Program Notes

Welcome! To everyone who was able to attend in person or tune in to the livestream, thank you

for supporting me for the important milestone in my musical journey that is my senior recital. I

hope you enjoy all four pieces on today’s varied program as much as I do. As always, please

silence your phones before the performance, and refrain from clapping in between movements.

The advice I was told was helpful last year for my junior recital was that if you’re not sure when

to clap, don’t be first. Wait for someone else in the audience who knows the piece to start the

clapping. In particular, notice that Poulenc has four movements, not three.

Like last year, I decided to include some notes for each piece on today’s program - things I

learned while studying them, and background information that I find useful or interesting.

Lamentatio (1998)

Yes, I am singing at the beginning! This piece is host to several extended techniques, most

notably the singing-and-playing that occurs in the slow unmetered opening. Lamentatio was

written in remembrance of the victims of the Armenian genocide; the beginning mourns the lives

lost, and the fast and energetic playing that follows is meant to “[express] the unwavering

will-power of the Armenian people in virtuoso, expressive rhythms1.”

Stylistically, the piece draws inspiration from the complex meters of Eastern European folk

music and the character of rock and funk. I haven’t yet had a chance to meet Giovanni Sollima in

person, but the impression I get of him based on his other compositions and his performances of
both his own music (including this piece) and music from the standard literature is exactly the

eccentric, flamboyant character you would expect to be necessary to write a piece like this one.

In Freshman and Sophomore year, Dr. Garrett and I had a joke about the cello’s suffering of what

I have called “key of D syndrome” - where a significant chunk of the instrument’s literature is in

the key of D. It came up then because there was a stretch of time where almost all of my new

repertoire was in the same key: this piece, Bach’s third Gamba Sonata and sixth Cello Suite, the

Luigi Silva transcription of Paganini’s Moses Variations, the second Haydn Concerto, and the

Cassado Suite. This joke came up again a few times this year since three of the four pieces on my

recital program (everything except Poulenc) are also in the key of D. So, to my fellow perfect

pitch havers, I apologize in advance.

Suite No. 6 in D Major (ca. 1720)

It came as a surprise to me when I first learned that the fame enjoyed today by Bach, the great

rule-breaker and master improviser, only began in the late nineteenth century. Prior to that, Bach

was little more than a “composer’s composer” - highly regarded by a few notable musicians

including Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, but little more than a footnote in musical history to

the rest of the world. I like to think that the delay in Bach reaching the popularity he deserved

can be attributed to how far ahead of his time he was. The composer would employ harmonies

which did not see use again until the twentieth century. Perhaps the reason that Bach became

popular around that time is because that is when the rest of the world finally caught up to him.
The Cello Suites are among the many examples of how ahead of his time Bach was. Prior to the

Suites, the only unaccompanied works for cello were pieces by cellists, and none had ever been

written on the same large scale. To find later pieces for solo cello other than show pieces and

etudes, one has to fast-forward all the way to the early twentieth century for pieces such as the

Kodaly Sonata and the Cassado Suite. (Sibelius wrote a piece for solo cello in 1887, but it’s not

very long and was never published during his lifetime.)

Like many works of Bach, no manuscript in the composer’s handwriting of the Suites is known

to exist today. Instead, it survives through four secondary manuscripts, the most commonly

referred to one being that by the composer’s wife Anna Magdalena Bach. Due to the existence of

multiple versions, there are disagreements over correct performance for the Suites stemming

from inconsistencies between manuscripts regarding bowings, ornamentations, and, in rare cases,

notes and rhythms. Some will argue that such ambiguity is an upside - that having some amount

of uncertainty in regards to Bach’s original intentions allows for more freedom. While this may

be true to some extent, I for one would still love to see a version of the music from Bach’s own

hand. It happens very occasionally that works of music long believed to be lost are rediscovered

centuries after their time of writing. I sometimes like to imagine a possibility, however unlikely,

that such will one day be the case for the Suites; that somewhere in the back rooms of a library or

a rich collector’s home lies the coveted autograph manuscript from Bach, waiting to be

discovered. In truth, if it really existed, it would almost certainly have been found by now. But

it’s a fun thought.

A little over a year ago, John sent me a clip of a cellist playing two pieces with piano, asking for

help identifying them. I immediately knew the first as Beethoven, but the second one was a

mystery to me. And I wasn’t alone - several people he asked were also unable to recognize it.

Eventually he was able to determine that it was none other than the Poulenc Sonata. I had known

of this piece’s existence for a long time, but evidently I hadn’t actually heard enough of it to be

able to recognize it without any context. We were working on the Beethoven A Major Sonata at

the time, but after each listening to the Poulenc, we resolved to learn it together next year. And

so here we are.

If I had to describe this piece in one word, I would say “quirky.” All four movements are

characterized by abrupt shifts in character between rich lyricism, pointy staccatos, and perpetual

motion. Poulenc makes use of several unusual effects on the cello; you’ll hear jarring instances

of long glissandi, ricocheted accompanying lines, and non-vibrato melodies. These effects

combined with the piece’s complicated tonality together give it a very unique quality.

Poulenc, as I’ve learned, was not that familiar with string writing. Most of his chamber music is

in the form of sonatas for wind instruments. While composing this Sonata, he had to work very

closely with cellist Pierre Fournier to ensure it was possible on the cello. Even with whatever

reconciliations they made, there are certain parts that definitely do not fit as nicely on the

instrument as some of our more typical repertoire. Especially for the fourth movement, the

comparison that comes to mind for this piece is to the Popper Etudes. But in studying the piece, I
found that this contributed to its aforementioned “quirkiness.” The weirdness of the technique

becomes not a restriction while learning it, but a virtue.

Caprice on a Theme from Niobe by Pacini (1865)

Until around November of last year, I had planned Poulenc to be the last piece on my recital

program. I came across this piece somewhat by accident, while listening to an album of Piatti

Caprices (the more usual ones of Opus 25). This piece caught my ear because I quite liked it but

was totally unfamiliar with it. I did some digging and found only two video performances of it

online. (Mine will be the third.)

The main reason why this piece has fallen into obscurity is because the opera the theme comes

from, Niobe, is no longer widely performed. This is not uncommon; plenty of pieces and

composers fall in and out of popularity over time. (Like Bach.) However, for Piatti and also

Frantz Liszt to have written show pieces based on music from the opera, it must have at least

been a hit during their lifetimes.

The performances of this Caprice that exist take plenty of liberties, dropping chunks of the piece

(I later found out that the first version I heard cuts out an entire variation) for the sake of time.

For my own rendition, I decided to play it as faithfully as possible. The only change I made was

simplifying the bowing in the last variation to make it play more smoothly. My hope for today is

that a few people in the audience and/or watching the video upload afterwards will be hearing

this, or any of the other pieces on the program, for the first time.
Reference

1. Sollima's lamentatio. Göteborgs Symfoniker. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2023, from

https://www.gso.se/en/gsoplay/video/lamentatio/