Program Notes

Williams Chamber Players: Souvenirs

Friday, October 30, 2009

Rebecca Clark
When Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was ninety years old and living in New York City, the radio
station WQXR made a programme about the British pianist Dame Myra Hess. The producer
discovered that Clarke had been a student at the Royal Academy of Music with Hess and that she was a
forgotten composer. As a result he also produced a programme about her and her music, which
included the Piano Trio (1921). This work was later recorded commercially, on September 1979,
twelve days after Clarke's death, and released the following year. Clarke was not an all-round
composer like Dame Ethyl Smyth (1858-1949) or America's Amy Beach (1867-1944). She had a
much more limited scope, rather like Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953); both gave up composition
for long periods.
Clarke was born in Harrow, Middlesex of an American father and a German mother. Chamber
music was encouraged in the family; she started playing the violin at the age of eight, and she entered
the Royal Academy of Music in 1902. When her teacher proposed marriage, however, her father
removed her but sent some of the songs she had recently composed to Sir Charles Villers Stanford at
the Royal College of Music. As a consequence she became Stanford's first female pupil and it was
apparently he who persuaded her to take up the viola. This led to lessons with the great violist, Lionel
Tertis and to a distinguished performing career. In 1912, Sir Henry Wood controversially took six
women, including Clarke, into the Queen's Hall Orchestra. Her work as a performer of chamber music,
usually in all-female ensembles, prospered and took her to the United States. In 1917 she was visiting
friends in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and here met the famous patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge who
persuaded her to enter the 1919 competition at the Berkshire Festival. The summit of Clarke's career
was reached when her viola sonata, submitted anonymously, tied for first prize. Coolidge herself
ex9ercised the casting vote and Clarke came second, after Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). Her next
landmark was the Piano Trio, another runner-up when she entered it in the 1921 contest. It was
premiered in New York and later in London by Marjory Hayward, May Mukle and Myra Hess.
Following these sucesses Clarke received a Coolidge commission for the Rhapsody for cello and piano
in connection with the 1923 Pittsfield Festival.
During the 1920's Clarke's concert career was enterprising - her tours with May Mukle included
India, China and Japan - and her songs and chamber music were published. Influences on her writing
included Bloch and Frank Bridge and they were all strongly affected by the harmony of late Scriabine.
When Clarke was asked why her composing declined at the end of the 1920's she implied that her
secret affair with the singer John Goss had proved inhibiting. She reached the next juncture when,
visiting family in New York, she was caught by the outbreak of World War II and unable to return to
Europe. She began to compose again and her Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale was given at the 1942
International Society for Contemporary Music in Berkeley, California. This second creative period
ended in New York in 1944 when by chance she met her old contemporary at the Royal College of
Music, the pianist Jame Friskin, whom she married.
 Peter Dickinson

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

As early as June 1887 Tchaikovsky made a start on a string sextet for the St. Petersburg Chamber
Music Society (which had requested a work the preceding October), but he gave it up after a few days.
He was not to return to the medium until the early months of 1890 when, while living in Florence, and
deeply involved with his opera The Queen of Spades, he wrote down the melody that was to become
the main theme of the slow movement. This fact alone (and no further programmatic connotation)
inspired the title of the finished composition.
Tchaikovsky finished the opera on June 20th, and five days later began serious work on the Sextet.
He was concerned about the medium, a new one for him, and particularly about the question whether
he might not be conceiving music that demanded an orchestra, and then reducing it to six strings. By
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the time he finished his sketch on July 12, his view of the piece had begun to improve. But he still
worried about the scoring as he worked out the final details, which were completed by August 6th.
Neither the composer nor his closest friends were entirely happy with the third and fourth movements
at a private performance in December. Tchaikovsky set the Sextet aside for a year, then made major
revisions to the last two movements and a small adjustment to the first movement, resulting in the
form in which we know the piece.
The Sextet is one of Tchaikovsky's last multi-movement instrumental works (only the Sixth
Symphony followed) and the last in which he retained the traditional patterns of abstract symphonic
form. He worked out a splendidly detailed sonata-form exposition for the first movement, in which
the transition grows out of a three note figure that appears in the main theme and then continues
under the surprising shy entrance of the second theme in the first violin. Although formal structure
was always something of a struggle for Tchaikovsky, this exposition clearly demonstrates his hard-won
mastery over the years.
The slow movement is among the most purely personal passages in Tchaikovsky's output, and the
one place in the score where his love of melodic lines laid out as a duet, intertwining, mutually
complementary, comes to full flower. The third movement takes a melody of a Slavonic folkish cast
and puts it through its paces, alternating two different versions with varied textures and
accompaniments.
For the finale, Tchaikovsky offers another sonata-form movement based on a dancing theme of
Slavonic imprint, varied with two sections of vigorous contrapuntal development. In writing for the
mostly German membership of the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society, Tchaikovsky knew that he
would be expected to offer some display of his ability at counterpoint, and he obliged with these two
passages, the second of which becomes a full scale fugato leading to a wildly sonorous close.

 Steven Ledbetter

Performer Bios
Ronald Feldman, cello
Ronald Feldman is artist in residence in orchestral/instrumental music, and coordinator of student
string chamber music here at Williams College. After a long career in the Boston Symphony
Orchestra’s cello section starting in 1967 at the age of nineteen, Mr. Feldman has gone on to receive
critical acclaim for a wide variety of musical achievements. Formerly music director and conductor of
the Worcester Symphony Orchestra and of the Boston new music ensemble Extension Works, Ronald
Feldman was also music director and conductor of the New England Philharmonic for five seasons. In
1991 he and the Berkshire Symphony were awarded the American Symphony Orchestra League’s
ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. He continues to be an
active cellist, conductor, and a member of the Williams Chamber Players.

Joana Genova, violin

Ms. Genova began playing violin at the age of six in her native Bulgaria and made her solo debut at the
age of twelve with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra. She is a prizewinner of the National Competition
in Bulgaria and has appeared as soloist with the Plovdiv Symphony Orchestra and Shumen
Philharmonic. Ms. Genova received her Bachelor of Music at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her
Master’s degree in chamber music at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Her teachers included Peter Brunt,
Ilya Grubert, members of the Daniel String Quartet and Prof. Samuel Thaviu. In Holland, Ms. Genova
was concertmaster of the Amsterdam Bach Consort and a member of Amsterdam Sinfonietta.

Since 2000, she has lived in the US where she is a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, principal
second violin of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra and concertmaster of the Manchester Chamber
Orchestra. She is Artist Associate at Williams College and is on the summer faculty at the Manchester
Music Festival and The Chamber Music Conference of the East, and teaches violin at the Michael
Rudiakov Music Academy in Vermont. Ms. Genova is active as chamber musician for the Manchester
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Music Festival and the Williams Chamber Players. Her collaborations include performances with the
Shanghai String Quartet, Nathaniel Rosen, Michael Rudiakov, Ruth Laredo, Adam Neiman, David
Krakauer among others. Ms. Genova has performed as soloist with Adelphi Chamber Orchestra,
Metropolitan, Rockaway and Danbury Symphonies and Manchester Festival Orchestra.

Nathaniel Parke, cello

Nathaniel Parke is a member of the Bennington String Quartet, principal cello of the Berkshire
Symphony and co-principal cello of the Berkshire Opera Orchestra. He has also been a member of the
Boston Composers String Quartet with whom he can be heard performing new works by Boston
composers on the MMC label. He is currently artist associate in cello at Williams College and
instructor of cello at Bennington College in addition to maintaining a studio of private students. He
has served as a faculty member and chamber music coach at the Longy School of Music, Skidmore
College, SUNY Albany and the Chamber Music Conference and Composer's Forum of the East. As a
soloist, he has been heard with the Wellesley, Berkshire and Sage City Symphonies. His free-lance
work in the Albany, N.Y. and Boston areas ranges from period instrument performances to premieres
of new works. He can be heard on Albany records performing solo cello music by Ileana Perez-
Velasquez. He received his training at the Longy School of Music studying with George Neikrug, and in
London with William Pleeth. He holds an MFA from Bennington College where he studied with
Maxine Neuman. Mr. Parke performs on an instrument made in 1721 by C.G. Testore.

Doris Stevenson, piano

Pianist Doris Stevenson, Artist in Residence at Williams College, leads a busy life as recitalist and
chamber musician in addition to teaching at Williams. She has played on many of the great stages of
the world including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in
Washington D.C., Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Salle Pleyel in Paris and Symphony Hall as soloist with the
Boston Pops Orchestra. She has played with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, Ruggiero Ricci and
Paul Tortelier, great artists of the past. The list of distinguished artists she has performed with includes
cellists Andre Navarra, Leslie Parnes and Gary Hoffman, violinists Mark Peskanov and Elmar Olivera,
violist Walter Trampler and singers Kaaren Erickson, Robert Hale and Catherine Malfitano. She is a
founding member of the Sitka Summer Music Festival in Alaska and has appeared in many other
chamber music festivals including the Grand Canyon festival, Steamboat Springs Strings in the
Mountains, Marin Music Fest, Chamber Music/LA and the Park City International Music Festival. She
served for ten years on the piano faculty of the University of Southern California where she was also
pianist for the master classes of famed cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky. Her many recordings include David
Kechley's Winter Branches with Douglas Moore, a work for two pianos and percussion of Ileana Perez
Velazquez on her new CD released last week by Albany Records, the Brahms Sonatas for cello and
piano with Nathaniel Rosen, the Saint Saens violin sonatas with Andres Cardenes and Mendelssohn
complete works for cello and piano with Jeffrey Solow. A Stravinsky CD with Mark Peskanov received
a Grammy nomination.

Stefani e Taylor, viola

Violist Stefanie Taylor, an active chamber and orchestral musician, has participated in numerous
festivals and concert series in the United States and Europe. Ms. Taylor performs frequently with the
New York Philharmonic; other performance associations include the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the
New Jersey Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the American Symphony Orchestra, where she
acts as principal violist. She has premiered several chamber works in New York City, at venues
including Merkin Hall, Roulette, and Columbia University’s Miller Theater.

A graduate of Indian University, Ms. Taylor studied violin with Miriam Fried and James Buswell. She
received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied
violin with Joyce Robbins, viola with Caroline Levine, and chamber music with Julius Levine and
Timothy Eddy.

Ms. Taylor has performed on live broadcasts on both WQXR in New York and Vermont Public Radio.
During the summers, she serves on the faculty of the Bay View Music Festival in Michigan.

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Scott Woolweaver, viola
Scott Woolweaver, violist, graduated with Distinction from the University of Michigan School of
Music where he won the Earl V. Moore and Joseph Knitzer awards for outstanding participation in
chamber music, before moving to Boston for graduate studies with Walter Trampler. While at U of M,
he founded the Vaener String Trio, which won the Grand Prize at the Joseph Fischoff Chamber Music
Competition and later founded the Boston Composers String Quartet, which won the Silver Medal at
the String Quartet Competition and Chamber Music Festa in Osaka, Japan. Currently he is a member
of the Grammy-nominated Baroque ensemble Boston Baroque, the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of
Boston, and Alea III, a contemporary ensemble in residence at Boston University. Scott is a regular
guest of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society and is Director of the Adult Chamber Music
Institute at Kneisel HAll in Blue Hill, ME. He is also Lecturer in Viola and Chamber Music at Tufts
University. In 2005 he was named Artist Associate at Williams College. He plays a Johan Georg Thir
viola made in Vienne in 1737.

Elizabeth Wright, piano

Elizabeth Wright, has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, the USSR and
Japan. She has appeared in recital with many distinguished artists and was awarded the prize of
Outstanding Accompanist at the Fourth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Ms.
Wright premiered and recorded many new works, performing in such groups as the American
Composers Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Festival and Orpheus. She is principal pianist with the
American Symphony Orchestra and was for many years piano soloist for both the Martha Graham
Dance Company and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She has been an artist-teacher for the Lincoln
Center Institute and has served on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Bennington, and
Princeton. Appearing frequently on PBS, Ms. Wright has recorded on the Gasparo, Opus One and CRI
labels.