Helena Baillie to Perform August 4, 2008 at Mahaney Center for the Arts

Helena Baillie, violin and viola
Janice Weber, piano

Monday, August 4, 2008
7:30 P.M.
Mahaney Center for the Arts, Concert Hall

Program:


VITALI Chaconne for viola and piano 
    (Transcribed by Alan Arnold)


PROKOFIEV Romeo and Juliet 
    (Five Selections from the ballet transcribed by W.W.Borisovski)  


MILSTEIN Paganiniana 
    (Variations on Themes by Paganini for viola solo) 


Intermission


MOZART Sonata in E Minor, K.304 
    Allegro 
    Tempo di minuetto


BOLBOM Graceful Ghost Rag


PAGANINI La Campanella 
    (Transcribed for viola and piano by William Primrose)


NOTE: This recital is being recorded and filmed for broadcast.
Silence during the performance is most appreciated.

Helena Baillie, violin and viola Helena Baillie was born in London in 1978. She graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music where she studied violin and viola. Her 2008 New York violin recital debut at Bargemusic was hailed by THE STRAD magazine for its “brilliance and poignance.” Ms. Baillie has appeared in chamber music with Pinchas Zukerman and with the Beaux Arts Trio at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. She has performed at Carnegie Hall in the Alexander Schneider Series and given recitals at Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and at Boston Symphony’s Higginson Hall.

Janice Weber, piano Janice Weber’s New York recital debut, performed under the pseudonym Lily von Ballmoos, was an early indication of the eclecticism and fluency for which she has become known.

Program Notes:

Tomaso Antonio Vitali
(b Bologna, 7 March 1663; d Modena, 9 May 1745).
Composer and violinist, eldest son of Giovanni Battista Vitali. He went to Modena in 1674 with his father, with whom he probably learned the violin. He began to perform professionally with the Este orchestra in 1675 and later became its leader; he remained on the court pay register until 1742. He had a number of distinguished pupils, including E.F. Dall’Abaco, Senaillé, G.N. Laurenti and L.A. Predieri.

He studied composition with Pacchioni, one of the leading musicians in Modena. He published his first two collections in 1693, a year after seeing through the press his late father’s op.14. He appears to have composed only instrumental music, which is similar in style to that of his father and Corelli. This is particularly evident in his consistent employment of binary forms and in his mixture of da chiesa and da camera movements. His last published collection, op.4, is dedicated to Cardinal Ottoboni and the cello part, in being fairly independent of and yet clearly derived from the continuo, appears to be similar to the cello writing in Corelli’s op.5. Sonata no.12 is a series of variations based on the well-known folia de spagna, similar to the variations published by Corelli the previous year. Recent research provides convincing evidence that the famous Ciacona for violin and continuo, long attributed to Vitali, is not by him, a conclusion supported also by a comparison of it with music definitely by him.


Sergey Prokofiev
(b Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk/Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, Apr. 1891; d Moscow, 5 Mar. 1953).
Russian composer and pianist. He began his career as a composer while still a student, and so had a deep investment in Russian Romantic traditions–even if he was pushing those traditions to a point of exacerbation and caricature–before he began to encounter, and contribute to, various kinds of modernism in the second decade of the new century. Like many artists, he left his country directly after the October Revolution; he was the only composer to return, nearly 20 years later. His inner traditionalism, coupled with the neo-classicism he had helped invent, now made it possible for him to play a leading role in Soviet culture, to whose demands for political engagement, utility and simplicity he responded with prodigious creative energy. In his last years, however, official encouragement turned into persecution, and his musical voice understandably faltered.


Nathan (Mironovich) Milstein
(b Odessa, 31 Dec 1904; d London, 21 Dec 1992).
American violinist of Ukrainian birth. At the age of seven he began to study with Pyotr Stolyarsky and remained with him until 1914. (At the final student concert that year, he shared the stage with the five year old David Oistrakh.) He later studied with Auer at the St Petersburg Conservatory. Milstein made his official debut in Odessa in 1920; that same year he played Glazunov’s Concerto under the composer. For the next five years he enjoyed growing success in Russia. He often appeared in joint recitals with Vladimir Horowitz, when his accompanist was Vladimir’s sister, Regina. In 1925 Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz left Russia on a concert tour and decided to remain abroad. In 1926 Milstein went to Brussels, where he received artistic advice from Ysaÿe. He made his debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1929 and settled in the USA, becoming an American citizen in 1942. After World War II, Milstein re-established his European reputation. Among his honors is that of Officier of the Légion d’Honneur (1968). Milstein was, perhaps, the least ‘Russian’ among Russian violinists because his violinistic instincts were so controlled by intellect. He began his career as a virtuoso and matured into a most individual interpreter. His fiery temperament was firmly disciplined, his line classically pure. It is clear that he could be a dazzling technician when he played his own Paganiniana (New York, 1954), or his cadenza to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. He ranked among the foremost violinists of his generation. With S. Volkov he wrote From Russia to the West: the Musical Memoirs and Reminiscences of Nathan Milstein (New York, 1990).


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(b Salzburg, 27 Jan. 1756; d Vienna, 5 Dec. 1791).
Austrian composer, son of Leopold Mozart. His style essentially represents a synthesis of many different elements, which coalesced in his Viennese years, from 1781 on, into an idiom now regarded as a peak of Viennese Classicism. The mature music, distinguished by its melodic beauty, its formal elegance, and its richness of harmony and texture, is deeply coloured by Italian opera though also rooted in Austrian and south German instrumental traditions. Unlike Haydn, his senior by 24 years, and Beethoven, his junior by 15, he excelled in every medium current in his time. He may thus be regarded as the most universal composer in the history of Western music.


William Bolcom
(b Seattle, WA, 26 May 1938).
American composer, pianist, and author. He began composition studies with Verrall at an early age and continued with Milhaud at Mills College (1958–1961) and with both Milhaud and Messiaen in Paris. After working with Leland Smith at Stanford University (1961–1964), he taught at the University of Washington (1965–1966) and Queens College, CUNY (1966–1968). While in New York he developed a style of playing ragtime that, through concerts and recordings, placed him in the forefront of the ragtime revival. He has also composed original rags, among them Graceful Ghost. From 1968 to 1970 he was composer-in-residence at the Yale University Drama School and the New York University School of the Arts. He began to teach at the University of Michigan in 1973. In 1975 Bolcom married mezzo-soprano Joan Morris with whom he began to develop programs on the history of American popular song. He is the author with Robert Kimball of Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake (New York, 1973) and has edited the collected writings of Rochberg, The Aesthetics of Survival: a Composer’s View of 20th-century Music (Ann Arbor, MI, 1984). In the 1960s, however, he gradually shed this academic approach [to composing] in favor of a language that embraced a wider variety of musical styles; he has sought to erase boundaries between popular and serious music.


Nicolò Paganini
(b Genoa, 27 Oct 1782; d Nice, 27 May 1840).
Italian violinist and composer. By his development of technique, his exceptional skills, and his extreme personal magnetism, he not only contributed to the history of the violin as its most famous virtuoso, but also drew the attention of other Romantic composers, notably Liszt, to the significance of virtuosity as an element in art. As a composer of a large number of chamber works, mostly with or for guitar, Paganini was influential in furthering the performance and appreciation of music in private circles.


**Program Notes excerpted from Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 07 July 2008).

Press Quotes:


“Baillie’s combination of brilliance and poignance as well as a telling lower register made her an effective exponent of all of them.”—Dennis Rooney, The Strad.


“It gives me great pleasure to recommend an outstanding young artist, Helena Baillie.”—Mariss Jansons, Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.