Four Scenes from Childhood

Program Note

Like many composers before him, Jonathan Leshnoff is often inspired by the virtuosity of the soloists for whom he is privileged to write. A significant portion of his work has been dedicated to the genre of the concerto, an especially appealing genre because of the collaborative possibilities that concerto writing offers to a composer. In a wide-ranging output that so far encompasses concertos for piano, violin, cello, guitar, flute, clarinet, and trombone, among a variety of double-soloist combinations, he often works closely with his performers to tailor the music to their specific playing styles. This work arises out of an ongoing collaboration between Leshnoff, violist Meredith Kufchak, and violinist Alexander Kerr. In 2018, Kerr gave the first performance of Leshnoff’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and has since performed many of the composer’s works with violin. In the summer of 2025, Kerr and Kufchak (husband and wife) made a forthcoming studio recording of Leshnoff’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola. To round out the album, Leshnoff composed this new viola concerto in the form of a suite of miniatures, entitled Four Scenes from Childhood, and dedicated the work to Meredith Kufchak and Alexander Kerr. (The work is also performable in a version with piano accompaniment.)

The concerto’s title might resonate with some music listeners: Robert Schumann’s set of piano pieces called Kinderszenen is perhaps the most familiar among a number of similarly titled works. Leshnoff’s approach, like Schumann’s in Kinderszenen, is not to write music for children, but rather to give sound to an adult’s reflective look back on formative experiences from childhood. Thus this composition is unique in Leshnoff’s output for being so openly autobiographical. In the composer’s own words, he felt that the “rich sound of the viola” was the perfect voice with which to “express the poignant moments of my happy childhood.”

Rolling arpeggios open the first movement, “Walks with my Father on Chilly November Nights,” while the voila declaims a calm, long-lined, lyrical melody. Leshnoff explains that this movement is “a representation of walks with my father that we took in the 1980s, especially when I was in high school. We would take walks around our suburban New Jersey neighborhood on chilly October and November nights, around 9 PM. We would talk about our days, and our conversations turned to the literature I was reading in English classes. My father was an engineer by training, but he took many literature classes in college, and our discussions became quite philosophical. I remember these walks with much tenderness and nostalgia now that my father is gone. They were very special walks with the leaves rustling in the chilly wind on those fall evenings.”

Rapid-fire scales and pulsating rhythms quickly supplant the preceding calm. The second movement, “Fun at the Beach with my Family,” evokes an earlier period in the composer’s life. Leshnoff writes: “In elementary school, my family would take trips to Cape Cod. The times we had on the beach were so joyous that to this day, I remember the glee and freedom we all had. This movement depicts that sense of joy.” Movement three is the emotional heart of the work. Entitled “Alone,” Leshnoff reminiscences how “being artistic often meant being alone. Though I had a very happy childhood, this movement expresses the times when I just didn’t fit in with the other kids—a sense of solitude.” The final movement, “Practicing Bach Partitas (Homage to Bach),” hearkens back to Leshnoff’s own musical beginnings. The composer writes: “Though I can be tough on the soloist, and it may be hard to recognize from my writing, I did in fact train on the violin as a kid! I got through the Mendelssohn, Bruch, and Mozart concerti, and I played several Bach partitas too. The finale is my homage to the great composer Bach and to his craft, but with my own twists.” A study in perpetual motion, the viola’s wide-ranging, Bach-like figuration brings the piece to an exciting and memorable conclusion.

Program notes by:
Aaron Ziegel
©2026 Aaron Ziegel