Nina Scolnik & American String Quartet

UCI CLAIRE TREVOR SCHOOL OF THE ARTS &

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NINA SCOLNIK WITH THE AMERICAN STRING QUARTET January 24, 2018 | Cheng Hall This performance will include a 15-minute intermission.

Nina Scolnik Piano

American String Quartet Peter Winograd Violin

Laurie Carney Violin

Daniel Avshalomov Viola

Wolfram Koessel Cello

Sponsored by: Ken & Helene Rohl

PROGRAM Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, K.493 Allegro Larghetto Allegretto

Dmitri Shostakovich

String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 Allegretto Moderato con moto Allegro non troppo Adagio Moderato

INTERMISSION

Antonín Dvořák

Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 Allegro, ma non tanto Dumka: Andante con moto Scherzo (Furiant): Molto vivace Finale. Allegro

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PROGRAM NOTES Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, K.493 A story well known, told at publisher Hoffmeister’s expense: he cancelled his contract for three Mozart piano quartets after seeing the first (the G minor). Mozart wasn’t producing the lightweight nonsense he evidently sought. But less often noted is that Mozart wrote the E-flat Major Piano Quartet, K.493 after the cancellation. The new grouping had caught and held his attention, and he wound up doing what he always swore not to: finishing a work without the promise of publication or patronage.

Democratic piano quartets were new, and Mozart delighted in exploring the combination of instruments. In the first movement, the variety he found allowed the repetition of a second-theme segment dozens of times without pall. The following Larghetto is built on echoes, too — effortlessly beautiful, as much of the best Mozart is.

And the finale is rare: the manuscript shows that he explored two dead ends before settling on a sonata/rondo hybrid, which he drove home in triumph. (And for the record, Hoffmeister’s rival, Artaria & Co., snapped up the publication rights to both piano quartets as soon as it could.)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 Dmitri Shostakovich suffered from ill health, bad nerves and Josef Stalin. The dictator was determined that Shostakovich’s art serve political ends, and he interfered drastically and often with the composer’s work. But string quartets? They don’t have words and cannot draw the wide attention that operas do. A direct, intimate expression from the composer, the quartet reaches out to a select and sympathetic audience — one whose counter-revolutionary tendencies evidently did not worry Stalin.

The first to appear after the Great Patriotic War, Quartet No. 3 is conceived on a near-symphonic scale, and it fully equals the somewhat over-played Quartet No. 8 in power and pathos. For its premiere in 1946, Shostakovich supplied the five movements with melodramatic (if politically astute) titles touching on the horrors of war. The work was soon essentially banned from authorized performance, and the composer promptly withdrew the titles. Years later, when pressed by a friend to reveal the secrets of the work, he responded: “If you must have images, you could say the movements correspond to the five ages in a life: the innocence of childhood; the turmoil of teen years; the struggles of adulthood; maturity’s ponderous awareness of mortality; and finally, the blurred reminiscence of old age.”

(Many hear an element of acceptance at the end as well.)

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Shostakovich intended to write quartets in all the keys, but completed only fifteen of the twenty-four in the time given him. Though we may associate his sound world with dissonance, it is good to be reminded that Shostakovich’s music always related to tonality, however far afield it ranged.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 Antonín Dvořák was someone you would have liked to meet.

Affable, humble, pious, he was a short, round fellow with wide eyes, a thorough beard, and a good heart. After his family and his music, his loves were trains, homing pigeons and beer. And like many enlightened composers, he played the viola.

Dvořák’s gift made him far more than a national composer; during his life, he enjoyed international acclaim and particularly influenced American composers in a lasting way. Yet it was the Bohemian-flavored pieces that first brought him fame: the Slavonic Dances, the String Sextet in A Major and the E-Flat Major String Quartet. So, it is little wonder that his Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, is richly flavored, and none at all that it is greatly favored. With the F Major String Quartet and the “Dumky” Trio, it is among his most popular chamber works.

He guaranteed it, really, in every movement: the opening cello solo shows a typically Czech spirit, turning the brightness of A major to doleful minor, just as in the second movement, Dumka, the brooding lament alternates with lighthearted vigor — and the right number of viola solos.

(In truth, Dvořák was very democratic in awarding solos to all five players.) He even titled his Scherzo a furiant (which, strictly speaking, it is not) to reinforce the ethnic aspect.

With energy inherited from the Scherzo, the finale’s irrepressible vivacity carries all before it. And though Dvořák takes care to include a fugal episode as well (to remind us that he could be Slavic and European), he reverts to type in the closing moments of this absolute Bohemian barnstormer.

— Program Notes by Daniel Avshalomov

NINA SCOLNIK Nina Scolnik, pianist, has concertized in the United States and abroad as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, chamber musician and collaborative pianist. She has been a guest artist with the American, Angeles, Lydian, and Blaeu String Quartets and has collaborated with principals of both the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Boston Symphony. Scolnik has also performed at important European venues such as the Rudolfinum in Prague and the Palais Auersperg in Vienna, where she was a soloist with the

Wiener Residenzorchester, as well as at celebrated music festivals in Vipiteno and Völs am Schlern, Italy; the Ameropa International Chamber Music Festival in Prague, Czech Republic; and Pianofest Austria in Bad Aussee, Austria. She has also been heard at the Williams International Piano Festival, Tulane University Keyboard Festival, Great Pianists at Stetson Series (Stetson University, Florida), and the Amherst, New World, and Aspen Music Festivals in the United States. Recent venues include the Hawaiʻi Public Radio Atherton Concerts and The Smith Center in Las Vegas.

Scolnik recorded Stravinsky’s four-hand piano transcription of The Rite of Spring on two pianos with pianist Lorna Griffitt for the Sacre Project, part of Pacific Symphony’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the work’s first performance.

Nina Scolnik has distinguished herself as a pedagogue of international standing through her master classes, lectures, research and clinical success in the rehabilitation of injured musicians. She has presented at music conferences, universities and festivals in the United States, Canada and Europe, and is one of just a few specialists in the field who works with pianists afflicted with focal dystonia and involuntary movements.

Formerly the Associate Chair for Performance at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Department of Music at the University of California, Irvine, Scolnik continues in her role as a member of the piano faculty, where she teaches courses in piano performance, art song for pianists and singers, and chamber music. For more than thirty years, Scolnik has groomed pianists for serious careers in performance and pedagogy. Scolnik also served as a faculty member of the Taubman Institute of Piano from 1979 to 2002, and at

the Golandsky International Piano Institute at Princeton University in 2004.

Born in Lewiston, Maine, Scolnik is a graduate of both the Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School of Music.

Her teachers have included Edna Golandsky, Dorothy Taubman, Martin Canin, Joseph Schwartz, Artur Balsam, Lenore Engdahl and Natasha Chances.

AMERICAN STRING QUARTET

Internationally recognized as one of the world’s finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet will celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states, appearing in the most important concert halls worldwide.

The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.

The Quartet’s 2017–18 season features a major project with the National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh. The groundbreaking program, combining music and readings, examines the effects of war on people’s hearts and minds. In 2016–17, the Quartet collaborated with the renowned author Salman Rushdie, in a premiere of a new work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon, built around

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Rushdie’s novel, The Enchantress of Florence. These wildly imaginative projects cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today.

The Quartet’s diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Recent highlights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andres Diaz, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel.

As champions of new music, the American String Quartet has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s 2015 Quartet No. 7.5, “Maverick”; Richard Danielpour’s Quartet No. 4; and Curt Cacioppo’s a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage took place in September 2016, and was performed around the U.S. in the cities the work celebrates.

In January 2009, the Quartet premiered Tobias Picker’s String Quartet No. 2 in New York City in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Manhattan School of Music.

Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year.

The resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American String Quartet has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

The American String Quartet’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch and RCA labels. Most recently, the group released Schubert’s Echo, which pairs Schubert’s monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous — and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other.

Celebrate Music at UCI Friday, May 18, 2018, 8:00 p.m.

An exciting, fast-paced evening of musical performances by the Department of Music at Claire Trevor School of the Arts’ students and faculty, including instrumental and vocal ensembles of all sizes, diverse forms of traditional classical music and jazz, and new works by UCI composers.

A family-friendly evening of performances to celebrate the arts and music at UCI.

Arts Box Office (949) 824-2787 | www.arts.uci.edu/tickets Pictured: Kei Akagi, Kojiro Umezaki, Dr. Seth Houston and the UCI Chamber Singers. Photo by Paul R. Kennedy.

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