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Recital: |
MIT MUSIC & THEATER ARTS
Youngmoo Kim, baritoneYoussef Marzouk, pianoAdeline Leong, piano
5 PM • WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH 2000 Killian Hall is located on the first floor of Building 14W (adjacent to Memorial Drive) on the MIT campus. Follow this link for a map highlighting its location.
Youngmoo Kim is a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab. He has performed extensively at Swarthmore College, where he was an undergraduate, and at Stanford University, where he received Masters degrees in Music and Electrical Engineering. He was music director of the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, an award winning a cappella ensemble. Youngmoo also appeared in American Musical Theater of San Jose’s productions of Anything Goes and Kismet in the 1996-97 season. At MIT he has been a soloist for the MIT Chamber Choir, and played the roles of Otto Kringelein in the Dramashop prodcution of Grand Hotel, and the Baker in Musical Theater Guild’s production of Into the Woods. Last fall, he played the role of the Doctor in the first regional production of William Finn’s A New Brain, produced by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for the Arts. Youngmoo is a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Program Notes: Many of the songs of Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) are considered to be masterworks of the Neapolitan salon song tradition. He attended the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory of Naples, where he graduated as a violinist in 1866. However, he was also a great pianist and had a beautiful tenor voice. His compositional training reflected the influence of Vincenzo Bellini, the lengendary master of Italian song and opera, emphasizing melody and proper vocal training and technique. Tosti’s songs were very popular in his time and influenced many other vocal and operatic composers, including Verdi. The Italian operatic repertoire of the 18th and 19th centuries is filled with characters of dubious moral orientation. Two of these characters are Don Giovanni and Don Pasquale. Don Giovanni is a shameless womanizer. After murdering the father of one of his prospective conquests, Donna Anna, he has moved on and set his sights on the chambermaid of one of his previous lovers, Donna Elvira. Deh vieni alla finestra is sung by Don Giovanni, accompanying himself on mandolin, in serenading the chambermaid near the beginning of the second act. Fortunately, Giovanni meets with an untimely demise when he is dragged away by demons after refusing to repent for his crimes. In Don Pasquale, the title character is a nobleman who has refused to allow his nephew, Ernesto, to marry the beautiful but poor widow Norina. He decides to disinherit his nephew, and asks his friend, Malatesta, to find him a wife so that he may have a son and heir. In Bella siccome un angelo, Malatesta tells Don Pasquale of a woman he claims to be his sister who would be the perfect bride. Actually, Malatesta is sympathetic to Ernesto and Norina’s plight, and is tricking Don Pasquale into allowing their marriage. Don Pasquale is smitten with Malatesta’s "sister", who is actually Norina. He instantly decides to marry her (Malatesta conveniently provides a false notary). Upon "marriage", Norina affects a willful manner and insults Pasquale, and begins spending his fortune with no end in sight. At the end, when the truth is revealed to Pasquale, he gives Ernesto and Norina his blessing, for he is relieved to be rid of his spendthrift "wife". 1840 is known as Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) "year of song", during which he composed over 150 songs, including the Liederkreis, op. 39. The title literally means "song-circle", indicating that the individual songs are joined in the form that has come to be known as a song cycle. In the first well-known cycles by Schubert (Die schöne Müllerin and Wintereise), the songs were linked by an overall narrative that ran from song to song. In Schumann’s song cycles, the songs are not as clearly linked dramatically, but more so in terms of general themes, musical motifs, and key relationships. Liederkreis was composed simultaneously with Dichterliebe, another of Schumann’s song cycles. But while Dichterliebe was conceived as a cycle from the beginning, Liederkreis was shaped as a group as it was being composed. The texts, by Baron Joseph von Eichendorff, deeply moved Schumann, who saw Eichendorff’s poetry as reflecting the "soul of the world", investigating themes and images such as one’s homeland, the magic of twilight, and the mystical sense of faith in life and God. Schumann himself said "This cycle is my most romantic." During the year of this work’s compostion, Schumann was also married to Clara Wieck, after a lengthy and arduous courtship that was vehemently opposed by her father. Their romance was intense and is believed to be the catalyst for the composer’s prolific song output of this year. The couple spent a month together in Berlin in April of 1840, directly preceeding the composition of Liederkreis. About this work, Schumann wrote to Clara: "There is much of you in it". Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) wrote only 39 songs in his career, a small number in comparison to his total output. Don Quichotte a Dulcinée is Ravel’s last work, written in 1932 before illness stripped the composer of his communicative and musical abilities. The songs were intended to be used in a film on Don Quixote, but ended up not being used. The singer is Don Quixote himself, and the melodies reflect the grand, noble, and virile nature of the character. Rhythmically, the songs are based on three rhythms of traditional Spanish dancers: 1. guajira, 2. zorzica, and 3. jota. As such, the first song, Chanson Romanesque, alternates between 6/8 and 3/4. It is sung by Don Quixote to his Lady, Dulcinea. The second song, Chanson Épique, is his prayer to St. Michael and St. George, asking them to bless his sword and his Lady. It is a prayer of humble but noble piety. The final song, Chanson a Boire, is a joyous drinking song, displaying the more boisterous side of the heroic knight. | |||||||||||||||||