Sisters Kristina Gullion (violin) and Monika Sutherland (cello) have joined forces with pianist Mary Ellen Haupert to form the 2 SISTERS TRIO. Highly-trained and experienced, these three women will perform an exciting program honoring the 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann's birth. You won't want to miss their "notes from the stage," which will explore Clara's life as performer, mother, husband of Robert Schumann, and close friend and confidante, Johannes Brahms.
PROGRAM & NOTES
Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 by Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo and Trio
Andante
Allegretto
"I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" – Clara Schumann, 1839
While it was rare for a woman to become a significant composer in the European tradition of classical music before the 20th century, there are noteworthy examples. It is generally accepted that one of the very first composers distinguished from the anonymity of the early medieval period was in fact female: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), the "Sybil of the Rhine", who left a significant legacy of over 80 pieces in a highly unique style. The Florentine Francesca Caccini (1587– c.1640) was an influential lutenist, singer, teacher and composer who became the first female to compose an opera. France produced at least two 19th century women composers of note, both of whom wrote chamber music: Louise Farrenc and Pauline Viardot. When Clara Schumann, at the tender age of 20, chastised herself for being a woman with the misguided impulse to compose, her contemporary, Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of Felix, had already written a piano quartet and a string quartet among other works. Whatever the context, sincerity or intent of Clara's words at the time, she would continue to compose, ultimately producing well over thirty works including character pieces for piano, a concerto, several lieder, three Romances for violin and piano and, what is regarded as her greatest achievement, the Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 17, written in 1846 when she was twenty-seven. From a larger perspective of her multi-faceted musical life, it is clear that Clara Schumann was one of the most outstanding and influential female musicians of the 19th century if not the history of European classical music in general up to that point.
Schumann was first and foremost a superb pianist, considered for many decades to be one of the finest in all of Europe, meriting the sobriquet "Queen of the Piano". Known for her masterful technique and a sensitive, artistic gift for interpretation, Clara sustained a successful performance career for over sixty years and was among the first to introduce the works of Chopin and Robert Schumann while tempering the popular appetite for virtuosic romantic potboilers with the rediscovery of such classic composers as Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven and Schubert. Schumann also frequently programmed her own piano compositions. Her skills as composer and pianist enabled her to prepare excellent arrangements, transcriptions and critical editions of works by Brahms, William Sterndale Bennett and Robert Schumann. Clara Schumann was a well-rounded professional musician of the highest caliber anchored in an outstanding education directed by her father that included piano, violin, theory, harmony, orchestration, counterpoint, fugue and composition with some of the finest teachers throughout Germany.
Clara Schumann was apparently also brilliant at multi-tasking. She was devoted in her marriage to Robert Schumann placing his professional and personal needs ahead of her own even when it meant sacrificing time to compose or practice. In addition to actively supporting and participating in Robert's professional artistic life, Clara largely managed his business affairs while, through her own performance career, serving as the chief breadwinner for a family including eight children she bore and mothered. Robert Schumann's life became increasingly difficult and ultimately tragic due to the onset of debilitating mental illness. That Clara managed all of this as well as sustaining her own artistic life as a performer, composer and scholar is utterly miraculous and a profound testament to her strength, character and will. Clara outlived her husband by forty years during which she stopped composing, resumed a fully active career as a concert pianist, cultivated a rich, platonic and artistic relationship with Brahms and maintained an active role in raising her grandchildren. She became a devoted champion of her husband's music.
The Piano Trio in G minor is a finely crafted work that is easily recognizable for its midcentury romantic style with an affinity for the music of Robert Schumann as well as possibly Felix Mendelssohn. It was written when Clara was pregnant with her fourth child and unable to tour thereby finding a precious stretch of "idle" time to devote to composition. The first movement sonata is polished, sturdy and resolute within the cast of its minor mode. The two inner movements—a gentle scherzo and a tender andante—introduce a lyrical warmth occasionally tinged with pathos, especially in the central episode of the slow movement. The andante is a very moving, wistful romance that can't fail to evoke the ghosts of Robert and Johannes. The finale demonstrates Schumann's finest handling of dramatic form with prominent contrapuntal features. While the entire work is characterized by expressive moderation, it skillfully embraces the intimacy of the piano trio for an admirably balanced texture, an artful feat especially laudable for a brilliant concert pianist, a woman who followed her desire to compose after all. – © Kai Christiansen and Music at Kohl Mansion. All rights reserved.
INTERMISSION
Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Allegro con brio
Scherzo
Adagio
Allegro
Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 by Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo and Trio
Andante
Allegretto
"I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" – Clara Schumann, 1839
While it was rare for a woman to become a significant composer in the European tradition of classical music before the 20th century, there are noteworthy examples. It is generally accepted that one of the very first composers distinguished from the anonymity of the early medieval period was in fact female: Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), the "Sybil of the Rhine", who left a significant legacy of over 80 pieces in a highly unique style. The Florentine Francesca Caccini (1587– c.1640) was an influential lutenist, singer, teacher and composer who became the first female to compose an opera. France produced at least two 19th century women composers of note, both of whom wrote chamber music: Louise Farrenc and Pauline Viardot. When Clara Schumann, at the tender age of 20, chastised herself for being a woman with the misguided impulse to compose, her contemporary, Fanny Mendelssohn, sister of Felix, had already written a piano quartet and a string quartet among other works. Whatever the context, sincerity or intent of Clara's words at the time, she would continue to compose, ultimately producing well over thirty works including character pieces for piano, a concerto, several lieder, three Romances for violin and piano and, what is regarded as her greatest achievement, the Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 17, written in 1846 when she was twenty-seven. From a larger perspective of her multi-faceted musical life, it is clear that Clara Schumann was one of the most outstanding and influential female musicians of the 19th century if not the history of European classical music in general up to that point.
Schumann was first and foremost a superb pianist, considered for many decades to be one of the finest in all of Europe, meriting the sobriquet "Queen of the Piano". Known for her masterful technique and a sensitive, artistic gift for interpretation, Clara sustained a successful performance career for over sixty years and was among the first to introduce the works of Chopin and Robert Schumann while tempering the popular appetite for virtuosic romantic potboilers with the rediscovery of such classic composers as Bach, Scarlatti, Beethoven and Schubert. Schumann also frequently programmed her own piano compositions. Her skills as composer and pianist enabled her to prepare excellent arrangements, transcriptions and critical editions of works by Brahms, William Sterndale Bennett and Robert Schumann. Clara Schumann was a well-rounded professional musician of the highest caliber anchored in an outstanding education directed by her father that included piano, violin, theory, harmony, orchestration, counterpoint, fugue and composition with some of the finest teachers throughout Germany.
Clara Schumann was apparently also brilliant at multi-tasking. She was devoted in her marriage to Robert Schumann placing his professional and personal needs ahead of her own even when it meant sacrificing time to compose or practice. In addition to actively supporting and participating in Robert's professional artistic life, Clara largely managed his business affairs while, through her own performance career, serving as the chief breadwinner for a family including eight children she bore and mothered. Robert Schumann's life became increasingly difficult and ultimately tragic due to the onset of debilitating mental illness. That Clara managed all of this as well as sustaining her own artistic life as a performer, composer and scholar is utterly miraculous and a profound testament to her strength, character and will. Clara outlived her husband by forty years during which she stopped composing, resumed a fully active career as a concert pianist, cultivated a rich, platonic and artistic relationship with Brahms and maintained an active role in raising her grandchildren. She became a devoted champion of her husband's music.
The Piano Trio in G minor is a finely crafted work that is easily recognizable for its midcentury romantic style with an affinity for the music of Robert Schumann as well as possibly Felix Mendelssohn. It was written when Clara was pregnant with her fourth child and unable to tour thereby finding a precious stretch of "idle" time to devote to composition. The first movement sonata is polished, sturdy and resolute within the cast of its minor mode. The two inner movements—a gentle scherzo and a tender andante—introduce a lyrical warmth occasionally tinged with pathos, especially in the central episode of the slow movement. The andante is a very moving, wistful romance that can't fail to evoke the ghosts of Robert and Johannes. The finale demonstrates Schumann's finest handling of dramatic form with prominent contrapuntal features. While the entire work is characterized by expressive moderation, it skillfully embraces the intimacy of the piano trio for an admirably balanced texture, an artful feat especially laudable for a brilliant concert pianist, a woman who followed her desire to compose after all. – © Kai Christiansen and Music at Kohl Mansion. All rights reserved.
INTERMISSION
Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Allegro con brio
Scherzo
Adagio
Allegro
Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio, Opus 8, is in many respects a paradoxical work. Progressing from a radiant B major to a tragic B minor, the piece juxtaposes passages of luxurious warmth and optimism and music of turbulence and despair. It is also, in the version heard most often today, simultaneously one of Brahms’ earliest and latest works.
He had already started composing the trio in 1853, when the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim gave the 20-year-old Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms’ meeting with the Schumanns at their Düsseldorf home marked an important turning point in his life and career. The Schumanns received him with enormous enthusiasm and generosity. They invited him to stay with them for several weeks, initiating a close friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. Schumann wrote glowingly about the younger composer in his influential journal The New Leipzig Musical Times, and he introduced Brahms to the head of the prominent music publishing firm Breitkopf & Härtel. This greatly enhanced Brahms’ prospects for a successful composing career.
The following February, while still working on the trio, Brahms received the distressing news of Robert Schumann’s suicide attempt. He hastened back to Düsseldorf to comfort the Schumann family. It was under those dark circumstances that he completed the piece later that year. Perhaps this brush with tragedy associated with his mentor altered the emotional trajectory of the work, diverting it from its luminous B-major beginning and setting on the course towards its stormy B-minor conclusion.
Toward the end of his life Brahms, now the most respected of living composers, changed music publishers. Fritz Simrock bought the rights to all of Brahms’ works from Breitkopf & Härtel for the purpose of publishing them in a new edition. Simrock offered Brahms the opportunity to revise some of his earliest works for the release of the new edition. Brahms, ever the perfectionist – he had burned his first twenty string quartets and postponed composing his first symphony until his mid-40s – decided to revisit his 35-year-old trio, Op. 8.
After performing the new version in 1890, Brahms wrote to a friend, saying, “Do you still remember the B major trio from our early days, and wouldn’t you be curious to hear it now, as I have (instead of placing a wig on it!) taken the hair and combed and ordered it a bit…?” This was quite an understatement. In fact, he had shortened the overall length of the work by a third, substantially rewriting the middle sections of the first, third, and fourth movements. Only the Scherzo remained essentially unchanged from its original version. The final work seamlessly blends the impetuosity and passion of his youth with the technical assurance and architectural mastery of his maturity.
The first movement begins like a cello sonata, unleashing a glorious cello melody that continues for 23 measures before it is finally joined by the violin. The atmosphere of the movement is wise and reassuring, demonstrating that, even at an early age, his musical sensibilities were already well-formed and recognizably “Brahmsian.”
The Scherzo begins in a stealthily portentous B minor. Compressed staccato phrases are interwoven with longer thematic threads that foreshadow surprises ahead. Sudden fortissimo outbursts crash through the texture, dissolving into delicate piano filigree and quiet passagework in the strings. The contrasting trio introduces a melody of expansive warmth and maturity.
The third movement alternates between solemn piano and string chorales, eventually blending the two into a sustained, meditative texture. The music then gives way to a long-lined, soulful cello solo. The solemn chorale textures return toward the end of the movement, now accompanied by ethereal ornaments in the right hand of the piano.
The final movement is a musical battle between hope and despair. A quietly agitated opening explodes into major-key passages of great exuberance and exultation. Finally, though, the music retreats back into agitation and concern, and the trio concludes in a burst of stormy, B-minor turbulence. – ©Michael Parloff for Parlance Chamber Concerts
He had already started composing the trio in 1853, when the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim gave the 20-year-old Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms’ meeting with the Schumanns at their Düsseldorf home marked an important turning point in his life and career. The Schumanns received him with enormous enthusiasm and generosity. They invited him to stay with them for several weeks, initiating a close friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. Schumann wrote glowingly about the younger composer in his influential journal The New Leipzig Musical Times, and he introduced Brahms to the head of the prominent music publishing firm Breitkopf & Härtel. This greatly enhanced Brahms’ prospects for a successful composing career.
The following February, while still working on the trio, Brahms received the distressing news of Robert Schumann’s suicide attempt. He hastened back to Düsseldorf to comfort the Schumann family. It was under those dark circumstances that he completed the piece later that year. Perhaps this brush with tragedy associated with his mentor altered the emotional trajectory of the work, diverting it from its luminous B-major beginning and setting on the course towards its stormy B-minor conclusion.
Toward the end of his life Brahms, now the most respected of living composers, changed music publishers. Fritz Simrock bought the rights to all of Brahms’ works from Breitkopf & Härtel for the purpose of publishing them in a new edition. Simrock offered Brahms the opportunity to revise some of his earliest works for the release of the new edition. Brahms, ever the perfectionist – he had burned his first twenty string quartets and postponed composing his first symphony until his mid-40s – decided to revisit his 35-year-old trio, Op. 8.
After performing the new version in 1890, Brahms wrote to a friend, saying, “Do you still remember the B major trio from our early days, and wouldn’t you be curious to hear it now, as I have (instead of placing a wig on it!) taken the hair and combed and ordered it a bit…?” This was quite an understatement. In fact, he had shortened the overall length of the work by a third, substantially rewriting the middle sections of the first, third, and fourth movements. Only the Scherzo remained essentially unchanged from its original version. The final work seamlessly blends the impetuosity and passion of his youth with the technical assurance and architectural mastery of his maturity.
The first movement begins like a cello sonata, unleashing a glorious cello melody that continues for 23 measures before it is finally joined by the violin. The atmosphere of the movement is wise and reassuring, demonstrating that, even at an early age, his musical sensibilities were already well-formed and recognizably “Brahmsian.”
The Scherzo begins in a stealthily portentous B minor. Compressed staccato phrases are interwoven with longer thematic threads that foreshadow surprises ahead. Sudden fortissimo outbursts crash through the texture, dissolving into delicate piano filigree and quiet passagework in the strings. The contrasting trio introduces a melody of expansive warmth and maturity.
The third movement alternates between solemn piano and string chorales, eventually blending the two into a sustained, meditative texture. The music then gives way to a long-lined, soulful cello solo. The solemn chorale textures return toward the end of the movement, now accompanied by ethereal ornaments in the right hand of the piano.
The final movement is a musical battle between hope and despair. A quietly agitated opening explodes into major-key passages of great exuberance and exultation. Finally, though, the music retreats back into agitation and concern, and the trio concludes in a burst of stormy, B-minor turbulence. – ©Michael Parloff for Parlance Chamber Concerts
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Kristina Nocker Gullion, Violin
Kristina Nocker Gullion, a native of Chicago, received her Bachelors and Masters degrees in violin performance from Indiana University. Ms. Gullion has had an active career performing chamber music, solo, and orchestral repertoire. She was a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, American Symphony, and numerous chamber ensembles, performing at Carnegie Hall and the Weill Recital Hall in New York City. Ms. Gullion won a position in the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia in La Coruña Spain, where she lived for several years, performing and touring Europe with the orchestra. During her time in Spain, Ms. Gullion founded the Ananda Trio, which performed concerts and mentored young local musicians. Since 2002, Ms. Gullion has lived in Southwestern Wisconsin where she has performed regularly as a chamber musician in the Viroqua Fine Arts Association music festivals. She also maintains an active private teaching studio and helped create the strings program at Pleasant Ridge Waldorf school in Viroqua. Ms.Gullion is currently a member of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, the Dubuque Symphony, and various freelance orchestras in the Midwest. She performs chamber music with the Two Sisters Trio and the Druzhba Ensemble. |
Monika Nocker Sutherland, Cello
Monika Sutherland is an active performer and teacher. She has performed with the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra in Japan, and has been a member of the music faculty at Goucher College in Baltimore, and the Western Springs School of Talent Education in Western Springs, Illinois. In 1999 Ms. Sutherland became the music director of the Four Winds Waldorf School where over the course of six years she created a very successful orchestra and chamber music program. Ms. Sutherland is a recipient of the MacDowell Arts Award, and won first prize in the St. Paul Federal Music Competition. She participated in the Sarasota Chamber Music Festival, and has played with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. She performs annually in the Viroqua Fine Arts String Festival. Ms. Sutherland received a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University School of Music, and a Master of Music from Northwestern University. She studied with Janos Starker, Hans Jörgen Jensen, and Leonard Chausow. In June, 2005, pursuing a lifestyle change, Ms. Sutherland and her family moved to Viroqua, Wisconsin where she now resides with her husband, cellist Wyatt Sutherland, and their four children. She enjoys teaching, chamber music, knitting, and yoga. |
Mary Ellen Haupert, Piano
Mary Ellen Haupert spreads her musical abilities between her roles as Music Director for Roncalli Newman Parish and as a tenured Professor of Music at Viterbo University, both in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She holds a bachelors degree in music education with emphases in piano/flute performance from the College of St. Scholastica, as well as M.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Piano Performance Practice from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. She spent ten years in a rigorous re-training program under the tutelage of Taubman specialist Teresa Dybvig. Her performing interests are almost exclusively in the realm of chamber music. She is founder/artististic director of Viterbo University's One-of-a-Kind Chamber Music Series and Out-of-Our-Minds Chamber Music Series, as well as the Bonfire Chamber Music Festival in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She has recorded Louise Farrenc’s Sonata for Piano and Cello in B-flat Major, Op. 46 (comp. 1857-1858) and the Sonata for Piano and Violin in A Major, Op. 39 (comp. 1850-1855) with violinist Nancy Oliveros and cellist Kirsten Whitson in July, 2012, as well as (2014) Farrenc’s two piano trios, Opus 33 and 34 with Nancy Oliveros and cellist Laura Sewell, both on the CENTAUR LABEL. Haupert has received both of Viterbo University’s most prestigious teaching awards--the Alec Chui Memorial Award (2012) and Teacher of the Year (2014)--recognizing her dedication to excellence in student research and music composition. She was named a Research Fellow for Viterbo University's Institute for Ethics in Leadership (2015-2016). Her theory pedagogy, emphasizing music composition as an integral part of the curriculum, has been presented/published internationally: The 4th World Piano Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia (Novi Sad, 2012) Second Annual International Conference on Fine and Performing Arts(Athens, Greece, 2010), the International Conference on Education and New Technologies (Barcelona, Spain, 2009 and 2012), to name a few. |