University of Florida Performing Arts
Presents
Young Concert Artist:
DaXun Zhang, Bass
with
Tomoko Kashiwagi, Piano
Sunday, September 18, 2011, 2 p.m.
Squitieri Studio Theatre
Sponsored by
DaXun Zhang, Bass
Tomoko Kashiwagi, Piano
Program
Suite No. 4 BWV 1010
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourree I & II
Gigue
Johann Sebastian Bach
“Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso
Ennio Morricone
I Got Rhythm
George Gershwin
INTERMISSION
Song of Birds
Chinese Traditional
Bass Trip
Peteris Vasks
Elegia in re (Elegy in D major)
Souvenir d’Amerique — Variations burlesques sur
“Yankee Doodle”, Op. 17 (“Variations on ‘Yankee Doodle’”)
Program subject to change.
Giovanni Bottesini
Henri Vieuxtemps
Program Notes
Suite No. 4, BWV 1010
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Though we now regularly celebrate the life and work of German composer and keyboardist
Johann Sebastian Bach, it has not always been so. Records indicate that little of Bach’s vast output
of music was performed publicly in the years immediately following his death. Renewed interest
in his music didn’t begin in earnest until almost 100 years later, led by German conductor and
composer Felix Mendelssohn.
In our day, the revival continues unabated. A considerable wealth of music by J.S. Bach has
joined the standard repertory, including the six suites for solo cello, which are now considered
standards of the solo cello and solo bass literature.
The Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites were likely composed while Bach was music director
in Köthen (1717-1723). Suite No. 4, BWV 1010, is hard enough on the cello, but on the bass
it presents even more challenges. The double bass is not just a bigger version of the cello; the
instruments’ strings are tuned differently (cello in perfect fifths: C-G-D-A; the bass in fourths:
E-A-D-G), and as a result a transcription poses interesting challenges for the bassist. DaXun
Zhang created the version on this program.
After the free-flowing and spirited Prelude, the Suite unfolds in a series of movements based
on Baroque dance forms. Some noteworthy highlights include the Courante, an upbeat
dance in which the notes fly by in a dazzling flurry. The lilting Sarabande, among the most
faultless movements in Bach’s vast catalog, requires double stops – more than one note played
simultaneously – in every single measure. The Gigue is a buoyant and flowing, triple-meter romp,
an ideal ending to the Suite.
“Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso
Ennio Morricone (b. 1928)
From the ubiquitous and distinctive opening theme of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to the
haunting score to The Untouchables and the powerful soundtrack to The Mission, Italian composer
Ennio Morricone has made his mark through his more than 500 film and television scores. That
mark is indelible at this point and his reputation is gigantic among filmmakers, other film music
composers, and aficionados of film music, yet he could probably stand unnoticed and unrecognized
in most any airport security line. Indeed, he may be the best-loved unknown composer of our day.
The music for Giuseppe Tornatore’s award-winning Cinema Paradiso is among Morricone’s most
recorded and most popular works. The composer perfectly captures the nostalgic and heartfelt
nature of the film, a look back at the filmmaker’s life-long fascination with the cinema. The “Love
Theme” portrays the longing and desire between Tornatore’s alter ego, Salvatore, and his long lost
teenage love interest, Elena.
I Got Rhythm
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
In his short life, American composer George Gershwin did what he set out to do: be taken
seriously as a classical composer. His piano concerts Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F, his
opera Porgy and Bess, and his orchestral tone poem An American in Paris have joined the
standard repertory, both here and abroad.
Yet, in spite of this, he was still a songwriter at heart. Gershwin got his start in Tim Pan Alley,
a district of New York City dedicated to sheet music publishing that sprang up in the late
1800s and was in its golden age when Gershwin began there in the early 1900s. He started as a
song plugger, a pianist who demonstrated the latest hit tunes of the day on piano for potential
wholesale buyers. Gershwin figured he could do as well writing the tunes himself, and he was
right. His first hit was in 1919, Swanee. This launched his career on Broadway and beyond.
I Got Rhythm found popular success in the 1930 musical Girl Crazy, originated by the inimitable
Ethel Merman. George’s brother Ira was the lyricist. The iconic tune has since become the
harmonic basis for dozens of jazz tunes – Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s Salt Peanuts, for
example – and even for Gershwin’s own Variations on ‘I Got Rhythm.’
Song of Birds
Chinese Traditional
Chinese music history tradition predates our own Western music practice. As in Western music,
the Chinese string instruments likely might have their roots in Mongolia, a vast arid country in
East Asia between Russia and China. The bowed fiddle made its way from there to China, and
then on to the West on the so-called Silk Road trade route.
What fascinates many Westerners about traditional Chinese music, and many Asian arts in
general, might be called “elegance of gesture.” To put it simply, small gestures have great meaning.
Imagine a thin brush stroke of black that captures an entire mountain, or a ragged branch of a
tree painted with only a single dot of color.
Chinese traditional solo instrumental music is often inspired by nature, too, both by its awesome
power or by the beauty in the smallest of things. Song of Birds is a well-known solo work adapted
from the Chinese suo-na (a double reed wind instrument), that evokes both the solitude and
peacefulness of nature. You will likely believe you hear the birds themselves as the work unfolds.
Bass Trip
Peteris Vasks (b. 1946)
Most people today no longer possess beliefs, love and ideals. The spiritual dimension
has been lost. My intention is to provide food for the soul and this is what I preach in
my works.
— Peteris Vasks, from the Schott Music website
Up until this point of the program, every piece you have heard was adapted for the bass. Not so
for Bass Trip, written by Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. Vasks was commissioned to write this
work specifically for solo bass by the 2003 ARD Music Competition in Munich, Germany.
Vasks, son of a Baptist minister, began his professional musical life as a bassist, first in Latvia,
then in neighboring Lithuania. In 1973, he began to study composition at the Latvian Music
Academy in Riga. His compositions – ranging from choral works and symphonies to chamber
works and solo instrumental works such as this one – are multi-faceted, inspired by Latvian folk
music as much as by the modernist composers of Eastern Europe.
Bass Trip begins like a meditation, almost like an incantation from an ancient ceremony, with a
drone continually insinuating itself. In short order, the bassist is holding forth, a mile a minute.
The incantation returns, followed by more intense virtuosic passages. The ending, by contrast, is
a real surprise. Perhaps after years of cultural oppression by a brutal Soviet regime, this ending is
Vasks’ response.
Elegia in re (Elegy in D major)
Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889)
Though Italian composer and conductor Giovanni Bottesini is now considered among the
greatest bassists ever; that almost didn’t come to pass.
He began his studies as a clarinetist, then a timpanist, then a violinist. He apparently was quite
accomplished on the violin, but fate intervened. As often is the case, even today, the gifted young
musician came face to face with reality: The Milan Conservatory needed bassists and since
Bottesini’s family couldn’t swing the fees at the Conservatory, the young Giovanni became a
bassist to get a scholarship.
In short order, he was already a well-known bass soloist, gaining a following in the music capitols
of Europe and beyond. He eventually became known as the Paganini of the Double Bass, after
the deft and accomplished violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini.
Bottesini’s Elegia in re was a short work most likely originally conceived as a showpiece for his
concertizing. This work shows Bottesini’s musical upbringing, the bel canto style of 19th century
Italian opera: oh, yes, the bass can “sing” and here’s the proof.
Souvenir d’Amérique – Variations burlesques sur “Yankee Doodle”,
Op. 17 (“Variations on ‘Yankee Doodle’”)
Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881)
Belgian composer and violinist Henri Vieuxtemps was a child prodigy on violin. By age 8, he had
already made a successful Paris debut. He wanted more for his life, so the story goes, and thus
he took up composition in the mid-1830s in Paris. A prolific period of composing began, with
his first two violin concertos quickly establishing him internationally. He continued composing,
teaching, and performing until a stroke made it nearly impossible for him to perform.
He wrote the Souvenir d’Amérique – Variations burlesques sur “Yankee Doodle”, after an 1843
American tour. Following a rhapsodic introduction, we hear the Yankee Doodle theme. The
various technical acrobatics and virtuosic fireworks that follow are all variations on the theme.
— Program notes by Dave Kopplin
Biographies
DaXun Zhang, Bass
“If the bass is finally to produce a headliner, the instrument
can have no better champion than Zhang,” wrote The
Washington Post of double bassist DaXun Zhang, who
has indeed made his mark as a soloist on this unusual
instrument Zhang was the recipient of the 2010 Aoyama
Award of Kyoto, Japan. In April 2007, he won an Avery
Fisher Career Grant, becoming only the second double
bassist in the history of the prestigious award to do
so. He is the first double bass player to win the Young
Concert Artists International Auditions and start a career
under the auspices of Young Concert Artists. He made
his New York debut sponsored by the Claire Tow Prize
and his Washington, D.C. debut as a co-presentation
with Washington Performing Arts Society. He also won the La Jolla Music Society Prize, the
Orchestra New England Soloist Prize and The Fergus Prize. In April 2006, Mr. Zhang performed
his arrangement of Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy in at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall with Keith
Lockhart conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Zhang was the first double bassist ever to win first prize in the 2003 WAMSO Competition,
leading to a performance with the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra with Osmo Vanska
conducting. In 2001, Zhang was the youngest artist ever to win the International Society of
Bassists Solo Competition. He has also received the Grand Prize of the American String Teachers
Association National Solo Competition.
Zhang has performed extensively with the Silk Road Project, including concerts with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at Carnegie Hall, and in Japan and California. He recorded the
soundtrack to a 10-part documentary series with the Silk Road Project and its artistic director,
Yo-Yo Ma, which aired in Japan on NHK Television. The CD, Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the
Horizon, was released on Sony Classical.
As concerto soloist, Zhang has appeared with prominent orchestras such as the Minnesota
Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Lukes, the Tokyo Symphony, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and
the Pacific Symphony. He has given recitals in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Panama, Japan, Korea
and China. As a chamber musician, Zhang has appeared in music festivals such as the La Jolla
Summer Fest, Music@Menlo, Strings in Mountains and Vancouver Summer Combustion. He
was also a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two.
Zhang comes from a family of bassists in Harbin, China. He has been playing the instrument
since age 9, and studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing beginning at age 11.
He continued his studies in the U.S. at the Interlochen Arts Academy and received his Artist
Diploma at the Indiana University School of Music, where he worked with Lawrence Hurst. He
has served on the faculty of Northwestern University and is Assistant Professor of Double Bass at
the University of Texas at Austin. DaXun Zhang plays a modern double bass made by Nick Lloyd
of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Tomoko Kashiwagi, piano
Pianist Tomoko Kashiwagi has been actively performing as a collaborative and chamber music
pianist for many years. She was the staff pianist at the University of Texas-Austin and the
Interlochen Arts Camp, and the piano faculty/coach at the Ithaca College Suzuki Institute. She
received intensive training on chamber music at the renowned Kent/Blossom Music Festival
where she was a full scholarship recipient in 2003. Kashiwagi has performed across the country
and internationally with double bass soloist DaXun Zhang at such prestigious venues as the 92nd
St. Y in New York, the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
A native of Japan, she began her piano studies at the age of 6. She completed her Bachelor of Music,
Master of Music and Performer Diploma in piano performance at Indiana University. Kashiwagi
was the first recipient of the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in collaborative piano with professor
Anne Epperson at the University of Texas-Austin.