Cantilena

Poema

This CD brings together all my works written for cello, the instrument I simply adore. And my greater joy is to have Leonardo Altino as the performer. Leonardo Altino is an exceptionally gifted cellist, whom I consider to be the greatest discovery in the current cello scene in the whole world. Sensitive artist, fit with perfect technique yet always at the service of music, Leonardo Altino is just that, the ideal interpreter for any composer. Along with Ana Lucia Altino, they make a duo of extraordinary musicianship and superior understanding of these works. The first piece I wrote for the cello was the DESAFIO II at the request of Aldo Parisot, my good friend, the cellist, and teacher for so many generations. It was at the International Competition in Paraíba in 1968 that Aldo suggested the work, initially to be written for a group of six cellists. I went onto writing a total of fifty Desafios, virtually for all the instruments, including chamber and symphony orchestras. This DESAFIO II quickly became one of favorites among cellists, and in 2009 it was performed by all the finalists of the International Competition Carlos Prieto in Mexico. The piece is based on the idea of 'poetic challenges' of the folk singers of the Northeastern Brazil, in which the singers would challenge each other in drawn-out duels by composing poems on the spot, making them more elaborate in each turn. This centuries-old tradition, which originated in the Iberian world, namely Portugal and Spain, was transformed by the Brazilian folk culture. In my DESAFIO II, I begin with a virtuosic cadenza for cello solo followed by a type of toccata or 'challenge' between the piano and cello with a very strong contrapuntal undercurrent. The PARTITA LATINA was written in 2002, by the commission of another dear friend, the great Mexican cellist Carlos Prieto, who made it's world premiere in 2003 in Mexico and recorded it for the Urtext label. The work is based on the eighteenth-century idea of partitas with individual movements, but in this work, the movements interconnect through the initial idea introduced by the cello. I could also say that they are studies of musical character with the first movement (Lento-Estático) presenting the initial idea and developing it in increasingly complex forms. The second movement (Apassionatto) is a deviation from the melodic theme, written in a brief form, in which the cello part dialogues with the left hand of the pianist. The third (Scherzando) is virtuosic and sarcastic, and the fourth (Calmo) explores the variants of the opening theme leading to a type of crazed habanera. The fifth (Profundo) is extremely chromatic for both instruments yet intensely calm. The sixth (Vivo) is of virtuosic character and extreme contrast. The seventh (Grave) begins very slowly and gradually reaches a great sonorous climax. The POEMA III is part of another series that began in 2002, and as with the Desafios, it was written for virtually all the instruments of the orchestra to be performed either with piano or a string orchestra. The idea of Poema came from a love song I wrote for my wife Maria Luiza. At the same time, I was inspired by something Picasso said, 'I am a cubist painter, yes, but able to paint beautiful portraits.' The POEMA III is nothing more than a simple melody, a song of positive and direct nature. The work, TRÊS CANTOS DE IEMANJÁ, is based on my work, 'Beiramar" for baritone and piano, composed in 1968. I always wanted to write this piece for cello, whose particular dramatic and cantabile features would be well displayed. I made this version in 2009 specially for a concert in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate my seventieth birthday, and the debut was given by cellist Bernardo Katz and pianist Maria Luiza Corker. The CANTORIAS are also a case apart. In 2005 my dear friend, the great Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses came to me with the idea of commissioning several composers to write works based on Bach's suites for solo cello. I immediately chose one of my favorites, the suite in D minor, then wrote my CANTORIA I, which began with the initial idea of Bach and from there entered my personal world. It is as if Bach's idea bore fruit in my mind of a work with it's own ways, finding it's way to the 'Northeastern Cantorias,' hence the title of the work. Antonio Meneses premiered the work with great success in 2005 in Sao Paulo and soon after recorded it on CD. In the same year, Carlos Prieto, commissioned a work for solo cello. I then proposed writing CANTORIA II based on the same idea of the CANTORIA I, except this time on the C major suite. While the CANTORIA I is more melodic, the CANTORIA II is extremely virtuosic and devilish. Carlos premiered it in Mexico in 2006. Then came at last TRÊS CANTILENAS. Carlos Prieto commissioned the first two for the concert he organized in Mexico in honor of my seventy years in 2009, and I dedicated them to Carlos Prieto. And the CANTILENA III I wrote a little later also in 2009, for the concert performed by Leonardo Altino and the pianist Victor Asuncion in the Festival Virtuosi 2009, in which they presented the first world premiere of the work along with the other Cantilenas. The fundamental idea of Cantilenas is simple, it uses the ancient form, the A - A' of the baroque period (to which my music has so much resemblance, not in style, but in technique). In these TRÊS CANTILENAS a simple melodic idea is introduced in all it's extent by the cello, with an elaborate contrapuntal texture in the piano, and then is repeated, always with profound harmonic and contrapuntal variations. MARLOS NOBRE Rio de Janeiro, February 2011.

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Chopin

During my time as a student with Byron Janis in New York, we studied many of Chopin's works together, encompassing all genres, both large and small. Byron Janis was a genius of expression and characterisation in all the music of Chopin. He gave the small works the respect that tends to be reserved only for the large works by many and he influenced me greatly in my interpretation. In gratitude for music and much else, I dedicate this recording to Byron Janis. Small forms... I was delighted to be asked to record a Chopin Recital devoted to his smaller works. The emerging musical Romantics undoubtedly owed some of their ideals to their literary aunts and uncles. One legacy of this was the status of the fragment as a work of art, stemming from Novalis and Jean Paul and finding musical form through Schumann and some of the Preludes by Chopin. However, the musical revolution was not unopposed. Even in our postmodernist age, there is an uneasiness, among members of the artistic profession especially, about the eminence of these Waltzes, Nocturnes, Mazurkas and other small works. How typically ironic was Chopin's pen when in a letter from Vienna he wrote, 'Here, waltzes are called works!' An article from 1835 in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik by August Kahlert, typical of the day, represents a three-pronged attack on small forms in general, calling dance music the lowest form, implying that dramatic music is incompatible with small genres and explaining the custom of adding literary titles to musical works as being a mask to cover up empty works that have no meaning of their own. Even Schumann himself, who later attempted opera and symphony, said that Chopin's exclusive concentration on piano composition prevented him from achieving even greater heights. It is the aesthetic of the fragment - so many half-glimpsed and half-wrought visions, 'individual eagle pinions' as Schumann styled Chopin's Preludes - that is valuable to an appreciation of all Chopin's small forms. Although not strictly fragments, the Waltzes, Mazurkas and Nocturnes all share a dispersive quality with the true fragments among the Preludes. Each short work is a microcosm of expression, voice, form and technique. The epic, dramatic and lyric voices of a Chopin ballade or sonata can all find their individual articulation in the passage of a single Mazurka or Nocturne, just as the Waltz is a component of most of the large-scale works. The song... The nocturnes have a superficial affinity with the growing tradition of small-scale works popular with publishers and amateurs from the start of the nineteenth century. This association is responsible for the notion of Chopin the salon composer. However, Chopin's first published nocturne, Opus 9, No. 1, stands manifesto-like at the gateway forbidding such an interpretation with it's remote and dark opening tones. The full drama is unleashed in the middle section of the last nocturne of that same set of three. Publishers of the day followed the custom of attaching poetic titles to works to promote sales. The London edition of the Opus 9 Nocturnes went under the title Murmurs of the Seine and few works by Chopin escaped such treatment. Inevitably these titles, combined with the narrative hallmarks and intensity of many of his lyrical compositions, brought about another powerful conception of Chopin as a Romantic composer. His music became a 'fragment of autobiography', in Dahlhaus' words, and Chopin's liaison with Georges Sand, the trip to Majorca, his suffering and consumptive end took on new significance for the reception of his music. Chopin himself was too classicist to support this. He did not approve of descriptive titles and in his extant correspondence hardly more than once gives a poetic description of one of his own works. The dance... The Waltzes and Mazurkas mostly abandon the solid practicality of danceable music and instead elevate the spirit of dance, aspiring to the Baroque tradition of Bach. Chopin's Mazurkas tend to draw from more than one type of Polish regional dance, including the oberek and the kujawiak in addition to the characteristic holubiecs and other accents of the mazur. This elaborate mixing of genre, often perceptibly within one work, is an indication of the richness of the musical thought. Chopin's Mazurkas are also misinterpretations - in Harold Bloom's sense - of their folk models. One example is the treatment of the drones of Polish folk dance, such as the dudy or gajdy (bagpipes) or basetla or basy (unstopped string bass), which form a stable basis in the folk models. In Chopin, they sometimes function perversely to destabilise the tonic key, such as in the middle section of Opus 7, No.l. The Mazurkas partly fuel the myth of Chopin as the exiled Polish nationalist composer. As a result of the Polish folk origin and unusual modal elements of these dances, groups of listeners perceive his entire oeuvre, by association, as politically and culturally programmatic. Rubato... Eigeldinger identifies three distinct forms of rubato in Chopin - and the evidence suggests that Chopin used them all when he himself played his works. The most characteristic kind of rubato is that derived from the Italian Baroque bel canto tradition, and continued by Mozart, where the left hand maintains the pulse and the cantilena has an independent rhythmic freedom. The second kind is the more generally practised agogic fluctuation of tempo in response to phrasing, texture and dynamics. The third kind is a rhythmic signature specific to the Mazurkas, whose tradition must now sadly be regarded as lost to us. Chopin abandoned the use of the term rubato in his compositions at an early stage, no doubt because of the scope for misunderstanding and the recognition that the nature of rubato could only be communicated by demonstration. CD notes © 2001 Tamami Honma About TAMAMI HONMA, piano Tamami Honma began her career at the age of five as a prize-winner in a national competition in Tokyo, going on to make her US concerto debut at the age of seven with Mozart's Concerto in A Major, K414. After this auspicious start, she won grand and first prizes in several international competitions and has made many solo and orchestral appearances across most of the continental USA, in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Israel, Lithuania and Russia. In Moscow's Great Hall, she performed Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 7 with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. Tamami Honma studied piano over a four-year period with legendary pianist of the Romantic generation Byron Janis - himself a student of Horowitz and the Lhevinnes - in New York and thereafter with Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music, London. She now lectures on and co-ordinates the Piano Literature Course at the Royal Academy of Music, a course which she founded in 1998. An article by Tamami Honma on Beethoven performance was recently published in Arietta, Volume II (Autumn 2000 edition) and she was appointed as editor of the Liszt Society Journal in 2001. Commercial CD recordings of Tamami Honma's playing demonstrate an eclectic approach and a refreshingly diverse focus, including a disc of Mozart sonatas with violinist Howard Davis (leader of the Alberni Quartet), also for DK Music Ltd, and discs of contemporary British chamber works by McCabe, Rawsthorne and Nigel Clarke on Metier. Both Metier recordings received five stars in BBC Music Magazine and the Clarke CD also received high acclaim in Gramophone magazine. Tamami Honma's concert appearances around the world have included radio and television broadcasts with distinguished chamber partners. She has recently been featured on Lithuanian radio and television with the Vilnius String Quartet as part of the Gaida 2000 Festival in Vilnius, and on Polish Radio during the Autumn Festival 1999 in Warsaw with the acclaimed Kreutzer Quartet. Tamami Honma has also played with violinist Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, cellist

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