Prelude
Allemande
Les trois mains
Sarabande
Fanfarinette
La Triomphante

The Nouvelle Suite "La Triomphante" in A minor by Jean-Philippe Rameau was originally written for solo harpsichord. Akropolis recasts the suite for its unique instrumentation, arranged by Raaf Hekkema, bringing ear-opening ideas and sounds to this already masterful music. This massive work displays many of the impressive musical qualities that have attracted audiences to Baroque music for over 300 years. Rameau and the French Baroque tradition are rooted in rhythm and ornamentation, contrasting Bach’s German style centered upon harmony and counterpoint. This has been a featured work in several prize winning performances, including Akropolis’ Gold Medal at the 2014 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

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From the composer: "A Soulful Nexus is a transcultural classical work that blends elements of Persian classical music with ornamental vocal techniques found in solo Balkan vocal melodies and the groove-based polyrhythms characteristic of electronic dance music. From Persian classical music, the piece uses an E koron, which to the Western trained ear may sound like a flat microtonal pitch. However, in Persian classical music, a koron is considered its own note, not a microtone between notes. Sonically, this demonstrates how something initially perceived as an imperfection, over time and with change in perspective, can be seen as an aspect of perfection.

Central to A Soulful Nexus is the use of the melodic framework Gushé Shekaste from Persian classical music, which includes the E koron. Shekaste translated means "broken," due to the relationship between the main tetrachord and auxiliary notes of this melodic framework. Throughout the piece, Morakab-Navazie is used to move between Gushé Shekaste and Darâmad Dastgâh-e Mahur and Dastgâh-e Râstpanjgâh. The fourth movement in particular is inspired by Afro-Persian music from Southern Iran. From Balkan music, the piece uses mordents and fragmented motivic phrasing often used by solo vocalists in Bulgarian women's choir music. From electronic dance music, A Soulful Nexus uses cyclical, groove-based polyrhythms to accompany instrumental solos. The title A Soulful Nexus serves as an invitation for listeners and performers to trace the intricate pathways of these musical idioms interwoven throughout the composition." 

A Soulful Nexus has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Mellon Foundation.

From the composer: I first learned about the Venus of Willendorf, a 30,000-year-old, 4.4-inch carved limestone figure found in Austria, in an art history class in 2014, and so it was with tremendous sense of anticipation and excitement that I approached visiting the Natural History Museum Vienna, where the figure is currently exhibited, ten years later. In the same spirit of joyful enthusiasm, I composed Venus of Willendorf for the Akropolis Reed Quintet, a group of musicians who eagerly tackle every musical challenge with artistry and aplomb. The origins of the Venus figurine are mysterious, as is its meaning, though some scholars theorize that it is associated with fertility, growth, and vitality. In response to this theory, I composed exuberant and vigorous music for these talented musicians. Additionally, the Venus is both quite tiny and amply voluptuous, so I often simultaneously feature high notes in the oboe with low notes in the bass clarinet to reflect metaphorical mappings of high sounds with small things and low sounds with large things.

George Gershwin

B. 26 Sept 1898; Brooklyn New York
D. 11 July 1937; Hollywood California

Premiered on 13 December 1928 by conductor Walter Damrosch and the newly merged New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society in Carnegie Hall, New York City. (Approx. 18 mins.)

Paris in the 1920s served as a kind of spiritual home for American art, especially for music as New World composers required a refuge from the pervasive influence of the German masters. Yet, the essential inspiration for George Gershwin’s tone poem An American in Paris was not the Eiffel Tower, but New York City’s Hudson River. In January 1928, Gershwin began work on an “orchestral ballet” starting with a melody he had sketched out nearly two years earlier on a trip to Paris. Contemplating this snippet which he had labeled “Very Parisienne,” Gershwin looked out from his home on 103rd Street toward the Hudson. “I love that river,” Gershwin later reported, “and I thought of how often I had been homesick for a sight of it, and then the idea struck me—An American in Paris, homesickness, the blues.” He continued to work on the piece while visiting Europe that summer.

Overall, Gershwin’s tone poem follows a three-part ABA structure in which an intrepid American traveler revels in the dizzying soundscape of Paris, is overcome by memories of home, struggles to recover, and finally triumphs over his homesickness, enthusiastically returning to the sights. Gershwin later offered this succinct program to the work:

This piece describes an American’s visit to the gay and beautiful city of Paris. We see him sauntering down the Champs Elysées, walking stick in hand, tilted straw hat, drinking in the sights, and other things as well. We see the effect of the French wine, which makes him homesick for America. And that’s where the blue[s] begins…. He finally emerges from his stupor to realize once again that he is in the gay city of Paree, listening to the taxi-horns, the noise of the boulevards, an the music of the can-can, and thinking, “Home is swell! But after all, this is Paris—so let’s go!”

In 1928, of course, the sale of alcohol was illegal in the U.S, but not in Europe. In a letter preserved in the Library of Congress, Gershwin endorses the use of An American in Paris for an anti-prohibition concert!

The piece not only captures Gershwin’s personal experiences in France, but here the composer uncovers a new depth of artistry. His early success with Tin Pan Alley songs and Broadway shows made him both hugely popular and wealthy, yet classical composers and critics remained skeptical of his aspirations to write serious music. Many dismissed works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) as untutored. Written just four years later, An American in Paris exhibits Gershwin’s trademark popular appeal, yet musically it is a one-movement symphony, as closely related to the economical construction of Beethoven as to the jazz stylings of Fletcher Henderson and Willie “The Lion” Smith. The musical building blocks of Gershwin’s tone poem are small motives that could only be imagined for instruments. These are repeated and passed from one voice to another in a rich tapestry of counterpoint. Gershwin’s motives represent everything from a laughing passersby and taxicabs (a three-note motif featuring real car horns) to drunken tourists stumbling down the street and a brisk walking tune to accompany a stroll along Paris’s romantic Left Bank.

You may hear the colorful influence of French composers such as Claude Debussy and Les Six that Gershwin was consciously trying to evoke, as well as a bit of J. S. Bach’s famous “Air” in the bluesy “homesick” trumpet theme. The reed quintet arrangement by Raaf Hekkema of the Calefax Reed Quintet captures all the excitement, reverie, jazzy verve, and storytelling drama of Gershwin’s full orchestra original.

Listeners curious to know more might pick up Howard Pollock’s monumental study George Gershwin: His Life and Work or Summertime: George Gershwin’s Life in Music by U-M Professor Emeritus Richard Crawford. Fans of An American in Paris, in particular, might also want to rent the MGM film of the same title. It won the 1951 Oscar for Best Picture and features Gene Kelly, pianist Oscar Levant, and love interest Leslie Caron in bringing the story of Gershwin’s musical poem to life. The movie influenced a recent Broadway show.

Mark Clague, Editor-in-Chief of the U-M Gershwin Critical Edition

Executive Director, University of Michigan Arts Initiative