2018 Bravo! Vail Chamber Book

2018

CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

J U N E 21– A U G U S T 2 , 2 018

WELCOME

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hamber music has always been at the heart and soul of the Bravo! Festival. In the founding days, Artistic Director Ida Kavafian and Executive Director John Giovando presented the chamber music concerts on stage at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, and by some accounts, on a few occasions the number of musicians performing almost exceeded the number of people in the audience! Our chamber music concerts are flourishing now and the intimacy and power of this repertoire enrich the Festival every summer.

Anne-Marie McDermott One of my greatest joys as Artistic Director since 2011, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR is watching this booklet come to life with the scope and variety of all the chamber music we now offer to the public.

Whether you love keyboard works by Bach or are intrigued by new vocal ensembles like Roomful of Teeth, or are drawn to new compositions by today’s young composers, I am certain you’ll find concerts that will touch your heart. There is no greater privilege for a chamber musician than to share our joy of playing together and to share the thought-provoking and touching magnificence of this music.

Please join us. Listen, and enjoy!

CONTENTS CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES.....................................................................................2 FREE CONCERT SERIES........................................................................................4 CLASSICALLY UNCORKED SERIES

PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE.......................6

SEASON AT A GLANCE.........................................................................................8 CONCERT LISTINGS............................................................................................10 MEET THE ARTISTS............................................................................................. 46 ALL PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

P H O T O S BY Z AC H M A H O N E .CO M UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

UP CLOSE & MUSICAL JUNE 26–JULY 24, 2018

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ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (page 10) 2

2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET, PIANO (page 20)

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC STRING QUARTET (page 36)

FROM LEFT: © DAVID ROWE; © DECCA; © CHRIS LEE

RAVO! VAIL’S CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES offers something for music lovers of all persuasions. Audiences will enjoy wellloved masterworks and new discoveries of the chamber music repertoire, performed by members of the resident orchestras alongside world-renowned guest artists and ensembles, all in the spectacular setting of the Donovan Pavilion, a stunning venue with expansive mountain valley views. Experience chamber music as it was meant to be heard: in a beautiful, intimate environment, with acclaimed artists, and among friends.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUN

26 JUL

10 JUL

17 JUL

24

The Academy Winds & Strings.......................... 10 Four Pianists/ Two Pianos..................................... 20 McDermott Plays Bach and Mozart......................28 New York Philharmonic String Quartet..............................36

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FREE CONCERT SERIES

CHAMBER MUSIC FOR ALL JULY 3–26, 2018

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NHANCE YOUR DAY with a free, hourlong chamber music concert performed by the Festival’s renowned musicians including the 2018 Chamber Musicians in Residence and the 2018 Piano Fellows. These programs offer a wide variety of repertoire, and are held in beautiful and unique community venues throughout the Vail Valley.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUL

10

Vail Interfaith Chapel,

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03 1:00PM.............................................. 12

12

JUL

Vail Interfaith Chapel,

JUL

Edwards Interfaith

JUL

05 1:00PM.............................................. 15 JUL

09 Chapel, 6:00PM.....................16

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JUL

16 17

2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM..............................................18

JUL

Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM............................................. 22

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19

Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM............................................. 32

Brush Creek Pavilion, 6:00PM............................................ 24

JUL

Vail Interfaith Chapel,

Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM............................................. 26

19

Golden Eagle Senior Center, 11:00AM.................... 31

24 1:00PM............................................. 34 JUL

Vail Interfaith Chapel,

26 1:00PM............................................. 38

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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CLASSICALLY UNCORKED PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

ARTISTRY IN ABUNDANCE JULY 31–AUGUST 2, 2018

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LASSICALLY UNCORKED pulls out all the stops in an unforgettable chamber music experience unlike any other.

With gourmet hors d’oeuvres, handcrafted wines, and intimate seating in an exquisite mountain setting, this year’s programs showcase two of the most visionary and enterprising ensembles performing today. Experience a Pulitzer Prize-winning “passion play,” the world premiere of a contemporary Requiem, and the fascinating interplay between musical perspectives, past and present.

LEFT: MEIOMI WINE (1)

PRESENTED BY

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUL

31 AUG

Voices + Quartet: A Sonic Dialogue.................... 40

01

Voices + Quartet + Piano: Little Match Girl & Mozart.............................................42

AUG

Voices + Quartet +

02 Piano: Intoxicating

Harmonies...................................... 44

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SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2018 SEASON AT A GLANCE 24 COLOR KEY Orchestra Concerts Chamber Music Concerts

25

Academy of St Martin in the Fields 6:00PM | GRFA

26 Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

1 JULY

2

3

Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Little Listeners 2:00PM | APL Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | VPL

8

9

10

The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Little Listeners 2:00PM | APL Free Concert 6:00PM | EIC Soirée 6:00PM | Mayer Residence

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | VPL Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

APL: Avon Public Library

15

16

17

BCP: Brush Creek Pavilion

2018 Annual Gala An American in Paris 5:30PM | RCBG

Free Concert 6:00PM | BCP

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

22

23

24

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Soirée 6:00PM | Rothkopf Residence

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

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30

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Classically Uncorked presented by Meiomi Wine Free Concerts Free Education & Engagement Events Linda & Mitch Hart Soirée Series

LOCATION KEY

DP: Donovan Pavilion EIC: Edwards Interfaith Chapel EPL: Eagle Public Library GESC: Golden Eagle Senior Center GPL: Gypsum Public Library GRFA: Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater LAG: Lundgren Amphitheater, Gypsum RCBG: Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch VAH: Vail Ale House VIC: Vail Interfaith Chapel VMS: Vail Mountain School VPL: Vail Public Library WMSC: Walking Mountains Science Center

Soirée 6:00PM | Millett Residence 8

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

Classically Uncorked Presented by Meiomi Wine 7:30PM | DP

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY 21 JUNE

FRIDAY 22

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Academy of St Martin in the Fields 6:00PM | GRFA

SATURDAY 23 Academy of St Martin in the Fields 6:00PM | GRFA

27

28

29

30

Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Soirée 6:00PM | Loosbrock Residence

Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

4

5

6

7

Dallas Symphony Orchestra Special Time, 2:00PM | GRFA

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | VAH

11

12

13

14

Master Class 11:00AM | VMS The Philadelphia Orchestra Special Time, 7:30PM | GRFA

Free Family Concert #1 11:00AM | GRFA Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Free Family Concert #2 6:00PM | LAG

Master Class 11:00AM | VMS The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | VAH

18

19

20

21

Little Listeners 2:00PM | GPL

Free Concert 11:00AM | GESC Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | EPL Science Behind Sound 6:30PM | WMSC

New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | VAH

25

26

27

28

Little Listeners 2:00PM | GPL New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | EPL Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

1 AUGUST

2

Classically Uncorked Presented by Meiomi Wine 7:30PM | DP

Pre-Concert Talk 6:30PM | DP Classically Uncorked Presented by Meiomi Wine 7:30PM | DP

CHAMBER MUSIC

THE ACADEMY WINDS & STRINGS Serenata in vano for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Cello and Double Bass (1914)

Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in A major, K. 581 (1789)

CARL NIELSEN (1865-1931)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

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he best-known of Carl Nielsen’s pieces for wind instruments is the sunny Quintet, Op. 43 of 1921, although he had shown his interest in using the wind instruments in a chamber setting several years earlier. In 1914 the bassist Anton Hegner asked him to compose something in a lighter vein for a concert at which he and some of his Royal Danish Orchestra colleagues were to offer Beethoven’s Septet for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass. For Hegner, Nielsen created a delightful work — a “Serenade in Vain” — for Beethoven’s trio of winds supplemented by cello and bass.

The Serenata in vano is arranged in three continuous movements — a gently flowing Allegro with extended solo passages, a tender Adagio and a chipper closing March — to which Nielsen applied this tongue-in-cheek program: “Serenata in vano is a humorous trifle. First the gentlemen play in a somewhat chivalrous and showy manner to lure the fair one out onto the balcony, but she does not appear. Then they play a slightly languorous strain (Poco adagio), but that doesn’t have any effect either.

Since they have played in vain (in vano), they don’t care a straw, and shuffle off home to the strains of the little final march, which they play for their own amusement.” Despite its charm and immediate appeal, the Serenata was regarded by Nielsen as a minor work, and he did not offer the score for publication during his lifetime. It finally appeared in print in 1942.

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Mozart harbored a special fondness for the graceful agility, liquid tone and ensemble amiability of the clarinet from the time he first heard the instrument as a young boy during his tours, and he later wrote for it whenever it was available. His greatest compositions for the instrument were inspired by the technical accomplishment and expressive playing of Anton Stadler, principal clarinetist of the Imperial Court Orchestra in Vienna and a fellow Mason, for whom he wrote not only this Quintet but also the Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Viola (“Kegelstatt,” K. 498), the clarinet and basset horn parts in the vocal trios, the clarinet solos in the opera La Clemenza di Tito, the clarinet parts added to the second version of the G minor Symphony (K. 550), and the flawless Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), his last instrumental work, completed in October 1791, just two months before his death.

The Quintet opens with a theme that is almost chaste in its purity and yet is, somehow, deeply introspective and immediately touching.

The second theme, a limpid, sweetly chromatic melody is given first by the violin and then by the clarinet. A reference to the suave main theme closes the exposition and serves as the gateway to the development section, which is largely concerned with permutations of the arpeggiated figures with which the clarinet made its entry in the opening measures. The recapitulation provides exquisite closure of the movement’s formal structure and emotional progression.

The Larghetto achieves a state of sublimity that makes it the instrumental counterpart to Sarastro’s arias in The Magic Flute, which George Bernard Shaw once said were the only music fit to issue from the mouth of God. The Menuetto is fitted with two trios: the first, a

JUN

26 somber minor-mode essay for strings alone, is perfectly balanced by the clarinet’s lilting, dance-like strains in the second. The variationsform finale is more subdued and pensive than virtuosic and flamboyant, and serves as a fitting conclusion to one of the most precious treasures in Mozart’s peerless musical legacy.

Septet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass in E–flat major, Op. 20 (1799-1800) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

The Septet, Op. 20, was Beethoven’s most popular work during his lifetime. Even before it was published, it had gained a reputation through circulating manuscript copies, and the score was in great demand as soon as it was printed by Hoffmeister in 1802. To make the music available to the widest range of music lovers and amateur performers, arrangements by many hands for all manner of instrumental ensembles were concocted and sold to an eager public. For the three decades after its composition, the Septet was played in homes and concerts and meeting halls more frequently than any other music by Beethoven.

The Septet’s slow introduction is more decorative than expressive. The main body of the first movement is in sonata form, with a dashing main theme (initiated by the violin) nicely balanced by a legato second subject, given by the strings in chordal texture. The Adagio is a long-limbed song in three-part form (A–B–A). Beethoven borrowed the theme of the following Minuet from his Piano Sonata in G major, Op. 49, No. 2 of 1796.; the chipper Minuet proper surrounds an enchanting trio in which the horn and clarinet indulge in brilliant flashes of virtuosity. The fourth movement is a set of variations on a theme once identified as a folk tune from the lower Rhine, Ach Schiffer, lieber Schiffer (“O Sailor, Dear Sailor”). Later evidence suggests, however, that Beethoven may have invented the melody. The Scherzo is airy in texture and spirited in mood. The closing movement begins with a somber introduction, but the mood changes with the fast tempo.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

TUESDAY JUNE 26, 6:00PM CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

DONOVAN PAVILION

ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

James Burke, clarinet Stephen Stirling, horn Paul Boyes, bassoon Emi Ohi Resnick, violin Martin Burgess, violin Robert Smissen, viola Stephen Orton, cello Lynda Houghton, double bass

NIELSEN Serenata in vano for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Cello and Double Bass (9 minutes) Allegro non troppo ma brioso — Un poco adagio — Tempo di marcia

MOZART Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in A major, K. 581 (34 minutes) Allegro Larghetto Menuetto Allegretto con Variazioni

— INTERMISSION — BEETHOVEN Septet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass in E-flat major, Op. 20 (40 minutes) Adagio — Allegro con brio Adagio cantabile Tempo di Menuetto Tema con Variazioni Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace Andante con moto alla Marcia — Presto

Concessions provided by:

FREE CONCERT

PIAZZOLLA, FAURÉ, AND DEBUSSY Histoire du Tango (1981) ASTOR PIAZZOLL A (1921-1992)

T

he greatest master of the modern tango was Astor Piazzolla, born in 1921 in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, a resort town south of Buenos Aires.

He was raised in New York City, where he lived with his father from 1924 to 1937. Before Astor was ten years old, his musical talents had been discovered by Carlos Gardel, then the most famous of all performers and composers of tangos and a cultural hero in Argentina. At Gardel’s urging, the young Astor returned to Buenos Aires in 1937 and joined the popular tango orchestra of Anibal Troilo as arranger and bandoneón player. Piazzolla studied classical composition with Alberto Ginastera in Buenos Aires, and in 1954 he wrote a symphony for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic that earned him a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. When Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires in 1956, he founded his own performing group and began to create a modern style for the tango that combined elements of traditional tango, Argentinean folk music and contemporary classical, jazz and popular techniques into a “Nuevo Tango” that was as suitable for the concert hall as for the dance floor. Piazzolla toured widely, recorded frequently and composed incessantly until he suffered a stroke in Paris in August 1990. He died in Buenos Aires on July 5, 1992.

In 1981, when he had just turned sixty, Piazzolla composed his Histoire du Tango, in whose four movements he tried to encapsulate the evolution of both the styles and the performance venues of the dance. The work’s first three movements are titled Bordel 1900, Café 1930 and Nightclub 1960.

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Impromptu for Harp in D-flat major, Op. 86 (1904) GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

The Belgian-born harp virtuoso Alphonse Hasselmans (1845-1912) was well established as one of the Paris Conservatoire’s most distinguished teachers by the time that Fauré joined the school’s faculty in 1896. Hasselmans also served as principal harpist for the orchestras of the Opéra, Opéra-Comique and Conservatoire, and inspired original works from other musicians. Among the most important of these was Fauré’s Impromptu in D-flat major, written for the Conservatoire’s harp competition in July 1904. The Impromptu, as its title implies, is a free treatment of its two principal themes: a striding, noble strain first announced in full chords at the outset; and a scalar melody (begun after a brief silence) that consists of an arching phrase and a descending pattern incorporating a little triplet flourish.

Divertissements for Harp (1924) ANDRÉ CAPLET (1878-1925)

André Caplet wrote his two Divertissements for Harp in 1924 for Micheline Kahn (18891987), who studied with Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatoire. She won the school’s demanding Premier Prix when she was just fourteen, premiered Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro (written for her) four years later, and taught for much of her long life at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Caplet’s Divertissements are remarkable examples of the unique sound world available only to the harp — ethereal, evocative, often hovering between sound and silence, sometimes mysterious, always luminous. The first Divertissement, “In the French Manner,” suggests a water scene in Monet’s lovely garden at Giverny seen through a shrouding mist. The second, “In the Spanish Manner,” is sensuous and apparently improvisational, though it is rigorously built from a few distinctive motives.

JUL

03 TUESDAY JULY 3, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, L. 137 (1915)

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL

CL AUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

Debussy looked backwards for the inspiration, style and temperament of the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, to the elegance, emotional reserve, and textural clarity of the music of the French Baroque. The Sonata’s ethereal opening movement, titled Pastorale, unfolds as a series of episodes based on themes that at first encounter seem like little more than wispy arabesques. There are, however, five fragmentary but distinct thematic entities here, which are later recapitulated in a different order to round out the movement’s form: 1 and 2) two melancholy strains that introduce the flute and the viola; 3) an open-interval, drone-like motive for viola and harp; 4) a lyrical melody in the flute’s lower register supported by arching arpeggios in the viola; and 5) an animated ensemble passage in an uneven meter. The motives are heard at the end of the movement in this order: 2–4–5–3–1. A quicker dance-like section occupies the middle of the movement.

Though the Interlude, a reminiscence in pastels of the durable old form of the Minuet, is Debussy’s most obvious tribute here to the music of the Baroque, its whole-tone theme, parallel chord streams, and modal harmonies plainly mark this as a product of the 20th century. The form proceeds by twice interpolating a vaguely Oriental duple-meter episode (B) into the delicate triple-meter Minuet (A): A–B–A–B–A. The Finale brilliantly grounds its apparent evanescence of expression in a carefully crafted development of its themes. Most of the movement grows from mutations of the three motives that are presented in quick succession at the outset: snapping viola pizzicatos, quicksilver falling arpeggios from the flute, and a longer viola melody anxiously juxtaposing duple and triple rhythms. As the movement nears its end, the tempo slows to admit a brief recall of the flute theme that opened the first movement before a short, animated coda closes the Sonata.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

MEMBERS OF THE DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Emily Levin, harp David Buck, flute Ann Marie Brink, viola

PIAZZOLLA Selections from Histoire du Tango Bordel 1900 Café 1930 Nightclub 1960

FAURÉ Impromptu for Harp in D-flat major, Op. 86

CAPLET Divertissements for Harp À la française À l’espagnole

DEBUSSY Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, L. 137 Pastorale Interlude Finale The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

Not your mother’s marching band.

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

ASPHALT

ORCHESTRA ”PART PARADE SPECTACLE, PART HALFTIME SHOW AND PART CUTTING-EDGE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC CONCERT…COOLLY BRILLIANT AND INFECTIOUS. AND WHAT A SCENE!” —THE NEW YORK TIMES

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reated by the founders of the “relentlessly inventive” new music presenter Bang on a Can (New York Magazine), Asphalt Orchestra unleashes innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs, and jazz basements and takes it to the streets and beyond.

For five days in July, this “new-music group disguised as a ragtag

marching band” (New York Times), made up of New York City’s most exciting rock, jazz, and classical players, will bring their thrilling arrangements to Bravo! Vail events, the streets and public spaces throughout the Vail Valley.

You never know where they’ll pop up, or what you’ll hear, but you can count on their unbelievable energy and brilliant virtuosity.

JULY 4

JULY 5

JULY 7

JULY 7

JULY 7

JULY 8

10:00AM– 2:00PM —

1:00PM —

9:00AM– 2:00PM —

12:30PM —

8:30PM —

10:00AM– 3:30PM —

Vail America Days

Free concert at Vail Interfaith Chapel

Minturn Market

Vail Bravo!

Family Vail After Fair in Dark at the Lionshead Vail Ale House

Vail Farmers’ Market & Art Show

BRAVOVAIL.ORG | 877.812.5700

© STEPHANIE BERGER

Experience these scheduled ASPHALT ORCHESTRA performances, and keep an eye and ear out for more surprise appearances throughout the Valley.

JUL

05

FREE CONCERT

ASPHALT ORCHESTRA

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reated by the founders of the “relentlessly inventive” new music presenter Bang on a Can (New York Magazine), Asphalt Orchestra unleashes innovative music from concert halls, rock clubs and jazz basements and takes it to the streets and community spaces like the Vail Interfaith Chapel. At today’s performance, you’ll hear music by avant-garde icon György Ligeti, pioneering vocal artist Meredith Monk, Merrill Garbus of the art-punk duo tUnEYaRdS, Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon, the Pixies’ Kim Deal, and Ivo Papasov, master of the Balkan Gypsy “wedding band” genre. Asphalt Orchestra delivers unbelievable energy and brilliant virtuosity, guaranteeing an unforgettable musical experience unlike any other.

THURSDAY JULY 5, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL

ASPHALT ORCHESTRA

Jas Walton, saxophone Ken Thomson, saxophone Peter Hess, saxophone Stephanie Richards, trumpet Jen Baker, trombone Kenneth Bentley, sousaphone Kenneth Salters, percussion Kyle Struve, percussion

LIGETI Passacaglia ungherese

PIXIES / DEAL Gigantic

CRAWFORD-SEEGER/KOCI Movements from String Quartet

MONK St. Petersburg Waltz

TUNE-YARDS / GARBUS Bizness

GORDON Tree-oh

PAPASOV Ivo’s Ruchenitsa The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

FREE CONCERT

BEETHOVEN & SCHUBERT FOR SOLO PIANO Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3 (1802)

modeled on the Italian tarantella and a dazzling showpiece of virtuoso pianism.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960 (1828)

B

eethoven completed the three Piano Sonatas of Op. 31 during the summer of 1802 in Heiligenstadt. They stand at the threshold of a new creative language — the dynamic and dramatic musical speech of his so-called “second period.” The E-flat major Sonata, Op. 31, No. 3 embodies remarkable strides forward in the sophistication of its form and content. Its very first sound, for example, a smiling chord topped with a blithe descending motive, commits the stylistic heresy of avoiding the work’s nominal tonality, a fundamental structural procedure of Classical music. The home key — E-flat major — is grazed, then toyed with again before the music proceeds to its second theme, an aerial melody displayed above a broken-chord bass figuration. The extraordinary thing about this opening section of the Sonata is the manner in which Beethoven couched his iconoclasms in such suave musical language, making the revolutionary seem elegant, inevitable and even beautiful. The development section deals mainly with permutations of the principal subject. The recapitulation of the earlier themes, appropriately adjusted as to key, closes the movement.

The second movement is labeled Scherzo, though this is not the dynamic, triple-meter dynamo that Beethoven perfected in his symphonies, but rather a duple-meter, sonataform essay whose upward striding main theme seems to have been joined when it was already in progress. The following movement contrasts two different types of music — the Minuet that forms the outer sections is serene and smoothly flowing, while the central trio jumps about the keyboard in a rather ungainly manner. The finale, another sonata form, is a whirlwind of incessant rhythmic energy 16

2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

FR ANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

In the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on March 26, 1828, Franz Schubert gave the only public concert entirely of his works during his lifetime. The event, prompted and sponsored by his circle of devoted friends, was a significant artistic and financial success, and he used the proceeds to celebrate the occasion at a local tavern, pay off some old debts, acquire a new piano, and buy tickets for Nicolò Paganini’s sensational debut in Vienna three days later. Despite the renewed enthusiasm that concert inspired in him for his creative work, and encouraging signs that his music was beginning to receive recognition outside of Vienna, Schubert was much troubled during the following months by his health. His constitution, never robust, had been undermined by syphilis, and by the summer of 1828, he was suffering from headaches, exhaustion and frequent digestive distress. Despite his discomforts, he continued to compose, completing the Mass in E-flat, a setting in Hebrew of Psalm 92 for the City Synagogue of Vienna, and the Schwanengesang, doing extensive work on what proved to be his last three piano sonatas (D. 958-960), and beginning his C major String Quintet.

At the end of August, Schubert felt unwell, complaining of dizziness and loss of appetite.

His physician advised that he move for a time to a new house outside the city recently acquired by the composer’s brother Ferdinand.

Though Ferdinand’s dwelling was damp and uncomfortable and hardly conducive to his recovery, Franz felt better during the following days. He was able to participate in an active social life and attend the premiere of a comedy by his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld

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09

© LAURA DEAN

MONDAY JULY 9, 6:00PM on September 5th. Schubert also continued to compose incessantly, completing the three piano sonatas on the 26th and performing them at the house of Dr. Ignaz Menz the following day. The C major Quintet was finished at that same time; it and the sonatas were the last instrumental works he completed.

On October 31st, Schubert fell seriously ill, his syphilitic condition perhaps exacerbated by the typhus then epidemic in Vienna. He died on November 19, 1828, at the age of 31.

“All three of the last sonatas are works in which meditation, charm, wistfulness, sadness and joy are housed in noble structures,” wrote George R. Marek. Though each follows the traditional four-movement Classical pattern of opening sonata-allegro, lyrical slow movement, scherzo (minuet in the C minor Sonata) and lively finale, this is music less concerned with the titanic, visionary, long-range formal structures of Beethoven (whom Schubert idolized) than with the immediately perceived qualities of melody, harmonic color, piano sonority and the subtle balancing of keys — what Hans Költzsch in his study of Schubert’s sonatas called “the nascent present.” This characteristically Schubertian predilection is particularly evident in the development sections of the opening movements, which eschew the rigorous thematic working-out of the Beethovenian model in favor of a warm, even sometimes dreamy, lyricism whose principal aims are to examine fragments of the movement’s melodies in different harmonic lights and to extract the instrument’s most ingratiating sonorities. The B-flat Sonata, generally regarded among Schubert’s greatest achievements in the genre, opens with a movement of breadth and majesty based on one his most ravishing melodies. The Andante, music such as it is given to only the greatest masters to compose, seems almost freed from earthly bonds, rapt out of time. The playful Scherzo serves as the perfect foil to the slow movement. The finale balances a certain seriousness of expression with exuberance and rhythmic energy.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

FREE CONCERT SERIES

EDWARDS INTERFAITH CHAPEL Do-Hyun Kim, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Albert Cano Smit, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3 Allegro Scherzo: Allegretto vivace Menuetto: Moderato e grazioso Presto con fuoco Mr. Kim

SCHUBERT Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960 Molto moderato Andante sostenuto Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza Allegro, ma non troppo Mr. Smit The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

ALBERT CANO SMIT

FREE CONCERT

BACH, LIGETI AND CHOPIN FOR SOLO PIANO Selections from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 (1742-1749) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

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he Art of Fugue was the final product of Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable genius. It was the custom at that time in Germany for men of great learning to gather up their thoughts on a lifetime of work as they approached their last years, compiling a sortof autobiography of their contribution to their discipline. Bach, in his sixties and with his eyesight failing, was not immune to this need for summing-up, and the major creations of his last years — A Musical Offering, Schübler Chorales, The Art of Fugue, even the B minor Mass — were conceived as demonstrations of the highest technical skill attainable in the field of musical composition. He apparently began planning The Art of Fugue in the early 1740’s and sketched some of its movements before 1745. By 1749, the project pressed itself upon him urgently because of the deterioration of his health. In March 1750, he underwent an eye operation by the English oculist John Taylor (who later performed a similar procedure on Handel), but it was only partly successful and had to be repeated the following month. Both operations ultimately failed, however, and Bach not only lost his sight (Handel also went blind, despite [because of?] Taylor’s ministrations) but he was also considerably weakened by the procedures. His health declined steadily over the next two months, and he died on the evening of July 28, 1750.

Bach worked on The Art of Fugue during the early months of 1749 and finished everything except the stupendous final fugue on four subjects, which breaks off after the introduction of the first three subjects. A note inserted at that point by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel reads: “Where the name B–A–C–H [B-flat–A– C–B-natural, in German notation] would have entered as a counter-subject, the author died.”

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Two Études (1995, 1993) GYÖRGY LIGETI (1923-2006)

Hungarian composer György Ligeti, one of music’s greatest modern masters, said that his three books of Études (1985, 1988-1994, 1995-2001) resulted from “my own inability as a pianist…. What I wanted to achieve was the transformation of inadequacy into professionalism.” However, his expression of such mastery of the keyboard came in the form of compositions rather than performances.

In spring 1993, Ligeti was staying along the Pacific coast for the American premiere of his Violin Concerto in Los Angeles. He enjoyed biking along the shore, but one morning got caught in a terrifying storm several miles from home. “I had to cycle back against the wind,” he recalled. “I had no coat and was completely wet. After a while I could not ride at all.”

After battling the storm for three hours and then fighting his way uphill to his apartment, he began the Étude No. 13, L’escalier du diable (“The Devil’s Staircase”), which one critic characterized as “an endless climbing, a staircase that was almost impossible to ascend.”

Ligeti began Book III of the Études in 1995 but completed only four movements before his death a decade later; it was his last work for piano. Étude No. 15 — White on White — is in two highly contrasted sections: a stark, serene canon (i.e., voices in exact imitation) played on just the instrument’s white keys, and a whirling, perpetual-motion postlude.

Études, Op. 25 (1836-1837) FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Clara Schumann wrote that the Étude No. 1 of Op. 25 (A-flat major) embodied the playing of Chopin himself: “Imagine that an Aeolian harp possessed all the musical scales and that the hand of the artist were to cause them all to intermingle in all sorts of fantastic embellishments.” (An “aeolian

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harp,” incidentally, is a lyre-like object whose delicate strings are set in motion by the force of the wind to give forth faint, indiscriminate sounds.) No. 2 (F minor) was described by Robert Schumann as “charming, dreamy and soft as a child singing in its sleep.” No. 3 (F major) was once known as the “Cartwheel” because of its fast, repetitive rhythms and strong accents. No. 4 (A minor) is an exercise in agitated and persistent syncopation. No. 5 (E minor) is delicate and nimble, with broad arches of melody that sweep up the keyboard and back down again. The moto perpetuo stream of parallel intervals in the right hand of No. 6 (G-sharp minor) has earned it the nickname “Study in Thirds.” No. 7 (C-sharp minor) begins with a deeply felt recitative and reaches great heights of emotional expression.

The celebrated 19th-century virtuoso Hans von Bülow said that the Étude No. 8 (D-flat major), a fearsome study in parallel sixths, “might honestly be called ‘the pianist’s indispensable.’

As a remedy for stiff fingers before performing in public, playing it through six times is recommended for even the most expert pianists.” The charming sobriquet of the Étude No. 9 (G-flat major) — “Butterfly” — denotes the music’s aerial grace. The furious music of the outer sections of No. 10 (B minor) is thrown into bold relief by the movement’s serene central episode. Of the Étude No. 11 (A minor), known as “The Winter Wind,” Eric Harrison wrote, “This is one of the greatest stormpictures, natural or emotional, ever conceived.”

There is something of a Beethovenian urgency and grandeur in the Étude No. 12 (C minor), which is sometimes known as the “Ocean” Étude because of its almost tidal power.

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL Do-Hyun Kim, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Albert Cano Smit, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

BACH Selections from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 Contrapunctus I Contrapunctus IV Contrapunctus II Contrapunctus V Contrapunctus IX Mr. Smit

LIGETI Two Études No. 15: White on White (Book III) No. 13: L’escalier du diable (Book II) Mr. Smit

CHOPIN Twelve Études, Op. 25 No. 1 in A-flat major: Allegro sostenuto No. 2 in F minor: Presto No. 3 in F major: Allegro No. 4 in A minor: Agitato No. 5 in E minor: Vivace No. 6 in G-sharp minor: Allegro (“Study in Thirds”) No. 7 in C-sharp minor: Lento No. 8 in D-flat major: Vivace No. 9 in G-flat major: Allegro assai (“Butterfly”) No. 10 in B minor: Allegro con fuoco No. 11 in A minor: Lento — Allegro con brio (“The Winter Wind”) No. 12 in C minor: Allegro molto con fuoco Mr. Kim The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

CHAMBER MUSIC

FOUR PIANISTS/TWO PIANOS Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for Two Pianos, Op. 35 (1874)

Souvenirs for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 28 (1951-1952)

C A M I L L E S A I N T-S A Ë N S (1835-1921)

SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981)

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One of Samuel Barber’s favorite relaxations, after he was discharged from the Army Air Force at the end of World War II and settled in his new home at Mt. Kisco, was traveling into Manhattan to hear the music at the city’s nightclubs.

Among the spots he visited most often was the Blue Angel Club, where a two-piano team, Edie and Rack, played sophisticated arrangements of popular and show tunes. Their performances encouraged Barber to compose something of a similar nature, and in 1951 he began writing some lighthearted numbers for four-hand piano in turn-of-the-20th-century dance styles that grew into the set of six Souvenirs.

hough Camille Saint-Saëns was far removed temperamentally from Ludwig van Beethoven in his creative personality, he greatly admired his celebrated predecessor and learned many important creative lessons from him. In 1874, Saint-Saëns gave his admiration for Beethoven substantial form by writing a set of variations for two pianos on the trio theme from the Piano Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3 (1802), a quirky melody of wide leaps and unexpected dynamic changes.

Nocturnes Nos. 1 and 2 for Two Pianos, Four Hands (1897-1899) CL AUDE DEBUSSY (1863-1918) ARRANGED (1909) BY MAURICE R AVEL (1875-1937)

Debussy wrote, “The title Nocturnes is intended to have here a more general and, particularly, a more decorative meaning. It is not meant to designate the usual form of a nocturne, but rather all the impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.

“Nuages (‘Clouds’): the unchanging aspect of the sky and the slow and solemn march of clouds fading away in gray tones slightly tinged with white.

“Fêtes (‘Festivals’): vibrating, dancing rhythm, with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of a procession (a dazzling, fantastic vision) passing through the festive scene and becoming blended with it; but the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of things.”

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“Berceuse” from Dolly for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 56 (1893-1896) GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)

The delightful Dolly Suite was named for Hélène Bardac, who was so tiny as a baby that she was nicknamed “Dolly.” Hélène was the daughter of Emma Bardac, a talented soprano, a woman of wit and elegance, and the wife of a successful Paris banker, whom Fauré met in the summer 1892. Fauré’s nine-year-old marriage had never been one of passion or shared interests (it had largely been arranged for him by his friend Marguerite Baugnies when he was trying to start a family before reaching his fortieth birthday), and that summer he fell into an affair with Mme. Bardac. Emma and Fauré saw each other frequently throughout the 1890’s, but their relationship cooled and in 1904 she took up with Claude Debussy, giving birth later that year to Claude-Emma, affectionately called “Chouchou,” who was to inspire from her father the Children’s Corner Suite and the “children’s ballet,” La Boîte à Joujoux (“The Toy Box”). Emma’s apparently liberal husband joked, “She’s just treating herself to the latest fashion in composers; but I’m the one with the money.

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10 TUESDAY JULY 10, 6:00PM She’ll be back.” But he was wrong — Debussy and Emma were married in 1908.

The gently swaying Berceuse takes its name from the French word for “rocking chair,” which in music denotes a “cradle song” or “lullaby.”

La Valse for Two Pianos (1919-1920) MAURICE RAVEL

Ravel first considered composing a musical homage to Johann Strauss as early as 1906.

The idea forced itself upon him again a decade later, but during the years of World War I, he could not bring himself to work on a score he had tentatively titled “Wien” (“Vienna”), and it was not until January 1919 that he undertook the composition of his tribute to Vienna — “waltzing frantically,” as he wrote to a friend. He saw La Valse both as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz” and as a “fantastic and fatefully inescapable whirlpool.” The “inescapable whirlpool” was the First World War toward which Vienna marched in three-quarter time, salving its social and political conscience with the luscious strains of Johann Strauss. Ravel completed La Valse in piano score by the end of 1919, and then made a piano duet version and undertook the orchestration.

CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

DONOVAN PAVILION Do-Hyun Kim, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Anne-Marie McDermott, piano Albert Cano Smit, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

SAINT-SAËNS Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for Two Pianos, Op. 35 (18 minutes) Ms. McDermott, Mr. Kim

DEBUSSY/ARR. RAVEL Nocturnes Nos. 1 and 2 for Two Pianos, Four Hands (13 minutes) Nuages Fêtes Mr. Thibaudet, Mr. Smit

— INTERMISSION — BARBER Souvenirs for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 28 (18 minutes) Waltz Schottische Pas de Deux Two-Step Hesitation-Tango Galop Mr. Smit, Mr. Kim

FAURÉ “Berceuse” from Dolly Suite for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 56 (3 minutes) Mr. Thibaudet, Ms. McDermott

RAVEL La Valse for Two Pianos (12 minutes) Mr. Thibaudet, Ms. McDermott

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

Concessions provided by:

FREE CONCERT

SCHUMANN & CHOPIN FOR SOLO PIANO Humoreske, Op. 20 (1839) ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

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y the middle of 1838, Robert Schumann’s parallel passions for music, writing and Clara Wieck had brought the 28-year-old composer to a crucial point in his life. Denied by the adamant intervention of Clara’s father from having her hand in marriage, and having resigned to never becoming the piano virtuoso that he had hoped to be since childhood, he sought a more vibrant musical milieu than Leipzig, where he could continue editing the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“New Journal for Music”), and moved to Vienna. By Christmas, it had become clear that his Viennese venture would fail. He could not find a significant way to advance his career and the situation with the Zeitschrift was not promising. He also missed Clara terribly, especially since the Viennese adored her playing and continually interrogated him to learn more about her. He lingered in the imperial city until March 30, 1839 and then returned to Leipzig, where, after six more months of waiting to outlast Wieck’s intransigence and legal obstacles, he finally married his beloved Clara on September 12th, the eve of her 21st birthday.

Though Schumann did not realize his most immediate goals during his Viennese incursion, the enterprise was not without value.

He brought home with him two important souvenirs — a steel pen he found on the grave of Beethoven, with which he wrote his First Symphony in 1841; and the score for the late Franz Schubert’s never-performed Ninth Symphony, which, at Schumann’s insistence, Felix Mendelssohn premiered at the Leipzig Gewandhaus concert of December 12, 1839.

Schumann also composed several piano works in Vienna, including the Arabesque, Blumenstück, Humoreske, Nachtstücke, the opening sections of the Faschingsschwank aus Wien (“Carnival Jest from Vienna,” Op. 26) and a

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number of smaller pieces.

Though its name implies something diminutive, the Humoreske is comparable in scale and form to the large piano cycles, those peerless collections of aphoristic character pieces that had occupied Schumann since his Papillons (“Butterflies”) of 1832. As with his other cycles, the Humoreske embraces a wide variety of strongly contrasted moods.

Twelve Études, Op. 10 (1833) FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Chopin’s first set of twelve Études was published as his Op. 10 in 1833 (with a dedication to Franz Liszt), though the individual pieces had been written two and three years earlier, around the time that the young composer left Warsaw for Vienna and Paris. The étude originally grew from the need for study pieces focusing on one aspect of keyboard technique, but Chopin’s examples lifted the genre from that of a simple pedagogical vehicle to a richly expressive concert form with a single, sustained mood. The Études are the first works in which Chopin’s fully formed genius is evident.

His second set of Études, Op. 25, appeared in 1837, with a dedication to the Countess Marie d’Agoult, Liszt’s mistress and mother of Cosima, later Richard Wagner’s second wife. The English pianist and writer on music Robert Collet explained why the Études are among the most characteristic and perfect of Chopin’s creations: “Here, Chopin’s more obvious limitations, his lack of sense of the monumental, either seem to be unimportant or to be positive virtues; in these works, he never attempts anything basically unsuited to his natural genius. They are in some ways the most universal of his works; to an unusual degree, they transcend barriers of time and nationality.... It is difficult to think of any music of the decade around 1830 that has dated less.”

The Étude No. 1 of Op. 10 (C major), a virtuoso exercise in continuous right-hand

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arpeggios, bursts with joy. No. 2 (A minor) is a gossamer scherzo enclosed within a study in glistening chromatic scales. The lyricism of the slow third movement (E major), “conceivably the most beautiful étude ever composed,” according to Herbert Weinstock, lent itself to adaptation as a popular song in the early days of Tin Pan Alley. The Étude No. 4 (C-sharp minor) is driven and tempestuous. In No. 5 (G-flat major), the sparkling “Black-Key Étude,” the fingers of the right hand never leave the keyboard’s black keys; the piece was a favorite of Clara Schumann, who often included it in her recitals. No. 6 (E-flat minor) presents a morose melody entwined with a ceaseless accompanimental figuration in the middle voice. No. 7 (C major) is lilting and airy. The Étude No. 8 (F major) is based upon sweeping broken chords that are balanced by a curious fragmented melody in the left hand. No. 9 (F minor) is haunted and agitated. The celebrated 19th-century pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow said of the moto perpetuo Étude No. 10 (A-flat major) that any performer who can play it in a polished manner “may congratulate himself on having climbed to the highest point of the pianist’s Parnassus.” No. 11 (E-flat major) is a study in euphonious rolled chords. The closing number of the Op. 10 set (C minor) is the fiery “Revolutionary” Étude, written in 1831, when Chopin learned during a stop in Stuttgart that the independence movement in his native Warsaw had brutally been put down by the occupation troops of imperial Russia.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL Do-Hyun Kim, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Albert Cano Smit, piano (2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

SCHUMANN Humoreske, Op. 20 Einfach — Sehr rasch und leicht — Hastig — Einfach und zart — Innig — Sehr lebhaft — Mit einigem Pomp — Zum Beschluss Mr. Smit

CHOPIN Twelve Études, Op. 10 No. 1 in C major: Allegro No. 2 in A minor: Allegro No. 3 in E major: Lento ma non troppo No. 4 in C-sharp minor: Presto No. 5 in G-flat major: Vivace (“Black Key”) No. 6 in E-flat minor: Andante No. 7 in C major: Vivace No. 8 in F major: Allegro No. 9 in F minor: Allegro molto agitato No. 10 in A-flat major: Vivace assai No. 11 in E-flat major: Allegretto No. 12 in C minor: Allegro con fuoco (“Revolutionary”) Mr. Kim The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

DO-HYUN KIM

FREE CONCERT

ENSEMBLE CONNECT WITH HANZHI WANG Selections from Five Tango Sensations for String Quartet and Accordion (1989) ASTOR PIAZZOLL A (1921-1992)

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he greatest master of the modern tango was Astor Piazzolla, born in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, a resort town south of Buenos Aires, on March 11, 1921, and raised in New York City, where he lived with his father from 1924 to 1937.

Before Astor was ten years old, his musical talents had been discovered by Carlos Gardel, then the most famous of all performers and composers of tangos and a cultural hero in Argentina. At Gardel’s urging, the young Astor moved to Buenos Aires in 1937, and joined the popular tango orchestra of Anibal Troilo as arranger and bandoneón player. Piazzolla studied classical composition with Alberto Ginastera in Buenos Aires, and in 1954 he wrote a symphony for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic that earned him a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. When Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires in 1956, he founded his own performing group, and began to create a modern style for the tango that combined elements of traditional tango, Argentinean folk music and contemporary classical, jazz and popular techniques into a “Nuevo Tango” that was as suitable for the concert hall as for the dance floor. In 1974, Piazzolla settled again in Paris, winning innumerable enthusiasts for both his Nuevo Tango and for the traditional tango with his many appearances, recordings and compositions. By the time he returned to Buenos Aires in 1985, he was regarded as the musician who had revitalized one of the quintessential genres of Latin music. Piazzolla continued to tour widely, record frequently and compose incessantly until he suffered a stroke in Paris in August 1990. He died in Buenos Aires on July 5, 1992.

During an extended stay in New York in November 1987, Piazzolla heard the pioneering 24

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Kronos Quartet. When he met the group after the concert, violinist David Harrington asked if he could call him in a few days to discuss writing a piece for them. When he did, Piazzolla told him he had already completed Four, For Tango. Two years later, following a grave illness, Piazzolla composed Five Tango Sensations for the Kronos and included a bandoneón part for himself (the title implies feelings or emotions rather than anything showy or virtuosic); they premiered the piece together at Alice Tully Hall in New York on November 25, 1989 and recorded it soon thereafter. It was Piazzolla’s last studio recording. The Five Tango Sensations, whose movements Piazzolla gave evocative titles that he said suggest “a musical farewell to life,” display what David Harrington called a “centered sternness.”

Quintet for Strings in G major, Op. 77 (1875) ANTONÍN DVOŘ ÁK (1841-1904)

In 1874, Antonín Dvořák was a little-known Prague musician whose income from his compositions and as organist at St. Adalbert’s Church was so meager that the city officials certified his poverty. That same year he submitted some of his work for consideration to a committee in Vienna awarding government grants to struggling artists whose members were a most distinguished lot — Johann Herbeck, Director of the Court Opera, the renowned critic Eduard Hanslick and that titan of Viennese music himself, Johannes Brahms. Their report noted that Dvořák possessed “genuine and original gifts” and that his works displayed “an undoubted talent, but in a way which as yet remains formless and unbridled.” They deemed his work worthy of encouragement, however, and, on their recommendation, the Minister of Culture, Karl Stremayer, awarded the young musician 400 gulden, the highest stipend bestowed under the program. The distinction represented Dvořák’s

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first recognition outside his homeland and his initial contact with Brahms and Hanslick, who both proved to be powerful influences on his career through their example, artistic guidance and professional help.

Dvořák had just begun the G major String Quintet when he learned, in February 1875, that he had been awarded the Austrian State Prize. To celebrate, he took a short holiday, a luxury he had previously been unable to afford.

He finished the Quintet in March when he returned to Prague, and submitted the score to a competition sponsored by the local Society of Artists. It won, and the work was premiered by the Society on March 18, 1876.

The G major String Quintet, one of the first works to show the composer’s growing self-assurance and maturity during the years after he received the Austrian Prize, is full of typically Dvořákian delights. Its melodic profligacy brings to mind Brahms’ jealous lament: “I should be glad if something occurred to me as a main idea that only occurs to him by the way.” Its first, second and concluding movements are infected with the rhythms and melodic leadings of the peasant music that he had lovingly stored in his heart and his head since childhood. The composer’s biographer Otto Šourek called the Andante “one of the most entrancing slow movements in the whole of Dvořák’s chamber music … one flowing stream of passionate warmth, depth of feeling and powerfully affecting range of mood.” The character of this Quintet, like that of its composer, is unaffected, sincere and immediately friendly.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

BRUSH CREEK PAVILION

ENSEMBLE CONNECT (Bravo! Vail 2018 Chamber Musicians in Residence) Dana Kelley, viola Madeline Fayette, cello Lizzie Burns, bass Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington, flute awith guest artists Jason Issokson, violin Katie Hyun, violin Hanzhi Wang, accordion (Bravo! Vail 2018 Chamber Musician in Residence)

PIAZZOLLA Selections from Five Tango Sensations for String Quartet and Accordion

DVOŘÁK Quintet for Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Bass in G major, Op. 77 Allegro con fuoco Scherzo: Allegro vivace Poco andante Finale: Allegro assai The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

FREE CONCERT

BACH, GRIEG, AND MENDELSSOHN ON ACCORDION Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826 (ca. 1727) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

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he term “partita” was originally applied to pieces in variations form in Italy during the 16th century and survived with that meaning into Bach’s time.

His Partitas originally written for harpsichord, composed during the years after he arrived in Leipzig in 1723 to direct the music at the city’s churches, however, are not variations but suites of dances, a form that in France occasionally bore the title of Partie, meaning either a movement in a larger work or a musical piece for entertainment. The French term was taken over into German practice in the late 17th century as Parthie to indicate an instrumental suite, and the title of Bach’s “Partitas” seems to have been a corruption of that usage.

The Sinfonia that opens the Partita No. 2 in C minor comprises three continuous sections: a slow introductory passage whose pompous dotted rhythms are borrowed from the French overture; an austere two-voice exercise of sweeping scales supported by a walking bass; and a lively fugue in two parts. The next two movements follow the old custom of pairing a slow dance with a fast one: an Allemande (here marked by swiftly flowing rhythms and active dialogue among the voices) is complemented by a Courante, a dance type originally accompanied by jumping motions. The stately Sarabande that follows is balanced by a quick Rondeau based on a leaping theme and a closing Capriccio whose brilliance rivals some of Bach’s concerto movements.

Selections from Suite from Holberg’s Time, Op. 40 (1884) EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)

In 1884, Grieg was approached by the commission organizing the celebration of 26

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the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Holberg, the writer generally acknowledged as the founder of the Danish-Norwegian school of literature, to make a musical contribution to the proceedings. Holberg (1684-1754), a native of Grieg’s hometown of Bergen, Norway, gained fame with his satiric comedy Peder Paars of 1719, a work with sufficient social barbs to rouse the ire of the authorities. His recognition continued to grow, however, and in 1722 he was named playwright to the newly formed Danish National Theater. His comedies were the first original plays written in the Danish language. After 1727, he wrote several volumes of history and biography, but his early plays always remained his most popular works.

The center of the 1884 Holberg celebration was in Bergen, where the playwright was born.

A new statue of him was to be unveiled on the waterfront, and a series of concerts was planned to commemorate the event, to which Grieg contributed a cantata for men’s voices and the piano suite From Holberg’s Time, which he arranged the following year for string orchestra. In the suite, a vivacious Praelude, a miniature sonata-form movement, is followed by a series of dances, including a perky Gavotte that is linked to a Musette built above a mockbagpipe drone, and a lively closing Rigaudon.

Menuetto (2014) Passing III (2012) MARTIN LOHSE (B. 1971)

Composer and visual artist Martin Lohse, born in Copenhagen in 1971, pursued his professional education at the Musical Science Institute and Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he studied composition and music theory with Hans Abrahamsen and Niels Rosing-Schow; in 2000, he undertook a postgraduate course in composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Among Lohse’s distinctions are a three-year grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. “In my music,” he

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17 wrote, “I try to encircle small, simple musical moments and atmospheres that can timelessly progress and unfold. At its heart, the music often emanates from harmonic and melodic reminiscences of past experiences with hints of a floating sensation moving quickly or slowly.”

“Menuetto,” the composer wrote, “started as a movement in 8 Momenti Mobile (2008) for saxophone quartet, was recomposed in 5 Momenti Mobile (2013) for accordion duo and piano trio, and finally found its current form for solo accordion in 2014. It uses what I call ‘rhythm across harmony,’ which developed into a composition technique where different musical layers, independent in time and rhythm, are connected by a simple sequence of consonant intervals.” Menuetto is more thoughtful than its dance title would suggest, juxtaposing ethereal sections with almost prayerful passages.

Passing III, the third of three eponymous works for accordion, is a virtuoso showpiece that builds from an opening section with echoes of tango to a breathtaking close.

“Spinning Song” from Songs Without Words, Op. 67, No. 4 (1845) FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

Mendelssohn seems to have been the first to call a piano piece a “Song Without Words,” indicating both this music’s small scale and its essential lyricism. He gave evocative titles to a few — Venetian Gondola Song, Spinning Song, Duetto, Spring Song — and later music lovers tacked on many more of less relevance, but he seems to have been wary of too much specificity in attaching words to music. When asked in 1842 by Marc André Souchay, a relative of his wife in Lübeck, about his opinion concerning the suggestive qualities of music, he sent a now-famous reply: “People usually complain that music is so ambiguous. For me, it is just the reverse.

It is the words that seem so ambiguous, so indefinite, so open to misunderstanding in comparison with real music, which fills one’s soul with a thousand better things than words.” The Spinning Song is one of Mendelssohn’s inimitable gossamer scherzos.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

TUESDAY JULY 17, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL Hanzhi Wang, accordion (2018 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musician in Residence)

BACH Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826 Sinfonia Allemande Courante Sarabande Rondeaux Capriccio

GRIEG Holberg Suite, Op. 40 I Prelude. Allegro vivace III Gavotte. Allegretto – Poco piu mosso – Allegretto V Rigaudon. Allegro con brio

TRAD./HANZHI WANG Short Introduction to the classical accordion

LOHSE Menuetto Passing III

MENDELSSOHN Song Without Words, Op. 67, No. 4 “Spinning Song” The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

HANZHI WANG

CHAMBER MUSIC

MCDERMOTT PLAYS BACH AND MOZART Piano Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056 (ca. 1730) Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052 (ca. 1730) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

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t is said that when the Viennese were finally able to drive the Turks from their walls in 1683, the fleeing legions left behind an unforeseen legacy — coffee. The rage for the stimulating new beverage swept through Austria and into Germany, where coffee houses became important centers of society and amusement. In order to give public concerts of instrumental music at one of the local coffee houses in Leipzig, in 1704 Georg Philipp Telemann organized some of his fellow students at the city’s university into a performing group known as the “Collegium Musicum,” a “Musical College (or Society).”

Those Friday afternoon concerts became a fixture of life in Leipzig, and were still popular when Bach arrived in 1723 to assume the position of cantor and organist at the Thomas Church. In 1729, he took over leadership of the Collegium Musicum, and continued in the post for seven years. In addition to his work at the Thomas Church and with the Collegium during those years, Bach also derived special delight from making music at home with his family. It was for use at both his home entertainments and the Collegium concerts that Bach produced his keyboard concertos.

The Concerto No. 5 in F minor is generally thought to have been based on a lost violin concerto in G minor. The opening movement follows the common Baroque formal practice of ritornello, in which a “returning” orchestral refrain is separated by episodes for the soloist. The second movement resembles an operatic cantilena in its lyrical flow and florid decorations. It leads with only a pause for a single breath into the finale, which returns the bracing vitality of the first movement.

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The source of the Concerto No. 1 in D minor continues to puzzle scholars. From stylistic evidence, it seems to have been based originally on a violin concerto by a composer other than Bach. An early version of Bach’s arrangement for harpsichord and orchestra corresponds with instrumental movements in his Cantatas No. 188 (Ich habe meine Zuversicht [“I have my faith”]) and No. 146 (Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal [“We must go through much sorrow”]). The final version of the Concerto apparently represents yet a further refinement of the earlier arrangements.

The ritornello-form opening movement is music of grave countenance but vigorous rhythmic energy that embodies the Baroque ideals of touching sentiment allied with physical stimulation. The somber Adagio is an elaborately decorated song spun by the soloist above expressive harmonies in the orchestra.

The dashing motion of the finale is enriched by elaborate conversational interchanges between orchestra and soloist.

Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 (1785) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) ARRANGED BY CARL CZERNY (1791-1857)

Though his legacy is commonly reduced to just the finger-strengthening and spiritdulling exercises that have been the bane (and boon) of generations of piano students, Carl Czerny was one of Vienna’s most respected musicians during the early 19th century. Born in Vienna on February 20, 1791, Czerny was playing piano at three, noting down some little pieces at seven, debuting publicly (in Mozart’s Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491) at nine, and exhibiting a phenomenal musical memory at ten, when he played Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata for the composer himself, and was eagerly accepted as his student.

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Beethoven mapped out a tour for his pupil in 1804, but political unrest forced the venture’s cancellation. Apparently this was much to the relief of Czerny, who claimed that he lacked “the brilliant, calculated charlatanry necessary for touring virtuosos.” Czerny instead devoted himself to teaching, and became one of the day’s most renowned (and expensive) piano pedagogues. Though his friends recognized in him a warm personality, he chose to follow a reclusive life ruled by the stern work ethic instilled by his father. He renounced marriage, almost never socialized, rarely played in public, seldom attended concerts or opera, and remained in Vienna all his life except for onetime trips to London, Paris, Leipzig and Italy.

During the day, he taught up to twelve hours At night, surrounded by an ever-growing pride of cats, he composed. Czerny was forced to retire from teaching when his health declined during the 1840’s, and by 1850 he had become a semi-invalid. He died in Vienna in July 1857.

Czerny’s career coincided with the exploding demand from genteel home music-makers for instruments and sheet music. In addition to well over 800 original compositions, he made some 300 arrangements, including the Requiem, a half-dozen symphonies and the D minor Piano Concerto by Mozart, whom he championed throughout his file.

The first movement of the D minor follows the concerto-sonata form that Mozart had perfected in his earlier works for piano and orchestra. It is filled with conflict between soloist and tutti heightened by enormous harmonic, dynamic and rhythmic tensions. The Romanza moves to a brighter key that provides a contrast to the stormy opening Allegro, but even this lovely music summons a dark, minormode intensity for one of its episodes. The finale is a complex sonata-rondo form with developmental episodes. The D major coda offers less a lighthearted, happy conclusion than a sense of catharsis capping the cumulative drama of this noble masterwork.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

DONOVAN PAVILION Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

ENSEMBLE CONNECT (Bravo! Vail 2018 Chamber Musicians in Residence) Dana Kelley, viola Madeline Fayette, cello Lizzie Burns, bass Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington, flute with guest artists Jason Issokson, violin Katie Hyun, violin

BACH Piano Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056 (11 minutes) Allegro Largo — Presto

BACH Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052 (23 minutes) Allegro Adagio Allegro

— INTERMISSION — MOZART/ARR. CZERNY Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 (31 minutes) Allegro Romanza Rondo: Allegro assai Q & A Session with the artists immediately follows this performance.

Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

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Registration opens in August for the 2018/2019 programs.

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THANK YOU

TO THE 2018 BRAVO! VAIL GUILD Thank you to the dedicated individuals who donate countless hours as volunteers of the Bravo! Vail Guild to help fulfill Bravo!’s mission of enriching lives through the power of music.

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FREE CONCERT

ENSEMBLE CONNECT

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nsemble Connect is a two-year fellowship program for the finest young professional classical musicians in the United States that prepares them for careers that combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. It offers topquality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and the opportunity to partner with a New York City public school throughout the fellowship. Fellows are supported by a rigorous professional development curriculum aimed at ensuring they have the skills needed to be successful in all areas of the program and to give them the tools to shape purposeful, personally rewarding career paths that redefine the role of the 21st-century musician.

PROGRAM NOTES Š 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

19 THURSDAY JULY 19, 11:00AM FREE CONCERT SERIES

GOLDEN EAGLE SENIOR CENTER

ENSEMBLE CONNECT (Bravo! Vail 2018 Chamber Musicians in Residence) Dana Kelley, viola Madeline Fayette, cello Lizzie Burns, bass Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington, flute with guest artists Jason Issokson, violin Katie Hyun, violin SELECTIONS WILL BE ANNOUNCED FROM THE STAGE Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

FREE CONCERT

GRIEG & PIAZZOLLA ON ACCORDION Andante in F major, K. 616 (1791) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

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ount Joseph Deym was a highspirited youth who got himself thrown out of Vienna as a teenager for the serious offense of dueling. By 1790, he was back in town making his living with a popular museum of curiosities comprising mainly wax effigies and mechanical musical instruments. One of the first opportunities that came to the ambitious Herr Deym for his waxworks was supplied by the death in July 1790 of Field Marshal Ernst Gideon Freiherr von Loudon, greatly esteemed in Austria for defeating Frederick II at Kunersdorf in 1759 and for later driving the Turks from Eastern Europe (thus allowing the free spread of Austrian monarchism). Deym constructed a memorial exhibit to Loudon featuring a life-size wax figure of the late Field Marshal in appropriately funereal surroundings.

He commissioned Mozart to write the Andante in F major for one of his mechanical organs that would sound throughout the shrine every hour on the hour.

De Profundis (1978) SOFIA GUBAIDULINA (B. 1931)

Sofia Gubaidulina, born in Chistopol in 1931, is among the handful of composers from the former Soviet Union whose music has gained widespread notoriety in the West.

Her father was descended from the ancient lineage of Genghis Khan’s Tatar tribes and her mother was a Russian Jew. Gubaidulina once described herself as the place where East and West meet. She studied piano and composition at the Kazan Music Academy (1946-1954) before attending the Moscow Conservatory from 1954 to 1962 as a student of Nikolai Peiko (an assistant of Shostakovich) and Vissarion Shebalin. In 1975, she founded, with Victor Suslin and Vyacheslav Artyomov, 32

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the ensemble “Astreya,” which specialized in improvisation and special performance techniques using folk instruments from Russia and central Asia. Gubaidulina’s music shows the wide range of influences inherent in the diverse cultural backgrounds of her parents, as well as a dedication to self-expression and avant-garde techniques that in 1980 earned her a denunciation by Tikhon Khrennikov, the Communist Party’s musical spokesperson. It was only with the fall of the Soviet Union and her move to Germany in the early 1990s that her music received full recognition at home.

Her reputation in the West grew quickly after she attended the Boston Festival of Soviet Music in 1988.

De Profundis is among Gubaidulina’s numerous works rooted in sacred sources, this one referencing Psalm 130 — Out of the depths I call to Thee, O Lord — an impassioned plea for both forgiveness and unfailing hope.

The piece uses a wide range of non-traditional techniques — glissandos, shudders, sighs, longsustained notes and barely audible ones — not as ends in themselves, but as evocations of one of the Bible’s most profound supplications.

“Do you know why I am so fond of this De Profundis?” asked Friedrich Lips, professor of accordion at Moscow’s Gnesin Institute for Music Education and a pioneer in expanding the repertory and expressive possibilities of his instrument, for whom the work was written.

“Because it breathes.”

Selected Lyric Pieces (1867, 1886) EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)

Among the most characteristic of Grieg’s creations rooted in the songs and dances and spirit of Norway are his 66 Lyric Pieces for piano, which he composed throughout his career and published in ten books between 1867 and 1901. These miniatures not only solidified his rank as the leading musician of his native land, but also became some of the most popular music of the day, sounding from

JUL parlor pianos throughout Europe and America and constantly in demand on his recitals. The two Lyric Pieces from Op. 43 on this program — Little Bird and Butterfly — suggest the natural life of Norway that inspired Grieg throughout his life. The Elf Dance (Op. 12, No. 4) is a mischievous evocation of the beautiful, young female fairies of Norse mythology.

19 THURSDAY JULY 19, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL

Michelangelo 70 (1970) Chiquilín de Bachín (1969) ASTOR PIAZZOLL A (1921-1992)

For more information on Astor Piazzolla, please see the program notes for the concert of July 3, on page 12.

In 1969, Piazzolla chose as his base for club performances in Buenos Aires a nightspot called Michelangelo, located in the vaults of a 17th-century customs building. The following year he wrote Michelangelo 70 in honor of his new musical home, but later said that the piece was also a tribute to the great Italian sculptor, painter and architect.

Piazzolla wrote Chiquilín de Bachín (“Little Kid at the Bachín”) in 1969, when he and lyricist Horacio Ferrer were collaborating on the “tango operita” María de Buenos Aires. They often met at a Buenos Aires restaurant called “Bachín,” where the piece, one of Piazzolla’s few waltzes, was inspired by a young boy selling roses outside the front door.

Hanzhi Wang, accordion (2018 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musician in Residence)

MOZART Andante in F major, K. 616

GUBAIDULINA De Profundis

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE CLASSICAL ACCORDION

BY MS. WANG GRIEG Selected Lyric Pieces Little Bird, Op. 43, No. 4 Elf Dance, Op. 12, No. 4 Butterfly, Op. 43, No. 1

TWO TRADITIONAL CHINESE SONGS arr. Wang

PIAZZOLLA

Etincelles (“Sparks”), Op. 36, No. 6 (1886)

Michelangelo 70 Chiquilín de Bachín

MORITZ MOSZKOWSKI (1854-1925)

MOSZKOWSKI Etincelles, Op. 36, No. 6

Moritz Moszkowski, trained in Dresden and Berlin, made his debut at age 19 and quickly became one of Germany’s leading pianists.

He toured extensively as a performer, and also taught in Berlin until moving in 1897 to Paris, where his pupils included Wanda Landowska and Joaquín Turina. In addition to many piano pieces, he composed an opera, a ballet and orchestral and chamber works whose lyrical and harmonically rich style sprang from the same roots as that of Johannes Brahms. Etincelles (“Sparks”), the sixth of the 8 Morceaux Caractéristiques, Op. 36 that Moszkowski published in 1886, more than lives up to its title in the programmatic as well as the virtuosic sense.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

HANZHI WANG

FREE CONCERT

BEETHOVEN “RASUMOVSKY” QUARTET Quartet E minor, Op. 59, No. 2, “Razumovsky” (1806) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

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ount Andreas Kyrillovitch Razumovsky was one of the most prominent figures in Viennese society, politics and art at the turn of the 19th century. Born in 1752 to a singer at the Russian court, Razumovsky ingratiated himself with a number of women of lofty station and entered the diplomatic corps at the age of 25.

He was assigned to several European capitals, in which he made his reputation, according to one contemporary account, “less through his skill at diplomacy than through his lavish expenditure and his love affairs with ladies of the highest standing, not excluding the Queen of Naples.” In 1788 in Vienna, he married Elizabeth, Countess of Thun and sister of Prince Lichnowsky, one of Beethoven’s most devoted patrons. Four years later, Razumovsky was assigned as Russian ambassador to Vienna, whose sybaritic life style perfectly suited his personality. “Razumovsky lived in Vienna on a princely scale,” wrote a contemporary named Schnitzler, “encouraging art and science, surrounded by a valuable library and other collections, and admired or envied by all; of what advantage this was to Russian interests is, however, another question.” He was also an accomplished violinist who indulged his interest in music by taking lessons from Haydn, playing in chamber concerts, and sponsoring the performance of works in his residence.

In the spring of 1806, Count Razumovsky took over from Prince Lichnowsky the patronage of the string quartet headed by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and he commissioned Beethoven to write for the ensemble three new pieces that would be played in the grand palace the Count was building on the Danube Canal near the Prater. Beethoven, who had not composed a string quartet since the six 34

2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

numbers of Op. 18 in 1800, gladly accepted the proposal and immediately set to work. In honor of (or, perhaps, at the request of) his Russian patron, Beethoven included in the first two quartets of the Op. 59 set traditional Russian themes. Such music was much on the mind of the Viennese at the time because many Russian soldiers had sought refuge in the hospitals, convents and schools of the imperial city following their great battles with the French at Austerlitz at the end of 1805. After receiving Razumovsky’s commission, Beethoven determined, as he said, “to devote myself wholly to this work,” and he wrote the three Op. 59 Quartets between May and October 1806 (using a few sketches from 1804) with the intention of having Schuppanzigh’s quartet perform them late in the year at Razumovsky’s new palace. However, the Count’s wife took ill that fall and died on December 23rd, and no music was heard in the house during the period of mourning. Schuppanzigh played the Quartets for the first time in February 1807 at some now unknown site in Vienna, and several months later repeated them at the Razumovsky palace.

The Op. 59 Quartets, though they later became some of Beethoven’s most popular chamber works, were greeted at first with some of the strongest antagonism that his music ever excited. His student Carl Czerny reported, “When Schuppanzigh’s quartet first played the F major Quartet [No. 1], they laughed and were convinced Beethoven was playing a joke on them and that it was not the quartet he had promised.” “Surely you do not consider this music?” asked the bemused violinist Felix Radicati. “Not for you,” replied the confident composer, “but for a later age.” When Beethoven was told that Schuppanzigh was complaining about the difficulty of the violin parts, he grumbled, “Does he really suppose that I think of his puling little fiddle when the spirit speaks to me and I compose something?”

The powerful style of the “Eroica” of 1804 that also infused these scores, with their intense emotional expression and formal concentration,

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was still revolutionary and puzzling to Beethoven’s contemporaries in 1806. It would soon mark him as the most visionary musical artist of his time.

The second of the “Razumovsky” Quartets, in E minor, is made of the bold contrasts, formal concentration and dramatic statement that came increasingly to mark the music of Beethoven’s maturity. The opening movement begins with abrupt, tossed-off thematic fragments that give way to various rhythmically syncopated figures and truncated scraps of melody, as though the essential nature of the music was its own indecision painted against some vaguely melancholy backdrop, a quality Joseph Kerman described as “more brusque than violent, more tense than angry, hypersensitive rather than actually in pain.”

The Adagio, on the other hand, is music of a settled, almost transcendent mood, which the composer’s pupil Carl Czerny said “occurred to him when contemplating the starry skies and thinking of the music of the spheres.”

Beethoven wrote above this movement in the score, “This piece must be played with much feeling.” The third movement is more a character piece than a true scherzo. Its trio section, written in honor of the work’s patron, is a fantasia on the patriotic Russian hymn Slava (“Glory”), which appeared later in the century in the coronation scene of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov as well as in works by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. The finale follows the curious harmonic progression of beginning a sonatarondo form largely in the bright key of C major before passing under a minor-tonality cloud in its closing pages to end with a hint of the opening movement’s melancholy.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL

OMER STRING QUARTET (2018 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Mason Yu, violin Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola Alex Cox, cello

BEETHOVEN Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2, “Razumovsky” Allegro Molto Adagio Allegretto Finale: Presto The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

OMER STRING QUARTET

CHAMBER MUSIC

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC STRING QUARTET Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2, “Quinten” (1796-1797)

Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117 (1964)

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

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pon his second return to Vienna from London in 1795, Haydn, at age 63, was universally acknowledged as the greatest living composer. Though his international renown had been founded in large part upon the success of his symphonies and keyboard sonatas, he repeatedly refused offers to compose further in those genres and instead concentrated the creative energies of his later years upon the string quartet and the vocal forms of Mass and oratorio. Except for the majestic Trumpet Concerto, his only instrumental compositions after 1795 were the six quartets of Op. 76, the two of Op. 77, and the unfinished torso of Op. 103.

The Quartet, Op. 76, No. 2 opens with the falling-interval motive that gives the composition its nickname — Quinten (Fifths).

The mood brightens for the second theme, but the development is imbued with the proto-Romantic pathos with which the Quartet began. The recapitulation and coda maintain the music’s stormy demeanor to the end of the movement. The Andante is an ornate instrumental song in three large structural paragraphs: A (major) – B (minor) – A (major). The haunted third movement, sometimes referred to as the “Witches’ Minuet,” is constructed from a barren canon in which paired voices chase each other in precise imitation at the interval of an octave. The central trio provides contrast with its more cheerful key and soaring violin line. The finale is a bustling rondo inspired by Gypsy music.

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In 1948, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and many other important Soviet composers were condemned for threatening the stability of the nation with their “formalistic” music.

Through Andrei Zhdanov, head of the Soviet Composers’ Union and the official mouthpiece for the government, it was made known that any experimental or modern or abstract or difficult music was no longer acceptable for consumption by the country’s masses.

Only simplistic music glorifying the State, the land and the people would be performed: symphonies, operas, chamber music — any forms involving too much mental stimulation — were out; movie music, folk song settings and patriotic cantatas were in.

Shostakovich saw the iron figure of Joseph Stalin behind the purge of 1948, as he had for an earlier one in 1936. With Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953 (ironically, Prokofiev died on the same day), Shostakovich and all of the Soviet Union felt an oppressive burden lift. The thaw came gradually, but a more amenable attitude toward art did return to the country’s artistic life, which allowed significant works to again be produced and performed. Shostakovich composed steadily thereafter until his death two decades later. A steady stream of cantatas, film music, patriotic marches, choruses, and instrumental pieces in a popular style composed as a “People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R.” (a title conferred upon him in 1954) was countered by creations of profound emotion and personal revelation, most notably the last ten of his fifteen string quartets.

Vassily Shirinsky, first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, which premiered the Ninth Quartet in Moscow in November 1964, wrote that the work shows “grandeur, drama and a certain austerity.” The Quartet’s five movements

JUL (fast–slow–fast–slow–fast) are unified by their sharing of thematic fragments and by their uninterrupted connection one with the next.

The opening Moderato is based on a doleful, wandering motive introduced by the first violin and a slightly grotesque little march from the cello. The Adagio, using a melody of curious modal leadings, is a poignant dialogue between first violin and viola. The ensuing scherzo is constructed in symmetrical “arch” form: A–B– C–B–A. The fourth movement is music of stone and ice. The lower strings give out a frozen chorale in octaves and thirds while the first violin emits timid, undulating sighs. The violin then posits a melody that tries to soar upward only to collapse back almost immediately upon itself to be met by the angry snappings of the second violin in a horrific transformation of the chorale theme. The process is repeated by the viola, but, despite the hollow howls of the lower strings, the first violin sings a brief, mournful incantation in its highest register before, drained of energy and enthusiasm, it again gives itself up to sighs and silence. The finale is a vast sonata form (main theme in fast triple meter, subsidiary theme in duple) incorporating motives from the earlier movements.

Quartet No. 2 in D major (1881) ALEX ANDER BORODIN (1833-1887)

During summer 1881, Borodin, a part-time composer, took a two-month respite from the strenuous duties of his career as one of Russia’s leading researchers and teachers in chemistry and medicine. Given leisure and a halcyon summer setting, he completed his Second String Quartet during July and August 1881, virtually his only important work finished in a single session. The Quartet’s opening movement follows conventional sonata form, with its smooth, even-treading main theme and a more animated complementary melody. The second and third movements, a Scherzo and a Nocturne, will be forever linked as the songs Stranger in Paradise and This Is My Beloved with the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet, whose score was the result of unashamed raids upon Borodin’s music by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The sonataform closing movement juxtaposes two thematic strains in contrasting tempos.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

24 TUESDAY JULY 24, 6:00PM CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

DONOVAN PAVILION

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC STRING QUARTET

Frank Huang, violin Sheryl Staples, violin Cynthia Phelps, viola Carter Brey, cello

HAYDN Quartet in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2, “Quinten” (20 minutes) Allegro Andante o più tosto allegretto Menuetto: Allegro ma non troppo Vivace assai

SHOSTAKOVICH Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117 (25 minutes) Moderato con moto Adagio Allegretto Adagio Allegro Played without pause

— INTERMISSION — BORODIN Quartet No. 2 in D major (23 minutes) Allegro moderato Scherzo: Allegro Nocturne: Andante Finale: Andante — Vivace

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HAYDN & BARTÓK STRING QUARTETS Quartet in F major, Op. 50, No. 5, “The Dream” (H. III:48) (1785-1787)

Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (1907-1908) BÉL A BARTÓK (1881-1945)

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

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n 1785, Haydn undertook a series of string quartets to capitalize on the excellent success that had greeted his Op. 33 Quartets, published the year before. He worked for the next two years to round out the required six numbers of the new set — to be issued as his Op. 50 by the Viennese firm of Artaria — and gave much thought as they neared completion to the manner in which a carefully considered dedication might add to his burgeoning European acclaim. He settled on King Friedrich Wilhelm II, who had ascended the throne of Prussia in 1786, and the Op. 50 Quartets bore Friedrich Wilhelm’s name when they were published in September 1787.

The King responded, “His Majesty of Prussia regards with kindest feelings the attention Herr Kapellmeister Haydn intends to pay to his Majesty through the dedication of the six new quartets. The attached ring is sent as a sign of his Majesty’s satisfaction and disposition in good grace.” The “attached ring” was a valuable diamond that Haydn always treasured.

The opening movement of the F major Quartet grows almost entirely from the two thematic germ cells planted in the first line: a prim motive and a witty “wrong-note” harmony created by the cello’s entry. The Adagio is a delicately filigreed instrumental song whose lulling equanimity suggested the work’s sobriquet: The Dream. The Menuetto is pressed beyond strict Classical limits by its many harmonic piquancies, a technique that may well bear the impress of Mozart, whose six quartets dedicated to Haydn had been published in 1785.

The finale is a breezy sonata-form movement that takes as its pervading subject the bounding 6/8 motive presented by the violin.

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The year 1907, when he was 26, was a crucial time both personally and professionally for Béla Bartók. In January, he was appointed to the faculty of the Budapest Academy of Music as teacher of piano, and he soon became recognized as one of Hungary’s most talented keyboard virtuosos and pedagogues. By 1907, he had begun to establish himself as a composer and a folk music researcher, though his original works to that time, largely under the sway of late German Romanticism, had not yet revealed his distinctive creative personality. He was then also much occupied with thoughts of Hungarian nationalism (he even eschewed business suits for a short period in favor of traditional peasant dress), and the manner in which the music he was documenting on his research trips through the Transylvanian countryside could be most effectively incorporated into his original works.

These matters — the advancement of his professional life as a composer, performer and teacher; the foundation of a personal compositional language; the way to mold his music to his patriotic feelings — became enmeshed that summer in an affair of the heart, his first serious love entanglement. On vacation in the town of Jászberény, a short distance east of Budapest, he met the Hungarian violinist Stefi Geyer, then just nineteen, and fell in love with her. He wrote a concerto for Stefi, filled with allusions to his emotions, but she kept the score to herself and the work was not played publicly until two years after her death in 1956, when it was published as the Violin Concerto No. 1, Opus Posthumous. On July 1, 1907, still in Jászberény, Bartók began sketching a string quartet (he had suppressed three youthful efforts in the form dating from 1896 and 1899; they are lost), but did not undertake further work on it until the beginning of the following year.

By then, the affair with Stefi had come painfully, at least for him, to an end, as he indicated in his

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last letter to her (March 1908): “I have begun a quartet; the first theme is [borrowed from] the theme of the second movement of the Violin Concerto; this is my funeral dirge.” Tours to Switzerland, France and Italy that summer and fall precluded much progress on the Quartet, so the score was not completed until January 27, 1909. In August, Bartók, apparently recovered from his passion for Stefi, married Márta Ziegler, a sixteen-year-old student of his at the Academy. The premiere of the new Quartet was given on March 19, 1910 at the Royal Concert Hall in Budapest by the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet.

Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1 begins with a close canon [i.e., voices in exact imitation] in slow tempo on a lamenting theme (i.e., the theme derived from the principal motive of Stefi’s Concerto). Formal contrast is provided by the movement’s central section, based on a descending theme in worried rhythms (marked “very impassioned”). A return of the opening canon, floating high in the violins, rounds out the movement’s form. An inconclusive harmony leads without pause to the next movement.

The Allegretto combines the formal elements of a traditional opening movement with the expression of a spectral scherzo. The folkinfluenced finale is introduced by a preludial paragraph in which the cello makes bardic pronouncements that are separated by excited punctuations from the upper strings. The movement’s main part is a modern sonatarondo whose structural demarcations are often blurred by continuous thematic working-out.

The folkish second theme is placed in high relief by its slow tempo and Impressionistic trilled accompaniment.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL

OMER STRING QUARTET (2018 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Mason Yu, violin Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola Alex Cox, cello

HAYDN Quartet in F major, Op. 50, No. 5, “The Dream” H. III:48 Allegro moderato Poco Adagio Menuetto: Allegretto Finale: Vivace

BARTÓK Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 Lento — Allegretto Introduzione (Allegro) — Allegro vivace The running time for this concert is approximately one hour.

OMER STRING QUARTET

PRESENTED BY

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED

VOICES + QUARTET: A SONIC DIALOGUE Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)

String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5 (1772)

IGOR STR AVINSK Y (1882-1971)

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

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n April 1914, Stravinsky sketched a piece for string quartet in the style of a Russian folk dance. Alfred Pochon, second violinist of the Flonzaley Quartet, expressed an interest in taking such a piece on the Quartet’s American tour the following year, and Stravinsky added two more short movements in July to complete the Three Pieces for String Quartet.

Vesper Sparrow (2012) MISSY MAZZOLI (B. 1980)

Missy Mazzoli studied at Boston University, Yale University and Royal Conservatory of the Hague and teaches at New York’s Mannes College of Music. She wrote, “The text for Vesper Sparrow comes from Farnoosh Fathi’s Home State, from her book of poems Great Guns. The piece is an amalgamation of imaginary birdsong and my own interpretation of Sardinian overtone singing.”

High Done No Why To (2010) WILLIAM BRITTELLE (B. 1977)

William Brittelle describes himself as “a North Carolina-born, Brooklyn-based composer of post-genre electro-acoustic music.” He teaches courses in Post-Genre Music and The Ethos of Punk at The New School in New York City, and co-founded Infinite Palette, an electroacoustic music collective, and New Amsterdam, a Brooklyn-based record label. Brittelle wrote, “High Done No Why To, composed for Roomful of Teeth, represents my attempt to synthesize their many amazing extended vocal techniques into a coherent piece. I used words as ‘sound’ instead of as ‘lyrics’ to stay focused on texture and harmony. The ending is meant to bring a sense of catharsis to a somewhat restless and angular piece.”

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

The six works of Op. 20 were known to Haydn’s contemporaries as the “Sun” Quartets because the cover of their first published edition (1774) was emblazoned with a drawing of the rising sun. Haydn’s full genius in the form dawned. The Op. 20 Quartets are remarkable for the manner in which all four of the instrumental voices participate fully in the musical conversation, a distinct stylistic advance over the Rococo divertimento, in which the violins largely played their pretty tunes above the discrete background of the lower strings.

Montmartre (2009) JUDD GREENSTEIN (B. 1979)

Judd Greenstein, educated at Williams College, Yale School of Music and Princeton University, wrote, “Montmartre is an exploration of sound and color [i.e., no text except isolated syllables], opening with a counterpoint between throat-singing men and yodeling women, then moving through a variety of more familiar vocal production techniques, belted and bell-like. I named the work after the famous Paris neighborhood where early-20thcentury French composers wrote pieces that elevated the concepts of sound and timbre to their rightful place alongside harmony, counterpoint and voice-leading.

Suonare/To Sound (2010) ERIC DUDLEY (B. 1971)

Conductor, vocalist, pianist and composer Eric Dudley has held conducting positions with the Cincinnati Symphony and Adelphi Chamber Orchestra; in 2016 he was appointed Music Director of the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra and two years later became Artistic Director of the San Francisco Contemporary

JUL Music Players. Dudley wrote, “Suonare/To Sound is a meditation on qualities of timbre and language. I was fascinated with the idea of writing complementary English and Italian poems — direct translations of each other — that have interesting sonic properties of their own that are amplified when superimposed. My image for the musical setting was a cavernous, echoing space, with each of the parts moving as if in delayed reaction to the others.”

“Letter to My Father” from Coloring Book (2015) TED HEARNE (B. 1982)

Ted Hearne attended the Manhattan School of Music and Yale School of Music, and was appointed Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California in 2014. Letter to My Father is the fourth of the five songs comprising Coloring Book. Hearne wrote of the complete cycle, “I set the words of three great black American writers of different generations (Zora Neale Hurston [1891-1960], James Baldwin [1924-1987], Claudia Rankine [b. 1963]) in texts dealing with identity, not because I could ever pretend to speak for them, but because I wanted to know: Could I better understand their words by speaking them in my own voice? Could I better understand my own perspective — my own identity, my whiteness, my relationship to racism — by appropriating the perspective of someone different? And what does it mean to hold myself apart?”

String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80 (1847) FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

On May 14, 1847, two days after arriving home to Leipzig from an exhausting tour to London, Mendelssohn learned that his beloved sister Fanny had died suddenly in Berlin. He collapsed and was too ill even to attend the funeral. He seemed to be recovering by fall, when he went to Berlin to visit his brother, Paul, but he sight of Fanny’s rooms was more than Mendelssohn could bear, and he collapsed again. He made it back to Leipzig but suffered three strokes between October 7th and November 3rd. On November 4th, four months shy of his 39th birthday, Felix Mendelssohn died. The F minor Quartet was his last important work.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

31 TUESDAY JULY 31, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

DONOVAN PAVILION

DOVER QUARTET

Joel Link, violin Bryan Lee, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Camden Shaw, cello

ROOMFUL OF TEETH

Brad Wells, Artistic Director

Esteli Gomez, soprano Martha Cluver, soprano Eliza Bagg, alto Virginia Warnken Kelsey, alto Eric Dudley, tenor Thann Scoggin, baritone Dashon Burton, bass-baritone Cameron Beauchamp, bass

STRAVINSKY Three Pieces for String Quartet (7 minutes) Dance: Quarter note = 126 Eccentric: Quarter note = 76 Canticle: Half note = 40

MAZZOLI Vesper Sparrow (5 minutes)

BRITTELLE High Done No Why To (5 minutes)

HAYDN String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5 (24 minutes) Allegro moderato Menuetto Adagio Finale: Fuga a due Soggetti

— INTERMISSION — GREENSTEIN Montmartre (5 minutes)

DUDLEY Suonare/To Sound (3 minutes)

HEARNE “Letter to My Father” from Coloring Book (12 minutes)

MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80 (24 minutes) Allegro vivace assai Allegro assai Adagio Finale: Allegro molto

This evening’s hors d’oeuvres provided by:

PRESENTED BY

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED

VOICES + QUARTET + PIANO: LITTLE MATCH GIRL & MOZART The Little Match Girl Passion for Vocal Octet (2008) DAVID LANG (BORN IN 1957)

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avid Lang, born in Los Angeles in 1957, is a graduate of Stanford, University of Iowa and Yale; he joined the Yale faculty in 2008. Among his many honors are a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award for The Little Match Girl Passion, Rome Prize, Le Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Musical America’s 2013 Composer of the Year, and holder of the 2013-2014 Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. In 2016, his Simple Song #3, written for Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth, was nominated for Golden Globe and Academy Awards. Lang is also co-artistic director of New York’s influential contemporary music collective Bang on a Can. Lang wrote of The Little Match Girl Passion (2008), “I wanted to tell a story — the story of The Little Match Girl by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The original is ostensibly for children, and it has that shocking combination of danger and morality that many famous children’s stories do. A poor young girl, whose father beats her, tries unsuccessfully to sell matches on the street, is ignored, and freezes to death. Through it all she somehow retains her Christian purity of spirit, but it is not a pretty story.

“What drew me to The Little Match Girl is that the strength of the story lies not in its plot but in the fact that all its parts — the horror and the beauty — are constantly suffused with their opposites. The girl’s bitter present is locked together with the sweetness of her past memories; her poverty is always suffused with her hopefulness. There is a kind of naive equilibrium between suffering and hope.

“There are many ways to tell this story. What has always interested me, however, is that Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, 42

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drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus. The girl suffers, is scorned by the crowd, dies, and is transfigured. I wondered what secrets could be unlocked from this story if one took its Christian nature to its conclusion and unfolded it, as composers have traditionally done in musical settings of the Passion of Jesus.

“The Passion told in music can include texts other than the story itself: the reactions of the crowd, penitential thoughts, statements of general sorrow, shock or remorse. These are markers for our own responses, making the audience more than spectators to the sorrowful events. These responses can have a huge range — in Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, the extra texts range from chorales that his congregation was expected to sing along with to completely invented characters, such as the ‘Daughter of Zion’ and the ‘Chorus of Believers.’ The Passion format — the telling of a story while simultaneously commenting upon it — has the effect of placing us in the middle of the action.

“My Little Match Girl Passion sets Andersen’s The Little Match Girl in the format of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, interspersing his narrative with my versions of the crowd and character responses from Bach’s Passion. The word ‘passion’ comes from the Latin word for ‘suffering.’ There is no Bach in my piece and there is no Jesus — rather the suffering of the Little Match Girl has been substituted for that of Jesus, elevating (I hope) her sorrow to a higher plane.”

AUG Fantasia in D minor for Piano, K. 397 (1782) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Baron Gottfried van Swieten had developed a taste for the contrapuntal glories of German music while serving as ambassador to the Prussian court at Berlin, and when he returned to Vienna as Court Librarian he produced a weekly series of concerts devoted to “ancient music,” mostly Bach and Handel. He hired the best available musicians to perform and arrange the compositions for these events, including Mozart, who used the opportunity to study the fine workings of Baroque music. In addition to the enriched contrapuntal textures that increasingly figured in his compositions, Mozart also discovered from Bach’s preludes, fantasies and toccatas how to fix the evanescence of improvisation into a finished work. He tried out just such a passage of musing, seemingly spontaneous broken chords to begin the Fantasia in D minor he wrote in 1782, and followed that music with a plaintive, chromatically inflected melody. Repetitions of this sad song are twice interrupted by sweeping cadenza-like episodes before the Fantasia takes a small breath and trots off with a melody of opera buffa jocularity.

String ­Quartet in D minor, K. 421, “Haydn No. 2” (1783) WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

“One of his most ferociously earnest works” is how John N. Burk characterized Mozart’s D minor Quartet of June 1783. The concentrated opening movement begins with a melancholy theme begun with a falling interval; the lyrical subsidiary subject is presented in a brighter tonality. A tiny repeated-note figuration heard at the close of the exposition in the first violin serves as a motto that recurs in later movements. The development is noteworthy for its intricate thematic working-out and harmonic daring. The recapitulation proceeds as expected, though this deeply expressive music is anything but ordinary. The simplicity of the Andante’s structure (A–B–A) belies its deep well of expression. The turbulent Menuetto has a music-box trio of almost startling contrast.

The finale is a set of variations on a sad melody in the meter of a siciliano.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

01 WEDNESDAY AUGUST 1, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

DONOVAN PAVILION

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

DOVER QUARTET

Joel Link, violin Bryan Lee, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Camden Shaw, cello

ROOMFUL OF TEETH Brad Wells, Artistic Director

Esteli Gomez, soprano Martha Cluver, soprano Eliza Bagg, alto Virginia Warnken Kelsey, alto Eric Dudley, tenor Thann Scoggin, baritone Dashon Burton, bass-baritone Cameron Beauchamp, bass

DAVID LANG The Little Match Girl Passion for Vocal Octet (35 minutes)

— INTERMISSION — MOZART Fantasia in D minor for Piano, K. 397 (6 minutes)

MOZART String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, “Haydn No. 2” (24 minutes) Allegro Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Allegro ma non troppo

This evening’s hors d’oeuvres provided by:

PRESENTED BY

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED PRE-CONCERT TALK, 6:30PM DONOVAN PAVILION

Leah Weinberg, University of Denver (speaker)

VOICES + QUARTET + PIANO: INTOXICATING HARMONIES Pavane pour une infante défunte (“Pavane for a Dead Princess”) for Piano (1899) MAURICE R AVEL (1875-1937)

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he pavan was a dance of slow tempo and refined gesture that originated in Italy during the late Renaissance, and spread throughout Europe, becoming especially popular in Spain and England. Thomas Morley, in his guide of 1579 for the dedicated musical amateur of the Elizabethan age, Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musicke, described the pavan as “a kind of staide musicke, ordained for graue [grave] dauncing.” In Spain, the pavan often accompanied the weddings of young girls of the nobility, the solemn activities of feast days and certain religious ceremonies. The provenance of its name became obscured in the wondrous, frustrating etymological thicket that is 16th-century language. It may refer to Padua as the place of its origin (“pavana” meaning “of Padua”) or to the supposed resemblance between the majestic movements of the dance and the spreading of a peacock’s tail (“pavón” in Spanish).

Ravel recreated the dignified, processional character of the pavan in his Pavane pour une infante défunte, but admitted devising the title just because he was pleased by the sound of the words. The music’s elegant simplicity recalls not only a stately Spanish Renaissance court, but also the pastoral serenity of classical civilization. It was Ravel’s first popular success, and has become one of his best-known works.

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Requiem for Vocal Octet and String Quartet (2018) Commissioned by Bravo! Vail as part of the NEW WORKS PROJECT GABRIELLA SMITH (B. 1991)

Gabriella Smith, born in Berkeley in 1991, studied composition with Arkadi Serper, Yiorgos Vassiladonakis and Pulitzer Prize-winner John Adams before she entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia as a student of David Ludwig, Jennifer Higdon and Richard Danielpour. After graduating, Smith returned to Curtis as an ArtistYear Fellow for 2015-2016, dedicating a year of public service in the Philadelphia region as a “Citizen-Artist.” She is currently a doctoral candidate at Princeton University. In 2016-2017, she was the Nashville Symphony’s inaugural Composer Lab & Workshop Fellow; her other residencies include the Instituto Sacatar (Brazil), Monadnock Music Festival (New Hampshire) and Copland House (Cortlandt Manor, New York).

Smith wrote that her one-movement Requiem, a 2018 Bravo! Vail commission for Roomful of Teeth and the Dover Quartet, was “inspired by several of the great Requiems but expanded in scope to address not just death in a human sense but the deaths of entire species (many of which humans have directly or indirectly caused over the last couple hundred years). The piece is intended to offer us the chance to consider our impact on the environment as well as our place in earth’s history on a larger, geological/environmental scale. The text is a list of the Latin names of all the species that have gone extinct over the last century in approximate chronological order of their disappearance. I chose the Latin names to give the text a similar sound to the language of

the traditional Requiem (despite its drastically different content) and also to relate it to the sacred and secular texts of the Medieval and Renaissance vocal music I love so much. The music itself drifts back and forth between these older types of sounds and more textural, percussive and less traditional techniques.

Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in C minor, Op. 1 (1895) ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI (1877-1960)

Ernst von Dohnányi, one of the 20thcentury’s foremost composers, pianists, teachers and music administrators, was born in 1877 in Pozsony, Hungary and studied at the newly established Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, the first Hungarian of significant talent to do so. He graduated in 1897, and toured extensively as a pianist for the next several years before joining the faculty of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. He returned to Budapest in 1915, becoming director of the Liszt Academy in 1919 and musical director of Hungarian Radio in 1931. Dohnányi served as conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic for the 25 years after 1919 while continuing to concertize at home and abroad and remaining active as a composer. In 1944 he settled in Tallahassee as pianist and composerin-residence at Florida State University, appearing regularly on campus and in guest engagements; his last public performance was as conductor of the FSU Symphony just three weeks before his death. He died in New York on February 9, 1960 during a recording session.

Dohnányi composed his Piano Quintet No. 1 in 1895, when he was eighteen and still a student at the Franz Liszt Academy. The sonata-form opening movement, passionate, spacious and almost symphonic in scale and sonority, takes as its main theme a bold, striding melody announced by the piano; the second subject is a lyrical strain given by the strings.

The Scherzo, with its fiery cross-rhythms and headlong energy, is reminiscent of the Bohemian furiant. The elegiac Adagio follows a broad three-part form (A–B–A). The finale is a rondo whose reiterations of a folk-influenced, mixed-meter theme are separated by episodes of Schubertian lyricism, Bach-inspired fugue and even a recall of the first movement’s principal theme.

PROGRAM NOTES © 2018 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

AUG

02 THURSDAY AUGUST 2, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

DONOVAN PAVILION

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

DOVER QUARTET

Joel Link, violin Bryan Lee, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Camden Shaw, cello

ROOMFUL OF TEETH Brad Wells, Artistic Director

Esteli Gomez, soprano Martha Cluver, soprano Eliza Bagg, alto Virginia Warnken Kelsey, alto Eric Dudley, tenor Thann Scoggin, baritone Dashon Burton, bass-baritone Cameron Beauchamp, bass

RAVEL Pavane for a Dead Princess for Piano (7 minutes)

GABRIELLA SMITH Requiem for Vocal Octet and String Quartet (25 minutes) World Premiere NEW WORKS PROJECT

— INTERMISSION — DOHNÁNYI Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in C minor, Op. 1 Allegro Scherzo: Allegro vivace Adagio, quasi andante Finale: Allegro animato

This evening’s hors d’oeuvres provided by:

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble was created in 1967. Drawn from the principal players of the orchestra, the Chamber Ensemble performs in all shapes and sizes, from string quintets to octets, and in various other configurations featuring winds. The group’s touring commitments are extensive and include regular appearances in Europe and North America. The ensemble’s recording contracts with Philips Classics, Hyperion and Chandos have led to the release of over thirty CDs.

Asphalt Orchestra is a street band created by New York City’s Bang on a Can, a leader in new music of every conceivable style and genre. An outdoor “guerrilla” musical force comprised of top classical, jazz, and rock musicians and choreographed by Susan Marshall and Mark DeChiazza, Asphalt made its debut at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival in 2009. It has appeared at London’s Barbican Center, Washington, D.C.’s TED Women’s Conference, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art playing music that ranges from Björk to Zappa. This summer marks the ensemble’s Bravo! Vail debut.

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Ann Marie Brink (viola) has been Associate Principal Viola of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 1999. She began playing in public school at age 10 and joined the ©SMU

Pensacola Symphony while a freshman in high school.

She holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the William Schuman Prize. Active as a chamber musician, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, and Cleveland’s Severance Hall.

David Buck (flute) joined the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as Principal Flute last fall, having played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra since 2012. He is a Philadelphia native and a graduate of The Juilliard School.

Previously Buck has held positions with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Oregon Symphony and made guest principal appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony.

His primary teachers were Robert Langevin, Jeffrey Khaner, and David Cramer.

Albert Cano Smit (piano) turns 22 this year and is the first prize winner of the 2017 Walter W. Naumburg Piano ©LAURA DEAN

Competition. He has been winning top prizes at major competitions since 2011 and today continues his studies in Los Angeles with Ory Shihor and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, with whom he performs this summer as a 2018 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow. Playing concertos, recitals, and chamber music equally occupy his growing schedule of concerts worldwide.

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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The Dover Quartet (string quartet) became the first-ever Quartet-in-Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2013, the same year it won the Banff ŠCARLIN MA

Competition. In the 2017-18 season it performed over 100 concerts at major venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, where it has been made Quartet-inResidence for the next three seasons. Comprised of Joel Link, Brian Lee, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and Camden Shaw, the group is an active member of Music for Food, an initiative to help musicians fight hunger in their home communities.

Ensemble Connect is a professional development and training program run by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. It attracts the finest young musicians in the country, who are equally committed to musical excellence and education. A select group of the program’s members have returned to Bravo!

Vail this summer to play chamber music with Anne-Marie McDermott (July 17) as well as outreach concerts throughout the Valley.

Do-Hyun Kim (piano), a recent graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, is making his Bravo! Vail debut as one of two Piano Fellows chosen each summer

by Anne-Marie McDermott. A top prizewinner at numerous competitions, he performed in the Mariinsky Theatre at the 12th International Piano Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, and last year was a winner of the 2017 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He will make his recital debuts in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. during the 2018-19 season.

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2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Emily Levin (harp) is the Principal Harp of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the youngest principal harpist of ©DARIO ACOSTA

a major American orchestra. She has appeared as soloist with the Dallas, Jerusalem, and Colorado Symphony Orchestras and currently serves on the faculty at the Young Artist’s Harp Seminar. Her outreach activities have included a concert series benefiting the International Rescue Committee and Refugee Services of Texas. She is a self-proclaimed bookworm and holds degrees in history and music from Indiana University and The Juilliard School.

Anne-Marie McDermott (piano), Bravo! Vail’s Artistic Director since 2011, enjoys a career playing, planning, and recording an incredible variety of music. Last summer she performed Gershwin’s Concerto in F with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic and gave the world premiere of a Bravo! Vail-commissioned work from composer David Ludwig. She recently performed her first complete Beethoven Concerto cycle with Sante Fe Pro Musica and released her second all-Haydn sonata CD for Bridge Records. An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she also served as Artistic Director of the inaugural McKnight Center Chamber Music Festival at Oklahoma State University this past spring.

The Omer Quartet (string quartet) is the 2018 first prize winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions.

Consisting of violinists Mason Yu and Erica Tursi, violist Jinsun Hong, and cellist Alex Cox, the quartet was also a top prizewinner in the Bordeaux International Competition in France and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Having recently completed a graduate residency at the New England Conservatory, the group is currently the Doctoral Fellowship String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Maryland. The quartet makes its Bravo! Vail debut this summer as Chamber Ensemble-in-Residence.

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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Roomful of Teeth (vocal project), founded in 2009 ©BONICA AYALA

by Brad Wells, is dedicated to mining the expressive potential of the human voice. The group has studied Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, Inuit throat singing, Korean P’ansori, Georgian singing, and Sardinian cantu a tenore styles. Its 2012 debut album received a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/ Small Ensemble Performance. Its first appearance at Bravo! Vail in 2015 led to this season’s commissioned work for Roomful with the Dover String Quartet from composer Gabriella Smith, scheduled to be premiered on August 2 at the Donovan Pavilion.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano) has performed around the world for more than 30 years and recorded more than 50 albums. He has been nominated for two Grammy ©DECCA

Awards and has won the Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or, the Choc du Monde de la Musique, a Gramophone Award, two ECHO awards, and the Edison Prize. A frequent guest of Bravo! Vail, Thibaudet was invited by Anne-Marie McDermott to help select this summer’s two Piano Fellows, with whom he will perform on July 10 and appear as a coach in a public master class on July 11.

Hanzhi Wang (accordion) is the first accordionist to be presented at Bravo! Vail, as well as the the first ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in that organization’s 57-year history. YCA will present her debut concerts in New York City and Washington D.C. this season. In August, Naxos will release its first-ever solo accordion CD featuring Wang in works by Danish composers. She earned degrees at the China Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen as a student of Geir Draugsvoll.

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THANK YOU EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS Bravo! Vail is proud to offer dozens of free and low-cost concerts and events to the community each summer and throughout the year. We thank all those whose support makes these events possible.

Anonymous Letitia and Christopher Aitken Amy and Charlie Allen Alpine Bank Mercedes and Alfonso Alvarez Dierdre and Ronnie Baker Jayne and Paul Becker Sarah Benjes and Aaron Ciszek Barbara and Barry Beracha Elinor and Howard Bernstein Eva-Marie and Ray Berry and The Paiko Foundation Courtney Block Adriana and David Bombard Bravo! Vail Guild Kelly and Sam Bronfman, II Lilia and Nico Brown Alison and Nick Budor Jean and Harry Burn Janie and Bill Burns Greta and Michael Campanale Moe and Steve Cardinale Edwina P. Carrington Carol and Harry Cebron Sara and Michael Charles Dr. David Cohen Costco

Rebecca Crawford Keelin Davis Katherine and Hassan Dayem John Dayton Robin Deighan Barb and Rob DeLuca Kathy and Brian Doyle Molly Doyle and Richard Niezen Sandi and Leo Dunn Eagle County Eagle Ranch Association Peggy and Gary Edwards Julie and Bill Esrey Holly and Tim Finchem Barbara and Howard Finkelstein FirstBank Jamie Fisher Deb and Ed Fitts Courtney and Brian Fitzgerald Cookie and Jim Flaum Joan Francis Jane and Stephen Friedman Sue and Dan Godec Jennifer and J. Bradley Greenblum Mr. and Mrs. Neal Groff Terri and Tom Grojean Diana Harris, in honor of Valerie and Noel Harris Valerie and Noel Harris Linda and Mitch Hart William Hecht Becky Hernreich Cheryl Holman Michele Howe Carol and Richard Hunton BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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Ellen and Mike Imhof Anna Janes and Sig Langegger Theresa and Steven Janicek Sue and Rich Jones Vicki and David Judd Alexia and Jerry Jurschak Elaine and Art Kelton Dorothy and James Klein Judy and Alan Kosloff Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Kushner Linda and Robert Llewellyn Rallet and John Lovett Donna and Patrick Martin Barbie and Tony Mayer Ferrell and Chi McClean Anne-Marie McDermott and Michael Lubin Shirley and William S. McIntyre, IV Billie and Ross McKnight Melissa Meyers Kay and Bill Morton Caitlin and Dan Murray Krizia Naegele-Routh and Michael Routh National Endowment for the Arts Renee Okubo Martha and Kent Petrie Linda Farber Post and Dr. Kalmon D. Post Betsy and Pedo Printz Jerry Raemisch Mary Pat and Keith Rapp Amy and James Regan Michele and Jeffrey Resnick Susan and Rich Rogel Adrienne and Chris Rowberry Lisa and Ken Schanzer Peggy and Tony Sciotto Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Cheryl and Richard Shaw Harvey Simpson Slifer Smith & Frampton Foundation Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate Beth and Rod Slifer 52

2018 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Rachel and David Smiley Brooke and Hap Stein Nancy and Jerry Stevens Cathy and Howard Stone Susan and Steven Suggs Lisa Tannebaum and Don Brownstein Dhuanne and Doug Tansill Jennifer Teisinger and Chris Gripkey Joe Tonahill, Jr. Town of Eagle Town of Gypsum United Way of Eagle River Valley U.S. Bank U.S. Bank Foundation Elli Varas Anne and Jim von der Heydt Martin Waldbaum Wall Street Insurance Jackie and Norm Waite Sandra and Greg Walton Carole A. Watters Gunnel and Hal Weiser John Westcott, in memory of Andrea Westcott Ellen and Bruce Winston Pam and Joe Woods

CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES Special thanks to the many donors and partners who make the Bravo! Vail Chamber Music Series possible. The Festival is grateful for their generosity, which brings this beautiful set of concerts to life.

Eva-Marie and Ray Berry and The Paiko Foundation Fork Art Catering The Francis Family The Sidney E. Frank Foundation The Judy and Alan Kosloff Artistic Director Chair Town of Vail

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED Presented by Meiomi Wine Bravo! Vail gratefully acknowledges the support of the many donors whose generous support brings this unforgettable series and experience to audiences.

Amy and Charlie Allen Eva-Marie and Ray Berry and The Paiko Foundation The Francis Family The Sidney E. Frank Foundation The Judy and Alan Kosloff Artistic Director Chair Meiomi Wine The New Works Fund Red Canyon Catering Town of Vail

NEW WORKS FUND Bravo! Vail acknowledges the donors whose support underwrites the premiere of new music and the presentation of music from the late 20th century through our current time that may be unfamiliar to Vail audiences.

Eva-Marie and Ray Berry and The Paiko Foundation New Music USA Town of Vail

LUIS D. JUAREZ HONORARY MUSIC AWARD

Marilyn Augur Dierdre and Ronnie Baker Jayne and Paul Becker Sarah Benjes and Aaron Ciszek Doe Browning Edwina P. Carrington John Dayton Peggy and Gary Edwards Margaret and Tom Edwards Irene Emma Sallie and Robert Fawcett Cookie and Jim Flaum Tracy and Mark Gordon Anne and Hank Gutman Julie and Steven Johannes Judy and Alan Kosloff Shirley and William S. McIntyre, IV Kay and Bill Morton Laurie and Tom Mullen Caitlin and Dan Murray Jullie and Gary Peterson Patti and Drew Rader Martha Rehm and Cherryl Hobart Vicki Rippeto Sally and Byron Rose June and Paul Rossetti Adrienne and Chris Rowberry Carole and Peter Segal Slifer Smith & Frampton Foundation Rachel and David Smiley Cathy and Howard Stone Joanne and Frank Strauss Debbie and Fred Tresca

Established in 2016, the Luis D. Juarez Honorary Music Award supports and extends opportunities for students to pursue musical studies. Bravo! thanks the donors whose support provides financial assistance to students for the costs of instruments, lessons, software, and other essential materials.

BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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