Freedom
Mimi Stillman, flute Charles
Abramovic, piano
Innova 935
Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) (17:08)
Five Pieces for Flute and Piano (1947)
1. Landscape 2:58
2. First Dance 1:21
3. Second Dance 6:23
4. Melody 4:05
5. Third Dance 2:21
David Finko (1936) (18:49)
Sonata for Flute and Piano (2012)
6. Largo 5:34
7. Con moto 3:44
8. Lento assai 4:06
9. Con moto, appassionato 5:25
Richard Danielpour (1956) (17:16)
Remembering Neda: Trio for
Flute, Cello, and Piano (2009)
10. Lamentation 3:53
11. Desecration 3:23
12.
Benediction
10:00
Yumi Kendall, cello
A Note from Mimi Stillman
It
is with great pleasure that I introduce “Freedom,” which brings together two works
commissioned by my Dolce Suono Ensemble and one
discovery, all receiving their first recordings here. This has been a journey
of over six years of artistic exploration and planning during which pianist
Charles Abramovic and I performed and lived with
these works extensively. It began when we commissioned Richard Danielpour to write a trio for Dolce Suono
Ensemble - pianist Charles Abramovic, cellist Yumi Kendall, and me. I had known and worked with Richard since
my student days at the Curtis Institute of Music and had long been thinking of
collaborating on a new piece. As it happened, the people of Iran erupted in
protest for their freedom while he was composing the work in 2009, sparking
Richard to reflect on his Persian-Jewish roots and the plight of the Iranian
people living under a brutally repressive regime. The result was Remembering
Neda: Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano,
a work of great depth, a powerfully emotional contribution not only to our
repertoire for flute, cello, and piano trio, but to the chamber music
repertoire at large.
The
next piece to enter my life was Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s
Five
Pieces for Flute and Piano. In 2011, I met with Bret Werb, the musicologist at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, to get his advice on a project I was
planning on the music of the Holocaust. Toward the end of our conversation, Werb showed me a facsimile of a flute and piano work by Mieczyslaw Weinberg he had come across in St. Petersburg,
saying he could not find references to any public performances since shortly
after it was written in 1947, and published by the Soviet Composers’ Union the
following year. Playing through it, I was immediately captivated by its beauty
and depth. This fortuitous meeting resulted in a nearly four-year journey of
exploration of Mieczylsaw Weinberg’s Five Pieces for
Flute and Piano and his life and music. I had the privilege of giving the
United States premiere of the work with Charlie on the Dolce Suono Ensemble series in Philadelphia in 2013, with subsequent
performances at the National Flute Association in Chicago and on concert tours.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg suffered
personal tragedy at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviets. A Polish Jew,
he narrowly escaped the Nazi invasion by fleeing to the Soviet Union, but his
whole family was murdered in the Holocaust. For Weinberg and his fellow artists
working under the Soviet regime, artistic expression was fraught with the
threat of censorship, imprisonment, and murder. He formed a close friendship
with Dmitri Shostakovich, and both composers were persecuted in the
anti-Formalist purge of Stalin in 1948, along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and
other composers. It is not known whether political events played a role in
Weinberg’s Five Pieces, effectively lost until recently, but the piece does
come from a particularly turbulent period in Weinberg’s life. He was imprisoned
for several months in 1953, but was saved in part because of Stalin’s death.
Five
Pieces for Flute and Piano is a suite of contrasting character pieces. "Landscape",
a lyrical movement, connotes a sense of spaciousness through ample rubato and silences. Three movements are contrasting dances
– “First Dance,” a march-like Allegretto which is sometimes elegant, at times
ponderous; “Second Dance,” which veers from a classical-sounding minuet to an
off-kilter waltz; and “Third Dance,” a virtuosic Presto in which flute and
piano engage in playful dialogue culminating in a rousing finale. The fourth
piece, “Melody,” is the emotional core of the set, a soulful, at times anguished
song.
I
decided to commission David Finko to write his Sonata
for Flute and Piano in 2012 after I performed and recorded his piccolo
concerto with Orchestra 2001 and conductor James Freeman. I was impressed
with Finko’s compositional craft, part of a lineage
stretching back through Shostakovich to Prokofiev to Rimsky-Korsakov. And I was moved by the searing personal stamp in his music when
he reflects on his history of narrowly escaping the Nazis and suffering
persecution under the Soviets as an artist and as a Jew. Something resonated
with me as a Jewish artist of Eastern European descent, and I knew that if
David wrote for me the result would be a profoundly eloquent work.
Working
on this collection of pieces has been one of the most inspiring projects in my musical
life, as it deals with the universal human yearning to be free. Danielpour writes on this theme, and the life stories of
Weinberg and Finko are a testament to their
courageous dedication to their art.
I
dedicate this recording to the artists who at different times and places have dared
to express themselves whatever the risks, in recognition of the triumph of
artistic freedom and of the human spirit.
For further reading
about this project,
visit www.mimistillman.org and
www.dolcesuono.com
Notes from the Composers
David
Finko, Sonata
for Flute and Piano
The sonata was written for Mimi Stillman
in 2012 and is dedicated to her. I identified the role of the flutist as
protagonist in a loosely structured narrative throughout. The Largo opens with
soft yet ominous chords in the piano for which I have a mental picture of a
devastated city after a nuclear bombing. The flute enters with tentative
steps, the image of a sole survivor roaming through this desolate landscape.
Anguished cries interrupt the quietly flowing music. The second movement, Con moto, is a kind of dance exhibiting fury, virtuosity, and
humor. A slow middle section provides a peaceful meditation. The Lento assai is
gentle, dreamlike, and melancholic. The fourth movement, Con moto, appassionato, is dramatic and energetic. The flute’s motif
at the beginning of the sonata is now heard in loud passages. The piece ends
with shimmering major sonorities, indicating that the lone voice finally obtains
inner peace. —David Finko
Richard
Danielpour, Remembering
Neda: Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano
Remembering Neda: Trio for
Flute, Cello, and Piano was composed in the fall of 2009 in remembrance of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman who
was shot to death in protests during the summer of 2009 in Tehran. She was part
of a wave of thousands of young Iranians who took to the streets in the wake of
what were very likely rigged elections in Iran in June 2009. Because of Iran’s
repressive
government (some have called it a “police state”) which has evolved in recent years, and
because of the way women in particular have been brutalized in that country, Neda has become, for Iranians and others, a symbol of the
struggle to prevail against such political and social injustices. Her death was
documented on television; millions throughout the world watched this young
woman die on video. And when I saw this myself, I realized that I needed to say
something about it in the way I am most articulate - through music.
My parents, Persian Jews, were born in Iran and came
to the US when they were young. I was born in USA but spent a year as a child
in Iran (1963), during the reign of the Shah Mohammed Pahlavi. My memories of
that time are still quite clear. My mother, a sculptor,
worked on several pieces commissioned by the Pahlavi family in the 1970s.
And in the spring of 1980, roughly a year after the Iranian Revolution of 1979
when the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power, one of my paternal uncles was imprisoned,
tortured and executed for the crime of owning land in Israel. Other members of
my family were forced to leave Iran in the months and years that followed. I
have kept much of my personal history at a distance from my work as a composer
- until now. Remembering Neda is a cry for understanding
in this most troubled place in the world. It is a lamentation for the losses
incurred during this dark time in Iran. And it is a prayer of hope that this
most unfortunate of situations will one day change. —Richard Danielpour
The Artists
Mimi Stillman,
one of the most celebrated and innovative flutists of her generation, has been
hailed by The New York Times as “a consummate and charismatic performer.”
Called “the coolest flute player” by Philadelphia Magazine, she is critically acclaimed
for her dazzling artistry and communicative powers. She has performed as
soloist with orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, Bach Collegium Stuttgart,
Orquesta Sinfónica de
Yucatán, and as recitalist and chamber musician at venues including Carnegie
Hall, The Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Symphony Space,
La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Verbier Festival
(Switzerland), Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and Kol
HaMusica (Israel). At age 12, Ms. Stillman
was the youngest wind player ever admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music,
where she studied with Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner.
Her many awards include Young Concert Artists international Auditions, Astral
Artists, the Bärenreiter Prize for Best Historical
Performance for Winds, and the 2012 Women in the Arts Award from Women for
Greater Philadelphia.
A
wide-ranging artist, Ms. Stillman is equally at home
with the classical canon, new music, and Latin genres. She holds an MA in
history from the University of Pennsylvania and is a published author on music
and history, integrating scholarship with her artistic vision in projects with
her hallmark, thought-provoking depth. A Yamaha Performing Artist and
Clinician, Mimi Stillman has taught masterclasses for the National Flute Association, Eastman School
of Music, University of California, Cornell University, and conservatories and
flute societies throughout the world. She is on faculty at Curtis Institute of
Music Summerfest and Music For All National Festival.
Ms.
Stillman can be heard on several CDs for EMI, Innova, and other labels, as well as a film score for Kevin
Bacon. Her recording “Odyssey: 11 American Premieres for Flute and Piano,” with
pianist Charles Abramovic (Innova),
has received rave reviews on four continents. Her recordings can be heard on
Performance Today, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, and WWFM The Classical Network
where she is broadcast co-host. She is a frequent guest speaker at arts
organizations and interviewee on radio, television, and online media. Her
unique project Syrinx
Journey, a tribute to Claude Debussy on his 150th anniversary through her daily
recordings of Syrinx on her blog, garnered an international following.
As Artistic Director of Dolce Suono
Ensemble which she founded in 2005, Mimi Stillman has created a dynamic force in the music world.
With acclaimed performances and the premieres of 42 commissioned works in ten
seasons, Dolce Suono Ensemble was Chamber Music America’s
featured American Ensemble and won the Knight Arts Challenge for its “Música en tus Manos” engagement
initiative with the Latino community. www.mimistillman.org.
Charles Abramovic is widely acclaimed for his performances as soloist,
chamber musician, and recording artist. He has performed throughout the United
States and Europe, with engagements at festivals in Berlin, Salzburg, Bermuda,
Dubrovnik, Aspen, and Vancouver. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 14
with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and has performed as soloist with orchestras
including the Baltimore Symphony, Colorado Philharmonic, and Florida
Philharmonic. He has performed with artists such as Midori, Viktoria
Mullova, and Sarah Chang. He is a founding member of
Dolce Suono Ensemble, for which he performs as
pianist and harpsichordist, and has served as artistic co-curator and
commissioned composer. Mr. Abramovic has recorded for
EMI, Innova, Naxos, Albany, Bridge, and other labels.
His recording of the solo piano works of Delius for DTR has been highly
praised. A distinguished composer as well as interpreter of new music, he has
recorded the works of Babbitt, Schuller, and Schwantner. He is Professor of Keyboard Studies at Temple
University. His teachers have included Natalie Phillips, Eleanor Sokoloff, Leon Fleisher, and Harvey Wedeen.
He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and
received his doctorate from Temple University.
Yumi Kendall joined The
Philadelphia Orchestra in 2004 as assistant principal cello upon graduation
from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with the late David Soyer and Peter Wiley. She is a founding member of the
Dryden String Quartet. She has performed chamber music on the Kennedy Center’s
Fortas Chamber series, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Marlboro
Music Festival, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, Angel Fire, the Verbier Festival, and Carnegie Hall’s Emerson String
Quartet Workshop. She has served on the
faculties of the New York State School for Orchestral Studies, the Philadelphia
International Music Festival, the University of Pennsylvania chamber music
department, and the National Orchestral Institute.
With
deepest appreciation to Marshall Levine and Harriet Potashnick
Levine for commissioning Remembering Neda: Trio for
Flute, Cello, and Piano, and to The Philadelphia Cultural Fund and the Samuel
S. Fels Fund.
Weinberg
and Finko recorded September 2-3, 2014,
Danielpour recorded December 16, 2013 at Gould
Rehearsal Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia
Mixed and mastered
by Drew Schlegel
Weinberg and Finko produced and recorded by Drew Schlegel
Danielpour
produced and recorded by George Blood with assistant engineer
Tadashi Matsuura
Innova
director: Philip Blackburn
Operations director: Chris
Campbell
Publicist: Steve McPherson
Graphic design: Mark
Willie / Photos: Vanessa Briceño