Lauren Hamilton, Violin

Neil Metcalfe, Piano

East to West

BA Solo Recital

26th May 2014

Auditorium
The Music Box
Biography

I am currently studying a
Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
in Music Performance with
Abertay University and have
been playing Violin for about
11 years. Since leaving
high school I have achieved
a Distinction in my HND in
Music Performance and
have worked with many
orchestras and ensembles
with Violin such as:
Dunblane Chamber
Orchestra (Conductor:
Mark Wilson)
Glasgow Symphony
Orchestra (Conductor:
Tommy Fowler)
Stirling Regional Schools Orchestra
Callander Amateur Operatic Society (Conductor: Ian Milligan)
Edinburgh Youth Orchestra( Conductor: Sian Edwards)
Edinburgh Film Music Orchestra (Conductor: Yati Durant)
Stirling Orchestra (Conductor: Stephen Broad)
I am being taught by soloist Rosemary Ellison. Since I began lessons
with Rosemary in the recent years, my violin playing has accelerated
dramatically allowing me to achieve certification in ABRSM Grade 8
Violin and the hope to further my study in working towards a Masters
in Performing.
My hopes for the future entail travelling the world and the aim to
study abroad to enhance my musicianship. I have played in a
Masterclass with RSNO player Paul Medd and had the wonderful
opportunity to work with retired RSNO violinist Robert Gennings who
have both given me huge encouragement in following Music to ‘play
with all feelings unleashed’.
 Introduction: East to West

In putting together this recital, I want to say how Western composers

have a fascination with music from other cultures, where the works
represent the transition and response to cross-cultural stimuli and
how musicians are influenced by faraway places, from ‘East to West’.

The Western composers take influence from neighbouring cultures

or experiences and some of the pieces reflect how eastward glances
indulged their artistic fantasies. Our Austrian, Mozart takes centre
stage of what traditional Western Classical composition had to offer,
where Classical music boomed with his influence of diatonic harmony
unlike his predecessors who took influences from the east into their
music, being less structured and more bringing to light ideas and
techniques from other cultures to create their own personalised style
that was growing into the twentieth century.

From 1750 to 1820, Classical Musicians moved away from the

ornamented styles of the Baroque Period instead focusing on clean
and orderly approaches, significant of Classical Grecian culture. At
this period, the Austrian capital of Vienna, became the centre of
European Music where some of these works were being referred to
as Viennesse in style, Mozart being one of whom to express the
culmination of mastering technique and structuring pieces of work.

By the turn of the century composers began to experiment with new

ways of the traditions from the Classical and Romantic periods of
music, where they were fascinated by Eastern music, shying from
diatonic writing and delving into nationalistic backgrounds.
Programme: East to West

Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, K. 526 (1778).........Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I. Molto Allegro (1756-1791)

II. Andante
III. Presto

Sonata for Violin and Piano, L 140 (1917)..........................................................Claude Debussy

I. Allegro Vivo (1862-1918)

Suite Populaire Espagnole (1915)............................................................................Manuel de Falla

V. Astriania (1876-1946)
VI. Jota
Programme Notes: East to West

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came from a musical
family and wrote 32 violin sonatas in his lifetime. He spent the last
decade, composing the Sonata for Piano and Violin in A major, KV
526 in 1787 as part of six string quartets which were dedicated to
the composer Haydn. His travels to Prague, exploration of Prussia
and time in Vienna are heightened in his work at this period. Having
written in his youth earlier sonatas which were essentially keyboard
sonatas with the Violin taking the accompaniment role, it was only
until his maturity in spreading the musical material between the
instruments to be of equal partnership, where this Sonata acclaimed
to be one of the Austrians finest virtuosic works.

The opening movement is written in the Classical Sonata form,

featuring the exposing, developing and restating of music ideas in
clear sections. Throughout this movement he emphasises off-beats,
crisp articulation and his good-humoured qualities where the two
instruments take turns taking leading and supporting roles.

Mozart incorporates a cantabile line in both instruments of the middle

movement. In the Andante, this second theme is in the key of A minor
however he alternates into Major keys where the relationship is
differed from common practice of Classical harmony by surprising the
listener into arriving in its major equivalent.

The finale based on the Rondo movement of Karl Friedrich Abel’s

Sonata for Violin, Cello and Keyboard where Mozart paid homage to
his friend’s death. The Presto is written in Sonata-Rondo form where
he presents his thematic material in a dazzling array of passagework
and energy on both instruments.
Claude Debussy
The Frenchman, Debussy drafted a project in producing a group of six
sonatas for various instruments, where his solitary Violin Sonata was
the third and last in the uncompleted set in 1917, never finishing the
rest of the three sonatas before his death of terminal cancer the
same year. He dedicated the only work for the violin to his wife Emma
and acknowledgement of without his friend Arthur Hartmann’s
influence; Debussy would have never before considered writing for the
violin. This sonata was his last public appearance before his death.

This opening of the sonata is presented by sweetness soon to be

followed by fire and nostalgia where Debussy embodies freedom and
depth in his distinguished style of impressionistic composition. The
violin-piano duo is unlike earlier sonatas as the two instruments do not
accompany each other but one instrument leads with a pulling
sensation against the counter motif’s of the other. This blurred
characteristic can make it harder to decipher who has the melodic
line in comparison to a ‘Classic’ piece of composition.

The first movement is in a rough sonata form where the structure

and style suggests a fantasia rather than following the norms of a
traditional ‘sonata’ where in particular he composed to differentiate
from the German composers such as Wagner and using his
nationalistic routes. Debussy was heavily influenced in the later of his
composing days of Spanish and Asian idioms, from his studies in
Budapest is evident in areas of the sonata.

The movement is in triple metre which is obscured by the use of

hemiolas and irregular subdivisions across the phrase where the very
opening falling melody is grouped in duple over almost dormant
subdominant chords in three beat groupings. The French style is
captured through Debussy’s use of subtlety and extended technique
where false harmonics and whole-tone scales mark his touch on
eastern influence.
Manuel De Falla
The Spanish composer Manuel De Falla was a central figure in the
musical culture of his native country at the beginning of the twentieth
century. His experience of the folk idiom of Andalusia, an area of
southern Spain that still stands by the deepest cultural evidence of
the occupation of Arabic speaking Moorish cultures, as well as others
such as Romani and Sephardic Jewish Cultures which are heavily
influenced de Falla’s musical language.

The melodic inflections of Moorish music, found its way to Iberian

peninsula via North Africa from the Middle East evident in his Siete
Canciones populaires Espagnolas written in 1914, originally an
arrangements for voice and piano of folk songs from canciones then
transcribed for violin and lutheal under the title Suite Populaire
Espagnole. He took influence from around various areas of Spain with
the help of Polish violinist Paul Kochanski to arrange six of these for
Violin a year later: the final two of which I will be performing.

The most renowned of the songs is the Asturiana originated from

Northern Spain, a lament played on muted strings capturing a sense
of unfathomable heartache against rhythmic figures in the piano. The
closed quality of the intervals on what would have been lyrics, lends
itself to poignancy and fire to the Latin-Moorish temperament.
Spanish music contains a melting pot of musical ideas, plucked from
cultures from the east, such as the Arabic impacting on the ‘esta
casa es su casa’ style of music and the mixed society which Spain
was becoming.

The Aragonese Jota is an energised dance in triple time featuring a

guitar like accompaniment both in the piano and violin. The
percussive nature is contrasted by quasi-improvisational motives
typical of the Spanish flare where eastern culture was heavy
influenced on his studies and also the inspiration of Claude Debussy.
This recital is presented by Lauren Hamilton in partial
fulfilment of Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music Performance
from the University of Abertay, in conjunction with Edinburgh
College

Acknowledgments

Many Thanks to:

Neil Metcalfe, Rosemary Ellison, Robert Gennings, Scott

Whitefield, Irene & Gary Hamilton, Duncan & Lily Robertson,
Lilian & Kenny Laing, Colin Adamson and The Music Box Staff.