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It is a special honor to share this space with you today — this is a program of particular significance: Kathy will retire from her extraordinary career as a performer at the end of this year, and she designed this program knowing it would likely be the last we would perform together.

I hope you will listen to today’s concert with this in mind, hearing in its whole a celebration of the time we have spent together, and in each piece a glimpse of the explorations we have shared.

Kathy and I believe that music lives through relationships: among performers, between students and teachers, across generations. The opening suite is testament to this, to the fact that we musicians stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and that we can only hope that ours will sustain those who come after.

My path and Kathy’s intersect through one teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Nadia taught Kathy in her early years at the Menuhin School, south of London, and Nadia’s student, Luise Vosgerchian, was my professor in college. Professor Vosgerchian liberated me from being a neurotic instrumentalist tethered to perfection and taught me how to approach music with perspective, with humanity. It feels right that Nadia Boulanger’s Cantique — a song of praise — arrives twothirds of the way through the suite, at its golden mean. Cantique anchors an opening that contains our shared musical world, from DvoÅ™ák’s own homage to the transmission of music across the generations to the creation of Sérgio Assad, one of the many friends Kathy and I met in our immersion in the music of Brazil. It is a microcosm fittingly framed by the composer who has been with Kathy since the very beginning, Gabriel Fauré, friend and mentor to Nadia Boulanger!

The three pieces that follow the opening suite contain worlds of meaning for us. In the Shostakovich, we hear the pursuit of truth, against all odds; in Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, simplicity and complexity coexist to create a portrait of the universe; and in César Franck’s sonata, composed as a wedding gift for the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, we are given the immortal gift of love. All three are, for us, reminders of our humanity, as needed today as ever.

When I reflect on my decades of collaboration with Kathy, I realize that they have been so sustaining in part because she is fiercely grounded, yet always open to receiving the world as it is. This program reflects this, her clarity, her curiosity, and her boundless love of music.

I want to leave you with the opening lyrics of Nadia Boulanger’s Cantique. They are words that you won’t hear in our performance, lines from a poem by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck:

A toute âme qui pleure
A tout peché qui passe
J’ouvre aux seins des étoiles
Mes mains pleins de graces

To every crying soul,
To each passing sin,
I open to the bosom of the stars
my hands full of grace

I write this note with the deepest affection and greatest admiration, trying to reconcile a spirit of huge celebration with real sadness and, above all, gratitude.

Yo-Yo Ma

Each of these songs is a miniature, and they are sharply varied -one moment they can be quietly reflective, the next full of fire and excitement. Special note should be made of the fourth, widely known under its English translation as “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” This has become one of DvoÅ™ák's best-known songs, and one of the most remarkable things about it is that the beautiful vocal line is in 2/4, while the quite active piano accompaniment is pulsed in 6/8.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Assad composed Menino in 2003, and the music exists in several forms. Assad originally wrote it for clarinet and piano, but when Yo-Yo Ma heard this version, he asked that Assad arrange it for cello and two guitars, and Ma has recorded this version with the Assad Brothers. Menino is heard on this concert in Sérgio's arrangement for cello and piano. “Menino” is the Portuguese word for “boy,” and this brief and gentle piece may be understood as a boy's musing about life and what lies ahead.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Boulanger composed Cantique in 1909, when she was 22. The song sets Maurice Maeterlinck's poem about love, suffering, and consolation, and Boulanger gives it a most gentle setting. She marks the entrance of the voice Avec une grande simplicité, and the beautiful vocal line rises and falls above the simplest of accompaniments: the pianist's steady pulse of quarter-note chords continues throughout. Cantique is heard at this concert in an arrangement for cello and piano.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

And so audiences should not search for the musical depiction of butterflies in this music, but instead should approach it in the way Fauré wished, as simply a “piece for cello.” The work is sectional in construction, alternating a lively perpetual-motion-like beginning marked Allegro vivo with a more lyric second subject marked espressivo. Fauré moves easily between these two attractive ideas before the music rushes to its close on two quick, quiet pizzicato chords.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Frequently performed and recorded, the Cello Sonata remains one of Shostakovich's most approachable works, particularly for its broad lyricism and generally untroubled spirit. Viktor Lubatsky was cellist and Shostakovich the pianist at the premiere, which took place on Christmas Day 1934. Shostakovich was a virtuoso pianist, and it is not surprising that the piano is given so prominent a role in this sonata: it introduces several themes, dominates textures, and is an extremely active participant.

The cello, however, has the lovely opening melody of the Allegro non troppo. The piano introduces the quiet second theme, and both are treated fully before the quiet close of this sonata-form movement. Brisk cello arpeggios open the energetic Scherzo, with the piano singing the main idea high above; the piano also has the second subject over eerie, swooping swirls from the cello. The Largo begins with a recitative-like passage from the cello in its deepest register; soon the piano enters, and the movement's central theme is heard: a lyric, flowing passage for cello over steady piano accompaniment. Dark and expressive, this Largo stands apart in its intensity from the other three movements of the sonata.

The concluding Allegro comes closest to the sardonic manner of Shostakovich's early music. The piano has the abrupt main idea, and the cello's restatement already brings a saucy variation. The theme goes through several episodes, some of them humorous. At times the humor is almost too broad: one of the instruments will have the theme, played fairly straight, while in the background the other is going crazy with the most athletic accompaniment imaginable. For all its humor, however, the music never turns to slapstick, and the final episode --for piano over pizzicato accompaniment --is lovely.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

Pärt composed Spiegel im Spiegel in 1978. That title, which translates “Mirror in the Mirror,” refers to the visual effect that results when two facing mirrors are slightly out of alignment, creating an endless pattern of visual repetitions that fade into the distance. The music is simplicity itself. The piano has a steady progression of quarter-notes (the meter is 6/4), and over this the cello has long, sustained notes, melodic lines that slowly move upward or downward. The effect of this music, with its steadily-repeating quarter-notes, is hypnotic, very much like that created by the opening of Beethoven's “Moonlight” Sonata. There is no dynamic marking in this music, but the atmosphere is subdued and calm. The cumulative effect of the held notes above a repeating pattern is not simply soothing, but quietly reassuring, and it comes as no surprise to learn that Spiegel im Spiegel has been used as part of the soundtrack of numerous films. The slow progression of quarter-notes continues throughout, and at the end --as if in the most distant of mirrors --the music fades into silence.

Program note by Eric Bromberger

The piano's quiet fragmented chords at the beginning of the Allegretto ben moderato suggest a theme-shape that the cello takes over as it enters: this will be the thematic cell of the entire sonata. The piano has a more animated second subject (it takes on the shape of the germinal theme as its proceeds), but the gently rocking cello figure from the opening dominates this movement, and Franck reminds the performers constantly to play molto dolce, sempre dolce, dolcissimo.

The mood changes completely at the fiery second movement, marked passionato, and some critics have gone so far as to claim that this Allegro is the true first movement and that the opening Allegretto should be regarded as an introduction to this movement. In any case, this movement contrasts its blazing opening with more lyric episodes, and listeners will detect the original theme-shape flowing through some of these.

The Recitativo -Fantasia is the most original movement in the sonata. The piano's quiet introduction seems at first a re-visiting of the germinal theme, though it is --ingeniously --a variant of the passionato opening of the second movement. The cello makes its entrance with an improvisation-like passage (this is the fantasia of the title), and the entire movement is quite free in both structure and expression: moments of whimsy alternate with passionate outbursts.

After the expressive freedom of the third movement, the finale restores order with pristine clarity: it is a canon in octaves, with one voice following the other at the interval of a measure. The stately canon theme, marked dolce cantabile, is a direct descendant of the sonata's opening theme, and as this movement proceeds it recalls thematic material from earlier movements. Gradually, the music takes on unexpected power and drives to a massive coda and a thunderous close.

Program note by Eric Bromberger