Program TenAfter Puccini
August 14, 2016
1 PM Preconcert Talk: Richard Wilson
1:30 PM Performance: Teresa Buchholz, mezzo-soprano; Colin Davin, guitar; Viktor Tóth '16, clarinet; Xing Gao '17, harp; Robert Martin, cello; Elmira Darvarova, violin; Sam Magill, cello; Blair McMillen, piano; Anna Polonsky, piano
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), Pezzo per pianoforte (1916); Franco Alfano (1875–1954), Concerto for violin, cello, and piano (1932); Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968), from The Divan of Moses-Ibn-Ezra, Op. 207 (1966); Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–1975), Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (1952); Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007), Ricercare and Toccata on a theme from The Old Maid and the Thief (1953); Luciano Berio (1925–2003), Chamber Music, for female voice, clarinet, cello, and harp (1953)
The post-Romantic language of Puccini's final works anticipated something of the stylistic developments to come. Program Ten, "After Puccini," offers a snapshot of Italian composition in the decades after his death, including the piano book Dallapiccola wrote for his daughter; one of the chamber works that Dallapiccola's student Berio composed for his wife, mezzo Cathy Berberian; excerpts from a song cycle with guitar accompaniment by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who, though Jewish, studied with Pizzetti and Casella; and the solo-piano adaptation made by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Menotti, on themes from his first English-language opera, The Old Maid and the Thief. Rounding out Bard's final chamber program is an account of Alfano's haunting Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello by Elmira Darvarova, Sam Magill, and Blair McMillen, whose world-premiere recording of the misleadingly named trio has been credited with "razor-edged accuracy, passion, and insight" (Fanfare).