Symphonic Wind Ensemble Program Notes

04/26/2025, 7:30 PM, Wright Auditorium

William Staub, conductor

Georgia Kate Shelton, graduate conductor

Kwan Yi, piano

Apollo Unleashed from Symphony No. 2 (2004)

Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)

“Apollo Unleashed,” is perhaps the most wide-ranging movement of the symphony, and certainly the most difficult to convey in words. On the one hand, the image of Apollo, the powerful ancient god of the sun, inspired not only the movement’s title, but also its blazing energy. Bright sonorities, fast tempos, and galloping rhythms combine to give a sense of urgency that one often expects from a symphonic finale. On the other hand, its boisterous nature is also tempered and enriched by another, more sublime force, Bach’s Chorale BWV 433 (Wer Gott vertraut, hat wohl gebaut). This chorale – a favorite of the dedicatee (James E. Croft), and one he himself arranged for chorus and band – serves as a kind of spiritual anchor, giving a soul to the gregarious foreground events. The chorale is in ternary form (ABA’). In the first half of the movement, the chorale’s A and B sections are stated nobly underneath faster paced music, while the final A section is saved for the climactic ending, sounding against a flurry of 16th notes.

– Program Note from score

Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1924)

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

1. Largo – Allegro
2. Largo
3. Allegro

At the urging of conductor Serge Koussevitsky, Igor Stravinsky wrote his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments while in Paris in 1924, just four years after his famous Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Stravinsky had decided to write a piano concerto for one of Koussevitsky’s Paris concerts after he had worked on writing a piano adaptation of Three Movements from Petrushka (1921) for Artur Rubenstein and after completing the score of Les Noces (1922/23) which includes four pianos! Koussevitsky wanted him to write for the piano to encourage his performance career, and it had an immense impact on Stravinsky who began writing several works for piano, including Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1929), Piano Sonata (1924), Serenade in A (1925), that he would perform repeatedly. In fact, he kept the performing rights to his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments to himself for several years, in part as a source of income but additionally as he wanted to make sure the percussive approach in the work would not be ruined by pianists that played in a more “Romantic” fashion. Like other works for piano, Stravinsky approached the piano as a percussion instrument, and he favored writing for wind instruments to mark a change from the sound of the Romantic orchestra. Stravinsky had been featuring the winds in works such as Mavra, Octet, and Symphonies of Wind Instruments that predated his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Additionally, his piano style was influenced by adopting the ragtime rhythms from America that had become quite popular in France in the 1920s. Stravinsky was so taken by ragtime rhythms that he had already included them within his L’Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier’s Tale), his Ragtime for Eleven Instruments (1918), and his Piano-Rag-Music (1919). We hear his love of ragtime rhythms included within this Concerto as well. Stravinsky not only had to finish his composition for the premiere, but he had to improve his piano technique along the way. To do this, Stravinsky stated that he would play Czerny etudes daily to improve his technique, and we hear the Czerny influence within the piano accompaniment and solos. To further prepare for the premiere, Stravinsky studied private piano lessons with Isidore Phillip, a noted piano pedagogue who may have additionally influenced the composer with her own published set of piano technique exercises.

Stravinsky dedicated his Concerto to Mme. Natalie Koussevitsky, and he played its premiere with Koussevitsky conducting at the Opera of Paris on 22 May 1924. The work was an immediate success, and he played the work over 40 times in performances throughout Europe. The British premiere was recorded for radio broadcast on 19 June 1927 with the Wireless Symphony Orchestra (which would become the BBC Symphony Orchestra) conducted by Stravinsky’s friend Edward Clark. Additionally, Stravinsky recorded the first movement of the Concerto in New York in 1925 for the Aeolian Company’s Duo-Art reproducing piano, on roll no. 528. The work was first published in 1924 by Edition Russe de Musique, and later it was revised and published by Boosey and Hawkes.

For the Concerto’s wind ensemble, Stravinsky modeled it upon the standard wind section of a full orchestra: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons (contrabassoon doubling), 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba–and additionally added three double basses and timpani. He felt that the winds and the percussive piano writing best suited the crisp articulation and counterpoint that he wanted to achieve in the work, and even Stravinsky’s notated fingerings for the piano reveal a more staccato approach to playing. As Charles Joseph mentions in his discussion of the work in his book Stravinsky and the Piano, Stravinsky’s Concerto is often cited under the term “pandiatonicism” in the Harvard Dictionary of Music as an example of a work that uses a diatonic language with the absence of functional harmony; it creates a tonal stasis that is activated through counterpoint, rhythm, and chordal spacing. In fact, Joseph states that Stravinsky referred to the work as his “Concerto en La” as he often asserts A as a tonal center in the first movement–leading to it with careful voice leading and prolongation. As mentioned by Donald Traut in his book on this work, Stravinsky often complicates what would be a functional diatonic progression by delaying the resolution of the leading tone in one voice as the harmony has moved to tonic or bringing in the tonic pitch early against the leading tone harmony, thereby offsetting the conventional voice leading and creating a tension through the delay in expected voice leading resolution.

The first of the Concerto’s three movements begins with a slow introductory passage (marked Largo) that features dotted rhythms in a chorale-like setting for the winds that recalls the characteristics of a French overture opening and introduces the tension of a tonic that shifts constantly between major and minor. As the section draws to a close, the music breaks off and with the sudden arrival of the piano introducing a faster toccata-like theme in triple meter that has obvious affinities to the contrapuntal style of Bach and Scarlatti. Charles Joseph remarks that the toccata has “stylistic references to baroque conventions, rag rhythms, and jazz-like cadenzas.” We also begin to hear this “split third” triad that he accentuates in the piano voicings. The orchestra mimics, adapts, and develops material derived from the piano toccata-like theme. The contrast between the percussive piano and the wind instruments invigorates the motion and delights the listener. Stravinsky employs the conventions of classical concerto form with the alternation of soloist and ensemble and sonata form organization that includes a piano cadenza in both the exposition and recapitulation. Joseph remarks that Stravinsky brings back the exposition material in the recapitulation nearly unchanged. Within the piano cadenzas, Stravinsky achieves the effect of constant syncopation by keeping the accented off-beats alive through shifting accents and meter changes that include sudden insertions of 3/16 measures between the regular 3/8 meter. At the close of the movement, Stravinsky brings back the opening Largo introduction with the piano accompanying the wind chorale with arpeggios in the right hand against alternating A and G# octaves in the left hand before finally leading to sharply punctuated A major chord in the final measure.

The second movement (marked Largo) offers an immediate change of mood from the first movement. In ternary form, this movement opens with the piano playing a simple scalar melody with chordal accompaniment that emphasizes C. There are two cadenzas for the piano in which the right hand imitates the left hand’s gesture at a short delay, so the listener hears a series of unsynchronized waves of arpeggios that frequently overlap. Following the first piano cadenza, there is a Più mosso section that harkens back to the toccata theme of the first movement. Several authors recall that Stravinsky admitted to having performance problems at times in performing the Concerto; surprisingly, Stravinsky mentions that after finishing the first movement in one performance he forgot how the second movement began, and Koussevitsky sang a few measures to him which was enough to jog his memory and allow him to proceed without hesitation.

How unique to start a movement with the sound of a cadence? That is what Stravinsky does at in the initial measures of his third movement, as his opening gesture forcefully announces a perfect authentic cadence in C before racing away toward an authentic cadence in its dominant. Rapid and sudden shifts in this joyous music demonstrate Stravinsky’s interest in counterpoint and desire to lead us to new surprising tonal areas in this work. He will often start a pattern, but then he adds insertions that disrupt any sense of regularity. At one point in this rondo-form third movement, the pianist plays a descending scale that changes its grouping from 3 to 2 and suggests an upcoming tempo change but instead turns back and announces a previous theme. At one point, the orchestra repeats the theme the piano has played in rhythmic augmentation as the piano accompanies with further passagework. The music races forward with virtuoso scales and arpeggios in the piano until a new section marked Agitato begins. At this point, balance and order is thrown to the wind as the music becomes almost frantic with rapid changes of meter and extended flourishes. A coda immediately follows which references the Lento introduction of the first movement and brings a sense of stability again. After a brief pause, Stravinsky brings the movement to a close; the piano makes a final marcato reference to the two-part theme of the first movement as the orchestra accompanies with chords on the offbeats until the final measures where a 5/8 measure surprises us with a downbeat ending.

Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments offers the listener and exciting opportunity to hear Stravinsky’s creative and imaginative voice at the beginning of his Neoclassical period in a work that reveals the same drive and energy that captivated us in his early ballets now caste in a colorful world for winds and piano that reimagines classical balance and counterpoint infused with syncopated rag-time rhythms.

Program note by ECU Professor Dr. Mark Richardson

Overture “The Barber of Seville” (1816)

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) arr. Wenzel Sedlak

The opera “The Barber of Seville” was first performed in the Teatro Argentina in Rome on February 20, 1816. It opened in Vienna on September 28, 1819. Wenzel Sedlak was recorded as paid for the transcription of the second half of the opera by the Viennese Hofmusikkapelle in June of 1822. No record exists of the payment of the first half.

Wenzel Sedlak was born in Jesborzitz on August 4, 1776 and died on November 20, 1851 probably in Vienna. He is first mentioned in around 1805 as a clarinettist in the employ of Prince Auersperg and in 1808 as a member of the Harmonie (wind band) of Prince Liechtenstein. In 1821 he is noted as belonging to the first Viennese wind quintet organized by Johann Sedlatzek, a flautist.

The customary size of the Harmonie in the Austrian Empire in the early 1800’s was a nonet consisting of pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, bassoons, and a contrabassoon. It is for this Harmonie that Sedlak made his early transcriptions. Later, one or two trumpets and even a trombone were added to the Harmonie. Sedlak’s later transcriptions were for this ensemble of eleven or twelve. Sedlak is credited with making transcriptions of operas by Beethoven, Auber, Bellini, Donizetti, Herold, Mercadante, Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Weber.

Sedlak’s original transcription of “The Barber of Seville” encompassed numerous movements from the opera. Only the overture is presented here. The original manuscript appears in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. The manuscript is unreliable and required numerous corrections indicated in the edited copy with brackets [] or a slash slur. Sedlak changed the original key from E major to C major. Dynamic shadings have been added to render the edited copy ready for performance. Some harmonies in the transcription differ from the original.

Sedlak scored his transcription for two oboes, two clarinets (each C and B flat), two horns (each C and E flat), two bassoons, contrabassoon, and two trumpets (each C and E flat). The edited copy is scored for two oboes, two clarinets in B flat, two horns in F, two bassoons, contrabassoon, and two trumpets in B flat.

– Program Note from the score

Divertimento for Winds and Percussion (1994)

Roger Cichy (b. 1956)

1. Exaltation
2. Follies
3. Remembrance
4. Salutation

The composer writes:

Divertimento for Winds and Percussion was written as a tribute to three American composers who shared a common interest: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin were each intrigued with jazz, and each incorporated elements of the idiom into his own music. Roger Cichy became interested in Bernstein’s writings on the influence of African-American music and the effects of jazz on the works of Copland and Gershwin. He has used the musical notes C (Copland), B (Bernstein) and G (Gershwin) to form the nucleus for much of the thematic and harmonic material in Divertimento. These three notes are dominant in three of the work’s four movements.

The jazz idiom transfers well to Divertimento, including the use of syncopated rhythms and the flatted third, fifth and seventh intervals of the blues scale. Written meters are often altered by grouping notes in a manner that displaces the normal agogic accents. (Typical is the eighth note grouping of 3+3+2 in a 4/4 measure.) The interval of the seventh is derived from the C to B relationship, a prominent unifying element. “Remembrance,” the third movement, strays from the C, B, G note combinations, but continues the use of idiomatic blues elements to form a jazz ballad, a lovely contrast to the other movements.

The original form of the work, Divertimento for Strings, Winds, and Percussion, was commissioned by the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra and premiered in September 1993. Later transcribed and renamed by the composer, Divertimento was premiered by the Iowa State University Band at the College Band Directors North Central Convention in Omaha, Nebraska, in February 1994.

– Program Note by the composer

Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral from “Lohengrin” (1848)

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) arr. Lucien Cailliet

“Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral,” with its medieval color and pageantry, prefaces her betrothal to Lohengrin, mystic Knight of the Holy Grail, who comes to deliver the people of Brabant (Antwerp) from the Hungarian invaders.

In the operatic presentation, a large double chorus (representing the people of Antwerp) adds its song of solemn praise to that of the orchestra. It is in this music, mystic yet powerful, that we find Wagner striking out with those new and intense musical thoughts that were to culminate in Tristan, The Ring, and Parsifal. Not quite emancipated from the musical speech of his operatic contemporaries, one finds in the Lohengrin score those unmistakable flights into musico-dramatic magnificence transcending all that preceded it in idiom and musical adventure.

In this transcription of “Elsa’s Procession” for symphony band, Lucien Cailliet, with his great talent for instrumentation, has succeeded in building into the instrumental framework of the modern band a true and delicate representation of all that Wagner so eloquently describes with orchestra chorus.

In the present score, the instrumental solo voices of the original score are paralleled, the choral voices deftly absorbed in the rich instrumental texture and all the luxuriant Wagnerian color re-created in terms of the instrumentation for the band.

– Program Note from the score

Soloist Bio

Pianist Kwan Yi has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kimmel Center, Kennedy Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Mann Performing Arts Center, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Library of Congress, Metropolitan and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museums, Großer Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks, Auditorium du Louvre, Teatro Gayarre, Suntory Hall, and Seoul Arts Center.
Yi has appeared as a soloist with the Russian National Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Brevard Festival Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony under the batons of Hans Graf, Julian Kuerti, and Mikhail Tartanikov. As a recitalist and masterclass instructor, he has completed residencies at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Bowling Green State University, University of Georgia, Michigan State University, and University of South Carolina. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, and Roberto Diaz on national tours and was invited to perform at the Kronberg, Ravinia, Trondheim, and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern festivals and Carnegie Hall Presents, Curtis Presents, CIM Mixon Hall Masters, and Peoples’ Symphony Concert series. He has recorded for FHR and Hänssler labels with violinist Itamar Zorman.
A recipient of many honors and prizes, Yi’s awards include Mieczyslaw Munz Prize, National Federation of Music Clubs Award, and prizes at the Fourth Sendai International Piano Competition.
Yi is a graduate of the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School and the Peabody Institute where he worked with Leon Fleisher and Robert McDonald. He currently serves as associate professor of piano at the ECU School of Music

Kwan Yi

Director Bio

William Staub is in his thirteenth year at East Carolina University and fifth year as Director of Bands. He oversees the band programs at ECU, conducts and directs the ECU Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and teaches conducting and music education courses. Since arriving at ECU, Staub has conducted multiple world premieres including works by Pulitzer Prize winning composer Melinda Wagner and Grawemeyer winning composer Lei Liang. Dr. Staub and the ECU Symphonic Wind Ensemble performed at the NCMEA convention in 2022.

Prior to becoming director of bands, Staub served as the Associate Director of Bands and Director of Athletic Bands at ECU. Under his direction, the ECU Marching Pirates performed at a Carolina Panthers football game, the Superdome and Tropicana Field in addition to many exhibitions throughout North Carolina.

Dr. Staub came to ECU from Iowa State University where he served as Assistant Director of Bands with duties including assisting with the Cyclone Marching Band and conducting the Symphonic and Concert Bands. Staub has also taught public school in Austin, Texas at Grisham Middle School. While there, he co-conducted the Grisham Middle School Symphony Orchestra at their performance at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention.

In addition to his formal teaching positions, Dr. Staub is highly in demand as a clinician, adjudicator and conductor. His residencies have included the University of Akron, Eastern Kentucky University, Michigan State University, New Mexico State University, UNC-Wilmington, Duke University, the University of Georgia, Western Washington University, and the University of Puget Sound. In 2010, he participated in the West Point Conducting Workshop where he guest conducted the West Point Band in concert. In 2017, Staub served as one of the conductors for the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project in Schladming, Austria. From 2015-2024, Dr. Staub served as conductor of the Symphonic Band at the New England Music Camp in Sidney, Maine.

Staub received his Doctor of Musical Arts from Northwestern University, where he was a conducting student of Mallory Thompson; his master’s degree in conducting from Michigan State University, where he was a student of Kevin Sedatole; and his undergraduate degree from Arizona State University, where he studied euphonium with Sam Pilafian and conducting with Gary Hill. In 2018, Dr. Staub received the ECU Alumni Association Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2019, he received the East Carolina Creed faculty award for Integrity. Staub is a member of NCMEA, CBDNA, Pi Kappa Lambda, and Phi Kappa Phi and is an honorary member of Tau Beta Sigma, Kappa Kappa Psi and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

Dr. William Staub

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