David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, March 24, 2016 at 7:30 Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse 3,558th Concert
GILLES VONSATTEL, piano DAEDALUS QUARTET MIN-YOUNG KIM, violin DAVID FULMER, violin JESSICA THOMPSON, viola THOMAS KRAINES, cello ROMIE DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, clarinet JENNIFER MONTONE, horn
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
Wolfgang Rihm's Sextet was commissioned by Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, together with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the AMMODO Foundation, and Wigmore Hall, with the support of AndrĂŠ Hoffmann, President of the Fondation Hoffmann, a Swiss grant-making foundation.
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.
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, March 24, 2016 at 7:30 GILLES VONSATTEL, piano DAEDALUS QUARTET MIN-YOUNG KIM, violin DAVID FULMER, violin JESSICA THOMPSON, viola THOMAS KRAINES, cello ROMIE DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, clarinet JENNIFER MONTONE, horn
FRED LERDAHL (b. 1943)
JOHN HARBISON (b. 1938)
Quartet No. 3 for Strings (2008) KIM, FULMER, THOMPSON, KRAINES
Twilight Music for Horn, Violin, and Piano (CMS Commission) (1984) MONTONE, KIM, VONSATTEL
—INTERMISSION— HELMUT LACHENMANN (b. 1935)
Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play) for Piano (1980) Hänschen klein Clouds in Icy Moon-Light Akiko Fake Chinese (Slightly Drunk) Filter Swing Bell Tower Shadow Dance VONSATTEL
WOLFGANG RIHM (b. 1952)
Sextet for Clarinet, Horn, and Strings (CMS Co-Commission, U.S. premiere) (2013-14) DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, MONTONE, KIM, FULMER, THOMPSON, KRAINES
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 No. 3 for Strings Fred LERDAHL Born March 10, 1943 in Madison, Wisconsin. Composed in 2008. Premiered on December 2, 2009 at the Cleveland Institute of Music by the Daedalus Quartet. First CMS performance on February 8, 2010. Duration: 22 minutes Fred Lerdahl's music is characterized by its original harmonic syntax and formal processes, its striking ideas and elegant craftsmanship, and its expressive depth. His work achieves both complexity and intelligibility. It is indebted to the past and committed to exploration of new territory. His music has been commissioned and performed by major chamber ensembles and orchestras in the United States and around the world, and he has been resident composer at leading institutions and festivals. His music is published by Schott and has been widely recorded for numerous labels, including Bridge Records, which is producing an ongoing series devoted to his music. His seminal book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, co-authored with linguist Ray Jackendoff, is a founding document for the growing field of the cognitive science of music. His subsequent book, Tonal Pitch Space, won the 2003 distinguished book award from the Society for Music Theory and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor award. A third book (in progress), Composition and
Cognition, based on his 2011 Bloch Lectures at UC/Berkeley, will bring together his dual activity as composer and theorist. In 2010 Lerdahl was honored with membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Three of his works composed since 2000—Time after Time for Chamber Ensemble, the Third String Quartet, and Arches for Cello and Chamber Orchestra—have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in music. Lerdahl studied at Lawrence University, Princeton, and Tanglewood. Since 1991 has been Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, where he directed the composition program for 20 years. Lerdahl writes: “The Third String Quartet (2008) was commissioned by Chamber Music America for the Daedalus Quartet, which premiered it in Cleveland in December 2009. The work is in one movement approximately 22 minutes long. “The string quartet is for me the most personal and psychological of musical media. The Third Quartet inhabits a world of abrupt mood changes, passionate urgings, quiet reveries, fantastical gestures, and sudden reminiscences. This turbulent world nonetheless has a discernible overall shape. After a fragmented introduction, the music settles into two long polyphonic cycles, each containing an agitated section followed by a lyrical sostenuto passage. A whirlwind presto interrupts the close of the second cycle and subsides into a passage of lyrical stasis, followed
by a playful scherzando and, finally, a homophonic coda of soft, short chords. “From another perspective, the Third Quartet is the finale of a large-scale work that begins with the First Quartet and continues with the Second. The First Quartet takes the form of 15 geometrically expanding variations, starting with a simple chord and elaborating gradually into a variation six minutes long. Its sequel, the Second
Quartet, continues the expansion with two more variations of nine and 13 minutes. The Third Quartet constitutes in its entirety a last expanded variation. At the same time, it periodically interposes reminiscences from the two earlier quartets, progressing through the Second back to the First. The coda of the Third Quartet comes full circle by stating in reverse order the brief opening variations of the First Quartet.”
Twilight Music for Horn, Violin, and Piano John HARBISON Born December 20, 1938 in Orange, New Jersey. Composed in 1984. Commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Premiered on March 22, 1985 at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center by horn player David Jolley, violinist James Buswell, and pianist Richard Goode. Duration: 17 minutes John Harbison’s concert music includes six symphonies, 12 concertos, a ballet, five string quartets, three operas, and numerous song cycles and chamber works. Four large church cantatas and ten a cappella motets are part of his ongoing involvement with sacred music, along with the largescale works Four Psalms, for the 50th anniversary of Israel’s statehood, and his Requiem, a Boston Symphony commission. Recent performances of Harbison's music include a new production in December 2015 of his opera The Great Gatsby by Semperoper Dresden, with a revival there planned for May 2017. His current composition
projects include a work for cello and strings, Longfellow settings for countertenor and viol consort, his sixth string quartet, and a monodrama. As one of America’s most distinguished artistic figures, Harbison has composed music for many of its premiere musical institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chicago Chamber Musicians, and the Orion, Emerson, and Cleveland Quartets. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation award, the Pulitzer Prize, a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, a Heinz Award, and the Harvard Arts Medal. More than 100 of Harbison’s works have been recorded on leading labels such as Harmonia Mundi, New World, Deutsche Grammophon, Albany, Centaur, and Naxos. He received degrees from Harvard and Princeton before joining the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is currently Institute Professor. He taught composition at Tanglewood beginning in
1984, serving as head of the composition program there from 2005 to 2015. Harbison and violinist Rose Mary Harbison are the founders and artistic directors of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival. Harbison writes: “Twilight Music was written directly after my First String Quartet: both pieces move toward an abstract and compact way of working, in reaction to the large orchestral works that precede them. The quartet shows this obviously, being outwardly tense and without illusions. The present piece shelters abstract structural origins beneath a warmer exterior. “The horn and the violin have little in common. Any merging must be trompl'oreille and they share material mainly to show how differently they project it. In this piece the two meet casually at the beginning, and part rather formally at the
end. In between they follow the piano into a Presto, which dissolves into the twilight half-tones that named the piece. The third section, an Antiphon, is the crux—the origin of the piece's intervallic character. It is the kind of music I am often drawn to, where the surface seems simplest and most familiar, where the piece seems to make no effort, but some purposeful, independent musical argument is at work. “The final section's image of separation grows directly out of the nature of the instruments. “This piece was commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for performance by David Jolley, James Buswell, and Richard Goode. Such virtuosity as possessed by these artists allowed me to write with reckless subtlety for instruments which I heard meeting best under cover of dusk.”
Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play) for Piano Helmut LACHENMANN Born November 27, 1935 in Stuttgart. Composed in 1980. Premiered on February 17, 1982 in Toronto. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 17 minutes Helmut Lachenmann has pioneered the philosophy of musique concrète instrumentale, creating an expanded sound world using extended technique. He has received numerous awards for his compositions, including the Siemens Musikpreis in 1997, the Royal
Philharmonic Society Award London in 2004, the 2008 Berliner Kunstpreis, France’s Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2012, and the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Prize for his opera The Little Match Girl. His works have been performed at many festivals, including the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Ars Musica in Brussels, Musik der Zeit in Cologne, Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Sommerliche Musiktage in Hitzacker, Festival d’Automne in Paris, di nuovo musica in Reggio Emilia, Wien Modern, and Tage für neue Musik in Zurich. Lachenmann studied piano, theory, and counterpoint at the Music Conservatory
in Stuttgart from 1955 to 1958 and from 1958 to 1960 composition with Luigi Nono in Venice. He taught at the music conservatories in Hannover (1976–81) and in Stuttgart (1981–99). He has also managed many seminars, workshops, and master classes in Germany and around the world, including several summer courses in Darmstadt between 1978 and 2006. In 2008 Lachenmann was the Fromm Visiting Professor at Harvard University and in 2010 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Music, London. Lachenmann writes: “Childhood and musical experiences related to it are an essential part of every adult’s inner world. These pieces resulted from the experiences I acquired in the creation of my large works Dance Suite with German Anthem and Salute for Caudwell–experiences in structural thinking projected on already existing
forms and patterns accepted by society like children’s songs, dance forms, and very easy models of fingering technique. To me it seemed important not to shift this change of listening and aesthetic behavior offered in my pieces into an abstract field but to start with a provocation where the listener (as well as the composer) feels at ease, where he thinks to be safe. The result of all this is something easy to play and easy to understand: a children’s game but aesthetic, without compromises, using a child’s model rather than of the conjuration of childhood. Theodor W. Adorno wrote to Walter Benjamin about his composition The Treasure of Indian Joe [‘I am using the childlike imagery to present some extremely serious things: in this connection I am far more concerned with presenting this image of childhood than I am with invoking childhood as such.’]”
Sextet for Clarinet, Horn, and Strings Wolfgang RIHM Born March 13, 1952 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Composed in 2013-14. Commissioned by Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam, together with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the AMMODO Foundation, and Wigmore Hall. Premiered on September 18, 2014 at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam by Quatuor Danel, clarinetist Jörg Widmann, and horn player Bruno Schneider. Tonight is the US premiere of this piece. Duration: 15 minutes
Wolfgang Rihm has composed more than 400 works, including many pieces for soloists, chamber groups, and orchestras—such as Jagden und Formen, Chiffre-cycle, and Pol— Kolchis—Nucleus—that have become an integral part of the repertoire. He has also written compositions that take their cue from music of past centuries: Deus Passus, an oratorio with Johann Sebastian Bach as a point of reference; Ernster Gesang and Das Lesen der Schrift, orchestral pieces of Brahmsian sound and gesture; and Fremde Szenen, a work of chamber music influenced by Robert Schumann. At age 25 he wrote the chamber opera Jakob Lenz,
which has since become one of the most often produced pieces of contemporary music theatre in Germany. Jakob Lenz was followed by a series of large-scale operas including Die Hamletmaschine, Die Eroberung von Mexico, and Das Gehege, as well as Séraphin, a work of experimental music theatre. He is one of the foremost song composers of our time and his string quartets (of which there are far more than the 12 numbered ones) are often presented in cycles by a wide range of groups. Rihm is a professor of composition at the Music Academy of Karlsruhe (where his students have included Vykintas Baltakas and Jörg Widmann) and the author of several books, including collections of his articles and interviews. This summer he will serve as artistic director of the Lucerne
Festival Academy. Rihm characterizes the piece as “simply a sextet for this instrumentation” and explains, “Listeners can experience the piece and have their own feelings. I choose not to go beyond the music. The work is entirely inspired by itself and arises from the motives and melodies that sound in the beginning. It was written in one continuous movement.” Andrew Clements, who reviewed the UK premiere in the Guardian, called it “typical of recent Rihm, inhabiting a dark, brooding world on which the whole weight of musical history seems to be pressing down… it invokes the ghosts of a range of composers from Brahms onwards.”
meet tonight’s
ARTISTS
Praised by the New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Since winning the top prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the quartet has impressed critics and listeners alike with the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances. The Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues; in the United States and Canada these include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Great Performers series), the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and Boston’s Gardner Museum, as well as on major series in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Abroad the ensemble has been heard in such famed locations as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan. Among the highlights of the Daedalus Quartet’s 2015-16 season were a pair of performances at Shanghai Concert Hall, a return to the Bard Music Festival, and the world premieres of works by Robert Maggio and Benjamin C. S. Boyle (with baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Marcantonio Barone) at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In the 2016-17 season, the quartet will perform the music of Puccini, Verdi, and Malipiero at the Bard Festival, premiere a new work by Louis Karchin in San Francisco, and present a program based around the “Kreutzer Sonata” for the Schubert Club in St. Paul, MN, with actress Linda Kelsey. The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music. Among the works the ensemble has premiered is David Horne’s Flight from the Labyrinth, commissioned for the quartet by the Caramoor Festival; Fred Lerdahl’s Third String Quartet, commissioned by Chamber Music America; and Lawrence Dillon’s String Quartet No. 4, commissioned by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts. In 2013, the Fromm Foundation awarded a commission to the Daedalus Quartet and composer Huck Hodge; the quartet will premiere Hodge's new work in April 2016. The Daedalus' most recent recording, for Bridge Records, features the string quartets of George Perle. In 2014, the Daedalus Quartet recorded Joan Tower's White Water (written for Daedalus) as well as her Dumbarton Quintet (with pianist Blair McMillen). A Bridge recording of Haydn’s complete “Sun” Quartets, Op. 20, was released on two CDs in 2010. An album of chamber music by Lawrence Dillon and the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl followed. The quartet has forged associations with some of America’s leading classical music and educational institutions: Carnegie Hall, through its European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars program; and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which appointed the Daedalus Quartet as the CMS Two quartet for 2005-07. The Daedalus Quartet has served as quartet-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. In 2007, the quartet was awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award. The quartet won Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funded a threeyear residency in Suffolk County, Long Island from 2007-2010. The award-winning
members of the Daedalus Quartet hold degrees from The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University. For this performance, David Fulmer will be replacing Matilda Kaul, second violinist of the Daedalus Quartet, who is on maternity leave. Composer, conductor, and violinist David Fulmer is in the midst of a surge of new commissions and recent performances including the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Berlin Philharmonic, Slovenian Philharmonic, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Salzburg Foundation, BMI Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, Washington Performing Arts, and the Fromm Music Foundation. He recently led the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Elision Ensemble, and will be making important debuts this coming season leading the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Szczecin Philharmonic, Asko Ensemble, South Netherlands Philharmonic, and appearing at the New York Philharmonic Biennial. Praised as “extraordinary” and “a formidable clarinetist” by the New York Times, Romie de Guise-Langlois has appeared as soloist with the Houston Symphony, Ensemble ACJW, the Burlington Chamber Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia, and McGill University Symphony Orchestra, and at Music@Menlo and Banff Centre for the Arts. She is a winner of the Astral Artists’ National Auditions and was awarded first prize in the Houston Symphony Ima Hogg competition, the Woolsey Hall Competition at Yale University, the McGill University Classical Concerto Competition, and the Canadian Music Competition. An avid chamber musician, she has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia and Boston Chamber Music Societies, 92nd Street Y, the Kennedy Center, and Chamber Music Northwest, among many others. She has performed as principal clarinetist for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the New Haven and Stamford Symphony Orchestras, and The Knights Chamber Orchestra. A native of Montreal, Ms. de Guise-Langlois earned degrees from McGill University and the Yale School of Music, where she studied under David Shifrin. She is a former member of Chamber Music Society Two, an alum of Ensemble ACJW, and is currently on the faculty of Montclair State University. Jennifer Montone joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as principal horn in September of 2006, and is currently on the faculties of The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. She was principal horn of the Saint Louis Symphony from 2003 to 2006, and before that associate principal horn of the Dallas Symphony and an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University. Named the Paxman Young Horn Player of the Year in London in 1996, she has since won many solo competitions and awards, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006. She has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, in which she was awarded the position of third horn while still a student. In addition to regular apperances at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she has performed at La Jolla SummerFest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, and Chamber Music Festival of Spoleto, Italy. A native of northern Virginia, Ms. Montone
was in the National Symphony Fellowship Program, where she studied with Edwin Thayer, and a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School as a student of Julie Landsman. Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary versatility and originality. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, he has in recent years made his Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, and San Francisco Symphony debuts, and performed recitals and chamber music at Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, Bravo! Vail, Music@Menlo, the Lucerne festival, and the Munich Gasteig. Chamber partners include James Ehnes, Frank Huang, Nicolas Altstaedt, David Shifrin, David Finckel, and the Swiss Chamber Soloists. Deeply committed to the performance of contemporary music, he has premiered numerous works both in the US and Europe and worked closely with notable composers such as Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, and George Benjamin. His 2011 recording on the Honens label was named one of Time Out New York’s classical albums of the year, while a 2014 release on GENUIN received a 5/5 from FonoForum and widespread international critical praise. This season’s projects include the Berg Kammerkonzert with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, a tour with Jörg Widmann and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Mozart concertos with the Vancouver Symphony and Florida Orchestra, as well as multiple appearances with the Chamber Music Society. A former member of CMS Two, Mr. Vonsattel received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. He is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
upcoming
EVENTS
DAVID FINCKEL AND WU HAN: RESONANCE
Sunday, April 3, 5:00 PM • Alice Tully Hall The power of music to excite, inspire, transport, and impassion is revealed in this unique program featuring CMS artistic directors.
MASTER CLASS WITH WU HAN
Monday, April 4, 11:00 AM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio CMS co-artistic director Wu Han leads a master class with talented young artists. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive
THE GINASTERA STRING QUARTET CYCLE
Thursday, April 7, 7:30 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio Featuring soprano Kiera Duffy and the Miró Quartet. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive
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.
3/31/16 9:00 PM Late Night Rose 4/4/16 11:00 AM Master Class with Wu Han 4/7/16 7:30 PM The Ginastera String Quartet Cycle 4/28/16 7:30 PM New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse 5/5/16 7:30 PM Art of the Recital: Benjamin Beilman & Yekwon Sunwoo 5/19/16 7:30 PM The Kirchner String Quartet Cycle
All events are free to watch. View full program details online. www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive