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| Christina Jennings, Lura Johnson, and George Rochberg. |
Preparations
This summer I have been very busy preparing for
my Fall recording session. This music, which is very dear to my heart, will be
Volume I of music for flute by the American composer, George Rochberg. In
addition to actually practicing this music- which has moments of extreme
technical demand and lots of juicy choices to make about sound color and style-
I am involved in the large scale transcription project of Rochberg’s Caprice
Variations for solo violin. Each of these miniature movements are based on the
Niccolo Paganini theme we flutists know from the etudes (Caprice 24, book 2).
Each of Rochberg’s caprices is done in a different style- Bach, Haydn,
Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Bartok, and many of them quote moments from his own
Concord Quartets (#4-6). These Quartets were pivotal compositions in the 1970s
and 80s and were composed for my father’s string quartet. I grew up with this
music through the string quartets, but also through my father’s performance of
the Caprices. Here are some of his notes and also a link to his youtube version
(Andrew Jennings Complete Caprice variations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIj4mwvTuCI)
…
1970 was a pivotal year in
Mr. Rochberg’s life in many ways. He was working on two large-scale
commissions, a solo piano work for Jerome Lowenthal which became the Carneval Music, and a new string quartet
for the Concord Quartet debut recital. He was struggling in both works
with a multi-lingual musical vocabulary
which drew as much on the musics of the past as those of the present without
the use of overt quotation. From the vantage point of 2010 it is hard to understand
(or remember) just how radical this idea was in 1970 (which is a measure of
just how potent and successful his revolutionary work was to be.) It was an enormously difficult challenge that
was taking vast amounts of time to work out. At the same time his teen-aged
daughter was on the crux of her own dilemma. A gifted dancer as well as a
brilliant intellect, she had been apprenticed to the Buffalo Ballet and was being groomed for a career in dance.
The pressure on her to make the decision between scholarship and dance was
enormous at such a young age and she asked her father for advice. Never one for
half measures, George decided that he would attend every one of her
performances of Nutcracker in
Philadelphia in order to see just how she might fit into this lifestyle so he
could better advise her.
He described to me returning
home every evening exhausted (and he never could stand Tchaikowsky to start
with) flopping down on his couch, where he did most of his composing, and only
having enough energy to produce little sketches for the larger works. These
sketches took the form of solo violin miniatures where he was working out
certain ideas, and as he wrote he began to use as a “springboard” the
twenty-fourth Caprice of Paganini. He
was intrigued not only by its compelling simplicity but also by the way that
same music was reflected in many other
composers. That musical germ allowed him to find a bridge to Bach, to Mahler,
Beethoven, Brahms and on and on.
By the end of some fifty Nutcrackers George had a sizeable stack
of short sketches which allowed him to finish both the Carvneval Music and the Quartet
in time for their respective premieres. (By the way, his advice to Chessie was
not to pursue ballet and she went on to a brilliant academic career that has
included the award of a MacArthur grant.)
After the success of the Quartet, George became the composer of
the moment, his music was being played all over and there were many calls on
him for new works. His publisher, on a visit to his studio noticed the stack of
manuscript sketches and when George told him what it was, suggested that he
might like to turn them into something publishable. In 1973, after polishing
and reworking the sketches, they were published as the Caprice Variations for Solo Violin.
The works were not conceived
in any was as “pedagogical” studies as some have thought, rather they are more
in the style of the great “miniatures” tradition of the piano literature
(Chopin, Brahms, Liszt come to mind.)
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| Jennings-Johnson Duo |
The transcription process has been a creative
nirvana as I make choices about how to best capture the composer’s intentions
and also bring some of my own thoughts alive. Because I grew up in a family of
violinists and am now married to a violist, string writing and technique is
familiar. I have been able to use flute extended techniques to bring out some
of the colors of the violin, including multiphonics, flutter tongue, jet
whistle, and whistle tones to name a few. This project has followed me on my
summer Festival hopping: first at Sarasota Music Festival where I debuted a few
of the new transcriptions on Sarasota Public Radio, then at Greenwood Music
Camp (in Cummington, MA) where I finished up the actual transcriptions. My
family and I are currently enjoying an island off the coast of Maine where,
while they sail and kayak, I am cleaning-up the transcriptions and actually
practicing them! CU alumnus Mathieu D’Ordine has been putting the
transcriptions into Finale, so we’ve been sending back and forth lots of drafts.
I look forward to rehearing with my amazing
collaborators: Lura Johnson (http://lurajohnson.com/) and
June Han (http://www.bowdoinfestival.org/ai_june_han.php) and
working with the incredible Grammy-nominated producer and engineer Judith
Sherman (http://www.discogs.com/artist/Judith+Sherman)
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Drafts of Caprice Variations used as scrap paper
for 4 year olds!
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