Marjorie Bagley : Miklós Rózsa's Double Life: Concert Music for Strings

This exceptionally performed music on this compact disc provides much-needed additions to available recorded performances of the music of the prolific Hungarian-American composer Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995). These three works illustrate the development and evolution of Rózsa's compositional style over more than five decades.

Marjorie Bagley also appears on:

www.marjoriebagley.com

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Miklós Rózsa's Double Life: Concert Music for Strings

Marjorie Bagley - violin

Stephen Swedish - piano

Michael Carrera - cello

The National Philharmonic of Moldova

Steven Huang - conductor

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Duo for Violin and Piano, Op. 7 by Miklós Rózsa
Tranquillo	01.	I. Tranquillo 6:01 With: Stephen Swedish - piano
Allegretto capriccioso	02.	II. Allegretto capriccioso 2:41 With: Stephen Swedish - piano
Largo doloroso	03.	III. Largo doloroso 5:14 With: Stephen Swedish - piano
Allegro vivo e giusto	04.	IV. Allegro vivo e giusto 4:10 With: Stephen Swedish - piano

Sonata for Violin Solo, Op. 40 by Miklós Rózsa
Allegro moderato	05.	I. Allegro moderato 7:22
Canzone con variazioni	06.	II. Canzone con variazioni 10:04
Finale: Vivace	07.	III. Finale: Vivace 5:47

Sinfonia Concertante by Miklós Rózsa
Allegro non troppo	08.	I. Allegro non troppo 10:32 With: Michael Carrera - cello, The National Philharmonic of Moldova, Steven Huang - conductor
Theme and Variations: Andante	09.	II. Theme and Variations: Andante 12:54 With: Michael Carrera - cello, The National Philharmonic of Moldova, Steven Huang - conductor
Allegro con brio	10.	III. Allegro con brio 8:34 With: Michael Carrera - cello, The National Philharmonic of Moldova, Steven Huang - conductor

Total Playing Time: 1:13:19

Marjorie Bagley - violin

Marjorie Bagley enjoys a varied career as performer and pedagogue. In August of 2009, she happily returned to her home state to be Professor of Violin at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is one of the concertmasters and teaching faculty at the Brevard Music Festival in the summers, and is Principal Second violin of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.

Marjorie was founding first violinist of the Arcata Quartet, a group that enjoyed nearly a decade of concerts around the globe. They collaborated with many great musicians, including members of the Emerson, Tokyo, and American Quartets, and can be heard in recordings on the VOX and New World labels. Concerts took them across North America and Europe, with recitals in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and Wigmore Hall, and a concerto for quartet and orchestra with the Utah Symphony and Keith Lockhart. The quartet spent several years as Quartet in Residence at Utah State University.

Marjorie began teaching as an assistant to Stephen Shipps at the Meadowmount School and the University of Michigan. She has held teaching positions at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, Utah State University, Ohio University, and Carnegie Mellon. Summer teaching positions have taken her to the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, the Perlman Music Program, the International Music Academy Plzen (Czech Republic), and the Brevard Music Festival.

Marjorie is actively involved in playing contemporary works, and has premiered works by many composers, including Joel Puckett, Paul Chihara, Mark Engebretson, Alejandro Rutty, Mark Philips, Judith Shatin, and David Noon. In contrast, she has also performed with the Berkshire Bach Society since 1995 under the direction of Kenneth Cooper. She and Cooper recently published a version of Mozart’s Fantasie in C for violin and piano (originally for piano with an incomplete violin part surviving) for the International Music Company.

She has performed as soloist with the Little Orchestra Society in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, with the North Carolina Symphony, the Asheville and Salisbury Symphonies (NC), the Idaho Falls Symphony, the Chisinau Philharmonic (Moldova), the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, the University of Michigan Symphony, and the Wind Ensembles at Ohio University, UNCG, and the University of Michigan.

Her teachers included Stephen Shipps (University of Michigan, B.M.), Patinka Kopec, and Pinchas Zukerman (Manhattan School of Music, M.M.) When she’s not performing, Marjorie enjoys cooking, gardening, and hiking with her husband, physics professor Ian Beatty, and their daughter, Eleanor.

Stephen Swedish - piano

Michael Carrera - cello

The National Philharmonic of Moldova

Steven Huang - conductor

In a 2011 article in Grammophone Magazine, conductor, arranger and educator John Mauceri stated that when serial music alienated concert audiences in the 20th century, traditional tonal composers turned to writing movie scores. Certainly one of the best was Miklos Rozsa (1907-1995), who wrote many film scores and won three Academy Awards, including one for the movie Ben Hur (1959). The name of this album, Double Life, refers to the title of his autobiography - as well as the music for one of his films that won an Academy Award. It also describes Rozsa’s career as a film composer and a respected writer of music for the concert hall. His Violin Concerto was premiered by Jascha Heifetz and Janos Starker commissioned a cello concerto from Rozsa, which Starker premiered in 1969. The three works on this CD span a period of over fifty years, tracing his development as a composer.

The 1931 Duo for Violin and Piano was penned shortly after his graduation from the Leipzig Conservatory. It reflects Rozsa’s Hungarian folk music roots as well as Bartokian motivic development. The emotional tenor is subdued but not without melodic interest and dramatic punctuation. The Sonata for Violin Solo, Op. 40 (1985-86) seems to be far removed from the sweeping melodies of his film scores, yet the last movement contains a recognizable melodic excerpt from a film score, albeit in terse modern garb. Short melodic cells and shifting rhythmic accents create a first movement that is compelling. A middle movement that uses the long-short-short pattern of a canzona is rhapsodic and rhythmically vibrant. The passionate Vivace is an exciting finale. Violinist Marjorie Bagley plays with panache and virtuosity.

In 1958 Rosza’s friend, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, asked him to compose a double concerto for himself and frequent collaborator, violinist Jascha Heifetz. The result was Sinfonia concertante, Op. 29, completed that summer when Rozsa was working on the score for the film Ben Hur. The middle movement, Theme and Variations was written first and played on the two famous string player’s concert series in Los Angeles in 1962. Piatigorsky was given a long solo at the beginning of the work, which annoyed Heifetz: “Do you expect me to stand there like an idiot all that time,” the temperamental violinist said. “Yes, Jascha, we expect you to stand there like an idiot,” Piatigorsky replied. There’s a tension between cello and violin that adds drama to the concerto that reflects the competition between these two great string players. The outer movements were added in 1966.

The first movement gives the violin the major thematic parts, with nervous dramatic sections alleviated by wistful romantic interludes. The brilliant orchestration is typical of Rozsa’s film scores, with a clear Hungarian flavor. The cello sings the prominent theme in the second movement, with alternating rhapsodic and dramatic variations. The finale is spirited and exciting. Both soloists play well, but the sound is a bit too reverberant and close, losing some clarity.

If you don’t know these works and like the film scores of Rozsa, this is an excellent opportunity to discover the genius of his concert works.

-Robert Moon
Audiophile Audition
Published on August 18, 2014