PROGRAM NOTES SPONSORED BY THOMAS WARD

For millennia philosophers, psychologists, and art and literary critics have pondered the sources and mechanisms of human emotions. From apathy and anger to joy and desire, emotions largely govern our actions even when we think we have them held in check. Among the strongest of all is passion, defined as a particularly strong emotion that can motivate people to acts of selfless devotion, intense commitment, and behaviors that transcend the everyday.

Thinkers from Plato, Aristotle and Augustine up through Descartes, Spinoza and beyond have wrestled with passions as operating apart from or against cool logic. During periods when reason held sway, as during the Enlightenment, passion was regarded with suspicion, as something to be mastered lest it drive humans to irrational decisions. Of course, the pendulum eventually swings the other way. Nineteenth-century Romanticism offered passion a renewed place of honor in place of logic and order. Passion thus touches on fundamental decisions in the creation of art and music. For certain groups of composers at certain times, passion seems hardly relevant. But others – think Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner – celebrated the intensity of deeply felt emotions for their ability to make any work, no matter how small or large, a stage upon which human drama could unfold.

The Baroque era overlaps historically with the Enlightenment, but it generally still prefers art of excess, decorative filigree, and unrestrained emotions – quite often linked to sacred situations and divine rapture. As many listeners will know, Johann Sebsatian Bach (1685-1750) composed multiple settings of the Biblical Passion story. But even in other genres, such as concertos, sonatas, and cantatas, Bach’s calculated logic of counterpoint merges with melodic material of stunning beauty and emotional power.
In the late 18th and 19th centuries the concerto came to be a form of musical drama, pitting a single soloist against the orchestra in a battle for control of the tonal unfolding. Baroque ensemble concertos or concerti grossi, which set a group of soloists apart from the larger ensemble, were essentially a thing of the past by the time Mozart died. But for Bach, composing concertos between roughly 1720 and 1740, all options were still on the table. In total he wrote thirteen concertos for one or more harpsichords, in addition to several violin concertos and the six Brandenburg Concertos.

BWV 1065, a Concerto in A Minor for four harpsichords and string orchestra, represents his largest undertaking in the genre. It also shows his facility with Italian instrumental concerto style. I must note at the outset that this piece is actually an arrangement of a concerto for four violins written by Antonio Vivaldi in 1712 (indeed, a version we heard in SMF’s BaroqueFest four months ago). The three-movement form, clear tonal structure, effective balance between solo and tutti groups, and memorable themes are all Vivaldi’s. Bach’s task – much like a co-author or translator – was to adapt idiomatic string writing to the keyboard and infuse it with what mattered most to him: polyphony and motivic elaboration. Years earlier he made a series of solo keyboard arrangements of Italian concertos, so this was not new territory for him.
The opening Allegro starts in the solo group (Vivaldi’s novel idea), then alternates between full ensemble and one or two harpsichordists. At no point do all four keyboards play together without the strings; not, that is, until the curious slow movement. That Largo opens with rhetorical flourishes before reveling in an extended harpsichord improvisation à 4. During the finale the solo episodes are brief, to say the least. Instead Bach sustains a full texture that, despite substantial doubling of lines, could rival even the largest string band of the day.

The Washington Post has called Zachary Wadsworth a composer of “fresh, deeply felt and strikingly original” music. Wadsworth’s works have been heard around the world. In the 2025-26 season, his Chamber Symphony (after music by Ravel) will be premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and a new song cycle will be premiered at the Belvedere Series in Richmond. In earlier seasons, he was in residence at the Metropolitan Opera and his music was performed at Westminster Abbey in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II. Other recent honors include two JUNO Award nominations, two National Choral Awards, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Composers Forum. Wadsworth earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Yale School of Music, and Cornell University and is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Williams College.

Staunton Music Festival proudly presents the world premiere of Wadsworth’s Passion, about which the composer writes:

My Passion is an eleven-minute work for soprano, oboe, harp, and string quartet, and its text comes from “Do Pana,” a poem by the Polish writer Piotr Odmieniec Włast. In this poem, Włast ponders the nature of suffering, as expressed through Christ’s Passion and through the poet’s own tragic experiences, and he also ponders his relationship with a God who “denied [him] happiness.” Born “Maria Komornicka” (the name under which he first published this poem in 1900), Włast knew suffering; he lived through World Wars, forced institutionalization, a violent marriage, and a public gender transition in an extremely unwelcoming time and place. And though that suffering informs much of this poem, Włast is not trapped within it; instead, he wears his scars of suffering proudly, likening them to Christ’s Passion wounds and calling himself God’s “equal.” By the end of the poem, he writes defiantly that God “did not grant [him] the earth for which [he] asked,” but he nonetheless lists all the things he finds beautiful about the imperfect world he was given to live in.

In my setting of this poem, I use the instrumental ensemble and high voice to lean into the ecstatic contrasts of Włast’s text. When he sings of his suffering, the voice and oboe wind around one another like in a Baroque aria. As the poet directly addresses God, the singer and ensemble perform in vibrant, flexible recitative. Włast’s final emphasis on beauty and wholeness finds a gentler, steadier music that eventually evaporates, unrealized but vividly imagined.

As a composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) tended to work in bunches. For instance, each of his first thirty published compositions is for solo piano. During these years, he also passed in and out of several romantic relationships, including an infatuation with Clara Wieck, the teenage daughter of his Leipzig piano teacher. Forbidden to meet by Herr Wieck, the pair eloped in 1840. The effect on Schumann was immediate and profound. During his “Year of Song” (1840), Schumann wrote nothing but lieder, including Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe und –Leben, and two collections titled Liederkreis (Song Circle). Having exhausted the vocal muse, he next worked primarily on orchestral and chamber pieces throughout the 1840s.

Then, after nearly a decade in which he composed no vocal music at all, Schumann made a striking return to genre with the Spanisches Liebeslieder song collection in 1849. The immediate stimulus was likely his experience as founding director of the Verein für Chorgesang (Choral Society), which he formed after moving to Dresden in 1847. The Liebeslieder, Op. 138, is actually the second set Schumann made on Spanish folksongs. Like the first collection, Spanisches Liederspiel, Op. 74, it draws upon Emanuel Geibel’s German translations of mostly 16th-century Spanish texts. And as in Op. 74, Schumann nicely combines songs for solo voice with duets and quartets.

The only substantive difference with the Liebeslieder is the composer’s decision to use four-hand, as opposed to solo, piano accompaniment. That feature would be imitated later in the popular Liebeslieder Waltzes by Johannes Brahms, Schumann’s admirer and bosom friend. The role of the piano is further expanded through the inclusion of two purely instrumental movements that emphasize the Spanish flavor (especially the opening Prelude played “in Bolero tempo.” The songs, however, do not overtly betray the texts’ Spanish origins with exotic musical cues. To be sure, the messages contained in these poems are hardly unique to Spain. By using stock motifs, Schumann crafts musical settings that are broadly appealing.

After the rippling piano prelude, the first two songs, solos for soprano and tenor, mark out the set’s emotional range: from the intimacy of “Tief im Herzen trag’ ich Pein,” which continues the guitar-like strummed chords from the Prelude, to the strophic, animated spirit of “O wie lieblich” that shows no signs of darkening skies.

Song 8 starts in the most serene and simple way with gently arpeggiated harmonies made all the sweeter by the impending agitation, which takes hold both of the music and the protagonist as she watches her beloved disappear into the hills. A deliberate pause at the bottom of the mezzo’s range, signaling the moment when she finally loses sight of him, dramatically opposes the poem’s references to the “proud mountain peaks.” Song 9, in particular, captures the self-assured style of “gemütlich Hausmusik” that must have pleased the Schumanns’ musical guests.

Oppositions are the guiding principle in the final poem (No. 10), “Dunkler Lichtglanz, blinder Blick,” which Schumann has set as a vocal quartet. The piece is often performed on its own and has become a staple of the German choral tradition. Complete with touches of Bachian four-part harmony and moments of breakthrough on “Liebe” (love), it fittingly concludes the collection. Indeed, if until now we have known Schumann only for his symphonies, solo piano works, or solo lieder, the chamber vocal repertoire (as represented in these Spanish Love Songs) leaves us a great deal still to discover in this remarkable musician.

INTERMISSION

Born in San Juan, Argentina, Juan Pablo Jofre Romarion, popularly known as J.P. Jofre, is a GRAMMY-nominated composer and bandoneon vituoso. Having written several double concertos with chamber and symphony orchestras, and more than 40 chamber music works, Jofre has been repeatedly highlighted by The New York Times and praised as one of today’s leading artists by Great Performers at Lincoln Center. His music has been recorded by the legendary London Symphony Orchestra, multi-Grammy award winner Paquito D’ Rivera, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra among others. He has performed and given lectures at Google Talks, TED Talks, Juilliard, The New School, and other venues. A recipient of the National Prize of the Arts grant in Argentina, Jofre has been part of many prestigious festivals around the globe. As a soloist, composer, and leader of the J.P. Jofre Quintet, Jofre has appeared at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Music Center, and in halls from Moscow to Seoul.

For the release of his Double Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Bandoneon with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Michale Guttman, BBC Magazine wrote: “Jofre’s concerto is arresting and – through the gorgeous Adagio – rather beguiling.” Dedicated to violinist Francisco Fullana, the Double Concerto offers a brilliant and virtuosic combination of solo, duo, and orchestral passages. It was commissioned jointly by the Classical Music Institute of San Antonio (TX), the Balearic Islands Symphony, and Metropolis Ensemble (NYC).

The opening movement launches from the outset into an imposing theme – aptly labeled Marcato pesante (heavily marked) – for the full ensemble before the two soloists indulge in a shared cadenza. Jofre was initially inspired to create this concerto by meeting and per-forming with Francisco Fullana. “Francisco and I met regularly through-out the creative process, shaping ideas and exploring the possibilities of the two solo instruments.” As the short movement begins to wind down, Jofre simply pulls back on the tempo, allowing the Allegro to drift gently to its conclusion. Jofre calls the movement a “Big Tango, inspired by the spirit of Astor Piazzolla’s La Camorra series.”

The slower second movement opens with rainstick and triangle, yielding to a passage for solo bandoneon. As Jofre puts it, “I have always felt a strong connection between the sonorities of the bandoneon and the shō, particularly in the opening solo bandoneon passage, which gradual-ly evolves into a duet with the violin before being embraced by the or-chestra.” He also channels the lyric sensitivity of Piazzolla in music of lush texture and spicy dissonance, yet all the while suggesting a modern take on traditional folk song. Agonal gestures mount in intensity as the movement segues into an Allegro finale.

That finale vacillates between syncopated figures à la Stravinsky and neo-Romantic swells of sound poured forth in high string tremolos. Overall, furious chaos rules the day, leading to an abrupt punctuated final cadence. Jofre titles the finale Metamorphosis, drawing inspiration from Franz Kafka’s celebrated novella: “I have always been fascinated by its surreal atmosphere and powerful imagery. The transformation of the protagonist into an insect sparked the musical ideas that ultimately shaped the movement’s themes and character.”

In the spirit of tonight’s program, Jofre’s Concerto No. 2 unfolds con passione. The faster sections exhibit dramatic changes of mood and tempo and are spontaneously given over to soliloquies from the two soloists. The slow central movement projects the pathos-laden lyricism of earlier eras. Jofre seems wonderfully content to carry his heart on his sleeve, such that even this quite recent composition moves easily between intensely chromatic outbursts and moments of emotional respite.

Jason Stell, © 2026