Ensemble and Faculty Concert:
2008-10-12 -- University of Iowa Chamber Orchestra and Christine Rutledge,
viola
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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
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Ensemble
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Sunday October 12, 2008
3:00
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f Orchestral Studies
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Dr. William LaRue Jones, conductor Christine Rutledge, viola
Oct. 12, 2008, 3:00 p.m. West High Auditorium
Rounds for String Orchestra
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Allegro, molto vivace
11 Adagio
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Allegro Vigoro
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Evocations for Viola and Orchestra
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Rhapso'dically
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Dreamily
111 Driving
PROGRAM
Christine Rutledge,
viola
Symphony No. 40,
K.
550, G MinorAllegro molto
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegro assai
David DIAMOND
(1915-2005)Michael KIMBER
(b.
1945)Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART
(1756-1791)•
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BIOGRAPHIES
CHRISTINE RUTLEDGE, viola, has appeared as soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician throughout the United States and abroad. Her performances and recordings have been praised in such p·ublications as The Strad, Fanfare, The New York Times, ancl The New York Concert Review. Recent solo performances and master classes include those at four International Viola Congresses in the US, Germany, and Sweden; the University of Michigan; the Oberlin Conservatory; Arizona State University; the University of Arizona; the University of Northern Arizona; the University of Kansas; and Bowling Green State University.
Rutledge's repertoire spans major works from the standard repertory to lesser-known and obscure works for the viola, particularly those for viola in unusual combinations. She also performs many of her original transcriptions of Baroque compositions on both modern and Baroque viola, including the Bach Cello Suites and Sonatas for viola da gamba. During the 2002-03 concert season she performed these complete works as a four-recital cycle. As a champion of new works she has commissioned many new compositions includ-ing Chimera for Viola and Harpsichord by
C.P.
First, Nudged Along on Time's Notched Stick for Flute, Viola, and Guitar by Zae Munn, Hamadryad for alto flute, viola, and guitar by Jeremy Dale Roberts, and a duo for viola and percussion by Claude Baker with a Center for New Music Commissioning Grant, which will be premiered in the 2003-04 concert season.Currently Rutledge holds the position of associate professor of viola at The University of Iowa. She serves on the executive board of the American Viola Society, and is president of the Iowa Viola Society. For six years she served as Assistant Principal Viola of the Louisville Orchestra and violist of the Ceri:iti Chamber Players and the Kentucky Center Chamber Players. She has also been a member of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Festival appearances include the Roycroft Music Festival, the Sewanee Summer Music Center, "Brunch with Bach" series at the Detroit Institute of Art, the Manitou Music Festival, the Hot Springs Music Festival, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and the Fontana Chamber Arts Festival.
Rutledge is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Karen Tuttle and Michael Tree, and The University of Iowa with William Preucil, Sr. She is also a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where she was honored as Valedictorian and recipient of a Young Artist Award. Among her many honors are Prizewinner in the Aspen Festival Viola Competition, an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist's Fellowship, recipient of an Eli Lilly Foundation grant for undergraduate teaching development, as well as several awards from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame and the Arts and Humanities Initiative at The University of Iowa.
WILLIAM LARUE JONES is one of the most active and versatile symphonic conduc-tors in America today, possessing a unique ability to work effectively with musicians at all levels of performing capability and experience. His conducting schedule includes a wide array of professional, festival, collegiate and student ensembles throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, ranging from the Minnesota Orchestra to the Penang (Malaysia) Symphony. Jones has conducted over 80 All-State orchestras with additional festival/clinics in most of the 50 states and Canadian provinces. A Texas native, Dr. Jones holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin, University of
Iowa and Kansas State University, with additional studies at The Juilliard School of Music and the University of North Texas. Jones is currently Music Director/Conductor of the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra, Direc-tor of Orchestral Studies and Graduate Conducting at The University of Iowa, and the Artistic Director of the Conductors Workshop of America.
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, designed for graduate students, is based around the ensemble format established during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its rep-ertoire covers a broad range from Classical and early Romantic composers to contemporary. The Chamber Orchestra presents two or more concerts each semester.
Rounds for String Orchestra
David Diamond ( 1915-2005)
PROGRAM
NOTES
American composer David Diamond made his mark at an early age. The son of Austrian emigrants, the precocious boy began studies in violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music at the age of twelve, later at-tending the Eastman School for lessons in composition. After further studies with Roger Sessions in New York c::ity, Diamond eventually followed the path of many of his American contemporaries, working with the renowned pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger, in Paris. Although Diamond spent most of his career as an expatriate in France and Italy, his works were championed by American orchestras, including the Boston
Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Eschewing the serialise and aleatoric styles embraced by many contemporaries, Diamond's compositions employ more traditional concepts in their tonal language and neoclassical forms.
One of Diamond's most frequently played works, Rounds for String Orchestra, was commissioned by conduc-tor Dimitri Mitropoulos and received its first performance by the Minneapolis Symphony on November
24, 1944. The work is divided into three parts, with two Allegro movements framing a middle Adagjo. The opening Allegro pays homage to the round; in Diamond's approach to the imitative device sometimes found in popular tunes, a simple melody is created by the repetition of a single interval pulsating with rhythmic energy. The melody is restated in strict canon before the main subject is introduced in the violas. In contrast, the tender Adagio section is rife with arching lyrical melodies, conveying the brilliant hues of the strings in tranquil fashion. The final movement both expands on and embellishes the initial melody of the opening movement. Here, it is woven into an energetic fugue-like texture to "round" out Diamond's dynamic work.
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Evocations for Viola and Orchestra
Michael Kimber (b. 1945)
Michael Kimber has enjoyed an active career as a violist, teacher, and composer. A violist of the renowned • Kronos Quartet in its early years, he went on to become one of the founding members of the Atlanta Vir-tuosi, performing in venues across North America and Europe. Kimber was professor of viola at the Univer-sity of Kansas for twenty years, and then taught at the UniverUniver-sity of Southern Mississippi. He also served as visiting professor of viola at The University of Iowa in the spring of 2007. He currently teaches viola at Coe
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College and plays in the Cedar Rapids and Qu~d Cites Symphony Orchestras. He resides in Iowa City with his wife, a professor of musicology at The University oflowa.
Kimber's music has been performed throughout the United States and abroad. Listeners of Iowa Public Radio may be familiar with Kimber's Traveling Music, which is routinely heard as the theme music for its "Symphonies of Iowa" program. Evocations was commissioned by the Iowa City Community String Orchestra and .received its premiere performance on April 2, 2006, with viola soloist Christine Rutledge. Michael Kimber has described the formal design of the work:
The first movement opens with an energetic, folk-like melody introduced by the soloist. This theme, and a second, more broadly arching one, are then developed contrapuntally. A cadenza for the soloist leads to a return of the opening music, and the movement ends with nostalgic reflections of both themes .
1l1e second movement may bring to mind music from an earlier time. A dreamy, wistful melody Roats above a gencle accompaniment having five beats to the measure rather than the more usual duple or triple meter. After building to a climax, then returning to the mood of the beginning, the movement concludes with a brief cadenza.
The last movement is a driving perpetual motion for the soloist, whose running notes con-tinue relentlessly even as the orchestra brings back the opening theme of the first movement. The piece ends with the soloist rising to a high, sustained note while cellos and basses take up the running figures to bring the music to a brilliant conclusion.
Symphony No. 40,
K.
550, G minor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)The death of Mozart's father in May 1787 was the beginning of a turbulent period in the composer's time in Vienna. Estranged from his once close sister and suffering increasingly unstable financial conditions, Mozart faced bleak personal and professional circumstances. Despite the tumult, or perhaps because of it, the composer's creative output continued. In a prolific span of three months in the summer of 1788, Mo-zart composed what would become his three final symphonies, including the famed "Jupiter" Symphony and the Symphony no. 40 in G minor. Although the G-minor Symphony is one of the most frequently performed works in the symphonic repertoire, there is no clear evidence that it, or any of the three final symphonies, was performed in Mozart's lifetime. This has fueled the popular conception that the works were composed to satisfy what one scholar has termed Mozart's "inner artistic compulsion." However, it is possible the works had been intended for a planned trip to England that never reached fruition, or perhaps the concert tour of Germany that Mozart successfully undertook in 1789.
The Allegro molto opens with an uncertain, tense melody built around a descending three-note motive . A more lyrical second theme, tinged with chromaticism, is introduced before the main theme reaffirms its edgy, driving character in the development section. When both themes return at the conclusion of the movement, the second is in the minor mode, reinforcing the melancholy mood of the work.
1he more stately rhythms of the second movement are paired with a shift to a major key. Here a se-renely pulsating, ascending theme is slowly built up amongst the strings. Descending two-note figures in the woodwinds dominate the second theme, briefly turning the movement from its tranquil ambiance to wrenching forte entrances of harmonic discord.
The ensuing Menuetto insistently reasserts the minor mode, its driving rhythmic energy imbued with por-tent atypical of the traditionally_ elegant genre. The Trio briefly returns to major, restoring a dance-like atmosphere with graceful, sweeping melodic gestures. A final restatement of the minuet ensures the move-ment's stern conclusion.
The final movement is pierced by rising staccato arpeggiation followed by powerful tutti outbursts. The central development section's near-complete disintegration of formal structure and rhythmic and harmonic motion has even been regarded as foreshadowing atonal musical idioms. The return of the primary theme restores a semblance of harmonic stability to conclude the work.
It
does little, however, to pacify the fore-boding character of the previous section, which propelled Mozart's music to unparalleled dramatic depths. •-Michael Accinno
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Violin 1 Anna Draper*
Emily Rolka Kelley Johnson Cameo Jong Jeremy Starr Colleen Ferguson Violin 2 Lauren Trolley*
Preston Krauska Erin Dupree Rebecca Neely Katie Klocke Katelyn Truscello Viola Jessica Altfillisch*
Christopher Fashun Anton Jakovcic Cello JeeHyung Moon*
Parker Stanley Christina Craig Amy Pirtle Bass Asli Yetisener*
Evan Pettit Nicolas Coffman Olivia Rose MuzzyFlute Anna Hall Oboe Jennifer Bloomberg
*
Angela Lickiss Clarinet Jennifer Augello*
Brian Walsh Bassoon Kevin Judge * Jacqueline Wilson Horn Phillip Runkle*
Patrick Rappleye*
Principal player Jeremy Starr, manager Christopher Fashun, librarian Yuichi Ura, librarianAndrea Molina, concert manager
