Reveries
Louise Farrence Symphony No. 1
Intermission
John Knowles Paine Overture to Shakespeare’s As You Like It
June Bonacich Selections from Life in the Produce Aisle
Adagio for String Beans
When Life Gives you Lemons
Emmanuel Chabrier Danse Slav
PODIUM NOTES
Arguably, anything can happen in a dream, and in Shakespeare, as in life, all is not what it seems! There are dreams that fueled my repertoire choices for our concert and in curating our Season Finale. I had two primary objectives: to present women composers more prominently and to create an engaging and uplifting program for a spring afternoon.
We begin with the sublime artistry of Louise Farrenc in her Symphony No. 1 in C Minor,( 1842) scored for classical orchestra with double winds and brass, timpani and strings. This is absolute music. While there is no program, you will hear rumbling and references to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. No 3. This is not a surprising reference for a French woman vying for her own right to liberty, equality and musical expression in 1842. While not directly quoted, we find striking similarities in the finale to the Contredanse theme that was born out of Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus, and fully realized in the finale of the Eroica Symphony. Allegory and allusion abound in the much studied Eroica; In Farrenc allusion is by design, though somewhat veiled. Structural, and harmonic similarities abound; even the key areas chosen parallel Beethoven. Farrenc masterfully navigates key shifts, melodic sequencing and intricacies of rhythm, revealing a firm footing in classical symphonic style and the evolving romantic musical tastes of her time.
Continuing our musical journey today, we draw from the comical story of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, opening our second act with John Knowles Paine’s setting of an overture to this famous play. Paine is explicit, this is Shakespeare’s As You Like It, as if there were any other. Perhaps in our dreams. A slow, contemplative introduction sets the stage for the tender melody of the clarinet, and a gradual build up to a series of rousing and playful tunes spar for prominence, in the classic tradition of introducing the themes and characters of the play that should follow, but does not.
What follows instead are two programmatic vignettes excerpted from A Walk through the Produce Aisle by our Composer in Residence, June Bonacich. Inspired by Mussorsgky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, they offer a colorful rendering of this imaginary walk, with a shopping list that includes string beans and lemons. Harp and percussion feature prominently, as do lyrical wind solos by the flute and clarinet.
As with much European folk music, traditional Slavonic dances and tunes have made their way into the established orchestral canon. Among the best known are the two sets of Slavonic Dances by Antonin Dvorak, opus 46 and 72. Emmanuel Chabrier’s two contributions to this genre Polonaise and Dans Slave, are found in Le Roi Malgre Lui (the King in Spite of Himself), a comic Opera in Three Acts.
The Danse Slave is a short piece in three parts. The regularity of its phrase structure and ABA form make it a suitable dance number for the stage, and the piece works well as an interlude or concert encore.
Martha Stoddard, Music Director
THE COMPOSERS
LOUISE FARRENC: 1804 -1875 (Paris, France)
Louise Farrenc holds a place of distinction in the history of music, and among professional musicians and composers. A renowned pianist and teacher as well as composer, she was the only woman to hold a faculty post at the Paris Conservatory in the nineteenth century. She composed a significant body of chamber music including the famous Nonet, three symphonies and more,, but as a composer whose sensibilities required orchestral forces, she encountered the barriers we so often see facing women in the field of musical composition.
Author François-Joseph Fétis captures her plight in his Biographie universelle des musiciens (1862), 2nd edition:
“Unfortunately, the genre of large scale instrumental music to which Madame Farrenc, by nature and formation, felt herself called involves performance resources which a composer can acquire for herself or himself only with enormous effort. Another factor here is the public, as a rule not a very knowledgeable one, whose only standard for measuring the quality of a work is the name of its author. If the composer is unknown, the audience remains unreceptive, and the publishers, especially in France, close their ears anyway when someone offers them a halfway decent work; they believe in success only for trinkets. Such were the obstacles that Madame Farrenc met along the way and which caused her to despair”
Finally in the 21st Century Louise Farrenc is gaining ground on concert stages around the globe and new editions of her works are increasingly available.
To learn more:
JOHN KNOWLES PAINE (January 9, 1839 – April 25, 1906) MAINE, USA
John Knowles Paine came from a professional musical family in Maine and later studied organ in Europe. Upon moving to Boston, he was appointed the first professor of music in America, with a position at Harvard University, which he held until a year before his death in 1906. Paine was an important advocate for American composers and a senior member of the Boston Six, a group that notably included Amy Beach. His body of orchestral music paved the way for a new American orchestral tradition and he enjoyed much success on the concert stage, including being the first guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
To learn more:
JUNE BONACICH (b. 1958 )
June Bonacich is the Composer in Residence with the Community Women’s Orchestra, and has served in this role since 2015. A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a Master’s degree in Composition, she has been a teacher in the Precollege division of the Conservatory for over 25 years . She now also teaches music at the Mount Madonna School in Watsonville, near her home in the Santa Cruz mountains, where she lives with her wife, dogs, cats and chickens.
June composes prolifically and has an array of unusual and immensely creative works for orchestra, for which CWO has given many of the premieres. The world premiere of her Concerto for Four Bassoons was featured on NPR’s State of the Arts with Jeffrey Freymann in 2015.
About today’s work June writes:
Life in the Produce Aisle is a parody of sorts. I borrowed the idea from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, where each movement has a promenade preceding it. Instead of an exhibition of art however, in my version it is a shopper in the produce section of a supermarket. It has been a work in progress for a number of years; When Life Gives you Lemons and Lettuce Pray were the last movements to be finished. In 2019 CWO performed Sour Grapes, Take a Leek, Adagio for String Beans, Beet Around the Bush, and World Peas. Today the orchestra will perform Adagio for String Beans, and When Life Gives you Lemons.
Adagio For String Beans is a gentle contemplative movement with tuneful melodies and a rich sonority.
In When Life Gives You Lemons, the music goes from anxiety to almost sickeningly sweet and takes you on a journey from feeling like life is throwing lemons at our shopper to her making the best of it.
By the end we can imagine the shopper partaking of several LARGE glasses of lemonade.
ALEXIS- EMMANUEL CHABRIER (1841 –1894), France
The only child of affluent parents in the Auvergne region of France, Emmanuel Chabrier was provided with music lessons from prominent teachers at an early age and showed great promise. But coming from a family of lawyers and merchants he was expected to follow suit. The family moved to Paris in 1856 to better prepare him to enter law school (which he did) and he resided in Paris throughout his life, assuming a post at the Ministry of the Interior.
In addition to maintaining a successful legal career, he was deeply committed to his musical pursuits, and had a wide circle of artistic friends. Like many today whose professions are outside the field of music, the level of his musical achievements far surpassed what we typically consider amateur. Chabrier was held in high musical esteem by members of Les Six, Stravinsky, Debussy and others, and was thought to be a progressive composer with rare musical talent. Ravel credited him with developing an harmonic language that shaped the emergence of Impressionism and was a refreshing departure from traditional functional harmony.
Upon hearing Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, while toggling between Wagnerian and Impressionistic sensibilities, Chabrier decided he had to devote himself exclusively to music. In 1880 he resigned from his post at the Ministry, and dedicated himself solely to music until his death. Completed in 1883, his opera Le roi malgre lui was premiered in Paris on May 18, 1887 at the Opéra-Comique. But misfortune seemed to follow this opera; the opera house burned down after the third performance. Luckily,there were performances for a few more seasons elsewhere in Paris and around Western Europe. However, few companies perform the opera today and it is not held in repertory. There have been a few revivals in the US, notably at the Juilliard School and by the American Philharmonic.
To learn more:|
Emmanuel Chabrier - Wikipedia
To see the opera
Le Roi Malgré Lui - American Symphony Orchestra
CWO Musicians
Violin I
Claire Baffico - Principal
Anita Engles
Elizabeth McDaniel
Judy Reguero
Jennifer Slotnick
Mineru Suzuki
Violin II
Cathryn Bruno - Principal
June Bonacich
Nahal Rose Lalefar
Suzy Logan
Joan Rosen
Viola
Linda Kay - Principal
Ada Naiman
Tim Schoof
Cello
Jane Lo - Principal
Emilie Bergman
Nancy Ellis
Sally Goldman
Sara Jane McDonald
Bass
Hélène Foussard
Nancy Kaspar - Principal
Bassoon
Barbara Jones - Principal
Donna Wiley
Clarinet
Karen Fisher - Principal
Kathy Hennig
Flutes
Kristin Brooks-Davidman - Principal
Kathi Day
Dawna Stebbins - Piccolo
French Horn
Lisa Bress
Sue Crum
Sharon Seto
Carol Yarbrough
Harp
Samantha Garvey Mulgrew
Oboe
Wendy Shiraki - Principal
Amy Kahn - English Horn
Percussion
June Bonacich
Kathi Day
Kate Kraft
Piano
Gillian Henry
Timpani
Juliana DiMicelli
Cynthia Seagren
Trombone
Annalise King
Kate Kraft
Jenna Pohlman
Trumpet
Sue Leonardi - Principal
Christine Krezel
2023 - 2024 CONCERT SEASON
November 12, 2023
Family Concert
World Premiere: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra featuring Cadence Lui, composer and flute soloist
March 3. 2024
International Women’s Day Concert
Program to be announced
June 3, 2024
Season Finale
Program to be announced