Thursday, April 10, 2025
7:30 PM Collins Recital Hall
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Program
Octet Op. 34 - Asger Lund Christiansen
in this house - Cristian Larios
INTERMISSION
and the swallow - Caroline Shaw/Fisher
Serenade Op. 43 - Emil Hartmann
I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my own ideas of home lately, every new move for a job or for graduate school has taken time to adjust to, and after so many moves, I have felt my sense of identity shift away from belonging to a specific place and towards belonging to a community, a profession, and a group of people who I care for deeply. Even still, each move leaves me missing the people that I have left. In a sense, this program began as an attempt for me to make sense of this constant change. The works by Danish composers Asger Lund Christiansen and Emil Hartmann are sonically very different, and offer an insight into the musical lineage of their home country. They are included in this program to pose the question: What does it mean to belong to a place, a people, and a tradition?
It is hard not to think about belonging right now; it seems like every time we turn on the news we are bombarded with images of our neighbors being torn away from the communities that they call home, students who are vilified by people they have never met just for showing up to school as themselves, and politicians who claim that America is a country that you have to either love or leave. The works by Cristian Larios and Caroline Shaw pose the question: Who owns the right to call a place their home?
The content of this program is heavy, but so is the import of our work as artists in the world today. We hope that the music you hear tonight will provoke new perspectives and lasting change.
Serenade Op. 43 (c. 1880)
Emil Hartmann (1836-1898)
Emil Hartmann was a Romantic composer of the Danish Golden Age. Born in Copenhagen in 1836, Emil was the son of composers Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann and Emma Hartmann, and the fourth generation of composers of the Hartmann family. Emil began studying piano and composition at a young age, and lived much of his early life in the musical shadow of his parents, and later his brother-in-law Niels Gade. It was perhaps to escape their shadow that he moved to Leipzig in 1859 to continue his studies on a scholarship. He returned to Copenhagen in 1961 to serve as a church organist, but continued to travel abroad annually for performances of his works, which were more popular in other countries than they were in his native country of Denmark.
Hartmann’s musical style is best described as a blending of the Danish nationalist school that his father and brother-in-law were well known for, as well as the German school associated with Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms. Many of his works invoke Scandinavian subjects, such as his Overture to Ibsen’s Hærmændene paa Helgeland [The Vikings at Helgeland] or his symphonic poem Hakon Jarl. He also created two sets of Skandinavisk folkemusik that became widely popular both at home and abroad.
Hartmann’s catalogue of works includes seven symphonies as well as many pieces for orchestra, chamber ensembles, art songs, opera, and piano. He experienced great success as a composer during his lifetime, due in part to the popularity of nationalist music in Europe in the mid-1800s, exemplified by other compositions such as Brahms’ Hungarian Dances and Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. Unlike many of his fellow nationalist contemporaries (particularly those in Germany in the coming decades), Hartmann vocally opposed the rampant anti-semetic attitudes of the time, which could explain why his music quickly fell out of fashion in the early 20th century.
Serenade Op. 43 was written at an unknown date in the late 1880s, and is Hartmann's only known work for winds. The work is mostly unmentioned in biographical accounts of the composer, so scholarship on the piece is quite limited. The first recorded performance of the work occurred in March, 1891 by Paul Taffanel’s Société de Musique de Chambre pour Instruments à Vent, where it was met with poor reception from reviewers. Despite the initial negative reviews, Hartmann’s Serenade Op. 43 remains a frequently-performed piece in the chamber wind repertoire, with many recent performances made possible by a new edition created by Joshua Kearney in 2016.
Octet Op. 34 (1992)
Asger Lund Christiansen (1927-1998)
Asger Lund Christiansen is regarded by many as the greatest Danish cellist of his generation. As the cellist of the Copenhagen String Quartet from 1957-1995, he performed nationally and internationally, and appeared on over forty albums alongside colleagues Tutter Givskov, Mogens Ludolph, and Mogens Brunn. In 1965, he was offered a spot on the teaching faculty at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he served until his retirement in 1987. Christiansen also composed a large catalogue of works for chamber and orchestral music. He composed five works for recorder and chamber ensemble which were performed by recorder virtuoso Michala Petri, as well as a flute sonata which was premiered by Jean-Pierre Rampal.
Octet Op. 34 was commissioned by the Danish Wind Octet in 1992 and was included on their 1994 album Danish Wind Octets. Despite the popularity of the album, the work remained unpublished until Dustin Barr created a new edition for his dissertation recital at the University of Michigan in 2015. The Octet had not been performed again since the premiere, and the score and parts had to be sent directly from the Danish Wind Octet in order to create the new edition. To this day, the work remains relatively unknown with only a handful of documented performances and only one professional recording.
Christiansen’s Octet Op. 34 is composed in his distinctively neo-classical style. The three movements each adhere closely to traditional forms of Sonata, Leid, and Rondo, woven together by a hazy harmonic language that drifts frequently from one key center to another. The opening and closing movements feature more open harmonic textures, both themes in the first movement are based on whole tone sets, while the primary theme of the third movement is based on leaps of a perfect fourth. The second movement is the most harmonically dense, featuring a first theme that is based off of the tone set [0147] which is also shared with a diminished triad. The second theme of this movement is a chromatically winding and highly dissonant march macabre.
Christiansen’s rejection of conventional tonality is consistent with the practices of many composers across Europe and the United States during the Twentieth-Century as they tried to distance themselves from the Nazi Party’s embrace of late-romanticism. We can see this evolution in studying the symphonies of Danish composer Carl Nielsen, who had only finished teaching at the Royal Danish Academy of Music several years prior to the start of Christiansen’s studies there. Both Nielsen and Christiansen’s approach to harmony can be described by what Robert Simpson called “Progressive Tonality”.
Despite this progressive approach to harmony that permeates so much of Octet Op. 34, Christiansen writes that the music reflects his own inspiration by French composers like Francis Poulenc and Albert Roussel and their elegant treatment of the woodwind octet.
In This House (2017)
Cristian Larios (b. 1996)
Cristian Larios is a composer, conductor, and educator of Joliet, IL. He currently serves as choir director at Plainfield North High School. He studied composition and education at Illinois State University, and is pursuing a Masters of Music Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Through his music, he hopes to empower performers and provide listeners with a new perspective on the human experience.
About the piece, Larios writes:
“In 2017 I was able to work with The Resurrection Project in Chicago, a community based organization. They provide a variety of services to the Pilsen community , a primarily Latinx neighborhood, including education and resources for immigrants. Throughout my time with TRP, I worked heavily with community navigators who traveled throughout Chicago to spread information regarding immigration.
in this house is for those affected by the current rhetoric surrounding immigration, especially those in the latine community. So often we are degraded by politicians and attacked verbally and physically. Not the mention the mistreatment from ICE officials and facilities. The piece aims to highlight the internal trauma and constant fear undocumented immigrants face daily. in this house also serves as a reminder, that undocumented immigrants are human people who deserve grace and love. Refugees and immigrants leave their countries for various reasons, usually out of their control.”
If you are detained by ICE:
1) Remain Silent
2) You have the right to not sign anything
3) You have the right to call an attorney or emergency contact
4) You have the right to call your consulate
5) You have the right to find out your Alien Number
Todos tenemos estos derechos
If ICE comes to your home, do not open the door
You are NOT required to open the door unless ICE has a warrant signed by a judge
Ask them to show you the warrant – Slide it under your door or hold it up to the window
IF THEY TRY TO FORCE THE DOOR OPEN Write down the agents’ badge numbers and vehicles’ license plate numbers
– from Know and Exercise Your Rights presentation by Chicago Legal Protection Fund Community Navigator Fund
——————--
this house was built dreams
and fears and hope and the unknown
this house was built on tradition and love and food
in this house we harbor “druglords, rapist, illegals, and aliens”
in this house we harbor tias, primos, and hermanas
in this house we harbor innovators, workers, and dreamers
dios te bendiga
-Cristian Larios
and the swallow (2017)
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) arranged by Danielle Fisher
Caroline Shaw is perhaps one of the most sought-after vocal composers of her generation. Her piece Partita for Eight Voices won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2013, making her the youngest composer to ever receive the award. She has received two Grammy Awards for her works Narrow Sea (2022) and Rectangles and Circumference (2025). She holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in violin performance from Rice University and Yale University, and a PHD in composition from Princeton University. She performs as a violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and as a vocalist with Roomful of Teeth.
and the swallow was written as a musical response to the Syrian Refugee crisis, and features text adapted from Psalm 84. It was originally performed by the Netherlands Chamber Choir in November, 2017, and was recently adapted for chamber winds by Danielle Fisher.
About the piece, Shaw writes:
‘There’s a yearning for home that feels very relevant today. The second verse is ‘the sparrow found a house and swallow her nest where she may place her young’ -- a beautiful image of a bird trying to keep her children safe – people trying to keep their family safe.”
How lovely is your dwelling place,
Lord Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young--
a place near your altar,
Lord Almighty, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
- Psalm 84
Thank you to the following performers for their gifts of time and dedication on this important and challenging music:
Instrumentalists: Isla Coronado, Sydney Kostelac, Tom Lacy, Amanda Givens, Presley Hansen, Tiffany Coolidge, Stephen Dubetz, Brian Jaap, Annabelle Melus, Luke Larson, Anton Wachmann, Thomas Holten
Vocalists: Mary Brandstein, Emma Hatch, Monica Bertrand, Kuo-Chen Yu, Elijah Schuh, Emmit Thom, Eric Luebke, Sam Speer
Program notes written by R. Louis Vajda