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and little (other than pedal effects) to the discretion of the performer. In its sheer density, of both sound and ideas, Eckhardt’s 11-minute composition relates to the so-called New Complexity movement that arose in the 1980s, partly in reaction to the reductive language of minimalism. Its legacy is a body of works characterized by multilayered textures, dissonant harmonies, fiercely complicated rhythms, and ultrafine gradations of timbres and dynamics.

Eckhardt acknowledges the influence of movement-oriented composers like Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but his music is equally beholden to the likes of John Coltrane and Led Zeppelin.

Eckhardt has likened the genesis of his music to “being in a landscape during an evening thunderstorm. There is darkness, then a flash of lightning that illuminates the surroundings. For that fraction of a second I can ‘see’ everything I need to begin the piece. What follows is a painstaking reconstruction of that moment.” One such lightning flash came in the form of a prose poem titled Echoes by the late W. S. Merwin. A meditation on the interpenetration of past, present, and future — on “the echoes pouring through us out of the past” and the “sounds that rush away from us: echoes of future words”—Merwin’s poem culminates in the image of a child sitting beside a lake at nightfall, calling out into the silence and watching the sound of his embodied voice “running away from me over the water in her white veil.” Echoes’ White Veil captures that multilayered poetic imagery in an analogous complex of sound and silence, movement and stasis. Eckhardt’s sound world recalls Jay Parini’s description of Merwin’s poetry as a “kind of free verse” in which “he layered image upon bright image, allowing the lines to hang in space, largely without punctuation, without rhymes.” Notated without barlines, Echoes’ White Veil might be called the musical equivalent of free verse. Sonic images pile on top of one another in tightly packed, asynchronous layers, and spare, spectral sonorities are left hanging in space.

(1810–1856)

Schumann embodied the spirit of the Romantic era in his affinity for small-scale musical forms and lyrical utterances, his reliance on literary and other extramusical sources of inspiration, and the supreme value he placed on emotional freedom and spontaneity. Although he wrote four symphonies, several concertos, and even a single opera, his impulsive genius found its most characteristic expression in art songs and piano music, including a small body of chamber pieces for keyboard and strings. Schumann was an inveterate improviser at the keyboard, as one might suppose from the rhapsodic fluidity that characterizes his piano writing.

In fact, only a chronic hand injury prevented him from realizing his youthful ambition to be a concert pianist. Instead, he dedicated himself to creating a new kind of music for the piano, compounded of heroic virtuosity and poetic intimacy.

In the seven years before his marriage to the pianist Clara Wieck in 1840, Schumann wrote some of his greatest piano works, including Kreisleriana, Carnaval, the First and Second Sonatas, and the C-Major Fantasy. Schumann was infatuated with Clara, a budding pianist and composer ten years his junior; her father’s implacable opposition to the match only made their hearts grow fonder. The eight fantasy-like pieces that constitute Kreisleriana take their cue from a fictional musician created by the great Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. Like the emotionally unstable Schumann, Hoffmann’s Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler “was drawn constantly to and fro by his inner visions and dreams as if floating on an eternally undulating sea, searching in vain for the haven which would grant him the peace and serenity needed for his work.” Apart from its literary associations, Schumann’s work was a love letter in disguise. “Play my Kreisleriana sometimes!” he counseled Clara. “There’s a very wild love in a few movements, and your life and mine and many of your looks.”

Of the two fictitious alter egos that Schumann invented for himself, the impulsive Florestan takes center stage in the first piece, marked “extremely animated,” with its fierce, almost violent torrent of racing triplets in looping patterns, while the more reflective Eusebius comes to the fore in the lyrical, placidly undulating theme of the second piece (to be played “very inwardly and not too quickly”). The contrast in character is accentuated by Schumann’s key scheme, which alternates more or less regularly between minor and major keys. But Kreisleriana is permeated with an ambiguity, rhythmic as well as tonal, that highlights the music’s phantasmagorical atmosphere. Particularly in the first and last pieces, the underlying pulse is upset or obscured by changing metrical patterns and displacements of the downbeat. In the closing bars of the work, the music’s driving, frenetic energy dissipates and Kreisleriana ends with a subterranean whisper.

– Harry Haskell

Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by The New York Times. He is the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist — an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. As a composer, he was also the recipient of a 2019 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Composition, for his work on More Forever, his collaboration with dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher.

Conrad Tao has recently appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony. In 2020–21, he was the focus of a series of concerts and interviews with the Finnish Radio Symphony, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Hannu Lintu and Andrew Norman’s Suspend with Sakari Oramo, live on television. While most performances in the 2020–21 season were canceled due to the COVID pandemic, he appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony and Louis Langrée, and returned to the Seattle Symphony to perform Beethoven Concerto No. 4. Further invitations included the National Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. His creation with Caleb Teicher, More Forever, commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim, was planned for tours across the U.S., including Dance Cleveland and Fall for Dance, Toronto. Tao and Teicher’s latest collaboration for Works & Process, Rhapsody in Blue, kicked off the Guggenheim’s return to in-person performances and was lauded by The New York Times as “monumental.” The duo also gave the inaugural virtual recital of the season for Concerts from the Library of Congress.

In the 2019–20 season, Tao was presented in recital by Carnegie Hall, performing works by David Lang, Bach, Julia Wolfe, Jason Eckhardt, Carter, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. He also made his debut in recital at Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the L.A. Philharmonic presented him in works by Copland and Frederic Rzewski. Following his debut at Blossom Music Center, the Cleveland Orchestra invited Tao to perform at Severance Hall in a special program featuring music by Mary Lou Williams and Ligeti, and improvisation alongside pianist Aaron Diehl. After his debut with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood,

his return date was canceled due to COVID; instead he was invited to give a streamed recital in their Great Performers series, where he played works by Felipe Lara, Crawford Seeger, Tania León, David Lang, and Beethoven.

In the 2018–19 season, the New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden gave the world premiere of Tao’s work, Everything Must Go. The European premiere will take place in 2021–22 with the Antwerp Symphony. Other recent performances of his compositions include his own performance of The Oneiroi in New York with the Seattle Symphony, and Spoonfuls with the IRIS Orchestra. His violin concerto for Stefan Jackiw will be premiered in the 2021–22 season.

Other recent highlights include Tao’s L.A. Opera debut in the West Coast premiere of David Lang’s adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s the loser. In Europe, he has been presented by the Swedish Radio Symphony in recital and in Andrew Norman’s Suspend alongside Susanna Mälkki; he also recently returned to the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, performing with Antonio Pappano.

A Warner Classics recording artist, Tao’s debut disc Voyages was declared a “spiky debut” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross. Of the album, NPR wrote: “Tao proves himself to be a musician of deep intellectual and emotional means – as the thoughtful programming on this album … proclaims.” His next album, Pictures, with works by David Lang, Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, Mussorgsky, and Tao himself, was hailed by The New York Times as “a fascinating album [by] a thoughtful artist and dynamic performer … played with enormous imagination, color and command.” His third album, American Rage, featuring works by Julia Wolfe, Frederic Rzewski, and Aaron Copland, was released in the fall of 2019.

Tao was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1994. He has studied piano with Emilio del Rosario in Chicago and Yoheved Kaplinsky in New York, and composition with Christopher Theofanidis.

Friday / July 16 / 8:00pm / Venetian Theater

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858–1924) Crisantemi (Chrysanthmums) (1890)

GRAZYNA BACEWICZ (1909–1969) Quintet for Piano and Strings No. 1 (1952)

Moderato molto espressivo

Presto

Grave

Con passione

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 (1826)

Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo Allegro molto vivace Allegro moderato Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile Presto Adagio quasi un poco andante Allegro

This concert was made possible, in part, by the Westchester Community Foundation, a division of The New York Community Foundation.

Please do not take photos or record any part of the performance, and remember to silence your mobile devices. On behalf of the artists and the rest of the audience, we thank you.

Giacomo Puccini, known for his operas La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and Tosca, is definitely not typically associated with the genre of the string quartet, but his early one-movement work, Crisantemi, (“The Chrysanthmums”) composed in 1890, is both melancholy and moving. Presumably completed in only one night, he dedicated it to the memory of Prince Amadeo di Savoia, Duca d’Aosta and King of Spain, who died in mid- January of that year. Next, we are introduced to the work of a relatively rarely performed 20th century woman composer, Grazyna Bacewicz. Bacewicz became one of the most prominent Polish composers of the mid-20th century and was one of the most prolific female composers ever, producing over 200 compositions. The work to be performed in this concert, the eclectic Quintet No. 1 for piano and strings, encompasses widely disparate emotions and influences ranging from the folkloric to the Classical. The third and final work on the program, Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 131, is one of his last works. Complex and demanding, this magnificent and moving work displays how Beethoven developed the string quartet genre in an experimental and dynamic fashion.

(1858–1924)

Italian composer Giacomo Puccini achieved worldwide fame and acclaim for his operas (among them La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and Tosca) which are still among the most popular operas today. His work initiated the operatic trend toward realism.

Puccini came from a family of church musicians who, for four generations, had composed religious music and were organists at the Cathedral of San Martino, Lucca’s religious heart. By 14, the young Puccini had taken up the family mantle and become the church organist of San Martino and was beginning to compose. When he was 18, Puccini had his epiphany moment when he and one of his brothers walked almost 20 miles to Pisa to attend a production of Verdi’s Aida and the world of opera opened to him.

Two years later, in 1880, he moved to Milan and entered the Reale Conservatorio di Musica. At that time, Milan was the most important musical center of Italy; there the young Puccini could begin to satisfy his burgeoning interest in opera. Also at that period of time, German Romantic symphonic music was being performed in concert halls and also excerpts from Wagner’s operas were receiving a lot of attention. Academics and the younger generation were very interested in Wagner’s music and ideas

and were discarding the traditional Italian composers in favor of the new “symphonism” and “instrumental polyphonism.” Puccini’s work developed the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents; from vero, which means “true,” verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition that incorporated realistic plots and settings often with characters from the contemporary lower class.

Like most composers of opera, Puccini experimented with other kinds of composition before he attained the maturity and expertise in which he could express himself in the operatic medium. Opera allowed him to demonstrate the depth of his talent and the great mastery of orchestral scoring that he had already achieved. Puccini never worked quickly, always searching for the right subject matter, one that would “make people weep.”

Fame and fortune came with his successes; Puccini spent the next few years traveling internationally to attend productions of his operas and to ensure that the productions met his high standards. After 1904, his compositions appeared less frequently, and his personal life was often troubled: in 1909, a major scandal ensued after Elvira, his wife, falsely accused their maid, Doria Manfredi, of having an affair with Puccini.

Puccini, a chain smoker, began to complain of chronic sore throats in 1923. Diagnosed with throat cancer, he was sent to Brussels for a new and experimental radiation treatment but died from posttreatment complications. One does not usually associate Puccini with chamber music, yet this work for string quartet is memorable. The elegiac work Crisantemi and the three Minuets that followed it are early Puccini and are the only chamber music he ever wrote.

The very moving, melancholy elegy Crisantemi was published in March of 1890. According to a letter of Puccini to his brother, Michele, on February 6, 1890, it was first performed by the Campanari Quartet at the Milan Conservatory and in Brescia and was well received on both those occasions. Although Puccini never returned to writing for string quartet, he returned to this music in a different form: some of the most poignant moments in Manon, Acts III (the prison scene with Manon and Des Grieux) and IV (the death scene) are based on themes from Crisantemi. It is noteworthy that Puccini entitled this work Crisantemi as chrysanthemums are the flowers used for mourning in Italy.

Crisantemi, Andante mesto, actually does retain the contours of a serious operatic interlude while also doubling as a successful string quartet. Throughout its one continuous movement, it is darkly colored and rhapsodic in structure. Principally, there are two quiet themes; one, emotional with sighing elements and with dramatic pauses, is highly chromatic; the second, contrasting with the first, is more flowing, yet darker in tone. In this work, Puccini uses melodies doubled at the octave as well as counterpoint and dynamic changes, to great effect.

(1909–1969)

Initially regarded as an outstanding violinist who wrote music on the side, Grazyna Bacewicz came to be regarded not only as a gifted woman composer, but also as one of the most prominent Polish composers of the mid-20th century as well as an integral member of the underground music scene during World War II. Although her work is little performed today, she was admired and respected as an equal by her colleagues and adored by her public. She was an integral part of the mid-century Polish cultural world and helped to make the music of her country known throughout Europe.

She, together with her musical compatriots, bridged the gap between the Neo-Romanticism of Szymanowski and the modernism of Lutosławski.

As a child, Bacewicz studied violin, piano, and theory at a small conservatory in her native Lódz and gave her first public performances at the age of seven. At 19, she began to study philosophy at the University of Warsaw, but after a year decided to focus on music and enrolled in the Warsaw Conservatoire, where in 1932, she received diplomas in violin and composition. Karol Szymanowski recommended that she study at the École Normale de Musique with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, possibly because of a scholarship from composer Paderewski, who funded her trip to Paris and her study of violin with André Touret and composition with Nadia Boulanger. As a violinist, she took first place in the 1935 Wieniawski Competition in Warsaw; simultaneously, she won prizes for her compositions. As a pianist, she presented the premiere of her Piano Sonata No. 2. By 1955, she stopped playing violin to devote more time to composing, but she also wrote fiction as well as music. She composed four symphonies, many string quartets and other chamber music, as well as a striking series of seven violin concertos mostly written for herself.

One of the most prolific female composers that we know of, “the first lady of music” (as Bacewicz was labeled by one English critic) produced over 200 compositions including four symphonies, seven violin concertos, seven string quartets, five sonatas for violin and piano, concertos for piano, two pianos, viola, and cello, plus numerous works for chamber orchestra and for full orchestra.

Piano Quintet No. 1, composed and premiered in 1952, is a tantalizing introduction to Bacewicz’s music as it encompasses widely disparate emotions. The Quintet followed immediately after her outstanding String Quartet No. 4 and shares with the quartet a sound world that embraces both folkloric impulses and classical principles.

This quintet was hailed as a work of exceptional maturity in terms of its musical ideas and the ways in which those ideas were implemented; the work sounds like Bacewicz intentionally eschewed the latest academic trends of her time because she was more intent on giving voice to her innermost personal emotions in