Concert 2 - Hungarian Rhapsody
Friday, October 24, 2025 @ 7:30 PM
Cappella Performing Arts Center
Magdalena Sas, cello | Mary Ellen Haupert, piano | Michelle Elliott, violin | Maritsa Rosamilia, viola
PROGRAM
Zoltan Kodály (1882-1967)
Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 4
I. Fantasia. Adagio di molto
II. Allegro con spirito
Notes: Kodály shares with Bartók the reputation for being one of the two greatest Hungarian composers of the twentieth century. Born just a year apart, they also shared during their lifetimes a deep common interest in music of their homeland, and conducted extensive scholarly research into music of the Hungarian gypsies and peasants in addition to that of surrounding countries. As such, they were among the first important ethnomusicologists. Into the sonata we hear today, Kodály poured the essence of his absorption with indigenous Hungarian folk music. To musicologist Harry Halbreich, “the cello seems to speak Hungarian.”
As Kodály had studied the cello as a youth, it is not surprising to learn that he wrote generously for this instrument. For cello and piano his catalogue includes, in addition to the work on this program, a Romance lyrique, a Sonatina and a Hungarian Rondo (originally with orchestra). For unaccompanied cello there is a capriccio and a sonata, and for violin and cello a Duo.
When Kodály began working on the sonata for cello and piano in 1909, he intended it to be a three-movement work in the classical tradition, but he never completed more than the two movements we have today. Many years later, shortly before the two movements were published in 1923, Kodály made a last attempt to write a first movement, but, as he stated near the end of his life, “By 1921 my style had changed so much that I was no longer capable of recapturing the spirit of 1909.” Cellist Jenö Kerpely and pianist Béla Bartók gave the first performance of the two movements on May 17, 1910.
A rhapsodic air prevails in the opening movement as it unfolds in a series of juxtaposed sectional divisions. The first sounds are for the cello alone, a rising motif that will prove to be a key structural element in both movements of the sonata. (Commentators like to note that it is the same motif that opens the slow movement of Brahms’s Double Concerto.) Its descending version is equally important.
In contrast to the darkly ruminative, moody Fantasia, the exuberant second movement is powerfully rhythmic and infused with the spirit of the dance. While most “unfinished” compositions lack endings (Schubert’s Eighth and Bruckner’s Ninth symphonies come to mind), Kodály’s Cello Sonata lacks a beginning. Yet, as in the case of the just-mentioned symphonies, the work seems complete despite its outward appearance as a torso. Kodály closes his sonata with a return to the opening of the Fantasia movement, now somewhat rewritten as if, with the passage of time, this material has now evolved into a new form. It makes for a most satisfying feeling of closure.
- Andreas Brontelid and Shai Wosner
David Popper (1843-1913)
Hungarian Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, Op. 68
Notes: The composer, teacher, and celebrated cellist David Popper likely won't have the mass name recognition as Paganini or Liszt; still, he is a mammoth icon in the realm of all things cello. His 60-plus cello works, including the bible of advanced etudes, the 40 Studies: High School of Cello Playing, Op.73, are staples of the cello repertoire. Like violinists/composers Eugène Ysaÿe and Fritz Kreisler, Popper is in the obscure category of the often overlooked performer-composer, composers who extensively and exclusively write for their instrument.
Popper studied at the Prague Conservatory with the Hamburg cellist Julius Goltermann and quickly amassed a high-profile performing resume. During an 1863 tour of Germany, Popper won praise and support from the conductor and protege of Franz Liszt, Hans von Bülow. Bülow intersected with many titan figures, including a love triangle with Liszt's daughter Cosima and Richard Wagner. By association, Popper was equally entangled in the upper echelons of high music society. Popper's concertizing history is a whos-who of the Western Anthology of Music (Late Romantic chapters). In addition to Bülow, Popper performed under Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Karl Goldmark, Anton Rubinstein, Carl Reinecke, with Béla Bartók, and gave the world premieres of several works by Johannes Brahms, including the Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op.60 in 1875, and the Cello Sonata in F Major, Op.99 in 1886, with Brahms at the piano.
The Hungarian Rhapsody (Ungarische Rhapsodie) is a dazzling showpiece, offering a perspective of skillful idiomatic virtuosity through a Jewish lens of Hungarian folk music. The rhapsodic work channels the Czárdás, a traditional Hungarian dance characterized by fluctuating slow and fast tempi in 2/4 or 4/4. Comparisons with Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Hungarian Dances of Brahms are immediate, with some sections sharing similar folk themes. Originally composed for piano and cello in 1893, Max Schlegel orchestrated the work four years later. The 9-minute score calls for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Unfolding in six contrasting sections, a grand orchestral introduction begins marked Andante maestoso. Following a cadenza, the cello takes up the orchestra tune with declamatory lyricism. Cellos and basses hint at the next haunting Andante with pizzicato. Dotted rhythms fore- shadow the upcoming Allegretto, which will use the same theme from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 and Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 15. The technically demanding Presto, a perpetual motion, hurls sprinting scales with ascending and descending figurations. With the same theme from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.8, a second slow and soulful Adagio is a moment of reprieve before a fiery Allegro vivace finale. The work concludes with a compilation of sorts, using themes from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies 6, 8, and 14. Popper premiered the work in Budapest on April 4, 1893, and dedicated it to Belgian cellist Jean Gérardy.
David Popper was born on June 16, 1843, in Prague, Czechia, and died on August 7, 1913, in Baden bei Wien, Austria.
- Michael Thomas Foumai
INTERMISSION
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
I. Allegro
II. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo - Trio: Animato
III. Andante con moto
IV. Rondo alla Zingarese: Presto
Notes: The Piano Quartet in G minor Op 25, was seemingly conceived about 1857, drafted in 1859 while Brahms was employed at the small ducal court of Detmold, and polished up in Hamburg in 1861. The abandoned C sharp minor Quartet had been an out-and-out product of his years of youthful Romantic turmoil, of Sturm und Drang. The genesis of the G minor, by contrast, spans from the turbulent years of the mid-1850s to the more considered classical stance of Brahms’s late twenties. It combines a troubled Romantic vocabulary with a poised, almost symphonic mastery of musical architecture. Yet the finale, with its unbridled gypsy music, displays all the young Brahms’s taste for vigorous horseplay. The whole quartet seems continually to strive beyond its chosen medium, towards an orchestral sense of colour, scope of expression and range of development. (These tendencies were given full rein by Arnold Schoenberg when he arranged the work for large orchestra in 1937.)
The sombre, spacious first movement is the most searching sonata-structure Brahms had yet written. The outer spans of exposition and development, with their almost reckless expansion and length of themes, are held in balance by the ruthless concentration on the one-bar motif that is the foundation of the very first theme, continually raising the level of tension, in the development. The way the recapitulation reshuffles the principal elements is unparalleled in a major sonata-style work, even introducing a completely new idea. The coda, beginning hopefully with sweet tranquillo-writing for strings alone, blazes up in a passion only to gutter out quietly in implied frustration.
Brahms calls the C minor second movement an Intermezzo: one of the first examples of the species of (sometimes deceptively) gentle scherzo he was to make his own. A delicate, moderate-paced, rather subdued interlude full of expressive half-lights, its poignant understatement throws the larger movements into relief. It refers, obliquely, to his love for Clara Schumann: the main theme is a haunting version of Robert Schumann’s ‘Clara-motif’ (a characteristic five-note falling–rising melodic shape), which Brahms took over in several works for his private symbolism.
The E flat slow movement begins as a full-hearted song, but develops into a strutting, almost military march in C major. This colourful parade somehow resolves the expressive tensions that have shadowed the work up to this point, making possible the sheer animal vitality of the concluding Rondo alla Zingarese. Startlingly extending a tradition of ‘gypsy’ finales that goes back to Haydn, this is the most unbuttoned episode in Brahms’s long love-affair with the popular and exotic Hungarian idioms he had imbibed from his violinist friends Reményi and Joachim. The movement’s devil-may-care abandon, with its extremes of pulse, virtuosity and emotional affliction, suggest his tongue was at least half in his cheek; and the extravagant piano cadenza that forestalls the whirlwind coda seems to parody Liszt himself.
- Calum MacDonald
Friday, October 24, 2025 @ 7:30 PM
Cappella Performing Arts Center
Magdalena Sas, cello | Mary Ellen Haupert, piano | Michelle Elliott, violin | Maritsa Rosamilia, viola
PROGRAM
Zoltan Kodály (1882-1967)
Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 4
I. Fantasia. Adagio di molto
II. Allegro con spirito
Notes: Kodály shares with Bartók the reputation for being one of the two greatest Hungarian composers of the twentieth century. Born just a year apart, they also shared during their lifetimes a deep common interest in music of their homeland, and conducted extensive scholarly research into music of the Hungarian gypsies and peasants in addition to that of surrounding countries. As such, they were among the first important ethnomusicologists. Into the sonata we hear today, Kodály poured the essence of his absorption with indigenous Hungarian folk music. To musicologist Harry Halbreich, “the cello seems to speak Hungarian.”
As Kodály had studied the cello as a youth, it is not surprising to learn that he wrote generously for this instrument. For cello and piano his catalogue includes, in addition to the work on this program, a Romance lyrique, a Sonatina and a Hungarian Rondo (originally with orchestra). For unaccompanied cello there is a capriccio and a sonata, and for violin and cello a Duo.
When Kodály began working on the sonata for cello and piano in 1909, he intended it to be a three-movement work in the classical tradition, but he never completed more than the two movements we have today. Many years later, shortly before the two movements were published in 1923, Kodály made a last attempt to write a first movement, but, as he stated near the end of his life, “By 1921 my style had changed so much that I was no longer capable of recapturing the spirit of 1909.” Cellist Jenö Kerpely and pianist Béla Bartók gave the first performance of the two movements on May 17, 1910.
A rhapsodic air prevails in the opening movement as it unfolds in a series of juxtaposed sectional divisions. The first sounds are for the cello alone, a rising motif that will prove to be a key structural element in both movements of the sonata. (Commentators like to note that it is the same motif that opens the slow movement of Brahms’s Double Concerto.) Its descending version is equally important.
In contrast to the darkly ruminative, moody Fantasia, the exuberant second movement is powerfully rhythmic and infused with the spirit of the dance. While most “unfinished” compositions lack endings (Schubert’s Eighth and Bruckner’s Ninth symphonies come to mind), Kodály’s Cello Sonata lacks a beginning. Yet, as in the case of the just-mentioned symphonies, the work seems complete despite its outward appearance as a torso. Kodály closes his sonata with a return to the opening of the Fantasia movement, now somewhat rewritten as if, with the passage of time, this material has now evolved into a new form. It makes for a most satisfying feeling of closure.
- Andreas Brontelid and Shai Wosner
David Popper (1843-1913)
Hungarian Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, Op. 68
Notes: The composer, teacher, and celebrated cellist David Popper likely won't have the mass name recognition as Paganini or Liszt; still, he is a mammoth icon in the realm of all things cello. His 60-plus cello works, including the bible of advanced etudes, the 40 Studies: High School of Cello Playing, Op.73, are staples of the cello repertoire. Like violinists/composers Eugène Ysaÿe and Fritz Kreisler, Popper is in the obscure category of the often overlooked performer-composer, composers who extensively and exclusively write for their instrument.
Popper studied at the Prague Conservatory with the Hamburg cellist Julius Goltermann and quickly amassed a high-profile performing resume. During an 1863 tour of Germany, Popper won praise and support from the conductor and protege of Franz Liszt, Hans von Bülow. Bülow intersected with many titan figures, including a love triangle with Liszt's daughter Cosima and Richard Wagner. By association, Popper was equally entangled in the upper echelons of high music society. Popper's concertizing history is a whos-who of the Western Anthology of Music (Late Romantic chapters). In addition to Bülow, Popper performed under Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Karl Goldmark, Anton Rubinstein, Carl Reinecke, with Béla Bartók, and gave the world premieres of several works by Johannes Brahms, including the Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op.60 in 1875, and the Cello Sonata in F Major, Op.99 in 1886, with Brahms at the piano.
The Hungarian Rhapsody (Ungarische Rhapsodie) is a dazzling showpiece, offering a perspective of skillful idiomatic virtuosity through a Jewish lens of Hungarian folk music. The rhapsodic work channels the Czárdás, a traditional Hungarian dance characterized by fluctuating slow and fast tempi in 2/4 or 4/4. Comparisons with Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies and the Hungarian Dances of Brahms are immediate, with some sections sharing similar folk themes. Originally composed for piano and cello in 1893, Max Schlegel orchestrated the work four years later. The 9-minute score calls for an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Unfolding in six contrasting sections, a grand orchestral introduction begins marked Andante maestoso. Following a cadenza, the cello takes up the orchestra tune with declamatory lyricism. Cellos and basses hint at the next haunting Andante with pizzicato. Dotted rhythms fore- shadow the upcoming Allegretto, which will use the same theme from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 and Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 15. The technically demanding Presto, a perpetual motion, hurls sprinting scales with ascending and descending figurations. With the same theme from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.8, a second slow and soulful Adagio is a moment of reprieve before a fiery Allegro vivace finale. The work concludes with a compilation of sorts, using themes from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies 6, 8, and 14. Popper premiered the work in Budapest on April 4, 1893, and dedicated it to Belgian cellist Jean Gérardy.
David Popper was born on June 16, 1843, in Prague, Czechia, and died on August 7, 1913, in Baden bei Wien, Austria.
- Michael Thomas Foumai
INTERMISSION
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
I. Allegro
II. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo - Trio: Animato
III. Andante con moto
IV. Rondo alla Zingarese: Presto
Notes: The Piano Quartet in G minor Op 25, was seemingly conceived about 1857, drafted in 1859 while Brahms was employed at the small ducal court of Detmold, and polished up in Hamburg in 1861. The abandoned C sharp minor Quartet had been an out-and-out product of his years of youthful Romantic turmoil, of Sturm und Drang. The genesis of the G minor, by contrast, spans from the turbulent years of the mid-1850s to the more considered classical stance of Brahms’s late twenties. It combines a troubled Romantic vocabulary with a poised, almost symphonic mastery of musical architecture. Yet the finale, with its unbridled gypsy music, displays all the young Brahms’s taste for vigorous horseplay. The whole quartet seems continually to strive beyond its chosen medium, towards an orchestral sense of colour, scope of expression and range of development. (These tendencies were given full rein by Arnold Schoenberg when he arranged the work for large orchestra in 1937.)
The sombre, spacious first movement is the most searching sonata-structure Brahms had yet written. The outer spans of exposition and development, with their almost reckless expansion and length of themes, are held in balance by the ruthless concentration on the one-bar motif that is the foundation of the very first theme, continually raising the level of tension, in the development. The way the recapitulation reshuffles the principal elements is unparalleled in a major sonata-style work, even introducing a completely new idea. The coda, beginning hopefully with sweet tranquillo-writing for strings alone, blazes up in a passion only to gutter out quietly in implied frustration.
Brahms calls the C minor second movement an Intermezzo: one of the first examples of the species of (sometimes deceptively) gentle scherzo he was to make his own. A delicate, moderate-paced, rather subdued interlude full of expressive half-lights, its poignant understatement throws the larger movements into relief. It refers, obliquely, to his love for Clara Schumann: the main theme is a haunting version of Robert Schumann’s ‘Clara-motif’ (a characteristic five-note falling–rising melodic shape), which Brahms took over in several works for his private symbolism.
The E flat slow movement begins as a full-hearted song, but develops into a strutting, almost military march in C major. This colourful parade somehow resolves the expressive tensions that have shadowed the work up to this point, making possible the sheer animal vitality of the concluding Rondo alla Zingarese. Startlingly extending a tradition of ‘gypsy’ finales that goes back to Haydn, this is the most unbuttoned episode in Brahms’s long love-affair with the popular and exotic Hungarian idioms he had imbibed from his violinist friends Reményi and Joachim. The movement’s devil-may-care abandon, with its extremes of pulse, virtuosity and emotional affliction, suggest his tongue was at least half in his cheek; and the extravagant piano cadenza that forestalls the whirlwind coda seems to parody Liszt himself.
- Calum MacDonald
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Prize winner of international competitions, Polish cellist Magdalena Sas performs across Europe, Asia and the Americas, and appeared in renowned concert halls such as Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, BOZAR in Brussels, Witold Lutoslawski Studio in Warsaw, NCPA in Mumbai. She is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship and Paul Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Fellowship, and a graduate of music conservatories in Poland, Belgium, and Austria. In 2011-12 she was a member of the acclaimed European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) in Vienna, she is also a recent graduate of the prestigious Global Leaders Program, an Ivy League curated Executive Education program for impact-focused Art Entrepreneurs. Magdalena presented masterclasses and workshops across the globe in collaboration with MusAid Organization, El Sistema, Global Leaders Program, International Cello Institute, Mehli Mehta Music Foundation and Antigua & Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestras, to mention a few. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor of Music at the Bemidji State University in Minnesota. Magdalena is the founder and director of the Third Coast Chamber Collective, a chamber music group devoted to promoting the transformative power of chamber music through inspiring performances, residencies and workshops.
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.
Violist Maritsa Rosamilia’s extensive training in classical Viola Performance along with her versatility in the recording studio as a violinist, violist, singer-songwriter and composer, make her an valuable member of the St. Croix Valley String Collective. With prominent awards for creativity under her belt, most recently being a SparkPlug Foundation grantee, Maritsa’s innovation-driven perspective brings fresh new energy into any project she is involved with. Originally from Bulgaria, Maritsa took interest in music early on, singing Bulgarian folk songs and playing the violin. She specialized in Viola Performance in high school and at the age of 16, along with her immediate family, Maritsa moved to the United States. She continued viola studies in Florida and Boston, earning a Bachelor in Viola Performance from Boston Conservatory and a Masters in Viola and Baroque performance from Longy School of Music of Bard College. When Maritsa is not performing, teaching, or tinkering with new composition ideas, she enjoys attending to her raised beds during the summer. The garden features almost exclusively basil and cilantro as per request of her half-Italian husband James Rosamilia. Maritsa also loves spending time with her husband and their vocal and adventurous cat, Tom.
Prize winner of international competitions, Polish cellist Magdalena Sas performs across Europe, Asia and the Americas, and appeared in renowned concert halls such as Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, BOZAR in Brussels, Witold Lutoslawski Studio in Warsaw, NCPA in Mumbai. She is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship and Paul Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Fellowship, and a graduate of music conservatories in Poland, Belgium, and Austria. In 2011-12 she was a member of the acclaimed European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) in Vienna, she is also a recent graduate of the prestigious Global Leaders Program, an Ivy League curated Executive Education program for impact-focused Art Entrepreneurs. Magdalena presented masterclasses and workshops across the globe in collaboration with MusAid Organization, El Sistema, Global Leaders Program, International Cello Institute, Mehli Mehta Music Foundation and Antigua & Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestras, to mention a few. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor of Music at the Bemidji State University in Minnesota. Magdalena is the founder and director of the Third Coast Chamber Collective, a chamber music group devoted to promoting the transformative power of chamber music through inspiring performances, residencies and workshops.
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.
Violist Maritsa Rosamilia’s extensive training in classical Viola Performance along with her versatility in the recording studio as a violinist, violist, singer-songwriter and composer, make her an valuable member of the St. Croix Valley String Collective. With prominent awards for creativity under her belt, most recently being a SparkPlug Foundation grantee, Maritsa’s innovation-driven perspective brings fresh new energy into any project she is involved with. Originally from Bulgaria, Maritsa took interest in music early on, singing Bulgarian folk songs and playing the violin. She specialized in Viola Performance in high school and at the age of 16, along with her immediate family, Maritsa moved to the United States. She continued viola studies in Florida and Boston, earning a Bachelor in Viola Performance from Boston Conservatory and a Masters in Viola and Baroque performance from Longy School of Music of Bard College. When Maritsa is not performing, teaching, or tinkering with new composition ideas, she enjoys attending to her raised beds during the summer. The garden features almost exclusively basil and cilantro as per request of her half-Italian husband James Rosamilia. Maritsa also loves spending time with her husband and their vocal and adventurous cat, Tom.
