David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
ROSE STUDIO CONCERT Thursday Evening, October 8, 2015 at 6:30 Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio 3,473rd Concert
AMPHION STRING QUARTET KATIE HYUN, violin DAVID SOUTHORN, violin WEI-YANG ANDY LIN, viola MIHAI MARICA, cello TOMMASO LONQUICH, clarinet
2015-2016 Season
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 10th Floor New York, NY 10023 212-875-5788 www.ChamberMusicSociety.org
ROSE STUDIO CONCERT Thursday Evening, October 8, 2015 at 6:30 AMPHION STRING QUARTET KATIE HYUN, violin DAVID SOUTHORN, violin WEI-YANG ANDY LIN, viola MIHAI MARICA, cello TOMMASO LONQUICH, clarinet
ANTON REICHA Quintet in B-flat major for Clarinet, Two (1770-1836) Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 89 (c. 1809) Allegro Andante Menuetto: Allegro Finale: Allegretto LONQUICH, HYUN, SOUTHORN, LIN, MARICA
JOSEF SUK Meditation on the Old Czech Hymn (1874-1935) ‘Saint Wenceslas' for String Quartet, Op. 35a (1914) SOUTHORN, HYUN, LIN, MARICA
LEOŠ JANÁČEK Quartet No. 1 for Strings, "The Kreutzer (1854-1928) Sonata" (1923) Adagio—Con moto Con moto Con moto—Vivace—Andante Con moto—Adagio SOUTHORN, HYUN, LIN, MARICA
Please turn off cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices. Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited.
notes on the
PROGRAM
Quintet in B-flat major for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 89 Anton REICHA Born February 26, 1770 in Prague. Died May 28, 1836 in Paris. Probably composed around 1809. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 28 minutes Anton Reicha—revered teacher, innovative theorist, gifted composer, respected friend of Beethoven and other eminent musical figures—was one of the most highly regarded musicians of his day. Reicha was born in Prague on February 26, 1770. His father, a city musician, died when the boy was ten months old, so Anton’s early musical training was limited to a little singing as a choirboy. When he was 11, he was adopted by his uncle, Josef Reicha, a court cellist and composer at Wallerstein (on Germany’s “Romantic Road,” equidistant from Nuremberg, Munich, and Stuttgart), who taught him piano, violin, and flute. In 1785, Josef moved to Bonn to direct the court orchestra, and he found a place for the 15-year-old Anton as a flutist in the ensemble. Anton immediately struck up a friendship with a violist in the orchestra, the son of a court singer and a promising keyboard player and composer who was only seven months his junior, a restless teenager named Ludwig van Beethoven. Reicha profited from his time in Bonn, taking classes at the local university, conducting his first attempt at a symphony (now lost) with the court orchestra in 1787, and meeting Haydn there in the early
1790s, but that halcyon period came to an end when French troops overran the town in 1794. Reicha fled to Hamburg, where he gave up performing in favor of composing and teaching. After a brief period in Paris, he moved to Vienna in 1801, renewing his friendship with Beethoven, taking lessons with Albrechtsberger and Salieri (Beethoven’s teachers), and composing some 50 works that were notable for their innovative harmony and contrapuntal richness. By 1808, Reicha was back in Paris, where he began to build a solid reputation as a theorist and composition teacher. In 1818, he was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Paris Conservatoire, and quickly became one of the school’s most highly respected pedagogues. Reicha became a French citizen in 1829, was decorated with the Légion d’honneur in 1831, and succeeded Boieldieu as a member of the Académie in 1835. He died in Paris on May 28, 1836. Though Reicha wrote a vast quantity of music—operas in French and German, symphonies, concertos, sacred and secular choral pieces, piano solos, string duos and quartets, didactic works—he is best remembered for his chamber music for winds, notably his two-dozen compositions for woodwind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon), a musical medium whose viability he largely established. The Quintet in B-flat major for Clarinet and Strings, published in Paris in 1820 but probably composed a decade earlier, is a virtual concerto for clarinet in all but name and scoring. The quintet’s opening movement, a spacious sonata structure, begins with
a unison gesture from the strings that prepares for the clarinet’s presentation of the graceful main theme. More unison string gestures and some fleet passagework from the clarinet lead to the lyrical second subject, initiated by the first violin but appropriated almost immediately by the clarinet. The development section consists of a stream of shadowy, pulsing chords, some references to the unison opening gesture, and a passage of clarinet-violin dialogue that leads to a full recapitulation of the earlier materials and a long coda.
The Andante is a lovely, peaceful song in three parts (A–B–A) that calls for the clarinet’s most warm, limpid sonorities. The sunny Menuetto surrounds a central trio of almost folk-song purity. The clarinet is entrusted with the genial main theme of the sonata-form Finale; the strings present the movement’s second subject as the exposition of a fugue. In place of the usual development section, clarinet and violin share another cheerful melody before all three themes are reprised to close this delightful work.
Meditation on the Old Czech Hymn 'Saint Wenceslas' for String Quartet, Op. 35a Josef SUK Born January 4, 1874 in Křečovice, Bohemia. Died May 29, 1935 in Benešov, near Prague. Composed in 1914. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 7 minutes Josef Suk, one of the most prominent musical personalities of the early 20th century, was born into a musical family and entered the Prague Conservatory at the age of 11 to study composition and violin. He began composing three years later, and in 1891 became the prize pupil of a new member of the Conservatory faculty— Antonín Dvořák. Following his graduation in 1892, Suk founded the Czech Quartet, with which he was to perform over 4,000 concerts before retiring in 1933. He was deeply influenced in his early compositional style by the music of Dvořák, and his relationship with his teacher was cemented
when he married that composer’s daughter, Otilie, in 1898. Suk suffered the double tragedy of the deaths of Dvořák in 1904 and of his own young wife only 14 months later. His personal loss was reflected in his later music, which became more modernistic and complex in its texture, harmony, rhythmic construction, and form, and more sophisticated in its instrumental technique. The works of his later years—most notably the symphony dedicated to the memories of Dvořák and Otilie titled Asrael (Angel of Death) and the symphonic poem The Ripening—show a concentrated emotional power through which Suk sought “to embrace the sterner problems of humanity,” according to Czech musicologist Otakar Šourek. Much of the closing decade of his life was devoted to teaching composition at the Prague Conservatory, where he served four terms as Rector and taught many important Czech musicians of the next generation, including Bohuslav Martinů. His grandson, also named Josef (1929-2011), was one of the leading violinists of his generation.
The start of World War I had the dual effect of preventing Suk and the Czech Quartet from traveling abroad and of focusing his personal sympathies for his homeland. In the summer of 1914, he addressed both concerns with a Meditation for quartet (or string orchestra) that took as its
subject an ancient Bohemian hymn about St. Wenceslas, the country’s patron saint. Suk made unambiguous the music’s ardent plea for peace by inscribing in the score the powerful words of one phrase each time it occurred: Oh, save us and future generations from perishing.
Quartet No. 1 for Strings, “The Kreutzer Sonata” Leoš JANÁČEK Born July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy, Moravia. Died August 12, 1928 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. Composed in 1923. Premiered on October 17, 1924 in Prague by the Bohemian Quartet. First CMS performance on November 24, 1992. Duration: 17 minutes
In the summer of 1917, when he was 63, Leoš Janáček fell in love with Kamila Stösslová, the 25-year-old wife of a Jewish antiques dealer from Písek. They first met in a town in central Moravia during World War I, but, as he lived in Brno with Zdenka, his wife of 37 years, and she lived with her husband in Písek, they saw each other only infrequently thereafter and remained in touch mostly by letter. The true passion seems to have been entirely on his side (“It is fortunate that only I am infatuated,” he once wrote to her), but Kamila did not reject his company, apparently feeling admiration rather than love for the man who, with the successful staging of his Jenůfa in Prague in 1915 11 years after its premiere in Brno, was at that time acquiring an international reputation as a master composer. Whatever the details of their relationship, Kamila’s
role as an inspiring muse during the last decade of Janáček’s life was indisputable and beneficent—under the sway of his feelings for her he wrote his greatest music, including the operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, and The Makropoulos Affair, the song cycle The Diary of the Young Man Who Disappeared, the two string quartets (the second of which he titled “Intimate Letters”), the Glagolitic Mass, and the Sinfonietta for Orchestra. Most of Janáček’s compositions, whether for voices or instruments, grew from some literary or programmatic germ. The First Quartet—written in a blaze of creative inspiration in a single week— was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 short story The Kreutzer Sonata. Ian Horsbrugh summarized the tale in his biography of Janáček: “In Tolstoy’s story, the tragic events of the marriage are told by the husband to the author as they travel together on a rail journey. The man, Pózdnyshev, is cynical about love and about marriage. He recounts with passion his jealousy of the violin-playing Trukhachévski, whom, ironically, he had introduced to his wife—‘a strange, a fatal force led me not to repulse him.’ One evening his wife and this man performed Beethoven’s 'Kreutzer' Sonata to a small gathering, and, in spite of Pózdnyshev’s forebodings, the concert was a success. But the first movement of the
sonata had a ‘terrible effect’ on him. ‘It was tonal picture of Tolstoy’s character, whom as if quite new feelings, new possibilities the composer described to Kamila as “a of which I had till then been unaware, had pitiable woman who is maltreated, beaten, been revealed to me,’ and, after the intense and murdered.” The second movement, the jealousy of the previous weeks, ‘that quartet’s scherzo, is based on a theme, really music drew me into some world in which not much more than a melodic fragment jealousy no longer had a place.’ However, frequently terminated by a sour dissonance, Pózdnyshev goes away on a business trip, that could depict either (or both) the foppish but returns home unannounced, finds his violin player or what Janáček’s biographer wife in the company of the other man, and, Jaroslav Vogel called “the short-lived gripped by a terrifying frenzy, he stabs her satisfaction of the heroine’s desire.” The with his ‘curved Damascus dagger.’” Like internal regions of the movement contain Katya Kabanova (in which the heroine an icy tremolo passage played ponticello is also killed by her jealous husband for (at the bridge), denoting, according to her infidelity) and The Diary of the Young Vogel, “the chilling pang of temptation,” and a wide-interval Man Who Disappeared (the true account of a The First Quartet—written melody that conjures the Brno lad who vanished in a blaze of creative woman’s passion and from home to run away inspiration in a single her confessions of love. with a Gypsy girl), week—was inspired by The third movement Janáček’s First Quartet Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 short begins as a sentimental broaches the subject of story The Kreutzer Sonata. duet in close imitation for violin and cello love outside accepted societal bounds—all three works seem to whose melody was modeled on the second have been pleas to Kamila to requite his theme of Beethoven’s 1803 “Kreutzer” Sonata (dedicated to the French violinist own passion for her. and composer Rodolphe Kreutzer). The Though it is possible to fit Janáček’s duet is repeatedly broken off by slashing “Kreutzer” Quartet into traditional musical interjections from the other instruments, forms, the power and progress of the work however, and the tenderness of the may also be equated with the emotional beginning becomes exhausted as the music unfolding of Tolstoy’s marital tragedy. The proceeds. The movement ends with a tired quartet opens with a terse, rising three-note sigh. The tragedy culminates in the finale, motive (short–short–long), perhaps the which bears such performance markings as symbol of the heroine’s ultimate despair, “desperately,” “shyly,” and “as in tears.” which is immediately juxtaposed with a The music, largely derived from the stark folk-like ditty that may reflect the story’s motive that opened the quartet, is arranged Russian setting. Contrast is provided by in a steadily increasing line of tension, a lyrical theme of ambiguous rhythmic which, wrote Vahn Armstrong, “mirrors structure, evocative of the woman’s the pace of Tolstoy’s story, in which the unsettled longing, and a darting figure husband, believing himself deceived and of arching shape that is a super-heated mad with jealousy, rushes home and there variant of the opening despair motive. murders his wife as her lover flees.” These elements are played out to create a ©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
meet tonight’s
ARTISTS
The Amphion String Quartet is a winner of the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and joined the roster of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two Program in fall 2013. Through CMS, the ensemble made its Alice Tully Hall debut in March 2014, about which the New York Times praised “the focused, forceful young Amphion String Quartet” for its “sharply detailed performances.” The quartet’s debut album (Nimbus Records) has received critical acclaim with the New York Times describing its playing as having “propulsive energy and raw drama…jaunty exuberance…epic sweep” and “fiery temperament.” Highlights of the 2015-16 season include a performance with the Chamber Music Society at Alice Tully Hall and at the Melbourne (Florida) Chamber Music Society in November. The quartet will collaborate with harpist Bridget Kibbey in performances at SubCulture (NYC) and in San Francisco’s Morrison Chamber Music Center. Other highlights of the year include a return to the Tilles Center Chamber Music Series on Long Island and performances at the Chamber Music Society of Bethlehem and the Newburgh Chamber Music Series. The ASQ will return to the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC for a concert in collaboration with percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum. Recent performances include Mostly Mozart recitals at Avery Fisher Hall, critically acclaimed performances at Alice Tully Hall for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and return engagements at the Tilles Center Chamber Music Series and BargeMusic. In May 2015 the ensemble premiered David Philip Hefti’s Sextet at the Chamber Music Society’s Kaplan Penthouse alongside Yura Lee and Jan Vogler. This past May the quartet had a three-week residency in Portland with the contemporary dance company BodyVox on a special project entitled “Cosmosis.” Internationally the Amphion Quartet has performed in South Korea at the Music Isle Festival in Jeju, Seoul Arts Center, and the Busan Chamber Music Festival. Previous US festival appearances include The Chautauqua Institution, OK Mozart, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, New Jersey’s Mostly Music Series, NYU String Quartet Workshop, Princeton Summer Concerts, Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival, and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. Summer 2013 featured the world premiere of a new quartet by Yevgeniy Sharlat at the Caramoor Music Festival (commissioned by Caramoor as the culmination of the 2012-13 Stiefel String Quartet Residency). The ASQ has collaborated with such eminent artists as the Tokyo String Quartet, Ani Kavafian, David Shifrin, Anne-Marie McDermott, Carter Brey, Edgar Meyer, Michala Petri, James Dunham, and Deborah Hoffmann.
Italian clarinetist Tommaso Lonquich is solo clarinetist with Ensemble MidtVest, an international chamber ensemble based in Denmark. He has performed on prestigious stages on four continents and at major festivals. As a chamber musician, he has partnered with Klaus Thunemann, Sergio Azzolini, Umberto Clerici, Christoph Richter, Felix Renggli, Claudio Martinez Mehner, Jeffrey Swann, Alexander Lonquich, and the Allegri Quartet. He performs regularly as guest solo clarinetist with the Leonore Orchestra in Italy and others, collaborating with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, and Leonard Slatkin. He has devised many performances in collaboration with visual artists, dancers, and actors. With Ensemble MidtVest he has been particularly active in improvisation, leading workshops at The Juilliard School. He is vicepresident of KantorAtelier, a vibrant cultural space based in Florence, dedicated to the exploration of music, theatre, art, and psychoanalysis. He can be heard on a number of CD releases for DaCapo, CPO, and Col Legno, as well as on radio broadcasts around the world. He graduated from the University of Maryland under the tutelage of Loren Kitt, furthering his studies with Alessandro Carbonare, François Benda, and Michel Arrignon at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 2009 the Queen of Spain awarded him the Escuela’s prestigious annual prize. Other honors include prizes at the Marco Fiorindo International Competition and at the Concerto Competition of the National Symphony Orchestra (USA). He is a member of CMS Two.
Fall 2015
WATCH LIVE Enjoy a front row seat from anywhere in the world. View chamber music events streamed live to your computer or mobile device, and available for streaming on demand for the following 24 hours. Relax, browse the program, and experience the Chamber Music Society like never before.
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9:00 PM 6:30 PM 11:00 AM 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 9:00 PM 11:00 AM
Late Night Rose Inside Chamber Music Master Class with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet Inside Chamber Music The Zemlinsky Cycle New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse The Nielsen Cycle Late Night Rose Master Class with Torleif ThedĂŠen
All events are free to watch. View full program details online. www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive
upcoming
EVENTS
INSIDE CHAMBER MUSIC
Wednesday, October 14, 6:30 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio Focus on Bartók’s Quartet No. 4. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive
HAYDN, MENDELSSOHN, & SCHUMANN
Sunday, October 18, 5:00 PM & Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall The CMS season begins with three jewels of the chamber music repertoire, taking listeners on a journey from the classical to romantic era.
MASTER CLASS WITH JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET, PIANO
Monday, October 19, 11:00 AM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio The art of interpretation and details of technique are explained as master artists share their widsom with the next generation of chamber musicians. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive