Viterbo University Nola Starling Recital Hall
Carolyn Haupert Drazich, oboe
Mary Ellen Haupert, piano
Michelle Lee Elliott, violin
Busya Lugovier, viola
Derek Clark, cello
PROGRAM
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1962)
Elégie (Paisiblement, Sans Presser)
Scherzo (Très animé)
Déploration (Très calme)
Notes: During the last years of his life, Poulenc worked on a projected series of sonatas, one for each wind instrument. He lived to complete only three, the others being for flute and for clarinet. All are dedicated to the memory off friends or fellow musicians and the Sonata for Oboe and Piano is inscribed 'à la mémoire de Serge Prokofieff'.
In My Friends and Myself, Poulenc said: 'You can be a great musician and still not be an innovator…you can be influenced by Prokofiev... I have myself in certain little areas'. He acknowledged Prokofiev's influence on the Sextet in an essay on Prokofiev's piano music, but the Sonata for Oboe and Piano is undoubtedly Poulenc's most direct tribute to the Russian master. The reversal of his customary fast - slow - fast sequence of movements fulfills affective requirements yet the influence dedicatee is felt most strongly in the Scherzo. Here the brilliant brittle piano writing might be by Prokofiev himself (though there is more than a hint of Balakirev's Islamey) while the slow, lyrical central section is based on one of the themes from the finale of Prokofiev's flute sonata. If the opening Elegy owes something to Stravinsky, the sense of deep calm which pervades the final Deploration is pure Poulenc, reminiscent of much of his religious music. How fitting that the valedictory final page was to be the last music he wrote.
© 1985 Graham Mackie
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15
Allegro molto moderato
Scherzo; Allegro vivo
Adagio
Allegro molto
Notes: Faurés chamber music is dominated by ensembles with piano. In fact, only one work excludes it: the string quartet of 1924 written when he was 79, Fauré's final chamber composition. In addition to the numerous works for piano and soloist including violin and cello sonatas and a treasure trove of precious miniatures mirroring his gift for song, Fauré wrote two piano quartets, two piano quintets and a piano trio, all of them superb works of the highest order. The Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 begins the series of larger ensemble works. Written between 1876-79 and revised with a new finale in 1883, it falls neatly between the music of César Franck and Ravel suggesting appropriate and revealing comparisons. Fauré had a very distinct musical personality, somewhat aloof from the intoxication of Wagner as well as the modern leanings of the Impressionists. Yet his music is unmistakably French with a strong kinship to both the suave Romanticism of Franck and the cool sensuality of Debussy. As especially demonstrated in this piano quartet, a remarkable lineage seems to flow across this span of time and compatriot composers that evolved a most distinctive school of French art at the end of the 19th century. It is particularly compelling to realize that Fauré's first piano quartet predates Debussy and Ravel's first mature works by ten and twenty years respectively. Along with the traditional clarity, poetry and restraint of the French tradition preceding it, Fauré's music sounds refreshingly and presciently modern.
The quartet's first movement amply illustrates many of these qualities. The sonata's two primary themes establish wonderful contrasts. The first is heavy-handed and robust with immediate pointers to Franck and Debussy's first quartet. Through a supple series of transformations, the theme enjoys chameleon-like changes of character and mood as both Franck and Debussy did within and across movements with a typical French penchant for cyclic form and subtle permutations. Fauré's second theme is lyrical and winsome, flowing in ribbons of step-wise sequences that became a signature texture throughout much of his oeuvre. Here is both the essence of Fauré's counterpoint and his subtle technique of development through nuanced modulation of a near minimalism of material. Delicate, elusive, ever flowing and shimmering, this kind of ingenious musical continuity flows straight into music of Ravel, Fauré's most famous student.
Fauré's Scherzo is fascinating. It moves throughout with the dual personality of a march and a waltz with a steady perpetual motion gently animating the entire construction. It suggests phrases such as "watch-like precision" often given to key French composers like Saint-Saëns and Ravel. The steady "groove" is based on a combination of an obstinate bass pattern (the pizzicato strings or the piano's left hand) and a scurrying melodic figure (in the piano's right hand or the bowed strings). Over time, the strings introduce a much more languid melody that stretches with a certain wryness like gauzy fabric over a loom. This is one part of the casual, playful humor of Fauré's Scherzo. The other is the trio: it is surprisingly similar to the Scherzo musically, but it begins on the dominant and seems to invert aspects of the bass, melody and texture for an "inside-out" and "upside-down" effect. Running through the fabric are wisps and threads of musical lines that fly off in the treble range and a merry dotted rhythm that skips and prances through the precision clockwork, all in a very suave, scherzando musical entertainment.
The adagio is majestic and profound, serene with a dark streak of poignancy. It opens with an elegiac theme, a stately pavane measured, reflective and somewhat grave. It gathers momentum, reaching with a more emphatic yearning that relaxes again into pastels and a dreamy nostalgia like a French café song whose languorous melancholy savors its own sorrow fondly. A dour chord wakens the reverie into a disorienting drift back through the spinning of time in wide ranging piano arpeggios; a recollection of the poised elegy sinks deeply into the lower strings under the terrible weight of reality. The piano continues to dream, lost, floating skyward like a brightly colored kite against the gray clouds, forever untethered from the gravity of the dark earth below.
Fauré concludes his first chamber work for large ensemble with a blustery, restless rhythmic tour de force that begins with a storm in a minor key and travels, moto perpetuo, a wide arc of kaleidoscopic changes to end in a surge of bright triumph, a sparkling finish awash in color and grand cadences. The magnificent swell and sweep of the finale carries in its wake a whole history of styles, textures and moods. Here one finds the Romantic heft of Franck waltzing with the pointillism of Ravel, the big orchestral rainbows from Iberian tributes of earlier Frenchman amidst the intimate, ripe lyricism characteristic of all great chamber music. And for the distinctive sound of the piano quartet itself, one finds the surging, precisely unified rhythms in gigantic strides that are idiomatic to the great modern pianoforte as well as the glittering melodic lines high and impossibly delicate in the right hand, those that Mozart first set against the velvety, long lines of a tremulous and harmonically complete string trio, the definitive colorful textures of the earliest great piano quartets.
© Kai Christiansen
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Carolyn Haupert Drazich, oboist, studied oboe with Mary Beth Hensel while growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She continued her studies at the College of St. Benedict with oboist and Alexander Master Teacher Andrea Fedele, and graduated with a BA in oboe performance and minor in German. After graduating, Carolyn continued language studies in Bamberg, Germany where she was employed as an au pair. Carolyn is currently a registered nurse who has worked at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Gillette Children's Hospital, Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, Barnes Hospital, and Freodtert Hospital. She is currently working in the Emergency Department at Essentia-St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, MN.
Mary Ellen Haupert, pianist, is currently a professor of music in Viterbo University Music Department and Director of Liturgy at Roncalli Newman and Blessed Sacrament Parishes. She was awarded the Alec Chui Memorial Award in 2012 (for fostering student research) and Teacher of the Year in 2014. Mary Ellen is passionate about chamber music and is credited as founder/artistic director of the One-of-a-Kind Chamber Music Series (2008-2018), the Out-of-Our-Minds Chamber Music Series (2018-present), and the Bonfire Chamber Music Series (2018 – present) – a summer series sponsored by the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, MN. Mary Ellen has presented her theory pedagogy at national and international conferences, recorded two albums of chamber by Louise Farrenc on the CENTAUR label, and is a published composer. Her most recent composition, "Variant," was performed by the Galan Piano Trio on tour in November 2022.
Michelle Lee Elliott, violinist, has enjoyed a diverse musical career as a chamber musician, orchestral musician, and soloist. As a founding member of the Vinca Quartet, which was appointed as the first resident quartet to study and collaborate with the Takács Quartet at the University of Colorado. The Vinca Quartet were prizewinners of the Fischoff National String Quartet competition, and laureates of the Chesapeake and Plowman Chamber Music Competitions, as well as the Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Vinca Quartet was also selected to participate in the Emerson Quartet’s Carnegie Hall Training Workshop where they were hailed as “stunning” and “musicians worth keeping an eye on” by the New York Times.
Busya Lugovier, violist, was born and educated in the former USSR. She was a member of the Dubna Trio, which was the first delegation to come to La Crosse after the Cold War between the US and Russia. The Dubna Trio played an instrumental role in the sister-city/La Crosse-Dubna project by helping build bridges of understanding between cultures. At the present time, Ms. Lugovier coaches chamber music for the School District of La Crosse, teaches private students, and plays with the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra.
Derek Clark, cellist, received his Master of Music degree in cello performance from The Pennsylvania State University. Before moving to La Crosse Mr. Clark resided in Pittsburgh, PA, where he was an active professional cellist with several area symphony orchestras and ensembles as well as a private teacher. Upon moving to La Crosse in 2002, Mr. Clark became a member of the Rochester Orchestra and the La Crosse Symphony, where he was principal cellist for ten years. Mr. Clark is currently a member of Bluffside Consort, Crescendo String Quartet, and Ensemble Druzhba. In addition to performing, Mr. Clark has been an active cello teacher as well. He has taught cello at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Winona State University, and St. Mary’s University in Winona. He also maintains a private studio.
Carolyn Haupert Drazich, oboe
Mary Ellen Haupert, piano
Michelle Lee Elliott, violin
Busya Lugovier, viola
Derek Clark, cello
PROGRAM
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1962)
Elégie (Paisiblement, Sans Presser)
Scherzo (Très animé)
Déploration (Très calme)
Notes: During the last years of his life, Poulenc worked on a projected series of sonatas, one for each wind instrument. He lived to complete only three, the others being for flute and for clarinet. All are dedicated to the memory off friends or fellow musicians and the Sonata for Oboe and Piano is inscribed 'à la mémoire de Serge Prokofieff'.
In My Friends and Myself, Poulenc said: 'You can be a great musician and still not be an innovator…you can be influenced by Prokofiev... I have myself in certain little areas'. He acknowledged Prokofiev's influence on the Sextet in an essay on Prokofiev's piano music, but the Sonata for Oboe and Piano is undoubtedly Poulenc's most direct tribute to the Russian master. The reversal of his customary fast - slow - fast sequence of movements fulfills affective requirements yet the influence dedicatee is felt most strongly in the Scherzo. Here the brilliant brittle piano writing might be by Prokofiev himself (though there is more than a hint of Balakirev's Islamey) while the slow, lyrical central section is based on one of the themes from the finale of Prokofiev's flute sonata. If the opening Elegy owes something to Stravinsky, the sense of deep calm which pervades the final Deploration is pure Poulenc, reminiscent of much of his religious music. How fitting that the valedictory final page was to be the last music he wrote.
© 1985 Graham Mackie
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15
Allegro molto moderato
Scherzo; Allegro vivo
Adagio
Allegro molto
Notes: Faurés chamber music is dominated by ensembles with piano. In fact, only one work excludes it: the string quartet of 1924 written when he was 79, Fauré's final chamber composition. In addition to the numerous works for piano and soloist including violin and cello sonatas and a treasure trove of precious miniatures mirroring his gift for song, Fauré wrote two piano quartets, two piano quintets and a piano trio, all of them superb works of the highest order. The Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 begins the series of larger ensemble works. Written between 1876-79 and revised with a new finale in 1883, it falls neatly between the music of César Franck and Ravel suggesting appropriate and revealing comparisons. Fauré had a very distinct musical personality, somewhat aloof from the intoxication of Wagner as well as the modern leanings of the Impressionists. Yet his music is unmistakably French with a strong kinship to both the suave Romanticism of Franck and the cool sensuality of Debussy. As especially demonstrated in this piano quartet, a remarkable lineage seems to flow across this span of time and compatriot composers that evolved a most distinctive school of French art at the end of the 19th century. It is particularly compelling to realize that Fauré's first piano quartet predates Debussy and Ravel's first mature works by ten and twenty years respectively. Along with the traditional clarity, poetry and restraint of the French tradition preceding it, Fauré's music sounds refreshingly and presciently modern.
The quartet's first movement amply illustrates many of these qualities. The sonata's two primary themes establish wonderful contrasts. The first is heavy-handed and robust with immediate pointers to Franck and Debussy's first quartet. Through a supple series of transformations, the theme enjoys chameleon-like changes of character and mood as both Franck and Debussy did within and across movements with a typical French penchant for cyclic form and subtle permutations. Fauré's second theme is lyrical and winsome, flowing in ribbons of step-wise sequences that became a signature texture throughout much of his oeuvre. Here is both the essence of Fauré's counterpoint and his subtle technique of development through nuanced modulation of a near minimalism of material. Delicate, elusive, ever flowing and shimmering, this kind of ingenious musical continuity flows straight into music of Ravel, Fauré's most famous student.
Fauré's Scherzo is fascinating. It moves throughout with the dual personality of a march and a waltz with a steady perpetual motion gently animating the entire construction. It suggests phrases such as "watch-like precision" often given to key French composers like Saint-Saëns and Ravel. The steady "groove" is based on a combination of an obstinate bass pattern (the pizzicato strings or the piano's left hand) and a scurrying melodic figure (in the piano's right hand or the bowed strings). Over time, the strings introduce a much more languid melody that stretches with a certain wryness like gauzy fabric over a loom. This is one part of the casual, playful humor of Fauré's Scherzo. The other is the trio: it is surprisingly similar to the Scherzo musically, but it begins on the dominant and seems to invert aspects of the bass, melody and texture for an "inside-out" and "upside-down" effect. Running through the fabric are wisps and threads of musical lines that fly off in the treble range and a merry dotted rhythm that skips and prances through the precision clockwork, all in a very suave, scherzando musical entertainment.
The adagio is majestic and profound, serene with a dark streak of poignancy. It opens with an elegiac theme, a stately pavane measured, reflective and somewhat grave. It gathers momentum, reaching with a more emphatic yearning that relaxes again into pastels and a dreamy nostalgia like a French café song whose languorous melancholy savors its own sorrow fondly. A dour chord wakens the reverie into a disorienting drift back through the spinning of time in wide ranging piano arpeggios; a recollection of the poised elegy sinks deeply into the lower strings under the terrible weight of reality. The piano continues to dream, lost, floating skyward like a brightly colored kite against the gray clouds, forever untethered from the gravity of the dark earth below.
Fauré concludes his first chamber work for large ensemble with a blustery, restless rhythmic tour de force that begins with a storm in a minor key and travels, moto perpetuo, a wide arc of kaleidoscopic changes to end in a surge of bright triumph, a sparkling finish awash in color and grand cadences. The magnificent swell and sweep of the finale carries in its wake a whole history of styles, textures and moods. Here one finds the Romantic heft of Franck waltzing with the pointillism of Ravel, the big orchestral rainbows from Iberian tributes of earlier Frenchman amidst the intimate, ripe lyricism characteristic of all great chamber music. And for the distinctive sound of the piano quartet itself, one finds the surging, precisely unified rhythms in gigantic strides that are idiomatic to the great modern pianoforte as well as the glittering melodic lines high and impossibly delicate in the right hand, those that Mozart first set against the velvety, long lines of a tremulous and harmonically complete string trio, the definitive colorful textures of the earliest great piano quartets.
© Kai Christiansen
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Carolyn Haupert Drazich, oboist, studied oboe with Mary Beth Hensel while growing up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She continued her studies at the College of St. Benedict with oboist and Alexander Master Teacher Andrea Fedele, and graduated with a BA in oboe performance and minor in German. After graduating, Carolyn continued language studies in Bamberg, Germany where she was employed as an au pair. Carolyn is currently a registered nurse who has worked at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Gillette Children's Hospital, Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, Barnes Hospital, and Freodtert Hospital. She is currently working in the Emergency Department at Essentia-St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, MN.
Mary Ellen Haupert, pianist, is currently a professor of music in Viterbo University Music Department and Director of Liturgy at Roncalli Newman and Blessed Sacrament Parishes. She was awarded the Alec Chui Memorial Award in 2012 (for fostering student research) and Teacher of the Year in 2014. Mary Ellen is passionate about chamber music and is credited as founder/artistic director of the One-of-a-Kind Chamber Music Series (2008-2018), the Out-of-Our-Minds Chamber Music Series (2018-present), and the Bonfire Chamber Music Series (2018 – present) – a summer series sponsored by the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, MN. Mary Ellen has presented her theory pedagogy at national and international conferences, recorded two albums of chamber by Louise Farrenc on the CENTAUR label, and is a published composer. Her most recent composition, "Variant," was performed by the Galan Piano Trio on tour in November 2022.
Michelle Lee Elliott, violinist, has enjoyed a diverse musical career as a chamber musician, orchestral musician, and soloist. As a founding member of the Vinca Quartet, which was appointed as the first resident quartet to study and collaborate with the Takács Quartet at the University of Colorado. The Vinca Quartet were prizewinners of the Fischoff National String Quartet competition, and laureates of the Chesapeake and Plowman Chamber Music Competitions, as well as the Premio Paolo Borciani Competition in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Vinca Quartet was also selected to participate in the Emerson Quartet’s Carnegie Hall Training Workshop where they were hailed as “stunning” and “musicians worth keeping an eye on” by the New York Times.
Busya Lugovier, violist, was born and educated in the former USSR. She was a member of the Dubna Trio, which was the first delegation to come to La Crosse after the Cold War between the US and Russia. The Dubna Trio played an instrumental role in the sister-city/La Crosse-Dubna project by helping build bridges of understanding between cultures. At the present time, Ms. Lugovier coaches chamber music for the School District of La Crosse, teaches private students, and plays with the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra.
Derek Clark, cellist, received his Master of Music degree in cello performance from The Pennsylvania State University. Before moving to La Crosse Mr. Clark resided in Pittsburgh, PA, where he was an active professional cellist with several area symphony orchestras and ensembles as well as a private teacher. Upon moving to La Crosse in 2002, Mr. Clark became a member of the Rochester Orchestra and the La Crosse Symphony, where he was principal cellist for ten years. Mr. Clark is currently a member of Bluffside Consort, Crescendo String Quartet, and Ensemble Druzhba. In addition to performing, Mr. Clark has been an active cello teacher as well. He has taught cello at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Winona State University, and St. Mary’s University in Winona. He also maintains a private studio.