2025 Concert Set 5: Music for Strings & French Horn
- loonlakelive
- May 10
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 16
Aug 7 7:30pm Loon Lake Jewish Center
Aug 8 7:30pm Historic Saranac Lake Laboratory
PROGRAM
Tanz by Hans Krasa (1899-1944)
Ari Fierer, violin
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
Woman Holding a Balance by Anna Clyne (1980- )
Susanna Klein and Ari Fierer, violins
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
The More Things Change by John Winn (1971- )
Progress
Stasis
Times-People
Sonya Stith Wiliams and Susanna Klein, violins
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
Quintet for Horn and Strings by André Previn (1929-2019)
I.
II. “There in the Morning”
III. “Working"
Debra Sherrill, horn
Sonya Stith Wiliams and Ari Fierer, violins
Catherine Beeson, viola
Jordan Gunn, cello
MUSICIANS
Catherine Beeson, viola
Ari Fierer, violin
Jordan Gunn, cello
Susanna Klein, violin
Debra Sherrill, horn
Sonya Stith Wiliams, violin
(Shown above in alphabetical order)
Plus, composer John Winn will be present!
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Click on the name of the piece below to skip right to it!
Hans Krása (1899-1944) was a composer, pianist, and violinist from Czechoslovakia. He achieved acclaim as a composer before being arrested by the Nazis and sent to Terezín/Theresienstadt concentration camp along with many other notable artists, performers, and creators of Jewish heritage. Krasa continued to compose music at Terezín right until the time he and several other composer colleagues were sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. In a testament to resilience and risk on behalf of preservation of Jewish and, ultimately, human culture many of the works created by Krasa and others were hidden and smuggled out of Terezín so that their memories would not only survive but be for a blessing.
Tanz is a short composition for string trio which Krasa composed just a few weeks before his transfer and murder. Listening to this defiantly joyous and beautiful folk influenced music, one could never guess the conditions under which it was composed.
A typical performance lasts about 6 minutes.
Anna Clyne (1980- ) is a British composer of electronic and acoustic music, currently living in New York. She began composing music at the age of 7. Now just in her mid 40s she has nearly 90 published works and over a dozen recordings to her name, and is highly sought after for new commissions.
Woman Holding a Balance is a 2021 composition for string quartet originally meant to underscore the David Ward and Jyll Bradley short film Woman Holding a Balance in Dutch/Light (After Vermeer). This string quartet is the final layer of a project involving four different artists who work in different mediums and across different times. Clyne wrote the music for a film created by performance artist David Ward based on, and involving, a large outdoor sculpture by Jyll Bradley called Dutch/Light which was influenced by 17th century painter Joannes Vermeer. Vermeer was a master of his use of light as a framing device for ideas around time, space, and internalized emotion. In the film, shot on a sunny day, Ward loops in and out of the sculpture performing gestures from various subjects in Vermeer’s paintings.
About the piece, Clyne writes “The music reflects the meditative nature of the film and the cyclical passing of light through a sculpture over the course of a day. Shifting harmonic colors undulate in strange loops until they reach a melodic section, before returning to the stillness of the opening music. I find Jyll’s work to be very meditative and time momentarily slows down when I experience it. It’s a very beautiful visual world and it has been a joy to create music to accompany it."
A typical performance lasts about 5 minutes.
John Winn (1971- ) is an American composer and multi instrumentalist based in Richmond, VA. He composes regularly in the jazz and musical theater genres and has been commissioned to write, and had the opportunity to record, multiple compositions primarily for small ensemble specialists that could be considered ‘crossover classical’. John’s compositions and arrangements have been featured on the Loon Lake Live series since the early 2000s, including the premieres of Adirondack Suite (2005) for strings, harp, and clarinet and Party Hopping (2024) for string trio. In 2005 Loon Lake Live released a CD of Adirondack Suite and Songs for Modern Times a song cycle for voice and string quartet along with two arrangements of Gershwin tunes for clarinet and string quartet. Recently Loon Lake Live musicians spent a week in Richmond recording Party Hopping and his 2009 string quartet The More Things Change (performed on the LLL series in 2015).
The More Things Change is a string quartet in 3 movements, observing and commenting on that old saw “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The first movement, Progress, begins with a slightly disorienting Morse code plucking figure being passed unevenly around the quartet while periodic sharp punctuations from the various instruments knock at the rhythmic flow. This grows into a bit of a modernist rant for solo solo cello and then for violin before melting into a sweetly broken waltz and finally heading back into the opening material for a thoroughly hard rock finish including a scorching ‘ lead guitar’ solo in the violin part. The second movement, Stasis, is a beautiful expression of stillness and togetherness in an uncertain context with long melodic lines over slow moving chorale harmonies. The third movement, Times-People is in reference to that other adage “Times change, people don’t.” It is a hard driving busy expression featuring a ‘head down forge ahead’ walking bass line in the cello and choral outbursts in tight crunchy jazz harmonies from the violins and viola. There is an unsettling and slightly creepy middle section duet between the cello and first violin making a ghostly melody while the inner voices make a plucked composite rhythm that always seems a bit off kilter. The cello has a big monologue solo moment which then brings us back to the harried opening material and eventually takes us out to a very suddenly jarring C major chord with final statements in the cello. The quartet seems at once familiar and disconcerting, allowing listeners the space to consider their place in history even as it repeats.
A typical performance lasts about 15 minutes.
Progress
Stasis
Times-People
Learn more about John Winn's piece The More Things Change and a recording project including it!
André Previn (1929-2019) was a German born American naturalized pianist, composer, and conductor. He was successful as a composer and performer in wildly different genres of jazz, Hollywood film scores, and classical music. He was recognized from a very early age as having musical talent and by the time he was 6 years old he was enrolled at the Berlin Conservatory. However, due to his Jewish heritage in 1938 he was told he couldn’t continue his studies there despite his obvious abilities and potential. That same year his family applied for US visas an in the meantime, left Germany for France. Previn was able to continue his musical studies there until October when they emigrated to the US, eventually relocating to Los Angeles where he was exposed to the music world within Universal Studios through a family member music director there. Previn and his family were incredibly lucky to have sponsorship and the ability to escape Nazi Germany. His contribution to the world of music is difficult to adequately measure and highlights even more distinctly the immeasurable loss to the world of so much cultural potential as a result of the Holocaust.
Quintet for Horn and Strings was commissioned by the Terezín Music Foundation (TMF), which is dedicated to preserving the musical legacy of composers lost in the Holocaust and helping to fulfill their unrealized artistic and mentoring roles with new commissions. Over the years, TMF has commissioned a broad range of composers to write pieces for diverse instrumentation, including solo works, chamber music, and choral settings, all honoring the composers whose voices were silenced prematurely. The 2019 North American premiere of the Quintet was on a program including Hans Krása’s Overture for Small Orchestra. The first movement of the Quintet, which is untitled, begins with a duet between horn and cello. Occasionally conversational, and melody vs supportive harmonic underpinning, this movement jumps between textures and tempos, keeping listeners engaged all the way. The second movement, “There in the Morning”, is basically a song form for horn and string quartet with an emotionally active cello part. The third movement, “Working”, has an energy infused start over which the horn melody hovers and observes the activity below. The piece ends with a splashy horn call, reminding the listener of the vitality of life and living as a form of resistance to tyranny.
A typical performance lasts about 25 minutes.
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