Program Book - CSO All-Access Chamber Music: Sequoia Quartet at South Shore Cultural Center

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Sunday May 1, 2022, at 3:00 South Shore Cultural Center

All-Access Chamber Music Series SEQUOIA QUARTET Rong-Yan Tang Violin Kozue Funakoshi Violin Youming Chen Viola Karen Basrak Cello r. strauss

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 2

Allegro Scherzo: Allegro molto Andante cantabile, molto espressivo Finale: Allegro vivace

intermission

mendelssohn

String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13

Adagio—Allegro vivace Adagio non lento—Poco più animato—Adagio non lento Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto—Allegro di molto— Allegretto con moto Presto—Adagio non lento—Adagio

The All-Access Chamber Music series is generously underwritten by an anonymous donor, who attended similar concerts forty-five years ago.

comments by richard e. rodda richard strauss

Born June 11, 1864; Munich, Germany Died September 8, 1949; Garmisch-Partenkirchen

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 2 composed 1880

From 1874 to 1882, Richard Strauss studied at Munich’s highly respected Royal Ludwig Gymnasium. By the time he entered the school, he had already begun studying piano and violin and composing music. During his eight years as a student at Royal Ludwig, he wrote dozens of scores, all in the classical molds espoused by his father, an outstanding horn player who served as principal horn in the Munich Court Orchestra for over forty years. English writer Ernest Newman’s words about Strauss’s early compositions are still trenchant and revelatory: The general impression one gets from all these works is that of a head full-to-overflowing with music, a temperament that is energetic and forthright rather than warm, a faculty—unusual in so young a composer— of keeping the hearer’s attention almost always engaged. . . . The work is the outcome of a definite personality, not the mere music-making of a man who has nothing of his own to say. It is this youthful strength that makes the best of the earlier works still interesting and enjoyable.

The Munich of Strauss’s youth possessed two established chamber music series, one run by Benno Walter, concertmaster of the Munich Court Orchestra and Strauss’s violin teacher from 1870 onward. Strauss got to know the standard literature from the series’ performances as well as from participating in informal chamber music soirées organized by his father’s colleagues. In 1880, fifteen-year-old Strauss composed his own

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string quartet, which Walter agreed to perform for a concert in 1881. It was the first of four Munich programs that marked Strauss’s public debut as a composer. The quartet’s performance went well, and Munich publisher Aibl Verlag agreed to issue the score, which began a business relationship that lasted through the publishing of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben in 1898.

Though the String Quartet in A major is fully embedded within classical norms of form and harmony, it is remarkably characteristic of several fundamental aspects of Strauss’s innate musicality: an ease and fertility of melodic invention, idiomatic scoring for individual instruments as well as the full ensemble, and the ability to sustain large harmonic structures.

The opening sonata-form Allegro takes a vigorous, upward-leaping strain as its main theme and a smoothly flowing melody as its second.

The development is largely concerned with the leaping motive. Both themes return in the recapitulation, though the flowing second subject is somewhat compressed.

The nimble scherzo is Strauss’s youthful tribute to an equally youthful Felix Mendelssohn; a more easygoing central trio drapes ribbons of violin cantilena upon the ensemble’s subtle background. The Andante describes a large three-part form (A–B–A), in which melancholy outer sections are countered by a central episode of warmer disposition and moderate animation. The warm melody returns in the coda to bring the movement to a peaceful close. The finale—another exercise in sonata form—is based on two genial themes, the first comprised of an arching phrase and some kittenish grace notes, the second lyrical and lightly syncopated.

Both ideas figure into the development section and return before the quartet reaches its affirmative conclusion.

COMMENTS

felix mendelssohn

Born February 3, 1809; Hamburg, Germany Died November 4, 1847; Leipzig, Germany

String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13 composed 1827

Mendelssohn possessed a boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for all music, old and new. By the age of eighteen, he was intimately familiar with the classical forms and idioms of Mozart and Haydn and also was one of the leading Bach scholars of his time.

Complementing Mendelssohn’s fondness for these composers’ music was his interest in the most daring, avant-garde music of the day: the last works of Beethoven. The Quartet in A minor is the product of Mendelssohn’s entire collection of influences, which was further inflamed by a petite affaire de coeur (small affair of the heart).

The previous spring, shortly before he began studies at Berlin University, Mendelssohn indulged in a short holiday at Sakrow—an area near Potsdam, Germany—and there, he fell in love . . . at least a little. The circumstances (including his love interest’s name) are unknown, but he was sufficiently moved by the experience to set to music a poem written by his friend Johann Gustav Droysen that began, “Is it true (Ist es wahr?) that you are always waiting for me in the arbored walk?” That piece, published two years later under the title “Frage” (Question) as part of his op. 9 songs, contains thematic material that Mendelssohn wove into the A minor quartet.

The quartet opens with a slow introduction in an A major tonality that serves as an emotional foil for the tempestuous main body of the movement. Two arching phrases—the second soaring

high in the first violin’s compass—preface the quotation of the searching motto phrase from “Ist es wahr?,” recognizable by its long–short– long rhythm. The music’s tempo and energy quicken before the viola initiates the principal theme based on the motto phrase’s rhythm. The cello posits a lyrical melody as a complementary subject. Scurrying phrases return to mark the onset of the development, which is remarkable for its contrapuntal intensity and feverish mood.

The recapitulation reintroduces and enhances earlier themes.

The deeply felt Adagio offers another paraphrase of the motto theme at the beginning and end, serving as a frame for a somber, densely packed fugal episode that occupies the middle of the movement. The third movement, entitled Intermezzo, uses a charmingly folkish tune in its outer sections to surround an ethereal passage of musical feather-stitching at the center. A dramatic cadenza-recitative for the violin over tremolo harmonies launches the finale. As the music unfolds, a clutch of highly charged motives is presented and worked out with great intensity. The work closes not with a tragic wail or sunburst of redemption, but with a recall of the quartet’s most introspective moments: first, the theme from the Adagio, and then the introduction from the opening movement, bringing with it a final reflection upon the music and thought of “Is it true?.”

Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.

op p os i te pag e : Richard Strauss, 1888 a b o v e : Felix Mendelssohn, ca. 1830 watercolor by James Warren Childe (1780–1862) painted during the composer’s first visit to Great Britain

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profiles Rong-Yan Tang Violin

Kozue Funakoshi Violin

Rong-Yan Tang was appointed to the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Daniel Barenboim in 2003.

After graduating from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she came to the United States on full scholarship to study with Camilla Wicks at Louisiana State University and Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Prior to joining the CSO, Tang held several titled orchestral positions, most recently associate concertmaster of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

As a soloist, she has performed in China, Hong Kong, and France, and with several U.S. orchestras. A former protégé of Isaac Stern, Tang plays on a violin from Stern’s private collection, and by his invitation performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

Tang has extensive experience as a chamber musician. As first violin of the Fry Street Quartet, she has appeared on Carnegie Hall’s Rising Stars series, the New School’s Schneider Concerts series, and at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. A winner of numerous awards and competitions, she considers the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition’s Millennium Grand Prize and first prize in the Yellow Springs National Chamber Music Competition her most notable.

Tang currently performs on the CSO’s Chamber Music series and for educational concerts at Chicago Public Schools. She has appeared in recital at the Art Institute of Chicago and on WFMT-FM broadcasts, and as a soloist with regional orchestras.

Kozue Funakoshi joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2000 after playing with the Cleveland Orchestra for three years.

A former concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, she studied with Hideyuki Nimura, Joseph Genualdi, and Sando Shia. A native of Yokohama, Japan, Funakoshi grew up in Kamakura. Her father was a rock musician who played guitar and piano, and her mother was a kindergarten teacher. In 1987, she received first prize at the All Japan Young Musicians Competition and was awarded a full scholarship to the Tokyo College of Music, where she received a bachelor’s degree.

Funakoshi has appeared on the Cleveland Orchestra’s chamber music series, at the Kurashiki Music Festival directed by conductor Takashi Asahina, and as a soloist on the Thüringer Philharmonic Orchestra’s 1993 German concert tour. She also served as concertmaster for the Tokyo College of Music Symphony Orchestra’s 1993 U.S. concert tour, which included performances in Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington (D.C.). In 2008, Funakoshi performed with the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung.

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PHOTOS BY TODD ROS EN BERG

PROFILES

Youming Chen Viola

Karen Basrak Cello

Taiwanese violist Youming Chen was appointed by Music Director Riccardo Muti to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during its 125th season. Chen served as associate principal viola of the Kansas City Symphony and was a member of the Grant Park Music Festival. He performs with the International Chamber Artists ensemble, which is located in the Chicagoland area. Chen has previously participated in the Pacific Music, Aspen Music, Prussia Cove, and Music@Menlo festivals. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, master’s degree from the Juilliard School, and a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Karen Basrak joined the cello section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012. A native of Arlington Heights, Illinois, she began her studies with Adele O’Dwyer, Gilda Barston, and Richard Hirschl. She received a bachelor of music degree in cello performance from the University of Southern California, where she studied with Eleonore Schoenfeld. While at USC, Basrak received several honors, most notably the Gregor Piatigorsky Award. Before returning to Illinois, she was a member of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 2001 as associate principal cello; she served as acting principal from 2002 to 2005 and principal from 2005 to 2012. Basrak has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe, and has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Northwest, Harper, Kishwaukee, Elmhurst, Skokie Valley, and Greenville symphony orchestras; Winnetka Chamber Orchestra; Marina del Rey–Westchester Symphony; and American Youth Symphony. She has performed in schools throughout the nation as a strong advocate for music education. In recognition of her efforts, she was awarded the key to the city of Greenville, South Carolina. Basrak is on the faculty of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

P H OTOS BY TO DD RO S E NB E RG

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