2024 Primrose International Viola Competition & American Viola Society Festival Program Book

2024 Primrose International Viola Competition & American Viola Society Festival Schedule of Events — SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 2024

9:15 am – 10:15 am

AVS Shared Recital Thayer Hall

International Colors

Provincetown Suite (1987)

Mira J. Spektor (1928-2021)

10,000 Filaments (2010)

Sarah E. Gibson (b.1986)

The Brazos Ensemble

A prolific composer, poet, and Holocaust survivor, Mira Spektor was born in Berlin in 1928 to Lithuanian parents, fled to France in 1938, and eventually to the United States. In 1975, she founded The Aviva Players to support and perform works of women composers and served as its Artistic Director until her death in 2021. Provincetown Suite is an instrumental suite for flute, viola and piano, adapted from the musical score for the PBS television documentary entitled Art in Its Soul (1987). The title of the suite sets the scene in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small coastal town on the tip of the Cape Cod peninsula. Sarah Gibson is a Los Angeles based composer and pianist whose works draw on her breadth of experience as a collaborative performer. While writing 10,000 Filaments (2010), Gibson was reminded of Thomas Edison’s effort to make the light bulb in which he claimed he had to try 10,000 different filaments before discovering the right one.

Terzettino (1905)

Théodore Dubois (1837-1924)

Fujin’s Dream, Op.58 (2018)

Airat Ichmourat (b.1973)

Bacanal (2005)

Eduardo Angulo (b.1954)

Trio Lawrence

"Terzettino" by French composer Théodore Dubois is the first registered work for the flute-viola harp ensemble, composed in 1905 in romantic style. Its stretched melodies intertwine into a poetic dialog of the instruments. In "Fujin’s Dream" (2018), the Volga Tatar born Russian/Canadian composer Airat Ichmouratov refers to Japanese myth about the god of wind. Fujin is the Japanese god of wind, who has been known for bringing devastating typhoons to Japan over the centuries. However, on some days, Fujin decides to be a nice god. Most of the time, Fujin is depicted with his “windbag” which contains the winds, and according to Japanese mythology, Fujin opened the bag at the world’s creation and blew away all the clouds so that brightness shone down on the world. In the piece, the composer experiments with timbres, sound effects, and extended technique. "Bacanal" (2005) by Mexican composer Eduardo Angulo is an adaptation of the third movement of his viola concerto for this ensemble. Full of boisterous rhythms and tunes of folk origin it immerses the listeners in a festive atmosphere.

10:30 am – 11:30 am

Lecture Olive 270

Expanding the Canon: Sonatas by Henriëtte Bosmans, Dora Pejačević, and Ethel Smyth Molly Gebrian – This lecture will feature discuss brand-new viola transcriptions of cello sonatas by Henriëtte Bosmans, Dora Pejačević, and Ethel Smyth. These three sonatas are outstanding works in a late-Romantic style that all deserve a place in the standard repertoire of every cellist and violist. Recorded selections from each sonata will be presented and the lecture will delve into the lives of these fascinating and unconventional women.

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