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present…

JASON VIEAUX | GuitarSaturday, October 26, 2019 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

SCARLATTI Sonata in A Major, K. 208 (arr. Brouwer)

GIULIANI Variations on a Theme of Handel, Opus 107

BACH Violin Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001 (arr. Vieaux) Adagio Fuga Siciliana Presto

INTERMISSION

MARTIN Quatre pièces brèves Prelude Air Plainte Gigue

BARRIOS Vals in G Major, Opus 8, No. 4

JOBIM A Felicidade (arr. Dyens)

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ELLINGTON In A Sentimental Mood (arr. Vieaux)

MERLÍN Suite del Recuerdo Evocación Zamba Chacarera Carnavalito Evocación Joropo

This program is supported, in part, with funds provided by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jason Vieaux is represented by Jonathan Wentworth Associates Ltd.Jwentworth.com

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ARTIST PROFILE

San Francisco Performances presents Jason Vieaux for the second time. He made his San Francisco Performances’ debut in October 2017. Mr. Vieaux is currently our Guitarist-in-Residence.

Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux is “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), His most recent solo album, Play, won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

Jason has performed as soloist with over 100 orchestras in the U.S. and abroad. A first-rate chamber musician and programmer, he frequently collabo-rates with the Escher Quartet, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, accordion/ban-doneon virtuoso Julien Labro, and vio-linist Anne Akiko Meyers. His passion for new music has fostered premieres by Jonathan Leshnoff, Avner Dorman, Jeff Beal, Dan Visconti, David Ludwig, Viv-ian Fung, José Luis Merlin, Mark Manci-na, and more. Vieaux’s latest CD release, Dance (Azica), includes works by Boc-cherini, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Ker-nis with the Escher Quartet. Later this season, he will release a new solo Bach album on Azica. Recent recordings in-clude Leshnoff’s Guitar Concerto with the Nashville Symphony (Naxos); Beal’s “Six Sixteen” Guitar Concerto with the Norr–köping Symphony (BIS); Infusion (Azica)

with Labro; Ginastera’s Guitar Sonata on Ginastera: One Hundred (Oberlin Music) produced by Kondonassis; and Together (Azica), a duo album with Kondonassis.

In 2019–20, Vieaux returns to the Ell-nora Guitar Festival, and makes his debut at Music from Angel Fire. He will perform at Wolf Trap with the Escher Quartet, and give concerto performances with the Buf-falo Philharmonic, New Mexico Sympho-ny, New West Symphony, and Bakersfield Symphony. Recent highlights include de-buts at the Domaine Forget International Festival and the Carmel Bach Festival, and performances at the Caramoor Festival as Artist-in-Residence, Chamber Music Soci-ety of Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Cham-ber Music Society, the National Gallery of Art, Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon, Amster-dam’s Concertgebouw, New York’s 92Y, and Ravinia Festival.

Jason Vieaux has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1997, heading the guitar department since 2001. In 2011 he co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 2015 was invited to inaugurate the guitar program at the Eastern Music Festival. He has re-ceived a Naumburg Foundation top prize, a Cleveland Institute Distinguished Alumni Award, GFA International Guitar Compe-tition First Prize, and a Salon di Virtuosi Career Grant. Vieaux was the first classical musician to be featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk series. He plays a 2013 Gernot Wagner gui-tar with Augustine strings.

PROGRAM NOTES

Sonata in A Major, K. 208

DOMENICO SCARLATTI(1685–1757)

Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples in 1685 and spent his early life in Italy but his most productive years were spent as composer for the royal courts of Portu-gal and Spain, where he wrote 555 sonatas for solo harpsichord. Single tempo move-ments emphasizing a particular rhythm, the sonatas are cast in the simple binary form of dance music but are highly complex and nuanced works with their clear form and tonal foundation animated by novel expressive details and extraordinary har-monic effects. The originality of Scarlatti’s style can be traced to the influence of both Spanish popular music and the guitar. Scar-latti imitated many of the sonorities typical

of guitar music including internal pedals, chords built on the interval of a fourth, and note clusters reminiscent of guitar strum-ming. He enthusiastically embraced the dance rhythms and modal harmony of the Iberian folk and flamenco traditions and many of his most dramatic and unforget-table gestures are the result of the infiltra-tion of street music into this music he wrote for the royal courts. The Sonata in A Major, K. 208 elegantly develops an intimate and lyrical melody. It is arranged for guitar by Leo Brouwer.

Variations on a Theme of Handel, Opus 107MAURO GIULIANI (1781–1829)

Mauro Giuliani was the most famous guitarist-composer in Vienna, perhaps in all of Europe, during the first two de-cades of the 19th century. Born in south-ern Italy, he was greatly influenced by the virtuosic and fluent style of Rossini. In 1806, at the age of 25, he settled in Vienna and became part of a musical establish-ment that included Beethoven, Hummel, Weber, Diabelli and many other leading musicians. His musical activities ranged from the composition of beginners’ guitar exercises to performances of his own gui-tar concerti, and even a performance in the world premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as a featured guest cellist.

It was, however, as a guitar virtuoso that Giuliani was highly esteemed. A critic for the British guitar journal Giulianiad wrote: “In his hands the guitar became gifted with a power of expression at once pure, thrilling and exquisite. He vocalized his adagios to a degree impossible to be imagined by those who never heard him. His melody…was invested with a charac-ter not only sustained and penetrating, yet of so earnest and pathetic description as to make it appear in reality the natural characteristic of the instrument. In a word he made the instrument sing.”

Giuliani’s solo guitar music—a mercu-rial combination of grace, lyricism and dazzle—is always well wrought, and on occasion crosses to deeper levels. His Variations on a Theme of Handel, Opus 107 is based on the final movement of Handel’s Suite in E Major HWV 430, commonly known as The Harmonious Blacksmith. A popular but apocryphal story says Handel first heard the tune being sung by a local blacksmith.

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Violin Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH(1685–1750)

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote six works for solo violin. He designated the first, third and fifth of these compositions as So-natas, and the second, fourth and sixth as Partitas. The three partitas are loosely in the form of baroque dance suites though each has its own individual characteris-tics. Each of the three sonatas has a four-movement pattern of slow-fast-slow-fast. The first movement serves as an introduc-tory prelude, the second is in the form of a complex fugue, the third provides lyrical relaxation, and the fourth a brilliant finale.

In these works, Bach creates the illu-sion of a full harmonic and contrapuntal texture by means of single melodic lines that outline or suggest an interplay of in-dependent voices—a technique originally developed by lute composers and perfectly suited to the guitar. The Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001 begins with an elaborately orna-mented Adagio with a carefully organized tonal structure masked by an improvisa-tory surface. The profound Fuga has a terse subject and an intricate yet clear texture. The lilting Siciliano creates a trio texture in which duetting top parts are offset by a complimentary bass. It is the only dance movement actually labeled as such in this set of Sonatas. The concluding Presto, with its constantly changing accentuation pat-terns, is an exuberant example of Bach’s rich melodic invention.

In tonight’s recital, Jason Vieaux plays his own arrangement of Violin Sonata in G minor.

Quatre pièces brèves

FRANK MARTIN(1890–1974)

Frank Martin was Switzerland’s most important 20th-century composer whose many works for orchestra, chamber groups, and voice have been internation-ally acclaimed. His sole work for guitar, Quatre pièces brèves, is one of the most influential and expressive works for the instrument from the first half of the 20th century, although the Spanish virtuoso Andrés Segovia, for whom the piece was written, never performed it. Presumably Martin’s adventurous use of elements of

impermanence of happiness composed by Jobim in 1958 for the movie Black Orpheus. The solo guitar arrangement heard this evening is by the brilliant Roland Dyens.

In A Sentimental Mood

EDWARD KENNEDY “DUKE” ELLINGTON(1899–1974)

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, one of the greatest composers of American music, won high praise from musicians as diverse as jazz great Miles Davis and clas-sical composer John Adams as well as 14 Grammy awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Pulitzer Prize. First known as a leader of his own big band, El-lington composed many jazz standards as well as film scores and extended suites. Jason Vieaux’s arrangement of In A Senti-mental Mood captures the opening blues la-ment with expressive slides and bent notes as well as the bridge’s sensuous modern harmonies with a silky, smooth tone.

Suite del Recuerdo

JOSÉ LUIS MERLÍN(B. 1952)

José Luis Merlin is an Argentinian gui-tar composer and performer who tours extensively throughout North and South America and Europe. His Suite del Recuerdo is dedicated to the memory of the many thousands of people “disappeared” during the days of the military junta in Argentina.

Merlin writes: “This is an homage to memories, my memories. To the collective memories of my people living in nostalgia, tormented, anguished, happy and hopeful. Memories from the country, in San Luis, with all the smells and sounds from the country. It is like looking inside yourself in very pro-found silence. Memories of afternoons with grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins. All enjoying each other, sharing our feelings and playing gui-tar, sitting in the back yard drinking wine, under the vines. Lots of them are not here anymore. They are in my memories.”

The suite is in six movements which use traditional Argentinian forms: Evocación, Zamba, Chacarera, Carnavalito, Evocación (reprise), and Joropo.

—Program notes by Scott Cmiel

Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone composition-al technique was a barrier, but 30 years lat-er a passionate recording by Julian Bream brought Quatre pièces brèves worldwide at-tention and it has been popular ever since. Though modern in its use of harmony, the piece is in the form of a mournfully expres-sive Baroque suite in four movements: Pre-lude, Air, Plainte and Gigue.

Vals in G Major, Opus 8 No. 4

AGUSTÍN BARRIOS MANGORÉ (1885–1944)

The Paraguayan guitar virtuoso Agustín Barrios was a romantic composer who tried to capture the pure essence of emotion in his music. Everyday life seemed dull, re-pressed and over-rational to the Roman-tics who felt it could be transcended only through heightened emotional expression. They idealized romantic love, wore odd clothes and led irregular lives that were frowned upon in their time as Bohemian. Barrios saw himself as a brother of the me-dieval troubadours; undergoing an artistic journey through life, suffering a romantic madness, but inspired by destiny.

I am dancing in a mad whirlwindto the four corners of the planet!I carry in my blood a restless life,and in my pilgrimage, uncertain and wandering,Art lights up my pathas if it were a fantastic comet!

Barrios—The Bohemian

Chopinesque in its romantic beauty, Barrios’ Vals Opus 8 No. 4 in G Major was written in Brazil around 1919.

A Felicidade

ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM (1927–1994)

Antonio Carlos Jobim established the popularity of bossa nova and contributed to its development along with fellow Brazil-ians Garoto, João Gilberto, Luis Bonfa and Laurindo Almeida. After the success of The Girl from Ipanema Jobim appeared on Amer-ican TV specials, recorded solo albums, and appeared on two LPs with Frank Sinatra. A Felicidade is a bossa nova song about the