In Nature's Realm
Friday, May 18, 2018 at 11:30:00 PM UTC
Victoria Marra, Conductor
Featuring Grammy Award-Winning Angelin Chang
In Nature’s Realm, Opus 91 - Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)
Morning Mood from Peer Gynt - Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Fingal’s Cave (The Hebrides) - Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony #82 “The Bear” - Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
IV Finale Vivace assai
Dance of the Swans from Swan Lake - Tschaikovsky (1840-1893)
Nights in the Gardens of Spain - Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
I En el Generalife In the Architect’s Garden
II Danza lejana A Distant Dance
III In the Gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba
Angelin Chang, Piano
See Program Notes below.
Clear Track, Polka Schnell, Opus 45 - Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899)
Guest Artist
Internationally acclaimed pianist Angelin Chang is the first American female and the first pianist of Asian heritage to be awarded the GRAMMY® for Best Instrumental Soloist with orchestra. She is recognized for her sense of poetry and technical brilliance. Concertizing in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, Miss Chang’s concert tours have led her to the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Lincoln Center (New York), Severance Hall (Cleveland), St. Martin-in-the-Fields (London), Zelazowa Wola (Warsaw), Shanghai Grand Theatre (China), Sala Luis Ángel Arango (Bogotá), Schnittke Philharmonic Hall (Russia) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation. She is the first American awarded First Prizes in both piano and chamber music during the same year from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, France. As the first Artist-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Angelin Chang participated in the development and launch of the Arts for Everyone initiative. She has performed at the U.S. Department of State, for the United Nations Women’s Organization in Nepal, for World AIDS Day in New York, and for the United Nations before the Secretary-General. An active chamber musician, she performs regularly with the legendary violist Joseph de Pasquale, The de Pasquale String Quartet, and with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra.
Angelin Chang earned the Doctor of Musical Arts from Peabody Institute – Johns Hopkins University, Premier Prix - Piano and Premier Prix - Musique de Chambre from the Paris Conservatoire, Master of Music and Distinguished Performer Certificate from Indiana University, Bachelor of Arts (French) and Bachelor of Music from Ball State University, and highest honors upon graduation from the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her piano teachers have included Michel Béroff, Marie-Françoise Bucquet, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Robert McDonald, Menahem Pressler, Pierre Réach, Pia Sebastiani, György Sebök, Louis-Claude Thirion, and Dorothy Taubman. She also holds a Juris Doctor from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Dr. Angelin Chang is Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at Cleveland State University, where she is also Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She serves on the faculty of the Great Lakes Sports and Entertainment Law Academy, a joint program of Case Western University School of Law and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. Previously, Dr. Chang taught piano at Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey. Through her work with the Taubman Approach and Keyboard Wellness Seminars at the University of North Texas and Temple University in Philadelphia, Dr. Chang helps pianists develop virtuosity while liberating them from fatigue, pain, and injury.
Angelin Chang is Vice President, Board of Governors of The Recording Academy Chicago Chapter (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) and serves as Chair of the Education Committee and the Classical Task Force. She is Past President of the Ohio Music Teachers Association Northeast District and has served on the Board of Trustees for the Great Lakes Theater. Dr. Chang is the Co-Chair of the Research Committee on Asian and Pacific Studies of the International Political Science Association (IPSA/RC18).
Recordings include solo piano album Angelin (Sabintu Records), Soaring Spirit (Albany Records) with Joseph de Pasquale on viola, and Cleveland Chamber Symphony (TNC) with Angelin Chang as piano soloist and John McLaughlin Williams conducting Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
Angelin Chang is Yamaha Corporation of America’s first Academic-Performing Artist. Her use of the Disklavier® hybrid piano in presentation and performance is available upon request.
Program Notes
Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Noches en los jardines de España)
Along with Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) was one of Spain’s most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was printed on Spain’s 1970 100-pesetas banknote.
Manuel de Falla was from Andalusia and his work refers to both the Spanish and Arabic past of this region (Al-Andalus).
Falla began this composition as a set of nocturnes for solo piano in 1909. On the suggestion of pianist Ricardo Viñes he turned the nocturnes into a piece for piano and orchestra. Falla completed it in 1915 and dedicated it to Viñes; however, the pianist at the first performance was neither Viñes nor Falla but José Cubiles. The premiere was April 9, 1916 at Madrid’s Teatro Real with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós.
Viñes played the work in its San Sebastián premiere with the same orchestra. Arthur Rubinstein was in the audience and subsequently introduced the work to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Paris premiere took place in January 1920 with pianist Joaquín Nin. Manuel de Falla was the soloist at the London premiere in 1921.
Falla’s composition depicts three gardens:
En el Generalife (In the Architect’s Garden), the jasmine-scented gardens surrounding the Alhambra.
Danza lejana (A Distant Dance), a distant garden in which there is an exotic dance. This music strives to suggest the movements of the mystic Sufi dancers.
En los jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba (In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba) The best-known inhabitant of the gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba was the Sufi philosopher Ibn Masarra and the dances depicted here are, presumably, Sufi dances.
Falla referred to Nights in the Gardens of Spain as “symphonic impressions.” The piano part is elaborate, brilliant, and eloquent. It is integrated with the orchestration and is only occasionally dominant. The orchestral texture is lush and evocative. This is Falla’s most impressionistic score, in which is expressed “an intimate and passionate drama.”