As a laureate of Concert Artist International Competition winner, Seulki Susie Yoo will join the winners’ recital at Carnegie Weill Hall on May 31, 2024. Please join us!

Hosted by The Jewish Studies and Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society, Seulki Susie Yoo will present Paul Dukas’s French-Jewish identity manifested in his piano repertoire.

Link to join:  https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqcuutrjkvE9bYi17RfpfwmVyd7DA-m0G3 

The Penn State School of Music Presents: The Rhapsody Series A curated recital series of hour-long concerts presented without intermission. Free and open to the public.

On Flute Music by Jewish Composers, join professor Naomi Seidman for a recital of music from Jewish composers across the diaspora. Music selections include compositions by Aaron Copland, Shulamit Ran, Lex Van Delden, and Rosy Wertheim. She will be joined by violinist Trevor Thompson, violist John Roxburgh, soprano Jennifer Trost, cellist Jon Dexter, and pianist Seulki Yoo.

Violinist Michael Fisher and I will perform various Romantic pieces with a theme of “Love.”

Don’t miss Franck Violin Sonata, Kreisler, Manuel de Falla, and Amy Beach (and more)!

The location is at Trachte Music Center, Williamsport, PA.

Paul Dukas’s Rameau Variations

This 50 minutes of lecture-recital of Paul Dukas’s Rameau Variations explores the composition’s theoretical, musicological, and sociological aspects along with the recital.

A legendary double bassist in our time, Joel Quarrington will visit State College, PA. We will perform Silvestrov, Korngold, Schumann, and Bach!

Date: March 9th, 2023

Location: Angelo State University, San Angelo, TX, USA

Context:

Lecture Recital on Variations, Interlude, et Finale sur un Thème de Rameau, followed by my lecture of “A Musico-Sociological Study of Paul Dukas's French-Jewish Identity Manifested in "Variations, Interlude, et Finale Sur un Thème de Rameau.”

Program: Prokofiev - Overture on Hebrew Theme

Penn's Woods Festival

Program: Paul Schoenfeld Café Music

Penn's Woods Festival Schedule

Seulki Susie Yoo DMA Final recital:

Program:

Program notes

Piano Sonata in E flat minor (1901)

Paul Dukas 

Paul Dukas’s pianism is among the finest representations of the French fin-de-siècle style despite his small portfolio of piano writing. Dukas’s Piano Sonata (1901) is the most complex, serious, and monumental piece in French keyboard history. This sonata was dedicated to Saint-Saëns and was premiered by Edouard Risler, a celebrated pianist of the era. In 1928, the critic Irving Schwerké published his analysis of the sonata in The Musical Quarterly: “mutual formal perfection and mobility of thought…By the vastness of its proportions, the quality of its writing, the power of its developments, and by its luminous lyricism, the Sonata in E flat minor is unrivaled by any other composition of this type” 

Indeed, the synthetic aesthetic that Dukas pursues in the sonata appears in form and structure, colorful harmony use, and refined compositional techniques. The sonata-allegro form of the first movement is representative of French Romanticism, manifesting a virtuosic texture with liberal use of accidentals. The Beethovenian second movement is a free-variation in heavenlike mood. The vigorous, perpetual rhythmic first part of the third movement is sharply contrasted with the following strict fugue. The last movement is symphonic in scale; after the improvisational Très Lent, the ambitious first theme contrasts with the grandeur, majestic Lisztian second theme in moods. 

Le Tombeau De Paul Dukas- Neuf pièces inédites composées pour piano, à la mémoire de Paul Dukas (1936)

After Paul Dukas died in 1935, Henry Prunières asked a group of Dukas’s pupils and colleagues for short memorial works to publish in La Revue musicale. Le Tombeau de Paul Dukas was published in 1936 including nine miniature pieces. 

Schmitt uses the consistent ostinato bell motif ‘A (la)’ to remember Dukas the same way Dukas commemorates Debussy in his La Plainte, au loin, du Faune… 

Falla’s French Impressionism language in Pour le Tombeau is expressed by the consecutive octaves in a large range, borrowing the similar technique in La Cathedrale Engloutie.

Pierne and Ropartz both use Dukas theme “B (P)- A (A)- G (U)- E (L) -D (D)-G (U)-D (K)-A (A) -E (S) to unfold the music. While Pierne explicitly develops the Dukas subject in rigorous contrapuntal texture in Prélude, Ropartz’s A la Mémoire has a more introspective quality. After the chordal Grave, the nostalgistic melody begins, then the abrupt E minor chord implies Dukas’s death. 

Rodrigo’s Hommage à Paul Dukas is the most sorrowful and melancholic piece among this set. The semitone ostinato provides a contemplative atmosphere, and the following lamenting, cantabile theme delivers Rodrigo’s deep sadness for Dukas’s absence. 

Kreins’ expressivity in Pièce á la Mémoire de Paul Dukas is represented in fin-de-siècle style; the juxtaposition of accumulated chords, and mixture of major and minor deliver his heavy emotions. The restless eighth notes throughout the piece almost sound like soft prayer. 

Messiaen commemorates Dukas as a majestic and dignified colleague using his hallmark of the permutation technique with the style of symphonic in Pièce pour le Tombeau de Paul Dukas.

Aubin’s Le Sommeil d’Iskender has subtitle ‘...Il sentit l’ombre l’entourer Paul Dukas, “La Péri.” The descending chromatic Chanté from La Peri is juxtaposed with the slow promenading quarter notes. The music reaches the grandiose climax then recalls the La Peri motif at the ending. 

Barraine’s Hommage à Paul Dukas is rather light-toned. The vanishing ending is as if she envisions Dukas’s ascent to heaven. 

-Seulki Yoo

Program: Stephen Heller 25 Melodious Studies, Op. 45

Location: Lycoming College

Stephen Heller’s 25 Melodious Studies, Op. 45 represents lyrical and poetic etude style combined with a character piece genre. My presentation will reveal both the technical and musical value of this masterpiece which would be an excellent fit for the intermediate level of students. The contents incorporate Heller's distinctive view on the etude genre that enhances a student's musical imagination, and the following content will include choosing finger numbers and editions to discuss the technical aspect.