THE COMPOSER

AND

SPIRITUALITY: A Musical Investigation

with compositions and commentary by

JONATHAN LESHNOFF

Sunday, August 30, 2020

7:00 PM

Including performances by

Stefanie Jacob Piano

Jeanyi Kim Violin

Wendy Richman Viola

Clarice S. Turer

Charitable Fund

With thanks to: David McCoy, Roamin’ Studios, LLC – video production Tim Feeney – sound and video production

Special thanks to our funders

PRESENTS

Pre-Concert Talk by Jonathan Leshnoff

Introductory remarks by Jeanyi Kim

Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24 “Spring” Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 — 1827) I. Allegro II. Adagio molto espressivo III. Scherzo. Allegro molto - Trio IV. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Jeanyi Kim, violin and Stefanie Jacob, piano

Introductory remarks by Jonathan Leshnoff

Three Minute Chaconne for Solo Viola Jonathan Leshnoff (1973 — )

Wendy Richman, viola

Brief Intermission: Remarks by Joshua Richman, Founder and Executive Director, RUACH, Inc.

Introductory remarks by Wendy Richman

Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 — 1975)

III. Adagio

Wendy Richman, viola and Stefanie Jacob, piano

Chamber Concerto for Violin arrangement with Piano Jonathan Leshnoff (1973 — )

I.Slow, ה, Malchus

Jeanyi Kim, violin and Stefanie Jacob, piano

Introductory remarks by Wendy Richman

Meditation and Processional for Viola and Piano Ernest Bloch (1880 — 1959)

I. Meditation II. Processional

Wendy Richman, viola and Stefanie Jacob, piano

Yiddish Suite for Violin and Piano Jonathan Leshnoff (1973 — ) I. Shicker Tanz II. Shalom Aleichem III. Yiddishe Zach IV. Der Rebbes Niggun V. Der Rebbes Tanz

Jeanyi Kim, violin and Stefanie Jacob, piano

Be sure to answer the General Public or Student Listening Guide questions at the end of the program here.

PROGRAM

It may be altogether too glib to say that Beethoven anticipated or pioneered every major musical development of the Romantic age that followed him. Yet, when listening to his aptly nicknamed “Spring” Sonata, the notion is tempting. Here, in a nutshell, Beethoven presents a pre-echo of the heartfelt spirit, naivety, and boldness of Mendelssohn and Schumann — as well as elements of their melodic and harmonic vocabulary. The first movement is particularly illustrative. In its opening, we have the innocent freshness of a Mendelssohn, heard in melodious themes given first to the violin and then answered by the piano. A short development leads to the unprepared and surprising recapitulation. Now, the harmonic color of the principal themes is tinged with the pathos of experience, but the spirit of pure joy returns in the sumptuous coda. The Adagio is more comparable to Schumann in its harmonic richness and full, pianistic textures. However, chamber music authority W.W. Cobbett maintains that the opening theme of this five-part form “seems to have escaped from some opera by Mozart.” The very brief Scherzo movement turns again to a Mendelssohn-like spirit. Its elfin violin melody. However, it is accompanied by offset piano rhythms that could have come only from Beethoven’s pen. Over the rondo finale, the big-hearted Schumannesque spirit hovers again, although there are occasional winks in the direction of Mozart. In contrast with the opening movement, the piano is usually the leader and the violin the follower in presenting new themes. One Beethovenian feature in the harmonic plan is a false recapitulation in the key of D major, which then slips deftly back into F major for the concluding sections. Beethoven composed the “Spring” Sonata in 1800 or 1801 and published it in the latter year alongside the Op. 23 Violin Sonata (no. 4). Much of the youth, vigor, and studied innocence of the “Spring” Sonata may be attributed to the early period in which the work was written. This was the time of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata for piano and the First Symphony, but a time before he fully realized (or admitted) his loss of hearing. Thus, with this sonata we might imagine Beethoven standing at the brink of the future. It is also easy to imagine this happening on a bright, sunlit day with a spring breeze wafting through the young master’s hair.

Violin Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24 (“Spring”)

Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer Program notes by Dr. Michael Fink, copyright 2020

Original notes can be found on Camerata San Antonio’s website:

https://cameratasa.org/beethoven250-program-notes/

Program Notes

Three Minute Chaconne for Viola (2011) Jonathan Leshnoff, Composer

Program notes by Jonathan Leshnoff

Lately, my compositional output has consisted of larger works such as concerti and oratorios. When the Friday Morning Music Club in Washington asked me to compose a solo work for the 2012 Johansen International Competition (JIC) for Young String Players (ages 13-17), I was asked to write three versions for each of the competing instruments: violin, viola, and cello. I was intrigued by their request to keep the piece “within three minutes,” a consistent requirement in the previous commissions for this competition. As a composer, this presented me with a particular challenge of being extremely brief and concise. Composing the same music for three unique instruments with individual needs and quirks added another layer to the exercise.

It seemed to me that I should focus on a small amount of material and develop it rapidly. Luckily, there was a prototype for such a form: a chaconne, a form utilized commonly in the Baroque era where a composer repeats continual variations upon a harmonic progression. The brief melodic theme of the chaconne is presented in the beginning with its long arching lines. Immediately following are five variations separated only by slight pauses. The first variation is brooding, the second is a bit more kinetic, the third utilizes harmonics (very light ethereal tones), the fourth variation builds energy in a fast tempo, and the fifth explodes in double stops (multiple pitches played at once on the instrument). The chaconne concludes triumphantly, harkening back to the opening material.

On October 29, 1966, in Leningrad, Shostakovich suffered a massive heart attack. He survived, but his health for the remaining nine years of his life was poor, making work and travel difficult for him. More than just a change in his physical well-being was wrought by the illness of 1966, however, because his thoughts and his music thereafter became imbued with a pervasive, solemn tragedy, a residual fatalism that turned him from the overt, public works of his earlier years to the

Viola Sonata, Op. 147

Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer

Program notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda. Original program notes be found on Music@Menlo’s website:

https://musicatmenlo.org/files/2018_CBIV.pdf

introspective, thoughtful compositions of his last decade. In his purported memoirs, Testimony, when the composer discusses the Fourteenth Symphony, a song cycle for soprano, bass, and chamber orchestra from 1969 comprising settings of eleven poems dealing with the subject of death, he was clear and specific concerning his views following his heart attack:

I tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t fear death. But how can you not fear death? Death is not considered an appropriate theme for Soviet art, and writing about death is tantamount to wiping your nose on your sleeve in company. But I always thought that I was not alone in my thinking about death and that other people were concerned with it, too, despite the fact that they live in a socialist society in which even tragedies receive the epithet “optimistic.” I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question, and it seems to me they’re not particularly optimistic works...I think that working on these compositions had a positive effect, and I fear death less now; or rather, I’m used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such. After all, it’s a law of nature and no one has ever eluded it... When you ponder and write about death, you make some gains. First, you have time to think through things that are related to death and you lose the panicky fear. And second, you try to make fewer mistakes.

By the time Shostakovich began the Sonata for Viola and Piano in June 1975, his health was failing rapidly. Though his attendance at concerts and plays during the spring was limited by treatments and hospital stays, he did make it to the premiere of his Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin by bass Yevgeny Nesterenko and pianist Yevgeny Shenderovich at the Moscow Conservatory on May 10th; it was the last time he would appear in public. He stopped in Repino, on the coast north of Leningrad, to visit an extrasensory healer whom he believed had brought him some relief during the winter (“the sorceress,” he called her) and then headed for his country dacha at Zhukovka. At the end of June, he phoned Fyodor Druzhinin, violist of the Beethoven Quartet, the ensemble that had premiered all of his quartets from the second onwards, for some technical advice on the Viola Sonata. He told him that the piece would be in three movements: “The first is a novella, the second a scherzo, and the finale is an Adagio in memory of Beethoven.” The score was finished on July 5th, just one day before Shostakovich was scheduled for another hospital stay, and immediately sent off for copying. (Shostakovich’s motor control was much impaired after his heart attack, and he had enormous difficulty writing legibly during his last years.) Good days alternated with bad for the next month—he corrected the proofs of the Viola Sonata on August 5th—but his heart disease and lung cancer took their inevitable toll, and he died at 6:30 p.m. on August 9th in a Moscow hospital. Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan played the new sonata privately at Shostakovich’s Moscow home on September 25th, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday, and gave the work’s formal premiere at the Glinka Hall in Leningrad on October 1st. The Viola Sonata, like other late works of Shostakovich’s, is lean to the point of asceticism. Its three movements—all of which end with the instruction morendo (“dying away”)—are, like those of Beethoven’s late quartets and sonatas, based on the fluid processes of form rather than on established models. The first movement begins almost inaudibly, with open-interval pizzicato notes from the viola across which the piano stretches a slow-moving melody of indeterminate

tonality. These ideas are drawn out and joined by others of a more animated nature, allowing the music to rise twice to points of expressive intensity from which it retreats to the brooding quiet of the opening. The second movement is a sardonic scherzo whose march and dance motives Shostakovich borrowed from his unfinished opera of 1941, The Gamblers, based on a story by Gogol. Allusions to the somber opening movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (op. 27, no. 2) pervade the finale. The movement, slow throughout, is really a meditation for the viola, with the piano supplying just a sparse, broken-chord accompaniment and long, bell-tone bass notes, both reminiscent of Beethoven’s work. The mood is difficult to define: not angry, not optimistic, but certainly not despondent, either—perhaps weary, perhaps resigned, perhaps even consoling (the sonata ends on a major chord). Or, perhaps, in these final notes that he was ever to write, Shostakovich left us the music of the calm acceptance of life’s last, inevitable experience. Such things strike us in a very deep and personal place, a place beyond the reach of mere words but which may, sometimes, be touched by the precise emotional vectors of music.

Chamber Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2015)

Jonathan Leshnoff, Composer

Program notes by Janet Bedell

It’s not difficult to understand why this professor of music is being embraced by the music world. Leshnoff writes music that is emotionally powerful, melodically rich, elegantly orchestrated, harmonically innovative, and thoroughly accessible. Unlike many composers working today, he is unafraid to tackle the traditional big genres of classical music: symphonies, concertos, oratorios, and string quartets. “My aesthetic is to breathe new, invigorating life into time-honored traditions and forms,” he says. Concertos have been a particular Leshnoff specialty; he has now written fourteen of them, including works for piano, guitar, flute, clarinet, cello, and three for the violin. His Chamber Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, commissioned by Baltimore’s Shriver Hall Concert Series for violinist Gil Shaham and The Knights orchestra, joins this illustrious list. “When I write a concerto,” says Leshnoff, “I have to become the instrument. It’s a double refraction: it has to go through me and then through the solo instrument. I have to become a violin and produce what it sounds like, what it likes to do.” In the case of this instrument, Leshnoff has the benefit of being a violinist himself. For his chamber orchestra, Leshnoff chose roughly the same orchestral scoring that is used in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in addition to strings. The concerto is in two highly contrasted movements, which

showcase the violin’s different capacities. The composer writes: “The first movement is associated with the fifth letter of the Hebrew alpha-bet, Slow, ה, Malchus or ‘Hey,’ which refers to the attribute ‘Malchus,’ meaning ‘summation.’ The writing is very sparse and simple: it has nothing of its own, yet it receives everything. It is really written for the soul of the violin and allows the player to dig deep. It is predicated on line and lets the soloist hold onto a note and let the tone bloom. Slow chords unfold underneath in the orchestra as the violin soars above. The silences between the notes are very important.

Meditation and Processional,

“Two Pieces for Viola and Piano” Ernest Bloch, Composer

Program notes by Michael Grace, Colorado College Original notes can be found on the Concordia Chamber Players’ website:

http://concordiaplayers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/CCP-Program-April-23-2017-F-spreads-low-2.pdf

Ernest Bloch was born in Geneva, Switzerland. After studying in Europe, he came to the United States in 1916 and spent most of his life here teaching (in Cleveland, San Francisco and Berkeley) and composing. He became a US citizen in 1924. Many of his works, as can be seen from their Hebraic titles, were inspired by his Jewish heritage. His father had considered becoming a rabbi and brought up Ernest in a very Jewish household. So it is no wonder that as he became a mature composer he felt that expressing his Jewish identity was “the only way in which I can produce music of vitality and significance.” And indeed, he is best remembered for his music which celebrated Judaism, especially the often-played Schelomo for cello and orchestra. When he arrived in the United States, his compositional style turned to a more neoclassical style that often had less to do with his Jewish heritage, but that heritage still remained “lurking between the lines.” The “Two Pieces for Viola and Piano” were composed in 1951 when Bloch was 71. By this time he had been settled for 10 years in Agate Beach, a small coastal town in Oregon, and was teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. The first of the two pieces, Meditation, opens with an extended, broadly phrased melody for the solo viola. It could be heard as a meditative cantorial chant exploring a philosophical and spiritual

quandary. Its alto range fits the rich tone color of the viola perfectly. When the piano joins in, it enriches the harmonies but allows for the lyricism of the viola to prevail. This is rich musical lyricism at is best. Toward the end there is a modest outburst of intense melodic outpouring before a calm cadence. Processional has a more march-like feeling, as if the enigma of the Meditation has been resolved and we are now seeing the procession of the Torah scroll through the Temple. There is a strong rhythm Die Moldau and from the beginning, the two instruments work together to create an imitative, contrapuntal texture in which the viola begins and the piano immediately answers. This is reminiscent of traditional European musical traditions such as the fugue. Soon the texture builds to a point where both instruments combine to create regal processional music.

Yiddish Suite for Violin and Piano (2011)

Jonathan Leshnoff, Composer Program notes by Sandra Hyslop

Written for and dedicated to violinist Gil Shaham 1. Schicker Tanz 2. Shalom Aleichem 3. Yiddishe Zach 4. Der Rebbes Niggun 5. Der Rebbes Tanz

In April 2011 at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington (DC), the renowned violinist Gil Shaham and his sister, pianist Orli Shaham, played the premiere performance of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Yiddish Suite. It was also performed a week later at the 92nd Street Y in New York. It had been commissioned by Mrs. Linda Shapiro Chemtob and Dr. Claude Chemtob in honor of the marriage of Mrs. Chemtob’s daughter, Rachel Shapiro, to Christopher Grymes. The newlyweds, both professional musicians, and Mrs. Chemtob asked Leshnoff to create an additional version of the Yiddish Suite for clarinet, viola, and piano. This was Linda Shapiro Chemtob’s last commission. She died just before the New York premiere of the original Yiddish Suite. Jonathan Leshnoff and Gil Shaham first met in April 2010, when Jonathan Leshnoff’s new orchestral overture Starburst was performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Marin Alsop. Also on that concert program was Shaham, who performed the Stravinsky

Violin Concerto. In the course of a post-rehearsal conversation, Leshnoff, who had admired Sha-ham’s playing for many years, said to his colleague, “Gil, I’d like to write a piece for you,” to which Shaham assented without hesitation. “It occurred to me,” says Leshnoff, “when Gil suggested I write a suite, that I had never composed any music on Jewish themes. But here we were—I’m Jewish, Gil’s Jewish—it seemed natural.” Several months later, in January 2011, Leshnoff completed the score of the Yiddish Suite. The work comprises “some Chassidic tunes, some Sabbath themes, and,” says Leshnoff, “some that I made up ‘in the style of.’ ” As a violinist himself (“I got as far as the Mendelssohn Concerto at age eighteen and then put the violin aside,” the composer says), Leshnoff has an excellent sense of the instrument’s possibilities. The entire Yiddish Suite comprises five movements; numbers 1, 3, and 5 (“Schicker Tanz,” “Yiddishe Zach,” and “Der Rebbes Tanz”) are lively, and numbers 2 and 4 (“Shalom Aleichem” and “Der Rebbes Niggun”) are slower and more lyrical. All capture the qualities of Jewish liturgical and secular music as expressed inimitably by the violin. “The fourth movement,” says Leshnoff, “the ‘Rabbi’s Niggun,’ introduces themes that are taken up again in the fifth, the ‘Rabbi’s Dance.’ ”

Biographies

Jonathan Leshnoff

Distinguished by The New York Times as “a leader of contemporary American lyricism,” GRAMMY-nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoff is renowned for his music's striking harmo-nies, structural complexity, and powerful themes. The Baltimore-based composer’s works have been performed by leading international orchestras and chamber ensembles in hundreds of concerts worldwide. He has received recent commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, and Pittsburgh, among others. Leshnoff ’s compositions have also been premiered by classical music’s most celebrated soloists, including Gil Shaham, Roberto Díaz, Johannes Moser, Manuel Barrueco, and Joyce Yang.

Leshnoff has been ranked among the most performed living composers by American orches-tras in recent seasons, and upcoming seasons are comparably active with musical activity and collaborations around the world. Upcoming highlights include the world premiere of a major work, The Sacrifice of Isaac oratorio, by the Atlanta Symphony conducted by Robert Spano, the premiere of a new chamber orchestra overture commissioned by the IRIS Orchestra and River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and the premiere of a new Holocaust-inspired elegy for strings by the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Yaniv Attar. Leshnoff also looks forward to co-commissioned performances of his Piano Concerto for Joyce Yang with the Harrisburg and Tucson Symphony Orchestras and regional premieres of several of his recent works, Leshnoff also continues this season as composer-in-residence with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and Fairfax and Harrisburg symphony orchestras.

There are seven all-Leshnoff albums to date. Among his most notable recent releases is the 2019 Naxos recording exclusively featuring Leshnoff ’s music performed by the Nashville Sym-phony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero; nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Com-pendium, the CD included the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 4, “Heichalos” with the Violins of Hope. In the spring of 2020, Reference Recordings released a highly acclaimed disc featuring the world premiere performance of Leshnoff ’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon by the Pittsburgh Symphony and conductor Manfred Honeck, which made it to the top of the Billboard charts. Other notable releases include a 2016 recording of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing Leshnoff ’s Symphony No. 2 and Zohar oratorio, and three earlier all-Leshnoff albums—of both his orchestral and cham-ber music works—on the Naxos American Classics label. A disc featuring all of his string quar-tets was also released in August 2020.

Celebrated by BBC Music Magazine as “enchanting” and by American Record Guide as “lyrical,

Stefanie Jacob

Stefanie Jacob made her solo debut with the Boston Pops at age 17 and her Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1984. An avid chamber musician, she was twice awarded Second Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and received Indiana University’s Leo Weiner Prize for Chamber Music. Ms. Jacob has soloed with both the Milwaukee Symphony and the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Waukesha and Manitowoc

Symphonies; she has recorded for the Arundax, CRI, Fleur de Son, Equilibrium, and the Wisconsin Conservatory labels. A graduate of Harvard and Indiana Universities, Ms. Jacob taught at the University of Tampa from 1985-87, and since then at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, where she is a founding member of the school’s resident Prometheus Trio. She is a recipient of the Milwaukee Civic Music Association’s award for Excellence in Studio Teaching, as well as the Conservatory’s Faculty Award.

virtuosic, tender, and passionate all at once,” Leshnoff’s music has been lauded by Strings Magazine as “distinct from anything else that’s out there” and by The Baltimore Sun as “remarkably assured, cohesively constructed and radiantly lyrical.” Leshnoff’s catalog is vast, including several symphonies, various concerti, and solo and chamber music works. Leshnoff is a Professor of Music at Towson University.

Jeanyi Kim

Jeanyi Kim is the Associate Concertmaster (Third Chair) of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Concertmaster of Milwaukee Musaik (also known as the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra). A Toronto native, Kim’s command as a violinist and orchestral musician have brought her to illustrious venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Salle Pleyel,

and the Concertgebouw. As a guest, she has appeared as Assistant Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra (UK) under Sir Colin Davis and Valery Gergiev, Concertmaster of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and substitute musician of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Of her featured solo recital, the Journal Sentinel praised her performance, drawing likeness to that of “a glamorous international star.” Kim is equally comfortable in soloist, chamber, and orchestral roles as well as a variety of styles, and her playing has been described as “engrossing…intelligent,” and simultaneously having “easy grace” (Journal Sentinel) and “fistfuls of technical fireworks.” (Urban Milwaukee) Click here for Jeanyi Kim’s complete biography.

Wendy Richman, Viola

Violist Wendy Richman has been celebrated internationally for her compelling sound and imaginative interpretations. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller Theater, Mostly Mozart Festival, Park Avenue Armory, Phillips Collection, and international festivals in Berlin, Darmstadt, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Karlsruhe, Morelia, and Vienna. She is a founding member of the New York-

based International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Though best known for her interpretations of contemporary music, Wendy enjoys performing a diverse range of repertoire. Wendy regularly performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has also been a frequent guest with the viola sections of the Atlanta Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony. She is on the string faculty of New York University (NYU Steinhardt), where she teaches viola, chamber music, and a class on extended string techniques. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory (BM), New England Conservatory (MM), and Eastman School of Music (DMA), she studied viola with Carol Rodland, Kim Kashkashian, Peter Slowik, Jeffrey Irvine, and Sara Harmelink, and voice with Marlene Ralis Rosen, Judith Kellock, and Mary Galbraith. Through her vox/viola project, she has commissioned numerous composers to write pieces in which she sings and plays simultaneously. Wendy’s debut solo album, vox/viola, was recently released on ICE’s TUNDRA imprint on New Focus Recordings.

The Composer and Spirituality: A Musical Investigation

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES

RELEASE DATE PROGRAM

Sunday, August 23, 2020 7 PM CDT Initial Interview with Jonathan Leshnoff

Tuesday, August 25, 2020 7 PM CDT Second Interview with Jonathan Leshnoff

Thursday, August 27, 2020 7 PM CDT Interview with Stefanie Jacob - Founding pianist of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music’s Prometheus Trio

Sunday, August 30, 2020 7 PM CDT Main Concert Event, featuring a pre-concert talk by Jonathan Leshnoff, performances of his compositions, and works of composers who inspire him

Tuesday, September 1, 2020 7 PM CDT Interview with Wendy Richman – Renowned violist and founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble

Thursday, September 3, 2020 7 PM CDT Interview with Jeanyi Kim-Associate Concertmaster (Third Chair), Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

All programs are available On-Demand through September 30, 2020

General Public Listening Guide for

Jonathan Leshnoff’s Music

Three Minute Chaconne:

1. In literature, how is a short story different from a novel? Do you experience that differently in

this brief work?

2. A chaconne is roughly translated into a theme and variation form. The theme within this piece

can be heard within its first 20 seconds (approximately). Jonathan consciously continues to vary the

theme, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. What are the types of variations he used, and how do

they change the experience of the music?

Chamber Concerto for Violin (violin/piano transcription), movement 1

1. The main theme of this concerto is presented in the opening fewmeasures/seconds. Can you identify

it? Though we are not hearing the second movement today, there is a reference to this theme within

that movement as well. Why would a composer do that?

2. A concerto is a work written for a specific instrument. This violin concerto wouldn't "work" for an

oboe. Jonathan purposely adjusts his writing style to have the solo line “fit” the instrument and bring

out its particular qualities. Why does this concerto "sound" like it is written specifically for a violin?

Yiddish Suite (violin/piano transcription)

1. How can a composer fuse songs that are not originally theirs with their own creative, individual

voice?

2. How does Jonathan make this piece sound "Jewish?" Are there other ways to do that?

Student Listening Guide for

Jonathan Leshnoff’s Music

Three Minute Chaconne:

1. This piece of music has what is called a theme and variations—a single musical idea that

is changed around in different ways. What kind of changes do you hear? What stays the same?

2. Draw what this music makes you think and feel. How does the music, and the emotions of the

performer, change as the piece moves along?

3. A concerto is a work written for a specific instrument. This violin concerto wouldn't "work" for an

oboe or a piano. Jonathan purposely adjusts his writing style to have the solo line work for the

instrument and bring out its particular qualities. Why does this concerto "sound" like it is written

specifically for a violin? What can a violin do (or better yet, what can the musician do on that

instrument) that another instrument can’t achieve as well?

Chamber Concerto for Violin (violin/piano transcription), movement 1

1. The main theme of this concerto is presented in the opening fewmeasures/seconds. Can you identify

it? Though we are not hearing the second movement today, there is a reference to this theme within

that movement as well. Why would a composer do that?

2. A concerto is a work written for a specific instrument. This violin concerto wouldn't "work" for an

oboe. Jonathan purposely adjusts his writing style to have the solo line “fit” the instrument and bring

out its particular qualities. Why does this concerto "sound" like it is written specifically for a violin?

Yiddish Suite (violin/piano transcription)

1. What might it mean for a piece to sound “Jewish” How does Jonathan make this piece sound like

that? Are there other ways to do that? Are there other instruments that could have this effect?

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Nearing its sixteenth anniversary, RUACH (“spirit” in Hebrew) has consistently offered a wide variety of

arts opportunities to underserved populations. RUACH’s reach has expanded over time to include

diverse groups of all ages both within and outside the Jewish community.

RUACH has established itself as a frequent and willing programming partner, working with almost fifty

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RUACH has developed a programming framework which includes: Project: VITAL (Values in the Arts

& Life), engaging numerous, diverse organizations through arts residencies integrating essential,

universally appreciated Jewish values; Core Partner Programming with Yeshiva Elementary School and

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diverse populations in RUACH’s birthplace community.

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RUACH awakens creativity through arts enrichment rooted in Jewish values and the rich cultural

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