Loyal audiences of the Concordia Chamber Players have come to expect the unexpected in each concert they present.
It’s no different with their first concert of the 2023-24 season on Nov. 12, at Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury. Artistic director and cellist Michelle Djokic has a penchant for discovering seldom-performed chamber music works.
In this concert, titled “Watercolors,” Djokic introduces listeners to the music of William Grant Still, known as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers.” He was the first African-American to conduct a major symphony orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by the New York City Opera, and until 1950, his “Symphony No. 1” was the most widely performed symphony by an American composer.
When Djokic decided to program “Vignettes,” she secured the music two years ago by making a call to a woman in Flagstaff, Ariz. Djokic asked, “Who is it I’m speaking to?” It was Still’s daughter, Judith Anne Still, now probably in her 80s. She sent the music photocopied on separate pieces of paper, not bound.
Djokic said she wishes she could find someone to help Still streamline the production of publishing her father’s music. “With a composer who left so many wonderful works behind for us, it deserves to be presented in a more dignified way.”
Still’s “Vignettes” are a series of six brief movements, each alluding to folk-song melodies of America, Mexico, and Haiti. Originally scored for oboe, bassoon and piano, the piece may also be performed for violin, cello and piano, as it will be by Concordia. The score indicates that Still intentionally provided for such flexibility in instrumentation, perhaps to increase its number of performances.
The vignettes are “tender and innocent,” said Djokic, “a lovely window into the American culture that Still has captured.”
For violinist Siwoo Kim, a frequent Concordia performer, this will be his first time playing music by Still. He is looking forward to “capturing the essence of the sound world Still must have envisioned. I’m eager to delve into the work with such stellar colleagues and share it with the Bucks County community.”
Rita Strohl is one of many female composers in the past whose work was appreciated in their lifetime, but buried in years to come.
Djokic’s disinterment of her cello sonata, “Titus et Bérénice,” was no small feat. She paid for a membership in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to access the music; however, the library sent her an email saying that the sonata score was not available for public use. Then three days later, someone from the library emailed it to her on microfilm.
“Somebody must have missed the message that I wasn’t supposed to get it.” Since the microfilm was difficult to read, she sought the help of the San Francisco Opera office, which converted the file so that it was legible.
Djokic’s performance of Strohl’s cello sonata may well be its U.S. premiere. She’s never seen it on a recital program nor have any of her colleagues played it. The virtuosic composition, inspired by Jean Racine’s play, “Titus et Bérénice,” is the only programmatic cello sonata that exists in the literature.
It tells the story of the ill-fated love between Titus, the Roman emperor, and Bérénice, a Jewish princess who was some years older than her lover. (After Strohl’s first husband died, she married a man 20 years younger. Aspects of the composer’s life seem to be expressed in her work.)
It’s remarkable that Strohl, an accomplished pianist who also studied voice, composed such a technically challenging cello piece that spans the entire register of the instrument. The sonata “lies perfectly well on the instrument,” said Djokic. “It’s as if she understood everything that’s possible on the cello.” Djokic speculates that the cellist to whom she dedicated the work gave her lessons.
When Gabriel Fauré’s publisher suggested he write a piano trio, he was 77 years old and increasingly deaf. Of all his chamber music, this was his only piano trio. He composed his “Piano Trio” in D minor from 1922 to 1923, and it premiered May 12, 1923. Fauré died one year later.
“By evidence of his writing for the piano, Fauré must have been a marvelously fluid player himself, with a rich tonal color palette,” said pianist John Novacek. “His late works (and the trio is one of the last) seem to take us to a uniquely private world–perhaps reflecting an increasing introspection paralleling his advancing deafness. The piano writing consequently becomes very spare, eschewing any unnecessary embellishment, with much repetition of certain patterns. This makes the writing for the instrument not easier, but more difficult. It achieves a certain sublime transparency. Every note matters.”
Tickets for the 3:30 p.m. Nov. 12 concert are available at concordiaplayers.org. A free open rehearsal will take place at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10, in the Pearl Buck Room of the Bucks County Free Library, 150 S. Pine St., Doylestown.
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