Frank Bridge (1879-1941) Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, H. 125 I. Allegro ben moderato II. Adagio ma non troppo - Molto allegro agitato Paul Watkins, cello Min Young Kang, piano Recorded live on April 9, 2025 by NV Factory New Haven Lawn Club, New Haven, CT Visit our website/social media to learn more about our concert series www.kalloscms.org IG: @kalloscms www.facebook.com/kalloscms Program notes by John Matthews It is a somewhat perverse compliment that the music of Frank Bridge is less well known than his role as a one-time teacher of Britten, whose early tribute, the unsettled Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), is probably more familiar than Bridges’ best-known work, the orchestral suite The Sea (1910-11). The young Britten, born in the coastal town of Lowestoft, was deeply impressed by this work when he heard it in 1924; after which he was introduced to Bridge, who took him on as a private pupil before Britten’s entry to the Royal College of Music in 1930-3, sending him there with excellent advice: be confident in what you are doing, but also, compose carefully and with respect for how it should be done, be sure you have written what you mean, and work on the skills! Bridge is somewhat overshadowed by the monumental Elgar, and by younger composers like Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax and the more idiosyncratic but brilliant William Walton (others, like John Ireland, have more or less disappeared), but he was a fluent and productive composer, whose works number nearly 200 items, including solo sonatas and four string quartets, beginning in his student years at the Royal College of Music. He was very much a practising musician. Born into a musical family at Brighton on the south coast of England, he was made to practice long hours at the violin while also playing in (and sometimes conducting) his father’s pit orchestra at the Empire Theatre in Brighton, then a fashionable and still a very popular seaside resort town. Bridge was a younger contemporary of Elgar, whose reputation was established by the lovely Enigma Variations of 1899, when Bridge was just 20 years old and entering college. Yet his name is more connected with a practically orientated music-making tradition than with Elgar’s more formal and large-scale European idiom. His music develops a harmonic freedom stemming from Debussy, Delius and especially Fauré, and leading to a shifting harmonic style that combines very well with his late Romantic manner. The Cello Sonata was written in 1913/17, against the dreadful background of the First World War. As if to defy this, without any sense of the grandiose or mock-heroic, the music possesses a melodic sweep and splendour reminiscent of Brahms and, as in the case of Fauré, forward-looking in its harmonies. It is written in two movements: Allegro ben moderato–Adagio ma non troppo, leading to Molto allegro e agitato.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Piano Trio in G major, L. 5 I. Andantino con moto allegro II. Scherzo · Intermezzo. Moderato con allegro III. Andante espressivo IV. Finale. Appassionato Geneva Lewis, violin Jay Campbell, cello Min Young Kang, piano Recorded live on April 30, 2025 by NV Factory New Haven Lawn Club, New Haven, CT Visit our website/social media to learn more about our concert series www.kalloscms.org IG: @kalloscms www.facebook.com/kalloscms Program note by John Matthews Born in 1862 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, Claude Debussy had a relatively straitened and rather uncommunicative childhood (his sister commented on this) in which he was educated largely, and incompletely, by his mother. Only when he went to stay with an aunt at Cannes after his little brother’s death did it occur to anyone to give him a musical education and later, back in Paris, to study the piano, where there was sufficient evidence of talent for him to enter the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eleven. His ambitions to train as a piano virtuoso were not fulfilled, though by any lesser standards Debussy was a very good pianist. His great opportunity came when he was introduced by one of his teachers at the Conservatoire to a well-connected and very wealthy lover of music, none other than Nadezhda von Meck, the mysterious (and distant) supporter of Tchaikovsky. In 1880 Debussy joined Mme von Meck’s family as a sort of intern, to give lessons to the children and take part in the family’s music-making, including piano duets with the lady herself, also a very good pianist. The family travelled from Interlaken to the seaside resort of Arcachon in south-western France (a place well known for its oyster beds and associated cuisine), and later to Fiesole near Florence. At Arcachon took place a most unlikely musical event, Debussy’s and Mme von Meck’s keyboard rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, where Mme von Meck noted her young protégé’s ability to read from a full score. Debussy also gave time to composition, and Mme von Meck was on the mark in comparing his style with that of (the underestimated) Massenet. The debt is apparent in the Piano Trio, which he composed at Fiesole and was undoubtedly performed there in 1880, when the musical entourage was joined by a violinist and a cellist. Unpublished at the time, the piece was thought to have been lost until it turned up incompletely in 1980 and then in the estate of one of Debussy’s own students in 1982. It was only published in its complete form in 1986. There is no need to analyse the four movements of the Trio; Andantino, Scherzo, Andante, Finale: Appassionato. They express Debussy’s definition of the French style in music as transparent, lucid and accessible, as opposed to the obscure heaviness (in his opinion then and later) of the Germanic manner. Though such an early work does not begin to suggest the composer’s later development (who could have predicted La Mer, or the wonderfully exploratory Préludes for piano?), the Trio possesses both confidence and spontaneity of style. It is an enchanting work to hear in its own right, and not only in the context of the composer’s future development. ​

Maurice Ravel (1875-19937) Piano Trio in A minor, I: Modéré Nathan Meltzer, violin Samuel DeCaprio, cello Min Young Kang, piano Recorded live on November 9, 2023 New Haven Lawn Club, New Haven, CT Visit our website to learn more about our concert series www.kalloscms.org

Recorded for Lyric Chamber Music Society by Robert Langevin (Principal Flute of NY Philharmonic), and MinYoung Kang (Piano) on March 13, 2023. More information at www.lyricny.org Clara Schumann Three Romances op. 22 (orig. for violin and piano) Florentine Mulsant Dreams op. 79 for flute and piano Amanda Meier Sonata in B minor (1878) orig. for violin and piano Matt Herskowitz Lyric Trilogy 2.5 (for flute and piano) (World Premiere - performed with Matt Herskowitz) ​Amy Beach Romance (orig. for violin and piano) #nyphil #newyorkphilharmonic #flute #piano #chambermusic #nyphilharmonic #music #claraschumann

KALLOS Chamber Music Series Reimagined Season 2020-21 Music à la Carte 4 : Color, Color, Color! Premiered on May 17, 24, 31 Recorded at Firehouse12 (http://firehouse12.com/) Ani Kavafian, violin Min Young Kang, piano CLAUDE DEBUSSY: Sonata for Violin and Piano I. Allegro vivo (00:00) II. Intermède: fantasque et léger (04:51) III. Finale: très animé (08:58) Stay Tuned with Us! WEBSITE: https://www.kalloscms.org INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/kalloscms/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/kalloschambermusicseries

Sophia Mockler, Violin Min Young Kang, Piano Live performance on Feb 17th, 2018 Sprague Hall at Yale University

At NV Factory on June 5th, 2023 Performed by Sirena Huang Gold Medalist of the 11th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis Pianist - Minyoung Kang

Prima parte 'lassu': Moderato Seconda parte 'friss': Allegretto moderato Sirena Huang, violin Min Young Kang, piano Recorded Live on April 2, 2019 Sprague Memorial Hall, New Haven, CT

André Jolivet, Chant de Linos Beomjae Kim, flute Min Young Kang, piano Live recording from 3/19/2017 New York

Adagio - Allegro molto - Adagio - Allegro molto Kate Arndt, violin Min Young Kang, piano Recorded live on Jan 23, 2019 Sprague Memorial Hall, New Haven, CT

Chris Rogerson: Four Autumn Landscapes (2007) III. Scattered Leaves Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet Min Young Kang, piano www.graemesteelejohnson.com