David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, February 11, 2016 at 7:30 Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse 3,530th Concert
Celebrating the Commissioning History of Music from Angel Fire
OPUS ONE ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT, piano IDA KAVAFIAN, violin STEVEN TENENBOM, viola PETER WILEY, cello
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
The works on tonight's program were commissioned by Music from Angel Fire with the support of The Bruce E. Howden, Jr. American Composers Project. They were all written for OPUS ONE. This concert is made possible, in part, by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.
Thanks to Millbrook Vineyards & Winery, official wine sponsor of Kaplan Penthouse New Music Concerts.
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, February 11, 2016 at 7:30
Celebrating the Commissioning History of Music from Angel Fire OPUS ONE ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT, piano IDA KAVAFIAN, violin STEVEN TENENBOM, viola PETER WILEY, cello
LOWELL LIEBERMANN
Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 114 (2010)
(b. 1961)
STEVEN STUCKY (b. 1949)
Rain Shadow for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello (2012) Rain Shadow Stone Gathering Icicle Star Yellow and Red
—INTERMISSION— MARC NEIKRUG (b. 1946)
Green Torso for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello (New York Premiere) (2007-2009) I II III
ROBERTO SIERRA (b. 1953)
Fuego de ángel for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello (2011) El ángel y las sombras Misteriosa danza La visión del ángel Fuego
This evening’s performance is being streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive, and is being recorded for future broadcast. Please turn off cell phones and all other electronic devices. Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited.
notes on the
PROGRAM
Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 114 Lowell LIEBERMANN Born February 22, 1961 in New York City. Composed in 2010. Premiered on August 25, 2010 at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico by OPUS ONE. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 19 minutes American composer, pianist, and conductor Lowell Liebermann was born in New York City and began studying piano at age eight and composition at age 14. He made his professional debut at age 16, performing his Piano Sonata, Op. 1 at Carnegie Recital Hall, and went on to study at The Juilliard School. He is one of the most frequently performed and recorded living American composers. Orchestral works include four symphonies, his Concerto for Orchestra, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra, three piano concertos, and concertos for piccolo, flute, clarinet, trumpet, and violin. Chamber works include his Sonata for Flute and Piano, five string quartets, four cello sonatas, and piano quintets, quartets, and trios. He has composed two operas: The Picture of Dorian Gray, commissioned by Monte Carlo Opera, and Miss Lonelyhearts, commissioned by The Juilliard School in celebration of its 100th anniversary. In May 2016
his full-evening ballet Frankenstein will be premiered by the Royal Ballet in London. Liebermann’s music appears in recording on more than 80 releases. His many awards include the Virgil Thomson Award and a Charles Ives Fellowship. He has worked as composer-in-residence for Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Music Festival, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, among others, and is head of composition at Mannes College, The New School for Music. Liebermann’s Piano Quartet, Op. 114 was written for and premiered by OPUS ONE in August of 2010 in Angel Fire, New Mexico. The work is in one continuous movement and contains two distinct tempos of contrasting character. It begins with a mesmerizing repeated figure in the piano upon which the violin introduces the tender melodic material, subsequently picked up by the cello, followed by the viola. The cello and viola then take over the repeated figure to give the piano a turn at the melody. This section eventually melts into a sublime timeless chorale by the strings. After a short cadenza by the violin, the work breaks into the exciting Presto section, full of drive and rhythmic propulsion. A dramatic sudden change of character brings the beautiful chorale back, then finally the opening melodic material closes the piece quietly and completes the perfect circular form of this great work. (Note by Ida Kavafian)
Rain Shadow for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello Steven STUCKY Born November 7, 1949 in Hutchinson, Kansas. Composed in 2012. Premiered on August 22, 2012 at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico by OPUS ONE. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 15 minutes
Steven Stucky is one of America’s most highly regarded living composers. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, he is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, a director of New Music USA, and a board member of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. Notable world premieres in recent seasons include The Classical Style, an opera for the Ojai Music Festival; The Stars and the Roses by the Berkeley Symphony; Say Thou Dost Love Me for a cappella chorus with the New York Virtuoso Singers; Rhapsodies by the New York Philharmonic at London’s BBC Proms; the Chamber Concerto by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; and the Piano Quintet at Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest festival. He has served as composer-in-residence and consulting composer for new music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Stucky has fulfilled commissions for many major American orchestras, as well as for Boston Musica Viva, Camerata Bern, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, Carnegie Hall, the BBC, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. A highlight of his extensive discography
is Cradle Songs and Whispers, which were commissioned and recorded by Chanticleer, the San Francisco-based male a cappella choir. The two discs were Billboard-charting bestsellers and both won Grammy awards. Stucky taught at Cornell University from 1980 to 2014 and now serves as Cornell's Given Foundation Professor of Composition, Emeritus. He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2014. He studied at Baylor and Cornell universities with Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, Karel Husa, and Burrill Phillips. Stucky writes: "For many years I have found the British artist Andy Goldsworthy a real inspiration. His ability to see beauty lurking beneath the surface in unlikely places, and to expose it with heart-breaking clarity; the humility of his craftsman’s approach to art; and his willingness to make transient pieces that will disappear in a few minutes, hours, or days—these are for me daily reminders of how art can transform experience, and of how an artist of integrity and vision ought to behave. "I am aware that there is an irony in fixing Goldsworthy’s often impermanent creations in permanent form, as he does himself by photographing them and exhibiting and publishing the images. Even stranger is my attempt to fix some of my own impressions of his work in permanent musical form—a much more violent 'translation,' out of the visual realm into abstract sound patterns. But so powerful has been his impact on me that I feel compelled to work through that impact in the only way I know how."
Andy Goldsworthy describes his creative inspiration: "I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and 'found' tools—a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blownover tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. "Looking, touching, material, place, and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather—rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm—is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its
surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there. "Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials, and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season, and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature. "The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below."
Green Torso for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello Marc NEIKRUG Born September 24, 1946 in New York City. Composed in 2007-2009. First movement premiered on August 22, 2007 at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico by OPUS ONE; full version premiered on July 28, 2009 at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Tonight is the New York premiere of this piece. Duration: 23 minutes For 30 years composer Marc Neikrug has led an international career writing
chamber music, symphonic music, music-theater, and opera. Major performances have taken place with the New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo philharmonics, the Minnesota and Cleveland orchestras, and the St. Paul and Los Angeles chamber orchestras. His works have been performed internationally by the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, the BBC Symphony, London Sinfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Barcelona Symphony. Festivals that have presented his works include
Ravinia, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, "The result—a musical contemplation Aspen, Angel Fire, La Jolla, Marlboro, on his sculpture—was Green Torso, a Music@Menlo, London’s South piano quartet commissioned by the 2007 Bank, Aldeburgh, Berlin, Frankfurt, Music from Angel Fire Festival for the Schleswig Holstein, Zurich, Melbourne, group OPUS ONE. Tokyo’s Music Today, and Jerusalem. His music-theater work Through "The figure is quite realistic and has a Roses was commissioned by London’s distinctive posture: it stands at an angle, South Bank Festival with the National with one truncated upper arm raised. I Theater. Since its premiere in 1980 it was intrigued by the suggestive strength has received hundreds of performances of the implied gesture of this torso, in 15 countries and has been translated which, to me, elicits all the flowing into 11 languages. His Los Alamos, an power and beauty of a whole figure. anti-nuclear opera written in 1988, is the only American opera "But having completed ever commissioned “having completed Green Torso I found that by the Deutsche Oper Green Torso I found its ending pervaded my that its ending Berlin. Artistic director thoughts. I liked it very pervaded my of the Santa Fe Chamber much, but sensed there Music Festival, Neikrug was somehow more to thoughts.” has been composer-inthe torso's gesture than residence at the Marlboro, Angel Fire, what was visible. And after further Bravo! Vail, and La Jolla festivals. His reflection I realized that my concluding works have been recorded on Deutsche passage, too, held within it some further Grammophon, Koch International, possibilities or implications. I also felt Stereophile, Laurel, and Enya records. that if my existing composition were to become a 'first movement,' it had built Neikrug writes: "One night, my friend, enough momentum to sustain a lengthy Hopi artist Dan Namingha, came to slow movement following it. dinner at our home and presented me, quite unexpectedly, with a bronze "So, on a commission from the Bravo! sculpture of a female torso about eight Vail Valley Music Festival, I wrote two inches tall. I was taken aback by his additional movements: first an adagio generosity and promised Dan that when (II) and then a propulsive movement I wrote my next piece I would place the (III) that balances the first movement bronze on the piano for inspiration. (I) and exploits the potential of the first movement's ending."
Fuego de ángel for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello Roberto SIERRA Born October 9, 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Composed in 2011. Premiered on August 24, 2011 at Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico by OPUS ONE. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 16 minutes For more than three decades the works of American composer Roberto Sierra have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles, and festivals in the USA and Europe. In 2002 at the inaugural concert of the world-renowned Proms in London, his Fandangos was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that was broadcast by both the BBC Radio and Television throughout the UK and Europe. Many of the major American and European orchestras have commissioned and performed his works, including the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New Mexico, Houston, and Minnesota, as well as the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, and numerous Spanish orchestras. Commissioned works include the Concerto for Orchestra for the centennial celebrations of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Fandangos and Missa Latina commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra; and Songs from the Diaspora commissioned by Music Accord for Heidi Grant Murphy, Kevin Murphy, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. In 2010 he was elected
to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been nominated twice for a Grammy in the best contemporary composition category and has also received two Latin Grammy nominations. Born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, he studied composition both in Puerto Rico and Europe, where one of his teachers was György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. He is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in Music at Cornell University. Sierra writes: "The inspiration for Fuego de ángel was a place that, although I have never visited, triggered my imagination. The idea of an angel in conjunction with fire reminded me of images from Renaissance and early Baroque religious paintings; in particular some of the Latin American early colonial works which, in fantastic and unusual ways, depict celestial battles between good and evil— such as the many representations of the archangel Michael defeating the devil. "El ángel y las sombras (The Angel and the Shadows) explores the high and low registers of the instruments producing contrasting textures that range from luminous to dark. Misteriosa danza (Mysterious Dance) depicts a ritual dance; maybe the kind of dance an angel performs before confronting the enemy. La visión del ángel (The Angel’s Vision) is a reflection on the inner world of this imaginary creature; one which is profoundly inspired by love, but that at the same time, is inscrutable and does not relate to earthly feelings. Fuego (Fire) brings the work to a fiery conclusion, a tour de force for the whole ensemble."
meet tonight’s
ARTISTS
OPUS ONE brings together four of the leading musicians of our time: pianist AnneMarie McDermott, violinist Ida Kavafian, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Peter Wiley. Comprised of veterans as well as present members of the world’s most prestigious chamber groups, OPUS ONE is the result of a mutual love of music making between four extraordinary instrumentalists and friends who are each familiar figures in concert halls throughout the world, joining together to form one of the most exciting groups performing anywhere. The ensemble made its recital debut at the Library of Congress in 1998 and its orchestral debut with the Chattanooga Symphony shortly thereafter. It has since performed on major series, as well as at universities and festivals across the US. Dedicated to the music of our time, the group has commissioned and premiered several works written for it by such composers as Stephen Hartke, George Tsontakis, Marc Neikrug, Lowell Liebermann, Steven Stucky, and Roberto Sierra, and has been featured numerous times on St. Paul Sunday. The ensemble members are enthusiastic and active educators, and they have conducted numerous residencies such as The Schumann Project at the Curtis Institute, where they coached, gave master classes, and performances on their own as well as alongside students. An extraordinary experience for the group came in 2006 when OPUS ONE performed at Marine Barracks, Washington, DC by special invitation from the Commandant of the Marines and his wife, General and Mrs. Michael Hagee. For over 25 years pianist Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to performing, she also serves as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail and Ocean Reef festivals, as well as curator for chamber music for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego. This season she will premiere a concerto written by Poul Ruders. She has performed with many leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Charles Wuorinen's Fourth Piano Sonata, which she has recorded, was written for her and premiered at New York's Town Hall. She has recorded the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone magazine), and a disc of Mozart concertos with the Calder Quartet ("exceptional on every count."—Gramophone). Most recently she recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn concertos with the Odense Philharmonic in Denmark including two cadenzas written by Charles Wuorinen. With the Chamber Music Society she has performed the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas and chamber music, as well as a three-concert series of Shostakovich chamber music. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music and won both the Young Concert Artists auditions and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Violinist/violist Ida Kavafian just completed her 31st successful year as artistic director of Music from Angel Fire, the renowned festival in New Mexico. Her close association with the Curtis Institute of Music continues with her large and superb class, the recent endowment of her faculty chair by Curtis Board President Baroness Nina von Maltzahn, and the awarding of the Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, which is presented in recognition of outstanding service in stimulating and guiding Curtis students.
In addition to her solo engagements, she continues to perform with her piano quartet, OPUS ONE, and her newest ensemble, Trio Valtorna. Co-founder of those ensembles as well as Tashi and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival (which she ran for ten years), Ms. Kavafian has toured and recorded with the Guarneri, Orion, Shanghai, and American string quartets; the Beaux Arts Trio; and with such artists as Chick Corea, Mark O'Connor, and Wynton Marsalis. A graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied with Oscar Shumsky, she was presented in her debut by Young Concert Artists. In addition to Curtis, she teaches at The Juilliard School and the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Ms. Kavafian and her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom, have also found success outside of music in the breeding, training, and showing of champion Vizsla dogs, including the 2003 Number One Vizsla All Systems in the US and the 2007 National Champion. She has performed with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1972. Steven Tenenbom’s impeccable style and sumptuous tone have combined to make him one of the most respected violists performing today. He has appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri and Emerson string quartets, and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Beaux Arts trios. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Utah Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Brandenburg Ensemble. He is the violist of the Orion String Quartet, which is quartet-in-residence at Mannes College of Music and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. He is also a co-founder of the exciting piano quartet OPUS ONE. Mr. Tenenbom is a member of the viola faculty of The Juilliard School and the Bard College Conservatory of Music. He is also the coordinator of string chamber music at the Curtis Institute of Music. His recent recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets with the Orion Quartet are available on Koch International. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Mr. Tenenbom has studied with Max Mandel, Heidi Castleman, Milton Thomas at USC, and Michael Tree and Karen Tuttle at the Curtis Institute of Music. He and his wife, violinist Ida Kavafian, live in Connecticut where they breed, raise, and show champion Vizsla purebred dogs. Cellist Peter Wiley enjoys a prolific career as a performer and teacher. He co-founded OPUS ONE in 1998 with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, violinist Ida Kavafian, and violist Steven Tenenbom. Mr. Wiley attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of David Soyer. He joined the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1974. The following year he was appointed principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for eight years. From 1987 through 1998, he was cellist of the Beaux Arts Trio. In 2001 he succeeded his mentor, David Soyer, as cellist of the Guarneri Quartet. The quartet retired from the concert stage in 2009. He has been awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1998 with the Beaux Arts Trio and in 2009 with the Guarneri Quartet. Mr. Wiley participates at leading festivals including Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, OK Mozart, Santa Fe, Bravo! Vail Valley, and Bridgehampton. He continues his long association with the Marlboro Music Festival, dating back to 1971. Mr. Wiley teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music and Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Winter — Spring 2016
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.
2/17/16 2/18/16 2/24/16 2/25/16 3/2/16 3/10/16 3/14/16 3/24/16 3/31/16
6:30 PM 11:00 AM 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 6:30 PM 9:00 PM 11:00 AM 7:30 PM 9:00 PM
Inside Chamber Music Master Class with the Escher String Quartet Inside Chamber Music Art of the Recital: Anne-Marie McDermott Inside Chamber Music Late Night Rose Master Class with Sean Lee New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse Late Night Rose
All events are free to watch. View full program details online. www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive
February is Planned Giving Month at CMS. Please remember CMS in your Will. For more information, call the Planned Giving office at 212-875-5782.
upcoming
EVENTS
BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTETS: PART IV Tuesday, February 16, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall Featuring the Orion String Quartet.
INSIDE CHAMBER MUSIC
Wednesday, February 17, 6:30 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio Focus on Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive
MASTER CLASS
Thursday, February 18, 11:00 AM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio The Escher String Quartet leads a master class with talented young artists. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive