Streaming on FACEBOOK & YouTube/Glendale Noon Concerts 4/21/21

Streaming on FACEBOOK & YouTube
Glendale Noon Concerts  4/21/21

Alexander Knecht – viola

 

During the Covid-19 "Safer at Home" period,
Glendale Noon Concerts will bring our programs
to you via streaming on Facebook and YouTube:
The APRIL 21, 2021 program can be viewed at this link
beginning at 12:10 pm PT. (VIDEO will be available ongoing)

 

LINKS TO VIEW THE CONCERT:

On Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/xander.knecht/videos/10160915498988989/

On YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJC7dhGjkgM

 

PROGRAM:

J.S. BACH

Viola da Gamba Sonata no. 1, BWV 1027: 

Andante

 

Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor, BWV 1011:

Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande,

Gavottes 1 & 2, Gigue

Alexander Knecht, viola, keyboard and production

(Scroll down for artist bio and program notes)

Facebook APR 21 event page: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/2950619431850370

 

 

Please keep checking the site below for updates.

http://glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com

Streaming on Wednesday MAY 5, 2021 at 12:10-12:40 pm PT:

Ken Aiso - violin

Valeria Morgovskaya - piano

KAREN TANAKA  Ocean 

JOSEPH ACHRON Suite Bizarre, Op.41: Etincelles, Quasi Valse

ERNEST CHAUSSON Poeme

PLEASE HELP THESE CONCERTS TO CONTINUE WITH A DONATION

https://adventistgiving.org/#/org/ANPPGL/envelope/start 

Or by mailing it to 610 E California Ave, Glendale, CA 91206 to the Friends of Music.

The Glendale Noon Concerts series is presented by Glendale City Church every first & third Wednesday at 12:10-12:40 pm. www.glendalecitychurch.org

Concert schedule: www.glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com

Glendale City Church also presents the Second Saturday Concert Series,

http://glendalecitychurch.org/index.php/ministries/second-saturday-concert-series.html  

and sponsors the Caesura Youth Orchestra http://www.mycyo.org

Much appreciation to the Hennings-Fischer Foundation for their mission to support art & education and their generous grant to GNC.
RELAX DURING YOUR LUNCH HOUR WITH LIVE MUSIC

 

ARTIST BIO:

Alexander Cai Knecht, 29, completed a DMA under full scholarship at USC in 2018, where he studied with Brian Chen. He holds a master's degree from Juilliard, where he studied with Masao Kawasaki, and bachelors' degrees  from La Sierra University, where he studied with Jason Uyeyama.

In 2018, he became a member of the viola section of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra. Since 2019, he has served as a Teaching Artist for the Caesura Youth Orchestra at Columbus Elementary School in Glendale. In 2019, he founded a free violin class outreach program at the Los Angeles Chinese Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He is a regular participant as a violinist in the liturgical music at St. Joseph the Worker parish in Loma Linda. He has been a mentor teaching strings in the CKC-Music community engagement program in San Bernardino since its founding in 2008, continuing to the present day through Zoom.

This year he was featured in a live performance on AM 870 in Glendale, on the Impassioned Angels program.. Last summer he performed in an online celebration of the violin caprices of Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Grammaté, as part of a celebration of Canada Day hosted by Scott St. John of the Colburn School. He remains an active teacher and performer online.

In past summers he has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, and the Gonggeng Music Festival in Zhejiang Province, China. He comes from a musical family of Chinese, Korean and Caucasian ancestry including three siblings, all of whom play and teach string instruments.

 

PROGRAM NOTES:

Throughout his life, J.S. Bach occupied himself principally as a composer of sacred music for the Lutheran Church, producing a wealth of vocal and organ music for which he is still known. However, the years 1717 to 1723 were a notable exception in that he was instead employed in the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, who was a Calvinist. Since the Reformed Church at the time only permitted Calvinist psalms to be sung at worship, notably from the Genevan Psalter, there was no need for sacred music to be composed, including organ music. However, Prince Leopold employed a chamber orchestra and was himself an amateur instrumentalist. Bach thus occupied these years primarily with the composition of secular instrumental music, including the six unaccompanied cello suites and the six unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for solo violin, as well as possibly the three viola da gamba sonatas.

The viola da gamba is a member of a family of instruments related to the violin family, but now largely extinct aside from historical performance communities. The viola da gamba is played between the legs like a modern cello, though it is smaller, and it has frets and a different shape. Like typical baroque trio sonatas, Bach's viola da gamba sonatas are composed in three staves, so as to be playable by the solo instrument with either a keyboard or another solo instrument with the keyboard player realizing the figured bass line. In the interests of time, this performance only features one movement from the first of the sonatas, with the viola accompanied by a harpsichord. This Andante movement features a theme that alternates freely among the top two staves, over a simple bass pattern. Simple though the movement may be, its fugal writing from the beginning reveals Bach’s mastery of counterpoint, transposing the theme by various intervals and allowing both top lines alternately to take the lead. The chromatic descent in the bass leads to unexpected harmonies and key areas throughout, ending on a half cadence.

The fifth solo cello suite is known to be the most serious of all six suites, due among many factors to its musical characteristics, length, key, and difficulty. It was originally written for a cello with the A string, the highest, lowered by a whole step to G, though in this performance the standard tuning for viola is used, as is still a common practice.

Its Prelude is the longest out of all six suites, and the only one to comprise two parts, performed continuously. It is harmonically memorable out of all six suites for its artful use of highly dissonant intervals arising from seventh chords, in some instances even over a tonic pedal tone, including at the opening.

The remaining movements alternate between fast and slow, as traditional. The Courante and first Gavotte are the most polyphonic of all the movements in their intricate voicing, and the Gigue brings the suite to a somewhat lighter conclusion.