TCCP :: Music

Program Notes

January 23 & 25, 2009 (notes by Becky Van de Bogart)
Joaquin Turina Perez: Ciclo Plateresco
Jan Koetsier: Sonata, op. 94 for horn and harp
Joseph Curiale: Liquid Autumn
Claude Debussy: Trio for flute, viola and harp

Joaquin Turina Pérez

The rise of nationalistic composers in the late 19th century shocked the German-influenced traditionalists because it infused a richness of colors, styles and folk melodies into European classical music. Joaquín Turina Pérez, born in Seville December 9, 1882, was in the early group of Spanish nationalist composers. He defied the image of the struggling composer plagued with internal demons by being the son of a comfortable middle-class family with a passion for the arts. The best anecdote about Turina is that he was given an accordion as a gift at the age of four and surprised everyone by mastering it in a very short time! How could he even hold it?!

Turina began his formal studies of harmony, theory and counterpoint when he was 12. His solo piano debut on March 14, 1897, of Thalberg’s Fantasy on a Theme from Rossini’s Moses seemed to set the course for a solo career. In 1902 he entered the Madrid Conservatory to study under the famous Spanish pianist Tragó. The musical scene there nurtured the compositional urge and he saw the premier of his “Zarzuela La sulamita.” Three years later he joined the migration to Paris to study piano with Moszkowsky and theory under Vincent d’Indy in the Schola Cantorum. The pivotal point in his career was becoming close friends with Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla. Albéniz encouraged Joaquin to find compositional inspiration in his own national music. The result of these words of encouragement was the 1907 premiere of the Piano Quintet Op. 1, based on traditional Spanish folk music and for Turina the beginning of a new way of looking at music. He returned to Madrid in 1914 and became one of Spain’s most celebrated nationalistic composers. His life in Madrid was divided between composing, teaching and performing. Turina died in Madrid on the 14th of January 1949.
As a footnote there are over 100 recordings of his works. The most famous were his handful of orchestral poems, the piano trios, piano solo works, and solo guitar pieces.

Jan Koetsier

Jan Koetsier was born August 14, 1911, in Amsterdam, the son of singer Jeanne Koetsier and teacher Jan Koetsier-Muller. The family moved to Berlin in 1913 and at age 16 he entered the Berlin Hochschule für Musik as a piano student. Koestier also began studies in score-reading and music theory with Walther Gmeindl and conducting with Julius Prüwer. His skills in both of these studies, along with the encouragement of pianist and teacher Artur Schnabel, pointed toward the direction his musical career would follow—conducting and composition. Koetsier took up a position as a répétiteur at the Stadttheater in Lübeck in 1933. But after just one concert season, he returned to Berlin and began working as a conductor, touring with theatre ensembles such as the Deutsche Musikbühne and the Deutsche Landesbühne, adding music for theatre to his dossier.

During the very difficult years of the ’30s and ’40s in Europe, Koetsier successfully worked as a conductor. His career began in 1936 as the conductor for a short-wave broadcasting station in Berlin, directing broadcasts of his own folk music arrangements, including arrangements of South American and African songs. The increasingly difficult political situation (Koetsier was labeled a non-national and therefore an outsider) forced Koetsier to leave Berlin in 1940. During the war years he returned home and was fortunate to find work as conductor of the newly-founded Kammeropera in The Hague. This post was followed by a position as second conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam (1942–48). He then spent a short period as conductor of the Residentie Orkest and as conducting teacher at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague before being invited by Bavarian Radio to become principal conductor of its newly-founded Symphony Orchestra in 1950. Koetsier held this position for 16 years, working intensively on studio productions of all periods and styles which were required for daily broadcasting. He also conducted public concerts, including some in the Bavarian Radio “musica viva” series. In 1966 he became professor of conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich.

After his retirement, Koetsier concentrated mainly on composing. He founded the International Jan Koetsier Competition in 1999 for the encouragement of young brass ensembles. Koetsier’s work with instrumental soloists and ensembles led to numerous commissions, especially for brass ensembles but including numerous string and piano works. Koetsier’s practical musical considerations and requirements guided his choice of combinations and scorings. A perfect example is his combination of horn and harp in the Sonata, Op. 94. Koetsier also composed solo concerti (i.e., the Echo Concerto for 2 piccolo trumpets and string orchestra, Op. 124, and the Concerto for Brass Quintet and Orchestra, Op. 133) and numerous orchestral works including symphonies and serenades. Jan Koestier died in Munich on April 28, 2006.

Joseph Curiale

Joseph Curiale was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He attended the University of Bridgeport and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education. He briefly attended the University of North Texas in pursuit of a master ’s degree in music composition, but before completing his degree he took up residency in Japan, where he taught and composed new music. Many of his compositions incorporate Japanese themes and traditional Japanese instruments.

After nearly two years in Japan, he moved to Los Angeles where he began a career in film, television, and recording, signing an exclusive six-year contract with Columbia Pictures. His work has been performed and recorded by more than 100 artists ranging from Michael and Janet Jackson to Kathleen Battle.
Curiale began writing for “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson in 1982 and continued until the final show. His song, “Sick of the Blues,” became the closing theme. Soon after he was hired as the first staff songwriter in Columbia Pictures history, signing an exclusive six-year contract which led to platinum records for his work on the “Breakin’” soundtrack. In the early ’90s, although enjoying success in Hollywood, Joseph felt the time had come to explore concert music, and in 1995 went to London to record “Gates of Gold” with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In April of 1997 the first CD was released, entitled “Awakening.” A second CD, “The Music of Life,” was released in December of 2001.

Curiale is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2003 was awarded a grant by the American Composers Forum/Phoenix Symphony to compose a multi-faceted work celebrating the cultural diversity of Phoenix. He is also an author, poet, photographer, artist and educator. A deeply spiritual man, his works are recognized the world over for their passion, beauty and sense of wonder. His first book, The Spirit of Creativity, released in the spring of 2006, is an insightful and inspiring guide to exploring, unlocking and honoring the creative spirit in everyone. Its companion book of inspiring quotations, The Wisdom of Creativity, was released in the fall of that year. Joseph spent most of 2006 and 2007 bringing relief to the widows and children affected by the mass of farmer suicides in India. He was also included in the 2007 edition of Who’s Who in America.

Fortunately for the community of Lincoln, Joseph Curiale is currently studying at the University of Nebraska, working on an advanced degree in composition and lending his considerable talents and experience to many organizations in our area.

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy was the eldest son of a china shop proprietor and a seamstress. Born Achille-Claude Debussy in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1862, his humble beginnings could never have predicted the decades of influence he has had and will continue to have. The child prodigy began piano lessons at age 4, paid for by his aunt. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872 at age 11 Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent twelve years under the tutelage of illustrious teachers including composition with Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with Émile Durand, piano with Antoine-François Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfège with Albert Lavignac. Although clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and even worse, “experimental.” He challenged the rigid teaching of the old school favoring instead new and frowned-upon dissonances and intervals.

Debussy was a brilliant pianist and an outstanding sightreader, which landed him his first appointments. 1880 took Debussy to Russia where he accepted the post as music teacher to the children of Nadezhda von Meck, the infamous patroness of Tchaikovsky. Von Meck pressed Debussy to send his Danse bohémienne to Tchaikovsky for perusal. Tchaikovsky was unimpressed: “It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity.”

More influential was Debussy’s close friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She gave Debussy emotional and professional support and influenced his first songs. As the winner of the Prix de Rome he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the French Academy in Rome. According to letters to Madame Vasnier (1885–87), perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters “abominable.” He was unimpressed by the pleasures of the “Eternal City,” finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Often depressed and unable to compose, he did feel inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he admired.

Claude Debussy, as Nicolas Slonimsky so simply stated, was a “great French composer.” He is the man who defined musical impressionism by elevating color and nuance to positions higher than form and function. And he defined the French nationalistic style for the 19th century. But Debussy’s private life was fodder for a Mozart opera. His first liaison was with Gabrielle Dupont, lasting for nine years before marrying her friend Rosalie Texier, a fashion model, in 1899. Dupont unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Texier—affectionate, practical, straightforward and well-liked—became increasingly irritating to Debussy due to intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. As a result he left her in 1904 for Emma Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker and mother of one of his students. Debussy found Bardac sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. The distraught Texier, like Dupont, attempted suicide with a pistol and survived. The dual scandals forced Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to Eastbourne, England, where he completed his symphonic suite La Mer, until the hysteria subsided and the legal entanglements resolved. The couple eventually married in 1908. Their daughter, Claude-Emma, outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919.

Debussy’s final years were embattled from the outside and inside. He became terminally ill in the midst of the German aerial and artillery bombardment of Paris during the Spring Offensive of World War I. He succumbed in Paris on March 25, 1918, to colorectal cancer, after surviving one of the first colostomy operations ever performed two years earlier. The military situation in France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit his being paid the honor of a public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. It was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. He was interred in the small Cimetière de Passy sequestered behind the Trocadéro, and French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives. His wife and daughter are buried with him.

The beautiful Trio was composed during his first bout with the cancer requiring morphine injections for the pain and subsequently the colostomy. The Trio, a symphonic poem miniaturized into three players, unfolds as a synthesis of all the impressionistic colors, blendings and melodies we know as Debussy.