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Songs for a New Century

Judith Weir composer
Gabriela Lena Frank composer
Scott Wheeler composer
Felix Mendelssohn composer

Jonathan Miller cello
Lucia Lin violin
Randall Hodgkinson piano
Marc Ryser piano

Release Date: May 3, 2024
Catalog #: NV6623
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Romantic
Chamber
Solo Instrumental
Cello
Piano
Violin

The singing quality of string instruments ties together SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY, a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn.

The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.

Operetta, Three Chorales, and Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words were commissioned by Jonathan Miller and Diane Fassino for the Boston Artists Ensemble.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Song without Words, Op. 109 Felix Mendelssohn Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 4:34
02 Songs without Words: No. 13 Felix Mendelssohn, arr. Alfredo Piatti Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 2:25
03 Songs without Words: No. 25 Felix Mendelssohn, arr. Alfredo Piatti Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 2:37
04 Songs without Words: No. 37 Felix Mendelssohn, arr. Alfredo Piatti Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 2:14
05 Songs without Words: No. 1 Felix Mendelssohn, arr. Alfredo Piatti Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 3:03
06 Songs without Words: No. 9 Felix Mendelssohn, arr. Alfredo Piatti Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 2:17
07 Operetta for Violin and Cello: I. Prologue - Semplice, calling Gabriela Lena Frank Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello 2:08
08 Operetta for Violin and Cello: II. Aria I - Moody Gabriela Lena Frank Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello 4:29
09 Operetta for Violin and Cello: III. Recitativo Gabriela Lena Frank Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello 2:59
10 Operetta for Violin and Cello: IV. Aria II Gabriela Lena Frank Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello 3:16
11 Operetta for Violin and Cello: V. Finale: Hue and Cry: Vivo Gabriela Lena Frank Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello 3:59
12 Three Chorales for Cello and Piano: 1. Angels Bending Near the Earth Judith Weir Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano 4:01
13 Three Chorales for Cello and Piano: 2. In Death’s Dark Vale Judith Weir Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano 5:26
14 Three Chorales for Cello and Piano: 3. O Sapienta Judith Weir Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano 6:12
15 Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words for Cello and Piano: Among the trees Scott Wheeler Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 5:27
16 Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words for Cello and Piano: Forest at night Scott Wheeler Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 2:33
17 Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words for Cello and Piano: Barcarolle Scott Wheeler Jonathan Miller, cello; Marc Ryser, piano 6:36

Tracks 1-11
Recorded August 10 & December 21, 2022 at Mechanics Hall in Worcester MA
Recording Session Producer & Engineer Brad Michel
Editing & Mixing Brad Michel

Tracks 12-17
Recorded December 19, 2017 & June 25, 2019 at WGBH Fraser Studio in Boston MA
Recording Session Producer Sharan Leventhal
Recording Session Engineer Antonio Oliart
Editing & Mixing Antonio Oliart

Mastering Brad Michel

Operetta
Commissioned by Diane Fassino and Jonathan Miller and received its world premiere on September 16, 2022 by the Boston Artists Ensemble

Three Chorales
Commissioned by Jonathan Miller and received its world premiere by the Boston Artists Ensemble on September 23 and 25, 2017 at Hamilton Hall in Salem, MA and St. Paul’s Church in Brookline MA to open their 2017-2018 season. Formerly released by Albany Records, permission for rerelease from Susan Bush.

Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words
Commissioned by Jonathan Miller and Diane Fassino, received its world premiere by the Boston Artists Ensemble on April 20 & 22, 2018

Cover art of “Landscape with Yellow Birds” (1923) by Paul Klee

Piano by Steinway
Cello by Matteo Goffriller, “Paganini – Piatti” made in Venice in 1700
Violin by Pietro Guarneri, made in Venice in 1740

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Morgan Hauber
Publicity Chelsea Kornago

Artist Information

Jonathan Miller

Cellist

Jonathan Miller was a pupil of Bernard Greenhouse. He is a 43-year veteran of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has performed as a soloist with the Hartford Symphony; the Boston Pops, Cape Ann Symphony, and Newton Symphony; Symphony By The Sea, and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of Boston. Miller won the Jeunesses Musicales auditions, twice toured the United States with the New York String Sextet, and appeared as a member of the Fine Arts Quartet. He performed as a featured soloist at the American Cello Congress in both 1990 and 1996.

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Lucia Lin

Violinist

Lucia Lin currently enjoys a multi-faceted career of solo engagements, chamber music performances, orchestral concerts with the BSO, and teaching at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. Lin made her debut at age 11, performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony, then went on to be a prizewinner of numerous competitions, including the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She joined the BSO at the age of 22, and has also held positions as acting concertmaster with the Milwaukee Symphony and for two years, concertmaster with the London Symphony Orchestra.

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Randall Hodgkinson

pianist

Randall Hodgkinson (piano) won the International American Music Competition in 1981 and his October 1986 formal New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall under the competition’s auspices was greeted with critical acclaim. Hodgkinson has, in recent years, performed with orchestras including those of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Albany, Buffalo, Westchester, Oakland, and Caramoor and has collaborated with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Gunther Schuller. 1985 saw his European orchestral debut with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome. He is a featured artist on the Bösendorfer Concert Series aired over WNYC – FM in New York City and has recorded for the Nonesuch, CRI, and New World labels. Hodgkinson studied with Veronica Jochum and Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory where he now serves on the faculty. He is a member of the Gramercy Trio.

Marc Ryser

pianist

Pianist Marc Ryser performs in North America and Europe. Among the highlights of his solo career are the first performance in Bulgaria of Bela Bartók’s 3rd Piano Concerto, with the Vratsa Philharmonic, and concert tours in Switzerland which have included recitals and concerto performances with the Sinfonietta de Lausanne. He is a founding member of Music-by-the-Sea, a festival and artists’ residency on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island, now in its seventh season. Ryser is a member of the piano faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, the Walnut Hill School, the Rivers School Conservatory, and is adjunct piano faculty at Brandeis University. He has appeared as a guest artist at Music from Salem, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, and with the Walden, MIT, Holy Cross, and Smith College Chamber Players. He is also well known at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, where he was senior artist and resident collaborative pianist from 2003-2005.

Gabriela Lena Frank

composer

Gabriela Lena Frank is a highly acclaimed American composer known for her innovative and diverse musical style that blends elements of her Peruvian, Chinese, and Jewish heritage. Born in Berkeley CA, in 1972, Frank has received numerous awards and commissions for her compositions, which often explore cultural identity and cross-cultural influences. She holds a Master’s degree in Music Composition from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate from Indiana University. Frank has served as a composer-in-residence for various orchestras and institutions, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. Her recent opera El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego was premiered by the San Francisco Opera in June of 2023. Her works, ranging from orchestral pieces to chamber music and operas, showcase a deep commitment to exploring the intersections of different musical traditions, making her a prominent figure in contemporary classical music.

Judith Weir

composer

Judith Weir is a British composer, born in Cambridge, England to Scottish parents in 1954. She studied at Cambridge University and at Tanglewood, with Gunther Schuller. She taught for some years at Glasgow University and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and directed the Spitalfields Festival in London’s East End. She was resident composer with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with the orchestra’s then director, Simon Rattle, and more recently has been Associate Composer to the BBC Singers.

Since 2014 she has held the historic royal post of Master of the Queen’s (from 2022, King’s) Music, the first woman to do so in 400 years. The role has involved writing music for major occasions, including the State Funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II and the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla. She has also taken the opportunity to champion school and community music, writing music for learner ensembles and the United Kingdom’s many choirs.

Scott Wheeler

composer

Scott Wheeler’s music has been performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Boston Artists Ensemble, Washington National Opera, violinist Gil Shaham, conductor Kent Nagano, and many others. Recent premieres include works for pianists Eliza Garth and Maxim Lando as well as sopranos Laura Strickling and Kristina Bachrach. In 2023 Scott appeared as pianist at Merkin Concert Hall, Bargemusic, Guarneri Hall in Chicago, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Villa La Pietra in Florence, Italy.

Scott’s Sextet is a 2023 release by the Boston Chamber Music Society. His instrumental and vocal music can be heard on Bridge, Naxos, New World, and BMOP Sound.

Wheeler was born in Washington DC, grew up in various cities in the American midwest and east, then studied at Amherst College, New England Conservatory, Brandeis, and Tanglewood. He teaches songwriting at Emerson College in Boston.

scottwheeler.org

Notes

Gabriela Lena Frank (b.1972) is one of the most popular composers writing today, and it’s easy to see why: her work is both naturally captivating and rich with history and imagery. Frank grounds her music in culture and in narrative. Born in Berkeley CA, she has Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian, and Jewish ancestry and has traveled extensively in the Andean region of South America. In her celebration of traditional South American source material she brings to mind past greats like Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, and fellow Peruvian Celso Garrido-Lecca — yet her voice, outlook, and career are those of a 21st century woman. She describes inspiration for one of her most frequently performed works, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (Legends for string quartet, later arranged for string orchestra), as “the idea of mestizaje as envisioned by Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, where cultures can coexist without the subjugation of one by the other.” Her music offers a vision of our world at its richest and most unfettered.

Frank has been feted with awards including a Latin Grammy and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been commissioned by many of this country’s leading orchestras as well as constellations of classical music celebrities. She is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and this season the San Diego Opera is scheduled to premiere her first opera, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego. In 2017, she founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, which combines residencies for composers of all backgrounds and styles with concerts and mentorship throughout Frank’s rural Anderson Valley CA community; commissioning programs for alumni and composers of color; and climate activism. Truly a Renaissance woman, Frank describes herself in her Twitter bio as a “multi-racial Latina, pianist/composer, forager/farmsteader, history buff, climate activist, arts citizen, prone to flights of fancy…”

Of this work, the composer writes:
“I have always loved the concept of a song without words since one, a solo keyboard work by Felix Mendelssohn, was given to me to learn in my girlhood. Instead of seeing it as something less (words are missing, after all), I felt keenly the call to more: as if through magic, I could leave the audience convinced I was both singer and pianist even without actually — vocally — singing.

Since then, I’ve written other instrumental songs without words, as well as short ballets without dancers for symphonies. To carry the analogy further, how about an opera without words and, well, its inherent visual feast for the eyes of costumes, set design, lighting, plus grandeur?

To do so, one might wish to first write an opera. I had just completed my first one when, reeling from that epic experience, I turned my attention in earnest to this nimble violin and cello duo, Operetta, for my charismatic and esteemed colleagues Lucia Lin and Jonathan Miller. A prologue, a recitative, two arias, and a final “hue and cry” later, the operatic spirit of contrast, immediacy, dance, and lyricism is firmly in place. My hope is that Operetta is a joy to play and a joy to listen to.”

— Zoe Kemmerling

World Premiere — September 2016

Judith Weir (b.1954) is a London-based composer of Scottish ancestry who occupies a central position in the United Kingdom’s most august musical circles, having been appointed CBE (order of the British Empire) in 1995 and succeeding Sir Peter Maxwell Davies in 2014 as Master of the Queen’s Music. She also maintains lasting connections on this side of the pond, stretching back to a stint at Tanglewood, where she studied with Gunther Schuller, in summer of 1975. She has been commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra as well as the London Sinfonietta, and was composer-in-residence with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the 1990s. Among Weir’s distinctive and varied oeuvre, her operas are particularly arresting: they range from a one-woman depiction of an attempted Norwegian invasion of England in the 11th century (King Harald’s Saga), to a play-within-an-opera set in 13th-century China (A Night at the Chinese Opera), to an enigmatic 19th-century German tale of horror and the supernatural (Blond Eckbert), to a 21st-century warzone update of Tasso (Armida).

The composer writes:
“These three pieces for cello and piano are meditations — personal, secular, and musical — on images from religious poetry.

The title of No. 1, Angels bending near the earth, comes from a carol which begins “It came upon the midnight clear” by the Massachusetts pastor and poet, Edmund Sears. The full reference is to “angels bending near the earth/to touch their harps of gold” and this is the inspiration for the music, with piano arpeggios swooping down over the rich central band of sound produced by the cello.

No. 2’s title, In death’s dark vale, is a brief paraphrase (from a Scottish hymnal) of Psalm 23; the full quotation is “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” The image here is of human life lived against the prospect of impending death. The cello plays a hasty, self-absorbed continuo, whilst around it, piano motifs and chords of different height and depth create an evolving backdrop.

No. 3, O sapientia, is the only movement which quotes a musical original; Hildegard of Bingen’s hymn O virtus sapientiae — “O strength of wisdom.” This is a calm, elegiac set of variations for the cello on Hildegard’s melody, accompanied by mostly bright, optimistic reflections from the piano.”

— Zoe Kemmerling

Premiered April 20, 2018

“Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words, as its title suggests, invites the cello to sing. I was inspired to think of the cello in this way because of the many gradations of singing tone that are the hallmark of cellist Jonathan Miller. Most of the work was done at Yaddo in upstate New York, where my studio was in the woods by a stream. This setting also influenced the kind of singing I imagined for the cello. The first movement is entitled “Among the Trees.” It begins “like a hymn” but quickly moves into a sort of recitative. The piano sometimes provides the hymnal accompaniment and sometimes a more sparkling background. The second movement, “Forest at Night,” begins with misterioso pizzicato and soon becomes passionate. The third movement, “Barcarolle,” is the most expansive part of the sonata, and perhaps the most songful.

This sonata was commissioned by Jonathan Miller for Boston Artists Ensemble. The work is dedicated to Jonathan.”

— Scott Wheeler