The American String Quartet AMERICAN ROMANTICS

These recorded performances (16 March 2011; the Dvorak 5 June 2017) mean to celebrate the 45^th anniversary of the American String Quartet—Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney, violins; Daniel Avshalomov, viola; Wolfram Koessel, cello—specifically by featuring works that embrace the “national” experience as Dvorak had defined it for our composers, to avoid the imitation of European models. The so-called “American” Quartet in F Major (1893) came to quick fruition in the course of seventy-two hours in Spillville, Iowa. The use of pentatonic scales, Native American rhythmic motives, and the particular color of the viola make the first movement Allegro, ma non troppo immediately gripping.  In the momentum of its lyric and vivid energies, Dvorak finds room for some strict counterpoint in the development. The famous Lento has the violin in a melody set above an undulating bass line. The cello assumes the duties of poignant lyricism. The pulsations and mixed colors combine to create an extremely affecting moment in chamber music literature. The melody has tremolando effects to accompany its last page. The Molto vivace scherzo utilizes Dvorak’s patented contrast between the major and minor modes of F. A lively dance in rondo form, the music pays homage to a scarlet tanager which had made a nest outside of Dvorak’s home window. The Finale: Vivace, ma non troppo exploits another rondo form, this time built upon both a folk dance and a chorale that recalls a Czech hymn, the latter’s giving some sense of Dvorak’s potent homesickness. The sonic image, captured by vivid microphone placement from Judith Sherman, endows the performance with gracious “presence.”

Jonah Sirota STRONG SAD

Strong Sad is a classical new music commissioning and recording project featuring newly composed elegies for violist Jonah Sirota.  The elegy as a musical form has often found a home in the plaintive middle-register voice of the viola—it tugs, and makes us aware of our inner landscape. On Strong Sad, rather than the big catastrophes, the music will mourn the small, everyday losses. While some of these works may refer to lost friends and loved ones, this project will reaffirm that mourning is too important to save only for funerals, and that sadness, when given a chance to breathe, can be our best path to deep and lasting contentment and joy. The project features new works by Paola Prestini, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigur∂sson, Robert Sirota, A.J. McCaffrey, and Rodney Lister, as well as a new work from the duo Mondegreen, and a debut composition by Jonah Sirota.

“Maybe this is the secret chord – that each of us is whole within ourselves, to fully know and sing out our single note, so that we may join the wider chord, the set of strings, so that the sound we make moves and shakes each of us together in a dynamic, terrifying, shivering joy, covering us like light, clinging to us like dark.”  (Wes Sam-Bruce)

I made this album not because I am particularly obsessed with the emotion of sadness, but because I believe in the humanity of every feeling. We can’t have joy without sadness. We can’t be whole without knowing our brokenness. Each of the composers on this record has offered their own beautiful, vulnerable response to a sadness. Let us learn to mourn every day a little. To help heal ourselves, each other, and this world. (Jonah Sirota)