Festival explores Spokane treasure: The Moldenhauer Archive

Mar 14, 2007

For Immediate Release

Contact: Annie Matlow 326-3136

Spokane One of Spokane's treasures will be explored the weekend of March 23-25 when the Spokane Symphony and the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture host The Invisible Collection: The Moldenhauer Archive. The festival officially begins with a performance of one of the most famous pieces from Hans Moldenhauer's collection, Ernest Bloch's Schelomo, with cellist Mark Kosower under the direction of Guest Conductor Gunther Schuller, on Friday, March 23 at 8 p.m. in the INB Performing Arts Center.

Additional chamber performances, in the Davenport Gallery at the MAC will be held at 2 and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 24, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 25. The Saturday afternoon concert will feature selections by J. Strauss arranged by Webern, Berg and Mahler arranged by Schoenberg. Saturday evening will feature a Double Exposure performance where the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony arranged by Webern will be played, discussed by the musicians and played again. The Sunday afternoon performance will feature some unpublished compositions played by Kelly Farris and pianist Kendall Feeney.

The Friday night concert will also feature Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Symphony No. 5 and Ludwig Van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.

Two 20th-century masterpieces provide a fresh counterpoint to one of the most beloved of all symphonies: Beethoven's Seventh. In the symphony, Beethoven celebrates dance and the dynamic power of rhythm. Hartmann, one of Germany's most striking voices at the mid-century, displays a spirit unbowed by years of suffering under the Nazis in his witty Fifth Symphony. Bloch's Schelomo is more than a cello concerto; it is a haunting expression of the Jewish soul.

Schuller, a conductor, composer and horn player, is regarded as one of the key figures in contemporary classical music. He is artistic director of Spokane's Bach Festival and has a long association with the Spokane Jazz Orchestra. He conducted the Spokane Symphony in the 1984-85 season and was last guest conductor with the orchestra in 2000.

We are honored to have Gunther Schuller be here as a part of this very important salute to the Moldenhauer Archive and its importance to the study of 20th century music, said Music Director Eckart Preu.

Kosower is one of the outstanding and distinguished cellists of his generation. Hailed by musicians and critics alike for his extraordinary instrumental mastery, musical integrity, and purity of expression, he is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant awarded by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, he is the newly-appointed Principal Cello of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany under Music Director Jonathan Nott and is also on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

A former member of Chamber Music Two, a two-year residency at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Kosower makes frequent chamber music appearances at chamber music societies and festivals throughout the U.S. He frequently performs with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and the Omega Ensemble in New York, and has made numerous appearances at An Appalachian Music Festival, the Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival, the Delaware Chamber Music Festival, the Park City International Music Festival, the Sitka Summer Music Festival, and at Barge Music in New York.

The Friday night concert is sponsored by William C. Fix Investments and Whitworth College.

Tickets range from $15 to $35 and are available Monday through Friday from 9:30-5:00 p.m. at the Spokane Symphony Ticket Office at 818 West Riverside Avenue or by calling (509) 624-1200. Tickets are also available, with a service charge, at www.spokanesymphony.org or through TicketsWest at 325-SEAT or 1-800-325-SEAT.


Additional resources

The Invisible Collection

An exploration of the Moldenhauer Archive
A collaboration between the Spokane Symphony and the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture
The Moldenhauer Archive exhibit at the MAC January 13 April 8, 2007
Moldenhauer Music Festival March 23 25, 2007

Introduction by Eckart Preu, Spokane Symphony Music Director

With the 100th anniversary of Hans Moldenhauer's birth in 1906, the Spokane Symphony begins an exploration of his unique music archives in search for lost treasures of music history.

Hans Moldenhauer's passion was to show music as attempts to shape the future by preserving manuscripts and letters of artists and composers providing important things for us musicians. We listeners and performers are often tempted to rely on what we think we know, what we have heard, or what we have learned. Traditions are subjective and temporary. What is never going to change - and is the ultimate source of musical information - are the primary resources of the music: the manuscripts, the sketches. To do the music and the composer justice we have to go back to the closest link: the score.

This collection is unique. It is special as one of the largest private collections of music manuscripts it documents the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era over 400 years of music and cultural development!

For the Spokane Symphony this is a musical adventure. Many of the works collected have never been published and have been lying dormant for decades if not centuries. Are there any lost treasures we can unearth? This collection provides us with a true once-in-a-lifetime experience: a lot of this music you can only hear here and nowhere else! Eckart Preu, Music Director

Exploring Musical Treasures
Saturday, March 24 2-4 p.m. in the Davenport Gallery at the MAC

J. Strauss/arr. Webern
Schatzwalzer From Zigeunerbaron
Piano, harmonium, string quartet

A. Berg
Ein Orchesterlied op. 4, no. 5
Arr. For piano, harmonium, violin, cello

Mahler/arr. Schoenberg
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen 16'
flute, clarinet , piano, perc. Harmonium, string quintet
Randel Wagner, baritone

William Harvey, violin, Esther Olson, violin, Nick Carper, viola, Helen Byrne, cello, Chang-Min Lee, bass, Linda Siverts, piano, Bruce Bodden, flute, Dan Cotter, clarinet, Paul Raymond, percussion, Eckart Preu, harmonium/conductor

Double Exposure
Saturday, March 24 7 p.m. in the Davenport Gallery at the MAC

Schoenberg, arr. Webern
Chamber Symphony arranged for 5 Instruments
William Harvey, violin and moderator

William Harvey, violin, Jason Bell, violin, Chip Phillips, clarinet, John Marshall, cello. Kendall Feeney, piano

The chamber symphony will be played followed by a discussion of the music moderated by William Harvey. The musicians will then play the symphony again allowing the listeners to explore the elements from the discussion.

Exploring 20th Century Treasures
Sunday, March 25 2 p.m. in the Davenport Gallery at the MAC

Kendall Feeney, piano; Kelly Farris, violin;

The exploration continues with the performance of some unpublished compositions. Some are from the archive and some are owned by Kelly Farris, retired Spokane Symphony concertmaster and friend of Hans Moldenhauer.

Webern
Sonata mvt. (unpublished)
Kelly Farris, violin, Kendall Feeney, piano

Webern
String Quartet Op.28
Kelly Farris, violin, Randy Fisher, violin, Claire Keeble, viola, Helen Byrne, cello

Bailey. William H.
Green Corn
Kendal Feeney, piano, Helen Byrne, cello

Hartmann
Suite for violin solo (unpublished)
Kelly Farris, violin

Brahms
Neue Liebeslieder Walzer
Kendall Feeney, Eckart Preu, piano

Webern
Piece for cello and piano 1899
Kendal Feeney, piano, Helen Byrne, cello

Admission $7 adults, $5 seniors and students

Hans Moldenhauer bio

Hans Moldenhauer immigrated to the United States in 1938, settled in mountainous Spokane, Washington, in 1939, and served in the U.S. Mountain Troops during World War II. In 1942, as he embarked upon a musical career in collecting, performance, and writing, he founded the Spokane Conservatory. In 1943 he married his piano pupil, Rosaleen Jackman, to whose memory he would later dedicate his Archives. When Moldenhauer was diagnosed with the incurable eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa and told he soon would be blind, he dedicated much of his remaining energy to acquiring the monuments of Music History from Primary Sources, as he called the growing Moldenhauer Archives.

Hans Moldenhauer procured manuscripts from composers such as Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, and Witold Lutoslawski, and obtained numerous items from the archives of Gustav Mahler, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Arnold Schoenberg.

Moldenhauer acquired the Webern Archive in the 1960s and with his wife Rosaleen wrote the seminal biography Anton Webern, A Chronicle of His Life and Work (New York: Knopf, 1978), along with other publications on Anton Webern.

At the time of the collector's death in 1987, the Moldenhauer Archives included many thousands of items that are now housed in nine institutions around the world: in the United States, at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Northwestern University, Washington State University, and Whitworth College; in Basel, Switzerland, at the Paul Sacher Foundation; in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Zentralbibliothek; in Munich, Germany, at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; and in Vienna, Austria, at the Stadtarchiv und Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek.

The Moldenhauer bequest to the Library of Congress in 1987 consisted of more than 3,500 music manuscripts, letters, and other materials and was the greatest composite gift of musical documents the Library has yet received. The Library also received the funds to produce the volume that appeared under the title The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, edited by Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann.

Gunther Schuller Bio

The son of German immigrants, Gunther Schuller was born in New York on Nov. 22, 1925. He studied flute, horn, and theory, advancing rapidly enough as a hornist to join the Cincinnati Symphony as principal horn at 17 and the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera at 19. Schuller became actively involved in the New York bebop scene, performing and recording with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and John Lewis.

At the age of 25, Schuller taught horn at the Manhattan School of Music, beginning a distinguished teaching career; his positions have included Professor of Composition at the School of Music at Yale, President of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Artistic Director of the Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center and The Festival at Sandpoint and Co-Director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. His love of a wide range of American music guides the activities of his publishing and recording companies, Margun Music and GM Recordings. He also currently serves as Artistic Director of the Spokane Bach Festival. He conducted the Spokane Symphony for one year (1984-1985).

Schuller has created more than 160 original compositions in virtually every musical genre, including commissions from the Baltimore Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Minneapolis Symphony, National Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. Recent commissions include his 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning work Of Reminiscences and Reflections for the Louisville Orchestra; An Arc Ascending for the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Cincinnati Symphony; The Past is in the Present, also for the Cincinnati Symphony; a Sextet for Leon Fleisher and the Kennedy Center Chamber Players; Brass Quintet No. 2 for the American Brass Quintet; an Organ Concerto for the 1994 Calgary International Organ Festival; and Ritmica-Melodica-Armonica for the Newton Symphony Orchestra.

Schuller is acknowledged as father of the Third Stream movement in American music. He has worked with Arturo Toscanini, Miles Davis, Aaron Copland, Ornette Coleman, Leonard Bernstein, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, John Updike, Joe Lovano, Elvis Costello, Wynton Marsalis, Frank Zappa, and many more. He gathered together a lifetime of observations on conducting in his recent book, The Compleat Conductor (Oxford University Press). His extensive writings, on a variety of subjects ranging from jazz through music performance, contemporary music, music aesthetics, and education, have been issued in the collection, Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller. His monumental jazz history, The Swing Era, was published in 1989. Among Schuller's many awards are: a MacArthur Foundation genius award (1991); the Pulitzer Prize (1994); inaugural Member of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame; DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award; the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997); the BMI Lifetime Achievement Award (1994); the William Schuman Award (1988), given by Columbia University for lifetime achievement in American music composition; and several Grammy Awards. Though a high school drop-out, Schuller has also received 12 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities.