Caprice, Café, and Cabaret

Debussy’s Caprices en blanc et noir for Two Pianos, emerging from the composer’s own illness and concern for France’s involvement in World War I, is full of literary allusions and musical references. Debussy commented that the caprices “derive their color and feeling merely from the sonority of the piano, like the ‘grays’ of Velásquez.”

Schoenfield’s Cafe Music (1986) is a virtuosic romp through various twentieth-century American and European musical styles. Schoenfield writes, “My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music—music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also find its way into a concert hall.” The work draws on such styles as Broadway, Viennese, Romani, light classical and others.

Among the many innovations of Schoenberg’s groundbreaking melodrama Pierrot Lunaire is a melodic and harmonic landscape freed from traditional tonal structures. A soprano narrates the story of the titular character using sprechstimme, a type of sung speech drawn from German cabaret. In the midst of these modern innovations, listeners will hear familiar compositional forms and techniques such as canon, fugue and rondo.

Featured musicians: Lucy Shelton, soprano; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Benjamin Hochman and Max Levinson and , pianos