PROGRAM NOTE
When violinist Edna Michell first spoke to me about the theme of her project to honor the late Lord Yehudi Menuhin on the occasion of his 80th birthday, I found its core idea more than a little daunting: in tribute to Menuhin’s own life and aspirations, compose a short Romance-type piece that would allude to themes such as love, beauty of spirit, and humaneness. The invitation lay dormant for a while. The moment of illumination came sometime later, while working on my first opera based on S. Ansky’s great early 20th century play BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (THE DYBBUK). I became intrigued by the thought of a piece which would be expressive of the search, the yearning, longing, desire for such elusive qualities.
In THE DYBBUK, Khonnon yearns in vain for his beloved, Leya. He dies when it becomes clear that his love is to remain unrequited. Khonnon’s death is only the first step in the journey to fulfill the great longing of the doomed would-be lovers. I used a phrase out of Khonnon’s opening soliloquy in my opera as a compositional point of departure, though—once I began to write—YEARNING took on a life of its own.
The work had its first public performance, with Lord Menuhin conducting, in New York City on August 1996 as part of the first Lincoln Center Festival, and is dedicated to Edna Michell and her dream. I later adapted the work into the piano trio SOLILOQUY, and more recently by the invitation of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society to the chamber string ensemble version that is now the official version of YEARNING.
—Shulamit Ran
INFORMATION
Composed in honor of Lord Yehudi Menuhin’s 80th birthday at the invitation of Edna Michell
Premiere:
August 1996,
First Lincoln Center Festival, NYC
Edna Michell, solo violin
Lord Yehudi Menuhin, conductor
Adapted in 2016
for a chamber string version (Violin Solo.3.2.2.2.1)
for the Chamber Music Society
of Lincoln Center
First performance of
the reduced version:
March 4, 2016
Alice Tully Hall, NYC
Bella Hristova, solo violin
Keith Robinson, cello
Duration: c. 8’30
RECORDINGS
Chamber string version:
Bowling Green Philharmonia,
Emily Freeman Brown, conductor,
with Caroline Chin, violin,
Brian Shaw, cello obligato,
on The Composer’s Voice,
New Music from Bowling Green, Volume 9, Albany Records, Troy1947
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller, or directly from Theodore Presser.