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Jennifer Tao first appeared as soloist with orchestra at age 10, and the following year won critical acclaim for her performance as soloist with conductor Arthur Fiedler, going on to win prizes in distinguished competitions including the Maryland International Piano Competition, the New York Young Artists in Recital and the Baldwin National Piano Competition. Selected as musical ambassador by the United States Information Agency, she toured throughout Europe, giving recitals and master classes. She has also collaborated with such noted conductors as Frederick Fennell, Clyde Roller, Paul Wolfe, and Gunther Schuller. New York appearances include Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, The New York Historical Society, The New School, and Robert Sherman's Listening Room on WQXR. European venues include Philharmonic Hall in Lublin, Poland, the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, Poland and the Liceo Music Conservatory in Barcelona, Spain.
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| Charles Edward Ives (1874-1954) was the prophet of multiplicity, precariously balancing strata of melodies, rhythms and musical styles in a sonorous musical kaleidoscope. "The Alcotts" movement from Ives' second piano sonata ("Concored, Mass., 1840-1860) is a perfect example of Ives' masterful integration of disparate ideas toward a common cause. Ives described the second piano sonata as "a group of four pieces called a sonata for want of a more exact name." This work attempts to capture the intangible essence and beauty of the thoughts and ideas promoted by America's "Transcendal" philosophers, particularly the Concord Four. Each movement invokes the memory or some special quality of one philosopher (or family): Emerson, Thoreau, Walden and the Alcotts. "The Alcotts" movement was adapted from a lost, unfinished work entitled "Orchard House Overture" written between 1914 and 1917.Some years after composing the sonata, Ives characterized this piece as an attempt to catch "old man Alcott's ... sonorous thought" as well as depict "the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott chilcren, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony." (Ives, Essays Before a Sonata).Beginning with a sober, hymnlike phrase, the music is suddenly enveloped by a serene, droning chordal accompaniment. Above this gently pulsing chord floats a disembodied melody. The hymn melody (actually Charles Zeuner's Missionary Chant) returns in this next context. A faster version of the second melody sweeps the music along to a reiteration of the first four notes of the hymn tune which alarmingly recall the signature motto from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. A developmental passage follows playing up the grandiose power of the Beethoven commingled with the melody of the hymn generating a thunderous climax. As this drifts off in a warm version of the second melody, a dreamy bell-like version of the hymn returns.A warm, flowing song material begins, almost evocative of a Scottish folksong, but actually made up of fragments of another hymntune dovetailed onto a minstrel show song. These fragments are forged into a four-square traditional song that gradually disintegrates with part of the second melody leading to a great climax (reminiscent of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier") and eventually subsiding with a final utterance of that melody.In the Essays, Ives mentioned a "human-faith melody" which one writer claims is the sonata's prominent original theme, the second one that appeared in the work and the one which closed the movement. It may be more plausible to think that Ives' "human-faith melody" is somewhere beyond naming in this music, something deep beneath the sonic surface, perhaps even that "common sentiment" Ives described. |
CD: JENNIFER TAO - EROICA RECORDS
Label: Eroica Classical Recordings
Credits: Producer and Engieer: Jonathan M. Schultz |
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CD: Tao Piano, Jennifer Tao, pianist
Label: EROICA RECORDS
Credits: Producer and Engieer: Jonathan M. Schultz, Larry A. Russell, CEO |
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