Author Archives: Dolce Suono

Collegial Pianists perform in “Russia Revisited”

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Our upcoming program “Russia Revisited” on Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:00pm features great 20th- and 21st-century works by Russian composers. The program’s title refers to our “Russian Roots” program two seasons ago. I programmed it in conjunction with pianist Charles Abramovic, DSE core artist and my duo pianist for about 12 years. I decided to feature the piano as a point of departure in selecting from the vast repertoire of Russian chamber music. I invited Charlie to choose a solo sonata by Prokofiev to perform in context of duos for flute and piano and viola and piano by Shostakovich, Mieczeslaw Weinberg, David Finko, and Yevgeniy Sharlat. Charlie suggested we invite pianist Tatiana Abramova to collaborate on this program, and we are delighted to be performing with her at her Dolce Suono Ensemble debut.

Tatiana Abramova, born in Novosibirsk, Russia, received her DMA from Temple University, where she studied with Harvey Wedeen. She took graduate seminars with Charles Abramovic, who called her “a marvelous pianist and a very strong musician. She gave some of the best recitals I have ever heard at Temple.”

In addition to her experience performing Russian music, Tatiana encountered a rich pedagogical tradition during her studies in Russia. She studied with Mary Lebenzon at Novosibirsk Conservatory, who was a student of the legendary piano pedagogue at the Moscow Conservatory Alexander Goldenweiser, a friend of Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Tolstoy. On her approach to Russian piano music, Tatiana said: ”In my youth I primarily focused on the music of the Romantic period: mostly the works of Schumann and Chopin. Russian music is very difficult for young pianists: it requires physical strength, big hands, and the type of understanding of music which only comes through life experience.”

I also spoke to Charlie about the Prokofiev piano sonata he selected, #6. It is one of the composer’s three “war sonatas” written during World War II. He notes that the nine Prokofiev sonatas are staples of the piano repertoire, and “demonstrate (as in Beethoven sonatas) the stylistic and artistic growth of the composer.” He finds in the music an “interesting intersection of orchestral-like sonorities with pianistic figuration. I see the sixth sonata as Prokofiev’s most symphonic, and to me it would be the most successful to orchestrate.  Despite the brutality and modernist tonal elements in the music, there is a strong sense of tradition with the four movement structure, and even the return of first movement material in the last movement.”

Notes by Mimi Stillman, flutist and DSE Artistic Director

Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:00pm

Gould Rehearsal Hall, Lenfest Hall, Curtis Institute of Music

1616 Locust Street, Philadelphia

Click here to purchase tickets online. They can also be purchased at the door.

For more information, please write us at info@dolcesuono.com.

phpUgKU8SPMCharles Abramovic

 

 

 

 

 

 

About “Russia Revisited”

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We are gearing up for our “Russia Revisited” concert on DSE Presents:

Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:00pm

Followed by Post-concert Conversation with the artists

Gould Rehearsal Hall, Lenfest Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, 1616 Locust Street, Philadelphia

Mimi Stillman, flute

Burchard Tang, viola

Charles Abramovic, piano

Tatiana Abramova, piano (guest artist)

 

Program:

Sergei Prokofiev, Sonata for Piano #6, Op. 80 [Abramovic]

Dmitri Shostakovich, Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 [Tang, Abramovic]

Mieczeslaw Weinberg, Five Pieces for Flute and Piano – U.S. premiere [Stillman, Abramovic]

David Finko, Sonata for Flute and Piano – world premiere [Stillman, Abramova]

Yevgeniy Sharlat, Sonata for Flute and Piano [Stillman, Abramova]

 

Virtuosity and emotional intensity abound in this program of masterworks by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, along with the U.S. premiere of a recently rediscovered piece by Mieczeslaw Weinberg, a world premiere by David Finko, and a sonata by emerging composer Yevgeniy Sharlat. Prokofiev’s Sonata for Piano #6, Op. 82, written in 1940 and the first of his three war sonatas. Prokofiev died on March 5, 1953, the same day the death of Stalin was announced. Shostakovich lived on until 1975, and his intricate, controversial relationship with the regime has been much documented. We will perform his last composition, the Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147.

Mieczeslaw Weinberg (1919-1996), a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to the Soviet Union, enjoyed a distinguished career but his music fell into relative obscurity in the West until very recently. His work Five Pieces for Flute and Piano was premiered in 1948 just before the purge, and the manuscript score languished in a St. Petersburg archive for around 60 years before it was discovered by Bret Werb, musicologist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. When I consulted Mr. Werb while doing research on the music of the Holocaust for Dolce Suono Ensemble’s project commemorating the Holocaust, he gave me the manuscript of Weinberg’s piece. I am honored to be giving its United States premiere on the Dolce Suono Ensemble Presents series “Russia Revisited” concert.

In addition, we will give the world premiere of David Finko’s Sonata for Flute and Piano. Finko, a Russian Jewish composer, narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, and suffered persecution under the Soviet regime before emigrating to the United States in the 1970s.

Yevgeniy Sharlat, whose Sonata for Flute and Piano we will also perform on this program, was born in Moscow and came to the United States with his family as a child, having endured economic privation and anti-Semitism under the Soviet regime.

 

Tickets:

General $25 / Senior $20 / Student $10

Available online www.dolcesuono.com, by phone 267-252-1803, and at the door.