be listening to her Sextet for oboe, trumpet, string trio and piano

The Sextet  for oboe, trumpet, string trio and piano was written in 1931.

Although Williams uses both wind instruments in a solo capacity, all the instruments have their moment in the spotlight. The first movement, Allegro, is framed by a slow introduction in alternating three and four time, which returns at the end with cello pizzicato and the melody now molto espressivo.

The second movement is an extended scherzo and trio, the end of the scherzo marked by answering trumpet and oboe phrases, followed by a violin solo leading into the slow trio in G sharp minor, the violin tune then taken up by viola and cello, with a solo trumpet fanfare leading back to a repeat of the scherzo.

The third movement marked Andante: Tranquillo e semplice opens in the character of a slow march, the muted trumpet giving this third movement a more subdued timbre, with a more rhapsodic middle section in three time.

The last movement,  marked Allegro molto: Quasi una tarantella in the style of a tarantella, is a resolute and lively dance on a grand scale, shared among the ensemble, quite often marked con fuoco, with various tempo changes leading to a closing presto.

Here is performance of Grace Williams: Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano by the London Chamber Ensemble with David Owen Norris, piano; John Anderson, oboe; Bruce Nockles, trumpet; Gordon Mackay, violin; Roger Chase, viola and Joseph Spooner, cello from the album Grace Williams: Chamber Music

Grażyna Bacewicz: Quintet No. 2 (1965) for Piano and String Quartet 17:35

5 I Moderato – Pi. mosso – Allegro – Meno mosso – Pi. mosso –
Poco pi. mosso – Molto allegro – Meno mosso – Rubato –
Sostenuto – Pi. mosso 6:35
6 II Larghetto – Grandioso – Sostenuto – Tempo I 5:58
7 III Allegro giocoso – Poco meno mosso – Tempo I – Meno mosso – Lo stesso tempo 4:55


Silesian Quartet and Wojciech Świtała, piano
Grażyna Bacewicz: The Two Piano Quintets • Quartet for Four Violins • Quartet for Four Cellos
Chandos

Grażyna Bacewicz is considered one of the leading Polish composers of the 20th century. Grażyna Bacewicz was born in Łódź, Poland on February 5, 1909.  Trained as both a violinist and composer but only began composing full time after World War II.  After beginning composing full time, Bacewicz was always busy, but 1965 was an exceptionally productive year. She completed eight works, including her final violin concerto and string quartet.

The Second Piano Quintet, dedicated to the Warsaw Quintet but not premiered by this ensemble until after her death of a heart attack in 1969, revealed a composer moderating her avant-garde ventures with more open textures and strong back-references to her neo-baroque style of the 1940s and ’50s. Her sense of textural balance is as faultless as ever, but as the quintet progresses Bacewicz frequently separates the piano from the string quartet so that the two become concertante foils to each other. Wrought intensity is parried by more conversational interaction.

The Second Piano Quintet is in three movements.  In the first movement, after an atmospheric introduction, Bacewicz embarks on a whimsical Allegro that includes the propulsive dynamism for which she was already famed. Even so, its progress remains fragmented and skittish, as if she is having fun juggling with both musical past and present.

A distinctive feature of her focus in the mid-1960s was an obsession with her Partita for violin and piano, of 1955, which she raided on many occasions. In the Second Piano Quintet, the start and conclusion of the second movement, the Larghetto,  quote the opening section of the ‘Intermezzo’ of the Partita, and the Finale twice recalls the Partita’s ‘Preludium’.

What seems to have been the driving force for this self-quotation is the search for core strength in the stylistic flux in which Bacewicz had newly immersed herself. The Partita clearly fulfilled this desire for an intimate and reliable truth, and excerpts from it played a key role in the works of her last years.

The Larghetto, which occasionally alludes to the Quintet’s opening, ranges from fragility to anguish, evoking ideas of separation and distraction in which high-flown lyricism mixes with elements of sonorism, all framed by subdued musings borrowed from the Partita’s ‘Intermezzo’. In the third oveent, Allegro giocoso, the two passing quotations from the ‘Preludium’ provide oases within a new twist on Bacewicz’s favourite type of finale, a gigue in 6 / 8 time. The jousting between string quartet and piano that characterises the work now becomes a means for Bacewicz to reclaim the exuberance of her earlier music as she searches for equilibrium between old and new.


Here is a performance of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Quintet No. 2 for Piano and String Quartet by Silesian Quartet and Wojciech Świtała, piano from the album Grażyna Bacewicz: The Two Piano Quintets • Quartet for Four Violins • Quartet for Four Cellos

Alice Shields: Shenandoah
Alice Shields: 3 Electronic Works - Shenandoah
Alice Shields, electronics
Albany Records

Choreographic title, "In This Valley"
Duration 24:35

We are opening this second hour of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring music of four women composers whose birthday anniversaries are in the month of February with music by the American composer Alice Shields

Alice Shields was born in Manhattan, New York, on February 18, 1943 and is one of the pioneers of electronic music, particularly known for her cross-cultural operas.  Shields earned three degrees from Columbia University including the Doctor of Musical Arts in music composition.  As a performer, has been a professional opera singer, performing both traditional and modern roles with the New York City Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Clarion Music Society, Wolf Trap Opera, the Lake George Opera Festival and other opera companies. She was one of the first recipients of the George London award supporting the development of young opera singers.

During the 1990s she intensively studied and performed South Indian Bharata Natyam dance-drama as a vocalist, performing a form of South Indian rhythmic recitation with the Swati Bhise Bharata Natyam Dance Company, at venues including the United Nations, Asia Society and Wesleyan University. All Shields' compositions since 2000 reflect her immersion in Indian classical music and drama. Since 2016 Shields has been involved in the study of Noh theater with Noh performer Mayo Miwa, with whom she has collaborated on works using aspects of traditional Noh Theater.

We will be listening to her electronic work Shenandoah.  Shenandoah, was composed in response to the 9/11 attacks, but rather than ruminating over the depth and horror of this great tragedy, Shields presents in Shenandoah an affirmation of life and puts forth a tastefully low-key philosophical perspective on it.   It was written for a modern dance performance entitled “In the Valley”, and is based on oral histories of recent immigrants to the Shenandoah Valley, with rhythms from India and the Middle East and words in different languages (Mixteca, Spanish, Woloff, Russian, Ukranian, Vietnamese, Arabic).

Here is a performance of Shenandoah by Alice Shields on electronics from the album Alice Shields: 3 Electronic Works - Shenandoah


RUTH GIPPS: ORCHESTRAL WORKS, VOLUME 2
Juliana Koch oboe
Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Ruth Gipps Concerto, Op. 20 in D minor  for Oboe and Orchestra   (1941)*† 22:20

To Sir Arthur Bliss

Ruth Gipps Concerto, Op. 20 in D minor  for Oboe and Orchestra  -  I.  Allegro moderato – Tempo I 9:47
Ruth Gipps Concerto, Op. 20 in D minor  for Oboe and Orchestra  -   II.  Andante 4:11
Ruth Gipps Concerto, Op. 20 in D minor  for Oboe and Orchestra   -  III.  Allegro vivace – Meno mosso – Tempo I – Meno mosso –
Cadenza – Tempo I – Meno mosso – Tempo I 8:13


We will be closing this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring music of for women composers whose birthday anniversaries were in the month of February with Ruth Gipps’ oboe concerto.

Ruth Gipps was born in Bexhill-on-Sea, England,  on February 20, 1921.  She was a child prodigy on piano.   She studied oboe and composition at the Royal College of Music, London  from 1937-1941, studying composition with Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams as Grace Williams did a decade earlier.

During the war her portfolio as a composer grew rapidly, and by the time of the Second Symphony, in 1945, Gipps had reached Opus 30. The opus 20 Oboe Concerto, written for her friend the oboist Marion Brough, who premiered it in a wartime concert, given on 13 June 1942.  

Gipps’ Oboe Concerto is a notably varied piece in three movements. The substantial first movement is scored for the full orchestra;  the shorter pastoral slow movement, scored for muted strings, the only other instrument is the first clarinet which takes two solos when the oboe rests; and the finale consists of strongly contrasted episodes and also features a cadenza. I might almost summarise the work as: a troubled world, a dream of spring, and a hopeful future. A thirty-two-bar orchestral prelude presents motifs and rhythmic gestures that include
threatening repeated marching chords. As if rhapsodising in free time, the soloist enters over a pianissimo sustained string chord. But it is the strings that introduce the first theme, a folk-like tune hinted at, pizzicato, in the introduction but now played at length before the oboe finally joins in and repeats it. Once launched, the soloist holds the stage. The threatening war-like rhythm and chords constantly returning in the substantial first movement are surely evocative of the world in which it was conceived, the second world war and the London Blitz.

In the short slow movement the soloist sings over muted strings. In the finale the soloist is heard briskly introducing the dancing theme unaccompanied. The tune constantly returns in a rondo-like structure, punctuated by contrasted episodes. The orchestra, marking the first beat of the 3 / 4 bars, gives the music a waltz-like momentum. A second idea swiftly emerges – almost a waltz. Soon the orchestra falls silent while the clarinets sustain a rhythm suggestive of Scottish dancing, and the oboe plays on. A slow interlude, marked by distant muted trumpet, provides an elegiac episode, the strings largely silent. The opening music and tempo return and soon bring us to the Cadenza. But this is not the end, for the movement resumes, including a slow section with a new tune; the headlong closing bars fade before a brief gesture of dismissal.

Here is a performance of Ruth Gipps Concerto, Op. 20 in D minor  for Oboe and Orchestra  featuring  Juliana Koch oboe and
Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra from the album RUTH GIPPS: ORCHESTRAL WORKS, VOLUME 2