ARTEK Recordings
Contents of CD 6 Booklet
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Stravinsky/Ravel
Stravinsky, ever the pragmatist, composed both the Duo Concertante and
Divertimento to fill a practical need: to play on tour with the violinist Samuel Dushkin.
The two met through Stravinskyıs good friend and publisher at Schott,
Willy Strecker. Early in 1930, Stravinsky spent time in Wiesbaden, where he
socialized extensively with Strecker. Strecker talked to him often of a
young, Polish-born violinist named Samuel Dushkin,
prodding Stravinsky to perhaps write something for him.
In his memoirs, Stravinsky explained the genesis of what was to become a
remarkable relationship:
In the course of our conversations [Strecker] asked me whether I should care
to write something for the violin, adding that in Dushkin I should find a
remarkable executant. I hesitated at first, because I am not a violinist, and I was
afraid that my slight knowledge of that instrument would not be sufficient
to enable me to solve the many problems which would necessarily arise in the
course of a major work specially composed for it. But Willy Strecker allayed my doubts by assuring
me that Dushkin would place himself entirely at my disposal in order to
furnish any technical detail I might require. Under such conditions the plan was very
alluring, particularly as it would give me a chance of studying seriously
the special technique of the violin. When he learned that I had in principle
accepted Streckerıs proposal, Dushkin came to Wiesbaden to make my
acquaintance.
Stravinsky and Dushkin hit it off immediately, both personally and
artistically, and developed a close working relationship. Stravinsky set to
work immediately on a new violin concerto, relying heavily on Dushkin to
help him solve problems of technique and sound on the violin. Dushkin
premiered the concerto in Berlin on October 23, 1931, with Stravinsky
conducting.
The two artists decided to continue their musical collaboration by giving
duo concerts, with Stravinsky moving from podium to piano. On their first
joint recital, given in Milan in March of 1932, they played the new Violin
Concerto with piano reduction, as well as a suite from Stravinskyıs ballet
Pulcinella that he had arranged for the violinist Paul Kochansky in 1925.
They fleshed out the rest of the program with Stravinsky playing his Piano
Sonata, and Dushkin some unaccompanied Bach. Needing material to fill a
complete duo-recital program with his own compositions and inspired by his
experience writing the Violin Concerto, Stravinsky began work on the Duo
Concertante. In his memoirs he wrote: ³Far from having exhausted my interest
in the violin, my concerto, on the contrary, impelled me to write another
important work for that instrument. I had formerly had no great liking for a
combination of piano and strings, but a deeper knowledge of the violin and
close collaboration with a technician like Dushkin had revealed possibilities I
longed to explore.²
In addition to the Duo Concertante, Stravinsky, with the active help of
Dushkin, rearranged his old Pulcinella suite into the Suite Italienne. They
unveiled their new duo program on Berlin radio on October 28, 1932, when
they premiered both the Duo Concertante and Suite Italienne. The Violin
Concerto was the third work on the program. In later recitals they mixed in
lighter fare, such as shorter arrangements they had made from two other
Stravinsky ballets, Firebird and Petrushka, and from his opera The
Nightingale. It was in this vein of finding lighthearted music to balance
the weight of the Duo Concertante and Violin Concerto that Stravinsky made
yet another arrangement for violin and piano at the end of 1934. This time
he used the Fairyıs Kiss, a ballet in four scenes he had composed in 1928.
The first performance of the suite, Divertimento, was given by Dushkin and
Stravinsky in Strasbourg on December 12, 1934.
Ravel, as well, was motivated to write his violin compositions by close
relationships with specific performers. One of these was the French
violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, who Ravel met during World War I when she
participated in a hastily organized wartime
performance of his Piano Trio. Her husband had been killed in the war, and
she became a very close friend of Ravelıs; in fact, his closest female
friend. It is even rumored that he at one point proposed marriage to her. In
the end, their relationship remained strictly platonic, and she eventually
remarried the painter Jean-Luc Moreau.
One of the other performers in Ravelıs life was the popular Hungarian
violinist Jelly dıAranyi, who, among other things, collaborated extensively
with Béla Bartòk. In July 1922 while in England giving concerts, Ravel
attended a private musical soireé at which she and cellist Hans Kindler
performed his Sonata for Violin and Cello. After the performance, Ravel
asked to hear some Hungarian gypsy tunes and dıAranyi obliged him, playing
the night away with tune after tune. This encounter inspired him to start
thinking about a violin gypsy piece of his own.
Meanwhile, Jourdan-Morhange had premiered Ravelıs Sonata for Violin and
Cello in March 1922. Later the same year she gave the first performance of
his short work for violin and piano, the Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel
Fauré. Around this time Ravel conceived the idea of
writing a sonata specifically for her. However, by the time he had begun
sketches in 1923 she had given up performing for physical reasons. Instead he promised the
first performance, which was already fixed for an all-Ravel concert in
London in spring of 1924, to dıAranyi. Never terribly quick to finish his
compositions (he had spent a year and a half on the Sonata for Violin and
Cello) he struggled with the Sonata for violin and piano through the
beginning of 1924. Finding that he was not making any progress, he turned his
attention two months before the slated premiere of the Sonata to his gypsy
work. About Tzigane he wrote to dıAranyi, ³I am writing specially for you
[Tzigane], which will be dedicated to you and which will replace in the
London programme the Sonata which I have temporarily abandoned.²
Ravel ended up completing Tzigane only two days before the concert which
took place on April 26, 1924, and in fact did not complete the Sonata for
another two years. In the spring of 1927, the French publisher Jacques Durand presented two recitals
featuring compositions his firm had recently published. It was there that
the Sonata was finally premiered by Georges Enesco and Ravel.
It was subsequently given its American premier in New York
in January 1928 by Joseph Szigeti and Ravel, in the midst of a highly
successful US tour that Ravel undertook.
-Jennifer Frautschi
Jennifer Frautschi, Violin
Jennifer Frautschi is one of the most refreshing and original young
violinists on the musical scene today. Since making her debut with the Los
Angeles Philharmonic at the age of sixteen, she has been heard in concerts
throughout the world. Ms. Frautschi has won several First Prize awards in
prestigious
competitions, including the Washington International Competition, the Irving
Klein International String Competition, the Juilliard Concerto Competition
and GM/Seventeen Magazineıs National Concerto Competition. She was named a
United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 1990 and was awarded an
Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1999.
Ms. Frautschi has performed with orchestras, at festivals and on recital
series throughout the United States. She has appeared at Lincoln Centerıs
Mostly Mozart Festival, Ravinia Festivalıs Rising Stars series, the Phillips
Collection and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and at the Gardner
Museum in Boston. She is an avid chamber musician and has performed at the
Caramoor International Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and
La Jolla Summerfest. In Europe, Ms. Frautschi has toured Switzerland and
Belgium, given live recital broadcasts on Radio Suisse-Romande and has
performed at the Monnaie Opera House of Brussels and with the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders. This CD of Ravel and Stravinsky works
for violin and piano marks Ms. Frautschiıs debut recording for Artek.
Marta Aznavoorian, Piano
Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer has said of pianist Marta
Aznavoorian, ³[She is] a pianist of
exceptionally finished technique and purity of musical impulse.² Ms.
Aznavoorian, a Chicago native, is an accomplished performer, having been a
soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the New World Symphony as well as
appearing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Sydney Opera
House in Australia. Richard Kirchoff of the Salt Lake City Spectrum
commented, ³Very rarely is one able to hear music that [seems] that
it is being created anew and that the new creation is being heard for the
first time. This experience was available to all who attended the recital of
pianist Marta Aznavoorian.²
Marta Aznavoorian has won numerous competitions, including the Seventeen
Magazine/General Motors National Competition, the Aspen Music Festival Piano
Competition, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Competition. Ms.
Aznavoorianıs awards include a Level 1 scholarship from the National
Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and being named Presidential Scholar
in the Arts.
Ms. Aznavoorian holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University,
where she studied with Menachem Pressler and Lev Vlassenko and was awarded
the coveted School of Music Performerıs Certificate. Ms. Aznavoorian
recently completed her studies at New England Conservatory, where she earned
a Masterıs degree under Patricia Zandor. She is currently a faculty member
of the Community Music School at De Paul University.
Igor Stravinsky
Duo Concertante for Violin and Piano
[1] Cantilène (3:05)
[2] Eglogue I (2:15)
[3] Eglogue II (2:55)
[4] Gigue (4:20)
[5] Dithyrambe (3:16)
Divertimento for Violin and Piano
[6] Sinfonia (6:33)
[7] Danses suisses (4:51)
[8] Scherzo (3:04)
Pas de deux
[9] a) Adagio (3:16)
[10] b) Variation (0:59)
[11] c) Coda (2:10)
Maurice Ravel
Sonata for Violin and Piano
[12] I Allegretto (7:36)
[13] II Blues (5:21)
[14] III Perpetuum mobile (3:51)
Tzigane
[15] Tzigane (Rapsodie de Concert for Violin and Piano) (10:37)
Producer: Laura Harth Rodriguez
Engineer: Francisco X. Rodriguez
Editing and Mastering: Laura Harth Rodriguez, Francisco X. Rodriguez;
Digital Dynamics Audio Inc.
Graphic Design: Jim Manly, Judd Robbins
Cover Photo: Christian Steiner
Recorded on August 29, 1999 at Colden Center, Queens College, New York City
Jennifer Frautschi, Violin
Marta Aznavoorian, Piano