Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

Music at Maryville Concert Series 2025-2026

Music at Maryville Concert Series
Music at Maryville Concert Series
  • Free admission to all performances!
  • All events will take place in the Maryville University Auditorium.
  • Concerts will not be live-streamed, so please join us in person.

Concert 5 of 5 — Peter Henderson, pianist & composer • Jeffrey Heyl, baritone

Jeffrey Heyl, bass-baritone
Jeffrey Heyl, bass-baritone
Peter Henderson, piano
Peter Henderson, piano

Saturday, April 11, 2026 • 1:00 p.m.

Program:

Peter Henderson: “To Barbara” (text: John Wickersham) (composed 2026 • World Premiere) (ca. 4 minutes)
Gustav Mahler: Rückert-Lieder (texts: Friedrich Rückert) (composed 1901-02) (ca. 21 minutes)
  1. “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!” (“I breathed a delicate fragrance”)
  2. “Liebst du um Schönheit” (“If you love for beauty”)
  3. “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!” (“Do not look at my songs”)
  4. “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (“I am lost to the world”)
  5. “Um Mitternacht” (“At midnight”)
Intermission
Franz Schubert: Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959 (composed 1828) (ca. 40 minutes)
  1. Allegro
  2. Andantino
  3. Scherzo: Allegro vivace – Trio: Un poco più lento
  4. Rondo: Allegretto – Presto

Past 2025-2026 Events

Concert 1 of 5 — Morris Hayes, keyboard & Kip Blackshire, vocals

  • Friday, September 26, 2025 • 3:30 p.m.
  • Morris Hayes was bandleader and keyboardist with the iconic artist Prince. Morris will lead a performance workshop and jam session featuring students from Maryville’s Music Therapy Program. After intermission, Morris and Kip will perform a set together.
Morris Hayes, keyboard, and Kip Blackshire, vocals. Music at Maryville Series Event, 26 September 2025 at 3:30 p.m.

Concert 2 of 5 — STRIO, featuring SLSO musicians Kristin Ahlstrom, violin • Shannon Williams, viola • Bjorn Ranheim, cello

  • Tuesday, December 9, 2025 • 7:30 p.m.
  • Program:
    • Ludwig van Beethoven: String Trio in C minor, op. 9 no. 3
    • Ernő Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio, op. 10
    • Robert Schumann: Quartet for Piano and String Trio in E-flat major, op. 47 (with Peter Henderson, piano)

Concert 3 of 5 — Jesse Kavadlo, author and rock musician

Jesse Kavadlo — "Rock and Pages" concert and book-reading — February 22, 2026
Jesse Kavadlo — “Rock and Pages” concert and book-reading — February 22, 2026

Concert 4 of 5 — Yu Tamaki Hoso, trombone • Christopher Bassett, bass trombone

Wednesday, March 25, 2026 • 7:30 p.m.

Yu Tamaki Hoso, trombone
Yu Tamaki Hoso, trombone
Christopher Bassett, bass trombone
Christopher Bassett, bass trombone
with Peter Henderson, piano

Program:

J. Guy Ropartz (1864-1955): Pièce for Trombone and Piano (1908) (ca. 7 minutes) — Yu Tamaki Hoso, tenor trombone

Franz Strauss (1822-1905): Nocturno for Horn (arr. Trombone) and Piano, Op. 7 (1864) (ca. 6 minutes) — Yu Tamaki Hoso, tenor trombone

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Vocalise-étude for High Voice (arr. Bass Trombone) and Piano (1935) (ca. 4 minutes) — Christopher Bassett, bass trombone

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): From Songs of Travel for Voice (arr. Bass Trombone) and Piano (1901-1904) (excerpts ca. 12 minutes, total) — Christopher Bassett, bass trombone

  • 3. The Roadside Fire
  • 2. Let Beauty Awake
  • 7. Whither Must I Wander?
  • 4. Youth and Love

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen (Litany for the Feast of All Souls) for Voice (arr. Bass Trombone) and Piano, D. 343 (1816) (ca. 4 minutes) — Christopher Bassett, bass trombone

Keiko Takashima (b. 1962): Hear the Spring Calling for Trombone, Bass Trombone, and Piano (2011) (ca. 16 minutes, total) — Yu Tamaki Hoso, tenor trombone • Christopher Bassett, bass trombone

  1. Dawn
  2. Sea Breeze
  3. Sakura
Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

Music at Maryville 2025-2026 Concert 2 of 4

Beethoven: String Trio in C minor, op. 9 no. 3

Ernst von Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C major, op. 10

Robert Schumann: Piano Quartet in E-flat major, op. 47

Tuesday, December 9, 2025; 7:30 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium (Directions) • Free Admission

This recital will be our 2025-2026 Johannes Wich-Schwarz Chamber Music Concert. The event won’t be live-streamed, and no recording will be available, so please consider enjoying the performance in person. Information about the entire Music at Maryville 2025-2026 Concert Series is available via this link. You’re welcome to share this information with anyone you know who may be interested.

Artists

STRIO:

Kristin Ahlstrom, violin

Kristin Ahlstrom, violin
Kristin Ahlstrom, violin

Shannon Farrell Williams, viola

Shannon Farrell Williams, viola
Shannon Farrell Williams, viola

Bjorn Ranheim, cello

Bjorn Ranheim, cello
Bjorn Ranheim, cello

With guest musician:

Peter Henderson, piano

Peter Henderson, piano
Peter Henderson, piano

Musical Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello in C minor, op. 9 no. 3 (1797-98) — ca. 25 minutes

  1. Allegro con spirito
  2. Adagio con espressione
  3. Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace
  4. Finale: Presto

Ernst von Dohnányi (Dohnányi Ernő) (1877-1960): Serenade for String Trio in C major, op. 10 (1902-04) — ca. 23 minutes

  1. Marcia: Allegro
  2. Romanza: Adagio non troppo
  3. Scherzo: Vivace
  4. Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto
  5. Rondo (Finale): Allegro vivace

Intermission

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello in E-flat major, op. 47 (1842) — ca. 28 minutes

  1. Sostenuto assai — Allegro ma non troppo
  2. Scherzo: Molto vivace — Trio I — Trio II
  3. Andante cantabile
  4. Finale: Vivace

Program Note

Performed by artists from the St. Louis Symphony, this concert begins with two contrasting works for violin, viola, and cello (an ensemble known as a “string trio”). Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartets are more well-known than his string trios, but his trios sound just as brilliant as his quartets. Beethoven enriched his string trios’ texture by often demanding more of the players, giving the musicians of STRIO the opportunity to display their virtuosity. Beethoven’s famous, glowering “C-minor mood” is on display in his sometimes fiery String Trio, op. 9 no. 3 (opus nine, number three).

Ernst von Dohnányi was a Hungarian pianist, teacher, and composer whose music looked toward the Romantic past rather than the prevailing modernism of early twentieth-century classical music. Dohnányi held a leading position in the musical life of Budapest during the years before World War II. His Serenade for String Trio, composed in 1902-04, when he was in his twenties, features neoclassical elements, beginning with a bracing march that reappears during the concluding, fifth movement. A highlight is the scampering scherzo, featuring a chromatic, zig-zagging main subject treated in contrapuntal imitation.

Robert Schumann tended to concentrate on specific musical genres for a period of time; during 1842, he produced a great deal of chamber music. Among the works he composed that year were a Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (this genre is dubbed “piano quintet”) and a Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello (typically called “piano quartet”). These two works are grand, symphonically scaled, and in the key of E-flat major. While both pieces set a standard of reference in each genre for future composers, the Piano Quartet, op. 47, is more subtle and lyrical. The intimacy of its lovely, songful third movement is strikingly contrasted by the energetic, heroic finale that follows.

Categories
Maryville

“Words and the Melody” Class Plan for Monday, October 20, 2025

Dear Students,

Wick won’t be able to join us in class on Monday, October 20, but I will be there. Remember, Wednesday, October 22, is Maryville’s “Wellness Day,” when all classes are canceled. Below is the plan for tomorrow morning’s class.

See you soon,

Peter

P.S. I found a free iOS / iPadOS app (“English Poetry Collection”) featuring many poems in English. Here’s its App Store page.

Edgar Lee Masters — Spoon River Anthology, continued (at Wick’s Request)

Notes from Wick’s Spoon River class session during April 2021

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)

(Edgar Lee Masters)

Spoon River Anthology. 1916.

  • Born in Kansas, but grew up in Lewistown and Petersburg, Illinois
  • Trained in law in Chicago, practiced law there
  • Had literary ambitions
  • Wrote Spoon River Antholog (200 free verse poems, first published in Saint Louis, in serial form — the publisher had shown Masters The Greek Anthology, and its epigrams inspired Masters)
  • After Whitman, the most important American poet writing free verse (three descriptions, each useful: Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, Wikipedia)
  • Work was a runaway sensation, helped to propel free verse to the forefront
  • Moving from formal poetry into more experimental things
  • Everybody in a small town knows everyone’s business
  • Masters presumes that people in small towns know everything about everyone, recreates Lewistown into Spoon River
  • Decedents in a cemetery stand up and give a comment on their lives in turn
  • He works into the poems interactions between people
  • He made up names (first names from one cemetery and second from another)
  • People from Lewistown recognized who Masters was referring to — from Wikipedia:

Meanwhile, those who lived in the Spoon River region objected to their portrayal in the anthology, particularly as so many of the poems’ characters were based on real people. The book was banned from Lewistown schools and libraries until 1974.3 Even Masters’s mother, who sat on the Lewistown library board, voted for the ban.9 (Masters claimed “My mother disliked the anthology; my father adored it”.)4 Despite this, the anthology remained widely read in Lewistown; local historian Kelvin Sampson notes that “Every family in Lewistown probably had a sheet of paper or a notebook hidden away with their copy of the Anthology, saying who was who in town”.9

  • Demystification of small town America; the memory gilds everything, people forget the tragedies and betrayals
  • Small town life is dying
  • American painter (a Missourian) named Jesse Barnes has made a mint selling idealized images (“light painter”)
  • Masters talks about the smarminess and cruelty in small town life

Wick’s chosen poems for today’s class:

  • 26 – Knowlt Hoheimer (revisited) — refers to Owen, “Pro Patria”
  • 222 – Faith Matheny — about a mystical experience, a theophany, the “God-shine” seen in the faces of a friend
    • Mystics — Marguerite Perrette, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena; the great mystics were almost always associated with a monastery
    • John Dewey — Consummatory experiences
    • William Wordsworth — Spots of time (in which meaning is revealed)
    • James Joyce — Epiphanies (famous one in his novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: woman carrying a basket of laundry)
    • Fabian experiences — epiphanies at sunset
    • Natural moments can be epiphanic
    • Seeing the crescent moon cradling Venus in its arms makes you understand why all the Muslim nations have taken that symbol for their flags
  • 187 – Father Malloy — Masters is speaking to Malloy, buried in the Catholic Cemetery (not the City Cemetery, where Masters is visiting gravestones)
    • He was so remarkable that some of the German Lutherans considered converting to Catholicism
  • Another of Wick’s favorite poems from the Spoon River Anthology is 207 – Lucinda Matlock
    • Capitalization of Life in the last line puts the poem into a religious context (Life = God)
  • Wick has loved these poems since his boyhood

If students want to continue reading Spoon River Anthology poems, here’s the Index of Titles

Two leftover art songs (if time permits)

Song: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

(from Cymbeline)
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

How would you set Shakespeare’s text to music?

  1. Would you create a strophic setting?
  2. What aspects of THRMFT+ (musical style) would you employ?
    • Please take two minutes to jot down some thoughts.
    • If you’d like, please share your ideas with the class.

Musical setting by [Gerald Finzi] (1901-1956)

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
      When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
      Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
      The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
      The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
      A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
      Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
      Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): 20th century art song setting Hopkins’s Sonnet “Spring” — Phyllis Curtin, soprano; Ned Rorem, piano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W12_nnb8v98

Categories
Maryville

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Selected Music for Solo Piano

Composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Peter Henderson, piano • Maryville University Faculty Recital

Saturday, April 5, 2025 • 7:30 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium (Directions to the venue) • Free admission • List of Spring 2025 Maryville professional concerts

PROGRAM

  • Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19 (1899) (ca. 6.5 minutes)
  • Jeux d’eau, M. 30 (1901) (ca. 5.5 minutes)
  • Sonatine, M. 40 (1903) (ca. 11 minutes)
    1. Modéré
    2. Mouvement de menuet
    3. Animé
  • from Miroirs, M. 43 (1904-05)
    • 2. Oiseaux tristes (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, M. 58 (1909) (ca. 2 minutes)
  • Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55 (1908) (ca. 23 minutes)
    1. Ondine
    2. Le Gibet
    3. Scarbo
  • Prélude in A minor, M. 65 (1913) (ca. 2 minutes)
Categories
Uncategorized

Lecture / Recital on Maurice Ravel

Composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

for The Piano Teachers’ Round Table

Peter Henderson, piano

Friday, March 7, 2025 • 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Steinway Piano Gallery
12031 Dorsett Road
Maryland Heights, MO 63043

1. Lecture: Ravel’s Life, Times, and Relationship to the Piano

2. Musical Program (all works by Maurice Ravel, unless indicated), with interpolated remarks

  • Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19 (1899) (ca. 6.5 minutes)
  • BRIEF EXCERPT — Franz Liszt (1810-1856): from Années de Pélèrinage, Troisième année, op. 82 — 7. Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (The Fountains of the Villa d’Este) (1877) (ca. 30 seconds)
  • Jeux d’eau, M. 30 (1901) (ca. 5.5 minutes)
  • Sonatine, M. 40 (1903) (ca. 11 minutes)
    1. Modéré
    2. Mouvement de menuet
    3. Animé
  • BRIEF EXCERPT — Robert Schumann (1810-1856): from Waldszenen, op. 82 (1848-9) — 7. Vogel als Prophet (ca. 30 seconds)
  • from Miroirs, M. 43 (1904-05)
    1. Oiseaux tristes (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, M. 58 (1909) (ca. 2 minutes)
  • Prélude in A minor, M. 65 (1913) (ca. 2 minutes)

3. Group Discussion / Q & A

Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

List of All Maryville University Music Therapy & Music Program Concerts, Spring 2025

  • Concerts are listed below by type, then chronologically
  • Free admission to all performances!
  • All events will take place in the Maryville University Auditorium (directions available via this weblink).
  • Concerts will not be live-streamed, and no recordings will be available, so please consider enjoying these performances in person.
  • You are welcome to share this information with anyone who may be interested!

Listing by Concert Type

Music Therapy Senior Recitals, Spring 2025

  • Alexander Silver — Saturday, February 22, at 7:00 p.m.
  • Raelynn Wood — Friday, February 28, at 5:00 p.m.
  • Caitlyn Morgan — Friday, March 7, at 6:00 p.m.
  • Sophie Dueñez — Sunday, March 23, at 3:00 p.m.
  • Ella Becker — Friday, April 18, at 2:00 p.m.
  • Ethan Munro — Friday, April 18, at 4:00 p.m.
  • Tim Biby — Saturday, April 19, at 3:00 p.m.
  • Sylvia Adzoh — Wednesday, April 30, at 8:00 p.m.

Music at Maryville Series Concerts

Faculty Recitals

Music Program Performances

  • (Canceled) Student Recital 3 of 5 — Friday, February 7, at 10:00 a.m.
  • Student Recital 4 of 5 — Friday, March 21, at 10:00 a.m.
  • Performance Class 2 of 2 — Friday, March 21, at 11:00 a.m.
  • Student Recital 5 of 5 — Friday, April 25, at 10:00 a.m.
  • Spring Choral and Instrumental Ensembles Concert — Sunday, April 27, at 7:00 p.m.

Chronological Listing

February 2025

March 2025

  • Caitlyn Morgan’s Senior Recital — Friday, March 7, at 6:00 p.m.
  • Student Recital 4 of 5 — Friday, March 21, at 10:00 a.m.
  • Performance Class 2 of 2 — Friday, March 21, at 11:00 a.m.
  • Sophie Dueñez’s Senior Recital — Sunday, March 23, at 3:00 p.m.
  • Guest / Faculty Recital — Mark Sparks, flute • Peter Henderson, piano — Saturday, March 29, 3:00 p.m.

April 2025

  • Faculty Recital — Maurice Ravel: Selected Music for Solo Piano — Peter Henderson, piano — Saturday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m.
  • Music at Maryville Series 2024-25, Concert 4 of 4 — Scott Lyle, guitarist and composer — Sunday, April 13, at 3:00 p.m.
  • Ella Becker’s Senior Recital — Friday, April 18, at 2:00 p.m.
  • Ethan Munro’s Senior Recital — Friday, April 18, at 4:00 p.m.
  • Tim Biby’s Senior Recital — Saturday, April 19, at 3:00 p.m.
  • Student Recital 5 of 5 — Friday, April 25, at 10:00 a.m.
  • Spring Choral and Instrumental Ensembles Concert — Sunday, April 27, at 7:00 p.m.
  • Sylvia Adzoh’s Senior Recital — Wednesday, April 30, at 8:00 p.m.
Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

Music at Maryville Series 2024-2025, Concert 3 of 4

German Romantic Chamber Music for Cello, Clarinet, and Piano

Sunday, February 9, 2025 • 2:00 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium (Directions to the venue) • Free admission • List of Spring 2025 Maryville professional concerts

This recital will be our 2024-2025 Johannes Wich-Schwarz Chamber Music Concert. Please enjoy our pregame musical performance before the Super Bowl!

Artists

Yin Xiong, cellist
Yin Xiong, cellist
Nicolas del Grazia, clarinetist
Nicolas del Grazia, clarinetist

Musical Program

Brief Program Note

The nineteenth-century German composers Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms were strongly influenced by earlier musical traditions. Despite these creators’ orientation to the past, their works on the first half of this program could not be more fresh and energetic. Mendelssohn’s Second Cello Sonata is ebullient, and features a slow movement reflecting the composer’s fascination with J. S. Bach’s music. Brahms’s Second Cello Sonata is also joyful, but traces a more varied emotional landscape. Brahms’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano was one of several late masterpieces inspired by the Meiningen clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, whose sensitive playing spurred Brahms to end his first retirement from composition. Some years later, Carl Frühling produced a beautiful, lyrical trio showing the influence of Brahms’s autumnal, somber op. 114.

Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

Celebrating Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) — Two Concerts at Maryville University, September 30 & October 20, 2024

Gabriel Fauré — Portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1889.

Free admission to both events!

The concerts will not be live-streamed, and no recordings will be available, so please consider enjoying these performances in person. Feel free to share this information with anyone you know who may be interested.

Faculty Recital — Peter Henderson, piano

Monday, September 30, 2024 • 7:30 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium • Directions

Musical Program

Gabriel Fauré: Works for Solo Piano
  • Romance sans paroles in A-flat major, op. 17 no. 3 (ca. 1863) (ca. 3 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33 no. 2 (ca. 1881) (ca. 6 minutes)
  • Valse-caprice No. 1 in A major, op. 30 (1882) (ca. 7 minutes)
  • Impromptu No. 2 in F minor, op. 31 (1883) (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Impromptu No. 3 in A-flat major, op. 34 (1883) (ca. 5 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat major, op. 63 (1894) (ca. 9 minutes)
  • Deux pièces, op. 104 (1913)
    1. Nocturne No. 11 in F-sharp minor (ca. 5 minutes)
    2. Barcarolle No. 10 in A minor (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, op. 119 (1921) (ca. 7 minutes)

Brief Program Note

To observe the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death, Peter Henderson will perform a Maryville University Faculty Recital exploring works spanning the great French composer’s career. Renowned for his harmonic explorations and freedom, Fauré was also an inspired melodist, spinning long, flowing phrases set in a florid texture. His elegant, gorgeous piano music is poised between vigor and languor, raw emotion and restraint. This program features some of his most famous and extroverted early piano works, including the witty Valse-caprice No. 1 and two scintillating Impromptus, and ends with a few of Fauré’s sorrowful yet consolatory late pieces, including his intensely moving Nocturne No. 13.

Music at Maryville Series 2024-2025, Concert 2 of 4 — Musicians of the SLSO perform Gabriel Fauré’s Two Piano Quintets & Leo Marcus’s Three Schumann Stars

Sunday, October 20, 2024 • 3:00 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium • Directions

Artists

Musical Program

  • Gabriel Fauré: Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, op. 89 (1887-94, 1903-05) (ca. 30 minutes)
  • Robert Schumann (1810-1856): "Three Schumann Stars" [Untitled piece] No. 30 from Album for the Young, op. 68 (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Leo Marcus (b. 1945): Three Schumann Stars (Piano Quintet No. 3) (Midwest Premiere) (ca. 14 minutes)
  • Intermission (ca. 10 minutes)
  • Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor, op. 115 (1919-21) (ca. 32 minutes)

Brief Program Note

Fauré completed two quintets for piano and string quartet. A slow, painstaking composer, Fauré labored eighteen years on Piano Quintet No. 1, which was eventually premiered in 1906. One of his favorite works, its first two movements have an enchanting, ethereal, timeless quality. Fauré’s earthier Piano Quintet No. 2 was composed relatively quickly, across several months in 1920-21. Deemed a masterpiece since its premiere, the second quintet demonstrates “A deep and magnificent serenity of a great poet, wise and lyrical” (Louis Vuillemin). Between these two monumental late works of Fauré, we’ll present the Midwest premiere of Three Schumann Stars by Leo Marcus, an American composer and pianist, who here explores the ambiguity and sensitive beauty of a small piano piece from Robert Schumann’s Album for the Young, op. 68.

Categories
Maryville Music at Maryville SLSO

Music at Maryville Concert Series 2024-2025

And other professional concerts at Maryville University, Spring 2025

Music at Maryville Concert Series
Music at Maryville Concert Series
  • Free admission to all concerts (including the two faculty recitals listed below the Music at Maryville section)!
  • All events will take place in the Maryville University Auditorium (directions available via this weblink).
  • Concerts will not be live-streamed, and no recordings will be available, so please consider enjoying these performances in person.
  • Feel free to share this information with anyone you know who may be interested!
  • For a list of all Maryville Music Therapy Program concerts (including student performances), please click here.

Music at Maryville 2024-25, Concert 4 of 4 — Scott Lyle, Guitarist & Composer

Scott Lyle, guitarist & composer
Scott Lyle, guitarist & composer
  • Sunday, April 13, 2025 • 3:00 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium
  • Scott Lyle is the Director of the Music Program and Assistant Professor of Music at Maryville University in St. Louis. He teaches courses in music theory, aural training, audio engineering, and private lessons, offering students a comprehensive education in both traditional and modern musical disciplines. Scott earned his BM in Music Performance (classical guitar) summa cum laude from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and his MA in Composition from Washington University in Saint Louis. Passionate about academic scholarship and research, he also actively performs music from various eras, with a special affinity for avant garde and post-tonal contemporary works.
  • For this performance, Scott Lyle will be joined by guest performers Lisa Lillie, soprano, Alannah Coady, soprano, and Peter Henderson, piano.

Musical Program

To include these guitar works and arrangements, along with the world premiere of three songs by Scott Lyle:

  • John Dowland (1563-1626): “Come, Heavy Sleep,” from The Firste Booke of Songes (1597)
  • Francesca Caccini (1598-1640): “Per la più vaga e bella,” from La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (1625)
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): “Ach, ich fühl’s,” from Die Zauberflöte, K. 620 (1791) & “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro,” from Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492 (1786)
  • Robert Schumann (1810-1856): “Ich grolle nicht,” from Dichterliebe, op. 48 (1840)
  • Scott Lyle (b. 1970): 3 Eichendorff Lieder (2023)
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959): Etude No. 11 (Lent) from 12 Etudes (1928)
  • Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Nocturnal, after John Dowland, op. 70 (1964)
  • Swedish Folk Ballad (Anonymous): “Herr Mannelig”

Past 2024-2025 Concerts (listed in chronological order)

Music at Maryville Series 2024-2025 Concert 1 of 4 — Early Music Missouri presents Adoption, Adaption & Appropriation: Invasive Species in Mediterranean Musical Culture

Music at Maryville 2024-2025 Concert 1 — 14 September 2024Download

Faculty Recital — Peter Henderson, piano

Monday, September 30, 2024 • 7:30 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium • Directions

Musical Program

Gabriel Fauré: Works for Solo Piano
  • Romance sans paroles in A-flat major, op. 17 no. 3 (ca. 1863) (ca. 3 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33 no. 2 (ca. 1881) (ca. 6 minutes)
  • Valse-caprice No. 1 in A major, op. 30 (1882) (ca. 7 minutes)
  • Impromptu No. 2 in F minor, op. 31 (1883) (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Impromptu No. 3 in A-flat major, op. 34 (1883) (ca. 5 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 6 in D-flat major, op. 63 (1894) (ca. 9 minutes)
  • Deux pièces, op. 104 (1913)
    1. Nocturne No. 11 in F-sharp minor (ca. 5 minutes)
    2. Barcarolle No. 10 in A minor (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, op. 119 (1921) (ca. 7 minutes)

Brief Program Note

To observe the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death, Peter Henderson will perform a Maryville University Faculty Recital exploring works spanning the great French composer’s career. Renowned for his harmonic explorations and freedom, Fauré was also an inspired melodist, spinning long, flowing phrases set in a florid texture. His elegant, gorgeous piano music is poised between vigor and languor, raw emotion and restraint. This program features some of his most famous and extroverted early piano works, including the witty Valse-caprice No. 1 and two scintillating Impromptus, and ends with a few of Fauré’s sorrowful yet consolatory late pieces, including his intensely moving Nocturne No. 13.

Music at Maryville Concert Series 2024-25, Concert 2 of 4 — Musicians of the SLSO perform Gabriel Fauré’s Two Piano Quintets & Leo Marcus’s Three Schumann Stars

Sunday, October 20, 2024 • 3:00 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium • Directions

Artists

Musical Program

  • Gabriel Fauré: Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, op. 89 (1887-94, 1903-05) (ca. 30 minutes)
  • Robert Schumann (1810-1856): "Three Schumann Stars" [Untitled piece] No. 30 from Album for the Young, op. 68 (ca. 4 minutes)
  • Leo Marcus (b. 1945): Three Schumann Stars (Piano Quintet No. 3) (Missouri Premiere) (ca. 14 minutes)
  • Intermission (ca. 10 minutes)
  • Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor, op. 115 (1919-21) (ca. 32 minutes)

Brief Program Note

This program concludes Maryville University’s two-concert mini-series observing the centenary of Gabriel Fauré’s death. Fauré completed two quintets for piano and string quartet. A slow, painstaking composer, Fauré labored eighteen years on Piano Quintet No. 1, which was eventually premiered in 1906. One of his favorite works, its first two movements have an enchanting, ethereal, timeless quality. Fauré’s earthier Piano Quintet No. 2 was composed relatively quickly, across several months in 1920-21. Deemed a masterpiece since its premiere, the second quintet demonstrates “A deep and magnificent serenity of a great poet, wise and lyrical” (Louis Vuillemin). Between these two monumental late works of Fauré, we’ll present the Midwest premiere of Three Schumann Stars by Leo Marcus, an American composer and pianist, who here explores the ambiguity and sensitive beauty of a small piano piece from Robert Schumann’s Album for the Young, op. 68.

Music at Maryville 2024-25, Concert 3 of 4 (click here for additional program details) — Yin Xiong, Cello • with Nicolas del Grazia, Clarinet; and Peter Henderson, Piano

– Sunday, February 9, 2025 • 2:00 p.m. • Maryville University Auditorium
– This recital will be our 2024-2025 Johannes Wich-Schwarz Chamber Music Concert. Please enjoy our pregame musical performance before this evening’s Super Bowl!
– Program to include: Carl Frühling & Johannes Brahms’s Trios for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano

Nicolas del Grazia is Professor of Clarinet at Arkansas Tech University, and has appeared as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician throughout the United States and Europe. As an advocate for contemporary music, he has performed with a number of leading new music ensembles, including Chicago Pocket Opera Players, and Aguava New Music Studio, heralded as “brilliant” by the Washington Post and as “easily one of the most impressive new music ensembles in America today” by the International Record Review. He has worked with a number of the country’s leading composers, including David Felder, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, and MacArthur Genius prize winner John Eaton. As a scholar, Nicolas del Grazia has twice been the recipient of awards from The International Clarinet Association for his research, and he has published work on the hitherto unknown Pastorale & Rondo by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and the unfinished Quartet for Clarinet and Strings by Alexander Zemlinsky. He also enjoys composing, especially for the clarinet. The “pixelated humor” (AllMusic.com) of his Tarantella for clarinet and piano can be heard on Italian Vintages, on the Centaur label.

Spring 2025 Maryville University Faculty Recitals

Guest / Faculty Recital — Mark Sparks, flute • Peter Henderson, piano

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Selected Music for Solo Piano — Peter Henderson, Piano

Categories
SLSO

Artworks that inspired Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Studies

An hour before each of the SLSO’s mid-March 2024 “Romeo and Juliet” concerts, I will lead Pre-Concert Conversations. For these presentations (Saturday, 16 March, 6:30 p.m. & Sunday, 17 March, 2:00 p.m.), I’m honored that the renowned American composer Adam Schoenberg has agreed to join me onstage at the Stifel Theatre to discuss his 2012 orchestral work, Picture Studies, which the SLSO and The Big Muddy Dance Company will perform on these concerts.

Picture Studies is a “21st-century Pictures at an Exhibition” — like Modest Mussorgsky‘s 19th-century piano suite frequently performed in Maurice Ravel‘s splendid orchestration, Adam Schoenberg’s composition was inspired by several works of visual art. Picture Studies was commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Please find below links to the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s webpages for each of the artworks that provided the impetus for Adam Schoenberg’s musical responses:

1. Intro

Features the piano — a reference to Mussorgsky’s “Promenade” from Pictures at an Exhibition)

2. Three Pierrots

Albert Bloch (American, 1882 – 1961): Die drei Pierrots Nr. 2 (The Three Pierrots No. 2) (1911) — Oil on canvas

3. Repetition

Kurt Baasch (American, born Venezuela, 1891 – 1964): Repetition (1913) — Platinum print

4. Olive Orchard

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 – 1890): Olive Trees (1889) — Oil on canvas

5. Kandinsky

Vasily Kandinsky (French, b. Russia, 1866 – 1944): Rose with Gray (1924) — Oil on pulpboard

6. Calder’s World

Alexander Calder (American, 1898 – 1976): Untitled (1936) — Painted metal, wood, and wire

7. Miró

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893 – 1983): Women at Sunrise (1946) — Oil on canvas

8. Interlude (slightly varied reprise of the Intro)

9. Cliffs of Moher

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948): Atlantic Ocean, Cliffs of Moher (1989) — Triple-tone lithograph

10. Pigeons in Flight

Francis Blake (American, 1850 – 1913): Pigeons in Flight (1889) — Gelatin silver print