Calvin Wong Saxophone Recital
”INFINITE MORNING”
Lee Hysan Concert Hall | Dec 23, 2022 | 8:00 p.m.
Cherry Tsang, piano
Program
Infinite Morning // Joel Puckett (b. 1977)
Sonata In A Major // César Franck (1822-1890)
I. Allegretto ben moderato
II. Allegro
III. Recitativo, Fantasia
IV. Allegretto poco mosso
- Intermission -
Sonatine // Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
I. Modere
II. Mouvement de Menuet
III. Anime
Oriental // Masanori Katoh (b. 1972)
Yin Tak Au, saxophone
The Manitou Incline // Joel Love (b. 1982)
Sonatine
Maurice Ravel
Ravel dedicated the Sonatine to his dear friends Ida and Cipa Godebski. Madame Paule de Lestang gave the world premiere of the work in Lyon, France on March 10, 1906. It was premiered in Paris shortly afterward by Gabriel Grovlez at a concert on the series of the Société Nationale de Musique at the Schola Cantorum. The Sonatine quickly became popular with audiences and Ravel performed the first two movements regularly on concert programs across Europe and during his tour of America in 1928. (He did not often perform the last movement because he did not feel capable of playing it well enough.) Ravel made a reproducing piano roll of the first two movements for the Welte-Mignon Company in 1913 which is now available on LP records and CDs. However, the inaccurate recording process of piano rolls does not necessarily guarantee an authoritative guide to Ravel’s performance style.
The Sonatine is Ravel’s homage to late eighteenth-century musical elegance and classical structure. The first movement is in F-sharp natural minor (Aeolian mode) and is a sonata-allegro form. The Sonatine is a cyclical work that uses a descending perfect fourth (F-sharp–C-sharp) and its inversion, the perfect fifth, as a recurring motive. The opening theme of the first movement is transformed in the two subsequent movements––a technique refined by Liszt, whom Ravel greatly admired for that compositional device as well as for his virtuosity (c.f. Jeux d’eau and La valse). As the tempo marking Modéré warns, one should not play too fast. The internal
accompaniment should be kept quiet and not allowed to "run away." The doubled melody should be played very legato, keeping the fingers close to the keys, and the first F-sharp should always be more emphasized than the C-sharp that follows (like a word whose accent falls on the first syllable).
The Manitou Incline
Joel Love
In August of 2019, I decided on a whim to try and climb the infamous Manitou Incline in Manitou Spring, CO. I set out on to the trail in the mid-to-late morning on a particularly hot day for Colorado and when I was about halfway up, I stopped for a moment to take a break. I realized I had no water left, was already quite hot, and my heart was not slowing down, even when I completely stopped to rest. I then had a series of panic attacks that made my heart rate spike to 200bpm. Long story short, I was suffering from severe dehydration and a fireman came up the Incline to deliver a liter of saline to get me back up and running. I spent the next two days at home recuperating and decided that I would adequately prepare myself and would try it again. Facing my fear, I climbed it again, but was overprepared the second time. About a third-of-the-way up I had another panic attack, but through patience and perseverance was able to surmount my fear, pushing through and finishing the climb. It was exhilarating to best a goal that had beaten me just days before.
This piece follows my experience and is an expression of the emotions I felt. The first movement has a beckoning melody in the saxophone with bell-like sounds in the piano, followed by a bit of a playful “jam” that is reflective of the optimism I had heading to the trailhead. The first movement close with screaming, urgent sounds, reflective of my panicked state while on the mountain. The second movement mirrors the devastation but lifts in the end to bring back a reprise of the first movement’s beckoning melody, calling back to the mountain. The third movement has anew section with a determined, break-neck feel that leads into another climb. This time, however, the climb results in conquering the mountain rather than it conquering the climber.
— Joel Love
Oriental
Masanori Katoh
“Oriental, for soprano saxophone, alto saxophone and piano” was composed on commission of Nobuya Sugawa and Minako Koyanagi in summer of 2006, and was first recorded by Nobuya Sugawa (soprano saxophone), Kenneth Tse (alto saxophone) and Kazuo Murakami (piano) in 2008, and was first performed by Takaomi Yamada (soprano saxophone), Sadahito Kunisue (alto saxophone) and Minako Koyanagi (piano) on November 19, 2010 at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall.
Infinite Morning
Joel Puckett
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” (ca. 150 AD) - Seneca
I love beginnings. I don’t know why, but it has always been for me that the first line of a book is far more satisfying than the last. I dive into these first lines filled with the hope that I might be reading something life changing or at least reading something old in a new and meaningful way. Full of hope, full of the endless promise that only a new day can bring. Unadulterated optimism for the cyclic renewal of morning.
I sketched the opening of this piece while my wife and I were expecting our first child — full of hope and the promise of that new day. Unfortunately, that pregnancy ended with a late miscarriage. That ending brought devastation and severe depression. This sudden turn from unbridled hope to mourning left us both unsure how to move on. This short piece is a mediation on those days.
Postscript — My wife and I have since welcomed two beautiful children into the world and it is partly through that first ending that we are able to fully appreciate these two new beginnings.
Infinite Morning is dedicated to Scott Conklin and Alan Huckleberry.
— Joel Puckett
Sonata In A Major
César Franck
Although 64 years old in 1886, Franck was still known primarily as an organist – at the important church St. Clotilde and the lavish public arts palace the Trocadéro, as well as professor of organ at the Conservatory. The recognition that he gained in the last years of his life, and then increasingly afterwards, was due in large part to the fervent missionary work of supporters such as Ysaÿe. The violinist played Franck’s Sonata many times on his wide-ranging tours, telling his listeners that he played it “con amore” since it was a wedding present.
Franck originally intended the opening movement to be slow and reflective, but Ysaÿe persuaded him that it worked best at a quicker tempo, so Franck marked it Allegretto, though with the qualifier “ben moderato.” The movement juxtaposes rather than develops two themes, the first given almost exclusively to the violin, the second to the piano. These themes, particularly the violin’s, will return in the following movements, a sort of cyclical recontextualizing that Franck picked up from Liszt.
The second movement is a dramatic scherzo in D minor, opening as a turbulent piano toccata, then with a surging, offbeat violin line laid over it. There are lyrical or pensive interludes, working like trio sections, but the roiling toccata always reasserts itself, ending with a final sweep to D-major triumph.
The voice-led chromaticism that Franck absorbed from Wagner is apparent in the piano’s almost Tristanesque introduction to the third movement, a Recitativo-Fantasia. This introduction is also a reference to the opening of the Sonata, and much of this free-form movement is devoted to reflection on the previous movements. As the heading of the movement clearly indicates, there is a pronounced personality split midway through, as the improvisatory Recitativo yields to the more insistently directed Fantasia, which picks up some of the rumbling power of the second movement. The violin has a freshly configured dramatic theme in this section, which will come back in the finale.
That finale begins in a state of pure lyric grace, with a lovely optimistic theme that is played in canon, the violin following the piano’s lead a bar later. This is developed against stormier energies from the second movement in a section that shifts from five flats to six sharps and back. The opening theme of the movement sneaks back into A major with all of its original sweetness – and in canon again – before swelling into exultant joy.