About the artists:

Mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin has performed a number of operatic roles, including that of the voice/witch in Lisa Bielawa’s episodic opera written for broadcast, Elle in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine, and the role of Anne in the world premiere of Nadia Boulanger’s La Ville Morte in 2021. Other recent career highlights include two concerts at the Ravinia Festival, including a duet recital with Frederica Von Stade, the world premiere of Centuries in the Hours by Lisa Bielawa with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and the West Coast premiere of Do You Dream in Color by Bruce Adolphe, setting poetry by Laurie, with the LA Chamber Orchestra. 

In 2012, Laurie’s memoir, Do You Dream in Color? Insights from a Girl Without Sight, she looks back on her life as an international opera singer who happens to be blind. From her loneliness and isolation as a middle school student to her experiences skiing, Rubin offers her young readers a life-story rich in detail and inspiration drawn from everyday challenges. Beginning with her childhood in California, Rubin tells the story of her life and the amazing experiences that led her to a career as an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano.

Laurie, who grew up in Encino, California, is also co-founder and co-artistic director of Ohana Arts, a performing arts organization on Oahu which serves over 100 students, ages 6-18. She is thrilled and honored to be performing with Chamber Music Hawaii.

Pianist Jonathan Korth enjoys a multifaceted career as a soloist, chamber musician, collaborator, and teacher, having performed recitals across North America, Europe, and East Asia to critical acclaim. Recent concert activities include performances in Bangkok, Beijing, Brussels, London, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, as well as on the US mainland at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall, Washington DC’s Phillips Collection, and Chicago's Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series. Mr. Korth performs regularly in and around his home of Honolulu where he is a piano professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, as well on the neighbor islands. 

Chamber Music Hawai`i coined the word Tresemble to describe its combined ensemble of mixed instrumentation drawing from all three of its resident chamber music ensembles. Tresemble concerts can include great pieces of music that do not fit into one of the typical chamber music categories. It also can bring in guest musicians, such as pianists, harpists, or vocalists to perform this often neglected repertoire.

Program Notes:

The Shepherd on the Rock

Schubert and Beethoven, who died within a year of each other, are seen as the bridge between the classical and romantic periods of music. While Schubert wrote as many symphonies as Beethoven, the prolific composer may be best remembered for his more than 600 songs. Most are for voice and piano, however, there are several for voice with two or more instruments. The Shepherd on the Rock, written in 1828, shortly before Schubert's death, for voice, clarinet, and piano, is one of the most loved of these.

Of the seven verses, the first four and the last are set to poetry by Wilhelm Müller, while verses five and six were written by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. The work was written in response to a request from a friend, the operatic soprano Pauline Anna Milder-Hauptmann, as a piece to express a wide range of feeling to be performed before a large audience rather than a salon typical for art songs. It was not published until a year and a half after Schubert's death, and the singer sang it for the first in Riga, Estonia in 1830. 

The voice and clarinet are full partners. The first four verses are in a major key reflecting warmth of sound, as the lonely shepherd, high on the mountaintop, listens to the echoes rising from below. The fifth and sixth verses are in a minor key, as the shepherd expresses grief and loneliness. The conclusion opens with the clarinet in sprightly trills, as the shepherd anticipates the coming of spring and rebirth in a joyful ending.

Text
When I stand on the highest rock, look down into the deep valley and sing.
The echo from the ravines rises up from the dark depths of the distant valley.
The further my voice carries, the clearer it echoes back to me from below.
My sweetheart dwells so far from me, and thus I long so ardently for her.
I am consumed by deep sorrow; my joy has gone, my hope on this earth has vanished; I am so alone here.
So fervently the song resounded through the forest, so fervently it resounded through the night; it drew hearts heavenwards with its wondrous power.
Spring will come, spring, my delight; now I shall prepare to go a-wandering.

Prélude, Récitatif et Variations

Maurice Duruflé was a French composer, organist and teacher, who was little known in his lifetime but has won many admirers in recent years. Despite winning several prizes for composition while in his twenties, he published only 14 works during his life and often continued to edit and change pieces after publication. He is best known for his Requiem and a handful of short organ and choral pieces composed for church performances. The Prélude Récitatif et Variations is a rarely-heard gem of tremendous grace and beauty. His only composition for an instrumental ensemble, the piece is memorable for its dialogue between viola and flute, with contrasting moods of hope in the latter and sadness in the former.  Duruflé composed it prior to his lifetime appointment as organist at St. Etienne du Mont and prior to his obtaining a teaching position at the Paris Conservatory.

Perpétuelle

Composer Ernest Chausson created only a small body of music, but was highly respected by his contemporary French composers. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire after obtaining a doctorate in law. He subsequently visited Munich and Bayreuth, where he was present at the 1882 premiere of Wagner’s opera Parsifal. Wagner's influence is noticeable in the rich texture of much of his work. 

The composer's last completed work, the Chanson Perpétuelle, is best known as an orchestral work, but the composer also created the version for soprano, piano, and string quartet played in this concert. The text, a poem by Charles Cros, describes the suffering of an abandoned woman as she contemplates drowning in a pond, among the flowers, and under the "sleeping water". The sustained vocal line over more active instrumental writing creates much of the tension.

Chausson died in a bicycle accident about six months after the premiere of this composition in 1899. The score was not published until 1911.

Quivering woods, starry sky, my beloved has gone away carrying off my desolate heart!
Winds, may your plaintive noises, charming nightingales, may your songs tell him I’m dying! 
From the first evening he came here my soul was at his mercy. I no longer cared about pride.
My eyes were full of love He took me in his nervous arms and kissed me on my brow. I was seized by a great trembling; and then, I no longer know how, he became my lover. 
I kept saying: “Love me for as long as you’re able!” I would sleep well only in his arms But he, feeling his heart grown cold, departed some mornings ago without me, for a distant land. 
Since I have my lover no longer I shall die in the pond, among the flowers, under the still water. Pausing on the edge, I will speak his name to the wind, while dreaming that I often awaited him there. And as if in a golden shroud.

As It Fell Upon a Day

Aaron Copland was a composer, composition teacher, and writer, as well as a conductor of his own and other American music. He studied piano and composition for some years with Nadia Boulanger, the Parisian composition teacher who was mentor and muse to the most successful composers of the early 20th century. Copland created music that has a distinctive blend of classical, folk, and jazz idioms, and was referred to by peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers.” 

One of Copland's composition assignments by Boulanger was to compose a piece for flute and clarinet. He came upon a poem by the 17th century English poet Richard Barnefield and decided to add a voice part to the assignment. He explained: "The poem had the simplicity and tenderness that moved me to attempt to evoke that poignant expression musically…The imitative counterpoint between the two instruments in the introduction would satisfy my teacher’s request. The harmonies that seem to evoke an early English flavor were suggested by the nature of the text.” 

The poem tells the story of a spring celebration and the lament of a nightingale, representing a king's daughter who had been raped. She was transformed into a nightingale, but continued her accusing cries. Ultimately, the poet sympathizes with the nightingale as all of the other birds cheerfully sing, oblivious to her cries.

As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone:
She, poor bird as all forlorn
Leaned her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry;
Tereu, Tereu! by and by;
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:
King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapp’d in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.

Vocalise 

Rachmaninov’s Vocalise was originally written for voice and orchestra as the final piece in his “Fourteen Songs,” Op. 34. It can be sung to any vowel the singer chooses. It was written in 1915 for the coloratura soprano Antonina Nezhdanova, a star of the Moscow Grand Opera. When she objected to the lack of a poetic text, the composer gallantly replied: “What need is there of words, when you will be able to convey everything better and more expressively than anyone could with words by your voice and interpretation?”

Because the piece has no text and, it can easily be performed by any instrument. The most famous  arrangements are for orchestra (by the composer himself) and for cello and piano, arranged by the legendary Jascha Heifetz and Mitislav Rostropovich.  Written in a minor key, like so many of Rachmaninov’s most memorable pieces, Vocalise has a melancholy undertone that reflects the composer’s dark mood at this time, as Russia struggled in World War I and hovered on the brink of revolution. Its opening melodic phrase is an artfully disguised version of the ancient “Dies Irae” (“Day of Judgment”) plainchant theme for the Requiem Mass for the Dead; this grim musical idea was a recurring motive throughout much of Rachmaninoff’s music. But the effortless, unending flow of melody — unfolding in beautiful, arching phrases — triumphs over the sadness.

Yiddish Medley

This medley was arranged for Laurie Rubin by her voice coach, Tova Marcos,  when Laurie was in middle and high school. The three songs were written by Abraham Ellstein, a renowned Yiddish theatre composer who was a product of Julliard. Ellstein was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York’s Yiddish Theater District scene. His musical Yidl Mitn Fidl became one of the greatest hits of Yiddish-language cinema.

Oy Mame was featured in the film "Yidl Mitn Fidl" where, like Barbra Streisand's Yentl, Yid’l poses as a boy so she can become a street musician and falls in love with a fellow but can't divulge her true gender to him.  Molly Picon, the famous Yiddish actress/singer portrayed her.  Maz'l was from the film "Mamele", also starring Molly Picon. Abi Gezunt was also from the film "Mamele,"  which Molly Picon not only starred in, but for which she was the lyricist.  Abi Gezunt became Picon's theme song.”

Far From the Home I Love

Fiddler on the Roof is a musical based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales by Sholem Aleichem. The story centers on Tevye, a milkman in the village of Anatevka, who attempts to maintain Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon his family's lives. He must cope with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters who wish to marry for love; their choices of husbands are successively less palatable for Tevye. “Far From the Home I Love” is sung by Hodel (one of Tevye’s daughters) in Act 2 after news that her fiancé has been arrested and exiled to Siberia. She explains to her father that her home is with her beloved, wherever he may be, although she will always love her family.

Compiled by Chamber Music Hawaii, Laurie Rubin, and Tom Geballe