Violist Jonathan Bagg and his collaborators, pianists Emely Phelps and Mimi Solomon, unearth three overlooked gems of the mid-20th century chamber repertoire by Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, and Margaret Bonds. Bagg sheds light on well deserving repertoire by three composers whose contributions to the larger musical field went far beyond their fine music.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 32:37 | |||
Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22Marion Bauer |
||||
| Jonathan Bagg, viola, Emely Phelps, piano | ||||
| 01 | I. Allegretto (rubato) | I. Allegretto (rubato) | 5:28 | |
| 02 | II. Andante espressivo; Scherzo con moto | II. Andante espressivo; Scherzo con moto | 4:56 | |
| 03 | III. Allegro | III. Allegro | 4:47 | |
Sonata for Viola and PianoUlysses Kay |
||||
| Jonathan Bagg, viola, Emely Phelps, piano | ||||
| 04 | I. Largo | I. Largo | 2:10 | |
| 05 | II. Allegro | II. Allegro | 2:16 | |
| 06 | III. Adagio | III. Adagio | 1:00 | |
| 07 | IV. Allegretto | IV. Allegretto | 4:35 | |
| 08 | Troubled Water | Troubled Water | Jonathan Bagg, viola, Mimi Solomon, piano | 7:25 |
On Viola Revival, violist Jonathan Bagg and his collaborators, pianists Emely Phelps and Mimi Solomon, champion works by three significant African American composers who were not given their due during their lifetimes: Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, and Margaret Bonds. Each composer made significant contributions to the concert music community of the day. Bagg’s advocacy aims to facilitate more performances of these pieces on contemporary viola programs, while simultaneously enhancing and broadening that instrument’s repertoire of modern American works.
Marion Bauer’s compositional style straddled the old and the new, with a strong grounding in late Romanticism and French impressionism, and interjections of expressive dissonance. The opening movement of her Sonata for Viola and Piano, op. 22, flows with the liquidity of late Ravel, with a broadly lyrical primary theme. A short piano solo opens the second movement Andante espressivo; Scherzo con moto, a steady lilting pedal point pulse in triple meter surrounded by a descending contrapuntal line and gentle melody that is passed to the viola. The coy scherzo is marked by pizzicato in the viola and light interplay between the instruments before the Andante material returns. The final Allegro begins with an insistent figure in the piano supporting an agitated viola line. A rhapsodic viola cadenza develops the material from the first section and creates a transition to a pensive middle section featuring an imitative melodic dialogue before the keyboard ushers in a return of the more active opening material. The piece closes with five declamatory chords followed by a dramatic descending flourish in the piano. In addition to her oeuvre of compositions, Bauer was an influential organizer in classical music, founding the American Music Guild and co-founding the Society for American Women Composers and the American Composers Alliance.
Read MoreUlysses Kay spent a formative year as a student at Yale studying composition with Paul Hindemith, studies that reinforced his development as an artist with a strong foundation in compositional craft. Kay’s neoclassical leanings are apparent in the slow-fast-slow-fast ordering of his Sonata for Viola and Piano and his emphasis on contrapuntal dialogue. The embellishments and regal pacing of the opening Largo echo the stately character of French Overture openings to large scale works. The vibrant second movement Allegro evolves by turning its propulsive primary motivic cell around, examining it from multiple perspectives. The brief Adagio is shrouded and mysterious, with a dotted figure in the main thematic material creating a sense of deliberation. Kay closes with a moderate Allegretto in triple meter that uses subtle rhythmic displacement and imitation to develop thematic ideas into a satisfyingly dramatic close for this concise, restrained four movement sonata.
Margaret Bonds enjoyed a career as a composer and pianist in mid-century Chicago, as one of Florence Price’s most active students, and as a piano soloist. Troubled Water is an adaptation of an adaptation; Bonds originally wrote a solo piano work that was based on the Negro Spiritual “Wade in the Water” that was a staple of her touring concerts. That piece was included on her multi-movement Spirituals Suite for piano, and she later arranged it for cello and piano. It is an arrangement of that cello and piano version that we hear on this recording. Bonds treats the concept of water as an idée fixe in the setting, finding various musical ways to explore its properties. From the flowing opening keyboard accompaniment figure, through passages of cascading arpeggios, rhapsodic sequences, and blues inflected melodic figures, the connection to the soulful original melody is consistently apparent, as Troubled Water drives towards a dramatic end.
– Dan Lippel
Recorded at Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University on May 22 & 23, 2024
Recording producer: Judith Sherman
Sound engineer: Pablo Varga
Editing assistant: Jeanne Velonis
Mastering: Jeanne Velonis & Judith Sherman
Liner notes: © 2025 Andrew Moenning
Pictured on the cover (L-R): Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, Margaret Bonds
Jonathan Bagg photo, p.8: © Alex Boerner
Design, layout & typography: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Additional design contributions: Sandy Silva
Jonathan Bagg has performed hundreds of concerts in the U.S. and around the world as violist with the Ciompi String Quartet. He is Professor of the Practice at Duke University, where he has directed the chamber music program, taught viola, and performed extensively for many years. Bagg is co-Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire, which he founded in 2012 with flutist Laura Gilbert. The two also co-directed New Hampshire’s Monadnock Music festival from 2007-2011. Their creative programming has included many collaborations with composers, authors, poets, and choreographers resulting in a number of unique multi-media works.
In the summers Bagg has performed at the Portland and the Sebago-Long Lake festivals in Maine, Detroit’s Great Lakes Festival, the Eastern Music Festival and the Highlands festival in North Carolina, and the Mohawk Trail and Castle Hill festivals in Massachusetts. Recitals and concerto appearances have brought him to venues such as the Philips Collection in Washington D.C., Jordan Hall in Boston, Woolsey Hall in New Haven, and numerous other locations across the U.S.
Since 2015 Bagg has been principal violist and soloist with the CityMusic Cleveland chamber orchestra, where he performs throughout the year. Other orchestral appearances include the Boston Symphony, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, as well as with several other leading musical organizations in New England.
Bagg has made over 20 recordings with the Ciompi Quartet, most recently A Duke Moment (2024) on New Focus featuring works by Duke colleagues Stephen Jaffe, Anthony Kelley, and Scott Lindroth. His 2014 solo CD on the Albany label, titled Elation, brings together several works he commissioned, including a sonata and trio by Jaffe, and a trio by Lindroth. Other solo CDs contain music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann, and by the Viennese composer Robert Fuchs. Contemporary solo works by Robert Ward, Arthur Levering, Malcolm Peyton, and Donald Wheelock are on Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo Records.
Bagg was Chair of Duke’s Department of Music from 2019-2023 and he has also served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Performance. He holds an M.M. from the New England Conservatory and a B.A. from Yale.
https://jonathanbagg.comPianist Emely Phelps enjoys a multifaceted career as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Praised by the Boston Globe for her “fleet, energetic, and bright-toned” playing, she made her solo orchestral debut with the National Symphony Orchestra as the grand prizewinner of their Young Soloists Competition and has since been a featured soloist with many orchestras in the United States. Emely has presented solo recitals throughout North America and Europe, with a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to Carter, and is a particularly passionate advocate for new music, having premiered over a dozen compositions and received second place in the 2023 Ernst Bacon Prize for American Music.
An in-demand collaborator, Emely is on the faculty of the T-Town Chamber Music Festival, performs regularly with Electric Earth Concerts, and has appeared as a guest artist with the Borromeo String Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet, and A Far Cry. She recorded the albums Confluence and Discovering Her Voice with flutist Hannah Porter Occeña and Unbounded with violinist Dawn Wohn, all featuring duos by female composers. Emely has attended numerous chamber music festivals including Yellow Barn and Kneisel Hall, and was a founding member of Trio Cleonice, with whom she spent eight years performing more than 150 concerts across the United States, Europe, and China.
Emely earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Julian Martin and was awarded the John Erskine Prize for scholastic and artistic achievement. She completed her doctoral studies at St
American pianist Mimi Solomon enjoys a multi-faceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. She has performed throughout the United States, China, Japan and Europe, has appeared as soloist with orchestras including Shanghai Symphony, Philharmonia Virtuosi, and Yale Symphony Orchestra, and has been featured on numerous radio and television broadcasts including the McGraw-Hill Young Artist's Showcase, France 3, France Inter, and National Public Radio. An avid chamber musician, she regularly appears at music festivals on both sides of the Atlantic such as Santander, IMS Prussia Cove, Lockenhaus, Rencontres de Bel-Air, Ravinia, Taos, Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Charlottesville, La Loingtaine, and Aspen.
Mimi is also an enthusiastic and dedicated pedagogue: she is co-artistic director of MYCO Youth Chamber Orchestra, she spends part of every year coaching and performing chamber music at Kinhaven Festival in Vermont, and she has taught at Cornell University, East Carolina University, and Ithaca College. She is currently on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mimi graduated cum laude in East Asian Studies from Yale, went on to receive a Master of Music from Juilliard, and then studied the fortepiano in Paris. Her main teachers were Peter Frankl and Robert McDonald, and she has also played regularly for Ferenc Rados and studied the fortepiano with Patrick Cohen. Her studies were generously supported by a Beebe Grant and two Woolley Scholarships from the Fondation des Etats-Unis. She currently lives in Chapel Hill with her husband, violinist Nicholas DiEugenio.
https://mimisolomon.wordpress.comNew Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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