The University of Wisconsin-Madison violin club will host a master class by professor emeritus of violin, Tyrone Greive. This event is open to all students, auditioners, and others within the university community.
Tyrone Greive was professor of music at UW-Madison from 1979 until 2013, and from 1990 to 2010, he also served as concertmaster of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Greive is an international expert in Polish music written for violin and piano, publishing in 2005 a CD titled The Polish Tradition, “a lively survey of music in diverse styles for violin and piano, composed between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries….Violinist Tyrone Greive and pianist Ellen Burmeister preserve much of the energy of the dance and the rawness of Polish fiddling, and such pieces as Henryk Wieniawski’s La Ménétrier and Bronislaw Przybylski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini give a clear idea of Poland’s vital contribution to this literature, past and present. Albany’s sound quality is clear and balanced.”
Recently, International Music of New York (IMC) issued the third of a series of six publications of intermediate student repertoire, edited by Greive. The latest release is the Leo Portnoff Romance, op. 4 for violin and piano and the earlier publications include the Portnoff, Concertino, op. 18 and Concerto, op. 1.
Greive writes:
“Although the the Russian-parented and German-trained composer is well known to some, many violinists do not know him because he was among the Jewish composers and performers for whom the Nazis purged biographical information and other informational listings.
“The expressive and melodic Romance features a light German romantic style that includes chromatic shadings and other features that make it an excellent piece for students and other less experienced players to develop a beautiful sound and a fine sense of phrasing. The Concertino and Concerto are excellent preparation for eventual study of major repertoire because of their makeup as well as often having the ‘feel’ of a mainstream concerto. Neither explores the higher, especially E-string, positions, ebut both are valuable in their potential to utilize the even and half positions on the lower and middle strings and in the lower portion of the E-string register as ell as use more effective fingerings for augmented seconds and broken diminished chords. Thus, in many ways, the playing level of the op. 18 is comparable to the Frederick Seitz Concertos Nos. 2 and 5, and that of the op. 1 is good preparation for the J. S. Bach Concerto in A minor or the F. J. Haydn Concerto in G Major. These pieces are available in other editions; however, I have found the old historical editions to be riddled with errors and inconsistencies in both the violin and piano parts.
“The upcoming IMC releases (anticipated in 2019) include concertos by Portnoff and Seitz (with the latter being absent in most repertoire listings) and the Sevcik 40 [Bowing] Variations, op. 3.”
In February 1998, Greive was named winner of a 1997 Stefan and Wanda Wilk Prize for Research in Polish Music sponsored by the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California.
In October, 2018, the Wisconsin chapter of the American String Teachers Association designated Greieve as the “WiASTA Teacher of the Year for 2018.”
