PROGRAM NOTES SPONSORED BY THOMAS WARD

Of all the genres to which Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) applied his hand, the Lied (song) is what he is best known for. Having written 250 songs throughout his life, the late 19th-century Austrian composer was known for composing Lieder in rather frenzied periods of productivity. For instance, while penning his first set of songs – a collection of 53 texts by the German poet and Lutheran pastor Eduard Mörike – he is said to have completed 20 songs in the month of March 1888 alone! Such a feat would be enough to give a composer a bit of a big head. But rather than seeing himself as a musical genius, Wolf aspired to be an equal collaborator with the authors of the texts he set. Inspired by Richard Wagner and his formulation of the Gesamtkunstwerk (or “total artwork”), Wolf believed firmly in attempting a true fusion of text and music (as well as between piano and voice in his Lieder). He thus made sure to foreground the poets who contributed the literary lifeblood to his compositions, even placing their portraits front and center in his published collections.

“An eine Äolsharfe” is an expert combination of words and music as Wolf’s delicate setting pays homage to both the pain and rapture behind Mörike’s poem. Written in 1837, this poem paints a picture of the time that Mörike heard the “melodious lament” of an Aeolian harp in Ludwigsburg, the same town where his brother had died only seven years earlier. Mörike associates the harp’s bittersweet voice with the memory of his brother; Wolf renders this voice in the floating chords and gentle arpeggios of his piano accompaniment. He also beautifully captures the way that Mörike’s feelings of grief travel back to him over the course of several years, as if on the winds of time. By contrast, “Nimmersatte Liebe” shows off Wolf’s lighter side through his singsong treatment of “insatiable love,” with syncopation and playful dynamic changes introducing a bit of humor. “Abschied” is pure fun, from beginning to end. The angular vocal line, shaped to the contours of speech, delivers an absurd exchange between strangers while the accompaniment punctuates the scene, in just the right places, like a classic cartoon soundtrack.


A program note by composer-in-residence Leah Reid:

Clatter for percussion quartet is a dynamic, multimovement work that explores the vibrant interplay between onomatopoeic words – those that imitate or evoke the sounds they describe – and the rich timbral possibilities of percussion instruments. The work investigates the intersection of sound and language, revealing how onomatopoeic words can embody and amplify the essence of the sounds they represent. Structured in four succinct movements, the piece investigates distinct timbral subsets, interwoven with spoken, whispered, and drawn onomatopoeic expressions, shapes/images:

Movement 1: “Click Clack” is centered on stick-based timbres, features words like click, clack, tip, and tap.

Movement 2: “Scribble” explores the sonic textures of various drums and the act of drawing, incorporating words such as scribble, scrape, and doodle, alongside shapes like circle, star, and triangle.

Movement 3: “Shake” focuses on shaken textures, evoking words like shake, jingle, jangle, and swirl.

Movement 4: “Boom Boom Pow” highlights the rhythmic energy of drums and drumkits, drawing inspiration from rock, hip-hop, and Latin rhythms, with words like boom, bang, pow, thump, whomp, and clatter.

The work was commissioned by the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in honor of its 2025 Festival.


In his Serenade for Winds, Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) pays homage to the past in a variety of ways. The serenade as a genre is primarily associated with a type of orchestral repertoire from the mid-18th century, and with Mozart in particular. Yet composers like Dvořák – as well as his contemporary Johannes Brahms – sought to reinvigorate the older form. Just as serenades were often performed outside and scored for wind instruments that were easily transportable, Dvořák closely emulated the makeup of the 18th-century Harmonie-band and scored his work for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, one cello, and one double bass. Dvořák’s references to the past, however, were not only related to older Western European musical genres. Recognized as a composer who often imbued his works with references to vernacular musics, it comes as no surprise that Dvořák would include elements of native Bohemian dances – the sousedská and the furiant.

Dvořák’s Serenade opens its first movement with a march, followed by a gentler, lilting second section in which momentum builds up again to reintroduce the initial march material. At first glance, the composer would appear to be following the structural organization of a symphony, but he then switches up the typical order of the middle movements by placing his Minuetto in second position. It is in this movement that we can hear the Bohemian dances that Dvořák wove into the piece, with the triple meter of the sousedská and the alternating 2/4 and 3/4 of the furiant. His third movement spotlights the lyricism of both clarinet and oboe in the longest – and most serene – movement of the work. For the finale, Dvořák breathes life into the past one final time with an upbeat fourth movement. In the final minutes of the piece, he reprises the opening march material from the first movement in a final ploy to demonstrate that the music of the past does indeed have a place in the present.

Emily Masincup, Leah Reid, and Jason Stell © 2026