Stars of the Future

Featuring the Grand Prize Winners of the Vernell Gregg Young Artists' Competition

Annie Zhu, Piano

Laura Liu, Violin

Friday, February 20, 2009

 at 7:30 p.m.

At Lakeland Baptist Church, Lewisville  (Directions)

Adults $25, Seniors (60+) $20, Students $10

Families $60 no matter how large the family.

Special UNT student and faculty rate: $5

Franz von Suppé: Light Cavalry Overture
Edvard Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor, First Movement
Intermission
Felix Mendelssohn: Beautiful Melusine Overture

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D Major, First Movement

More on The Gregg Competition | Laura Liu | Annie Zhu |

The City of Lewisville, Season Sponsor

The Vernell Gregg Young Artists’ Competition

The Vernell Gregg Young Artists’ Competition has gained a reputation for attracting extremely talented competitors from Texas and surrounding states. For the first round, they submit a CD with a memorized movement of a concerto. Those selected for the second round participate in a live audition before a panel of distinguished judges from the faculty of the College of Music at the University of North Texas and a live audience.   

The judges, this year, were Prof. Heejung Kang, Prof. John Scott and Prof. George Papich along with Maestro Adron Ming.

The Grand Prize Winner wins the $1,200 Letitia Goodman Memorial Scholarship Award and an opportunity to solo with the Lewisville Lake Symphony. The prizes are shared if there more than one Grand Prize Winner.

The Scholarship Award is provided by Bill and Pat Leggett.

Daniel Yi

The 2009 Competition produced three Grand Prize Winners.  One, Daniel Yi, elected to forfeit the opportunity to perform with the Lewisville Lake Symphony and his share of the prize money in order to resolve a schedule conflict with an audition for the elite US Marine Band -- "The President's Own". He is one of only seven finalists for an oboe position from across the nation. 

Full details of the Gregg Competition

Laura Liu, Violin

Laura Liu studies with Emanuel Borok, concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  Laura was featured on the National Public Radio show "From the Top" in the fall of 2006. In the summer of 2008, she performed on China's CCTV, broadcast nationally and in international markets.  She is 16 years old and a junior at Spring Creek Academy.

Laura was the Grand Prize winner in the junior concerto division of the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2006. She then had her soloist debut at the age of 13 with the Meadows Symphony.  She was a finalist in the ASTA (American String Teacher Association) in 2006 as well as the National 3rd Place winner at the Music Teacher National Association’s Competition in 2008. Laura was also the Senior Concerto Grand Prize Winner in the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2008. 

Laura won the National Soloist Award at the 2007 Texas Bluebonnet Festival. Recently, all in 2008, she performed with the Meadows Symphony, Houston Civic Symphony, and the Great Wall Academy Symphony in Beijing. 

Her previous teachers include Jan Mark Sloman and she has played in masterclasses for Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Piotr Milewski, Kurt Sassmanhaus, Michael Ma, and Hu Kun. For chamber music, Laura has worked with many teachers, including Pamela Mia Paul, Tricia Park, Cathy Forbes, Laurie Carney, Mark Churchill, and Susan Dubois. 

Laura recently won the Grand Prize at the 2009 Collin County Young Artist Competition, 1st Place in the 2009 Juanita Miller Competition, and Grand Prize at the 2009 Vernell Gregg Young Artist Competition. Future plans include performing at the TASO 2009 Annual Conference, as well as with the Plano Symphony in March 2009.

Annie Zhu 

A ninth grader at the Hockaday School in Dallas, Annie Zhu started piano at four and has studied with Sam Wong for the last eight years. At six, she won first place in the Richardson Music Teachers Association Jazz Festival. A regular participant of the Texas Conservatory for Young Artists, Annie, at nine, was selected to play Beethoven’s Concerto in B-Flat with the Plano Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro Hector Guzman for a TCYA Concerto Evening.

She has also performed in numerous masterclasses given by world-renowned professors including Joan Havill (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, U.K.), Bryce Morrison (Royal Academy of Music, London, U.K.), Julian Martin (Juilliard School), and Marc Durand (University of Montreal). From 2003-2008 Annie has been a consistent prize-winner in the Dallas Symphonic Festival sponsored by the Dallas Music Teachers Association.

As the Dallas and District winner of the 2007 Texas Music Teachers Association Student Affiliate Solo Competition, she competed in the State Finals representing DMTA. Annie’s other interests include the violin, music composition and photography. Since 2003, as a composer, she received awards from the Texas PTA Reflections Program and as a violinist, participated in the Texas Music Educators Association All-Region Orchestra and Concerts.

 Recently, Annie has been selected to the 2009 Texas Private School Music Educators Association High School All-State Orchestra and will perform in an All-State Concert.

Program notes by Prof. John Green

The 'Beautiful Melusine' Overture

Felix Mendelssohn

The distinguished Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer and composer Conradin Kreutzer collaborated in writing the opera, The Beautiful Melusine.  Mendelssohn heard a performance of Kreutzer’s rather dull opera in the fall of 1833.  He was so annoyed by the overture that he decided to write his own, which he did on November 14.  He always considered the result to be among his best works.

The overture is cast in a sonata form with themes clearly inspired by the libretto; no doubt they would have been the principal themes of the unwritten opera.  Despite some obvious thematic references to characters in the opera, the piece is really abstract music, like Mendelssohn’s more familiar Hebrides Overture.  Here, too, Mendelssohn elegantly shapes his evocative musical gestures for purely musical ends.

Light Cavalry Overture

Franz von Suppe
Franz von Suppe wrote more than one hundred fifty opera, operettas, and similar works. For the most part his music had a strictly local popularity in Vienna, where he was conductor at the Theatre-an-der-Wien. Some of his music, however, including the Light Cavalry Overture, achieved world-wide renown.

As its name indicates, this is stirring music of martial character. Horn calls and forceful orchestral chords establishes its military character in the introduction. Then comes a vivacious melody for the violins and a spirited woodwind melody followed by the full orchestra simulation of the gallop of the cavalry that has made this overture so famous. Interspersed with the brisk military music are sections of spacious string melodies of decidedly sensual characteristics.
 

Violin Concerto in D major, Op.35  (First Movement)

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

When Tchaikovsky composed his Violin Concerto he counted on the Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer to be the soloist for the premiere performance. Auer’s reaction to the score was entirely unfavorable, commenting: “some of the passages are outright unperformable”. Adolf Brodsky was then approached, and he accepted the opportunity to be the soloist at the premiere in Vienna on December 4, 1881.

The general character of the music is lighter than in Tchaikovsky’s symphonic scores. The music is original and imaginative. Certain aspects of the work bewildered the first audiences, in and outside of Russia. When one looks back over the enormous popularity of this work, it is hard to believe it was once a cause celebre in its early history because its premiere received the most vitriolic criticism that any concerto had had the misfortune to receive. Fortunately the initial opinion was not the permanent one.

Allegro moderato. The first movement is a series of fine lyric statements for the solo violin, interspersed with less important orchestral interludes. After the opening in the winds and strings, the solo violin enters and moves about tentatively. After this preface the main theme is projected, a theme which has been hinted at previously in the orchestral opening.

The second theme is an expressive and lyrical one presented at some length. In a departure from strict Sonata Allegro form, the development section is a massive cadenza of exceptional difficulty for the solo violin. After the long cadenza, the recapitulation appears in regular form, and the movement ends with a brilliant coda.
 

Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16  (First Movement)

Edvard Grieg

As Sibelius is to Finland, so is Edvard Grieg to Norway. Grieg was the foremost Scandinavian composer of his generation and principal promoter of Norwegian music. He was an important factor in Norway’s struggle in the 19th Century to restore and retain her national identity.

His genius was for lyric pieces (songs and piano miniatures), but his Piano Concerto found a place in the standard repertory. The rhythmic patterns in the first movement of the concerto suggest peasant dances and Norwegian folk music. Admittedly, Grieg was not a master of orchestration, but the fact remains that he produced one of the most successful of Romantic concertos.

He had a real gift for melody and an unusual grasp of the picturesque in music. Also, he understood the piano, since he was an accomplished professional pianist in his own right. The soloist’s role in the A minor concerto is ingeniously conceived and skillfully worked out. Despite all the changes in music over the past century, the work steadfastly refuses to die.

Allegro moderato. Like many of the Romantic concertos there is no orchestral exposition of thematic material at the beginning. After a brief orchestral introduction the soloist begins with brilliant, crashing chords and octaves plunging from the top range of the piano down to its lowest depths and then sweeping upward in exhilarating waves of arpeggios.

The tranquil main theme is then announced softly by the woodwinds, later taken up and expanded by the piano to string accompaniment. The cellos state the mellow second theme in dialogue with the woodwinds, after which the piano proceeds, almost in the style of a nocturne. The piano and orchestra refer to the earlier thematic materials before a brief recapitulation. Toward the end of the movement there is an extraordinarily exciting and elaborate cadenza for the solo instrument, followed by a brief, powerful Coda.
 

Felix Mendelssohn

 Born on February 3, 1809 in Hamburg, Germany

Died on November 4, 1847 in Leipzig, Germany

Felix Mendelssohn, a romantic whose music was rooted in classicism, was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a wealthy and distinguished family.  By the age of nine, he was a brilliant pianist; by thirteen, he had written symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and vocal works of astounding quality.  As a teenager, he performed his compositions at home with a private orchestra for the intellectual and artistic elite of Berlin, where his family had settled.

In 1829, at age twenty, he conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in its first performance since the composer’s death.  This historic concert rekindled interest in Bach and earned Mendelssohn an international reputation.  He performed as pianist, organist, and conductor in Germany and in England, where his music was especially popular. 

He often visited and played for Queen Victoria, and the high point of his career was the triumphant premiere of his oratorio Elijah in Birmingham in 1846.  When only twenty-six, he became conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. 

His personal life was more conventional than that of many romantics; he was happily married and had five children.  But constant travel and work sapped his strength, and he died, after a stroke, at the age of thirty-eight.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Born on May 7, 1840 in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia

Died On November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, probably the most famous of all Russian composers, started his career as a government clerk and began to study music at the relatively late age of twenty-one. His progress in music was rapid, however.

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory and became a very prolific composer: a symphony, an opera, a tone poem – and by the age of thirty – his first great orchestral work, Romeo and Juliet.

In 1877 he acquired a wealthy benefactress, Nadexdha von Meck, with whom he had a curious relationship – they corresponded but never met in person. Madame von Meck gave him an annuity that allowed him to leave the conservatory and devote himself totally to composition; fourteen years later, he was deeply hurt when she cut off the stipend and stopped writing to him.

During these years Tchaikovsky achieved success conducting his own works throughout Europe (and the United States in 1893), but he always remained a spiritually troubled man. In 1893, nine days after conducting the premiere of his Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique) – which ends unconventionally with a slow, despairing finale – he died at the age of fifty-three.

Tchaikovsky’s music is extremely tuneful, colorfully scored, and filled with emotional fervor directed to the heart rather than the head. In 19th Century Russian music Tchaikovsky stands alone. He did not fall under the influence of Brahms nor Wagner, but greatly admired the French music of Bizet and Saint-Saens.

He had a lifelong passion for Mozart, and many passages in Tchaikovsky’s music are as delicately detailed and colored as works by Bizet and Mozart. In addition to his orchestral master-pieces he is noted for the success of his operas, ballets and songs.
 

Franz von Suppe
Born on April 18, 1819 in Split, Croatia
Died on May 21, 1895 in Vienna, Austria
Franz von Suppe was an Austrian composer, but of Belgian descent. His family had been largely Italianized, having lived in Cremona for two generations. Originally he studied philosophy at the University of Padua, but upon the death of his father he devoted himself to music, studying at the Vienna Conservatoire. It is in a kind of Viennese tradition – as perhaps the Viennese Offenbach – that von Suppe lived and wrote.

Suppe is the earliest Viennese composer of musical farces whose works still survive as viable stage scores and popular overtures. His light, fluent style includes the ability to vary melodic and rhythmic figures in an effective manner. Though now remembered mainly as the composer of overtures such as Poet and Peasant, Light Cavalry, and Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna, his ambitions extended to the composition of large scale church works and operas.
 

Edvard Grieg
Born on June 15, 1843 in Bergen
Died on September 4, 1907 in Bergen
Edvard Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the romantic period. When he was 15-years of age he met Ole Bull, the legendary Norwegian violinist, who immediately recognized Grieg’s musical talent and urged his parents to send him to the Leipzig Conservatory.

He was a gifted professional pianist but is noted primarily as a nationalist composer, drawing inspiration from Norwegian folk music. His many short pieces for piano – often built on Norwegian folk tunes and dances – led some to call him the Chopin of the North.

His piano concerto retains popularity, in part, because of its impressive opening flourish, and the folk-like melodies contained in the slow movement. The concerto earned the admiration of Franz Liszt, whom he met in Rome in 1870 where Liszt played Grieg’s piano concerto from the manuscript at sight.

Some of his other best-known compositions include ten volumes of Lyric Pieces for piano and his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, especially for In the Hall of the Mountain King. Grieg was asked by Ibsen to write the incidental music to Peer Gynt which had its first performance in 1876 and immediately made Grieg a national figure.