Sophia Subbayya Vastek, whose March 6 recital, part of Salem Classical, was one of the first cancellations due to COVID-19.
Mozart, at 35. Schubert, at 31. Mendelssohn, 38. Gershwin, 38. Purcell, 36.
Include Lili Boulanger, 24, on that list.
Imagining more decades of possible music-making from any of these composers, only leads to sadness. That music won’t be written. Only the potential exists. They died too young.
But we do have some music, sometimes precious little of it. On Friday evening in Salem, Sophia Subbayya Vastek plays the piano music of Lili Boulanger—all of it—in a Salem Classical recital in the historic house at 10 Chestnut St.
“I came to her music at a formative time in my life,” Vastek says. “I developed a deep connection to it, and keep coming back to it.”
Vastek lives in Troy, New York and is active as a recitalist, a collaborator and presenter. Her first piano release included music from Cage to Donnacha Dennehy. She’s performed this Boulanger repertory multiple times, and her connection to the composer has a personal, musical lineage.
“My undergraduate teacher, Émile Naoumoff, was the last pupil of Nadia Boulanger,” Vastek says. “They were very close. Since he had this personal relationship, he gave me a wonderful glimpse into the world of the Boulangers.”
Lili Boulanger’s sister Nadia is far more well-known, thanks to her longer life and her more public career as a conductor, composer and mentor to a whole generation of other composers, from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.
Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) fit right in with her musical family. She won the Prix de Rome composition prize at 20—the first woman (her father had won as well). She studied harp, violin, cello and piano, as well as composition. The entire Boulanger family played an integral part in a fabulously active Parisian music scene of the early century.
Lili’s modest compositional output includes vocal settings for orchestra, a number of songs, and chamber works. All the works on Vastek’s program are short, including “Cortège.” “To me it’s an outlier in this group,” Vastek says. “It’s so childlike in its simplicity. You hear this piece, written so close before she dies, and you imagine that she’s writing the music for her own funeral.”
Vastek’s teacher Naoumoff did more than just provide reminiscences of the Boulangers—he also helped rescue some of the music on this program. “Her ‘Theme and Variations’ was unavailable until Émile got the manuscript and made it available,” Vastek says.
When a composer dies so young—even a prodigy like Lili Boulanger—it’s difficult to gauge what styles might have developed. “I think that she was coming at her music from a more traditional standpoint,” Vastek says, “one you don’t hear with all the changes that were happening in France and Europe then.
“What’s remarkable to me is that in this short amount of time, you already sense a unique voice. When I hear it I don’t think of anything else.
“This is a very compact amount of music,” Vastek says. “People are always taken by it.”
Vastek has added a short suite, “Metopy,” by Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) to the program. “I came to both composers around the same time,” she says, “they opened up the floodgates into the 20th century for me, and I formed a connection to them. They are completely different—Szymanowski really pushes harmonies, and draws on an Impressionistic tradition. But I knew I should put them together on this program.”
Pianist Sophia Subbayya Vastek performs music of Lili Boulanger and Karol Szymanowski on Friday, March 6 at 10 Chestnut St., Salem. For tickets and information visit salemclassical.com or call 781 696-0532.