Into the Shadows

Chamber Music Concert

Friday, January 31, 2025 / 7:30 p.m.
Kerrytown Concert House, 415 N 4th Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

The American Romanian Festival celebrates its 20th-anniversary season with an evening of works centered around the subject of death. The recently commissioned piece by Ionica Pop, Remembering Ţăranu, employs a twelve-tone row, which also serves as a musical cryptogram to honor the recently deceased Romanian composer Cornel Ţăranu. George Crumb’s reaction to the horrors of the Vietnam War is expressed through his threnody, Black Angels. The work is structured around the numbers 13 and 7, numerals often related to fate and destiny, and several tonal musical quotations can be found throughout the piece, including snippets from our next work on the program, Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” string quartet. Written in 1824, Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” was the composer’s coming to terms with his long-term illness and impending death, and has been called “one of the pillars of the chamber music repertoire.”

Concert Program

Ionica Pop (b. 1967)
Remembering Ţăranu (2024)
•••Commissioned by the American Romanian Festival•••

George Crumb (b. 1929)
Black Angels for Electric String Quartet (1970)
I. Departure
1. THRENODY I: Night of the Electric Insects,
2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes
3. Lost Bells
4. Devil-music
5. Danse Macabre (Duo alternativo: Dies Irae)
II. Absence
6. Pavana Lachrymae (Der Tod und das Mädchen) (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)
7. THRENODY II: BLACK ANGELS!
8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)
9. Lost Bells (Echo) (Duo alternativo: Sounds of Bones and Flutes)
III. Return
10. [Solo: Aria accompagnata] God-music
11. Ancient Voices
12. Ancient Voices (Echo)
13. THRENODY III: Night of the Electric Insects

INTERMISSION

Franz Schubert (1787–1828) 
String Quartet No. 14, “Death and the Maiden”
I. Allegro
II. Andante con moto
III. Scherzo – Allegro molto
IV. Presto