The UNCG School of Music has been recognized for years as one of the elite music
institutions in the United States. Fully accredited by the National Association of Schools
of Music since 1938, the School offers the only comprehensive music program from
undergraduate through doctoral study in both performance and music education in North
Carolina. From a total population of approximately 12,700 university students, the
UNCG School of Music serves over 575 music majors with a full-time faculty and staff
of sixty. As such, the UNCG School of Music ranks among the largest Schools of Music
in the South.
The UNCG School of Music now occupies a new 26 million dollar music building
which is among the finest music facilities in the nation. In fact, the new music building is
the largest academic building on the UNCG Campus. A large music library with state-of-the-
art playback, study and research facilities houses all music reference materials.
Greatly expanded classroom, studio, practice room, and rehearsal hall spaces are key
components of the new structure. Two new recital halls, a large computer lab, a psycho-acoustics
lab, electronic music labs, and recording studio space are additional features of
the new facility. In addition, an enclosed multi-level parking deck adjoins the new music
building to serve students, faculty and concert patrons.
Living in the artistically thriving Greensboro—Winston-Salem—High Point “Triad”
area, students enjoy regular opportunities to attend and perform in concerts sponsored by
such organizations as the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, the Greensboro Opera
Company, and the Eastern Music Festival. In addition, UNCG students interact first-hand
with some of the world’s major artists who frequently schedule informal
discussions, open rehearsals, and master classes at UNCG.
Costs of attending public universities in North Carolina, both for in-state and out-of-state
students, represent a truly exceptional value in higher education.
For further information regarding music as a major or minor field of study, please
write:
Dr. John J. Deal, Dean
UNCG School of Music
P.O. Box 26167
Greensboro, North Carolina 27402-6167
(336) 334-5789
On the Web: www.uncg.edu/mus/
Frank Pittman, piano
Chamber Music of Johannes Brahms
assisted by
Mary Ann Bills, piano
Sally Thomas, soprano
Tasi Matthews, violin
Alexandra Glinkowski, viola
Christopher Hutton, violoncello
Graduate Recital
Sunday, January 27, 2002
3:30 pm
Recital Hall, School of Music
Program
Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor, Op. 34b (1864) Johannes Brahms
Allegro non troppo (1833-1897)
Andante, un poco Adagio
Scherzo. Allegro; Trio
Finale. Poco sostenuto; Allegro non troppo
Frank Pittman, piano
Mary Ann Bills, piano
Fünf Ophelia-Lieder, WoO 22 (1873)
Wie erkenn’ ich dein Treulieb
Sein Leichenhemd weiß wie Schnee zu sehn
Auf morgen ist Sankt Valentins Tag
Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß
Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?
Sally Thomas, soprano
Frank Pittman, piano
Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25 (1861)
Allegro
Intermezzo. Allegro ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Rondo alla Zingarese. Presto
Tasi Matthews, violin
Alexandra Glinkowski, viola
Christopher Hutton, violoncello
Frank Pittman, piano
In partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the
Doctor of Musical Arts
* * * * * * * * * *
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should please see one of the ushers in the lobby.
CHRISTOPHER HUTTON studied at Boston University with Leslie Parnas and earned
the M.M. and D.M.A. with Paul Katz and Steven Doane at the Eastman School of Music.
While at Eastman, he was teaching assistant to Steven Doane and taught cello for the
University of Rochester and the Eastman School's Community Education Division. He
also has had a broad range of experiences as a performer, including duo recital tours in
his home country of New Zealand and chamber performances at the Schlossfestspiele in
Heidelberg, Germany. He has played in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and was
rotating principal cellist in the New World Symphony Orchestra under music director
Michael Tilson Thomas. He has recorded for New Zealand's Concert FM, Germany's
SWF Radio and for a disc of contemporary music on Albany Classics and served on the
faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in 2001.
Coming Solo and Chamber Events:
Tamara Talley , clarinet
Matt Troy, viola
Sunday, January 27, 5:30 pm
Recital Hall
Thomas Dempster, composer
Sunday, January 27, 7:30 pm
Recital Hall
Erica Holley, flute
Tuesday, January 29, 5:30 pm
Organ Recital Hall
Di Daniels, flute
Saturday, February 9, 5:30 pm
Recital Hall
Pots and Pans Quartet
Thursday, January 31, 7:30 pm
Recital Hall
Flute Choir & Clarinet Choir
Tuesday, February 12, 5:30 pm
Recital Hall
*Faculty Composition Concert
Monday, February 12, 7:30 pm
Recital Hall
*Jack Masarie, horn
Wednesday, February 13, 7:30 pm
Recital Hall
Travis Newton, violin
Saturday, February 9, 7:30 pm
Organ Recital Hall
*University of Georgia
Wind Quartet
Sunday, February 10, 7:30 pm
Recital Hall
*Fee charged. Please call the University Box Office at (336) 334.4849 Monday-Friday from Noon-
5:00 pm to inquire about pricing.
The UNCG School of Music Artist Faculty Chamber Series Presents:
The Trout:
An Evening in Vienna
Thursday, February 7, 2002
7:30 pm • Recital Hall, School of Music
FRANK PITTMAN, piano, has been a member of the piano faculty at Meredith College
since 1998. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and
Temple University in Philadelphia. He has coached with Walter Hautzig since 1983 and
is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance from the
University of North Carolina-Greensboro where he studies with Dr. Joseph DiPiazza.
Mr. Pittman was the co-facilitator for the 1999 Chopin Festival and the 2000 Piano
Pedagogy Workshop at Meredith College. He is an active soloist, accompanist, clinician,
and adjudicator and has performed throughout the United States and England with live
broadcasts over British Radio. He is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda, North Carolina
Music Teachers Association, and The American Brahms Society.
MARY ANN BILLS, piano, is a staff accompanist at the North Carolina School of the
Arts and on the adjunct faculty at Wake Forest University. She has a Bachelor of Music
degree from Washington State University and a Master of Music degree in
Accompanying from UNCG. Her teachers have included Loran Olsen, Benton Hess,
Andrew Willis and Peter Kairoff. Mary Ann has maintained a teaching studio for more
than thirty years and holds professional certification from the North Carolina Music
Teachers Association and the Music Teachers National Association.
SALLY THOMAS, soprano, is currently on the faculty at Meredith College. During her
tenure there, she has taught studio voice, ear-training, vocal pedagogy and literature,
music education methods, and has conducted or accompanied various vocal ensembles.
Mrs. Thomas holds degrees from Meredith College, Ohio State University, and retains
Kodály Certification from Sam Houston State University. Currently, she is enrolled in
the doctoral program at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. A member of the
National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), Mrs. Thomas is active as a
recitalist in solo and chamber programs and frequently serves as a vocal and choral
adjudicator.
TASI J. MATTHEWS, violin, has been active as a chamber, orchestral, and freelance
musician in the Triangle area since 1997. She has performed with the Greensboro and
Durham Symphonies and currently plays with the Chapel Hill Chamber Orchestra, the
Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, and is the Concertmaster of the Raleigh Symphony
Orchestra. She also performs frequently with members of the faculty at the University of
North Carolina, where she is currently teaching. She earned her Bachelor of Music
degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and her Masters of Music from the NC School of the Arts
in Winston Salem. Her former teachers include Kevin Lawrence, Richard Luby, and
Mary Jane Kirkendol. In addition to teaching at UNC, Tasi teaches violin lessons
privately for all ages and levels.
ALEXANDRA GLINKOWSKI, viola, moved to the Triangle area in 1998. She has
been playing with local chamber groups, the North Carolina Symphony and the Opera
Company of North Carolina. Alexandra studied viola and violin making in Music
Academy in Poznan, Poland. She continued her viola study with Nathan Gottschalk in
Albany NY where she became his assistant in teaching viola performance classes at
SUNY, Albany. She was the founder and member of an international piano quartet The
Willard Consort. With over fifty performances, this ensemble specialized in romantic
period and contemporary repertoire. Additionally, Alexandra has been a member of the
St. Cecilia Chamber Orchestra, Albany, NY. Professional engagements include: May
1996, Tanglewood, MA with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson; November 1994,
Shostakovich Festival, Troy Music Hall with Maximilian Shostakovich; and October
l993, live broadcast of Brahms Sextet on Public Radio Station, Boston, MA.
Chamber Music of Johannes Brahms
No genre in Brahms’s oeuvre attained such a heightened artistic pinnacle as his chamber
music. Nowhere can one find the components of his compositional genius so
economically crafted. Here, Brahms developed the ideal balance of both sound and
structure. He explored the widest ranges of instrumental colors, timbres and textures
while maintaining his hallmark of implacable clarity. Preserving a fastidious sense of
proportion, Brahms formulated his music with the most ardent emotional lure without
succumbing to insipidness. Though Brahms probably would humbly dissent with the
comparison, his chamber works truly surpass those of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert.
Undoubtedly, Brahms was obsessively self-critical, often destroying entire works if they
did not meet his exacting standards. Brahms himself even claimed to have composed and
destroyed “20 string quartets” before he finally published his Op. 51 quartets in 1873.
Sadly, the absence of these discarded works encumbers scholars and connoisseurs from
studying the compositional processes employed by the master.
Fortunately, the Sonata for Two Pianos did not suffer such a plight. It was originally
composed in 1862 as a string quintet scored for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos. After much
criticism from Joseph Joachim, violinist and lifelong friend of Brahms, the string quintet
version was reworked as the Sonata for Two Pianos. It premièred in 1864 with Brahms
and Karl Tausig, the pianist who inspired the Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35,
at the pianos. Nevertheless, this version, too, came under scrutiny. This time the
criticism emanated from Clara Schumann, musical ally, mentor, companion, and
confidant, who preferred the earlier string quintet version. She suggested the work might
be better suited for piano and strings, feeling it needed the percussiveness of the piano in
combination with the sustaining properties of the strings. Consequently, Brahms
reworked the composition as a piano quintet and published it in 1864 as Op. 34, which is
how the work is better known and most often performed. Notwithstanding the critical
observations of Clara Schumann, it seems that Brahms did not entirely dismiss the two
piano conception. He must have felt this version had viability beside its counterpart, the
Piano Quintet. Indeed, the percussive quality of two pianos is better suited for the
vigorous Scherzo movement. After many years of labor and refinement, the two piano
version was finally published in 1871 as Op. 34b. Brahms found it superfluous to assign
a new opus number for a redrafted composition, hence, the designation of Op. 34b
instead of a subsequent higher number.
An understanding of any composer involves not only an awareness of their compositional
techniques but it also embodies an appreciation of their passions and affinities. One of
Brahms’s ardent passions was his avid admiration of antiquity and literature. He was a
voracious reader and owned an extensive and eclectic library. Evidence of his literary
knowledge is apparent in his choice of Lieder texts. As with other Lieder composers,
Brahms integrated texts by Goethe, Eichendorff, and Mörike, the giants of German
Lieder poets. However, Brahms additionally drew poetry from sources not commonly
regarded for this art form. Indeed, several of these unordinary texts come from the
Serbian and Bohemian cultures. In this same eclectic vein, the text of the Ophelia Songs,
translated into German by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, were written by the Bard of
Stratford, William Shakespeare.
Brahms took the poetry of the Fünf Ophelia Lieder, WoO 22, from the madness scene,
Act IV, Scene 5, of Hamlet. These songs were composed and dedicated in 1873 for the
actress Olga Precheisen and were premièred during a production of the play in Prague
with Precheisen in the role of Ophelia. In this scene, Ophelia enters, deliriously grieving
over the murder of her father. Brahms exhibits this delirium by incorporating irregular
phrase lengths in some of the songs. Nevertheless, because they advance the dramatic
action in the play, these songs, not originally intended to be performed as a set, appear to
lack a sense of conclusion.
The Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25, completed in the autumn of 1861, made its
première on November 16, 1861 in Hamburg with Clara Schumann at the piano. In her
usual consuetude as mentor, Clara wrote: “The first part seems to me too little in G minor
and too much in D major, and the absence of G minor makes it lack clearness.” She
included in her diary: “The Quartet only partially satisfies me, there is too little unity in
the first movement, and the emotion of the Adagio is too forced, without really carrying
me away. But I love the Allegretto in C minor and the last movement.” Indeed, it was,
perhaps, upon Clara’s recommendation that Brahms changed the second movement from
the original designation of “scherzo” to “intermezzo.” The attestation to this change
occurs in a letter to Brahms from Clara in July 1861: “I should not call it a scherzo, I can
only think of it as an Allegretto, but it is just the piece for me.”
Interestingly, it was exactly a year after Clara’s première performance in Hamburg that
Brahms performed the Quartet at his own première in Vienna on November 16, 1862.
This milepost proved to be highly significant for Brahms. His performance of Op. 25
with the Hellmesberger Quartet was highly praised. Consequently, this event established
Brahms’s reputation as both pianist and composer and it left an indelible mark on
Europe’s musical capital.
Incidentally, Arnold Schoenberg orchestrated Op. 25 in 1937 as a gesture of his
indebtedness to and adoration of Brahms. In a letter to a critic, Schoenberg explained the
reasons for engaging in such an endeavor: “1. I like the piece. 2. It is seldom played. 3.
It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays and you
hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.” It
is this author’s earnest goal to prove him wrong.
—Frank Pittman
Fünf Ophelia-Lieder, WoO 22
From Hamlet
William Shakespeare
German translation: August Wihelm von Schlegel
1.
Wie erkenn’ ich dein Treulieb
Vor den andern nun?
An dem Muschelhut und Stab
Und den Sandelschuhn.
Er ist lange tot und hin,
Tot und hin, Fräulein!
Ihm zu Häupten ein Rasen grün,
Ihm zu Fuß ein Stein.
1.
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
2.
Sein Leichen hemd, weiß wie Schnee zu
sehn,
Geziert mit Blumensegen,
Das unbetränt zum Grab mußt’ gehn
Von Liebesregen.
3.
Auf morgen is Sankt Valentins Tag,
Wohl an der Zeit noch früh,
Und ich, ‘ne Maid am Fensterschlag,
Will sein Eu’r Valentin.
Er war bereit, tät an sein Kleid,
Tät aug die Kammertür,
Ließ ein die Maid, die als ‘ne Maid
Ging nimmermehr herfür.
4.
Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß,
Leider, ach leider!
Un manche Trän’ fiel in Grabes Schoß.
Ihr müßt singen: »’nunter!
Und ruft ihr ihn ‘nunter.«
Denn traut lieb Fränzel ist all meine Lust.
5.
Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?
Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?
Er ist tot, o weh!
In dein Todesbett geh,
Er kommt ja nimmer zurück.
Sein Bart war so weiß wie Schnee,
Sein Haupt dem Flachse gleich:
Er ist hin, ist hin.
Und kein Leid bringt Gewinn;
Gott helf’ ihm ins Himmelreich!
2.
White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded all with flowers;
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
3.
To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
4.
They bore him barefac’d on the bier;
Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain’d many a tear,
You must sing, “Down, a-down,
an you call him a-down-a”.
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
5.
And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,
Go to thy death-bed,
He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow
All flaxen was his poll:
He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan:
God ha’ mercy on his soul!
This concert was made possible through the generous contribution of a grant from the
Faculty Development office at Meredith College, Raleigh, NC, administered by Dr.
Rosalind Reichard, Vice President for Academic Affairs.
For more information on The American Brahms Society, please write:
The American Brahms Society
School of Music
University of Washington
Box 353450
Seattle, WA 98195-3450
George S. Bozarth, ABS Executive Director, gbozarth@u.washington.edu
Daniel Beller-McKenna, ABS President, dbmck@mediaone.com
Frank Pittman, piano
Chamber Music of Johannes Brahms
assisted by
Mary Ann Bills, piano
Sally Thomas, soprano
Tasi Matthews, violin
Alexandra Glinkowski, viola
Christopher Hutton, violoncello
Graduate Recital
Sunday, January 27, 2002
3:30 pm
Recital Hall, School of Music
Program
Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor, Op. 34b (1864) Johannes Brahms
Allegro non troppo (1833-1897)
Andante, un poco Adagio
Scherzo. Allegro; Trio
Finale. Poco sostenuto; Allegro non troppo
Frank Pittman, piano
Mary Ann Bills, piano
Fünf Ophelia-Lieder, WoO 22 (1873)
Wie erkenn’ ich dein Treulieb
Sein Leichenhemd weiß wie Schnee zu sehn
Auf morgen ist Sankt Valentins Tag
Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß
Und kommt er nicht mehr zurück?
Sally Thomas, soprano
Frank Pittman, piano
Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25 (1861)
Allegro
Intermezzo. Allegro ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Rondo alla Zingarese. Presto
Tasi Matthews, violin
Alexandra Glinkowski, viola
Christopher Hutton, violoncello
Frank Pittman, piano
In partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the
Doctor of Musical Arts
* * * * * * * * * *
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should please see one of the ushers in the lobby.
