Elizabeth R. AustinPianist Kathleen Dale presents a concert at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, on Sunday, June 16, 2013 at 2pm. The concert will include Bach's
Prelude and Fugue #6 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book Two, 1738-42), Beethoven's
Sonata 81a (Les Adieux, 1809), and two Brahms Intermezzos (1893), the second
of which provided part of the inspiration for Elizabeth R. Austin's Rose Sonata for Piano
and Reciter (2002), which will round out the program.
Ms. Dale was first introduced to Elizabeth Austin's piano sonata through the work of another ACA composer, Michael Slayton, and his book Women
of Influence in Contemporary Music published in 2010 by Scarecrow Press.
Louisa
Loveridge Gallas (reciter of poetry) will join the pianist in performing Austin's exquisite
sonata, which has at its heart the rich, sensuous opening bar of Brahms' Second
Intermezzo. Austin writes, "At certain points throughout the music, a poem about
the rose is recited; this text informs the succeeding portion of the
music."
The
poems recited are by Ingeborg Bachmann, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Carlos Williams, and
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The composer notes regarding her Rose Sonata: “This is the second composition in
which I have explored using geometric forms
found in the natural world as the basis for an overall musical form. It is an ongoing exploration
of the idea of motivic fragments emerging into a theme, often taken from other composers’ works, through an
epiphany....The idea of ‘rose’ carries the motives from the outward petals ever further
into the center of the blossom, the transitory and transformational (developmental)
heart, where the source quote of the motives is heard (forward as well as backward in a retrograde)."
The concert is free admission, with optional donations accepted for library support and purchase of
books on women composers. Location: Wisconsin
Conservatory of Music, 1584
N. Prospect Avenue in Milwaukee.
