Meghan Jacoby, Adjunct Instructor in Music, typically spends her Fridays in the Graves Hall practice room teaching students. This past week, however, she took the spotlight.
Accompanied by Debbie Emery on piano, Jacoby performed a repertoire of four pieces: Roland Revell’s “Trois Pensées,” Sergei Vasilenko’s “Springtime Suite, Op. 138,” Michel Blavet’s Sonata II “La Vibray” and André Jolivet’s “Chant de Linos.”
“[Trois Pensées] and [Springtime Suite] are really kind of unknown pieces, and I really enjoy playing new music at concerts, whether it’s brand new, like the composer just wrote it for me, or new in that no one really knows about it. The other two were more standard pieces of music, I just had never played them before, so I was looking forward to a challenge,” said Jacoby.
According to Jacoby, “Springtime Suite” is a well-known and commonly played piece in Russia, but remains mostly unknown in the Western music world. The piece, which incorporated five movements, began with “Prelude,” a slow-paced, subdued movement and progressed into “Waltz Caprice,” a more intense movement which alternated between long, smooth notes and clipped, choppy notes.
The later movements, “In The Forest” and “Spring Streams,” were meant to mimic the sounds one would encounter on a spring day. They featured bright, flowing notes that contributed to the optimistic atmosphere of the performance.
“I really liked ‘Springtime Suite,’ because there are hardly any performances of it in the United States, so it was definitely a unique experience. And I love the way each movement captured a different feel—like in ‘Spring Streams,’ you could hear the stream running,” said Maita Eyzaguirre ’14.
The evening drew to a close with Jacoby’s performance of “Chant de Linos.” The piece’s somber melodies provided a sharp contrast with the previous pieces. Jacoby explained that the piece was said to either be a song of mourning for Linos, a young boy who was left in the wild and eaten by dogs, or for the music teacher who was killed by Hercules for chastising him.
Capturing the tone of the stories, the piece featured ominous progressions on piano and piercing flute melodies that were meant to emulate human shrieks.
The recital, which was performed again on Sunday at Boston University, marked the completion of Jacoby’s Doctorate in Music at Boston University.
