This concert is at The SPCO Center which is on the 3rd floor of the Hamm Building (same building as Great Waters and Meritage) 408 Saint Peter Street, Saint Paul.

Please arrive by 6:30 for our preconcert discussion.  I’ll distribute your tickets [...]]]> Hey Theoroi & Friends, Just a reminder about our upcoming event next week.

This concert is at The SPCO Center which is on the 3rd floor of the Hamm Building (same building as Great Waters and Meritage) 408 Saint Peter Street, Saint Paul.

Please arrive by 6:30 for our preconcert discussion.  I’ll distribute your tickets at this time. This discussion will be led by Steve Seel (from The Current) and Kate Nordstrom, SPCO’s producer of this series. Included in this conversation will be: Sarah Kirkland Snider, Shara Worden, and Rob Moose & Nadia Sirota from yMusic.

My best recommendation for parking is the Macy’s lot (Wabasha & 6th) or Lawson Ramp (Wabasha & 5th)

Sarah Kirkland Snider, Shara Worden and yMusic

Midwest premiere of Snider’s song cycle Penelope(excerpts) featuring vocalist Shara Worden, plus new work from Worden’s band My Brightest Diamond and chamber ensemble yMusic

Wed, February 27 at 7:30pm Music Room at SPCO Center, Downtown Saint Paul More info:

 thespco.org/concerts-tickets/liquid-music

Some links:

vimeo.com/20607961 (interviews with  Shara Worden and Sarah Kirkland Snider on their collaboration; work with  yMusic)

vimeo.com/16319487 (music video  for Penelope’s “the lotus eaters”)

vimeo.com/31980868 (Shara Worden  interview)

j.mp/UR7JM1 (NY  Times yMusic feature)

j.mp/UR7TD5 (Steve Seel       Bio

Tessa Retterath Jones

Marketing & Audience Development Manager

651.789.4410 tretterath@schubert.org schubert.org

The Schubert Club Sharing the finest musical arts

Although this is my first official season as a member of Theoroi, I was fortunate enough to attend some performances last year [...]]]> After Accordo’s moving November concert, I asked Joe Kapla if he would write a bit about his experience. Joe is an accomplished pianist, with a master in performance from University of MN, Duluth. 

Although this is my first official season as a member of Theoroi, I was fortunate enough to attend some performances last year as a fill-in. After the 2011 MN Opera performance of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, I was eager to become a member for the Theoroi 2012-2013 season.

I am so impressed with the organization and coordination of the lectures, meet & greets, and the events themselves. For many of the performances, links and other information are provided for us so we can prepare for the performances. It’s surprising how much this changes the understanding and appreciation of the performances we will be attending. Additionally, the social hours give us each an opportunity to express our opinions and share our experiences with one another.

I’ve greatly enjoyed each and every performance with the Theoroi group so far, but the most exciting and impressive performance has been the brilliant French-themed Accordo concert (December 2012). I struggle to remember ever experiencing a chamber concert performed with such quality and artistry. (Not to mention, French music from this era is both my favorite and my area of “expertise”.)

The guest pianist, Benjamin Hochman, delivered a sensitive and highly poetic interpretation of a small selection of Debussy preludes. The interesting thing about these Preludes is that Debussy himself only wrote the title of each prelude at the end of the piece. This way, the player can understand the setting Debussy was illustrating without being influence by a “title”.

Hochman’s ability to illustrate such beautiful settings was matched only by his collaborative sensibility. Chamber music requires each member of the group to move and breathe as one being. With such an expert-level of chamber skill from Accordo in combination with Hochman’s experience as an accompanist and collaborator, we were given a truly awesome concert. I am envious, because I’ve always wanted to perform the Faure C-minor Piano Quartet in it’s entirety and have never had the opportunity.

Creating interest in these extremely valuable performances through social media blogging, reviewing, and sharing will help promote the vitality and continuation of the arts in the Twin Cities area. That is why Theoroi is an important and effective resource for the promotion of arts to a younger generation.

Our next event with Theoroi is a Schubert Club concert at the Ordway    featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein on January 8th; I have set up a    promotion for $10 seats for “Friends of Theoroi” (regularly    $60). I’d love your help spreading the word about Theoroi and The    Schubert Club, so please feel free [...]]]> Hey Theoroi,    

Our next event with Theoroi is a Schubert Club concert at the Ordway    featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein on January 8th; I have set up a    promotion for $10 seats for “Friends of Theoroi” (regularly    $60). I’d love your help spreading the word about Theoroi and The    Schubert Club, so please feel free to invite your other “young    professional” friends.

It would probably be best if they called me so I could get them seats near the group, but they can also purchase online using    promocode “THEOROI10″. Anyone you invite will be welcome to join in    our pre & post concert events for that evening. (Hopefully a  pre-concert backstage tour & a post-concert “happy hour”.)

Please feel free to share my direct number to those interested in    joining – 651.789.4410. Thanks!

Just a reminder that our next event is this coming Monday, Dec 3. We’re going to Accordo at Christ Church Lutheran, 3244 34th Avenue South, Minneapolis. directions (street parking)

Accordo is a local group of the very best Twin Cities classical musicians, including the SPCO & Minnesota Orchestra principal players Steven Copes, [...]]]> Happy Friday, Theoroi!

Just a reminder that our next event is this coming Monday, Dec 3. We’re going to Accordo at Christ Church Lutheran, 3244 34th Avenue South, Minneapolis. directions (street parking)

Accordo is a local group of the very best Twin Cities classical musicians, including the SPCO & Minnesota Orchestra principal players Steven Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini, Maiya Papach, Ronald Thomas. For this concert they will be joined by guest pianist Benjamin Hochman.

Event Info

Please arrive at Christ Church Lutheran by 6:15pm for a preconcert discussion with the musicians (Steven Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini and Benjamin Hochman) Barry Kempton, The Schubert Club’s executive & artistic director, will be facilitating the discussion. Please come prepared with questions. The concert is at 7:30pm. After the concert, the entire audience is invited to a reception, which I encourage you all to attend!

Prepare before you go!

The program is a tribute to Debussy’s 150th Anniversary and will feature Jancek, Ravel, Faure and of course Debussy. Amy’s put together some great resources to help you prepare for this concert at theoroi.com. I encourage you to at least read Benjamin Hochman’s blog post about the selection of pieces and how they relate to each other:  read it here. Also, check out of some info about the church. It was designed by father and son Eliel & Earo Saarinen!

Contact me with any questions! Looking forward to seeing you all on Monday!

Tessa Retterath Jones

6:30 PM - pre-concert talk with Steven Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini and Benjamin Hochman, led by Barry Kempton
Performance at 7:30 PM 

“Performance bursting with electricity and urgency…far more intense and exciting than most would imagine chamber music could be.” —Pioneer Press

Accordo, established in [...]]]> Accordo at Christ Church Lutheran 
3244 34th Avenue South, Minneapolis directions

6:30 PM - pre-concert talk with Steven Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini and Benjamin Hochman, led by Barry Kempton
Performance at 7:30 PM 

“Performance bursting with electricity and urgency…far more intense and exciting than most would imagine chamber music could be.” —Pioneer Press

Accordo, established in 2009, is a Minnesota-based chamber group made up of some of the very best instrumentalists in the country, eager to share their love of classical and contemporary chamber music in intimate and unique performance spaces. Its fourth season (2012-13) will be presented by The Schubert Club, Northrop Concerts and Lectures, and Kate Nordstrum Projects at the National Historic Landmark Christ Church Lutheran, one of the Twin Cities’ great architectural treasures designed by the esteemed architect Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero Saarinen.

Accordo includes a string octet composed of Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra principal players Rebecca Albers, Ruggero Allifranchini, Steven Copes, Erin Keefe, Kyu-Young Kim, Maiya Papach, Anthony Ross, and Ronald  Thomas.

Presented by The Schubert Club, Northrop Concerts and Lectures, and Kate Nordstrum Projects.

Musicians: Steven Copes, violin; Ruggero Allifranchini, violin; Maiya Papach, viola; Ronald Thomas, cello; with Benjamin Hochman, piano

Blog Post about the Program: Benjamin Hochman blogged about the four composers being performed in A Tribute to Debussy on his 150th and how they influence, inspire, and relate to each other. read the blog post here

Program: A Tribute to Debussy On His 150th

Sonata for Violin & Piano - Leoš Janácek

Con moto, Balada, Allegretto, Adagio

String Quartet in F major - Maurice Ravel

Allegro moderato – Très doux, Assez vif – Très rythmé, Très lent, Vif et agite

Selected Preludes for Solo Piano - Claude Debussy

 Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir, Des pas sur la neige, Les collines d’Anacapri

Piano Quartet in C minor, Opus 15 - Gabriel Fauré

Allegro molto moderato, Scherzo. Allegro vivo, Adagio, Allegro molto,

Program Notes – Glenda Goodman

In many ways, composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is to music in fin de siècle France what painter Claude Monet is to painting. Monet’s Impressionistic, luminous paintings and Debussy’s delicate, shimmering music are penetratingly beautiful. But the aesthetic connection we hear is accidental: Debussy had no intention of writing Impressionist music, and indeed he reviled what he saw as a sloppy use of term. In a letter from 1909 Debussy wrote, “what the imbeciles call ‘impressionism’ is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics.” Instead, Debussy saw allies in the Symbolists—a nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that reacted against the naturalism and realism that dominated early 19th-century art. Mallarmé and Baudelaire were Debussy’s interlocutors, and the composer created rich symbolic content in his music. The solo piano Préludes on the December 5 program are emblematic of Debussy’s sound: ethereal and shimmering, but also quite moving. Debussy’s ability to conjure images and delve into the underlying symbolism of images is a hallmark of his style, and has made him extremely popular in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The program pays tribute to Debussy, although the first composer on today’s program, Leoš Janácek (1854-1928), has perhaps the loosest connection to the French composer. A Czech composer who spent much of his life in obscurity, Janácek made a name for himself as an opera composer in the 1920s. His operas, perhaps influenced by Debussy’s Symbolist operatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), show his ability to depict characters’ complex personalities with a few decisive musical statements. Janácek’s violin sonata conveys similar confidence and insightfulness. Janácek began sketching the sonata in 1914 and completed it some seven years later.

Janácek’s violin sonata displays a Czech nationalist pride that was vitally important to the composer. Although Janácek’s education was in German, he adopted an anti- German, anti-Austrian stance, speaking only Czech at home and enthusiastically supporting the arts and music of Bohemia. The composer collected Bohemian songs, and we can hear bits of these in flavoring of the rhythms and melodies in the violin part. This is particularly audible in the rhapsodic first movement, which delivers an impetuous, pulsating, lyrical tune. The piano and violin interact and engage with each other, playing with the melodies. A soulful balada or ballad second movement continues to display Janácek’s nationalistic style, with a melody that mimics the patterns of speech. A brief but fiery Allegretto movement is followed by the Adagio final movement. Perhaps the most experimental movement of the sonata, the Adagio features the piano prominently, with loquacious and mischievous interruptions by the violin.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is the French composer whose music is most closely connected to that of Debussy. A decade or so younger than Debussy, Ravel often faced accusations that he was imitating the well-known composer. Certainly Ravel’s music churns and glistens like Debussy’s music. But while Debussy was directly engaging with Symbolist ideas, Ravel was more intrigued by exoticism and dance. He collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, and works such as Bolero and Shéhérazade display Ravel’s fascination with so-called exotic music.

While Ravel certainly owed a debt of influence to Debussy, he also stands out as one of the most original and sophisticated composers of his period.

The String Quartet, written in 1902-1903, displays Ravel’s youthful energy and sprit of experimentalism. Ravel submitted the quartet to prestigious composition competitions in Rome and Paris; it was rejected from both—apparently Ravel’s forward-looking harmonies and textures were deemed unsuitable. Nevertheless, the quartet earned Ravel wide acclaim in Paris and the approval of Debussy. The expansive first movement takes the simple opening melody and develops it through various treatments—changing the rhythms, placing it in different registers, adding tremolo and other effects—all the while changing tempo in dramatic stops and starts. The first movement is marked “très doux”—”very sweet”—an indication that is most clearly heard in the lyrical secondary melody that the violin and cello share. The second movement presents a lively plucked (or pizzicato) texture that was quite singular in the early 20th century. A slow, musing middle section presents expressive and meandering melodies that finally peter out into thin air. The pizzicato reenter stealthily before resuming the rambunctious music from the movement’s beginning. The third movement, marked “very slow,” picks up fragments from the first movement and explores different coloristic possibilities. Note especially how the players use mutes to change the sound of their instruments. The slightly nasal, more delicate sound of the muted strings imitates the tenor of French speech, and this is indeed a very conversational, communicative movement. The aggressive and explosive finale continues to work with melodic fragments from the first and third movements, but in a playful, frothy, quivering manner.

Unlike Debussy and Ravel, Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was not widely recognized as a major composer in fin de siècle France. His elegant style, while engaging and lovely, offered few of the harmonic and coloristic adventures that Ravel and Debussy delivered. The other composers on today’s program exemplify early thrusts of a modern 20th-century sound, and Fauré provides a strong bridge to the 19th century. His music features gorgeous melodies and represents lush, full- throated Romanticism. Fauré wrote the Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor in the late 1870s, when he was still at an early point in his career. His fiancé, a woman he had loved for five years, had recently broken off the engagement, and perhaps we hear Fauré’s passion and distress in the tumultuous and majestic first movement, or his depression in the somber third movement. The scherzo presents a delightful melody that shows off the pianist’s dexterity, accompanied by pizzicatos in the strings. A modal-sounding middle section contrasts the fleet-footed style of the movement’s outer sections. The finale, a stormy Allegro molto, first presents a C minor theme that vacillates ambiguously with C major. The movement also features a soaring secondary theme in E flat major—a key associated with heroism. These two themes are reconciled at the end of the movement in an apotheosis of high Romantic style.

More Resources — Read Before You Go:
Debussy’s connection and influence on visual and literary artists was explored this spring in an exhibition at the Musee l’Orangerie in Paris. read more about the exhibition

If you miss attending college lectures, this Open Yale Course lecture on Impressionism and Debussy, Ravel, and Monet is a treat. enjoy the entire video or easily skip between the four sections

For a quick introduction to Debussy’s composition style, read this short article

Why is Christ Church Lutheran so perfect for musical performance? It was designed in two phases by father and son Eliel and Earo Saarinen. To learn more about this unique building, visit the church’s website or learn more about the building at galinsky.com

(1) Learn a little something before you go to an event. Find out about the play, the dance, the choreographer, the performers, the music. Read the play, if you can. Watch videos on YouTube. Listen to music on Spotify. Read other people’s reviews.

(2) Take notes during [...]]]> Here’s the Theoroi kick-off talk, stripped down.

(1) Learn a little something before you go to an event. Find out about the play, the dance, the choreographer, the performers, the music. Read the play, if you can. Watch videos on YouTube. Listen to music on Spotify. Read other people’s reviews.

(2) Take notes during the performance. Even brief notes are helpful later. So is a lighted pen, if you’ll be writing in the dark.

(3) Get your facts straight. Tell us the what, where, when, and who. Check and double-check details including how performers spell their names.

(4) Check your spelling. If you can, ask someone else to read what you’ve written before you post it.

(5) Remember that it’s not all about you. You’re writing about your anticipation, your experience, your response. But if every sentence starts with “I,” rewrite at least some of them.

(6) Actually, it’s about me. Me, as in your reader. Think of your reader while you write. What might your reader want to know? 

(7) Be honest. Be humble. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t really know. Don’t use vocabulary you’re not comfortable with. It’s perfectly fine to say, “Dance is a total mystery to me, but I really enjoyed the ballet last night, and here’s why.”

(8) Don’t be mean. It’s fun to be mean. And you won’t love every event you go to. But when you don’t love something, you can explain why without being mean. This is the rule I try hard to follow: Don’t write anything about another person that you wouldn’t say to his or her face.

(9) Be natural. Be yourself. If you tweet or post on Facebook, text or write emails, you already know how to do this. Write to inform, not to impress.

 (10) Build your audience. This didn’t used to be a writer’s job, but it is now. When you write about the arts, let your friends know. Post about it, tweet about it, send out an email.