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The CHAMBER
CONCERTO (Moderato - Scherzo: Vivace - Andante
Cantando) was composed for the First Viola of San
Francisco Symphony, Ferenc Molnar, during the tenure of
Pierre Monteux as Music Director. The work was first
recorded by Columbia Records in a pairing with Aaron
Copland's Sextet for String Quartet, Clarinet and Piano.
Members of the original Juilliard String Quartet were
featured in both works.
Following its premiere in Berkeley, California, with
members of the San Francisco Symphony, it has been
performed with full string sections of symphony orchestra
in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas (USA) and in Europe by
radio orchestras in Brussels, Frankfort/Main and Norway.
Virgil Thomson called it a "meaty neo-classic
work" with a "dignified and cohesive
shape...every measure of it filled with music" (New
York Herald-Tribune).
The first movement opens with the soloist at once,
without introduction. Following a contrapuntal working
out, a bridge leads to lyrical second theme in which the
solo is accompanied by the other strings, pizzicato. A
brief cadenza and retransition lead to a modified
recapitulation and codetta.
There are four principal sections in the second movement
(scherzo). Following a rather brusque opening, the mood
changes to leisurely, gracious, and this, in turn, to an
even slower and sentimental sensibility. The opening
section returns and leads to a code based upon the two
middle sections.
The slow finale is a species of variation. Solo viola
first is accompanied by pizzicato chords. Variation I is
a quasi-chorale with the theme in the violins, solo viola
entering at mid-point. Later, the solo viola weaves a
line around the nonet. The final variation is like the
first but is slightly extended, and closes in an
ambitious tonality that suggests C (because of the bass)
or E (because of the repeated E-based chords).
Written for Viennese harpsichordist Yella Pessl, founder
of the New York Bach Circle while associated with
Columbia University, the TOCCATA FOR HARPSICHORD
OR PIANO, K. 25 (1948) was never performed by
her. The work was premiered by pianist Evelyn Garvey at
an all-Kohs concert at Ball State Teachers College,
Muncie, India, (1948). There have been other performances
at various American Music festivals, and by Lionel Salter
on the BBC in London in 1971.
The Washington Post's Music Critic Hume described the
Toccata as "a proud guide to the baroque...an
excursion that includes a gigue, a fugue, ornamental
trills and a rousing chorale finale."
The PASSACAGLIA FOR ORGAN AND STRINGS,
k. 11 (1946) was commissioned for a CBS radio network
broadcast by noted organist E. Power Biggs and members of
the Boston Symphony directed by William Strickland, from
the Germanic Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts and was performed again several times by
Mr. Biggs with the Fiedler Sinfonietta on CBS. It was
chosen for performance at a John F. Kennedy Memorial
Concert at Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, along with
works by Piston (Kohs' professor at Harvard), Poulenc and
Mozart (the Requiem Mass), in 1965.
The first of Kohs' compositions to employ serial
techniques, these are combined with tonal procedures so
as to make the work, in effect, in the key of E-flat.
Other unusual features include the embellishment of the
tones in the "row" by passing-tones, etc., and
the "theme" itself appears only after a few
introductory variations.
The SONATINA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO, k. 26
(1946-48) was written for Samuel Dushkin, Stravinsky's
recital companion when on tour, premiered by him in
Carnegie Recital Hall, 1948, and repeated by him in the
main hall at a League of Composers Concert in conjunction
with radio station WNYC's 1948 American Music Festival.
Among the many subsequent performances were those by
Louis and Annette Kaufman in Los Angeles (1959), Manuel
and Sara Compinsky, concertmaster of the Cincinnati
Symphony Sigmund Effron and his wife Babetta.
In three closely related movements, the first and last
are lively and suggestive of Milhaud's adopted Latinisms.
The slow middle movement is a Blues featuring major-minor
triad clashes, leading without interruption to the finale
in which there is a brief recall of the harsh Blues. The
ending is happy and optimistic.
A SHORT CONCERT FOR STRING QUARTET
(STRING QUARTET NO. 2). K. 28, composed during the last
months of 1948, while Kohs was completing his first year
as faculty member of the Music Conservatory of College of
the Pacific, Stockton, California, was written for (but
never performed by) the Walden Quartet, and dedicated to
John Garvey, its violist. The premiere performances were
given by the Paganini String Quartet, headed by Henri
Temianka at McMillin University, Provo, Utah, in 1953,
and again at the University of Michigan First
Contemporary Music Festival in 1954.
The quartet is regarded by me as an autobiography. If it
is unlike Strauss' Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life),
perhaps it may resemble Proust in his recollections.
The quartet begins with youthful vigor, continues with
various mid-life experiences; and closes with a finale of
remembered musical events such as one might expect from a
musician in later years, perhaps comparable to the ending
of Strauss' Don Juan-with a taste of bitterness.
The New York Times review of the initial CRI release, on
LP, described the Quartet as "more or less
neo-classic" in style, "most satisfactory in
its elegance and poise, in its ability to avoid the cute
or cheap when being playful, in its haunting final
section, with its shadowy overlay of musical quatations-a
dreamlike sequence that the composer has indicated might
be musically autobiographical."
—Ellis B. Kohs
ELLIS B. KOHS, a member of the USC
Theory-Composition Department, and for many years Chair,
now Professor Emeritus, had his early musical training at
the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Institute of
Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School in New
York, University of Chicago (M.A. 1938), and Harvard
University where he studied with Walter Piston
(composition) and Hugo Leichtentrirr and Willi Apel
(musicology). He has been on the faculties of the
University of Wisconsin (summer only), Stanford (summer
only), Kansas City Conservatory (summer only), Wesleyan
University (1946-48), College of the Pacific (1948-50),
and at USC from 1950 to present.
His three textbooks, which grew out of his teaching,
(Music Theory (Oxford University Press), Musical Form
(Houghton Mifflin), and Musical Composition (Scarecrow
Press), have been widely adopted. Some of his major works
were written in response to commissions from, inter alia,
Pierre Monteux, E. Power Biggs, the Fromm Foundation, and
USC (for whose centennial Kohs' Violin concerto was
composed and performed by the USC Symphony under Daniel
Lewis, with Eudice Shapiro, soloist). Major biographical
data are included in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of
Musicians, (Nicolas Slonimsky, ed., Schirmer Books, 1986)
and in American Composers, by David Ewen (Putnam, 1982).
EUDICE SHAPIRO, who plays the
"Wieniawski" Guarnarius violin, has won
plaudits as a soloist with such famed conductors as
Eugene Goossens, Fritz Reiner, William Steinberg, Josef
Rosenstock, Igor Stravinsky, Otto Klemperer, and Izler
Solomon. She has played chamber music concerts with
world-famous Artur Schnabel, Bruno Walter, Lili Kraus,
Rudolf Firkusny, Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Zara
Nelsova, and Leonard Pennario.
She enlarged an already active solo career by becoming
concertmaster-soloist in the Hollywood film and recording
industries, a position that was held for more than twenty
years. A staunch champion of contemporary music, she gave
the premiere performance of works by Copland, Foss,
Kirchner, Milhaud, and Stravinsky.
LIONEL SALTER an English conductor,
pianist, harpsichordist, and writer on music. He was
associated for many years with the BBC in London where he
was assistant conductor of the BBC Theater Orchestra and
from 1948 held various administrative positions with the
BBC, retiring in 1974.
MAIJA LEHTONEN, organ, and her husband
MANFRED GRŸSBECK, violinist and conductor, have
performed widely in their native country, Finland, where
Passacaglia for Organ and Strings was prepared and
recorded for CD. They tour, also, in Finland and
Scandivavia as well as other northern European countries.
Gr”sbeck is a member of the National Finnish Opera
Orchestra from which most of the string players of the ad
hoc group have been drawn.
FERENC MOLNAR served as Principal Viola
of the San Francisco Symphony for 19 years, and as a
member of the San Francisco String Quartet for ten years.
He taught at Stanford University, Princeton, Mills
College and San Francisco State University where he
founded the Chamber Music Center. He established summer
festivals at the Stern Grove in San Francisco's Golden
Gate Park, at the Masson Music festivals in Saratoga,
California, and in Switzerland and Italy.
The Chamber Concerto for Viola and String Quartet was
commissioned by Molnar and first performed by him at UC
Berkeley in 1949, and recorded by him with members of the
Juillard Quartet in the nonet, and recorded on Columbia's
First Modern American Music series, coupled with
Copland's Sextet, in 1953.
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