Program Notes: From Heinrich Kaminski to Will Langlie Miletich

By Leilani Polk

Every season, Seattle Symphony musicians curate and perform in our Chamber Series programs. This latest edition opens with a world premiere by Assistant Principal Bass Will Langlie Miletich, who also happens to be an alumnus of the Merriman-Ross Family Young Composers Workshop. 

Will is excited to share his new string trio, called Bully Mammoth. “It was a long-simmering composition, written between 2019 and 2023,” he explains in his Artist Statement. “While the writing came in fits and starts amid my first seasons as a member of the Seattle Symphony and the upheaval of the pandemic, I am pleased to share the final product in performance with my brilliant colleagues, Andy Liang (violin) and Nathan Chan (cello). They make passages of devilish difficulty and virtuosic twists and turns sound easy. 

“The style of the piece draws influence from my teacher Edgar Meyer, both on a superficial level, like the non sequitur title, and on a musical level. There is a brief quote of one of his string trios in the slow middle section, and the musical language derives influence from his cross-genre explorations. One example is the opening material, which is essentially slowed-down Irish reel bowing in the violin, which sets up the main thematic engine of the piece. Over the next 10 minutes, the piece then unfolds in an ‘arch’ or ‘mirror’ form (A-B-C-B-A), one of Bartók’s favorites, but with a few detours to add a little more spice to what can be, at times, an overly tidy form. 

“After participating in the Young Composers Workshop as a highschooler and premiering three pieces in the Ilsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, I look forward to once again premiering a work on a stage that has meant so much to my development as a composer. I learned many valuable lessons from the workshop about how music is put together and I still utilize many tools I gleaned from Dr. Sam Jones and Dr. Huck Hodge. Bully Mammoth will be my first premiere since participating in the workshop and graduating from college at the Curtis Institute of Music, and it is surreal to hear my music brought to life by my incredibly talented colleagues. I also feel fortunate to share this piece with friends, family and the Seattle Symphony audience, whose enthusiasm, curiosity and support of local artists is a constant inspiration.” 

Next up is a selection from Principal Clarinet Benjamin Lulich: Heinrich Kaminski’s Quartet for Piano, Clarinet, Viola & Cello, Op.1. 

Kaminski’s mother was an opera singer, his father a Catholic priest of Jewish descent who became a minister in the Old Catholic Church before his son was born. Kaminski (1886–1946) was a gifted pianist but ended up studying national economics at the University of Heidelberg. His focus shifted, however, after a chance meeting earned him financial backing from a wealthy arts patroness, Martha Warburg. In 1909, he began attending Berlin’s Stern Conservatory of Music. By 1912, he had composed his well-regarded Psalm 130 for choir and soprano solo, which caught the attention of critics and contemporaries, as did his Psalm 69, premiered in 1919, and his 1933 work Dorische Musik for orchestra, his best known work, has been praised as a pinnacle in contemporary music. Composers like Carl Orff and Heinz Schubert were one-time Kaminski students and he was admired by Arnold Schoenberg, among others. But Nazi-era bans severely curtailed performances of Kaminski's works after 1937, due to his Jewish heritage, and this suppression contributed to his relative obscurity after his death in 1946. Despite this neglect, at present, Kaminski is hailed as an accomplished composer with ongoing impact on sacred traditions and his work continues to be revived and introduced to new audiences in programs like the one you are treated to on this night. 

The four-movement Clarinet Quartet is another one of his early significant compositions, finished the same year as his Psalm 130, in 1912. Wild mood changes in the first movement and a theme with variations in the second movement, titled Ruthenisches Volkslied (Ruthanian Folksong), reflect Kaminski's interest in thematic development and folk-inspired material, and these themes are carried into the Scherzo and the Grave—Risoluto finale. 

Ben brought the quartet to the Chamber Series after discovering it a few years ago while seeking out new music with clarinet. He tracked down a recording, then later dug up the score at the University of Washington Library. “I thought it was a cool, interesting piece, an unusual combination of instruments: instead of the higher-pitched violin, you have the middle-ranged viola, which has a bit more of a mellow tone to it.” Ben and his Symphony colleagues, Principal Viola Sayaka Kokubo and Cello Eric Chan, are joined by Nozomi Khudyev, a Seattle pianist and wife to Associate Principal Clarinet Emil Khudyev. “We’ve played together in the past. She’s a great pianist, so it should be a lively collaboration.” 

After intermission, the program closes with String Quartet No. 12, Op. 127 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). “I've always wanted to play all of the Beethoven quartets, and I've especially been fascinated by his late quartets,” says Viola Ursula Steele, who selected the quartet for its inclusion. “To me, Beethoven's late quartets have an extremely timeless quality to them, often transcending the conventions or context of their era and cutting straight to your heart.” 

The first of his six late quartets that were composed over two years (from 1825–1826), his 12th String Quartet was not well received initially, though as with the rest of the composer’s works, has grown in popularity and become appreciated as the centuries have passed. Ursula’s first encounter with the piece was hearing it performed by the Pacifica Quartet when she was studying at Indiana University, but this will be the first time she and her colleagues (Assistant Principal Cello Nathan Chan, Principal Second Violin Elisa Barston and First Violin Ji Yeon Lee) play this quartet, which, she explains, “appealed to me for its beautiful melodies, as well as the unexpected turns it takes. The Adagio second movement is one of the most heartbreaking, gorgeous pieces of music I've ever heard, and somehow interjected by a jaunty, virtuosic variation that sounds incredibly joyful. It is entirely unexpected but ends up feeling cohesive and satisfying, and there are many such unexpected paths the piece leads us down.”