Music, Drama and Birthday Cake: Cabrillo Celebrates Chopin, Schumann
Written by Tara Leonard
APTOS (May, 2010) - Susan Bruckner, Head of the Piano Department at Cabrillo College, is throwing a birthday party and music lovers of all ages are invited. There will be cake and the playing of “Happy Birthday” just like at other celebrations. But the gift for attendees will be six hours of live performances of the music of Chopin and Schumann. After all, it’s not every year that two of the world's most famous Romantic composers celebrate their second century.
The 200th Birthday Marathon will take place on Monday, May 24, at Cabrillo’s new Recital Hall from noon to 6 p.m. More than 70 performers will play instrumental and vocal solos, duets and chamber works. Plus Cabrillo College theater students will read from the letters and diaries of Robert Schumann and his beloved wife Clara.
“I just got the idea that we couldn’t let Chopin’s 200th birthday go unnoticed,” said Bruckner via phone when I caught her in the midst of last-minute preparations. “But with Chopin, the music would mainly be piano. I decided to add Schumann so we could include the vocals and chamber works.”
Both legendary composers were born in 1810 – Frederic Chopin in Poland in March and Robert Schumann in Germany in June. Chopin become known for his technically demanding piano compositions marked by nuanced and expressive melodies. Many of his more than 200 works are still played by concert pianists around the world. Schumann wrote enduring piano music, four symphonies, an opera, and other orchestral, choral and chamber works. According to Bruckner, the men moved in the same circles and admired each other’s work.
“I can’t even venture a guess about how much of their music we can cover in only six hours," Bruckner laughed. “A small percentage really.”
“There’s been a lot of hype about this birthday,” Cabrillo piano instructor Lavinia Livingston said. “Many teachers in the area have been playing Chopin and Schumann music with their students. Then when Susan announced that she was doing this, they took the opportunity to pursue it with their students.”
The free event will open at noon with a two-piano, four-hand version of the Birthday March (“Geburstagsmarsch”) Schumann originally wrote as a duet for his wife’s birthday in 1849. Visitors are free to come and go throughout the afternoon, enjoying the performances of college students, faculty, local piano teachers, and musicians from the greater Santa Cruz community.
“I’ve been in other recitals, but they were smaller,” confided the youngest performer, 7-year-old Joshua Gianelli. “This is my first big concert.”
Gianelli, who has been playing piano for just over a year, will perform a version of Chopin’s well-known “Military Polonaise.” The intrepid pianist has been working for about a month on the piece, which he describes as “kind of like smooth marching.”
Sharing the program with Gianelli will be accomplished pianists such as Livingston, Don Adkins, and Susan and Fred Squatrito, who will play Schumann’s “Andante and Variations” with four hands on two pianos.
“Robert and Clara played the piece together in Hamburg,” Livingston said. “Later, after Robert died, Clara played it with her daughter Elsie.”
Robert met Clara, a virtuoso concert pianist in her own right, while studying with her father, Friederich Wieck, in Leipzig. The elder Wieck was bitterly opposed to the match and tried to keep the lovers apart. When they became engaged, Wieck threatened to disinherit Clara if she married Schumann. Schumann and Clara petitioned the Court of Appeals to marry without her father’s consent, which they ultimately did in 1840. During their forced separation, Robert and Clara wrote hundreds of intensely moving letters to one another.
“There’s a quote from one of Robert’s letters to Clara when they were secretly dating,” Bruckner said. “He tells her that at eleven each night they should play the same piece by Mozart on their respective pianos and the sounds will meet in the night air, mingling their ‘twin spirits’.”
Once married, the Schumanns continued their epistolary exchanges, right up until Robert’s death in a mental institution in 1856. The letters are so beautiful they inspired a theater production called “Twin Spirits” starring the British musician Sting and his wife Trudie. During the Birthday Marathon, Cabrillo College theater students will bring excerpts of that production to life.
“It’s quite a poignant and tragic love story,” said actress Ali Eppy. “The letters are just lovely and so very much of their time. Those exchanges really allowed their love to blossom. If you are a romantic, especially a tragic romantic, this is the musical equivalent of Dr. Zhivago.”
Music, romance, theater and birthday cake. What more could you want?
"We could have gone for at least 8 hours!” Bruckner concluded. “I had no idea the response would be so overwhelming!”
The 200th Birthday Marathon is Monday, May 24 from noon to 6 p.m. at Cabrillo College Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 423-7025.
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written by tleonard , May 25, 2010
I'm so glad I managed to see a few hours of this incredible event. High school senior Taras Dreszer took the stage in a whimsical birthday hat before tearing into Chopin's Ballade #1 in G Minor, Op. 23 and professor emeritus John Orlando brought me to tears with his haunting rendition of Chopin's Nocture in Eb op. 55 #2. From blue-jean clad students to silver-haired seniors, there was a wonderful range of ages and abilities, but a universal joy in the music. Nadia Delye Lewis was heart-breaking in her performance as Clara Schumann, alongside Geoffrey Stanfield as Robert Schumann and Ali Eppy as the Narrator. I only wish I could have stayed longer. Congratulations to everyone who took part!
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