American Sketches – Bonus Concert

FEBRUARY 23, 2025
AT 4PM

Kristin Lee, violin

Michael Chertock, piano

“One of the most satisfying recitals that I’ve heard in years.” The Strad

Violin virtuoso Kristin Lee makes her Linton debut with Cincinnati’s own Michael Chertock in a beautiful program that celebrates the brilliance of American composers.

SUBSCRIBERS – As a thank you subscribers receive a complimentary voucher that may be redeemed for a ticket to this subscriber bonus program. To make your reservation email info@lintonmusic.org or call (513) 381-6868.

This special concert will take place at the First Unitarian Church and will be approximately 1.75 hours, including intermission.

Program Notes

Fritz Kreisler (1875 – 1962) 
Praeludium and Allegro for Violin & Piano

Fritz Kreisler was a gifted violinist who developed a reputation as one of the greatest virtuosos of his generation. After beginning his study of the instrument at age four, Kreisler won entry into the Vienna Conservatory at age 7, three years earlier than the conservatory’s official age of entry. After graduating in 1885, Kreisler entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied fro two more years before graduating and beginning his performing career at age 13. At the height of his career, Kreisler was performing as many as 260 concerts in a single year. In addition to his profound performing career, Kreisler also enjoyed success as a composer writing in traditional chamber styles as well as composing several dozen miniatures for solo violin. One of the most distinctive aspects of Kreisler’s compositional career was his tendency to compose pieces in the style of earlier composers and then claim that he had rediscovered them before adding them to his performance repertoire. Once discovered, this practice created a minor uproar in the critical community before being ultimately forgiven as a harmless act of homage by a gifted stylist. 

The Praeludium and Allegro began its life as one of Kreisler’s “discovered” works. Originally credited to Pugnani, it presents a very Romantic interpolation of the Baroque Italian virtuoso. Structurally, the work presents a series of tests for the violinist highlighting a range of different skills. Kreisler opens with a series of leaps in the violin that gradually evolve into more elaborate melodic lines. This leads to the main theme that elaborates through a second series of leaps and double stops. The next section features a “shifting” technique as the violinist creeps down the fingerboard. A return to the first theme then leads to a passage built on finger pattern exercises with brisk leaps across different strings. Finally, the violinist faces the challenge of tuning and performing three notes simultaneously through the penultimate passage before the work slows to a short, rich conclusion. The Praeludium and Allegro has earned a place as one of the standards of the violin repertoire as a work that strikes a nearly perfect balance of being a virtuosic showcase and being genuinely entertaining to perform and hear live.

Charles Ives (1874 – 1954)
Sonata No. 4 for Violin & Piano, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting”  

According to Ives’s Memos from the early 1930s, his fourth sonata began from a desire to compose a less technically intricate violin sonata suitable for his twelve-year-old nephew to perform. From this intention, Ives created the sonata in 1916 through his unique practice of combining fragments of earlier compositions. The sonata’s thematic subject matter derives from a remembrance of children’s services at outdoor summer camp meetings held around Danbury and in other small farm towns throughout Connecticut in the 1870s, 80, and 90s. 

Similar to his earlier violin sonatas, Ives places hymn tunes at the center of each of the three movements. Each tune is presented in fragments initially before gradually developing to a statement of the complete hymn at the conclusion of each movement. The opening movement pulls from the hymn Old Old Story by William Howard Doane, which Ives sets against a countermelody built on the first ten bars of a fugue composed by his father George Ives. William Bradbury’s hymn Jesus Loves Me forms the basis of the second movement as the fragmented presentation converges to three statements of the hymn, each slower, softer, and a fourth lower than its predecessor. The final movement is based on Robert Lowry’s The Beautiful River, which receives a triumphant final statement near the end of the movement before the sonata finally ends on a mysterious note.

Ernest Bloch (1880 – 1959)
Sonata No. 2 for Violin & Piano, “Poeme Mystique”

Ernst Bloch left a musical legacy that spanned multiple identities. Born in Geneva, the Swiss consider Bloch one of their major composers, but after earning American citizenship in 1924 Bloch also cemented a place as one of the USA’s premier composers of the twentieth century. Beyond national considerations, Bloch also devoted much of his musical exploration to his Jewish heritage, helping him earn a place as an important Jewish composer during his lifetime. First and foremost, though, Bloch as a master of the violin both as a performer, studying under Eugène Ysaÿe, and a composer who understood how to truly capitalize on the idiosyncrasies of the instrument. 

Bloch’s second sonata, “Poeme Mystique,” was composed in 1924. The single-movement work eschews traditional sonata form in favor of four musical sections played without breaks. Extremely technically demanding for both performers, it nevertheless manages to create a lyrical fantasy that follows an unbroken melodic arc across all four sections. By combining quotations from his own Jewish Cycle with the Gregorian chant Kyrie Fons Bonitatis, Bloch weaves an intricate and beautiful musical landscape that is distinctly characteristic of his masterful style.

John Adams (1947 – ) 
Road Movies for Violin & Piano

The title “Road Movies” is total whimsy, probably suggested by the “groove” in the piano part, all of which is required to be played in a “swing” mode (second and fourth of every group of four notes are played slightly late).

Movement I is a relaxed drive down a not unfamiliar road. Material is recirculated in a sequence of recalls that suggest a rondo form.

Movement II is a simple meditation of several small motives. A solitary figure in a empty desert landscape.

Movement III is for four wheel drives only, a big perpetual motion machine called “40% Swing”. On modern MIDI sequencers the desired amount of swing can be adjusted with almost ridiculous accuracy. 40% provides a giddy, bouncy ride, somewhere between an Ives ragtime and a long rideout by the Goodman Orchestra, circa 1939. It is very difficult for violin and piano to maintain over the seven-minute stretch, especially in the tricky cross-hand style of the piano part. Relax, and leave the driving to us.

–Notes by the composer

Amy Beach (1867 – 1944)
Romance for Violin & Piano, Op. 23

Often acknowledged as America’s first successful female composer, Amy Beach began her career as a gifted pianist. After marrying a surgeon who was 24 years her senior, the then 18-year-old pianist was allowed to present only one public performance each year. In search of a new outlet for her creativity she turned to composition and soon became impressively prolific. During the 25 year span between her marriage and her husband’s death, Beach composed an astonishing number of new works of a quality considered equal to any of her contemporaries.

Composed while she was in her late 20s, Romance, Op. 23 was dedicated to the distinguished American violinist Maud Powell. The Arthur P. Schmidt Company published the work in 1893. Powell and the composer premiered the piece at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago the same year. Beach unfolds riveting melodic and harmonic ideas on conventional formal structures. She then maintains musical interest throughout the Romance with variations and reharmonizations of this introductory material.

George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)/arr. Igor Frolov (1937 – 2013)
Porgy and Bess Suite for Violin & Piano

There is little left to be said about George Gershwin or his influence on American music. In his short life Gershwin rose from a composer and arranger of popular songs to become one of America’s “elite” composers of classical music. His opera Porgy and Bess, first performed in 1935, was an instant success and remains one of  the best known operas of the twentieth century. The opera draws on almost every quintessentially American style including blues, spirituals, swing, jazz, and Broadway show tunes. The songs from Porgy and Bess have been performed on virtually every stage, and arranged, as we see today, for almost every instrument.

Igor Frolov was the child of two professional musicians who began studying violin at an early age. Despite a lifetime of musicianship, Frolov never formally studied composition, and did not begin his composing career until he was in his fifties. Although he was brought up on classical music, Frolov’s compositional interest veered more towards jazz styles, making it unsurprising that he would arrange a fantasie on the themes from Porgy and Bess. The piece opens with a declamatory piano introduction before the violin weaves in Gershwin’s tunes from the opera. Each tune presents an opportunity for a virtuosic display from the violinist, transforming Gershwin’s timeless melodies into a challenging and brilliant showpiece for the violin.