Michi Wiancko, born in San Clemente, California in 1976, began Suzuki violin lessons at age three and studied with Haroutune Bedelian at UC/Irvine before undertaking her professional training at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Donald Weilerstein and at Julliard with Robert Mann. While she was still a student, Wiancko built a national reputation with her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1997, winning the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in 2002 — whose prize was a New York debut at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall — and debuting with the New York Philharmonic in December 2003 playing “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as a last-minute substitute for Michelle Kim. She has since appeared widely as a chamber musicians, recitalist and soloist in a range of style with an array of collaborators, from the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Musicians from Marlboro and Yo-Yo Ma to the indie rock band Wye Oak, the rock duo El Vy, and her own band, Kono Michi, which The Strad wrote makes “intriguing and exquisitely beautiful … music that breaks through the pop classical barrier.” Wiancko is a passionate interpreter of contemporary music, working with Mark O’Connor, Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Jessie Montgomery and many others; in 2007, she premiered and recorded Margaret Brouwer’s Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra with CityMusic Cleveland. Her other recordings include the complete solo violin works of French violinist and composer Émile Sauret (1852-1920) and two albums on Nonesuch of music by Laurie Anderson and Steve Reich.

Michi Wiancko is also a gifted composer of chamber works, film scores, a song cycle, arrangements, commercials and the opera Murasaki’s Moon, commissioned by Opera America and premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019. Her addition commissions include those from American Lyric Theater, Ecstatic Music Festival, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Anne Akiko Meyers, soprano Anna Prohaska, Camerata Bern, Aizuri Quartet, Enso Quartet and Metropolis Ensemble.

In addition to her composition and performing career, Michi Wiancko teaches a course on 21st-century musicianship and creativity at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and is director and curator of Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival, arts retreat and community organization on a 100-acre hilltop former dairy farm in rural western Massachusetts that she established with her husband, composer Judd Greenstein.

Wiancko wrote of Are You You, commissioned by CityMusic Cleveland and premiered at this concert, “The opportunity to write for a Baroque ensemble is a thrilling one, as it encourages one to ponder and dream about how music was expressed and received hundreds of years ago. Spontaneity and emotional directness are key focal point in my piece, and both are elements and cultural values that I imagine have been musically celebrated throughout the ages. Are You You takes its title and inspiration from a painting by Shantell Martin, an artist and cultural facilitator who explores themes of intersectionality, identity and play. How do we know who we are? How do we express the core of who we are today through instruments that were made centuries ago”?

The scant extant biographical information concerning Francisco José de Castro is anchored by the year 1695, when the respected Bolognese publisher Pier Maria Monte issued a collection of ten trio sonatas as his Op. 1 — Trattenimenti armonici da camera a tre (“Entertainments for Chamber Trio”). Castro was born into an aristocratic family in Spain around 1670, studied composition and violin in Seville, and went for advanced training to the Collegio dei Nobili de Antonio Viennese in Brescia in northern Italy, a Jesuit college for noblemen noted for its musical curriculum and elaborate, multi-disciplinary performances. These “chivalric exercises” – esercizi cavallereschi — included fencing, horseback riding, French recitation, dancing and music, all desirable attributes for the well-educated Italian nobleman. One account from 1693 mentions a “sumptuous Sinfonia for spinets, dulcimers, theorbos, guitars, violins, cellos and trombas marinas [a tall, narrow, triangular, one-string bowed instrument whose sound was thought to resemble a trumpet], all of which instruments were played by the gentlemen.” Among the six violinists was “Don Francesco de Castro di Siviglia.” For an Esercizi two years later, the year of the publication of his Op. 1, Castro was commissioned to compose a “festive symphony of musical instrument” to accompany a dance. That work is lost, but it is likely that is shared some movements with the Trattenimenti armonici. Two more collections of trio sonatas and one of concertos were published in Bologna under Castro’s name by 1708, but Op. 2 and Op. 3 are apparently lost and the authenticity of Op. 4 has been questioned. The time and place of Castro’s death are unknown.

The ten sonata of Castro’s Op. 1 follow Corelli’s model of the sonata da camera (“chamber sonata”), each comprising three or four movements with a slow Preludio followed by a series of dances. The Preludio that opens the compact Third Sonata is a sweet duet for violins over the gently flowing accompaniment of cello and harpsichord. The Allamanda is principally a French dance but whose name may indicate it originated in Germany. The Sarabanda, here in quick triple meter, is best known in the dignified manner of Bach’s day, but when it emigrated to Spain from its birthplace in Mexico in the 16th century, it was so wild in it motions and so lascivious in its implications that Cervantes ridiculed it and Philip II suppressed it. The Gavotta is a dance of moderate liveliness whose ancestry traces back to French peasant music.

Composer and lutenist Andrea Falconieri (sometimes, Falconiero) was born in Naples in 1585 or 1586 and died there in 1656, but his life between those events was hardly stationary. Little is known of his early years. He must have shown precocious talent as a performer, since by 1604 he was a student of the lutenist Santino Garsi at Parma, where he was apparently then living under the protection of Duke Ranuccio I Farnese. In 1610, Falconieri succeeded Garsi as court lutenist and began composing songs, motets and instrumental pieces. Four years later he abruptly quit his post as Parma without the permission of the Duke (whose reputation as “a gloomy bigot” may have precipitated Falconieri’s departure) and worked at the courts in Mantua, Florence and Rome during the following years; his first publication, a book of accompanied villanellas, appeared in Rome in 1616. He spent a few months in Modena in 1620-21 and got married there, but soon headed for Spain, alone. Records are sketchy, but he is thought to have spent the next seven years traveling, studying and composing in Spain and France, returning to Italy in 1628 to perform at the wedding of Princess Margherita de Medici and Duke Odoardo Farnese in Florence. Falconieri, apparently forgiven by Duke Ranuccio, was back in Parma by 1629, but three years later he moved to Genoa to take up a teaching post at the Santa Brigida Convent; he stayed there util 1637, when the Mother Superior asked him to leave because his music was “disturbing the nuns.” He returned to Naples in 1639, when he was appointed lutenist in the royal chapel. In 1642, he was granted leave to visit his wife in Modena. He was promoted to Maestro di Cappella at Naples in 1647, and held that post until he died of the plague in 1656.

Falconieri published six books of secular songs (1616-1619), seven motets (1619) and a large collection of canzone, sinfonie, fantasie, capricci, brandi, correnti, gagliarde, and alemane for one to three violins and continuo (1650). The Passacale from Falconieri’s 1650 publication (a genre also known as passacaglia, from pasar [“to walk”] and calle [“street”], i.e. a kind of promenade) originated as a popular dance form accompanied by guitar in the city barrios of Spain in the late 16th century. Its name, rudimentary harmonies, striding rhythms and repeated melodic patterns were taken over into formal composition for some French and Italian guitar publications around 1600, and during the 17th century the passacaglia evolved into its settled form — a series of continuous variations, usually in triple meter, built upon a recurring melodic phrase or harmonic progression.

La Folia di Spagna (“The Spanish Folly”) originated as the accompaniment to wild dances in Portugal and Spain in the 15th century, but it had been domesticated for more sedate musical purposes by Falconieri’s time. His Folias echa para mi Señora Doña Tarolilla de Carallenos (1650), written in honor of a Spanish noblewoman, probably a patron, is built from intertwining melodic lines above a repeated bass pattern.

The Spanish colonies of South America enjoyed an active musical culture from their founding in the 16th century, both in the churches, which supported trained musicians who performed sacred music from scores imported from Europe as well as new works in traditional sacred styles composed locally, and in secular culture, with songs, dances and a few more sophisticated pieces from the Old World and New as well as music of indigenous peoples. In 1767, the Spanish cleric Baltasar Jaime Martínez y Compañón, who was born in the northern town of Cabredo in 1737, thoroughly trained in music and general studies and some of Spain’s finest universities, ordained in 1761, and served as an advisor to the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Madrid in 1766, was assigned as choirmaster to the cathedral in Lima, Peru. Martínez y Compañón occupied increasingly important positions as musician, administrator and educator, and in 1778 he was appointed Bishop of the northern coastal town of Trujillo. Between 1782 and 1785, Martínez y Compañón authorized and frequently led extensive expeditions throughout his domain to learn about the life of the people and the natural attributes of the area. He and his researchers recorded their findings in journals, maps, geographical charts, linguistic notations, 1,411 watercolor images depicting Colonial Peru’s people, flora, fauna and landscapes, as well as twenty musical selections heard in the villages. Martínez y Compañón had those materials compiled into nine volumes titled Colección de Música Virreinal (“Collection of Vice-Royal Music”) — commonly known as the Codex Martínez Compañón — sent a copy to King Charles IV in Spain, and used the study’s findings to promote education, literacy, culture, science and trade among both immigrants and natives. His prominence in the gestating Latin American church and secular cultures was recognized when he was made Archbishop of Bogotá in 1788; he died there in 1797. Local legend holds that the smell of flowers emanated from his corpse and for three days the sun did not shine.

The twenty musical selections in the Codex Martínez Compañón were discovered in the oral traditions of the villages, and the rough field notes were put into traditional notation, comprising just the melody and an added bass line, by Pedro José Solis, maestro de capilla of Trujillo Cathedral from 1781 to 1823. All except three selections have sung texts.

Al Nacimiento de Christo Nuestro Señor (“At the Birth of Christ Our Lord”) is a cachua, a circle-dance for adolescents accompanied by drums, guitar and harp. There are two examples of that title with different texts and tunes in the Codex.

Lanchas para bailar (“Boats for Dancing”), which featured drums and guitar or harp, is strongly colored with the idioms that came to characterize Latin American music.

Half of the musical entries in the Codex are called “tonada,” a general 18th-century Spanish term for a melody played, sung or danced. The Tonada del Chimo was collected in the valley where the city of Trujillo was founded by the Spanish Conquistadors in 1534, which was named for the Chimú Empire that had once dominated the area.

La Despedida (“The Farewell”) is a cachua for leave-taking.

The tonada La Brugita de Guamachuco was collected in the city of Huamachuco, site of an Augustinian mission. The text is sung by a disappointed suitor referring to his intended sweetheart as Brugita [brujita], whom he finds either “bewitching” or, perhaps, a “little witch.”

The cachua Serranita: El Huico Nuebo is dedicated to the Virgen de la Puerta, patron of the city of Otusco, fifty miles north of Trujillo, whose celebration in December is one of the most important religious observances in Peru.

Luigi Boccherini was the foremost Italian composer of instrumental music of the late 18th century. The son of a cellist, he learned his father’s instrument early and well, and made his public debut in his native Lucca at the age of thirteen. The following year, 1757, he and his father took up appointments in the orchestra of the court theater in Vienna, where Luigi’s reputation as a performer began to be matched by that of his compositions. In April 1764, he returned to Lucca as composer and cellist at the church of St. Maria Corteorlandini. At the end of 1766, Boccherini embarked on a concert tour that ended several months later in Paris, where his playing and compositions were much admired and many of his works, mostly chamber music for strings, were printed by local publishing houses. In 1768, he moved to Madrid at the urging of the Spanish ambassador to Paris. The following year he composed and dedicated to Don Luis, the Spanish Infante, younger brother of King Charles III, a set of quartets, and was rewarded with an appointment beginning in November 1770 to serve the Infante as virtuoso di camera [chamber virtuoso] e compositor de musica. The next fifteen years were a time of security and steady activity for Boccherini, but this happy period came to an end in 1785, when both his wife and Don Luis died. The following year Boccherini won an appointment as chamber music composer to Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia.

The records of Boccherini’s activities for the decade following 1786 are scarce, but he seems to have remained in Madrid, where he filled Friedrich’s commissions as well as those from several Portuguese, Spanish and French patrons. Following Friedrich’s death in 1796, and the refusal of his successor to continue Boccherini’s employment, Boccherini’s income became undependable. Occasional commissions came his way, as did a small pension granted to him by Don Luis, but the pianist and composer Sophie Gail reported finding him in distress during her visit to Madrid in 1803. His condition had been exacerbated by the deaths the preceding year of two daughters; his second wife and another daughter passed away in 1804. Boccherini died in Madrid on May 28, 1805, from respiratory failure; in 1927, his remains were returned to Lucca.

“Boccherini was one of the most ingratiating of 18th-century composers,” wrote Abraham Veinus. “He had charm, delicacy, refinement and withal a peculiar sensuousness in the color and contour of his phrases which lent warmth and body to his music. From his creations we know that he was not only a man of genius but a composer of rare taste.” Most of Boccherini’s large output of some 500 works was for chamber ensembles, as necessitated by the makeup of quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos, most dating from the years of his employment with the Infante Don Luis. Much in the compositional manner that Haydn was exploring in Austria at the same time, Boccherini’s chamber works are notable for the integration and near equality of all the ensemble voices. “The most obvious characteristics of his melodic style,” wrote Stanley Sadie, “are the repetition of short phrases, the use of triadic or scalar figuration, the symmetry of rhythmic structure, and, above all, the delicate detail, with finely molded lines much elaborated with trills, appoggiaturas, flourishes and other kinds of musical filigree work.”

During the late 1790s, Boccherini arranged about a dozen of his existing quintet for the combination of guitar and string quartet, mostly on commission from the Spanish nobleman Marquis de Benavente. (Eight are extant.) Louis Picquot, an early biographer of the composer, explained: “The Marquis excelled on the guitar, an instrument dear to all good Spaniards. He asked Boccherini to provide a guitar part for his own use in those compositions which he liked, in exchange for one hundred francs for each quartet, quintet or symphony. Several other rich amateurs acted in a similar manner, which prompted Boccherini not to compose, as many believed, but to arrange with a guitar part a large number of chosen pieces from among his works.”

In 1798 Boccherini cobbled the Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D Major (G[érard] 448) from the first two movements of his Quintet, Op. 12, No. 6 and the Grave and Fandango from the Quintet, Op. 40, No. 2, composed in 1788. The Quintet opens with an ingratiating Pastorale of gently swaying rhythms and vernal mood. The guitar assumes an accompanimental role in the buoyant Allegro maestoso while the cello (Boccherini’s instrument) is featured in high-register flourishes. A stately Grave assai serves as the introduction to the brilliant closing Fandango, a folk dance in moderately fast triple meter built upon alternating tonic and dominant chords that originated in Spain in the early 18th century. The fandango was traditionally performed by couples with castanets accompanied by guitars, and here Boccherini distilled the essence of the dance in both the musical content and in calling for a sistrum (a rattle of ancient origin whose jangling sound resembles that of a modern tambourine) and castanets.