Program Notes for “Awakening,” August 23rd, 2024

Paul Wiancko (b. 1983) Sonata No. 1, Shifting Baselines for cello and piano (2022)

Paul Kenji Wiancko began playing the cello at age five and composed his first piece at eight. Wiancko came to international attention in 2007 when he tied for 2nd Prize in the Lutoslawski International Cello Competition. The Parker Quartet commissioned Wiancko’s first concert work, Strange Beloved Land, in 2013. Wiancko has since composed works for some of the most esteemed musicians on the stage today. 

Wiancko has also been an active performer across a range of genres. He has performed with the Harlem Quartet, The Owls and the Kronos Quartet, toured with Chick Corea, performed with Etta James at the Hollywood Bowl, with Stanley Clarke at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Wiancko currently serves as Director of Chamber Music at the Spoleto Festival USA.

Wiancko describes his 2022 Sonata No. 1, Shifting Baselines for cello and piano, as “at once a reflection on my continuing journey with Beethoven’s Sonata No. 4, and also an attempt to distill my own musical language down to its core elements—the title refers to a phenomenon defined as a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to the loss of perception that occurs when each generation redefines what is ‘natural.’”

Billy Childs (b. 1957) String Quartet No. 2 Awakening

Billy Childs is a five-time Grammy Award-winning musician in demand in both the classical and jazz worlds. Childs began performing the piano publicly at the age of six and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from the University of Southern California Community College of the Performing Arts.

Childs’ String Quartet No. 2 “Awakening” was commissioned by the Ying Quartet in 2012. The work draws inspiration from Childs’ own emotional, physical, and spiritual voyage dealing with his wife’s life-threatening illness and recovery. The first movement, “Wake Up Call,” expresses initial shock with a violent pizzicato in the cello and a melody in the first violin. The second movement, called “White Room,” describes the helplessness, anger and despair experienced while waiting at the hospital with its mechanical sounds of equipment and a rising and falling heartbeat. The piece closes with “Song of Healing,” where a viola melody opens to represent a long healing process. An extended dialogue between the first violin and cello in the middle of the movement symbolizes the real-life conversations between Childs and his wife as they process the changes to their lives and relationships. The piece closes with an A major chord, conveying a sense of gratitude at her recovery.

Amy Beach (1867-1944) Piano Quintet, Op. 67 

Amy Beach (nee Cheney) was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. She was an internationally-respected pianist and was one of her era’s most highly regarded American composers. After her marriage to Henry Harris Aubrey Beach in 1885, she began limiting her public performances to two per year and devoted herself to composition, listing her professional name as “Mrs. H. H. A. Beach. She resumed full activity after her husband’s death in 1910,  helping the careers of young composers, publishing frequent articles, and advancing the cause of music education. Amy Beach died in 1944, the Romantic style of her music fell out of fashion, and her body of work would remain obscure until a revival began at the end of the 20th century.

Beach wrote her Quintet for Piano and Strings in F-sharp minor, Op. 67, in 1905, apparently in homage to the Brahms Quintet in F minor; it is the most Brahms-like of Beach’s chamber music. Beach herself gave the first performance with the Hoffmann String Quartet in Boston in 1908 in front of a large audience and to great critical success. The Quintet was among the most popular of her works during her lifetime but languished after her death. With the renewed interest in Amy Beach’s music in recent decades, the Opus 67 has come to be accepted as an essential addition to the chamber music repertoire.