When Ellen Rose (Principal Violist Extraordinaire(*)) of the Dallas Symphony set forth on work together on our China tour, we chose a number of pieces which we thought would program well together.
Rebecca Clarke, Sonata for Viola and Piano
Olivier Messiaen, "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus" from QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME (that was the first piece we had ever played together)
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Romance
Boccherini, Sonata no. 5 in A Major
Isaac Albeniz, Puerta del Alma
(I may be forgetting one piece) ...
At the renewal of Ellen's very generous grant from the Dallas Symphony's O'Donnell Foundation, we decided to record the disc. She had previously recorded the Albeniz with Katherine Collier, now professor of piano at University of Michigan. So we had to find one piece, about the same length, which would pair with the rest of the program.
We settled on Britten's "Lachrymae," for viola and piano (one heck of a piece of music, if I do say so myself). That piece is sort of a variations and theme (the theme comes at the end!) on John Dowland's "In Darkness Let me Dwell." Naturally, an addition I suggested was to do our own arrangement (with an especially arranged accompaniment, à la Benjamin Britten himself) of the Dowland. We laid down a few tracks of those and each accompaniment is improvised and different. (I'm curious how the engineers will handle that one in the editing process).
The piece of music which "tied things together" is the one that I finally was in the mood - out of dyinig and unbridled curiosity - to finally listen to.
Within the magnificent song cycle, "Songs of Travel" (the namesake of this blog!), *the* centerpiece song is "Whither Must I Wander." It is a heartfelt, nostalgic ode to days past and a home that used to be welcoming and containing beloved family.
The sense of the piece - and the poem - to me has always been that - no matter what, there is a time to hit the road again. That has resonated so deeply with me - so deeply with what I believe about art and art-making and life.
When I suggested it to Ellen, naturally, I suggested the original key - c minor. The key in which we recorded - e minor - is the transposition done when tenors sing the song or cycle. (E minor lies a *lot* better on a viola than c minor).
Another part of this process of recording this particular song is dealing with the color of the words even though no one actually sings them. Ellen does this so beautiful. Even *more* stunning and *more* vocal is the way she handles the "passaggio." The string crossings on the viola have something to do (in some way) with the passaggio in the human voice. Her delicacy in negotiating this makes me believe that she was herself a singer in a former life.
To listen, please visit the following link:
PHOTO: This was taken by my uncle, Gary Ditlow. It reminds me so much of what a traveler in the English countryside in the 19th century would have seen ...
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