David Jolley has been acclaimed as one of his generation's most notable horn players. The New York Times described him as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician of "remarkable virtuosity," and Gramophone Magazine has hailed him as "a soloist second to none."
A frequent soloist with orchestra, Mr. Jolley recently premiered Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Concerto for Horn and String orchestra with the Rochester Philharmonic and performed it in Carnegie Hall with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Other recent orchestral engagements include the Detroit Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, London Ontario Symphony of Canada, Israel Sinfonietta and Kamerata Chamber Orchestra of Athens.
His recital appearances throughout the United States include performances at New York's 92nd Street "Y" and Alice Tully Hall. He is a frequent guest artist with the Musicians from Marlboro, Guarneri String Quartet, Beaux Arts Trio, Kalichstein-Larado-Robinson Trio and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Other recent collaborations include performances with Andre Watts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds and with Murray Perahia at the 92nd Street "Y" in the Beethoven Piano and Winds Quintet.
Mr. Jolley is a member of Windscape, the Areopagitica Brass Trio (with Chris Gekker, trumpet, and David Taylor, trombone), and Trio Solaris (with Daniel Phillips, violin, and Samuel Sanders, piano). He has performed at summer festivals such as Dartington Hall in England, Kuhmo and Mustasaari in Finland, Madeira Bach in Portugal, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, Marlboro, Bravo! (Colorado), Chamber Music Northwest and the Aspen Festival.
The first hornist ever to be chosen for the Affiliate Artist Residency Program, David Jolley has also won the Concert Artists Guild Award, the Heldenleben International Horn Competition, a 1982 Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund Grant and a prestigious Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mr. Jolley's numerous recordings include over two dozen CD's with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, including Mozart Concerti, for Deutsche Grammophon, and a series of solo albums Adagio and Allegro, Sonatas and Trios of Alec Wilder and Villanelle for the Arabesque label. His recording of the Strauss Concerti with the Israeli Sinfonietta was released by Arabesque in the Fall 1999.
Mr. Jolley received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Juilliard School. A resident of New York, he currently serves on the faculties of the Manhatten School of Music, Mannes College of Music, Hartt School of Music and Queens College-CUNY.
Taras Bulba
The careers of Janácek and his contemporaries Mahler and Sibelius straddle the close of the Romantic era and the beginnings of modernism. All three drew upon both these schools to create fascinating hybrid styles. Janácek's music is very much his own: quirky, mercurial, bursting with inventiveness and sharp contrasts.
Pressed to follow family tradition and become a schoolteacher, his love of music could not be denied. His early works display the powerful influences of Dvorák (whom he came to know personally) and Wagner. Research into the earthy, spontaneous folk music of his native country proved a decisive influence on the already deeply patriotic composer. Despite long years of sustained effort, he gained success only gradually. His final period saw a tremendous resurgence in creativity, brought about in large measure by a passionate (albeit platonic) relationship with a much younger woman. It also brought him the greatest acclaim of his career.
Janácek's finest works are without doubt his nine operas, compelling works marked by powerful emotions and melodies patterned on the rhythms of speech. Only Jenufa (Jealousy, 1904), however, has won lasting international success. Other major scores include two string quartets, numerous choral works, and the spectacular Glagolitic Mass for chorus and orchestra. He composed a handful of symphonic poems in the mold of Liszt and Smetana, but his most significant orchestral works are the spectacular, gritty Sinfonietta (1926), and the colorful, vividly dramatic three-movement rhapsody, Taras Bulba.
Composed during the First World War (although he had been considering the subject for as long as a decade before setting to work), Taras Bulba is Janácek's first large-scale concert work. Its literary inspiration came from Russian author Nikolai Gogol's novel chronicling a 16th-century Ukrainian Cossack chieftain's battle against his country's Polish oppressors. Bulba's life is also the subject of a 1962 motion picture starring Yul Brynner. Janácek intended his rhapsody as a salute to the indomitable spirit of the Russian people, and by extension as an expression of his countrymen's wish for a Czech state which would at long last be free from domination---in their case from the suffocating grip of the Austrian Habsburg empire. As the war unfolded, this seemed an ever-greater likelihood. In the end he dedicated the score to the Czech armed forces, because, as he put it, "they do not defend merely our earthly goods, but also our whole intellectual world."
The composer selected three episodes from Gogol's story to portray---with typical grittiness, color and fire---in the movements of the rhapsody. The sections are musically interrelated through recurrence and transformation of themes. The first movement relates the results of the love affair between Taras Bulba's younger son Andrij and the daughter of the enemy leader. It opens with a poignant description of Andrij's conflicted emotions, then continues with his search for his beloved and a passionate love scene between them. His father and his fearsome troops draw near; at first Andrij fights against his own people, but then bows his head and allows Taras Bulba to slay him as just punishment for his shameful deeds. In the second movement, Bulba's older son Ostap, overcome by the horror of his brother's death, has been captured by the Poles and led off to Warsaw. His enemies dance a savage mazurka of triumph. Bulba mingles with the crowd of spectators gathered to witness Ostap's execution. He makes himself known to his son, thus giving him comfort before he dies. The Cossack chief then makes his escape. But in the course of the third movement he too is captured and subjected to torture. Finally he is burnt at the stake, but not before he courageously prophesies the eventual triumph of his people. The final section of the music is suitably visionary and grandiose, complete with swelling organ and tolling bells.
Villanelle for Horn and Orchestra
A gifted but highly self-critical composer, Dukas allowed only a small number of his works to be published. They include an opera, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, a symphony, songs, chamber music and piano pieces. He devoted much of his energies to teaching, serving as instructor to many of the most significant members of the succeeding generation of French composers, including Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Duruflé. His music combines classical, romantic and impressionist elements into a rich and sturdy style.
He composed the Villanelle in 1906 as a test-piece for the Paris Conservatoire. The name derives from the Italian word villanella, a light-hearted, unaccompanied rustic part-song popular during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Dukas' piece has something of that same open-air atmosphere, both contented and zestful. The solo horn part is extremely demanding. Dukas' original scoring was for horn and piano; this orchestral setting was prepared by Donald Miller.
Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, K. 417
Mozart's horn concertos resulted from his friendship with performer Joseph (Ignaz) Leutgeb, whom he had known since the time they were both members of the court orchestra in Salzburg. Like Mozart, he had toured as a soloist before settling in Vienna. Unable to make a living through his playing alone, he opened a tiny cheese shop with money borrowed from Mozart's father. His retail income allowed him to continue making solo appearances. He was slow in paying back the loan, however, a situation from which Mozart was obliged to rescue him! Mozart and Leutgeb must have been exceptionally close, and surely shared a pointed sense of humor, since the manuscript scores of the horn concertos are laced with affectionate insults aimed at the soloist. Once Mozart completed the piece known as Concerto No. 2, he inscribing the manuscript, "W. A. Mozart took pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox and fool in Vienna on 27 May 1783." Despite the leisurely gentility of its character, the opening movement demands from the soloist both effortless breath control and considerable agility. The need for a smooth, singing line continues in the ensuing, warm and beautiful slow movement. With its proudly echoing fanfares, the spirited concluding rondo inevitably (and pleasurably) recalls the horn's longstanding association with the hunt.
Suite from Romeo and Juliet
The appeal of William Shakespeare's plays cuts across every consideration of time and place. The poignant story of the star-crossed lovers of old Verona, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, offspring of two families whose blood feud dooms the couple's love to a tragic end, has cast a powerful spell of inspiration on scores of composers from many lands. In 1934, the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Company (later renamed the Kirov) commissioned Prokofiev to compose a ballet based on Romeo and Juliet. He and the company's director Sergei Radlov spent months working on the scenario. Meanwhile a newly-installed company management came to have doubts about the viability of setting Shakespeare as a ballet (and about Radlov's avant garde taste), so they withdrew from the project. Undaunted, Prokofiev struck a deal to have it staged by Moscow's Bolshoi Theater. He then proceeded to complete his score, which he did in five months' worth of concentrated, inspired effort ending in September, 1935. Alas, history repeated itself and the Bolshoi decided to pass on it, too.
Prokofiev made changes which he hoped would address the Bolshoi dancers' concern that the music was too complex. In order to have his music heard (and hopefully to create interest in having the full ballet performed), he drew upon it for a set of 10 piano transcriptions and two orchestral suites (a third followed in 1947). Where necessary, he provided the movements with self-contained concert endings. They were performed to warm receptions. Audiences---not to mention the composer---wondered when they would have the opportunity to see and hear the score as Prokofiev intended it. These RPO performances will present a selection of movements drawn from all three suites, arranged in their order of appearance in the complete ballet. Romeo and Juliet finally saw the stage in December, 1938. The premiere took place neither in Moscow nor Leningrad, but in Brno, Czechoslovakia, the resident company having agreed to venture where their Soviet counterparts had not dared. That production was successful enough. More than a year passed before the appearance of the first staging to do the score justice, once the Kirov agreed to mount the first production within the Soviet Union.
Their star choreographer, Leonid Lavrovsky visited Prokofiev and sat listening as the composer played through the entire score at the piano. He liked what he heard immensely, but suggested changes. Prokofiev replied haughtily, "I have written the exact amount of music that is necessary. And I am not going to do anything more. It is done. The piece is ready. If you want to produce it there it is---if not---then not." Through diplomacy and the simple passage of time, Lavrovsky persuaded Prokofiev to make most of the alterations he wanted. Despite many further complications - Prokofiev's testy attitude at rehearsals, for one---the production scored an unqualified triumph at its debut on January 11, 1940. The music was instantly hailed as a masterpiece; many consider it Prokofiev's finest, most comprehensive work.
It continues to thrive, both in the theater and the concert hall. There are numerous reasons for its lofty reputation---its beauty, variety and humor to begin with. The sharply drawn characterizations are another. Juliet grows before our eyes and ears from a naïve young woman to a figure of genuine tragic stature. By limiting his use of Italianite instrumental color, Prokofiev left his music free to achieve recognition as a truly international and timeless work of art. Particular highlights include the concluding scenes of the first and second acts: one a rapturous pas de deux for the lover's balcony scene; the other, The Death of Tybalt, a shattering crescendo of dramatic tension as Romeo kills Juliet's brother in revenge for Tybalt's murder of Romeo's friend Mercutio. The whole of Act Three is the most gentle and touching music Prokofiev ever wrote.
This series is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Williams Family Foundation, by a continuing subscription from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, by a grant from the Wyckoff Family Foundation, and by the friends of Geneva Concerts. For additional information contact info@genevaconcerts.org. 
