String Quartet in G Major, Op. 77 No. 1 .......................................
Franz Joseph Haydn I. Allegro moderato (1732-1809)
Dale Bechtel Memorial String Quartet
Julie Kang and Blake Lee, violins
Jayce Lim, viola Lucas Sanford, cello Lauren Holt Ako, coach
Serenade, Op. 14 .............................................................................Eduard Herrmann (1850-1937)
Hirano String Quartet
Kotori Bilharz, Vincent Lau and Cayd Yamauchi, violins Zachary Merner, cello Lauren Holt Ako, coach
String Quartet No. 21 in D Major, K. 575 ...........................
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart I. Allegretto (1756-1791)
Cooke String Quartet
Aya Okimoto and Ellie Chung, violins Julia Saines, viola Cody Kajioka, cello Lauren Holt Ako, coach
String Quartet No. 2 in D Major ..................................................... Alexander Borodin I. Allegro moderato (1833-1887)
Vivaldi String Quartet
Nicholas Chi and Ethan Loo, violins Ethan Camp, viola Ian Jun, cello Rachel Saul, coach
String Quartet in G Major, Op. 54 No. 1 ....................................... Franz Joseph Haydn I. Allegro com brio (1732-1809)
Lau String Quartet
Max Shinno and Riya Krishnagopalan, violins
Swan Kim, viola Justin Merner, cello Steven Flanter, coach
String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18 No. 2 ........................ Ludwig van Beethoven
I. Allegro (1770-1827)
Arthur Y. and Misako M. Akinaka String Quartet
Ashley Hong and Skye Aoki, violins Albert Ko, viola Conrad Cao, cello Rachel Saul, coach
INTERMISSION
String Quartet No. 11 in C Major, Op. 61 ............................................
Antonín Dvořák
I. Allegro (1841-1904)
Saburo Watanabe String Quartet
Gwyneth Tenn and Daniel Yoo, violins Cassidy Sakamoto, viola Davis Morichika, cello Anna Callner Pare, coach
String Quartet in F Major ...................................................................... Maurice Ravel
I. Allegro Moderato (1875-1937)
Peter Mesrobian Memorial String Quartet
Preston Chi and Iris Sim, violins Eric Nakamoto, viola Matthew Huo, cello Maile Reeves, coach
String Quartet in F Major ...................................................................... Maurice Ravel IV. Vif et agité (1875-1937)
Kathryn Kennard Vaught Memorial String Quartet Maddy Hodge and Hinano Kawaiaea, violins Keon Sagara, viola Ian Ahn, cello Dr. Helen Liu, coach
Adagio (Elegy) for String Quartet ................................................Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
String Quartet No. 4 in C Major ................................................................ Béla Bartók
V. Allegro molto (1881-1945)
Keller String Quartet
Erika Kwee and Kate Wong, violins Rinny Fan, viola Celina Lim, cello Iggy Jang, coach
And in that poetry lies a full and rich range of human emotion and experience. We hope that you will enjoy the unique character and contrast found in each repertoire piece on the program. From elegant and graceful to driving and rhythmic - each student quartet had to discover and stretch themselves creatively, technically and emotionally to connect with the music.
Playing in a quartet is challenging and demands accountability, com munication and collaboration. Students hone these skills as musicians, while also exploring what it means to share their own unique voice as a team member. Chamber music provides a special and rewarding space in which to practice leadership, teamwork, and to build confidence.
Our program is made possible through the heartfelt and generous support of our sponsors. We are grateful for the stellar coaching faculty, who know how to artfully guide our students’ chamber music experience.
Thank you also to the students and their families for their commitment to the program.
Wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season!
Helen Chao-Casano & Craig Young Co-coordinators of the Punahou Chamber Music Program
“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”
- Pablo Casals
Haydn’s Quartet Op. 77 No. 1 is an incredibly elegant piece of music. But underlying the elegance is a gently but irresistibly military flavor. Haydn lived and worked for years in Hungary, and this music is inspired by a Hungarian recruiting song. You can hear it in the marching accompaniment, and in the dotted rhythms of the melody. The piece was written in 1799 on commission from the twenty-seven-year-old Prince Lobkowitz, a Bohemian who was described by another noble as being “as kindhearted as a child and the most foolish music enthusiast. He played music from dusk to dawn and spent a fortune on musicians. Innumerable musicians gathered in his house, whom he treated regally.” Remember the name for later in the program.
Eduard Herrmann was a violinist who played as concertmaster for orchestras in Germany and Russia before moving to New York and becoming an editor for the famous music publisher Schirmer. Chances are good that if you’ve played violin music from a Schirmer edition, Herrmann was responsible for the bowings and fingerings. He also wrote a fair amount of chamber music. This Serenade, written in 1895, is for three violins with either viola or cello. Notice how high and light the texture is compared to a more standard string quartet.
Mozart’s Quartet K.575, written in 1789, is a highly democratic work. Each player in the quartet gets a try at many of its melodies. Listen to how the melodies change depending on which instrument’s turn has come. In all four movements of the quartet, the cello part is more prominent and more difficult than was usually the case in quartets of the time. That’s because the piece was written for Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, who was an avid amateur cellist.
Another avid cellist was the composer Alexander Borodin. Although he was homeschooled, Borodin would have made a great Punahou student. He earned a doctorate in chemistry and became a famous scientist, but also played flute and cello, and wrote gorgeous music. In this piece, Borodin gives the opening melody, which is passionate from the first note, to the cello. Notice how different it feels to hear the melody from the cello first, instead of the usual first violin.
Haydn’s good-humored Quartet Op. 54 No. 1 is full of energy. Once the music starts, it doesn’t want to rest. The phrases have a charming way of staying aloft in an elusive and playful way. The music just keeps going, and carrying us with it.
Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 2 is a total contrast. Its phrases are short, chiseled, and symmetrical. See if you think it takes longer in this piece, compared to Haydn’s Op. 54 No. 1, to feel that you know where you’re going. This piece is part of a set of six quartets, Beethoven’s first forays into the genre, that were commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz, during the exact same years when he commissioned Haydn to write the quartet heard at this program’s outset.
Antonín Dvořák was a composer known for the folk music influence in many of his pieces (often a Czech influence, but sometimes an American one). But scholars tend to feel that in his Quartet No. 11, Dvořák was less influenced than usual by folk music, and more influenced by Beethoven. In fact, the opening melody is a little bit like the Beethoven just heard. (It’s also a little like that Suzuki Book II standby, Handel’s Chorus from Judas Maccabeus.) See if you think the way music logically develops from the beginning sounds a little bit classical, or if you think the more important factor is the elemental gutsiness. Are the scholars right?
If Dvořák paints his music in bright colors and heavy brushstrokes, Maurice Ravel uses a totally different palette. Listen throughout his Quartet’s first movement (though not at its very beginning) to how often at least one player in the quartet is playing very fast notes—not as a virtuosic display, but as a way to color the other parts. Maybe the fast notes will remind you of breezes rustling through leaves, or ripples in water. Or maybe you’ll think of your own images.
The fast notes in Ravel’s fourth movement are a slightly different story, since they are more often the main melody, and they’re also in the irregular meter of 5/8. Since 5/8 is uneven, the music doesn’t want to feel settled. Does this music give you a feeling of expectation, or of already being somewhere?
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a lot of string quartets, but before he even wrote his String Quartet No. 1, he wrote this transcription of an aria from one of his operas, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Just like the Shakespeare play, the opera has a grizzly plot involving murders. But Shostakovich made his Lady Macbeth sympathetic, describing his opera as a “tragic portrayal of the destiny of a talented, smart and outstanding woman, dying in the nightmarish atmosphere of pre-Revolutionary Russia.” The aria he transcribed here comes from a moment when Katerina Ismailova (the Lady Macbeth here) is lonely in her marriage.
Béla Bartók was a great composer, and he was also a great scholar of folk music. He spent much time making field recordings of music in his native Hungary and elsewhere, and he used the music he found in the field in his own compositions. This movement from his Fourth Quartet is an incredible, vigorous folk dance. One thing to listen for is the way the unpredictable accents in the accompaniment parts make the exciting melody even more exciting.
- Sasha Margolis