Rayna Yun Chou

Herbert Howells (1892-1983): Elegy Op.15 for Solo Viola, String Quartet and String Orchestra (arr. viola and piano, 1917)

Augusta Read Thomas (b.1964): Rainbow Bridge to Paradise (2016)

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Sonata for Viola da Gamba in G Minor, BWV 1029 (1730-40s)

I. Vivace

II. Adagio

III. Allegro

— Intermission —

Joseph Jongen (1873-1953): Andante espressivo (1900)

Joseph Jongen: Suite Op. 48 for Viola and Orchestra (arr. viola and piano, 1915)

I. Poème Élégiaque

II. Finale

— Reception to follow —

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“This work was composed in 1917, and first performed at the Mons Memorial Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in the same year by Sir Hugh Allen and the London Symphony Orchestra. It is inscribed to the memory of Francis Purcell Warren, a fellow student of the composer at the Royal College of Music in the years of the First World War. He was a Viola Scholar, and composer; and also one of the circle of young musicians that included Gurney, Eugene Gossens, Arthur Benjamin, Arthur Bliss, and the present writer himself - all fellow students at one time. Purcell Warren was killed in the 1914-1918 War, and the Elegy was composed soon after his death. It is not in the least ‘heroic’: it was entirely dominated (in my mind) by the personality of my friend.” — Herbert Howells.

“Rainbow Bridge to Paradise starts at the very bottom note of the viola, in the deep, rich, elegant tones of the instrument and traverses (throughout four minutes and thirty seconds) to the very bright, clear, clean, optimistic top register of the instrument.

The rainbow is one of humankind’s premier symbols, permeating our myths, art, and literature. Throughout history, the rainbow has been seen primarily as a symbol—of peace, covenant, divine sanction… and the rainbow's image is woven into the fabric of our past, present and future.

This music’s vibrant, expressive and distinct ‘picture’ is one of an ascent from earth to paradise across a colorful bridge.” — Augusta Read Thomas.

“J.S. Bach wrote three sonatas for the most popular member of the viol family of string instruments, the viola da gamba, a six-string fretted, held between the knees somewhat like a cello, which produces a soft, delicate tone. Since only a limited number of early music specialists play the viola da gamba today, the sonatas are much more frequently performed in transcriptions for either cello or viola.

With the Sonata fo Clavier and Viola da Gamba No. 3 BWV 1029, Bach seems to enter a new and even greater realm of creativity. In Spitta’s words, it is “a work of the highest beauty and the most striking originality.” Containing only three instead of hte usual four movements, the sonata opens with a Vivace that surges ahead with an elemental, almost ferocious, verve and dash. Perhaps the most striking moment occurs near the end of the movement when all three voices, which had been moving along with great contrapuntal independence and freedom suddenly combine ina powerful unison statement of the theme.

An almost religious hush pervades the slow movement, the Adagio, as all three voices sing their melodic lines with devotional fervor.

The start of the concluding Allegro, with the gamba giving out a vigorous, dancelike theme, leads on to expect the rest of the movement to be devoted to a working out of that subject. Instead Bach introduces a sharply contrasting melody that is much more cantabile and lyrical in articulation. The remainder of the movement treats both themes, often with a brilliance and virtuosity not encountered in the other gamba sonatas.” — Melvin Berger, Guide to Sonatas: Music for One or Two Instruments (1991).

“Joseph Jongen was a Belgian composer, organist and pianist (1873-1953). At the age of seven he enrolled as a student at the Liège Conservatoire, where he later studied composition with the director, Jean-Théodore Radoux. In 1892 he was awarded the gilt medal in the piano competition, and later that same year he joined the organ class of Charles-Marie Danneels. At the organ competition of 1896 Jongen was awarded the gilt medal unanimously and with the highest honours. In 1894 he gained first prize for his String Quartet op.3 in the competition of the Royal Academy of Belgium, and three years later he won the Prix de Rome with the cantata Comala.

Jongen became organist of the Grand Séminaire, Liège, in 1891, a post he relinquished three years later to become the organist at St Jacques, Liège. From 1898 he shared this post with his brother, Léon Jongen, in order to undertake a four-year tour of Europe. In Berlin he encountered the music of Brahms and met Bruch and Richard Strauss, whom he heard direct the first performances of Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan. For a short time Strauss gave him composition lessons, notably on his Symphony in A, but in 1899 Jongen moved on to Bayreuth, where it was proposed that he should become chorus master for the 1900 season. Complex Bayreuth politics eventually put paid to the plan, and instead he visited Munich, where he wrote his Violin Concerto, inspired by the playing of Joachim. The Exposition Universelle of 1900 attracted him to Paris, where he became acquainted with Fauré, d’Indy, Charles Bordes and many others connected with the Schola Cantorum and the Société Nationale. Six months in Rome, where he established a friendship with Florent Schmitt, concluded his travels.

By 1905 Jongen had taken up residence in Brussels. He taught at the Scola Musicae there, a counterpart of d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, and at the Liège Conservatoire, where he became professor of harmony in 1911. Jongen also maintained an affiliation with the Libre Esthétique, the Brussels chamber music society that shared the aims of the salons of Paris and of the Société Nationale. Since the latter had rarely permitted the performance of works by non-French composers, even after d’Indy’s committee had officially decided to allow it, Jongen found himself in the rare position of being able to present his chamber works to the highest musical echelons of both Brussels and Paris. The resulting recognition by Auguste and Jacques Durand, who ran the eponymous publishing house, led to the issue of a steady stream of his works. This, and the continuing championship of the revered Ysaÿe, consolidated Jongen’s position as Belgium’s greatest contemporary composer, but despite this, he failed to win the directorship of the Liège Conservatoire after Radoux died in 1911.

In 1909 Jongen married the pianist, Valentine Ziane. During the following four years their three children were born, and on the outbreak of war in 1914 the family fled to England, where they lived alternately in London and Bournemouth. With Désiré Defauw, Emile Doehaerd and Lionel Tertis, Jongen formed a piano quartet, the Belgian Quartet, which performed regularly, both in London and the provinces. With Defauw he gave the first British performance of Debussy’s Violin Sonata, and he made the acquaintance of Arthur Rubinstein, for whom he composed the Suite en forme de sonate. Regular performances of Jongen’s chamber music at the Popular Sunday Concerts of the South Place Ethical Society in Finsbury Square now saw the collaboration of J. & W. Chester, who assumed Durand’s former role in publishing and promoting his music. Most of this was now written in Bournemouth, which served as the family’s home during the summer months. Here, Jongen’s brother-in-law introduced him to Sir Dan Godfrey, conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, who not only performed the Cello Concerto, with Maurice Dambois as soloist, but also commissioned the Tableaux pittoresques, the orchestral suite written in Bournemouth, which Jongen himself directed in December 1917. Organ recitals occupied him on many occasions. These took place not only in Bournemeouth and London, but also in connection with visits to his sister-in-law’s family in West Didsbury, Manchester. Opportunities arose to present a number of new organ pieces, notably the Pensée d’automne at Manchester Town Hall and the popular Chant de May at the Steinway Hall, Lower Seymour Street.

After World War I Jongen returned to Brussels. In 1920 he was appointed professor of fugue at the Brussels Conservatoire and five years later he became its director. During this time he was principal conductor of two concert series in Brussels, the Concerts Spirituels and the Concerts Populaires, and he accepted the royal command to become tutor in harmony to Princess Marie-José. Jongen was responsible for a broadening of the horizons of the Conservatoire, establishing links with musical centres as far apart as Budapest and Madrid, but his music took the name of the Conservatoire much further. Léon Jongen asserted that the Concert à cinq had been performed over 400 times by 1940, but the Rhapsodie for wind quintet found a more enduring following, according to preserved concert programmes. Commissions were plentiful at this time, but composition was nonetheless reserved for the summer months, which he spent at his country estate at Sart-lez-Spa in the Ardennes. The Symphonie concertante for organ and orchestra was commissioned by Rodman Wanamaker for the opening of the Grand Court organ in Philadelphia, but Wanamaker’s sudden death led to the performance being cancelled. Jongen nevertheless subsequently played and directed the work throughout Europe.

Jongen retired in 1939 but continued to compose, refining his style in works such as the Concertino for clarinet, the Duo Sonata for violin and cello, and the Prelude and fugue for organ, all of which took on an unprecedented lucidity. His final years also saw his collaboration in organ-design projects, one of which led to the completion of the monumental organ at the Ixelles studios of the Belgian Radio. Jongen was twice elected to the office of director of the Royal Academy of Belgium and was a corresponding member of the Institut de France.

Jongen is remembered above all for his organ music, especially the Sonata eroïca and Symphonie concertante, which have become enduring works of the repertory. His chamber music, however, includes many brilliantly coloured works such as the later trios, the Concert à cinq and the Concerto for wind quintet. The Pièce symphonique for piano and orchestra rivals the Symphonie concertante, while the compositions for solo piano range from the simplest of miniatures to the transcendent Treize Préludes and the Trois études de concert written for Brailowsky. There are also concertos for piano, violin, cello and harp, settings of Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, a ballet and an unfinished opera, Félyane, though Jongen himself valued the Prélude élégiaque et scherzo.

Léon Jongen’s assertion that his brother should not be grouped with the school of César Franck serves to emphasize that Jongen’s independence allowed him to draw on a much broader legacy from the 19th century. Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin, for instance, served equally as his mentors in his cultivation of a uniquely synthesized, late-Romantic, euphonious lyricism. Through the tuition of both Strauss and d’Indy he found renewed zeal in the evolution of what one critic described as ‘an eloquence that is Wagnerian in its flow but French in its atmosphere’. Even as early as 1913 his music was admired for its ‘comprehension of the world’. Absorbing much from Debussy, Jongen began a period of ‘painting with sonority’, and the music of the 1920s went further in attempting to assimilate the influence of Stravinsky. In his most focused, later works Jongen sought to produce a classical impressionism, allied to that of Ravel, and during his final years a more abstract distillation of his style evolved as a result of his spiritual affinity for Fauré’s music.

Jongen’s individuality lies in the consistent, unfailingly natural way in which melody finds life through the inflections of plainchant and Liégeios folksong, and in the way this interacts with the state of flux of the modal contrasts of his harmony. Thus, whatever the period and the influences, his style is instantly recognizable, and his manner is noteworthy for its unique eclecticism, which Jongen himself preferred to think of as internationalism.” — John Scott Whiteley, Grove Music Online, 2001.