2019 Program Book

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“

would like this to be a place of collaboration, of creation, of permanent change, the opposite of a museum, which is a place for preserving works of art in one definite place. The museum part, which represents permanence, is but a small part of the overall project. All the activities taking place around these works of art are much more important than the museum part, and they give life to the art. Because of these activities, the works of art continue to live because they communicate their message and dialogue with the public.”

—Aimé Maeght

2019 SUMMER MUSIC PROGR AM July 12—September 7 Fishtail, Montana

Tippet Rise Art Center

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et on a 12,000-acre working sheep and cattle ranch, Tippet Rise hosts classical chamber music and recitals and exhibits large-scale, outdoor sculptures. Concerts are held on summer weekends in the Olivier Music Barn, or outdoors under the Domo. Sculptures can be toured by bicycle, on foot, or by van.

Tippet Rise is located in Fishtail, Montana, against the backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains.

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About Tippet Rise

THE FOUNDERS

C

athy and Peter Halstead have known each other since they were 16 years old. They both grew up in families that for generations have sought to bring art and education to communities both in the United States and abroad. Cathy is an abstract painter who has shown around the world. Peter is a pianist, photographer, and poet.

Some of his poetry is on adrianbrinkerhoffpoetryfoundation.org.

Six piano albums are on pianistlost.com. A Winter Ride and Tippet Rise from Princeton Architectural Press are available at Tippet Rise.

Cathy and Peter are trustees of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, which makes more than 90 grants annually to charities in the United States and England. They were inspired to found Tippet Rise by Hudson Valley’s Storm King Art Center, England’s Snape Maltings concert hall, and the many institutions they have been lucky enough to work with, as a way to share all the things they love: music, sculpture, poetry, and nature.

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2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Looking for Paradise 12

The Canyons of Tippet Rise 28

The Olivier Story 48

The Philosophy of Tippet Rise 14

The Sculptors of Tippet Rise 34

The Xylem Pavilion 56

The Ecosystem of Tippet Rise 20

The Sculptures of Tippet Rise 36

Artistic Integrity 64

Sustainability 22

The Art of Tippet Rise 40

Pianos as Role Models 72

Tippet Rise is a Working Ranch 24

The Tiara Story 42

The Pianos of Tippet Rise 74

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO VISIT THE PAGE 6

About Tippet Rise

TIPPET RISE ART CENTER Week One July 12-13 94

Week Six August 23-25 194

Tippet Rise and the Community 282

Week Two July 19-20 120

Week Seven September 6-7 230

Tippet Rise’s Partnerships 284

Week Three August 2-3 144

Carillon for Charlie 242

The Team at Tippet Rise 286

Week Four August 9-10 156

Artist Profiles 270

The Romance of the Piano 293

Week Five August 16-17 176

Education at Tippet Rise 280

Staff and Credits 296

VIDEO PERFORMANCE LINKS AND PODCASTS, PAGE 296 2019 Summer Season

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About Tippet Rise

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About Tippet Rise

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Looking for Paradise

By Peter Halstead, Pete Hinmon, and Ben Wynthein

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e had heard that Montana was the last frontier.

We owed it to ourselves to see it before we settled for something less open. And it was true. Montana put every place we’d looked at to shame. We looked all over the state, from grassy plains on the Hi-Line to river ranches in Paradise and Gallatin Valleys to the isolated prairies of the Rocky Mountain Front to more wooded smaller ranches around Glacier National Park. We always liked the rolling parts of every ranch we looked at, but they were usually small parts of each ranch, with the rest of the land unusable for our purposes. We wanted to be able to hide sculptures in gentle valleys and hollows.

Finally, we found Bev Hall’s ranch in Fishtail; it was exactly what we’d been looking for. It had no bad parts; it was 100 percent good parts. It was all deeply rolling: our favorite kind of terrain. It was covered in tall grass and sage, which echoed the Scottish Highlands and our summers in Nantucket. It had few trees, so it wouldn’t be subject to the mountain pine beetle kill, which was turning much of the West into a firetrap. It was under the Beartooths, which were a revelation: alpine tundra just feet from the road, Gothic mountains surrounded by tarns and grasslands, which usually would take days to access but were here minutes away, all on the road to Yellowstone’s vast valleys and prehistoric ecology.

There were a few other abutting ranches available, and ultimately, we put together 13 places to make one contiguous area.

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About Tippet Rise

There must be spots equally beautiful somewhere; but in years of looking, this was the most amazing landscape we ever found. In this part of the state, the land lightens. It goes from dark pines to endless horizons of hay. The air becomes radiant, as if it carried grasses from the plains in it. The mountains become somehow comforting, accessible, while also being completely Cretaceous.

We decided to name the ranch Tippet Rise. A sheep’s coat slows its growth in winter, but in the spring new growth resumes. This soft new growth is called the rise, and is easier for shepherds to roo— that is, to comb the wool from the sheep. We have always felt that sheep were complicit in outdoor art, maybe inspired by Henry Moore’s sculpture park at Much Hadham, where ewes huddle around the art, or the sheep in the fields around the Glyndebourne Opera, where the audience strolls during the hopefully golden intermission. A rise is also a gradual up-thrusting bench, as our ranch is. A tippet is not only the twine that ties the lure to the fishing line, but it was Cathy’s nickname for her mother. Cathy had been reading a book about a cat called Tippy, which she couldn’t pronounce. One day she called her mother “Tippet,” and it stuck. All of the kids who surrounded Tippet called her that. She was a mentor to all of us. Sadly, she died very young. We thought it was about time she came back again; it is her spirit which has been the mirror against which we’ve compared ourselves. The people we love never really die.

They rise again out of memory, and in dreams.

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The Philosophy of Tippet Rise

by Peter Halstead

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hat people mention most about Tippet Rise is its alchemy, where the atmosphere dictates the interplay between people and sculpture, between sculpture and music.

Lucas Debargue, a young French pianist who was an audience favorite at a recent Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, made his American debut at Tippet Rise during our first summer. Before he played, he asked to have a tour of the ranch because he said he felt the atmosphere, and he wanted to learn more about it so he could put it into his playing.

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About Tippet Rise

Art involves not just a work, but the atmosphere which the work creates, the aura which supports the work. In the way Stonehenge evokes a lost civilization calibrated on the stars, the land at Tippet Rise suggests a unique collaboration between the art, the music, and the sky.

What Tippet Rise tries to create is a bridge between the elements.

Tippet Rise is a geologic metaphor, where the synergy between the landscape and the art makes something else, a kind of poetry, a message read between the lines, never fully seen, but always felt.

Ensamble Studios, who have three works at Tippet Rise, have arranged their pieces like star charts, to map the sky onto the land, to bring constellations down to earth, where we can see them.

When we planned Tippet Rise from 2010 to 2014, we turned to the original divine ratio, the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon, of the Parthenon, of the

Great Pyramid at Giza, of the jewel boxes where Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn performed.

This shape, also called the golden mean, is found in the spiral helices of leaves, flowers, and palm fronds, and has been used by Pythagoras, Euclid, Ptolemy, Plato, Dürer, Piero della Francesca, Kepler, Penrose, Le Corbusier, Dali, Bartók, Satie, and Debussy to bring algorithms, design, art, and music into a self-replicating loop, what Douglas Hofstadter would call an “Eternal Golden Braid,” which focuses on both sound and vision of music; it brings it closer to what the composers knew and expected in the Enlightenment and in the prior era of classical proportions.

The solar system itself and black holes use this spiral whirlpool, which reflects the magnetic resonance of spins, the theory of opposites repelling each other and driving the yin-and-yang energy of the universe, a pattern we can see in nebulae and in the geom-etry of crystals: things too big and too small to be noticed, and yet you might say they are staring us in the eye.

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We wanted sculptures that fit the land, that annotate the music, that connect with the sky, that work with the land.

It was snowing at Tippet Rise, and the young French pianist Julien Brocal was visiting. He wrote a piece for himself and the young violinist Caroline Goulding called Snowing on the Moon, which in turn inspired me to write a poem, and both the piece and the poem were made into a film by Mickey Houlihan and Kathy Kasic, using footage from NASA, reflecting planets on the Calder sculpture Stainless Stealer.

Calder’s mobiles are about unseen unifying forces, so we projected planets on his metal wings. The film is called Stainless Stealer Steals the Universe, because its reflecting steel absorbs the NASA footage and reflects it back, the way Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens accused everything of being a thief:

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun…

(Act 4, Scene 3)

Baudelaire has said that nature is a forest of metaphor, where the symbols of words, scents, and colors become flesh.

The poem I wrote based on the Brocal piece, the Calder, and the film is called “Winterreise,” and in turn echoes the Schubert song cycle about the pathetic fallacy, where the arid winter light colors the character of the singer.

So there’s a sense of metaphor, of poetry, to music and sculpture at Tippet Rise. Metaphor is an arch; it’s the span between sound and sky, between frequencies in the air and structures on the land built from the same shape. It’s what’s implied but not stated in conversation: it’s the connotation.

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About Tippet Rise

At Tippet Rise, we’re trying to make those hidden synergies visible, for our grandchildren, for everyone’s grandchildren, and for anyone who might, like Schubert’s and Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer, pass by.

We’re trying to make poetry come true: the correlations, the conspiracies, between place, music, and art that pass the human spirit into the future.

Music itself is energy made flesh, variants of equations, orbits, atomic spins, which manifest themselves as frequencies, along with other unhearable frequencies such as ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, solar flares, the Northern Lights. When you drive under power lines you can feel the fizz of the frequencies. Sometimes you feel the tingle of a cosmic ray passing through your body.

These mysterious single events are accidental windows into the larger world of atomic structure, which is what creates the scaffolding on which our lives are hung.

Music is a harbinger, an avatar, an eidolon of this invisible world of whizzing atom tails and magnetic relationships. Music exists in the small window of hearable harmonies. On either side of these harmonies are the overtones and undertones of a larger cosmos, just as there are millions more colors than our eyes can see, millions more galaxies than even a telescope can make out.

There are computer pieces which are composed out of tones beyond our hearing, vibrations both too low and too high for our ears’ very limited range. These notes, however, produce sympathetic vibrations within the gamut of our hearing, and these accidental neighbor notes become what we hear, and the piece the composer intends us to hear, although he

wrote something else entirely: a piece calculated to produce ghost tones that become in fact the human translation of his ethereal scientific computer program.

Goethe painted a work which, when you stared at its colors, produced a totally different image of complementary colors on your eyelid when you closed your eyes. It was this image which Goethe intended you to see. Goethe, a great scientist, wanted to illustrate how the vast invisible world creates “neighbor” relationships which intrude upon our more limited vision, and how we see only a small part of what’s there, as if we saw a corner of a vast painting of water lilies.

In fact, Monet’s paintings of water lilies were intended to be hung together in an enormous grouping of panels which, put together, illustrated his entire pond. When we see only one of the panels, we are seeing just a bit of what Monet wanted us to see.

These panels have almost never been assembled in their entirety, so we effectively can never see what Monet saw (although we can see reduced versions of it in books and on the web). This is where virtual reality will eventually be able to bring us into such integrated environments.

Monet chose to paint without his glasses, so he could see the blurred (and thus impressionist) world that he was used to rather than a world corrected by science. Cameras existed at this time, and Monet took pictures to help plan his gardens, but the final product was a more romantic version of reality, which he preferred to the more clinical view of the camera.

When I was in Venice, I took a vaporetti, a water taxi, and photographed Venice reflected in a metal fender on the boat for several hours. The floating palaces superimposed themselves on one another as the boat moved, and the complex reflections were much

more baroque than the poor reality. After a while, every tourist on the boat began photographing the fender themselves, although I’m not sure they saw the same mirages my telephoto and polarized lens captured. Such a lens can also see collages in a rearview mirror of a car which the eye can’t.

And so there is a syzygy, an alignment of planets and stars, a synthesis, which becomes visible to us under certain conditions, which presents the world in a more Cubist way, with light reflected off formerly unnoticed bezels, with reflections in store windows merging with the brain’s memory of what it saw in the last minute.

I believe that we don’t so much see as collate, combining remembered views of our lives that include memories of friends, postcards, snapshots, a kind of Instagram where we brand the world and our travel through it to our own liking.

This is what music is: bits and pieces, overheard snatches of sound, found art reassembled into a jumble of fractal, Cubist, Impressionist, Expressionist angles and colors. The more we know of painting and photography (such as neorealism, photo reality, and such), the more techniques we bring to our personal paintings of the world’s complex synergies.

When I was at Columbia University during the riots of 1968, I was the lone student on a faculty committee of scholars, sociologists, biographers, and musicologists who were trying to reinvent education, to formulate ways that learning could be made attractive to distracted students. Other colleges, such as Brown, devised curricula that students could assemble themselves. Columbia decided that classes should be interdisciplinary, so that art could be taught alongside music and literature. Bringing stories to music fleshes it out. A musician plays her 2019 Summer Season

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own biography. She plays the stories the composer has planted in the music. He understands the subliminal texts, the hidden narrations, and he conveys those through phrasing, voicing, silences, pauses, emphases. The more you know of what happened the week the piece was composed the more you can re-create the mood of the composer. Music requires multiple disciplines to define it, just as writing is amplified by photos and painting profits from a soundtrack.

Tippet Rise is an adventure in multitasking, a collage of experiences which we hope will flesh out nature through art, and music through nature, reality through technology, as the leaves below are a metaphor through which we see ourselves.

Increasingly in our culture we prefer video to mere audio. We prefer stereo to mono, and surround sound to stereo. We will eventually demand virtualreality films, and holographic computers, the way Beethoven always preferred the newer, more sonorous pianos. We always adopt the sharpest and most colorful television screens, the most useful computer touchscreens. Art should present itself with as many dimensions as possible.

Leaves are snapshots of the summer. Their ragged edges trace the summer, as we ourselves are tracings of our passage through books, movies, and meadows. The reality of a photograph becomes imaginary as the photo fades and becomes more of a trick Escher illusion. The dying leaves of autumn are summer’s shadow, its ectoplasm, spread out on the ground, accidental documentaries which bring the phloem and xylem of a tree, its history, out into view. As much as leaves are an emblem of the hidden spirit of the tree, so nature is the edge of a hidden world which supports us, although we can’t see without instruments its small atoms or its enormous nebulae. But it is the lattice of the world, the energy grid which underlies everything, which transmutes thought, which parallels time, which permits the transmigration of matter, and sustains the momentum of planets and galaxies through the affinities between objects, which take the form of magnetism or frequencies. Music is a compendium of that skein of allegiances, where complex formulas, the Fibonacci sequence, Fermi’s spiral, the petals of field daisies, the whorl of a pinecone, assume the momentary human mask of melody, a matrix, so that we are not disturbed by the terrifying cascade of questions and solutions which underpin our existence.

Thus sculptures show themselves most variously when embedded in the complexities of nature, and music gains color when heard in a sculptural atmosphere. Our videos present a facsimile of performances, but they also try to add visual poetry to the narration. We will eventually add virtual reality as a way of complementing the reality of our concerts. Poetry itself is a shortcut to the underlying meaning of a moment, of a life.

All these disciplines are metaphors of one another.

They are alternate ways of seeing, of processing the world. Masterclasses explain the music, and may in fact be more multidimensional ways of enjoying music. We hope that everyone will read our programs, and also watch the videos after the concerts, so enjoyable moments can be fixed in their minds.

Google Institute uses surround videography to capture more of a work of art. We should use whatever techniques magnify the artistic experience.

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About Tippet Rise

At the end of this essay is one of three translations of Baudelaire’s poem Correspondances, which illustrates some of the synergies between material objects and immaterial correlations:

LEAVES Nature is a trick whose trees Are the root of our conspiracies: Trompe l’oeil hints and pseudonyms With the future in their limbs: Soft as night and dark as rhyme: Ancient snapshots stained by time, Now-imaginary places Whose faded edges trace us, Edges innocent as skin, And some, original as sin, Light as autumn on our face, Emblems spread out into space, Incidental woodland scents Which turn our spirit into sense.

by Peter Halstead

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The Ecosystem of Tippet Rise T

ippet Rise is at the north end of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, some 22.6 million acres acting as a single unit around the immense caldera of the park. In 2016 Montana science writer David Quammen put together a wonderful book called Yellowstone, along with the photographers of National Geographic, who spent a year in the park.

Tippet Rise is buffered on the west and north by the Beartooth Mountains, created by the Yellowstone supervolcano. These mountains form a lava wall which runs deep underground, as well as rising to the highest summits in Montana, and which shields Stillwater County from Yellowstone’s seismic activity. This volcanism is forced to travel elsewhere, such as up the Madison and Gallatin river valleys farther west, where Quake Lake, 6 miles long and 190 feet deep, was created in less than a month by an 80-million-ton landslide, which dammed the Madison River, all of it stemming from a seismic tremblor.

Far away from such faults, Red Lodge is a small ski and mountain town at the unknown fifth entrance to Yellowstone. From Red Lodge you wind upwards through the many switchbacks of the Beartooth Highway to a succession of high tundra plateaus on top of the world, exposed to sudden squalls, summer blizzards, temperature drops—all the exhilarating benefits of the alpine world. This is the most easily accessed high mountain wilderness and the largest true high elevation plateau in the United States, yet it is virtually deserted.

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About Tippet Rise

Millions of people descend on Yellowstone in the summer, but they haven’t discovered the neighboring Beartooths, a million acres of Gothic spires set among hundreds of large alpine tarns, lakes formed by snowmelt from the glaciers. Unlike similar high mountain environments in Europe, the Andes, and the Himalayas, this unique area can be driven through. Cars can be used to access mountain bases. When it was built in the 1950s, Charles Kuralt called the Beartooth Highway the most beautiful road in America. Fifty-foot walls of snow enclose the road immediately after it is plowed in late May, to be replaced by rolling fields of wildflowers in June. As the snow melts in July, trails into high mountain meadows open. Benign fall weather continues until early October, when sudden blizzards close the area until next May. Although the common explanation of the name Beartooth hangs on the spire hidden among massifs just north of the highway’s summit pass, in reality there are thousands of rock fins that jut up unexpectedly throughout the mountains here, made from Bighorn dolomite, Jefferson limestone, and Madison limestone, all from widely different periods. Pinched upwards by the Laramide uplift some 70 million years ago, these layers of rock strata rise like hands in prayer, or like the pinnate vanes along a Stegosaurus’s tail. They could be giant sharks’ teeth, or bears’ teeth. The famous basalt dike along the Hudson River just north of Manhattan is called a palisade, after fort walls built by soldiers during the colonial period But these palisades are just chapters from that longer book. The long dike has eroded, leaving only incidents, platelets, wings sticking up. Some are almost 300 feet tall, and thin. They pop up in

inaccessible places, like Godzilla emerging from the deep, but also along the road leading to the Red Lodge ski area, and along the Beartooth Front.

Five hundred million years ago, the entire region was below the sea. Seventy million years ago, the ocean began to recede. You can still find fish fossilized in the cliffs. More than two miles of sediment from the ocean was left behind. Fossilized trees are buried in the sediment around the highest points of Tippet Rise.

After the majority of the sea receded, the remaining water turned into ice, compacted from rains, and came alive. As its glaciers moved down the Beartooth Front under their own weight, they eroded the ocean sediment to create cirques, arêtes, and hanging valleys, which can all be observed above the gorgeous East and West Rosebud canyons.

A glacier is like a snowplow; it pushes everything in front of it. The dirt that gets pushed to the side forms a moraine. The two parallel moraines on either side of the glacier form what is called in Montana a coulee, a valley with steep moraines or walls on either side. Kettle lakes, kames, eskers, and outwash plains are left behind when the glacier’s plow finally melts and disappears, which is how the land around Tippet Rise got its distinctive shapes. However, the Beartooth Mountains still retain 107 cirque glaciers (tucked into the base of mountains) and 390 rock glaciers, more glaciers than Glacier National Park.

Into this geologic showplace rose the limestone remains of the ocean sediment which we call the palisades, and which give the Beartooth Range its teeth. The teeth are reflected in Ensamble Studio’s Portals, which rise like Stone Age erratics from the soil beneath them.

Tippet Rise, at the northern tip of this 22.6million-acre ecosystem, is further buffered on the west by the Gallatin National Forest, which may have trees but which is really a million-acre roadless wilderness anchored by the Absarokee Mountains.

To the south run the legacy ranches, such as Jack Bugas’s ranches in Clark’s Fork and Sunlight Basin (where the Marlboro Man ads were filmed), bought

by David Leuschen to form part of his 200,000acre Switchback Ranch; The Lazy E-L Ranch, run by the MacKays since 1901; the Scotts’ 475,000acre Padlock Ranch; Susan Heyneman’s Bench Ranch. As far as the eye can see, the land is in conservation, or mandated for ranching. The rolling grasslands have been scraped raw of soil and trees by wind and fire until grazing has become the best use of the land, so cows are mainly what you see for 50 miles as you drive to Red Lodge from Fishtail.

What you see at Tippet Rise is only the tip of an immense system, a microclimate of cloud patterns, wild Chinook thermals, sudden squalls and blizzards, in the rain shadow of Yellowstone and the Beartooths, all of which contribute to the otherworldly light, the soothing breezes, and the long lines of the land created by one of the largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems

on Earth.

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Sustainability at Tippet Rise

by Pete Hinmon

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About Tippet Rise

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e want to leave as little impact on the land as possible. This ideal has guided every decision we’ve made in planning the art center. Prior to construction, Tippet Rise commissioned a three-year comprehensive study of the ranch from Arup, headed locally by DOWL Engineers, before siting buildings, infrastructure, and art.

To offset our reliance on well water, we installed surface and rainwater reclamation systems. These systems can store up to 100,000 gallons for graywater and irrigation use.

Eight thousand square feet of bifacial solar panels were erected to produce power for the Olivier Music Barn’s recording and light facilities; the panels also provide shade and charge our hybrid tour shuttles.

Tippet Rise has partnered with Beartooth Electric through net metering; any excess power we produce is pushed back onto the local grid.

The heating and air-conditioning system in the Olivier Music Barn was designed by Arup and MKK Consulting Engineers and utilizes ground source geothermal energy to heat and cool the building.

Air passes through oversized, noiseless ducts to maintain ideal acoustics while heating and cooling.

The Music Barn is climate controlled by state-of-theart systems that keep its humidity and temperature within two degrees of the ideal.

The Olivier Music Barn and the Cottonwood Campus have been awarded LEED Gold certification.

Our staff is on hand to answer any questions you may have about sustainability at Tippet Rise.

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Tippet Rise is a Working Ranch

by Ben Wynthein

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anching at Tippet Rise? A question often heard.

The answer: absolutely. Tippet Rise is 12,000 acres of ranchland in south central Montana. We believe that the rangeland we live on needs to be cared for with the utmost attention to quality—not only as a moral obligation to care for the health of the land itself but also for our guests to enjoy and experience. This stewardship also allows us to partake in and share Montana’s rich historical and cultural tradition of ranching. Part of that care is the necessary grazing of the range with ungulates, as has been done here for thousands of years. This integration of grazing animals allows fresh regeneration of the plants and

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About Tippet Rise

animals that grow here, which helps us to better manage the risk of damaging fires in our landscape.

Portions of Tippet Rise are leased to a few separate, long-standing Montana ranch families. On the northern half of the ranch, one family runs Rambouillet sheep. This family brings 1,200 or so ewes annually to Tippet Rise to aid us in the control of noxious weeds. The family also brings to the ranch, every June through October, between 300 and 380 head of cow-calf pairs and yearling heifers to be run on the north side of the ranch. At around the same time, the sheep are herded onto areas where noxious weed species are present. By eating and digesting the seeds, the grazing sheep help limit

the spread of the weeds to new areas. The cattle are often rotated from area to area within the ranch so that they can graze the grasses in the appropriate quantities.

Tippet Rise leases a portion of its land on the southern half of the ranch to a second local ranch family with a proven record of land stewardship and high-quality ranching integrity. Every spring their cattle are brought to Tippet Rise and combined with Tippet’s own cattle so that they can all graze on the southern side of Tippet Rise. Annually these herds consist of about 130 cow-calf pairs and 200 yearling heifers. In the fall, portions of this herd return and winter north of Columbus, Montana. Some of

Tippet’s steer calves, however, stay right here at that time and are raised to weight right on the ranch.

Over the following summer, some of those calves become beef for our guests to enjoy during their visits. We hope to give guests the opportunity to experience a true ranch-to-plate meal while they visit us. The best of the Tippet heifers will be saved to become permanent members of the herd. Tippet Rise’s cattle wear the state-registered quarter-circle T lazy R brand on their left hip. Perhaps it stands for “Tippet Rise under Domo.” The Domo, which is a slightly curved dolmen in the shape of that quartercircle, is our highest sculpture in elevation.

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In the winter, much of the ranch goes into total dormancy and quietness. We leave plenty of grass and natural feed on the ridges and meadows, where the chinook winds through the winter keep the ridges free from heavy snow.

During the winter, this allows the elk and deer to migrate to these areas from their summer homes in the surrounding mountains. At this time, they are allowed to eat and maintain body condition with less effort than if they stayed in the mountains, where the snow lies much heavier and the feed requires much more energy to find.

One important resource that Tippet Rise is also constantly working to improve is management of our water resources. Included in this challenge is the constant improvement of drinking water for ungulates, wild and domestic. Since the beginning, we have completed 36 major water improvements that help increase even livestock and wildlife distribution on the land, as well as reducing pressure on the riparian areas we do have. Many of these systems for livestock water also do double duty as key and strategically placed locations for fire trucks to rapidly fill in the event of a wildland fire.

All of the water systems are hidden as well as possible in the landscape so as to maintain the open, rugged, and wild feeling that we hope to preserve.

We look forward to the future of ranching, as well as to providing a landscape that our guests and artists can visit, experience, and thrive within—a healthy landscape that represents the cutting edge of art as well as a deep commitment to land stewardship and the Montana ranching tradition that this good stewardship makes possible.

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About Tippet Rise

We are enormously lucky to have the talents,

experience, wisdom, diligence, and probity of Ben Wynthein as the steward of the ranch, the cattle, the sheep, the flora, the soil, the water, the roads, and the wildlife on the ranch. The quality of the land on all the ranches in Stillwater and Carbon Counties affects all of us, and Ben has turned Tippet Rise into a model environment for the area. He is working to bring solid innovation to the vital traditions of American ranching.

The new wells which Ben has installed contribute to our ability to water livestock, prevent

fires, and cultivate healthy grasses. Ben is masterminding our constant road improvements, repairing and adjusting fence lines, and overseeing our first herd of heifers raised entirely on Tippet Rise. He has led our film crew and visitors to appreciate and film wildlife. He built the replacement cabin in Box Canyon and he marshals the outfitters who operate out of it.

Ben’s wonderful wife and charming children add the most important part of the ranch: a warm family which brings a great sense of spirit to our team, our visitors, and our community.

—Peter and Cathy Halstead

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The Canyons of Tippet Rise W

e are fortunate to have five large named canyons, and innumerable smaller ones.

Box Canyon This isn’t a true box canyon because the stream that winds through it seasonally has cut its way down a narrow path ending in a pond. That is, you can get out. It’s not a dead end with a headwall. It’s a denouement with a pond. It has an adjacent small canyon, the North Fork of Box Canyon, over which stone cliffs lower. The trail here winds down from Mark di Suvero’s metaphor, Beethoven’s Quartet, hanging between the frequencies of sky and land, to the cowboy cabin rebuilt by Ben Wynthein in the winter of 2017. This has a fountain fed by a spring up about 400 feet to the immediate west.

Box Canyon also has di Suvero’s 70-foot-tall sculpture Proverb, which for 12 years was on the lawn next to the Meyerson Symphony Center, in Dallas. The sculptor put it together here in a windstorm, its compass legs dangling from an enormous crane.

Proverb changes the dynamics of the canyon. It anchors it, while the canyon echoes Proverb’s wild side. Both seem less without each other, now that they have married. Proverb was created in homage to the mysterious artifacts of art which measure the achievement of humanity as much as any other method, such as science or math.

A path continues to a bench above the cabin, where once our summer tent had to be tied to a Unimog to keep it from blowing away. From there, the path winds up to the ridge road which runs between Box and Arney canyons.

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About Tippet Rise

Box Canyon

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Arney Canyon Immediately to the north of Box, Arney is our soft, walker-friendly canyon, with its gentle bowl and waving grasses. At its head is di Suvero’s sculpture Beethoven’s Quartet. The shining steel Möbius strip hanging from its iron sawhorse is the unknowable offspring of the Industrial Revolution. Hanging from iron girders, it is a cold bend, having been bent without the help of a blast furnace into its other-dimensional curves by Mark with a crane over a period of a year, one of the great advances in modern sculpture and a milestone in Mark’s career.

Arney Canyon

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About Tippet Rise

The road winds east along the ridge and crosses the canyon down below at a small pond, out of sight of the sculpture, where strange Aku-Aku rock shapes can be observed.

A walking trail winds to the north around the large knoll to the Domo, a path which gives you a small taste of the intricate spaces surrounding the sculptures. Canyons and hills continue north on the ranch to the Stillwater Road, on the other side of which is a million-acre portion of the Gallatin National Forest which continues over the Absaroka Mountains to Paradise Valley.

Murphy Canyon

Murphy Canyon and Midnight Canyon You can take the bus out of Arney Canyon and around the rolling hills to Ensamble Studio’s Domo, a Stone Age dolmen where we hold outdoor concerts.

Domo was designed to be a disguised amphitheater, which magnifies the sound for concerts inside it for 500 feet on every side.

Just to the east of Domo, you can walk down the road on a ranch track to the head of Murphy Canyon.

This is a magical place, strewn with glacial erratics, boulders left over from the ice sheet which once covered the area. The road continues across the bottom of the creek and up an unnamed valley alongside a long rock dike which seems to have faces embedded in its angles. If you look long enough, you can see Beethoven’s Quartet on a ridgetop to the southwest. If you walk along the road for half a

mile, you pass through a bowl, up its lip, and down into a second bowl, a perfect site for outdoor concerts. Cows graze on one side. You can see eight mountain ranges. Other than the cooling breeze which waves through the grass, everything is completely still.

Retracing your steps and starting again at the bottom of the creek, you can walk west, up the giant doldrums at the head of the canyon to high meadows, and reach the road to the Midnight Canyon Overlook. Midnight Canyon is a miniature version of the Grand Canyon.

Or with a guide you can walk east, down into the wilderness of Murphy Canyon. There is a path around which the cliffs rise a hundred feet. Be prepared for wolves and eagles. Even if you see nothing, you are being watched by a hundred eyes.

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Grove Creek Canyon To the north are farther canyons, the South and North Forks of Grove Creek Canyon. This is wild land, populated by horses which have been running wild for decades. It abuts Midnight Canyon Ranch. We intend to keep our northern canyons as we found them, to preserve the sense of adventure when we stumble on new pastures and high meadows. We want to be able to preserve a sense of discovery for ourselves and our visitors, so we all feel the way we felt the first time we turned a corner and saw a new world in front of us.

Midnight Canyon Overlook

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Grove Creek Canyon To the north are farther canyons, the South and North Forks of Grove Creek Canyon. This is wild land, populated by horses which have been running wild for decades. It abuts Midnight Canyon Ranch. We intend to keep our northern canyons as we found them, to preserve the sense of adventure when we stumble on new pastures and high meadows. We want to be able to preserve a sense of discovery for ourselves and our visitors, so we all feel the way we felt the first time we turned a corner and saw a new world in front of us.

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The Sculptors of Tippet Rise

Patrick Dougherty As one of today’s most admired living sculptors, Patrick Dougherty composes with nature: wielding saplings and sticks to build monumental structures that echo, play, and tussle with the land. Dougherty literally worked with nature at Tippet Rise, crafting his sculpture Daydreams from local willows. Partially enclosed and protected from the Montana elements by a replica frontier-period schoolhouse, Daydreams seeks to materialize the dream synapses of students.

Learn more at stickwork.net.

Stephen Talasnik With ongoing installations around the world, sculptor Stephen Talasnik describes himself as a structural artist. He draws inspiration from imaginary architectural worlds like Piranesi’s, which he materializes into natural sculptures that fold into and accentuate the contours of the surrounding landscape. At Tippet Rise, Talasnik created Satellite #5: Pioneer to bring NASA’s mapping of the sky down to earth. Models of his proposed sculptures for Tippet Rise, Galaxy and Archaeology, are on display in the Olivier Music Barn.

Learn more at stephentalasnik.com.

Mark di Suvero Widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation to emerge from the Abstract Expressionist era, Mark di Suvero revolutionized the world of sculpture and profoundly influenced fields such as modernist architecture, design, and land art.

His large-scale steel sculptures, breaking away from the walls of museums, are meant to be experienced outside. His work probes time and space. Tippet Rise is proud to present two of di Suvero’s pieces: Proverb, a meditation on the tiny tools we use to measure infinity, and Beethoven’s Quartet, a clever commentary on the composer’s seminal work. Learn more at spacetimecc.com.

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Ensamble Studio Partners Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa lead the team at Ensamble Studio that blurs the lines between land, art, architecture, structure, and sculpture. Using found materials, their work transcends architectural boundaries and time periods to produce a pure and direct emotional impact. At Tippet Rise, Ensamble has created structures cast from the soil beneath them that map a constellation on the land. Equal parts concert space, sculpture, and land art, the structures emerge autochthonously from the earth, visceral manifestations of nature. Their primitive vocabulary, rawness, and geological qualities derive from the landscape around them. Learn more at ensamble.info.

Alexander Calder Alexander Calder, whose illustrious career spanned much of the 20th century, was an acclaimed and influential sculptor. Born into a family of celebrated, though more classically trained, artists, Calder utilized his innovative genius to profoundly change the course of modern art. In the 1920s, he began by developing a new method of sculpting by bending and twisting wire; he essentially “drew” threedimensional figures in space. He is renowned for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony.

From the 1950s onward, Calder devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted sheet steel. Today these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world.

A large Calder hung over Cathy’s living room as a child, and she was given a small Calder when she was born. Calder also painted wonderful colorful circles, one of which we’ve lived with for many years.

“Tippet Rise presents unique opportunities for the display of sculpture,” says Melissa Chiu, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. “At a time when art is being experienced as much in the digital realm as in person, it is wonderful to be able to welcome a breathtaking new physical destination that is devoted to the private contemplation of solitary works—and the landscape that enfolds them.

As part of its mission, the Hirshhorn maintains a

robust loan program through which we share the national treasure that is our collection with institutions around the country and around the world. We are honored to be part of the inaugural installation at Tippet Rise and to introduce these works to the people of Montana. The Hirshhorn looks forward to many more curatorial and programming collaborations with Tippet Rise in the months and years to come.”

Two Discs and Stainless Stealer, © 2019 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The Sculptures of Tippet Rise:

Creating Unique Relationships Between Land and Sky The art center’s rolling 12,000 acres are home to an extraordinary diversity of native grasses, wildflowers and wildlife, bucolic herds of sheep and cattle, and eight mammoth works of art.

Two Discs by Alexander Calder is on gracious loan to Tippet Rise from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian Institution’s museum of international modern and contemporary art, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. With dark steel arches that invite viewers to walk beneath it, the monumental sculpture is a cornerstone of the Hirshhorn’s collection. As it was the first work of art encountered for many decades by visitors to the Hirshhorn, it is the first to greet visitors to Tippet Rise.

The Stainless Stealer is the second work by Alexander Calder at Tippet Rise, also on gracious loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A large mobile, 15 feet across, hangs above the concert area in the Olivier Music Barn. Most of Calder’s mobiles are painted, but this one reflects the human condition around it.

Patrick Dougherty’s Daydreams is made from willows gathered by Pete Hinmon and Ben Wynthein from neighboring ranches and streams over several months in the spring. The collected willows were then soaked in a pond to prevent the saplings from sprouting, which allowed Dougherty to work with smooth willows. Dougherty’s weavings are like Van Gogh’s frenzied strokes of oil paint, but calmly reasoned and patiently bent into place, an-

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chored around key branches. Dougherty had the idea that a schoolhouse would be the perfect canvas, so the contractor, Max Anthon of JxM, copied a nearby structure, down to its missing shingles, which was then recrafted by CTA Architects of Bozeman. The shapes of the lounging students are also reminiscent of Provençal bories. Dougherty’s labyrinths lie on the surface of his mazes.

The Inverted Portal was the second of three sculptures created by Ensamble Studio for Tippet Rise. Equal parts shelter, sculpture, and landscape, the Inverted Portal was made from the land beneath it. Its primitive quality, rawness, and geological expression inspire a fascinating exchange with the natural surroundings. Each side of the Inverted Portal weighs over 200 tons. During construction of this piece, the largest cranes in Montana held the two sides of the sculpture in place while they were fastened together by steel pins.

The Domo is the final installment of Ensamble Studio’s three works for Tippet Rise. Although it seems a part of nature, the Domo was acoustically designed for superior sound projection for our outdoor performances. As a Stone Age plinth, it is the equivalent of a pyramid: an elegant transport into the new life of whatever is placed inside it. It was poured into the land and then excavated by bulldozers. Plastic tarps were used to create the folds in the stone, like a cloak by da Vinci. The top of the Domo has been covered with Montana soil and seeded with native grass species to grow and stretch out toward the big sky.

Mark di Suvero’s Beethoven’s Quartet is about the late quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven, which, like Stonehenge, do double service as both objects and tools by which the universe can be uncovered.

Di Suvero invites his audience to complete the connection of music, art, and landscape by playing the sculpture with the rubber mallets he left behind.

This piece was originally housed at Storm King Art Center in the Hudson Valley, one hour north of New York City.

Di Suvero’s Proverb, with its pendulum element that moves in the breeze, is a metronome made vast.

Originally placed next to the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, this monumental work brightly contrasts against the Tippet Rise landscape.

Stephen Talasnik’s Satellite #5: Pioneer is one of a series, this one named for the satellite launched in 1973. Of Pioneer, Talasnik has said, “it was important to try to make the connection between manifest destiny of both those situations, the idea of human beings wanting to go beyond what they knew, to risk everything to go, and that somehow the risk-reward was really what it was about. Whether it was the early settlers coming to a wonderful place like this or the satellites and eventually, people, astronauts, who would go out into space, there were similarities to me…”

Talasnik spends about a quarter of his studio time creating a growing collection of architectural model pieces. Two of these, Galaxy and Archaeology, are on display in the Olivier Music Barn.

The Beartooth Portal was the first of Ensamble Studio’s three sculptures completed at Tippet Rise.

Like The Inverted Portal, the Beartooth Portal was made from the land beneath it: two large forms dug directly from the soil they stand on.

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Stainless Stealer: a Collaboration It was snowing outside in the lunar Montana landscape of the ranch, and Julien Brocal, a young French pianist, improvised a piece he called Snowfall on the Moon to play under the revolving moons.

The hanging shards also reflect the pianist, leaves, and stars. It was snowing outside that week, and so snow falls like leaves on the keyboard. The piano lid reflects the mobile, creating a syzygy, a triangulation, a cat’s cradle of synonyms. Rivets on the steel become stars, connected points of light. Calder opens us up to the way that the small suspensions of nature around us mirror the vaster workings of the night hanging in the Montana sky, the way that meteors fall on us like snow, the way that music falls on us like leaves.

I

n 1966 Alexander Calder made his mobile Stainless Stealer out of stainless steel, in Saché, France, and sold it to the great collector Joseph Hirshhorn. In the same year, Congress established the Hirshhorn Museum, which was finished in 1969.

Stainless Stealer was one of the 850 works in the inaugural show.

Calder had been building mobiles since 1931.

Calder’s mobiles are about unseen unifying forces, so we projected planets on his metal wings, and Mickey Houlihan and Kathy Kasic had the idea of borrowing astronomical footage from Kasic’s friend at NASA and projecting it on the reflecting steel “planets” or “moons” of the mobile.

The Stainless Stealer Steals the Universe 38

About Tippet Rise

The way the steal reflects the planets, so the earth reflects the sun, and the moon shines only by reflected light, as Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens reflects: The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun…

(Act 4, Scene 3) The piano was the Istomin-Horowitz CD-18 concert grand, with which Eugene Istomin had toured the small towns of the American West, and which both pianists, Istomin and Horowitz, had used for major recordings of Rachmaninoff concertos.

In recording the piano, we used Neumann M-150 tube mics, which capture the human range of hearing. Their distortion mimics the way human hearing drops off in the high frequencies, and the warm tube

sound captures the human voice of both piano and violin. For the video, we used a handheld 4K Sony camera to provide a whirling viewpoint, the way a moon might see a planet or an astronaut.

The poem called “Winterreise” about the mobile, the snow, and Julien’s composition was written afterwards by Peter Halstead. Winterreise is the Schubert cycle of what he called “terrifying songs,” which he had written while dying, equating a wild winter ride through the arid landscapes around him with the process of dying. The piece became one of his most gorgeous and popular compositions, although he died before it could be performed, so he never heard it.

The poem sums up the metal gears of the mobile, the sense that music played and composed at Tippet Rise reflects the raw cosmology of the lunar landscape, the sculptures evoking a connection between the earth and the sky, the way Stonehenge has an astronomical significance, so that music in that location approximates more closely the idea of music of the spheres. We associate standing stones with ancient ways of measuring the sky, of attun-

ing daily routines to the seasonal changes brought about by the sun’s ascension in the sky as the year lengthened.

So a sculpture produced a composition which inspired a film which in turn produced a poem about death, music, the solar system, and how our voices come from all these elements combined.

WINTERREISE

Today we pause to hear the solar rage Of wind around the stars, To watch the world’s massive gauge Align itself with ours, The way that winter wanders Down a young girl’s long limb And shines a worried light On her simple skin, On the season’s grieving night, Anguished wails of storm transposed Into sleeping adult fears, So that our snows and songs and ghosts disclose All the planet’s human gears.

—Peter Halstead 2019 Summer Season

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Art at Tippet Rise

W

Isabelle Johnson

e discovered after a while that the mysterious Johnson ranch was actually one of three ranches owned by Isabelle Johnson and her two sisters, where they hayed and ran cattle. She always considered herself a rancher first. But secondly she was Montana’s first Modernist painter.

She lived down by the Stillwater River, but she came up to what is now part of Tippet Rise and did many of her great paintings in the meadows, in the snow, among the wildflowers.

The land hasn’t changed much since Isabelle Johnson painted it. Not much has happened to Fishtail. But what really happened to Fishtail was that Isabelle Johnson went to Paris. She went to New York, and Rome.

And she brought home the light from distant worlds. The Hudson River light of Thomas Moran, the chalk glaze of Cézanne, the yellowed clay of the Camargue, the arid, blockish hills and riverish fields of Winslow Homer.

After Isabelle Johnson, Western light could finally be described in terms of other civilizations, of New Jersey industrial haze and Norwegian angst. When

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About Tippet Rise

you look at the barren folds of glaciated wastes around Fishtail with her eyes, you come to see the erasures, the gaps. You see her idea of how the world worked, her personal mechanics of wheat and cottonwoods.

Leger, cut out from faded newspapers; Stuart Davis, the polluted pastels of the industrial revolution; the faded tempera of Giotto; the angularity of Thomas Hart Benton—all worked their way into her sandstone arroyos, coulees edged with Corot pinyons: what the West came to mean to people who had never gone West, to workers in East Coast factories, to existentialists in European cafés, to people at John Ford movies. Such Western pentimenti are nothing that can be seen; they are hidden under guidebook photos, accumulated over the years, suggested in silos, smelled in the pollution of big city sunsets, mixed into ordinary fields of grain by ions in the clouds, the way you can smell the rain before you see it.

You can’t visit the Alpilles around Les Baux without seeing them the way Cézanne did. In the same way, Isabelle Johnson lent Mondrian angles and Kandinsky chords to tufts in the Stillwater River, which flowed through her ranch in Fishtail.

Johnson’s West is the whorl in the hay, the sharp edge between the bales and the sky. Valleys howl with gouache, the knife slathers on the evening dark while morning continues to bend in the wheat, and sun beats on the trunk.

She saw nature as an adversary, the early winter that cuts in half the benefice of fall, the vast cumulus that rots the harvest with the scythe of storm light, the early flood that carries summer seeds into distant valleys: volcanic folds in the land that are gorgeous but sprung from ruin.

The recurrent droughts, the blizzards, the quakes, the notorious Arctic fronts have cleared the high plains of all but the most determined.

Ranchers chip a living out of the depleted soil on its way towards desert; artists hammer a sky out of a Provençal palette, forge a winter out of borrowed fire. Isabelle Johnson did both. And so her colors harbor a harder edge than their cousins on the palmate French coast. Her trees howl with deprivation, the stronger heirs of St. Rémy orchards limp in the Mediterranean heat. She brought foreign suns to frozen tundra, dichotomies that even now don’t fit into the easy sweep of the brush, that aren’t natural to the lazy hand of the landscaper.

She muscles the hiker’s eye onto a ridge, a bush, a cow in bursts of light like Vermeer’s, that guide the day into unnatural balances.

She notices how boughs interlock in mad scenes of wind, how cows blend into bursts of glare bouncing off the hay, how pines, snow, and sandstone, born out of extremes, merge into cozy, controlled patterns on the land.

When you travel outside Fishtail today, you see tractors frozen in amber set against the Magritte gray of a supercell sky; you see the campfire marshmallows of mountains superimposed on the pumpkin orange of lost hayfields. You see them because a woman who hayed her father’s ranch, who birthed calves, who shot sick horses also saw something deeper than what cameras see.

Isabelle Johnson saw the future, the industrial modernist palette in fields, flowers, and valleys that even today remain planted firmly in the agrarian past. But if you look closely, the details have changed. A lot more is on the breeze and in the leaves, because of Isabelle Johnson.

Tippet Rise is extremely fortunate to have recently been able to purchase the two Isabelle Johnson paintings. These two works will be on permanent display in the Olivier Music Barn.

—Portions excerpted from “Photographing Isabelle,” by

Peter Halstead in A Lonely Business: Isabelle Johnson’s Montana, Yellowstone Art Museum, 2015.

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Performance Spaces The Olivier Music Barn

With a direct view onto the Beartooth Mountains, the Olivier Music Barn is inspired by the intimate performance spaces where composers like Haydn and Bach premiered their compositions.

The pitched roof creates an elevated, ethereal sound, and the barn’s humble nature creates an informal space that breaks the barrier between performers and audience members, enabling powerful, direct musical experiences. The Music Barn is also home to Tippet Rise’s Visitor Center and a state-of-the-art screening room equipped for 4K high-definition film projection and three-dimensional immersive sound installations. The building and its systems have been awarded LEED Gold certification.

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About Tippet Rise

Architect Laura Viklund led the Olivier Music Barn’s architectural design. Acoustician Alban Bassuet managed the project and crafted the acoustics of the performance space. Gunnstock Timber Frames, with help from local craftsmen, constructed the barn using traditional mortise and tenon joinery. Oehme, van Sweden (OvS) landscape architects designed the siting of the Music Barn, its orientation to the mountains, and its relationship to the surrounding environment.

The Tiara Acoustic Shell The Tiara is a portable acoustic shell that invites listeners to enjoy performances while being enveloped by the Tippet Rise landscape. The Tiara’s sound-reflecting surfaces sit above musicians, rather than surrounding them, like a room with no walls.

Sound is reflected from corners above the audience, sending sound from the stage around the audience’s heads. Opening up the wall space of a typical bandshell allows for views of the art center’s rolling hills and the mountains in the distance. These acoustic and visual approaches create an intimate and enveloping concert experience for up to 100 audience members.

Alban Bassuet and Willem Boning designed the Tiara, with Arup Engineers, Gunnstock Timber Frames, and Fire Tower Engineered Timber.

Will’s Shed Designed by Timber Frames and On Site Management, Will’s Shed is nestled between the Olivier Music Barn and the Artist Residences. In keeping with the spirit of the surrounding buildings and the region’s agricultural heritage, the structure employs a classic barn form and is traditionally timber framed out of Douglas fir. Whereas the Olivier Music Barn is designed for sublime musical experiences, Will’s Shed provides a more casual space for dining, education, and community events. Two sides of the building are clad in operable doors, allowing the structure to close in inclement weather without sacrificing the incredible views of the Beartooth Mountains.

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Sculpture Tours

Placed atop knolls and nestled into valleys across the art center’s 12,000 acres, our sculptures can be toured by van, by bicycle, and on foot.

Art Van Tours Two van tour options are available during the 2019 season: the full tour, which visits all of the art center’s sculptures and lasts approximately 2.5 hours, and the half tour, which visits a preselected route and number of sculptures and lasts approximately 75 minutes.

All sculptures are visible from the van; however, the van will stop at each sculpture site. Guests are welcome to walk to the sculptures to stretch their legs, shoot photos, and take a closer look.

Satellite #5: Pioneer

by Stephen Talasnik 2016 Yellow cedar and steel 50' x 25' x 35'

Van tours are $10 per person and require reservations in advance, which are available on our website at tippetrise.org.

Hiking and Bicycling Bring your bike or your hiking shoes and tour the sculptures and the land on your own. Roughly 10.5 miles of trails and 13 miles of gravel road connect the sculptures at Tippet Rise. Distances between each sculpture vary from a half mile to 3 miles on hilly terrain with very steep grades.

Van tours are $10 per person and hiking and bicycling tours are free of charge. All tours require reservations in advance, which are available on our website at tippetrise.org.

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About Tippet Rise

The Beartooth Portal

by Ensamble Studio 2015 Concrete 32’ 6 1/2” x 25’ 3 1/4” x 26’ 5 1/2”

The Inverted Portal

by Ensamble Studio 2016 Concrete 40’ 2 1/4” x 17’ 11 3/4” x 22’ 5 1/2”

Beethoven’s Quartet

by Mark di Suvero 2003 Steel and stainless steel 25’ x 30’ x 23’ 25,000 pounds

Two Discs by Alexander Calder (1898–1976) 1965 Steel and paint 25' 5" x 27’ x 17’

The Domo by Ensamble Studio 2016 98’ 5” x 49’ 2 1/2” x 13’ 1 1/2” 1000 cubic yards of concrete

Proverb by Mark di Suvero 2002 Steel and stainless steel 60’ x 25’ x 35’

Daydreams by Patrick Dougherty 2015 Willows were gathered locally by Tippet Rise team members.

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The Tiara Story W

e had been talking with Arup Engineers in New York for years about various outdoor pavilions they’d designed. Finally, I designed my own, because we had a lot of leftover doors, and I saw them as a great way of bouncing sound to an outdoor audience.

Alban Bassuet was so horrified by my Rube Goldberg version that he leapt into action and, with Willem Boning at Arup, designed what is now the Tiara Acoustic Shell, a wall-less, roofless shed that bounces music to an outdoor crowd using only the top corners of an otherwise invisible room.

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About Tippet Rise

You can see from the acoustic studies how the sound lines carom off the walls. If you add in a slight overlap from a partial roof, the secondary and tertiary sound-bounces intensify. Alban and Willem discovered that 90 percent of concert sound comes from the top edge of the walls, where they meet the ceiling.

Laura Viklund and her husband, Chris Gunn, built this shell in a month in Cody, Wyoming, out of plywood, drove it up to Fishtail in pieces, and put it together in a very frantic week over by the Tia Barn. We’ve since moved it to a location closer to the Olivier Music Barn.

For its first concert, we asked the Red Lodge Chamber Players and the Magic City Strings to play Dvořák’s “American” Quartet in it. The results are on the web. This was the perfect piece for Tippet Rise: Dvořák wrote it to capture the sounds of what he saw as the real America. Dvořák himself, as a Czech, was regarded as a gypsy by the Prague Symphony, and had to fight prejudice all his life to become the composer he suspected he might be. The uniquely American spirituals, hymns, and the sheer freedom of wide-open ranges are evident throughout the piece, as is the scarlet tanager in the third movement, a bird which was bothering Dvořák in his studio, so he

wrote it into the quartet and it became an asset (a great way of dealing with difficulties).

The musicians inside the Tiara were astonished, because they heard the lush reverberation of a small, wood-paneled concert hall, as did the audience.

But you could see everywhere around you, and the presence of the American West on every side of and above the musicians was the beginning of what we came to see as the land’s contribution to the music, as Dvořák’s “American” Quartet, written in 1893 in Spillville, Iowa, has for so many years contributed to the myth of the American West.

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The Olivier Story T

he Olivier Story is the story of all the people who helped us realize our ideal, and the buildings we encountered along the way.

Raj Patel and his team at Arup Engineering in New York conspired with us for three years, introduced us to their London team, and developed the engineering concepts for the hall, its lighting, and its sustainable plumbing and ventilation.

Alban Bassuet, our lead acoustician at Arup, joined us as the first director of Tippet Rise and guided us through the history of small concert spaces while working tirelessly to implement the practical aspects of the hall.

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About Tippet Rise

Laura Viklund and her husband, Chris Gunn, of Gunnstock Timber Frames developed countless designs along with us and Alban, and oversaw the construction.

Mickey Houlihan helped us plan the audio-video element, and coordinated the complex installation of the components.

Lisa Delplace and Liz Stetson of OvS designed the landscaping, and Pete and Lindsey Hinmon helped Alban organize the hundreds of local craftsmen who actually built the hall.

Cindy Waters worked with us to design the interiors of the barn and the 20 initial bedrooms we built on the ranch.

Ben Wynthein kept the ranch and the livestock running smoothly throughout the enormous disruption of the construction of the Barn, 12 miles of roads, and 8 miles of biking and hiking trails.

There were ultimately four buildings whose acoustics we combined in the Olivier Music Barn: Snape Maltings, Wigmore Hall, Haydn’s jewel box at the Esterházy Palace in Hungary, and the Glyndebourne Opera House.

all his life and had always dreamed of concerts in the beautiful stone barn set in fields on the Sussex coast.

Derek Sugden of the Arup Group invented the “Snape Maltings roof.” This was a unique design, where a flat roof was lifted up some 40 feet by slanting walls which met about 10 feet apart on the flat part of the roof.

Snape Maltings We had heard a wonderful concert at the Aldeburgh Music Festival, started by England’s best-known opera composer, Benjamin Britten, in 1967 by the ocean in Sussex, some three hours north of London.

Britten had asked the great engineer Ove Arup to help him adapt a large barn which had held malt barley into a concert hall. Britten had lived nearby

Snape Maltings Concert Hall , UK

Behind the roof were vents for the heat to be vented from the building. As heat rises naturally, the hall could then be cooled without machinery, although a large fan brought air into the basement, as is the case in the Olivier Music Barn.

At Snape we heard a concert by the wonderful pianist Elisabeth Leonskaya, who played the late Schubert sonatas. The sound seemed to rise up above the audience and mist down slowly. The sound was aerated, smoothed out, softened, filtered; it descended on us evenly and gracefully, like a warm summer rain. It was the most gorgeous and dignified presentation we had ever heard of Schubert, whose chords are rooted in the tones which planets make as they hum in orbit. You can almost feel the Earth spin.

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Wigmore Hall We also listened to Wigmore Hall, which had always been our favorite urban space. It was originally Bechstein Hall and opened in 1901. Arup re-designed it in 2004. Its classical shape, the shoebox, made the sound powerful and brought it close to us. It seemed to surround us in a more personal way even than Snape, touching every part of our bodies.

Arup had done a study there, asking the audience if it preferred bleachers, or risers, instead of seats on a flat floor. After a year of sitting on bleachers, the audience voted nearly unanimously that they preferred the original floor, because they liked the way music enveloped them. With bleachers you could hear the separation between instruments, and between the low bass and the high treble. But risers lacked the romance, the familiarity, the communion of a flat floor, where sound descended from the stage to the audience stretched out below.

The problem with a stage is that the first few rows only hear “belly sound” from the underside of the piano, which is much less attractive than the music which arches from the lid of the piano upwards and outwards to the audience, making for a more comfortable experience, without the listener’s fatigue you get from too harsh or edgy a sound when you sit in the first few rows of such a hall.

So we decided we wouldn’t have a stage, so there wouldn’t be belly sound for the near rows. We ended up using the smallest of stages, maybe two inches off the concrete floor, just to help with seeing the performers. Having no stage brings the performers closer to the audience psychologically. We had sat on the front row of the bleachers at the Hoffmann Hall at Snape Maltings, and felt complicit with the musician’s performing Stravinsky’s Octet for Wind Instruments.

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About Tippet Rise

The next element of the room was the Snape roof. This lets the sound bounce around in the cupola of the barn, the way you toss pizza dough into the air. The notes weave together, and form a cat’s cradle among themselves before floating back down into the room, magically interwoven.

Otherwise, notes can bounce confusedly around, creating a harsh tone.

Added to this is the “halo,” a ledge running around the room where the wall joins the ceiling, about six inches wide. We enlarged this to a foot wide to make it even more important to the sound than smaller haloes in the Glyndebourne Opera Hall, in Wigmore, in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and in Snape Maltings. This incidental detail, a simple ridge around the walls, catches many of the notes before they continue up into the ceiling space. These notes are shot back at the audience immediately. This is called the “first bounce.” It makes the notes sound immediate, fast, tight, whole, powerful. So this quick return mixes with the delayed softness from the Snape roof to give a rounded sound to the music. You get the mixture from the roof, but also the quick tennis-ball volley from the halo. The ear hears these vibrations at the same time, and mixes them in the brain into what is then perceived as a driving, accurate, tight bass, a singing midrange, and a brilliant treble. In other words, a perfect loudspeaker. But it is even better than a loudspeaker, because this is the real thing, the music itself, unfiltered by a stereo, by a microphone, by an amplifier, by a magnetic coil.

We learned from the six deeply recessed window boxes in Haydn’s favorite room that sound bounces between the wood sides of the window box and never reaches the harsh-sounding glass of the window itself. So our one large window is a deep bay window.

We had built five recording studios and made dozens of recordings in them for Russell Sherman, Chris O’Riley, David Deveau, and others, with legendary engineers (Tom Frost, Judith Sherman, Wolfgang Erichson, and Tony Faulkner), before we built the Olivier Music Barn, so we had learned by trial and error how rooms help and hinder sound, and were ready to learn from the acoustical finesse and experience which Alban Bassuet brought to the project.

Just after the Renaissance, when classical music was at its peak, elegant salons and music rooms in rococo palaces had architectural details which actually helped the sound. Statues broke up the notes.

Moldings dispersed the tones so that no particular frequency was too loud. Wooden floors filtered the sound. Haloes focused it. If you build a perfect room, you can enhance it. If you build a flawed room, you can never fix it.

Music Room, Esterházy Palace

The Esterházys Prince Nikolaus Esterházy was the richest aristocrat in Hungary. Eventually the family extended its influence into the Habsburg Monarchy, which had originated in the Holy Roman Empire. By 1867 the region had become a dual realm, as the Habsburgs extended their rule under the Empress Maria Theresa over both Austria and Hungary. She brought in Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, and Germans to provide workers, whose cultures also diversified the realm. Her son

Joseph, an enlightened despot under the aegis of the Enlightenment, brought further culture, freedom, and reforms to the land. He was the last of the absolute monarchs, and his people flourished under his liberal yet strict rule.

The Esterházys were reputed to be richer than the Austrian emperor. One of them wore a diamondencrusted coat to the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Loyal suzerains of the Habsburgs, they were granted land taken from the Protestants and the Turks in battles, which they led. Nikolaus the Great was a man of immense culture and a great patron of Haydn. The family also helped Mozart and Beethoven, and later Chopin.

Nikolaus rebuilt his hunting lodge in the great swamps around the Neusiedlersee into the Versailles of Hungary, with 120 rooms. His private musicians hated it. There were no cafés, no shops, no parties.

Only the endless swamp, hunts they weren’t invited on, and concerts every night. Haydn wrote his “Farewell” Symphony to demonstrate to the Prince the musicians’ despair. One by one the musicians stopped playing and left the room, until only Haydn and the Prince remained. The Prince got the point, and they all left the swamp the next morning for Vienna.

The endless swamp which surrounds Mervin Peake’s Gormenghast is, I believe, based on Nikolaus’s palace in Fertőd (although the castle itself came from Sark, where Peake lived under its walls for four years).

It was Nikolaus who built the “jewel box,” a small salon with elegant, jewel-like angles, for Haydn, who wrote and performed his chamber music there. It was planned in 1762 and finished in 1784. Concerts and recordings continue there today. A larger room, the Haydnsaal, was built in the better-known Esterházy Palace at Eisenstadt, outside Vienna, for which Haydn wrote his symphonies.

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The Glyndebourne Opera House The Glyndebourne Opera House was built in 1934 as the dream of Sir John Christie and his wife, the concert pianist Audrey Mildmay. It is renowned for its enclosing sheep-filled meadows. It was redesigned in 1994, with acoustics by Arup, as an innovative 1,200-seat theater, in what was a radical move at the time towards a more intimate acoustic. We had been attending summer operas there for a while and had loved its powerful and focused sound, even before realizing that it was designed by Arup. We help Glyndebourne with its education program and its wonderful filmed operas, which are directed by legendary theatrical figures from the London stage, ensuring productions that work dramatically as well as musically.

Arup We went to Arup because of the perfect acoustics of the Snape Maltings concert barn, which they helped Benjamin Britten adapt for music, and because of Wigmore Hall in London, whose renovation they designed. Both are small halls with perfect acoustics.

Arup sent us to England, where we visited King’s Place, where Arup had modified the original Snape roof design in a building used for music, art, and food in London’s Kings Cross area.

The Sevenoaks School is next to Knole Park, where Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson lived in Knole House, one of the largest houses in England.

English aristocrats and Arab princes who live in the area today send their children to be educated at Sevenoaks. Arup arranged for a concert so we could hear the modernized Snape roof they had designed, to show us how the larger original roof could be adapted to a space of any size.

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About Tippet Rise

Arup had designed the superior acoustics of Harpa in Iceland, the Oslo Opera House, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, Benjamin Britten’s Snape Maltings Opera House, and the majority of the successful acoustic concert spaces in the British Empire over the last 50 years.

Arup in turn felt we were on the wave of the future, wanting to create a closer concert experience.

Arup staged a competition for us with four international firms whom we subsequently hosted in Montana, but Alban had met Laura Viklund at an architectural conference when she was still at Harvard and felt she would work with us seamlessly, with her knowledge of architectural precedent and her husband Chris Gunn’s mastery of ancient timber framing technique.

Hector Berlioz convinced the impresarios of his day that halls had to be large enough to accommodate a Romantic orchestra of 88 players. Cities commissioned them as a matter of status. At that time, there was no other competition for public entertainment, so the halls were financially viable for a while. Some of these oversized halls even had great acoustics (Boston’s Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Severance Hall, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus), but most didn’t.

The eventual failure of large halls to attract the very crowds they were designed for has led to a new direction, such as the smaller New World Symphony Hall in Miami Beach, Harris Hall in Aspen, the Vilar Center in Avon, Colorado, Le Poisson Rouge (the former Village Gate jazz house) in New York.

These smaller venues have become the sustainable concert models of the future. Such venues are adaptable to theater, lectures, jazz, chamber music, and solo concerts, so they are effective multipurpose spaces, and the more forward-thinking engineering concerns, such as Arup, have taken notice.

In fact, the Romantic symphony hall is a brief aberration in the history of performance spaces, and the balance is now shifting back to the historic smaller model.

As Alban Bassuet wrote us: I can tell you a long story about “great hall” rooms. But briefly, these are the most recurrent room dimensions in history, starting with the Temple of Solomon (with the inner chamber dimensions of a “jewel box”). Great Hall dimensions have traditionally been 45×90 feet, and are in every castle/palace in Europe. Originally used for banquets and events, they became the main room for instrumental music, such as Bach’s and Handel’s orchestral suites, and then led to the early concert halls in the Romantic era (Leipzig’s Gewandhaus and later the Musikverinsaal). The Haydnsaal at the Esterházy Palace at Eisenstadt was, however, constructed earlier, in 1784.

Other great halls are many of the chancel barriers in cathedrals which were otherwise too big for music, where concerts were then performed inside the chancel (e.g., at Notre Dame). My favorite great hall, personally, is in Rome, in the Cancelleria, just next to the fountain,

which also has a jewel box just next to it, which I love equally. The Cancelleria is my favorite because it is not too long. It is much more enveloping because of the closer rear wall. Another famous great hall is the Sistine Chapel.

The Soundlab at Arup In the Soundlab, Arup engineers feed hall dimensions into computer programs, which play the sound of those rooms through 17 speakers arrayed around a sweet spot, with a screen in the front which shows the architectural plan of the room being heard. As the room dimensions change in the computer and on the screen, the sound also changes, so you can hear the room you are contemplating before building it. You can eliminate windows and doors, expand the ceiling and walls, change the texture of the floor.

We could hear the personality of the music diminish as the room expanded, even slightly, from the jewel box model.

We listened to the sound of the jewel box and then the larger Haydnsaal, as well as dozens of other famous halls which had been programmed into the Soundlab: the Zurich Tonhalle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris, the Cancellaria in Rome. We came to prefer the power and intimacy of the jewel box over the larger and more dispersed sound of the Haydnsaal or Wigmore, the two runner-up halls.

Acoustics often lose out to the visual aspects of design, but in the Olivier Barn we put the sound first, inspired by Alban Bassuet’s study of Baroque and Classical small concert spaces, some 12 halls still in use in Europe: dimensions only found in the United States at Tippet Rise.

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The Olivier Music Barn The Fertőd jewel box became the benchmark for our concert hall. The room is 35 feet wide and 55 feet long and fits between a cube and a double cube. It is the height which gives it its determining sound, however. Although it is around 39 feet high at the flat part, the Snape ceiling is a very unique shape, and gives the music room to breathe. Dimensions can’t quite describe it.

We took from Wigmore its halo, and its flat floor. We took from Snape its extended ceiling box, its hard side walls. We took from the Fertőd Esterházy jewel box its dimensions. In our second season, we added a two-inch wood floor over a third of the room, cushions on the benches, two sculptures on the front walls, and slanted panels across the box corners up by the ceiling, which lent warmth and eliminated some harshness.

The concrete floor allows for a clean, accurate bass sound, warmed with a wood floor under the instruments. This floor is simply rested on the concrete beneath it.

The extra wood on the floor burnishes the sound, the way wine aged in oak gets a woody taste, so sound is actually aged by the wooden floor, giving it a woody patina, so that each note runs through the many years of built-up rings of wood, giving each tone many timbres. Using wood this way gives instruments a gorgeous cello-like sound.

The walls are larch, so the sound is filtered through the wood before bouncing crisply off the cement board behind. Like a cement floor, cement board preserves the quality of the tone, enriching the bass and brightening the treble.

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The simplicity of the wood hides the complexity of the audio, video, and theatrical lighting conduits hidden between the wood and the hard cement boards.

The basement and the mezzanine hold the electronic secrets of the space. We record concerts and independent sessions with DPA and Neumann tube microphones, along with U67s and ribbon spot mics.

We use the Pyramix/Horus multichannel digital recording system to make ultra-high resolutions of more than three million hertz a second. Multichannel sound and 4K video is routed to the basement, where professional racks allow for multiple different routings before the final choice is sent up to the control room, the broadcast booth, the projector, or the lighting room.

The computer files we produce end up on YouTube, on Vimeo, on Performance Today, on the PentaTone label in surround sound, on artist’s labels, and on our website, tippetrise.org. Select performances are available in our download library, where people can download their own copy of an album recorded at nine times CD-quality sound. We record in nine-channel surround sound and offer stereo versions in high-resolution 24/96 and ultra-highresolution 32/384, known as DXD.

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The Xylem Pavilion X

ylem breathes in the water in the soil to make a tree. It is a mechanism for miracles, a scientific metaphor for the birth of the forested world.

Forests are essential to life: they anchor moisture, prevent erosion, release oxygen to enrich the air, and provide shade from a sun that would be otherwise unbearable in the tropics. To villages in Francis Kéré’s native Burkina Faso, trees provide a gathering place for anchoring a community, for talking things out, for courting. Trees facilitate words; words invent communities.

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To this brilliant design Kéré and his team have added the circle shape from his Serpentine Pavilion 2017.

The irregular shape of seating arrangements is based on acrylics which Cathy painted as part of a commission for the German airline Lufthansa in the 1980s, a happy coincidence, as Kéré was educated in Germany and later set up his architectural firm in Berlin. At his father’s urging, he had been the first person to leave his village.

At the time, everyone asked, “But who will help with the cows?” Now Kéré has been able to bring the world back to his village, and not only help the cows but help bring education to an entire generation of children in his own and in many other villages in Africa. His father’s wisdom became clear to everyone in the end.

We have the great privilege of helping Kéré honor his father with a new school in Burkina Faso, as he honors Montana with a symbolic gathering place.

Cathy’s Lufthansa acrylics were based on the paramecium, the oblong organism which is the microscopic star of high-school biology classes. She later cut them out of her paintings and used them as appliqués in collages, as Kéré has also isolated the same shapes to define his seating areas.

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The Kéré Pavilion at Tippet Rise pays homage to the traditional thick African roof built from sticks and supported by twisting tree trunks, and also to the circular loop of Kéré’s Serpentine Pavilion 2017. This is a social circle, an architectural pun as well as a traditional African shape for gathering areas.

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Kéré uses the negative spaces between the leaves of a canopy to suggest positive shapes: the path of light through the forest roof.

Coincidentally, Cathy’s first painting was a cross section through tree roots, tree trunks, and the tree canopy to the stars. Sitting under the Kéré canopy,

visitors will be able to watch the sun move across the land through the trees, and finally watch the sky turn into stars.

The Pavilion uses logs and trunks as tree branches, shelters against the heat of day, but also as a place to watch stars at night.

These elements together make a gathering place where the African village, the negative space between tree leaves, and the scientific shape of a paramecium mix the deep-rooted similarities between our cultures, where art, science, nature, and friendship bring us together.

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The Notturno in E flat

his extraordinary pastoral by Franz Schubert takes one astonishing melody and repeats it in various ways which increase its revelations, similar to the Claude Lelouch film, Viva la Vie, where every time you think you understand the film, it starts again at a higher level.

I am reminded of the levels of Buddhist enlightenment, where the novice must be reincarnated through various stages or states of mind until she achieves true understanding.

For instance, the anāgāmi is free from Schadenfreude and desire.

The arahant is above cravings for wealth, or material success.

There are 16 recursions, or eternal returns, of the main theme in the Notturno. Each return has a subsection, so there are many steps to the final resolution.

The Notturno is thus a musical attempt at reincarnation, at salvation through music. Arriving at the final

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epiphany, you definitely feel rejuvenated, energized, and absolved: a psychological solution to the soul.

For Schubert the Habsburg night repeated itself endlessly, the same evening in different voices.

Classical music is just that: a pinwheel that is never the same, no matter how many times it spins; a “magic record” which tells different stories every time you put the needle down in the same place. An aurora borealis whose ions are constantly reinvented by the solar wind, magnetized plasma incited into sheets, curtains, waves, cascades, and rays by the solar storms we call sunspots.

In Tibetan Buddhism it is called the Wheel of Life.

We hope everyone who comes to Tippet Rise will find that, like the magic record or the northern lights or the stages of Buddhist enlightenment, the skies, the notes, the lives, are always the same: they just reappear in deepening and heightening magnetic shades.

So science, myth, psychology, and music are woven together in this “night piece” by a Romantic composer. We hope that the Montana sky will become part of its litany.

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Stealing Souls

hotographers steal souls. We rush into a Nepali village and snatch up personalities, identities, small children.

Some of those children eventually make their way to Colorado, where there is a large Sherpa population in Glenwood Springs, due to the number of Himalayan climbers who live in the hills and who are visited by their Nepalese friends.

And so one summer in Colorado I showed my slides of Nepal, taken many decades earlier, to the lovely Sherpas who worked on our ranch there.

“That’s us! And our parents and our cousins!” they shouted. I had visited their past and now had brought it back to them. So we may steal souls.

But we also return them.

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Artistic Integrity

onesty, or integrity, is another word for the self.

Integrity is what the self does when we aren’t looking.

The simple title of Lionel Trilling’s book Sincerity and Authenticity set out in the 1970s the simple definition of what the self needs to be taken seriously, and to take itself seriously.

Ethics happens when a civilization develops an instinctive form of decency. No one has to think about how to act.

But honesty isn’t conforming to a national standard of conduct; it’s conforming to what your own heart suggests.

Honesty doesn’t come naturally, though. It has to be taught. It has to be learned.

During my formative years, art for art’s sake was the cry. Art must never be commercial, although it might earn money by accident. Much of the most accessible self is unintentional. Frost wrote the poem “The Road Not Taken” as a gentle jibe to his friend the poet Edward Thomas, who always insisted while out walking that it would have been better if they had taken the other fork. The poem became universal, but it was meant to be personal.

Integrity is the ultimate form of being personal.

My teacher, the pianist Russell Sherman, always insisted that every note must be life or death; nothing less was valid. I think of the pianists Natalia Karp and 64

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Władysław Szpilman, both of whom played Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 for German officers, both of whom were spared because of it. Those are the stakes that musicians play for.

We make art to save our own lives, and to save other people’s lives. A culture without art can’t call itself a culture. As William Carlos Williams wrote in his poem “Asphodel”: It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

I always think of the advice Polonius gave to his son in Hamlet: This above all—to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Honesty (or the lack of it) is what you do when no one is looking. Left alone at a computer, a poet will write poetry, rather than sign on to online gambling.

Because we know there isn’t a second to lose. If you are desperate to do something to the exclusion of all else, that is your integrity.

Every day we fail at getting it right. What is important is that we try again tomorrow. All young people play at being artists. A real artist is someone who is still an artist after 40.

Honesty is trying to get beneath the surface of things, to get at the meaning of a musical note or a

word of poetry. As someone said of the pianist Artur Schnabel, music was just the start of it.

A brush stroke, a line of poetry, a musical phrase has to reveal as much truth as you can summon on any given day. And then you have to see if it’s still true the next day. So honesty isn’t a one-off. It’s a constant process of straightening, balancing, rearranging, questioning to get it right. Truth isn’t static. It’s a creature of the light.

Honesty isn’t momentary, or transitory. It’s a life lived in the pursuit of the things which matter to us.

Each of us has a different goal; honesty is not getting distracted from it.

Integrity is measuring our failures at being deep, at being true, at being kind, and resolving to do better.

Integrity isn’t arriving at perfection. It’s walking in the right direction.

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Integrity is picking the best role model, the best poem, the best performance as our minimum standard.

Integrity is simple when we are children, and becomes harder to hold onto as we age.

Honesty isn’t an instinct. It isn’t innocence. It’s a conscious decision. It’s taking what we’ve lost, what experience has taken away from us, and fighting to get it back over a long life.

Integrity isn’t a cliché or a statement. It’s too tough to be easily reduced. Integrity is what happens between the lines.

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RAKING LEAVES

Face your dreams, The ones with flying apes As themes. Put away The toys, the fears, The desolate unmarried

Years. Let what seems To be take hold. Shape The scene with day.

Put away the souvenirs Of truth, the harried Glaze of war, The tokens of your injured Youth, clichéd in time To rainy afternoons And broken lives.

Focus rather on the roar Of sun, the random bird, Falling snow, the rhyme And ripple in the dunes, The throw that drives About Tippet Rise

The game, accidents Of fortune, twists Of flame, burning shadows Into night, The turn of chance,

Island air that hints Of sea and mists, Solar haloes, The certain light Of stars that dance

Like curtains in the wind The dreams of women, Filled with presents, Food, and children— And realize

That leaves begin In deeper seasons: An accumulated essence, A cosmic sermon, Broken lessons in the skies.

—Peter Halstead

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Music and Place A

s wine tastes better out of thin glass, and food somehow tastes better when you cook it yourself or eat it under an arbor in the hills around Lake Locarno, with its Nabokovian echoes, as opera at the baths of Caracalla outside Rome changes your life, as that one concert did when Pogorelić asked us to stand on the stage while he played during a rainstorm at Caramoor, music in the surreal Hindu Kush–like hills just under the Beartooths shivers with the sudden chill of the Northern Lights, with the ghosts of Native American vision quests, with John Wayne films, with the mythic fogs of Bierstadt paintings, with the Romantic icescapes of Caspar David Friedrich, with the pastels of Cézanne introduced by our famous Montana modernist painter, Isabelle Johnson.

Double rainbows and orange light grew out of the ice particles in the air in a late summer sunset as

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Stephen Hough played his Sonata No. 3, subtitled Trinitas. The air itself turned purple during a concert of a late Beethoven quartet at Mark di Suvero’s sculpture Beethoven’s Quartet.

As we walked through purple air surrounded by giant raw monadnocks, we felt that the sculpture had liquified into the evening.

After Patrick Dougherty finished his sculpture, Daydreams, there was the second full moon in one month, a blue moon, two planets visible in the early dusk. The sounds of Copland’s Appalachian Spring echoed in the schoolhouse.

John Luther Adams and his wife, Cindy, walked around in the purple sunset under Calder’s Two Discs while the drums from Strange and Sacred Noise filled the field. The Dream of the Canyon

Wren inspired the birds to sing along in the meadow across the stream, down by where the Diébédo Francis Kéré canopy will go. These magical suspensions of disbelief could not have happened indoors. They needed the outside to expand into, to contribute power, color, wind, and mood to the music. As frenetic as music usually is, it soaks up nature through its pores, and gives it back in indefinable ways.

Even photos of the land reveal the strange northern clarity of the light, the starkness of the waves of grain, the stillness of the sky. Music is itself a connotation: a series of metaphors produced by hieroglyphic scratches on a piece of paper which create twilight in the Prater in fin de siècle Vienna, or the Sunday light on the Île de la Grande Jatte in Paris, or an epiphany on the shores of Lake Attersee in a Mahler symphony, or trolls at Grieg’s

cabin at Troldhaugen on the lake at Bergen.

Music comes from these places, from the offing just around the corner from what you can see, or just below the surface of the horizon. Music is a metaphor that doesn’t come from notes or instruments or concert halls, but from calving glaciers and Brocken specters and the shadows of seracs on the ice. It’s an intangible cloud that gravity brings down to earth on certain occasions—not dependably, not daily—a light that colors our minds, washes out the normal angles of the afternoon, replaces the video feed with augmented reality, that projects dinosaur holograms on the brain’s blue screen.

We build concert halls to keep the world out so we can concentrate on music. But maybe we should let the world back in, so music can weave itself back into the world it invokes.

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Crazy Fire

e used to have a mouse in our living room that would come out to hear Mozart—but only Mozart.

Even if we had guests, the mouse would come out into the center of the room and stand upright, head on its side, fearless, until the music was done.

I turned around once while playing the piano and saw, behind me on the deck, at the window, both a small brown bear and a deer, about 10 feet away from each other, listening to the piano.

We once found a bear’s paw print about six feet up on one of the side doors to the Olivier Music Barn, where the bear must have been leaning with one arm on the door to hear musicians practicing.

Yevgeny Sudbin, the great Russian virtuoso, would wander around the ranch all night photographing rattlesnakes, who were fortunately too sluggish to bite him. His wonderful photos of the Northern Lights and the Milky Way over Tippet Rise can be found in the book Tippet Rise.

After Stephen Hough played in 2016, there was a double rainbow. The sky turned gray-black and the fields were orange in the storm light.

After Mark di Suvero installed Beethoven’s Quartet, there was a storm at sunset where the sky was filled with purple moisture particles, like pollen in the air.

Giant supercell cumulus storm clouds develop legs or hands that reach down to the ground like giants, feeling the fields for an anchor.

Lightning makes its invisible links to the earth and then explodes back into the clouds (although we see it in reverse).

The sky is close enough in Montana that you feel connected to the invisible gears that keep the earth in motion, the magnetism which we see in the aurora borealis, the gravity which holds us inexplicably where we are.

There are very few places left on Earth where you can see into the universe at night the way you can in Fishtail.

Sheet lightning, static electricity that flickers around the masts of a ship or a house on the ocean or in the summer mountains for a few seconds (it always seems to be at night), and then is gone: the French call it feux follets: crazy fire.

After Patrick Dougherty finished his installation of Daydreams, there was a blue moon in the evening sky.

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A

Pianos as Role Models

nderson & Roe, the duo pianists, have created a video where the piano eats the pianist. Most collaborations between man and machine involve a more beneficial trade-off, where a pianist breaks a string, or knocks an insecure piano to its knees. But it is certainly an alliance, where two beings conspire to bring an audience to its feet, or into the dark.

The fact that both effects often happen are proof that the collaboration works. There is an unspoken pact between the hand and the keyboard which has repercussions in the cortex, where ideas sleep. Like a horse and a rider, a piano and its pianist can attack windmills.

A classical pianist is with his instrument from four to twelve hours a day, every day from the age of five. Like armor, you get harnessed to a piano. It becomes a virtual-reality limb. Like Pegasus, a piano responds to the slightest touch, to the mere idea of a crescendo. Your wish is its command. If love is in your heart, it will be in your hand. Pianos function on illusions, like magic acts. Just think a thought, and the action follows. As St. Augustine said, “Love, and then what you will, do.” You must have fire in your heart to sweep up the keyboard to the sun. Like a shadow, the piano knows. Like an Ouija board, it follows your hand before the hand even moves. It tells the future.

Like fortune tellers, pianos live in exotic places.

When I was a teenager, I played a piano on the roof of the world, in Kathmandu. The next day, the roof collapsed (not the roof of the world, but the roof of the embassy), and the piano was destroyed. I played a white piano in a gazebo overlooking the ocean, in the Bahamas, during (but unfortunately not in) the 72

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filming of the movie Thunderball. I played a piano on a ridge in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska, with avalanches roaring down on either side. I gave an outside concert in lush gardens in the Calcutta summertime, where the cool night had dropped to 100 degrees. When I was young, I played the “Military” Polonaise for Maria von Trapp on her piano in Vermont, before The Sound of Music became a film. I played the piano at the Baths in Virgin Gorda while my friend shot cockroaches with a revolver.

The piano is wild game. It belongs in Casablanca, at Rick’s Café. It pretends to be domesticated, until the owner leaves. Pianos dress in black, in nightclubs.

Like spies. Pianos are all dressed up, with no place to go (except over the edge). To play pretty music on a piano is to ignore it. Although when I played Chopin nocturnes on the piano in the restaurant of the Posthotel in Klosters, the maître d’ received a few notes saying, “Make him stop.” To be pretty is no guarantee of popularity.

Pianos are animals. They belong to no one. They don’t have owners. They are waiting for Ava Gardner. They are waiting to leave. To fall off the end of the world. I often feel like Victor Borge or Harpo Marx, where a scale might continue beyond the keyboard and pull me out the door. Or into the sky.

As several pianists have said to me, “You don’t have to know the piece. The piano knows it.” Pianos lead us into dreams. My teacher once began to reinvent all the voices in the Appassionata at Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met, and got so lost he had to start over. Many people were horrified, but all the pianists knew that what he had done was to break through the jungle of the notes into a lost world. Which is where all notes should lead.

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THE HISTORY OF

THE PIANOS AT TIPPET RISE

PIANOS

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ianos are woods in miniature. Forests unwind out of them. Their soundboards are histories of storms, drought, heat, blizzards, wound into wood. Their cases provide the discipline, the rigor, which focuses history. Small details, like the iron bell below the plate or the way they are strung, give them specific sounds: the fin-de-siècle languors of 1900, the fuzzy Sehnsucht (nostalgia) of the uneven string lengths of Brahms around 1880, the iron strength of the locomotive and its ringing train tracks in the plate, specially shaped in the Steinway factory in the early years. Out of these onomatopoetic contrivances Messiaen birds sing, Lisztian waves surge, Poulenc cars honk, Moog synthesizers quaver.

The sounds of pianos imitate the sounds of life: of leisure, of industry, of love. The Industrial Revolution introduced roaring engines, belching smokestacks,

clanging trolleys, honking horns. Before it, there was only wind in the leaves, water flowing in the river, mountain distances descended to ruffle the grass in the late afternoon.

Between the sonic events that shape our modern anxieties come the restful nights of Belmont in The Merchant of Venice, the moonlit lagoons of L’elisir d’amore, the enchanted forest of Arden in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The storms of Beethoven, the fairies of Mendelssohn are replaced by the musique d’ameublement of Erik Satie, the airplane propellers of George Antheil, the city noises of Bangkok or New York in Darius Milhaud, the fast car rides and gamelans of John Adams, the world music of Paul Simon. The role of sound in our lives is well catalogued in The Sonic Boom, by Beckerman and Gray.

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Later the monastic sanctuaries of Arvo Pärt, the Musica Celestis of Aaron Jay Kernis, and the snow-covered tundra of John Luther Adams return the world to its primal stillness.

Throughout it all, the piano has taken on the elements of its surrounding landscape. John Cage developed the prepared piano to respond to the deadening of sound, the untuning of the sky.

Keyboards and sampling libraries have added every known sound to the composer’s palette. But the challenge remains to imitate the orchestra of the world with the relatively limited tool kit of the old-fashioned piano, still the most human, the most sonorous of devices made for translating the soul of the world into sonic metaphors.

In my poem “Piano Maker,” I evoke the attributes and mechanisms of the piano which we weave into synonyms for the human spirit.

Soundboard, keybed, chord and cord, ebony dies, key ivories, maple sounding-board crowns, and glue mix with human limbs, fingers, bed and board, growth and sound to deepen the collusion of tree body and human body, piano wood and forest wood, body shape and piano shape, piano maker and poem maker, so that both human and celestial hands are heard together on the tree bark of the keyboard.

Since the advent of the “well-tempered” tuning system, harmony has been an organized trellis, using logarithmic surds to structure notes. “Piano Maker” is an ordered sonnet, but more modern, conversational mid-rhymes and meters dominate its more formal 76

About Tippet Rise

form, as a person or a pianist tries to rise beyond even the most complex structures in nature or in music:

PIANO MAKER Gnarls and boles, whatever woodwork words Can turn or blur to use, to glue, to growth Of board or bed, I know: I use their surds And darkened boughs like fingers, so that both Our hands are heard together on the keyboard Bark; no sounds but branches rise To leaf through breezes in the scattered cord Of sheaves and limbs, inking in the dyes, The ivories of silence on the evening’s rose And shade; twisting up the wires of a day’s Old sun and funneling the body’s splay Of music into crowns of maple and god knows, I wind up nature’s miniature keys To play out, on a bed of vines, The tune of my own trees.

A nine-foot concert Steinway has more than 12,000 parts. Its strings are under 20 tons of pressure. So it has an effect immeasurably beyond its size, as big as it is. It is a church organ in disguise. Although each piano is made in exactly the same way by the same people, each one is completely different. Each piano has its own DNA. On the morning of John Paulson’s purchase of Steinway & Sons in September of 2013, we were very lucky to be offered by the company a choice of 13 of their best pianos at the factory. Each one was better

than the next. I have never heard so many great pianos in one room. I’ve played Rubinstein’s piano given to him by Israel, a gorgeous mezzo beast, and a few of Horowitz’s instruments, all of them shimmering, with extraordinary rises. But this morning was a synthesis of every instrument I had been lucky enough to play.

everyone, including the pianist. It is when a piano jumps beyond its earth-bound tonalities into a world above the clouds, where the sun is unstoppable and the blue of the sky is almost black. Pavarotti called it the “solar” moment. Like the greatest tenors, only the greatest pianos have this ability to lift into another voice entirely at a certain point.

Rise is the sudden lift or break of the tenor’s voice, the passaggio from a normal tenor steel into a sfogo, the ethereal and impossibly thrilling vocal realm where the sun is unleashed, which only the greatest tenors can produce, the eco sonora of Pavarotti, Caruso, Bjoerling, Schipa, Gigli, Corelli, di Stefano.

This squillo, or ringing voice, rises above entire orchestras and is the most chilling and sublime operatic experience imaginable.

It isn’t just the treble, as it is with tenors. With a piano, it’s all three registers. It’s the ability of the bass to growl beyond mere notes, until it becomes a wolf, an animal. It’s the ability of the treble to ring with extreme brilliance without breaking up or becoming shrill. Most important, it’s the ability of the midrange, the baritone range of the piano, where most human voices fall, to sing out with a steely timbre that cuts to your heart.

In a piano the rise is a moment when the power of the accumulated volume of a piano being played fairly loudly exceeds the sum of its parts and takes off into the stratosphere, astonishing and thrilling

Like the caramel taste of a great Meursault, a rise in a piano comes along once in a decade. No one knows how to ensure its creation. It can’t be finessed or coaxed if it isn’t there from the start.

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The art of great pianos had risen so high by 2013 that Steinways were at their historic peak. Steinway had decided to end the contest between its two locations, Hamburg and New York, by replacing U.S. action parts with the German parts made by the Renner Company, eliminating the complaint that the American action was stiffer than the German.

Just as significant was the thickening of felts on the hammers from 17-pound to 21-pound weights, and the prehardening of the felts in the factory, so the hammers produced a brilliant, singing tone right out of the gate. Cosmetically, the New York piano case itself was brushed with the glossy polyester finish used by the Germans, and the New York wheel casters were swapped for the impressive German double-brass monsters. The only way you can now tell the difference between the American and

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German Steinway is that American piano cases still have a rectangular edge on either side of the keyboard.

So the great pianos are not only the ones from the 1890s or the 1930s but also the Golden Year of 2013.

Tippet Rise has two of these shiny 2013 superSteinways. The polyester finish is the same used by Ferrari. It is glistening but fragile.

The extraordinary Istomin-Horowitz CD-18 was used

by Vladimir Horowitz for his legendary performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which is available on video as well as CD. His good friend Eugene Istomin was the only person

Horowitz would lend the piano to, and Istomin used it for his own legendary recording of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, also with Eugene Ormandy but with Ormandy’s Philadelphia Orchestra, famous for its lush Russian violin section.

After Horowitz died, Istomin bought the piano and used it for 17 years on his famous tours to the small towns of the United States. So many people in North America heard their first classical music concerts from this piano. This was before people had stereos. They had RCA monophonic turntables with the famous “listening dog” horn attached.

Gene Istomin ran the great Casals Festival in Puerto Rico and in Spain for many years with his wife, Casals’s widow, Martha Casals Istomin.

Martha became the artistic advisor of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and has been for many years at the center of the classical world. She was friends with the piano technician for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tali Mahanor, who had traveled with Gene Istomin around the country for many years, maintaining CD-18. It was through our friendship with Tali that Martha heard of Tippet Rise. We had been introduced to Tali by Wu Han, the co-director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Tali is more than a technician; she has been for most of her life the true wizard of every aspect of how music is reproduced by the antique behemoths which to this day are the ultimate barometer of how we experience sound.

Only a few years ago, Martha Istomin made the astonishing decision to let Tippet Rise acquire the great Istomin-Horowitz CD-18, one of the legendary pianos of the last century, and the recognized king of the piano concerto. Many well-known pianists have played it at Tippet Rise in concert and on film;

it has been treated gingerly and lovingly by all of us, in recognition of its history and its immensity. Like a big Stradivarius, CD-18 isn’t for everyone; it takes enormous power to make it shine.

But in recognition of this, Tali Mahanor has provided it with two actions.

The first is the original action, with the original keyboard, which is slightly bigger than a normal keyboard (so you need a big hand to play it). It has a modern American Steinway action and Renner hammers. It is elegant and massive in its power, a piano for rising above orchestras.

The second action has a modern Renner action with standard plastic keys and American hammers. So the sound has immense finesse and the action is easier to play for more mortal pianists. This gives it the feel of a German Steinway, but the intense, neurotic complex harmonies of the American hammers.

We have a Hamburg Steinway as well, last played in Germany by Elisabeth Leonskaja, whose ethereal Schubert sonatas, seeming to float above the audience, were the reason we contacted Arup Engineers to design a hall similar to Snape Maltings, where we had heard the luminous Leonskaja play.

This Hamburg Steinway has steel, power, speed, and is easy to play. Stephen Hough felt it would present the brilliantine surfaces of his own compositions more accurately, and many pianists have chosen it for its ability to perform virtuoso etudes impressively. It is the height of what Liszt would have wanted from a Hungarian Rhapsody or his Totentanz, the frightening dance of death where the piano explodes with Satanic colors.

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Pianists are often judged not by their abilities but by the abilities of the piano they choose. You can’t play Liszt on a Mozart piano, or Beethoven on a Haydn piano. Immaculate, delicate, refined Viennese pianos present filigree and softness with great complexity, but you need a different instrument to raise the devil.

So we have pianos for all seasons, all composers, and all moods. Pianos for angels and for devils.

Two of our pianos date from 1897, shortly after the invention of the modern Steinway; their sound is like Proust’s madeleine, evoking a relatively more meditative world, where instruments were almost human, walls were burled with Circassian walnut wainscoting, and drawing rooms produced sounds like the inside of a violin, multiple layers of aged wood resonating around the divine ratios of an architecture which still remembered the Parthenon, where music meant a soirée in a rococo jewel box specially designed for it. The filigree, the moldings, the niches were not just decorative but today would be called absorbers, diffusors, and reflectors, clever shapes to deflect and augment the many frequencies which have to arrive simultaneously or variously at the ear in order to move us.

We are also lucky to have on these Brahmsian pianos certain innovations devised by Tali, the great magician of the instrument, which change pianos in significant ways, and which we honor as her secret sauce.

These pianos take you back to the day of four-inhand carriages, of exotic fogs that hovered around the Thames and the Seine and infused many of the 80

About Tippet Rise

photos of the day by Atget, Brassai, Man Ray, Marville. They are the sound the world wanted to savor from before the Industrial Revolution, when there were no loud noises, when a chord by Beethoven was the only cataclysm you were likely to hear in your life, before there were bright lights, or planes constantly in the night sky.

A piano being worked on for us by Tali will be the only nine-foot Chickering capable of combining the feather touch which Liszt prized with the deeper frequencies of modern concert mechanisms. It will play scales and arpeggios like the wind, as Chopin intended, but be able to shake the hall with the armageddons of Beethoven. It will allow virtuosic feats performed by Thalberg, Meyerbeer, or Gottschalk to regain their sweep and panache, without sacrificing the cries from the depths which Romantic playing demands. Many musicians who grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s learned to play on their household Chickering: Stephen Hough, Charles Hamlen, myself. We knew the easy action, the bite, and the power of the instruments we beat to death.

So Tippet Rise is piano heaven. We have something for everyone. Pianists sometimes switch pianos at intermission, so a Liszt spectacular can morph into a Schubert soirée on the same night. These are just a few of the tens of thousands of voices which pianos acquire as they mature, and we hope our concerts and videos will continue to illustrate the many shapes that music can assume, like light sparkling off a summer pond.

—Peter Halstead

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PIANO VOICES

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About Tippet Rise

T

he great technician for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tali Mahanor, gives the Lincoln Center pianos names. They are always women’s names: Chantal, Darcelle, Nola, Dorabella.

The 1897 Steinway D she restored for us is called Seraphina. Its baby cousin B from 1897 is Beatrice (after Dante’s love). The Istomin-Horowitz CD-18 was once called Kira. We call the new Hamburg Steinway Véra, after the great Véra Nabokov, without whom her husband, Vladimir, would never have had the time or space to write.

When my teacher Russell Sherman and I flew to Berlin to choose the number two piano at the Berlin Philharmonic for the recording we were making of the Beethoven Concertos with Václav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic, Sherman called the piano Lola Montez. It was sultry, silky, but also treacherous, slippery, insidious.

Pianos have intrinsic natures, deep in their bones. It isn’t just the voicing of the felts on the hammers, or

the way the touch is regulated by the technician. It’s a natural voice they’re born with, something deep inside the iron plate, or buried in the 17 layers of the bent-wood rim, or caught up by the metal bell suspended beneath the soundboard. Each soundboard is also different, and when boards die after many decades, the new board will bring a new identity into being.

Each piano is made exactly the same way with the same parts by the same craftsmen in the same factory in either Hamburg or Queens, and yet one piano will be dull and meandering, and another will be powerful and focused, while a third will be dreamy and poetic.

Pianists are often judged by their pianos, whose sound they can nuance, but whose nature is beyond their control. So pianists will try to choose a brilliant piano if they are playing Liszt, a profound piano for Beethoven, or a singing, amber-throated piano for Schubert or Brahms.

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Viennese pianos have wooden rims, and so rarely have the power to cut through an orchestra with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto. No. 1. Viennese pianos have rounded tones, so each note of a Mozart or Haydn sonata will glisten. But often the harmonics, the tonalities won’t mingle, and so the dialogue between the chords is cut short, making a piano unsuitable for a Rachmaninoff sonata, where the sonorities must pile up into a tsunami, a welter of voices.

Occasionally a piano has everything. This is true of our 2016 New York Steinways, of the IstominHorowitz CD-18 Steinway, of Véra, our Hamburg Steinway, and of Seraphina, our Brahmsian 1897 Steinway. All these pianos are Ds, or concert grand nine-foot Steinways. Each of these pianos has fast, stunning actions, where whatever a pianist dreams comes true a second later on the keyboard. Each has an ideal gamut—that is, the entire range of the keyboard sounds as perfect in every part as a piano can sound: the trebles are intense and biting; the midranges are like tenors or sopranos; the basses are growling, wrapped in vibrating iron bells.

But beyond that, each one is different.

To describe just three of them: The Istomin-Horowitz CD-18 has two actions. The older action has a massive sound and slightly wider keys, and demands enormous muscularity to bring out its waterfalls and chasms. It is like a Bierstadt painting, with Photoshopped, apocalyptic sunsets, immense cataracts spilling over jagged cliffs, boreal forests in which lurk trolls and centaurs. Thar be dragons. This is Horowitz playing the Rachmaninoff 84

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Third Piano Concerto, possibly the most gargantuan, complex, explosive collection of attacks and crescendos, the most grotesque and crenellated cathedral of sound imaginable. You’d better be ready to sustain your fingers for over an hour of trench warfare, of bomb runs, of octaves unlike anything ever written, of lightning scales, endurance tests of staggered chords where all 10 fingers perform at the peak of human potential for more than an hour.

It’s like playing Hamlet: you are always on stage, and every word you speak is fireworks.

The second action is more human: normal, modern-sized keys, a lighter action. Your fingers can relax a bit, and let the piano itself do the singing.

But the beast beneath the hammers is the same: a kraken emerging from the deep sea, the king of the dragons devastating the land, spikes on every scale.

This is a piano to choose when you want to make an entrance, to peal out the great stops of the grand cathedral organ, to pull up a church from beneath the sea. On this piano the gargoyles dance, the gnomes fly, and hell itself breathes forth.

To choose its opposite next: Véra, the elegant, steely virtuoso, its solid brass notes perfectly pitched to resolve any confusion in an étude: every note is clear, sung out, thrown to the far walls. Like a perfectly dressed hussar, or one of the Viennese Lipizzaner stallions, every foot is placed exactly right, every nuance of a note can be phrased and voiced with the most exacting accuracy. Voices can be separated from the crowd of chords, a child soprano can be heard in the middle of the Wagnerian chorus. The sun shines brightly over the entire countryside. Gone are the storms and lightning strikes of

CD-18, and in its place the brisk air of autumn tints the leaves with Chopinesque filigree.

And then the opposite of both Véra and Kira: the murmurs and feather boas, the canons and carriages, the oboes and bassoons of the expressive Seraphina, the odalisque of the drawing room, where samovars scent the air and candlelight tinges a distant tapestry. Anything is possible in the haze that surrounds her bells and strings; more than all our pianos, Seraphina responds instantly to any touch, to every desire. Somewhere children dance around a bandstand in the Prater at dusk, and silverware clinks under the chandeliers in the Blaue Bar of the Hotel Sacher. Where the Habsburg Empire was slowly waltzing its way to war, Hofmannsthal’s distant planets silently falling. The bygone lassitudes of Grillparzer, the salons of the golden houses, the twilight of the Magyars, all of whom had estates of not less than 1,400 acres, reverberate from every note in Brahms, and many measures in Schubert and Schumann.

By 1900 the nobility had retreated into its country estates, and a new middle class had emerged, in whose drawing rooms a piano like Seraphina might have been found. Markets had crashed, the prosperity of the Empire had foundered, and revolution had been in the air for half a century, along with the seeds of National Socialism, directed against exactly

the cultured Jewish society which produced the paintings, sonatas, buildings, and novels by which we remember that era.

So the purpose of Seraphina, built in memory of an era already vanished, was to evoke the past, to keep alive the memory of those idle days in the Viennese woods, of those lost chords in the Biedermeier ballrooms of the Liberal Age. A musician like Brahms was a recidivist, dedicated to the vanishing values which sustained his salary, that kept alive the illusions with which he buttressed his Rhapsodies. Rachmaninoff, too, carried the vanished world with him until, in the pink stucco greenhouses of Hollywood, it disappeared, along with the roots of his genius. Italian opera kept the old world alive well into the 1930s, until the new Russians, like Stravinsky, migrated to America, buried it forever.

Pianos are made for the society which will buy them, and it wasn’t long before the new middle class wanted pianos that invoked Strauss waltzes, and the latest compositions which imitated the sounds of industry, of the airplane, the siren, the railroad. The alpine naiveté, the Gemütlichkeit, the Sehnsucht, the Weltschmerz, all tinged with the premonition of their own demise, was gone. But with Seraphina, singer of Bavarian folk songs, painter of Klimt’s gilt and Kokoschka’s colored chaos, it lives again.

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MY FAVORITE PIANOS

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W

hen you love them all, all pianos become equal.

At that stage, choosing one over the other reflects on us, not on them. To say that any beauty might have permission to pass sentence on a cowering, sensate beast which lives to serve her is to denigrate the skein of secrets, the history of private triumphs, the inner life of dreams, the childhood of monsters, the iceberg which towers beneath its tip in all of us, and in pianos alike. They do not fail us; we fail them.

A pianist once said to me, “Why worry about the concert? Give the piano its head. Let it do the talking. It’s been there before; it knows where to go.”

On the other side is Don Quixote: PARABLE I read how Quixote in his random ride Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose The purity of chance, would not decide Whither to fare, but wished his horse to choose.

For glory lay wherever turned the fable.

His head was light with pride, his horse’s shoes Were heavy, and he headed for the stable.

—Richard Wilbur

Pianos require a certain amount of intervention to direct their innate memories.

But much of a performance rests with the moment itself. Lightning strikes randomly (assuming the electricity is there in the first place). A great concert happens as often in a practice session as onstage.

Music flows in the moment. The novels which we write nightly are often better than the ones we read.

Pianists play differently in every concert. What is a piano to do? They serve fickle masters.

Fortunately, pianos do not talk back, so we can blame everything on them, and they will treat us beautifully tomorrow, or as our moods deserve.

But we all know when there is something special in the air, when the sunset is filled with tropical drinks, when everything—the light, the night, the music, the mood—just clicks. There is more to those moments than any string, any key, or any finger. The great recorded operas of Pavarotti and Sutherland, the recordings of Magdalena Kožená, capture throughout just that sublime moment, forever. Sometimes everyone can feel the shiver in the sky, but at other times you hope that someone in the audience heard what just happened, and that it will change their life, as some musician at some time has changed ours.

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This Music Season at Tippet Rise features

seven weekends of classical chamber music and recitals. Performances take place indoors and outside: within the larch-lined walls of the 150-seat Olivier Music Barn, beneath the Domo and the big Montana sky.

Our fourth season, features new and returning artists, rising stars, established soloists, and ensembles.

We hope you enjoy our summer season as much as we have enjoyed creating it.

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O

ur friend and beloved former artistic advisor Charlie Hamlen was prescient in saying to us before he died that Pedja would be the perfect fit for Tippet Rise.

Pedja is a wonderful, detailed pianist who plays everything from C.P.E. Bach to Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Jonathan Berger. He is the artistic advisor as well to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, and directs a residency at the Banff Centre in Canada called Concert in 21st Century, while maintaining a concert career that encompasses Zagreb, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Lucerne, Melbourne, and Lincoln Center.

His explorations into the synergy between art forms and his love of poetry will help us pursue similar directions at Tippet Rise.

Pedja loves to deny affinities between ancient and modern composers and then present them in such a lucid and revealing light that the very correspondences he denies are slyly backlit.

But of course all the poetry, literature, film, and art which music contains are also in the offing, modestly waiting in the wings for an invitation to the dance.

Pedja embodies a mix of disarming courtliness and wit to which our audiences at Tippet Rise have already affixed themselves.

His Swannlike peregrinations into the shaded gardens of Balkan landscapes and sun-filled country fields of fact and fiction will provide us all with the creative neighborhoods whose esplanades and cafĂŠs we cannot so far imagine, fog-bound coasts and ancient Bosnian houses giving out into surreal kingdoms built from chords alone.

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PEDJA MUZIJEVIC

O U R A RTI S TI C A DV I S O R

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2019 CONCERT

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Friday, July 12, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Gryphon Trio

Saturday, July 13, 11:00 AM The Domo Brandon Patrick George, flute Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin Roman Borys, cello

Saturday, July 13, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Stephen Hough, piano

Friday, July 19, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn St. Lawrence String Quartet

Saturday, July 20, 11:00 AM The Domo Geoff Nuttall, violin Owen Dalby, viola Christopher Costanza, cello

Saturday, July 20, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Julien Brocal, piano

Friday, August 2, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Aristo Sham, piano

Saturday, August 3, 11:00 AM

Saturday, August 3, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn JACK Quartet

Friday, August 9, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Paul Huang, violin Roman Rabinovich, piano Escher String Quartet

Saturday, August 10, 11:00 AM The Domo Danbi Um, violin Paul Huang, violin Pierre Lapointe, viola Adam Barnett-Hart, viola Brook Speltz, cello

The Music at Tippet Rise

Olivier Music Barn

Katie Hyun, violin Gabriel Cabezas, cello Aristo Sham, piano

Saturday, August 10, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Roman Rabinovich, piano Escher String Quartet

SCHEDULE Friday, August 16, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Behzod Abduraimov, piano

Saturday, August 17, 11:00 AM The Domo Rolston String Quartet

Saturday, August 17, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Jenny Chen, piano

Friday, August 23, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn James Austin Smith, oboe Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

Saturday, August 24, 11:00AM The Domo James Austin Smith, oboe Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Anthony Manzo, bass

Saturday, August 24, 3:00 PM Olivier Music Barn Benjamin Beilman, violin Jennifer Frautschi, violin Anthony Manzo, performer Nathan Schram, viola and performer Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello

Saturday, August 24, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Pedja Muzijevic, piano Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Anthony Manzo, bass

Sunday, August 25, 3:00 PM Olivier Music Barn James Austin Smith, oboe Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

Friday, September 6, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Ensemble Connect

Saturday, September 7, 11:00 AM The Domo Ensemble Connect

Saturday, September 7, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Anderson & Roe

*Artists and/or programs subject to change without notice.

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WEEK ONE

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FRIDAY, JULY 12, 6:30 PM

Olivier Music Barn Gryphon Trio

Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin

Roman Borys, cello

James Parker, piano

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1 Allegro

Adagio cantabile

Scherzo: Allegro assai – Trio

Finale: Presto DINUK WIJERATNE: Love Triangle INTERMISSION JOHANNES BRAHMS: Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8

Allegro con brio

Scherzo: Allegro molto Adagio

Finale: Allegro

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1 The sharp opening of Beethoven’s Piano Trio No. 1 announced to the world that a new, important composer had arrived: it was this piece that Beethoven chose to publish as his Op. 1, No. 1, in 1795.

Of course, this did not come as a bolt from the blue.

Beethoven was already known as a young pianist and composer who three years earlier had moved to Vienna from Bonn, the sleepy city of his birth. He had hoped to study with Mozart, but settled in the Austrian capital the year after Mozart’s untimely death, and so went to Haydn instead. Beethoven’s patron, Count Waldstein, sent him off with the words: “you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”

The 22-year-old Beethoven already had aristocratic support, the public’s attention, and a pile of childhood compositions and sketches. He revised and drew from these to create many of his first works in Vienna, sharing them in private performances or through hand-copied manuscripts given to other musicians. The Piano Trio No. 1 began its life in this way, perhaps originating in sketches from Bonn and then honed under Haydn’s tutelage, before a premiere in 1793 by Beethoven and two string-playing friends at the house of Prince Carl Lichnowsky. Two years later, as his reputation grew, Beethoven published the Trio as part of a set of three. He selected it for the place of first importance as Op. 1, No. 1: a mark of arrival as much as a point of departure.

The beginning is confident and lithe—a jolt in the three instruments, a sprint upward in the piano, three pointed chords, and another sprint. A repetition, and then a more melodic closure of the phrase. These ideas fill the whole 96

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Allegro—while the development of small motifs into extended material is a basic technique of Classical style, the concentration of the Trio’s ideas and the variety of their elaboration seem especially Beethoven.

The slow movement, Adagio cantabile, is songlike, beginning with the solitary piano. The violin and cello respond, tentatively filling out the piano’s sonority, before joining in the song themselves and then continuing off in a new direction. The piano brings back the song, but a darkness passes over, and finally the song returns a third time dressed with embellishments.

The Scherzo—meaning “joke”—was a form Beethoven began to favor for his third movements instead of the older, more rustic Minuet. This Scherzo is a teasey diversion, cutting away to a more placid trio section. The joke reprises with a coda that slows to a halt, offering a brief contrast before the next movement starts up again at a fast clip.

The piano calls out inquisitively to begin the Finale, in wide ascending intervals that recall the first movement’s upward sprints. Again, Beethoven builds an entire movement from a few concise ideas: the two notes of the piano’s questions, the violin and cello’s response, and a jaunty second theme. Minutes later the first-movement sprint is brought back, unifying the entire Trio in a quick flash before the piece resolutely closes.

DINUK WIJERATNE (b. 1978) Love Triangle Dinuk Wijeratne is a Canadian composer, conductor, and pianist who was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Dubai. He pursued musical studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in England, then the Juilliard and Mannes schools

in New York, and finally at the University of Toronto. His compositions show the influence of all these experiences, often blending Western classical techniques with other musical traditions. He has worked with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble and appeared widely, including at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center.

Wijeratne wrote Love Triangle in 2013 for the Gryphon Trio. He describes: Love Triangle is not autobiographical, nor is it similar to the many conceptdriven pieces I write. The music evolved rather rhapsodically from two distinctive features: the Middle Eastern-inspired melody heard in the strings at the outset, and the underlying rhythmic pattern inspired by a seven-beat Indian classical “time cycle.” It also attempts to integrate a Western classical sense of structure with three very improvisatory cadenzas from each instrument—the musicians and I are aiming for an effect akin to that glorious “out-oftime”-ness that occurs when an Arabic oud solos over the unyielding fixed groove of the band. There are several other melodic and rhythmic devices that are Middle Eastern and North Indian.

The Gryphon Trio, with their staggeringly diverse résumé of collaborations, are no strangers to music that is about the meeting of cultures, or about blurred boundaries between what sounds improvised and what does not. I was utterly thrilled to have this opportunity to write for them!

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8 Like the Beethoven piano trio that opened this concert, Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 is a youthful work. Or at least so it began: Brahms completed it in January 1854, just months after he was introduced to Robert and Clara Schumann, who were deeply impressed and took him into their musical circle. But the trio we hear today was substantially revised by Brahms in 1889, 35 years later, at the pinnacle of his career. So really it is a work by two Brahmses, separated by three-and-a-half decades of experience.

The Trio No. 1 is also unusual in that it received its first public performances in America—first in New York and then in Boston—where it was heard by an audience for whom Brahms was a young and foreign unknown. These concerts were led by William Mason, an American pianist who studied with Franz Liszt while visiting in Europe.

He came from a musical family, even the musical family in America of the day: he was the brother of Henry Mason, who founded the Mason & Hamlin piano company, and son of Lowell Mason, a composer of well-known hymns and an important advocate for music education. For the New York premiere of the Trio, Mason was joined by the violinist Theodore Thomas and cellist Carl Bergmann, both of whom went on to conduct the New York Philharmonic in its early years.

In Boston, a critic for Dwight’s Journal of Music reviewed the Trio, which had been performed the night after Christmas, 1855: It has some strange and powerful effects, some ingenious combinations, remarkable for a mere boy....It seemed very enterprising, very adventurous, very self-confident, full of bold grasping after ideas, but we were never satisfied that the ideas really were ideas....We felt as if we had been pointed and pulled first this 2019 Summer Season

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way and then that way, where something great was to be seen, until we actually saw nothing. Brahms is still “future” to our humble comprehension.

Apart from a misunderstanding that Brahms was just 15 years old (he was actually 22), the review is actually quite astute: first impressions can have a particular clarity. Though Brahms’s friends, including Clara Schumann, grew fond of the trio, it sat with Brahms uneasily. Decades later, when his publisher Simrock acquired the Trio from another company, the venerable composer decided to revise it for reissue. He wrote to Fritz Simrock: With regard to the refurbished trio, I want to add expressly that while it’s true that the old version is bad, I do not claim that the new version is good!

What you do now with the old one, whether you melt it down or print it anew, is quite seriously all the same to me.

This was an unusual instruction from Brahms, who so often destroyed his drafts and even entire works he found unsatisfactory. It leaves us with two versions of the Trio, though most often, as in today’s performance, musicians choose the revision. It addresses some of the messiness of the original: the musical ideas are concentrated and refined, the movements more organized, and the entire piece is shorter.

The Allegro con brio has the piano introduce the cello in an extended, arching phrase. The violin joins, then a grand arrival leads to a more resolute laying out of the theme. Textures grow active and then a second theme. The ending nears with a distinctive sinking passage, settling into a hushed coda. The last bars again build to a forceful close.

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The Scherzo takes a dry opening and then douses it in liquid pianisism. A new tempo, Meno allegro, introduces a slower melody cut from the same cloth as Brahms’s famous lullaby. The Scherzo returns with a quiet, rather open-ended close.

An earthly prayer in the piano launches the Adagio, answered by distant strings. Gradually the instruments converge and then the color grows saturated—a cello solo, more complex textures, a pulsing bass—until the movement finds its point of greatest depth. The prayer returns, very quiet and transformed.

The Allegro finale starts with a fantastical cello solo (the cello was one of Brahms’s childhood instruments, likely a reason for its prominence in this and other works). Here, Brahms’s youthful grasping still lingers: exuberance struggles to project through nervous tension that never shakes away.

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SATURDAY, JULY 13, 11:00 AM The Domo Brandon Patrick George, flute Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin Roman Borys, cello

JOSEPH HAYDN: Divertimento for Flute, Violin, and Cello in G Major, Hob. IV:7

Allegro Adagio Allegro CLAUDE DEBUSSY: Syrinx for Solo Flute STEVE REICH: Vermont Counterpoint for Flute and Tape MAURICE RAVEL: Sonata for Violin and Cello

Allegro

Très vif Lent

Vif, avec entrain JOSEPH HAYDN: Divertimento for Flute, Violin, and Cello in C Major, Hob. IV:8

Allegro moderato

Poco Adagio

Finale: Presto

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) Divertimento in G Major, Hob. IV:7 Divertimento in C Major, Hob. IV:8 Haydn—the story always goes—worked for the wealthy Esterházy family, writing and directing courtly music as a glorified servant to the princes Paul Anton and Nikolaus I, before the younger Anton I downsized his orchestra and released Haydn from his formal duties in 1790, allowing him to work in Vienna, travel to London, and flourish independently into old age.

That is the picture from a Great Composers book, the “facts you should know” about Haydn, and simplified ones.

By the early 1780s Haydn had developed a sideline writing for the growing commercial market—there was a lot of money in selling new works, or repackaging parts of old ones, or relabeling the music of other composers as one’s own. It was an unregulated world where a composer could sell an “exclusive” piece to multiple publishers, or play a publisher against a private patron for the highest fee. On the other side, unscrupulous firms resold rights to third parties, and the trade in unauthorized editions—for which the composer received nothing—was not unlike music piracy in the early 21st century.

The divertimentos in G and C major were products for this scene. Haydn assembled them in 1786 as two of six divertimentos for the London publisher and noted luthier William Forster Sr. (a commission fulfilled by post five years before Haydn visited London in person). These chamber pieces are Haydn’s first with flute, which was a popular instrument in England for domestic music-making—especially for skilled and talented women who could not publicly perform.

For the first movement of the Divertimento in G Major, Haydn lifted and arranged an aria from his opera Il mondo 102

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della luna (The World on the Moon, a sort of sci-fi comic opera of 1777, also absent from the generic Haydn story). The Adagio and parts of the finale are set in a minor key, a bit unusual for a light divertimento.

The Divertimento in C Major begins with a gallant dance, while the lyrical second movement also takes from Il mondo della luna. The Presto finale is again danceable rather than singable, perhaps the essential distinction within these pieces.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Syrinx for Solo Flute This is the piece that launched a thousand solo flute pieces, a genre that hardly saw a new entry in the 150 years between Telemann and Debussy. In that time, the flute transformed from a wooden instrument with just a few keys into a sleek, often silver item with full keywork. And so one of the oldest instruments became a totem of modernity.

More pieces followed: in 1936 came Varèse’s Density 21.5 (titled literally after the density of platinum), and by the late 20th century a flute solo was practically a requirement for “serious” composers.

But back to the basics: in Greek mythology, and as told in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Pan pursued the nymph Syrinx, who turned herself into a thicket of reeds by the water’s edge to escape. Pan cut the reeds to make his pipes, and that was the end of the nymph.

Debussy wrote Syrinx as incidental music for Gabriel Mourey’s Psyché, a dramatic poem intended for the stage that premiered in 1913. The scene in question does not feature Syrinx, but rather two other nymphs (Pan knew many) called L’Oreade and La Naiade, while they overhear

his flute in the distance. However Debussy’s original prompt might have been slightly different: the playwright also suggested the piece should be “the last melody Pan plays before his death,” a different scene.

Truth be told, Debussy didn’t consider this an important work, and certainly didn’t expect it to jumpstart the modern flute repertoire. To him it was a one-off: his manuscript is lost, and it was only published posthumously in 1927 from a secondary source. Even the title is editorial: Debussy simply called it “Piece for Psyché ” or Flûte de Pan, with the publisher choosing Syrinx later.

Its two-and-a-half minutes are evocative, filled with color, and open-ended enough to give the performer wide space for interpretation. The beginning is reminiscent of the flute solo that opens Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (1894), but instead of blooming into an orchestral poem, Syrinx wanders off into solitary musings and elaborations.

Avoiding a conventional form, the opening measure comes back three times, each time farther apart (and once an octave lower), always with a unique, improvisatory continuation.

STEVE REICH (b. 1936) Vermont Counterpoint for Flute and Tape Steve Reich is one of the two best-known modern American composers associated with the style known rather broadly, and occasionally derisively, as minimalism. While the word might suggest sparseness—as it does in the worlds of visual arts and design—it is more closely associated in music with repetition and periods of stasis, not necessarily to the exclusion of complex textures even verging on the ornate.

Reich was born in New York in 1936 and as a child traveled between New York and California where his divorced parents lived. He studied philosophy at Cornell University and then music at Juilliard and Mills College, where he grew interested in electronic music, especially involving prerecorded tapes. Ghanaian drumming was another major influence, revolutionizing his sense of rhythm and pulse.

While the other best-known American minimalist, Philip Glass, grounded his work in the craft of Renaissance counterpoint as filtered through the French solfège tradition, Reich’s counterpoint in a piece like Vermont Counterpoint is quite different. He builds canons, he says, “between short repeating melodic patterns by substituting notes for rests and then playing melodies that result from their combination.”

The generative principal here is common in Reich’s work: musical elements are put through some process that produces more extended stretches of music, almost mechanically, with little composerly intervention on that level.

Like a computer program, you set it up and then it runs— though this analogy holds more strongly for Reich’s early “Phase” pieces of the 1960s than in his “Counterpoint” pieces of the ‘80s. In Vermont Counterpoint, rather than running one process through to the end, he says the “resulting melodies or melodic patterns then become the basis for the following section as the other surrounding parts in the contrapuntal web fade out.” In other words, the major inflections come at the transitions.

But for a live audience, the instrumentation and technological realization of Vermont Counterpoint might—at least at superficially—be its most striking aspect. A single performer plays flute, piccolo, and alto flute, changing between the three instruments while backed by 10 other flutes on a prerecorded tape. Reich explains: Starting in 1982, I began my “Counterpoint” series with Vermont Counterpoint, written for Ransom Wilson in response to his original 2019 Summer Season

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request for a flute concerto—which I was not interested in writing since its conception of soloist with accompaniment was not something I have any attraction for.…The overall texture is made up entirely of multiples of the same timbre, which texture highlights the overall contrapuntal web with its many resulting patterns.

MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Sonata for Violin and Cello Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello might reasonably be thought of as his second string quartet, missing two instruments. While string duos are often lightweight pedagogical works, this piece is a tour-de-force, the thinned instrumentation jacked up with blazing string crossings, piercing harmonics, and snapping pizzicatos.

Still, Ravel embraces a kind of bareness in his materials, lending an all-around sense of doing a lot with a little. “I think this sonata marks a turning point in my career,” he wrote. “The music is stripped to the bone. The allure of harmony is rejected and more and more there is a return of the emphasis on melody.”

Begun in 1920, following the First World War—in which the 40-year-old composer had volunteered to serve as a transport driver after being turned down as a pilot—the Sonata leaves behind Romantic lushness and blur, restoring edges and angles. But it also looks backward in its dedication to the memory of Claude Debussy, who died in 1918. In life, the two composers had a mixed relationship. Debussy, who was 13 years older, admired Ravel, but was at times competitive and protective of his own prestige. Ravel, on the other hand, was heavily influenced 104

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by Debussy, but wanted to be heard as a unique voice and not as a follower of a style. A century later, each of their concerns would appear nullified.

Ravel finished the Sonata in 1922, at first simply calling it “Duo,” a name still used informally. In the first movement, the cello plays higher than the violin in delicate passages, an unnatural inversion of ghostly color. Then as the cello descends to its bass range, it feels like a tug down to earth. The Scherzo is drawn largely in pizzicato—something of a second-movement tradition between Ravel and Debussy, also found in both their string quartets. In the Duo, however, the effect is not so good-spirited and instead feels acerbic and insincere, rising to vaguely threatening.

The Andante begins with the lonesome cello, then forces a growing melody between the two instruments—tinged with dissonance—into a grotesque climax, followed by doubt and lingering regret. The last movement, Vif, avec entrain (lively, with spirit), picks up threads from the Scherzo, tangling them into knots, cutting them apart, and tying them back into non sequiturs.

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SATURDAY, JULY 13, 6:30 PM

Olivier Music Barn Stephen Hough, piano

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (trans. BUSONI): Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004 FERRUCIO BUSONI: Berceuse élégiaque, Op. 42 FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, “The Funeral March”

Grave — Doppio movimento Scherzo — Più lento

Marche funèbre

Finale: Presto INTERMISSION STEPHEN HOUGH: Sonata No. 4 (Vida Breve) FRANZ LISZT: Funérailles, S. 173 LISZT: Bagatelle sans tonalité (Bagatelle without Tonality), S. 216a LISZT: Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514

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Introduction from Stephen Hough

ABOUT THE PROGRAM PETER HALSTEAD

People are often reluctant to talk about death. Indeed, there is a superstition about the number four in Chinese culture because it shares the same spoken sound as that dark D word. But in the world of the arts—in painting, literature, and music—death has always been a central subject resulting in the most exalted and inexhaustible expression. Indeed, the omnipresent image of a dead man hanging on a cross is arguably the foundational icon of Western culture.

This is a concert about mourning, death, and the afterlife.

In this recital I wanted to explore some pieces which have this theme as part of their identity or inspiration. Chopin’s “Funeral March” sonata and Liszt’s Funérailles speak for themselves—and that the latter was written in the same month as the Polish composer’s death may or may not have been an accident. Bach’s Chaconne was apparently written in memory of his first wife; Busoni’s Berceuse acquired the subtitle “the man’s lullaby at his mother’s coffin” when he orchestrated it. My Fourth Piano Sonata takes a more abstract if still melancholy inspiration from such ideas: life’s brevity, a “sonata” which ends sooner than expected. And in Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes we face the Devil himself—the cause of death and its terrors in traditional Christian devotion: the final fear for the final hour.

Chopin mourns his tuberculosis in the “Funeral March” sonata.

Death: the only certainty in every life; the final piece on everyone’s recital program. Ah, but what about the encores?

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When Stephen, Charlie Hamlen, Cathy and I sat in a fine New York restaurant with a good bottle of wine and an evening of verbal and vinous festivities in front of us, which of us thought that in a short time we would have one another, because of Charlie, but not Charlie?

Charlie, you live on in our memories, in the music and warmth that you brought us, in the thousands of recordings you made possible. As you watch us from above, so we raise our eyes with the music to you tonight.

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A chaconne is a mourning dance, in this case for Bach’s wife, who was dead when he came back from a three-month tour.

The Berceuse élégiaque is a lament for Busoni’s mother, in which she looks back at us and describes what she sees. Her vision radiates enervation; she is tired, and lacks any ability to change things; her only power is the aridity of her vision.

Liszt’s Funérailles is a dirge for Chopin, as well as for the friends Liszt lost in the Hungarian Uprising of 1848. Its terrifying atonal beginning hints at arid spaces, a prediction of the enharmonic afterlife to follow the Romantic era.

Liszt’s Bagatelle without Tonality, unpublished for 80 years, portends Schoenberg. It outlines the anxiety and loss of structure which Stravinsky described in The Rite of Spring and Ravel described in La valse. All three works are nightmare glimpses into the wasteland of World War I. Two of them anticipate this looming spiritual devastation.

Only music can present the bleak landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich with such charm. Stephen’s programming becomes itself an art form, sharing these evolving and mystical insights into ourselves with seamless agility.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) trans. FERRUCCIO BUSONI (1866–1924) Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004 Ferruccio Busoni was one of the great pianists of history, because he was also a composer and conductor and brought

not only diversity but also an enormous maturity to his virtuosity. Samuel Beckett said of Proust’s characters that they were like giants buried in the ages, touching the past and the future at the same time. Busoni was like that. He transcribed for piano some of Bach’s choral preludes, the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and a vast arrangement of Bach’s incomplete final fugue from The Art of the Fugue, called the Fantasia contrappuntistica.

But he also transcribed Liszt, Mozart, and even Schoenberg. Busoni was friends on the one hand with Schnabel and Sorabji, and on the other with Varèse and Schoenberg. He wrote atonal music, and taught composition to the witty and underappreciated cabaret composer Kurt Weill.

So what he brought to Bach’s monumental Chaconne was more than just Bach, and more than bravura. He captures the orchestral splendor of this cathedral of a piece, from its meditative recitative to its organlike summits. His use of octaves and scales is only what Bach would have done, had Bach had a modern piano. Busoni understands the concept of organ stops—that is, the ability to play on pipes that sound like flutes, violins, reeds, a celeste, the oboe, the bombarde, a clarinet, the diapason, and the giant bass bourdon. Bach’s own organ at the Thomaskirche was a typical Baroque organ with only about 63 stops (knobs that you pull out to unblock or unstop the attached pipe to create a specific sound). Busoni certainly pulls out all the stops and finds at the end of 31 variations and the D-minor storm a simple, clear day.

The great miracle is that Bach originally assembled an entire orchestra, an organ, the entire spectrum of a concert piano, on the four strings of a violin.

Bach wrote the Chaconne sometime around 1720. Busoni transcribed it in 1891 and 1892. He spent 30 years transcribing almost everything Bach wrote (for voice, violin, organ, and orchestra). Busoni wrote a 36-page book on the specific correlatives he used to transcribe Bach’s organ

pieces. As with the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, his building of crescendos is an effect made possible only by the pedal and by the sotto voce of tone necessary to begin such vast set-ups as subtly as possible.

Busoni was inspired by the thought that this was a requiem for Bach’s wife, Maria Barbara, as Bach may have added it later to the Partita and it is far longer than any of the other movements. This is no dance; it is a dirge, of magisterial languor. In Bach’s day, a chaconne was the dance of a grief-stricken mourner; so it was consistent with both the Buddhist ecstasy of accepting stoically the arc of life and death and the Romantic concept of emoting (long before Romanticism appeared around 1789: Alfred de Vigny said that Romanticism was conceived between battles, between the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars). Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1770) was the first and possibly the most seminal of the initial models, combining as it did nature, traveling, and the juvenile concept of ending it all.

It was easy for Busoni in retrospect to accentuate the hidden romantic concepts conceived by Bach: for instance, the recurring fall of the melody down a diminished seventh became quite popular later in Liszt’s tone poems, such as in Mazeppa, and even in the vocal lines of Philip Glass operas. William Kimmel has written of this sinking (and then rising) motif in his article “The Phrygian Inflection and the Appearances of Death in Music”: From earliest times the spiral gestalt has appeared along with the labyrinth as a symbol of transformation of the life and death cycle: generation-growth-decay-death-rebirth or regeneration. The ascending clockwise spiral is associated with creative power, growth, and life; the descending counterclockwise spiral with decay, destruction, and death. The combination of the two, the double spiral, symbolizes the perpetual transformation from life to death and from death to life.

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The serious intonations of the melody are like bells tolling, an effect which fascinated Busoni (along with Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, and Mompou). The piece is schizophrenic: Baroque in its lower Gregorian-like melody, and Romantic in its wandering descant above. Below is solid, sacred Bach; above is distracted, wandering, lost Busoni.

The concept of the Wanderer was popularized both by Goethe and by the painter Caspar David Friedrich.

Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) inspired both of them, and later Mary Shelley and Oscar Wilde (Maturin was his great-uncle).

As Robert Freeman wrote in The Guardian of Melmoth: Melmoth is a gothic matryoshka of fictions inside one another, and the common thread is the Wanderer, moving through every level, never present but always there—spoken of in whispers and hearsay. He is terrifying in his absence, moving through a Daedalian nightmare of narrative strands that twine into one another.

This is a very good description of the Chaconne.

The concept of the slow dirge gives the piece the largesse it needs to add details to its theme without becoming frenetic. The fact that it is the most personal of confessions has led to its being transcribed by an enormous number of great artists: Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Segovia— even Balanchine, who put it in a ballet.

Busoni, like Liszt, was an intellectual and had to embody philosophies in the passion of the notes. As Liszt turned to the church to vindicate his unholy talent, Busoni turned to Bach, to cleanse himself of the “amoral” music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. So the Chaconne is a recidivist step into religion, as Rachmaninoff ’s use of bells and Tatar 110

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harmonies harked back to Glinka and the folk roots of Russian music, maybe especially because of its disintegration under the Bolsheviks.

This was the period during which Brahms was writing his nostalgic love songs to Clara Schumann, the Intermezzi.

There was a certain wistful invocation of the past in Busoni’s obsession with the safety of Bach during an era that saw the emergence of Stravinsky. Interestingly, during this time Busoni was living in Boston, and was no doubt nostalgic himself for the rigors of European formalism.

As Liszt had done with the Transcendental Études, Busoni perfected and simplified the difficulties of the Chaconne over four different editions.

BUSONI Berceuse élégiaque, Op. 42 In memoriam Anna Busoni, née Weiss, d. October 3, 1909 Busoni later adapted this delicate elegy, originally written for piano, for orchestra. Today it is mainly performed in the orchestral version.

It was performed during the last concert that Mahler conducted before he died.

The orchestral version was subtitled “Des Mannes Wiegenlied am Sarge seiner Mutter” (The Man’s Lullaby at his Mother’s Coffin). It had a further inscription: “The child’s cradle rocks, the hazard of his fate reels; life’s path fades, fades away into the eternal distance.”

Endlessly sad and gorgeous, it is not as atonal as people would characterize it, because such unique pieces don’t fall into any cubbyhole, although we want to reduce them and forget them.

Its gestures are mild, like driving by a sunny ocean in an air-conditioned car, hermetically sealed against disruption, agony. The harmonies end all too often benignly.

Not as strident as Liszt’s Czárdás, or Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke, or Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, which was written in the same year.

Although Busoni was friends with the new wave of German iconoclasts, he chose his own path.

This is possibly the Isle of the Fortunate Dead, a seascape removed from sensation, ethereal, beyond anything human.

It is possibly the way the dead see the world, from behind a windshield, all passion removed, although the ineffable remains.

It is a nameless experience. The world here isn’t brooding, or morose, or negative. It is Buddhist, resolved, its problems and harmonies solved. It needs no help from us.

It could be a sacred piece, except that the familiar harmonies of the church are missing. This is religion without a god, without a church. All it has is indefinable scope. As such, it is Platonic, without a body, an essence which has lost all its human attributes. It is sad, because Anna has died. But it is also joyous. Her scares are gone.

There is no plosive, no sudden exclamation: everything is smooth, accepted. It is almost claustrophobic, as if the narrator is paralyzed, trapped in an inert body, with his mind unconcerned, wandering into the sky.

So in a way it grieves not just for Busoni’s mother but for the loss of music itself, its loss to encroaching German schools of disappointment and misery after the First World War. It is a work of great genius because it is entirely original. It was too perfect to be copied. Like the music of Chopin or the poetry of Dylan Thomas, it couldn’t be branded or reduced to a formula, and so it was to have no imitators, no supporting coterie of similar chords. It would be forgotten, one of those lonely, indescribable, celestial epiphanies with no past and no future.

We are very fortunate to be able to walk in its private fields for the 11 minutes or so during which we hear the music of another world.

But that other world isn’t some primeval jungle we are spying on: the dead are watching us. We are the subject of their lazy speculation. The music we hear is a description of our lives, seen by benevolent and tired phantoms.

The orchestral version is scored in its middle for tubular bells, which ring quietly behind the violins. A gong at the end accepts Anna into the beyond, and the piece fades away. Passion is avoided, for the modern passions of resignation and even surrender.

The music of the future here brings an insight that hasn’t compromised with any modern system—not with atonality, or a 12-tone series, not with the easy angst of Berg or the later German Expressionist discordances.

This is what music could have been like if it wasn’t partitioned into competing kingdoms: the anxious mathematical void of Schoenberg, Berg, and Stockhausen, and the luxurious, ponderous, Proustian fog of Stravinsky and Mahler.

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FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35, “The Funeral March” Chopin wrote the Funeral March first, and then added the other movements around it. The March was written on the anniversary of the November Uprising in Poland, and it is Chopin’s mourning for Poland. Liszt thought it sounded like “a nation in mourning, lamenting its own death.” Chopin saw a cadaver rise from the piano before he began the March at a concert once; he had seen the same apparition rise from the piano during the difficult winter at the Chartreuse in Mallorca. Robert Graves, who lived on Mallorca and knew all the gossip, claimed it was George Sand’s daughter, Solange, who detested Chopin and scared him by dressing as a phantom monk and hiding behind the piano. Chopin went to a doctor, who ruled that for the visitations to stop he should discontinue any physical contact with George Sand.

The other three movements are variations on the Funeral March.

Anton Rubinstein called the fourth movement, coming after the Funeral March, “the wind over the grave.” This was a natural progression from the Funeral March and is similar to the much shorter Prelude, Op. 28, No. 14, also written in 1839.

Rather than making harmonic changes with chords, Chopin breaks the chords into arpeggios and changes the direction of the harmonies by using one note, which seems discordant but is immediately revealed to be the beginning of a modulating chord, whose other notes follow immediately. Thus in both pieces he achieves four times the density than if he had just used chords. The notes oscillate between the pinky and thumb, with the inner fingers handling the rest of the chord, so the piece quivers towards its conclusion like candlelight.

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By having both hands play the same notes an octave apart, he achieves a Gothic heaviness, different from his usual lilting melodies accompanied by agreeable harmonies in the bass. Such preludes were used at the time as improvisations leading to a similar but larger piece. But here, in the fourth and last movement, the introduction has no goal: it introduces only itself, and it is gone before anyone can begin to understand it. It is Chopin imagining his ghost returning.

The vengeful wind which follows his burial is Chopin’s wraith flitting through the olive trees and pines.

The introduction to the first movement, marked Grave, has slow and portentous octaves which presage the Funeral March, three movements later. The first movement could almost be a variation on the Funeral March theme. This variation was written two years after the March, which gave Chopin sufficient time to come up with something worthy of it. As the March uses its famous three-note theme, the first movement uses those same three notes in a frenetic hurry, rather than the slow lament of the March.

Chopin placed the first two movements before the March, so they both have an ominousness which anticipates the corpse (Chopin). Mozart wrote his own Requiem; the Second Sonata is the dirge Chopin wrote for himself. He was deathly ill in Mallorca, and the rooms in the Charterhouse were damp, unfurnished, and unheated, with a dreary view out into the scrub. Sand wrote: We felt like prisoners, far from any enlightened help or productive sympathy.…

Rains, torrents, swamps, quickset hedges, ditches, all bar the path in vain; one does not stop for such trifles, because, of course they are part of the road. So you are left to contemplate the scenery either in expectation of death or in hope of a miracle.

The second movement, the Scherzo, is driven, and very similar in theme to Beethoven’s E-flat minor interlude in the second movement of his Sonata No. 4, Op. 7 (1797). Although Chopin claimed to be influenced only by Bach, his Scherzo has much more in common with Beethoven, and with the Mannheim Rocket form which Beethoven learned in and used in many pieces, such as his Sonata No. 1, Op. 2. The driving minor theme is an angry hammering at the same notes as the March, which then morph into a series of lovely major chords which ascend the piano, mollifying the anger. As with the Grave opening gesture, octaves feel their way down into the depths of the angry theme.

there is another fugato, this time energetic and rhythmic. The next climax places the fifth of the motivic cells center stage in a sudden passionate outburst where we hear it more clearly as a quote from the popular French chanson “En Avril a Paris,” made famous by Charles Trenet. The final section allows all the cells to take on a whirling, anarchic life of their own, leading to a headlong conclusion, the opening page’s hazy questioning answered with six irate octaves at the bottom of the keyboard.

A meditative second section in the second movement is similar to the middle berceuse theme of the Funeral March. Both lullabies are woven from the same notes as the mournful and angry motives, as if to affirm that the human genome is both Jekyll and Hyde. “It should be a house of the dead,” Chopin said of the opening motif of the Scherzo, in B-flat minor.

I like subtitles. Vida Breve has no reference to Manuel de Falla’s piece of the same name but rather is meant to evoke the melancholy of life’s short duration as well as to prepare the listener for a sonata lasting only around 10 minutes.

The Second Sonata is also in B-flat minor, a key that signified death and unearthly phenomena to Chopin.

FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886) Funérailles, S. 173 STEPHEN HOUGH (b. 1961) Sonata No. 4 (Vida Breve) Stephen Hough writes: This piece comprises an assemblage and manipulation of five tiny motivic cells lasting a few seconds each. After a page of doodling, we hear them lined up in a slow, expressive fugato. This builds up to a climax restating the opening improvised whisper in shouting octaves at the top of the piano after which

Chopin died on October 17, 1849, a few months before Liszt wrote his funeral march. In it, he pays homage to the octave bass of Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise, massing the notes to a point of unbearable pain, as John Luther Adams has used sheer volume to induce a kind of Inuit sweat lodge ecstasy. As anyone who has ever been to a rock concert knows, sound pressure levels release a kind of dopamine.

As Alan Walker points out in his definitive Chopin (published in 2018), “Liszt once told his Weimar masterclass that in the lead-back to the main theme [of the Polonaise] one should hear the rumble of distant cannon fire, ‘as if the passing cavalry a few moments earlier [the famous octaves] had conjured up recollections of a distant battle.’”

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The octaves are the “muffled guns” of the Vienna Uprising of October 1848, the Spring of Nations, a year fraught with dissent and not a little chaos throughout Europe, much of it guaranteed by the Habsburg policy of not taxing the nobility while raising taxes on the peasants. The pianist Ernst von Dohnányi felt that October 6 was a day that would live in infamy for all Hungarians.

Walker mentions that Chopin’s octaves change key to D-sharp major, “the extreme end of the tonal universe,” and Liszt understood this end-of-the-world sensation in protesting Chopin’s death with this disruptive and angry ode.

Liszt’s piece is an angry reaction as well to the hanging of 13 Hungarian generals who had fought in Hungary’s War of Independence against Austria in 1848, as well as the personal loss of Prince Felix von Lichnowsky and the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Lajos Batthyány. Karl Alois Lichnowsky was a patron of both Beethoven and Mozart. Felix Lichnowsky was a great friend to Liszt, Marie d’Agoult, and Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein, traveling with them on concert tours and holidays, hosting them on his three estates. His death was one of the undeserved ignominies of the revolution. It is absurd that Alan Walker says that the piece has nothing to do with Lichnowsky or with Chopin, both of whom died within weeks of its composition—Chopin, Liszt’s friend, who is invoked in most of the piece; Lichnowsky, who was Liszt’s great supporter.

Funérailles is the seventh movement of the cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (Poetic and Religious Harmonies).

The triumphant march at the end is a realization of Liszt’s concept that revolution is ultimately about freedom, liberation.

The piece has many ingredients: the Hungarian folksongs of the Magyar dalok, from which the rhapsodies emerged; the hallucinatory modes of Gregorian chant, which were to lure Liszt his entire life towards the spiritual and churchly 114

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aspects of music; and maqam, the Arabic rules for composition, whose modal scales and microtones underlie the adhans, the stark calls to prayer of the muezzin. The dissonant timpani of the opening, conveyed by widely spaced notes on the piano, invoke the tritones which Maurice Jarre used for the desert theme in Lawrence of Arabia.

Moorish themes in Russian architecture are well known, but less so the subtle interweaving of Moorish musical ideas throughout Slavic culture, as exemplified by Mussorgsky’s “Baba Yaga,” Balakirev’s Islamey and Tamara, or Ivanoff ’s three Moorish melodies. Folk music is a highly sensitive sponge of nationalist themes, which recur throughout various societies.

Liszt never mentioned the debt that Funérailles owes to Chopin. Although he intended it partly as homage, it may be that he was competing, showing the world that he could do Chopin, only darker, and maybe better. That chest-beating on Chopin’s grave may have struck Liszt ultimately as insensitive. And finally, Liszt was a sensitive, compassionate, loyal friend to all the composers (such as Chopin and Schumann) who privately belittled him. It was Liszt’s cross to bear that his early brilliance defined his entire life, although he rapidly matured beyond it. I had an aunt like that. She would never let you forget that wrong note. Liszt had an entire continent of such aunts, while he worked steadfastly to edify all of them, even if posthumously. But Liszt never doubted himself. As Oliver Hilmes has posited in Franz Liszt, the composer wore his many masks with the humility of the abbé that he was. But the misunderstandings continue.

Liszt’s exuberance with his material is often denigrated as immaturity and braggadocio. But, as my wife, Cathy, points out, his music is charged with sheer invention, an irrepressible largesse. (Liszt’s motto was “la génie oblige.”)

Military trumpets interrupt the initial theme, which is beginning to expand beyond the piano. One of the slow

Magyar lassans—used in the 3rd, 7th, 13th, 14th, 17th, and 19th rhapsodies, and in the midsection of “Mazeppa”— turns the pace meditative, segueing into a reminiscence of a Chopin nocturne, edged with the tension of the Liszt sonata. As the nocturne fades out, the “Heroic Polonaise” octaves begin and build into the syncopated lassan motif, which fades into the nocturne, followed one last time by a brief recurrence of the octave theme before the piece ends with three separated staccato notes, as does the Liszt sonata.

LISZT Bagatelle sans tonalité (Bagatelle without Tonality), S. 216a Liszt here anticipates Schoenberg by some 25 years.

Bagatelle without Tonality wasn’t published until 1955. His ode to Faust doesn’t celebrate Goethe’s text or the merrymaking of “The Dance at the Village Inn” so much as the underlying voids of both. Faust has sold his soul to the Devil. He has no future. He is damned, no matter what he has done. He must wander in the desert, much like Christ.

He has no home, and no home key. This is a dirge for Liszt himself, who, like Paganini, sold his soul to the Romantic era, to the audience, for applause, and is now doomed to pay the price for his youthful exuberance, in perpetuity.

Bagatelle without Tonality, which might be an anticipation of Schoenberg, is in fact simply a harmonically ambiguous waltz without a key, and arguably the first intentionally atonal piece in history. A bagatelle is an inconspicuous little bit of nothing, a trinket, a bauble, a cheap piece of fake jewelry. Couperin and Beethoven were famous for the musical kind, and Saint-Saëns, Bartók, and Ligeti wrote notable ones.

Liszt may have intended this as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz, so it has a waltz format and is very similar in its theme to the Mephisto Waltz No. 1.

The theme is also reminiscent of Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre (1874), which must have been the inspiration for this fragment. Liszt must have admired the keyless, homeless harmonics (or lack thereof) in Saint-Saëns’s Devil theme, which makes perfect sense for the Devil: he is atonal, an angel without a heaven, a prince without a throne. What is hell but the lack of a home? Even Mozart’s idea of hell in his opera Don Giovanni is chromatic waves.

Atonality, as in the Bagatelle, can be thought of as an extension of chromaticism.

You can even hear the beginning of Bernstein’s “Maria” in the tenth measure. As Liszt struggles to find a key, Tony struggles for words to describe Maria.

The main waltz theme is almost Spanish, a “turn” or complex appoggiatura around one note. Liszt being Liszt, this simple theme then runs around the keyboard. Atonality is not supposed to be this much fun.

You can almost hear one of Bizet’s toreadors pirouetting in front of the bull, as the “turn” theme lands on different notes, experimenting as to which one is best. You might do this in an improvisation or in composing a piece, and Liszt had the brilliant idea to keep all the rough drafts and make them part of the final product. The chords all work to increase the tension, however, until Liszt loses interest or is overcome with emotion and has to stop. So multiple meanings (Gottfried Weber’s Mehrdeutigkeit) are possible when a piece has no home key. Anything goes.

Diminished arpeggios zip up the keyboard, a familiar trick Liszt uses all the time, but here he puts spaces between them. They are like the attempts of bats to fly, always interrupted. This is a cadenza without a place to go, without a theme to improvise on.

The main “appoggiatura” theme returns, and becomes a kind of will-o’-the-wisp, frequently used by Liszt and Mussorgsky to suggest demonic fairies. This is a chance to 2019 Summer Season

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see how a composer puts together bits and pieces to make a work complete. In this case, Liszt hasn’t finished it into the kind of étude he might’ve written in his youth, but that makes it all the more modern and interesting. Artists came to realize that the well-made play wasn’t in fact true to life, and Zola’s and Verdi’s realism were the beginnings of fragmentation of plot devices, new ways to approach the re-creation of experience.

Although the piece might have seemed chaotic at the time, today we can accept it just as it is without any sense of its being unusual. Music has come a long way, even if we’re not aware of having been brought along with it.

At the end, the piece climbs up in staccato notes with rests between them, exactly as Liszt does in his Gnomenreigen (Dance of the Gnomes), but he just leaves it hanging there without coming to a conclusion or a finale. A piece without a coda is another wonderful, evasive schoolboy trick: it’s even more brilliant (and a lot easier) not to have a brilliant coda. I notice that modern screenplays use this trick a lot, when the hero says, “I should’ve thought of something clever to say, but I didn’t.” This is the Hollywood way to fake a clever conversation, or at least to think that you’ve faked it.

The main theme, marked Scherzando, alternates between F sharp and F natural, suggesting a traditional oscillation between major and minor modes, similar to his Sleepless!

Question and Answer! piece, where the minor is the question and the major is the answer.

This oscillation between major and minor occurs throughout Rachmaninoff ’s music as a traditional Russian melodic trick, as in his Prelude in E Minor, Op. 32, No. 10, and in the third movement of his Piano Concerto No. 3. It is also used in Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra as a kind of “ohoh” moment, and has become a staple of science-fiction film music as well. The change from major to minor is so wrenching that it is a good substitute for a sinking feeling, for a traumatic experience, for a sudden emotional reversal.

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The pauses, or rests, between his Spanish outbursts or dance steps are also the pauses natural to the waltz melody, the oom-pah-pah where one of the beats is slightly delayed, or “pulled,” in a Viennese waltz. Liszt has exaggerated that slight pause as an entire full stop. When you put the stops and starts together, you get the waltz rhythm, even without its really being there. So it is also a waltz without a waltz.

Modernity has figured out that the cleverest kind of art is no art at all, like the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, who rented a space but forgot to do the paintings for it, so he left the walls blank and got great reviews. Not so much reviews as obituaries.

LISZT Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514 Liszt did not use Goethe’s Faust as a source. But the Faust legend originated with the lost German Faustbuch (1587), which inspired Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1588), the “inspiration” in turn for the hapless, watered-down Faust (1836) of the decidedly un-philosophic Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau, in which Faust and the Devil chance upon a wedding celebration. Mephistopheles woos the townspeople with his fiddle while Faust dances with a young girl; together, they spin off into the forest, where the singing of the nightingale is heard through the open doors. Romeo and Juliet have their first argument about whether it’s the nightingale or the lark they’re listening to: that is, “What just happened?” The nightingale was Elizabethan code for having been up all night (dot-dot-dot).

Liszt based his Faust Symphony (1854) on Lenau, and wrote many other Faustian pieces, as well as a Faust polka and four Faust waltzes, among them the two-episode

Procession by Night and The Dance at the Village Inn, meant to be performed after the Faust Symphony, which Liszt would frequently do, to show he could outplay an orchestra with his piano. Of this devilish evening, the Dance alone has remained popular. Liszt originally composed an ending that fades away with the nightingale (a flute in the orchestral version), but thought better of it and added the well-known five final virtuosic displays.

The piece begins with the Devil’s (or Paganini’s) violin being tuned. Liszt had stated that he wanted to be the Paganini of the piano when he wrote his Paganini études in 1838. (He later revised them in 1851.)

Liszt enjoys this tuning so much that he repeats it. He then uses octaves to build up to the chords which announce something is going to happen. Note that Chopin used the same kind of beginning for his Grande valse brillante in E-flat major, Op. 18 (1833) and extended this opening even more for the Valse brillante in A-flat major, Op. 34, No. 1 (1834). So it was in the air.

Liszt uses even more suspense. He makes the introduction a wild ride even before the beginning of the theme.

One final tune-up, and the theme surprises us, coming so quickly this time. But then the theme wanders back to its own introduction, which so interests Liszt that he keeps figuring out new introductions, letting the actual waltz sit waiting in its chair like the boys in dance school, clustered on one side of the room.

Octaves climb towards a possible waltz, but then Liszt uses downward-falling arpeggios to mimic the introduction of Chopin’s Grande valse brillante. Then a sudden glissando up the entire keyboard leads immediately into the Waltz again.

A brief spot of dancing, and then the introduction takes over again, with its brilliant rapidly descending arpeggios, which could be interpreted as dance moves but obviously

mean that Liszt was still paying homage to Chopin.

Rapid passagework (scales and improvisatory fingerwork) lead to more octaves.

Once again we are back to the introduction. Giant chords seem to suggest an ending, but again, before you can catch your breath, the waltz theme has broken out.

It soon fades away, as couples leave the inn to walk off into the woods, where the real waltz begins, in a different key, the bucolic and restful key of G-flat major. Small discordances here and there suggest the earlier chaos in the bar, like embers flaring up now and then in a dead fire.

Liszt here “pulls” the tempo, as any Viennese waltz would do, slowing down on the second of the three-note oom-pah-pah. His extremely slow tempo is more exaggerated than anything Strauss would have done.

The five-note motif is a dying flame, descending in half notes. Brahms would latter use such suspensions to postpone harmonic resolutions, dragging out the pathos of a phrase.

In playing these two-note descending figures to a slow waltz tempo, you realize that the fast theme in the beginning was the same notes, just played rapidly. So this yearning theme has been there from the beginning.

The piece slowly fades away, the way the original version ended. Possibly these yearning two-note figures are the nightingale.

In a sudden Presto, an elfish will-o’-the-wisp flickers around the trees, leading to a reprise of the two-note “yearning” theme. (The four initial Prestos always foreshadow the sheet lightning theme, until the fifth and final Presto.) Lightning bugs flicker around the woods indolently, not a care in the world, until, suddenly, the elfish Puck theme starts up again. (This comes directly from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

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Rapidly repeating, very quiet notes repeat the “yearning” theme with slightly more virtuosity. There is tenderness here, after the lasciviousness of the chase.

single-note melody languishes in the understory, like Mazeppa when he’s fallen off his horse in Liszt’s earlier fourth Transcendental Étude.

The melody is taken up by the left hand, while the right hand plays sighing scales. The yearning theme continues in repeated notes. This is fiendishly difficult music, yet it happens so slowly, in a trance, that it is actually easy to play. It is wistful, dreamy, faraway. Again, like the nightingale, it fades away into the sky, like St. Elmo’s fire or the aurora borealis, lost down the night wind.

These slow notes are often harder to play than the fast notes, because when you play fast, you’re too busy to be nervous. During the slow passages you have time to think about it and notice the crowd.

Now our cavalier is back with his bravura theme of devilmay-care braggadocio. The devil’s trill (a well-known virtuoso violin piece by Tartini) is regaining its influence.

The wistful theme is now in octaves in the bass, with scary Satanic arpeggios raging around it in the treble. This is not the simple lovers’ tryst of the beginning. A chill wind is starting to blow. The two-note wistful theme is now getting out of hand, turning into a storm.

But the eye of the hurricane is reached and the night pauses.

And then the first coda returns in a rampaging game of tag, where it’s hard to recognize those benign two-note yearning figures inserted between chords in the bass.

Now comes the impossible part. In double time, a running bass in 4/4 time is met with very fast repeated notes in the right hand. The “yearning” theme in the bass is covered with fast glissandi scales up top. But the yearning theme is now transfigured into highly serious Wagnerian trumpets, bringing glory to what before had been pathos, as if the young lovers had turned into dragons.

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But this is also the time when you rise to the occasion by bringing all your wits to bear on the single notes. This is where a pianist becomes distinguished, in the interpretation of the lassan, in the real meaning of the aria. Of course, focusing intensely on these notes also helps banish fear.

But these quiet notes are what Liszt (and Rachmaninoff) lived for, and what any pianist loves. They are a chance to really sing, to make a difference. They are why pianists play.

As my teacher Russell Sherman used to say, every note is life or death. It is in these quiet passages that it becomes noticeable.

The nightingale sings one last time, with a plaintive trill that fades away to make room for the final Presto. There are five Prestos in the Waltz, meaning four false codas. There are not only many false introduction, but also four false endings.

Octaves alternate with double chords until rapidly repeating chords take over the world. A terrifying augmented arpeggio runs up and down the piano, accompanied in the bass by the chords of the Devil from the beginning of the piece.

Syncopated octaves climb up to the heights, and, as with the end of Liszt’s Robert le diable transcription, the octaves finish by going up and down the keyboard at the same time: up in the right hand, down in the left.

Again, Mozart started it all with his Don Giovanni chromatic scale going up and down to show the Don going to

hell right at the start of the opera (dramatic foreshadowing, because the actual scene comes almost at the end).

Two quick notes to assert the major key signify a cheerful flourish, the world righted at the last minute by A major, Liszt’s chosen key for sanctity. All is well that ends well.

We’re not sure who has won this dance-off. Except of course the pianist.

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WEEK TWO

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FRIDAY, JULY 19, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn St. Lawrence String Quartet

Geoff Nuttall, violin

Owen Dalby, violin

Lesley Robertson, viola

Christopher Costanza, cello

JOSEPH HAYDN: String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4, Hob. III:34

Allegro di molto

Un poco adagio affettuoso

Minuet: Allegretto alla zingarese

Presto e scherzando JONATHAN BERGER: Tango alla zingarese INTERMISSION OSVALDO GOLIJOV: Qohelet HAYDN: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 33, No. 3, Hob. III:39, “The Bird”

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: Allegretto

Adagio ma non troppo

Finale: Rondo – Presto

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY This concert includes two works by the father of the string quartet, “Papa” Haydn, and two recent works by contemporary composers in the same genre, both written for the St. Lawrence String Quartet. While the music of the 18th century clearly contrasts with that of today, there is also a gradation across the two Haydn selections: a Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) work from the early 1770s and an unflappable, poised work from a decade later.

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732 - 1809) String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4, Hob. III:34 The string quartet hardly existed as a concept when Haydn first started out. Earlier composers had certainly written for two violins, viola, and cello, but the idea of equality between the voices and the specific intent for one-on-a-part performance without keyboard accompaniment were novel. The origins of Haydn’s early quartets are fuzzy, but things come into focus with his Op. 9, Op. 17, and Op. 20, all from the early 1770s. The String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4, is a compelling example of these pieces, each of which showed off new colors and shapes for the ensemble.

It is not known who commissioned or premiered the six Op. 20 quartets (sometimes called the “Sun” quartets after an early printing’s cover art), but chamber music of this type was generally intended for salon performances by members of the professional class, rather than for performance at court. In seeking Viennese patrons, Haydn found an outlet for creative impulses that had no home at Esterháza, where he was employed as Kapellmeister in the service of Prince Nikolaus I. A few years earlier, in 1765, his relationship with the prince had briefly soured, as Haydn was accused of neglecting his duties and leaving the court’s musicians and instrument collection in disarray. He was ordered to “apply himself to composition more zealously,” and especially to write works for the prince himself to perform on his favored 122

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instrument, the baryton, which was a kind of viola da gamba with an added set of harp-like strings on the back for plucking. Haydn wrote 126 pieces for this fanciful instrument, while channeling his more complex ideas into pieces like string quartets, intended for more worldly performers.

In September 1772, Charles Burney, the English music historian, visited Vienna and reported hearing “exquisite quartets by Haydn, executed in the utmost perfection.”

These were most likely from Op. 20, perhaps even the D-major Quartet on today’s concert. “All who had any share in this concert,” Burney described, “were animated to that true pitch of enthusiasm, which, from the ardor of the fire within them, is communicated to others, and sets all around in a blaze.”

Op. 20, No. 4, is a richly colored quartet that delights in contrasts and frequently inflects into minor, despite its D-major key. The Allegro opens thoughtfully in triple time—an uncommon meter for an opening movement of the era. The four instruments breathe in tandem through six-bar phrases while moving notes often come in triplets— at every level, the feeling is circular.

The slow movement, Un poco Adagio affettuoso, is a remarkable set of variations on one of Haydn’s most beautiful and ponderous melodies. The first variation fragments the theme in the second violin, scattering it in lilting off-beats.

The second variation gives a version of the tune to the cello, which had grown out of its dedicated baseline role into a melodic tenor voice. The third variation returns the theme to the first violin, now filling it out with running notes. The fourth variation brings back the original version of theme, now sotto voce, and extends it into a fanciful coda.

The Minuet is marked Allegretto alla zingarese, meaning “in gypsy style.” In this case, Haydn seems to be suggesting a kind of brashness for the dance. The Trio section gives the cello another featured moment.

The bright finale, Presto scherzando, treats the first violin almost like a soloist, accompanied and colored (and occasionally interrupted) by the other voices. Little touches, like trills and grace notes, make it sizzle, and then Haydn ends with a pianissimo whisper—another inspired choice.

JONATHAN BERGER (b. 1954)

Tango alla zingarese

Jonathan Berger is a composer and professor of music at Stanford University, where the St. Lawrence String Quartet is ensemble in residence. In addition to composing, his research intersects with music theory and cognition and he serves as department chair for Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Berger studied at the California Institute for Arts and at Stanford, and in 2016 won both the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Tango alla zingarese draws from Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, which we just heard. It was premiered by the St. Lawrence at New York’s 92nd Street Y in 2016. Berger describes: Tango alla zingarese is a rollicking parody of the minuet from Haydn’s Op. 20, No. 4. As with the Haydn (in which both the character of the minuet and the “Gypsy” elements are obscured beyond recognition), the Tango and the “zingarese” are there in spirit only, while setting up and dashing expectations takes center stage.

As Haydn used clichés and popular materials, I draw sounds from my musical roots of folk music and rock and roll. Imagine you are on a rollercoaster with the sudden musical hiccoughs being the dips, twists, and turns. Enjoy the ride!

OSVALDO GOLIJOV (b. 1960)

Qohelet

Osvaldo Golijov was born in 1960 to a family of Jewish immigrants in La Plata, Argentina. He studied composition in Israel at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and then attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania.

The influences of his Jewish heritage and Argentinian upbringing feature heavily in many of his works—klezmer and tango jostle within a modern frame. He now lives in the Boston area and teaches on the faculty of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.

In 2002, Golijov and the St. Lawrence released the album Yiddishbbuk on EMI, featuring his 1992 piece by the same name, and celebrating 10 years of their collaboration. In 2011, he wrote Qohelet to mark another decade. Of this piece, he writes: Qohelet is inspired by some of the teachings and poetic images in Ecclesiastes. I thought that this short book of experience would balance in some way the youthful innocence of Yiddishbbuk, through which I first met my friends of the St. Lawrence String Quartet 20 years ago.

The first movement of the work is a meditation on motion and melancholy. Those seemingly contradictory states actually feed each other here: a lyrical line emerges in the first violin from a gritty, ever more propulsive ride in the other instruments. The first violin finally lifts in flight and the movement ends suspended in mid-air, like the sword of Don Quixote at the end of chapter VIII in that book.

The second movement flows like two slow river currents, perhaps memory and present. The merging and bifurcations of these currents are punctuated by cradling bells: reflection rather than action.

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HAYDN String Quartet in C Major, Op. 33, No. 3, Hob. III:39, “The Bird” Here we pick up with Haydn 10 years later. He wrote his Op. 33 quartets in 1781 for his publisher Artaria, and then ended up in a bind when he also promised them as a private subscription to a nobleman. The fault might have been with Haydn or with the publisher, who rushed the quartets to print sooner than expected. Haydn wrote to Artaria: “It was with astonishment that I read…that you intend to publish my quartets in four weeks…Such a proceeding places me in a most dishonorable position.” Lucky for Haydn, Artaria agreed to delay the release, and he succeeded in getting paid twice, by patron and publisher.

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The six Op. 33 quartets, like their predecessors, were intended for performance in social settings by appreciators of various levels of skill. In 1784, an opera singer named Michael Kelly described a dinner party that featured a string quartet: “The players were tolerable, not one of them excelled on the instrument he played…but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them: the first Violin—Haydn; the Second Violin—Baron Dittersdorf; the Violoncello—Vanhal; the Tenor—Mozart.” Composers all. Though this was unusually illustrious company, it gives a sense of the milieu in which

the quartet genre grew. The four colleagues might well have played some of Haydn’s Op. 33 at that party, and the following year Mozart came out with a famous set of his own— dedicated, of course, to Haydn.

The Scherzo is not a true Scherzo in the later Beethovenian sense, but really a minuet voiced rather low and played quietly. The Trio lifts the register and the birds flutter back in, then the Scherzo repeats.

Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, nicknamed “The Bird,” sheds much of the drama and gloom of his middle period, showing subtler inflections and less stark contrasts. The Allegro moderato starts with a little motor rhythm in the inner voices, the first violin takes the theme, and the cello opens up with resonance below. Grace notes suggest chirping birds without resorting to literal impression.

The slow movement, Adagio, spins an extended melody through variations that seem to yearn and wait, then fidget and ponder.

Nervous tension fills the Rondo, a taut finale where everything is wound tight, and then suddenly released in the last measures, dropped limp and dissipated to nothing.

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WEEK TWO

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SATURDAY, JULY 20, 11:00 AM The Domo Geoff Nuttall, violin Owen Dalby, violin and viola Christopher Costanza, cello

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major, BWV 1007

Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande

Minuet I – Minuet II Gigue LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (arr. GOLIJOV): Bagatelles for Two Violins, Op. 126

No. 5 in G Major: Quasi allegretto

No. 2 in G Minor: Allegro SERGE PROKOFIEV: from Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56

Andante cantabile Allegro LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3

Allegro con brio Andante

Menuetto: Allegretto Adagio

Menuetto: Moderato

Finale: Allegro

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major, BWV 1007

sources for them (the other by Johann Peter Kellner, Bach’s student). Only a copy of the Fifth Suite, in an embellished transcription for lute, exists today in Bach’s own ink. Ambiguities in the sources, and small differences between them, contribute to the suites’ reputation for interpretive puzzles.

Bach’s six solo suites are the companions of every modern cellist. Some are simple enough to play after just a few years of study, others wait for a higher level of technical mastery. But none of them are ever static in a cellist’s mind or fingers: they change and grow from concert to concert and from year to year.

Still, this perception is a bit misplaced, emphasizing less than the primary concern of most players. The suites are clear in their ideas even when particular details are thin on the page. Cellists are more likely to ask what they can do with these ideas, how they can shape and clarify them, both for themselves and for their listeners in the setting at hand.

They also combine musical sophistication with convenience.

A cellist needs nothing but a cello to play them, indoors or outside, at weddings and memorials, in conservatories and concert halls, in airports and hotel rooms. Each suite has a different mood, and there is one to fit any occasion imaginable.

The Suite No. 1 in G Major is almost certainly the most famous piece in the modern cellist’s repertoire, and one of the most familiar works in all of classical music. Bach sets the First Suite in a comfortable, resonant key—the cello’s open G and D strings ring out unstopped. In German, the name Bach means brook, and many have drawn a connection between that image and the rippling harmonies of the Prelude.

Bach wrote the cello suites sometime before 1720, likely during his time as Kapellmeister in Cöthen, though they may have earlier origins. In Cöthen he worked for Prince Leopold, a young aristocrat Bach said “both loved and knew music.” Though his principality was small, Leopold built one of the finest instrumental ensembles in Europe, hiring six accomplished musicians, including at least one cellist, from Berlin four years before Bach’s arrival.

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The Allemande, a German dance, adds an amiable, improvisatory melody in contrast with the Prelude, which put the focus on harmony. Next comes the Courante, a running dance—darting, leaping, and tumbling around, then finally charging forward.

In the previous decades, the cello had rapidly developed from a hulking bass violin into an elegant, medium-sized instrument. The invention of wire-wound gut strings made it possible to produce lower pitches at shorter, more manageable lengths, allowing for nimble solo playing. Bach was clearly writing for a skilled cellist with the latest equipment, and in Cöthen he had such players close: the musicians in Prince Leopold’s Kapelle were a tight-knit bunch who rehearsed in Bach’s apartment.

The Sarabande is poised and solitary, a Spanish dance with roots in colonial South America that in time lost its once-erotic connotations.

Around 1721, Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, copied out the cello suites, leaving us with one of two important

The Gigue derived from the British Isles—literally, a jig—and drives itself out with energy to the end.

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Next come two Minuets, French dances that were considered optional additions to the Baroque suite. The first is elegant and warm while the second visits the key of D minor, offering a change in tone and a slinkier feel. The first Minuet repeats after the second.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) arr. OSVALDO GOLIJOV (b. 1960) Bagatelles for Two Violins, Op. 126 Beethoven wrote his Op. 126 Bagatelles in 1824, the same year he wrote the Ninth Symphony. He dedicated the cycle of piano miniatures to his youngest brother, Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven.

The version we hear today of the No. 5 and No. 2 Bagatelles was arranged for two violins by Osvaldo Golijov, the composer whose own work, Qohelet, was performed yesterday evening by the St. Lawrence String Quartet. In addition to being a composer, Golijov has a long history working as an arranger, and is especially known for “translating” music from various world traditions for performance by the Kronos Quartet. Today’s arrangement of the Beethoven Bagatelles was made for Geoff Nuttall and Livia Sohn and premiered at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2016.

SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) from Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56 Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins was written in 1932 while he was living in Western Europe, on vacation at Sainte-Maxime on the French Riviera to be specific, but the piece premiered in Moscow. Prokofiev had left Russia after the Revolution, but resumed visiting and concertizing there in advance of repatriating in ’36, strangely at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge.

On today’s concert, we hear just two movements from the Sonata: the opening Andante cantabile, which finds the two violins singing in dissonances and pushing through strained climaxes, and the following Allegro, which opens with sharp jabs and then takes a journey through whimsy and fright.

BEETHOVEN String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3 Vienna was a tantalizing place to the young Beethoven, who had been born and raised in Bonn, a relatively sleepy city far to the northwest. Vienna, meanwhile, was the most cosmopolitan city in Europe—a musical capital where a young composer-virtuoso could make a splash in the wake of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven tested the waters with a visit in 1787, but was recalled to Bonn upon the death of his mother and had to remain there to shelter his brothers from their abusive, alcoholic father. But by 1792 his family obligations lifted, and he moved to Vienna “in fulfillment of long-frustrated wishes,” as his patron Count Waldstein described it.

The String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3, was written in 1795, three years into his Viennese career (though sketches or an early draft might date back to Bonn). Beethoven was best known as a pianist, but he also played violin and viola, and this is his first acknowledged work for strings alone; Op. 1 had been a set of piano trios, and Op. 2 were piano sonatas. The Trio is an ambitious piece and full of ideas, building on the established divertimento form while also anticipating aspects of his late style nearly 20 years before he would get there. The disjointed flow of ideas that somehow seem to work together, the extended number of movements, and surprising proportions are all Beethoven hallmarks, but not usually so present in his works from the 1790s. He might have been consciously working his way toward writing a string quartet (which would happen with Op. 18 beginning in 1798), but in this decade the string quartet had not yet entirely cemented its position as the preeminent string genre over its leaner trio sibling.

The Trio’s six movements unfold in a symmetrical plan: fast movement, slow movement, dance movement (Menuetto), a second slow movement, a second dance movement (Menuetto again), and a fast finale.

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The first movement opens dramatically with rich double stops in syncopated rhythm, and then rises questioningly in the violin. A second, quieter theme wiggles a little before breaking into double time. The extended development throws in surprises before the opening returns in recapitulation.

The first Andante suggests a mechanism of some kind, perhaps inspired by Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony from the previous year. The following Menuetto is a strange one—the dance arrives fragmented, lurching with space between the steps. The Trio section consistently combines three distinct ideas for the three instruments: melody for the violin, rolling harmonies for the viola, and plump pizzicato for the cello. Then the Menuetto repeats with an extended coda.

The second Andante is very different from the first: smooth and lyrical, with the viola and cello sometimes combining in melody in response to the violin. The second Menuetto is more typical of the dance style, followed by a minor-key trio section harmonized by drones.

The Finale starts out in a lighthearted vein, but gets lost and misdirected in an intriguingly Beethovenian way. Running scales scamper around and collide in counterpoint, and then the movement takes a left turn into a mock fugato—all ideas Beethoven would revisit in his late quartets.

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WEEK TWO

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SATURDAY, JULY 20, 6:30 PM

Olivier Music Barn Julien Brocal, piano

JULIEN BROCAL: Reflections World Premiere FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808

Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande

Gavotte I – Gavotte II ou Musette Gigue PĒTERIS VASKS: Vasaras vakara mūzika (Music for a Summer Evening) INTERMISSION BROCAL: Into the Wild World Premiere VASKS: Baltā ainava (White Scenery) from Gadalaiki (The Seasons) BROCAL: Snowing on the Moon World Premiere CHOPIN: Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM PETER HALSTEAD

JULIEN BROCAL (b. 1987) Reflections Julien Brocal’s moving video of this piece can be seen on the Tippet Rise website. He wrote it for himself and the young virtuoso violinist Caroline Goulding. Echoes of Debussy.

A very high melisma, written because Goulding was at the time enthralled by the overtones of such unearthly vibrations, descends into the grounded bass of Copland’s faux spirituals. Achromatic scale leads to meditative Impressionistic Alberti figurations in the treble (accompaniment as melody). The recurring “Copland” theme becomes heartbreaking and fades away into the heavens. The stability of the soil is mixed with stardust.

Brocal is not just a pianist, but also a great lover of gardens, herbs, and horticulture. The formal design of French parterres is here woven into a night of Montana constellations.

This is possibly the most effective portrait of Tippet Rise so far, although Brocal wrote it with no agenda in mind, other than to celebrate the light and the openness he felt, coming to America for the first time.

This is part of a trilogy of pieces he wrote at Tippet Rise over a few weeks in 2017.

Brocal is a protégé of the great Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. He has performed under the auspices of Rubicon Classics at the Salle Gaveau, and directed the Festival Classique du Vert in France.

Listening to Brocal is like having the chance to listen to the young Ravel, Debussy, or Mompou. He is the natural successor to their music in his compositions, and in his flawless technique, which makes him the perfect exponent of the great era of French musical spirit. We are lucky to be able to hear two examples of his perfect Chopin tonight, his Montana pieces, and two ethereal pieces by the modern Latvian lyricist Peter Vasks.

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FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 This Ballade is played by Adrian Brody (playing Wladyslaw Szpilman) in Polanski’s film The Pianist, based on a true story. The performance impresses a Nazi captain enough that the captain hides Brody and saves his life.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian, wrote a wonderful book called Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013), in which he decides to learn and perform this piece in a single year, during the time of royal phone hacks and inadvertent Wikileaks releases. He presents every note as he encounters it, as well as the advice of Stephen Hough and Charles Rosen on how to learn and play the piece. It is beguiling, disarming, and funny, and by the end, you will feel that you know the piece as well. Ideally, you should read it before you come to Julien’s concert. Failing that, you can watch the video on our website after you finish the book. It somehow manages to make learning a Chopin Ballade entertaining, and to make it sound almost possible.

The easiest of the Ballades, Ballade No. 1 (1836) is a great introduction to Chopin, the great drawing-room genius who rarely played in public, who earned his wealth teaching the children of the aristocracy, and who epitomized the Romantic ethos, along with his friends Delacroix, Liszt, Lamartine, and Hugo, and his lover and nemesis, George Sand, the Taylor Swift of her age, who started affairs with Alfred de Musset, Prosper Merimée, and many others. Her novel Lucrezia Floriani, published in 1847, the year of her final break with Chopin, portrayed him as a co-dependent invalid prince infatuated with a woman who was in reality Jenny Lind, the singer, who always loved Chopin, and would have been a far better partner for him than the volatile George Sand.

The Ballade sat for three years among Chopin’s manuscripts, as pieces would until he was sure he was satisfied with them.

When he played the piece for Schumann, Chopin said it was “dearer to me than anything.” He began it in Vienna and finished in Paris. You wonder if the brilliantine coda was written to impress the dragon-pianists who ran around Paris so noisily at that time, and if the dreamier, more Romantic initial themes are more Viennese in atmosphere. So it is a tale of two cities.

Really three cities, because Chopin had been in Warsaw just before Vienna, and the November Uprising had led to the capture of Warsaw by Russia in 1831. This was followed by a minor emigration known emotionally as the Great Emigration, showing the passion with which the Poles treated the loss of their honor. The Polish historian Zdzisław Jachimecki ascribes to these events Chopin’s maturation “into an inspired national bard who intuited the past, present, and future of his native Poland.” The first Ballade was possibly the first major expression of that.

Chopin’s friend Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish poet and patriot who published a volume of ballads and romances in 1822, gave his own impression therein of what was expected from the form: “The ballad is a tale spun from the incidents of everyday (that is, real) life or from chivalrous stories, animated by the strangeness of the Romantic world, sung in a melancholy tone, in a serious style, simple and natural in its expressions.”

Chopin was 23 when he wrote it. It is a seamless piece, where its opening arpeggio contains its lyrical theme, and the lyrical theme morphs into the jazzy, flashy coda, which reverts to the initial theme, and finishes with the scale in simple but powerful octaves in both hands. It is a tour of G minor, using every trick in Chopin’s technical arsenal. Except they are not tricks. They come from the soul. Without guile or calculation, it is naked genius. It needs no clothing, no ornamentation (although it has a few of those, they are in fact not ornaments, but the theme itself, expanded).

The three most interesting books about Chopin are Liszt: The Artist As Romantic Hero, by the brilliant raconteuse Eleanor

Perényi; Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, by Alan Walker; and Chopin’s Piano: In Search of the Instrument that Transformed Music, by Paul Kildea, the head of Wigmore Hall in London. All three spray out in each sentence anecdotes and insights of Chopin’s era.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808 There was almost never a time when J.S. Bach was considered just the thing; he was always outmoded, passé. When he died, the authorities of Leipzig declared, “What the school needs is a cantor, not a Kapellmeister.” That is, not a composer but a functionary. They appointed the best mediocrity they could find.

After Bach, trivial easy listening prevailed, until gradually his witty and iconoclastic son Carl Philipp Emanuel (C.P.E.) Bach, today forgotten, became the most famous composer in Europe.

J.S. Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann sold his father’s manuscripts, and much of Bach’s work has disappeared. Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl refused to support their stepmother, Anna Magdalena, who died an almswoman.

After the certitude of J.S. Bach’s world, the divinity that shaped our ends, came the Enlightenment, where reason prevailed over intuitive belief. The universe revealed its perfect order. The great wit and poet Alexander Pope wrote in 1733: All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony, not understood; 2019 Summer Season

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All partial Evil, universal Good; And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

But overnight an earthquake and tidal wave demolished Lisbon, and the perfect world was gone. Coupled with the French Revolution, all was chaos.

Johann Gottfried Herder made the point that every culture has its own truths. Immanuel Kant made the point that order came from the mind, not the universe. It was an early “Me” generation.

Giambattista Vico invented the concept of the Ideal Eternal History, the cycles of human behavior which dictate the course of the world: “Men first felt necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”

Johann Adolph Scheibe declared that music carried no meaning. But Beethoven, by studying Bach, infused music again with metaphor. Mendelssohn said of C.P.E. Bach, “It was as if a dwarf had appeared among the giants.”

Mendelssohn and the Romantics revived J.S. Bach, a century after his death, with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin. Wagner said that Bach was “himself the history of the German spirit through that horrible century during which the light of the German people was completely extinguished.”

Men came to believe that the artist was a Romantic Hero, his own work of art, epitomized in a quotation sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Wilde described nature as “a place where birds fly around uncooked.” He wrote that “One touch of Nature may make the whole world kin, but two touches of Nature will destroy any work of art.”

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promise of all that indifference. And it happened again, in World War II, which was really a continuation of World War I, postponed by the Spanish flu. The pride of Europe, its writers, teachers, composers, architects, painters, scientists, fled to America and Israel.

America became the heart of optimism, determined to erase the horrors of war with the pleasures of family. Everyone in the 1950s wanted to have a house with a white picket fence, a Ford, two kids, and to play golf. We became the land of invention, of the filmed comedy, of the compelling novels.

The great artists were now American. European pianists played mostly in America.

History had repeated itself. Now Planck’s quantum mechanics makes the point that the world is like fractals, a snowball rolling down the hill, revealing order, then chaos, then order.

Underneath, there is a universal order. The world is held together by gravity and magnetism, neither of which we entirely understand. As Pope said, “All Discord, Harmony, not understood.”

The poet, Pope, and the composer, J.S. Bach, had been right all along.

Very few people play Bach on the piano after Glenn Gould seemed to reveal all the voices simultaneously with a touch he got from his teacher, Alberto Guerrero (whom Gould never credited). The virtuosity needed to maintain evenness of touch while singing individual voices and the exposed nature of the structure, where any dropped note creates a chasm, mandates Bach as a terrifying rite of passage, to be recorded once and thus solved forever, never to be dredged up in concert.

But Bach is like the energy grid which underlies and unites all creation: he is omnipresent, if not audible. He was the only inspiration Chopin ever acknowledged; he was the basis for Schoenberg’s system of serialism.

In inserting Bach into the dialogue between his own music and Chopin, Brocal is summing up the world. This is an

example of how programming itself is a work of art.

Bach was 30 and living in Weimar, the town which Liszt later made into the center of learning in Germany. The ruler of this city-state was the literate and gifted Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, known not only for commissioning works from Bach, but composing some 19 instrumental works over a period of nine months, some of which were then transcribed and played on the organ and harpsichord by Bach.

Johann Ernst died at age 18. His descendant, Ernst-August V, head of the House of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneberg, married Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999.

PĒTERIS VASKS (b. 1946) Vasaras vakara mūzika (Music for a Summer Evening) Pēteris Vasks has been hailed as the most significant and popular composer to come out of Latvia. This is from his cycle The Seasons. It also exists in a version for violin and piano.

Lyrical, old-fashioned, melodic, heartbreaking, this may become one of your favorite pieces. It shares its wistful backcountry simplicity with Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, although it is written for solo piano.

Although it seems very personal, it suggests what Vasks feels about the encroachment of change on Latvia, about the loss of habitat, the loss of the simple pleasures with which he grew up.

After the false ending, a high octave which seems quite final, four more chords remain to comment on what has been said.

“Most people today no longer possess beliefs, love and ideals,” Vasks wrote. “The spiritual dimension has been lost. My intention is to provide food for the soul and this is what I preach in my works.”

Vasks was born in 1946 in Aizpute, Latvia, the son of a Baptist pastor. He has served as a member of various symphony and chamber orchestras, including the Latvian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lithuanian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, and the Latvian Radio and Television Orchestra.

His compositions incorporate archaic Latvian folk songs into a contemporary context. He often uses programmatic titles based on natural processes. He tries to embody global ecological threats through his musical language, which also invokes the hardship of Russian repression. At age 10, he wrote a chorale in memory of the Latvians who were driven from their homes and sent to detention camps.

Vasks was appointed main composer of the Stockholm New Music Festival in 1996. That same year he was awarded the Herder Prize from the Alfred Toepfer Foundation and the Baltic Assembly Prize. Vasks received the Latvian Great Music Award three times. He became an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences in 1994, and a member of the Royal Swedish Music Academy in 2001. In 2002 he was named an honorary senator of the Latvian Cultural Academy in Riga. He has been composer in residence at the Presteigne Festival, the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, the Usedom Music Festival, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and the Canberra Music Festival. A complete recording of the piano cycle The Seasons began in 1980 and ended in 2009, after completion.

“I am deeply rooted in nature, in the nature of the North,” Vasks wrote. “It influences all of my music. The nature we know is also quite various; we have four very distinct seasons. The winter is very long, the summer very short and therefore all the more beautiful and longed for. The seasons in between are quite dramatic.”

In 2009 Vasks wrote Vasaras vakara mūzika (Music for a Summer Evening) based on old sketches and therefore rather strongly anchored in tradition. It was meant to be performed as an encore.

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Vasks says: “It describes the quiet end of a summer day. The sun sets. Slowness. Memories of previous experiences rise.

With the memories’ appearance comes an increase in intensity. Towards the end a kind of folk song is heard: ‘We have survived the time of tyranny and have kept our identity.’ The ending is quiet, everything is asleep.”

BROCAL Into the Wild As I wrote last year: “Every piece that Julien plays is cut from the same fabric as Julien’s own sense of languid evening, rainy afternoon, and sun-dappled morning. Mompou, Bortkiewicz, Ravel are Julien. Julien’s own compositions are echoes of Sundays in the park, slow lunches under the village chestnut tree, summer nights filled with the songs of crickets.”

Brocal studied with Erik Berchot and Rena Shereshevskaya at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, “Alfred Cortot.”

Since 2013 he has worked closely with Maria João Pires at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. She subsequently invited him to continue his studies at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium and to become one of the founding members of the Partitura Project.

He received the 2018 Newcomer of the Year Award from BBC Magazine for his Chopin disc on Rubicon. His Ravel and Mompou album received the Best Classical Album Award by Gramophone magazine.

He debuted in 2018 at the Salle Cortot in Paris under the aegis of Rubicon Records. He has played at the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Florence, Oxford, and Cleveland. He has played with the Philharmonie de Paris. He was called to replace Fazil Say in the Chopin Festival in Nohant, at the George Sand house. He has played at the Académie Maurice Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. 138

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He has made five films at Tippet Rise: The Gardener, Reflections, Stainless Stealer Steals the Universe, Between the Notes, and a film with Anderson & Roe. He wrote Into the Wild at Tippet Rise.

His poem “The Words” gives a hint of Brocal’s feelings about the sense of wilderness at Tippet Rise, where we all are without borders, buoys drowning between land and sea, reduced to solitary points on the compass.

LES MOTS Les mots ne sont que des sanctuaires, Points cardinaux solitaires et sans frontières, Bouées naufragées entre terre et mer, Leurs Mystères encore vierges de la Pensée ; Les mots ne sont qu’ombre et lumière, Clair-obscur de leurs saintes prières, L’Âme errante vers d’autres sphères, Voyageur sans escale sur les rives Eternelles ; Les mots ne sont qu’imaginaires, Le dedans et le dehors solidaires, Projetés vers les espaces insoumis, Dans l’apesanteur stellaire de l’Esprit.

Words are only buoys Caught between the waves Shadows without bodies, Bodies without graves, Puzzles without hints, Porches without stairs, Rests without a silence, Churches without prayers Imaginary places Floating neither near nor far, Mirrors of our empty spaces And the gravity of stars.

—Translated by Peter Halstead

PĒTERIS VASKS Baltā ainava (White Scenery) from Gadalaiki (The Seasons) This is a simple piece where single notes paint a snowy landscape, with sudden pauses in the flow, like moulins that spiral down to underground rivers in a glacier but interrupt the continuity of the ice field.

Bass interludes deepen the gravitas of the ice. This is not just a simple snowfield; it is Greenland, Iceland, Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard, an inaccessible Norwegian archipelago of frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, reindeer, and Arctic foxes, bathed in the Northern Lights. Its last five notes are poignant, excerpted from the scenery, some mystery highlighted like stark light on an iceberg. This is the long polar night, the Arctic sky, the aurora, or possibly what it must be like to be suspended, half-dead, half-alive, underwater, like Dvořák’s mermaid Rusalka, condemned to eternal night.

This movement was composed first. “Autumn Music” followed a year later, and only after he had heard the music in concert did Vasks decide to add the other seasons.

Here everything is white. A new year begins, a quiet meditation with only two voices, presumably a couple, long together and preparing their souls for the long night.

“I am deeply rooted in nature, in the nature of the North,” Vasks wrote. “It influences all of my music. The nature we know is also quite various; we have four very distinct seasons.

The winter is very long, the summer very short and therefore all the more beautiful and longed for. The seasons in between are quite dramatic.”

BROCAL Snowing on the Moon While making a film at Tippet Rise, Brocal wrote a piece for it in a day, called “Snowing on the Moon.” It was snowing outside, and the landscape feels quite lunar, with its glacial moraines bleached into black and white as it often is in winter. In a way, the land returns to the glacier which created it.

The moons were also the planets whirling above his head, as he devised the piece while playing under the Alexander Calder mobile Stainless Stealer, made out of stainless steel in 1966, on generous loan from the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and hanging in the rear southern corner of the Olivier Hall.

Not only are the reflective mobile elements made of steel, but they also steal the light, or pictures, from anything around them and project it on the walls.

The way the steel reflects the planets, so the earth reflects the sun, and the moon shines only by reflected light, as Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens reflects: The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun…

(IV, iii) Peter Halstead wrote a poem called “Winterreise” about the mobile, the snow, and Julien’s composition. Winterreise is the Schubert cycle of what the composer called “terrifying songs.” Schubert wrote them near the end of his life, equating a wild winter ride through the arid landscapes around him with the process of dying. The piece became one of his most gorgeous and popular compositions, although he died before it could be performed, so he never heard it.

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The poem sums up the metal gears of the mobile, the sense that music played and composed at Tippet Rise reflects the raw cosmology of the lunar landscape, the sculptures evoking a connection between the earth and the sky, the way Stonehenge has an astronomical significance, so that music in that location approximates more closely the idea of music of the spheres. We associate standing stones with ancient ways of measuring the sky, of attuning daily routines to the seasonal changes brought about by the sun’s ascension in the sky as the year lengthened.

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52

So a sculpture produced a composition, which inspired a film, which in turn produced a poem about death, music, the solar system, and how our voices come from all these elements combined.

Chopin expanded the song form to a kind of fantasy, featuring lush secondary themes and impressive codas. Liszt and Brahms based their later ballades on Chopin’s. All of them are more like rhapsodies. Schumann invented the term romanze to describe a short romantic moment on the piano. Schubert used the word moment. Chopin borrowed the concept of the nocturne from John Field, but he made it his own. Appropriating new forms made the point that the Romantic movement was a new world, in every way.

But in a way this is not a ballade at all; it is an improvisation, a fantasy, a Lisztian tone poem. A ballade is a valise that Chopin expanded to fit all manner of luggage, but here the music has outgrown the form. It could easily be a one-movement sonata or a one-movement concerto.

WINTERREISE Today we pause to hear the solar rage Of wind around the stars, To watch the world’s massive gauge Align itself with ours, The way that winter wanders Down a young girl’s long limb And shines a worried light On her simple skin, On the season’s grieving night, Anguished wails of storm transposed Into sleeping adult fears, So that our snows and songs and ghosts disclose All the planet’s human gears.

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Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish poet and patriot, wrote a volume of ballades in 1822, inspiring Chopin to reinvent the form for the piano at the time of the November Uprising in Poland. An Irish or Scottish ballad was a simple folk song for voice and guitar. Walter Scott included many of them in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802), an anthology of border ballads.

Tonight Julien Brocal plays the First Ballade, one of Chopin’s first pieces, and his last Ballade, the Fourth, written five years later during the first months of summer 1842, at George Sand’s country estate of Nohant (where Julien has, incidentally, recently played).

This ballade, along with the barcarolle, the scherzos, and the sonatas, is one of the great achievements of Chopin and of the Romantic era. It involves counterpoint—that is, two contrary melodies played at once (although Chopin praised Bach for his mastery of it, he rarely used it himself)—and requires so much speed in the final coda that there is barely time to hit all the notes involved. The counterpoint isn’t merely the dutiful contrary notes of classical forms, but a full-blown Romantic mirror image: a theme which could

stand by itself but which just happens to fit into the harmonic jigsaw of the first melody.

The Ballade is also musically sophisticated: we join the piece in midstream, already in progress, as if we have come late to the ball. Or as if the piece is actually ending.

The initial melody has the Lisztian sense of Hungarian sleigh bells and country churches in the snow, and it has inspired decades of beautiful cinematic scores from Georges Delerue and others.

Then in the second theme it segues into a simple nocturne with a syncopated theme. The repeated notes of the introduction come back with the melody in octaves in the bass, now merging with the nocturne theme, and then adding the descending octaves, which finally spread in to the treble. A jeu perlé fioritura leads to simple chords and the beginning of an heroic theme. People referred to Chopin’s fast and dizzying fingerwork as pearls dropped on velvet. His notes were a game of pearls: jeu perlé. Rounded tones sparkle against the darkness of the context, possibly against the underlying violence of revolution, the loss of country.

(Chopin and Liszt were expatriates, driven out of their respective homelands by Russia, and even by the kind of ignorance that plagued Bach in Germany. Only in Paris could they remake themselves, because they could never capture what they had lost. The happy ending is that all the expatriates, including Nabokov, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff, made a better world for themselves than the one they mourned.)

The next variation seems almost to be a waltz, with a very independent left hand.

And then the first repeated-note theme comes back even more meditatively, working around to the nocturne theme, which now has more inventive harmonies under it. The theme is varied with scales and passagework, as Chopin often would do with his waltzes.

An etude-like left hand dominates the nocturne theme.

A barrage of arpeggios provides a false ending, leading to very silent half-note chords, before the final whirling coda comes out of nowhere (as the entire ballade has). Entirely new material creates what is essentially a new piece, replete with frenetic octaves, passagework, arpeggios, and the conclusive four chords. It is really only this coda which is daunting. It may capture the electricity of what it was like to hear Chopin improvise.

Chopin rarely played in public. Those who heard him report that his playing was spontaneous, inventive, much better than the versions of his pieces he laboriously wrote down.

He could compose in an instant, but he would worry the notes for months before he arrived at a final version (which apparently would often lose the genius of the actual improvisation).

Critics are always trying to find narrative in Chopin’s music—“programs.” But Chopin was adamant that nothing is told, nothing is contained in his music. There is no cushion for the mind to relax into, no peg to hang a hat on, no story to use to avoid the music itself. This is music not as metaphor, but music that exists to be listened to solely for itself. Fortunately, it is enthralling.

It was played on Polish radio to inspire resistance against the Nazis. So at its edges lurks the chaos of the Spring of Nations, the trauma of the greatest epoch of political instability in history. It may have no actual correlative between its notes and any particular battle or patriot (unlike Liszt’s music), but Chopin’s music paints a hazy picture of the dreams and tragedies of nations.

(It is possibly ignoble to mention that the nations for which Liszt and Chopin campaigned had long ago disowned them.)

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Aristo Sham, piano

ROBERT SCHUMANN: Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn), Op. 133

Im ruhigen Tempo

Belebt, nicht zu rasch Lebhaft Bewegt

Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo SCHUMANN: Humoreske in B-flat Major, Op. 20 INTERMISSION JOHANNES BRAHMS: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5

Allegro maestoso

Andante espressivo

Scherzo: Allegro energico

Intermezzo: Andante molto

Finale: Allegro moderato ma rubato

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER approach and growth of the morning, but more as expres-

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn), Op. 133 In September 1850, Robert and Clara Schumann bundled up their six children and left Dresden for Düsseldorf. There the 40-year-old composer began a new phase in his career: municipal music director. Clara, a famous pianist since childhood, had been trying to maintain a regular concert schedule, a source of much-needed income, but the stress was exhausting. Robert’s mood disorder had made him an unreliable provider. When the offer from Düsseldorf came, he couldn’t refuse.

The first year in Düsseldorf was productive, but trouble lay ahead. In the fall of 1853, he was fired for erratic behavior. Although he was cheered by visits from the violinist Joseph Joachim and the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms, Schumann kept deteriorating. He raved about the devils who persecuted him and the angels who sang to him. He declared himself a conduit for new works by Schubert and Mendelssohn, both deceased. After a failed suicide attempt in February 1854—he threw himself in the Rhine but was rescued by fishermen—he worried about harming Clara. At his own insistence, he was admitted to a sanatorium, where he would spend the rest of his life. His doctors prohibited visits from Clara. By the time she was finally permitted to see him, two days before his death, he was broken and nearly catatonic, but he recognized her immediately.

Completed in October 1853, Gesänge der Frühe is Schumann’s last coherent work for piano. He dedicated it to “the high poetess” Bettina von Arnim. In her diary, Clara described Op. 133 as “dawn songs, very original as always but difficult to grasp, their tone is so very strange.”

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sions of feeling than painting.” Beethoven described his Pastoral Symphony in almost identical language.

In a letter to von Arnim, Clara explained that she “would very much like to play them for you, for they are difficult to play and difficult to understand. They are governed by such a profoundly poetic mood, that not every player, even a talented one, would be able to grasp them rightly.” Fiercely protective of her husband’s legacy, she never performed Op. 133 in public. She may have worried that its originality would be misconstrued as madness.

Even today, Gesänge der Frühe is seldom performed. Just as Clara feared, the five character pieces are often unfairly pathologized, but a sympathetic performance reveals their deep emotional power.

Tonally, all five miniatures are based on the three notes of the D-major triad: D, F sharp, and A. No. 1, Im ruhigen Tempo (In a tranquil tempo), is a reverent, chorale-like opener in D major, shot through with flashes of Baroque dissonance. In the densely contrapuntal No. 2, Belebt, nich zu rasch (Animated, not too quick), Schumann juxtaposes supple triplets with spiky dotted rhythms while artfully concealing the tonic (D major) until the closing measures.

No. 3, Lebhaft (Lively), the fastest and most virtuosic installment, is cast in A major, with galloping rhythms offset by hectic syncopation. No. 4, Bewegt (With motion), in F-sharp minor, unleashes a dramatic cascade of downward-falling 32nd notes amid wayward harmonies.

No. 5, Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo (First tranquil, then brisker tempo), returns to D major and revisits earlier ideas, including the hymnlike introduction and the delicate latticework of Nos. 2 and 4.

SCHUMANN Humoreske in B-flat Major, Op. 20 In late 1838, the chronically cash-strapped Schumann moved to Vienna, where he hoped to find backers for the periodical he’d founded, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal of Music). He was stymied by bureaucratic obstacles and his growing despair. “It is hardly possible, because of the pressure from above,” he vented to Clara in a letter, “for anything imaginative, open-minded, or spirited to come from here.”

Thoughts of his fiancée kept him going. Responding to her repeated requests for accessible pieces that she could perform on tour, he produced a flurry of piano works, starting with Arabeske and Blumenstücke, which he described as “light and suitable for ladies.” In March 1839 he completed the more ambitious Humoreske, which he’d begun in Leipzig. He recounted his creative process to Clara: “All week I sat at the piano and composed, wrote, laughed and cried all together. You will find this all nicely evoked in my Op. 20, the grand Humoreske, which is about to be engraved. You see how fast things are going with me now.

Conceived, written down, printed.”

In April he returned to Leipzig, after learning that his music journal was in danger of folding. He also pursued legal options to force Clara’s father, his former piano teacher and landlord, to consent to her marriage. Predictably, the obstinate Friedrich Wieck countersued, and the conflict dragged on for more than a year before Robert and Clara finally prevailed. They were married on September 12, 1840, one day before she turned 21.

Humoreske contains between five and fifteen sections, depending on how you count them, but they’re played attaca (continuously). Tonally, the music is confined to a single key, B flat major, and its relative minor, G minor. A single motif generates a stream of kaleidoscopic variations, all of which are ingeniously linked despite their contrasting moods and textures.

The piece begins with an elusive, songlike melody that begins in F sharp and follows an archlike slow-fast-slow trajectory. The section marked Hastig (hastily) is notated on three staves, with the central one serving as a mysterious inner voice, meant to be imagined rather than played. (As Charles Rosen memorably wrote, “It has its being within the mind, and its existence only through its echo.”) Later in this interlude, the left hand keeps a steady tempo while the right seems to resist it, creating a syncopated rhythm that Schumann indicates should be played “as though out of tempo.” A remarkable overlapping recapitulation picks up at the ninth bar instead of returning to the beginning.

Next, Schumann pits a tender tune in G minor against a quicksilver intermezzo in B flat. Thanks to its rapid right-hand figuration in octaves, this scherzo-like section is technically demanding. Toward the end of the piece, an introspective interlude morphs into a faster, nervier episode that seems to be racing toward a fiery conclusion. But then Schumann unexpectedly interjects a satiric march (marked “With a certain pomposity”), which dissolves into a slower, more meditative part, which Schumann marked “Toward a resolution”—another false ending. Then suddenly, a spirited allegro coda erupts, and Humoreske ends with a volley of exultant chords.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5 In late September 1853, the blond and beardless Johannes Brahms arrived at the Schumann home in Düsseldorf.

The handsome 20-year-old Hamburg native had sent Robert Schumann some of his compositions a few years earlier, only to be stung when the package was returned to him unopened. But now the situation had changed.

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violinist Joseph Joachim, who had sung Brahms’s praises when he passed through Düsseldorf a month earlier.

Although Brahms was awkward and tongue-tied and Schumann was struggling to maintain his sanity, the two hit it off immediately. After Brahms began playing his C-Major Piano Sonata, Robert became so excited that he asked him to stop a moment while he fetched his wife.

“Here, dear Clara,” Schumann said when the pair entered the parlor, “you shall hear music such as you have never heard before.” The Schumanns urged Brahms to keep playing while they listened attentively. Hours later, Schumann patted Brahms on the shoulder and said, “You and I understand each other.” He invited Brahms to lunch the next day. That afternoon, Clara and Robert couldn’t stop talking about the brilliant young stranger. In her diary, Clara exclaimed, “Here again is one who comes as if sent from God! He played us sonatas and scherzos of his own, all of them rich in fantasy, depth of feeling, and mastery of form.” Robert, for his part, was pithier: “Visit from Brahms (a genius).”

The Schumanns talked Brahms into staying in Düsseldorf until Joachim arrived to perform in late October. As their friendship deepened, Robert urged his publisher to consider his young protégé, whom he also promoted in his music journal. In the October 28 issue, under the title “Neue Bahnen” (New Paths), Schumann rhapsodized about this “young blood by whose cradle graces and heroes kept watch” and described his sonatas as “veiled symphonies.”

He hailed Brahms as a musical messiah, channeling the “mysteries of the spirit world.”

Encouraged by the Schumanns’ support, Brahms composed at a breakneck pace. His Piano Sonata No. 3, which he’d begun in Hamburg, was the only work by Brahms that Robert critiqued while it was in progress. The last piano sonata that Brahms completed, it represents the pinnacle of his early keyboard compositions. Clara performed it to great acclaim on her next European concert tour.

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The opening Allegro maestoso begins in the home key with fortissimo chords that encompass almost the entire piano register. It is based on two main motifs, the first in F minor, which leads to a brief digression in C minor that evokes Beethoven’s famous “Fate” motif from the Fifth Symphony. The second main motif begins in A-flat major and ends in D-flat major. The first movement concludes with an expansive coda.

The metrically complex Andante, a kind of song without words, is preceded in the score by a quotation from a poem

by C.O. Sternau: The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams Two hearts in love unite, embraced in rapture.

Its two main themes, which alternate throughout, are in A-flat major and D-flat major.

The third movement, comprising a demonic scherzo and a serene trio, starts in F minor with a quotation from a Mendelssohn piano trio. Once again, Brahms alludes to Beethoven’s “Fate” motif, here conjured up in the bass accompaniment.

Marked as an intermezzo, the brief fourth movement bears the somewhat unusual title “Rückblick,” which literally means “backward glance” but could also be translated as “Reminiscence.” Here Brahms seems to revisit the songlike second movement, but the prominent “Fate” motif darkens the romantic mood to an almost funereal one, mimicking a Beethovenian muffled drum-roll.

The complex and unusual finale, a modified rondo, returns to the home key. Perhaps inspired by Schumann and his love for musical cryptograms, Brahms includes a theme based on the notes F, A, and E: a nod to his friend Joseph Joachim, whose motto was Frei aber einsam (free but lonely).

The sonata ends with an extensive coda in the parallel major.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 11:00 AM Olivier Music Barn Katie Hyun, violin Gabriel Cabezas, cello Aristo Sham, piano

JOSEPH HAYDN: Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XVI:27

Allegro Andante

Finale: Presto FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66

Allegro energico e con fuoco

Andante espressivo

Scherzo: Molto Allegro quasi Presto

Finale: Allegro appassionato

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER impresario Johann Peter Salomon showed up at his door When Joseph Haydn died, at age 77, Felix Mendelssohn wasn’t quite four months old. The younger man came to revere his Austrian elder. On February 22, 1838, the 29-yearold German composer, conductor, and pianist played the virtuosic piano part in a performance of Haydn’s Piano Trio in C Major, which had somehow fallen into obscurity.

Mendelssohn’s audience was enthralled. “The people couldn’t get over their astonishment that such a lovely thing could exist,” Mendelssohn wrote to his sister, Fanny, “and yet it was published long ago by Breitkopf and Härtel.”

Today the C-major Trio is widely hailed as one of Haydn’s finest achievements in the genre, of which he composed at least 45.

Like the Piano Trio in C Major, which Haydn composed in his mid-60s, Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor is a relatively late work. Completed in the summer of 1845, it was the last chamber composition that Mendelssohn saw through to publication. After suffering a series of strokes, he died on November 4, 1847, at age 38. His beloved sister, herself a talented and prolific composer, had died less than six months earlier, of the same apparent cause. Mendelssohn’s last major work, written two months before his death and published posthumously, was a grief-stricken string quartet he called “Requiem for Fanny.”

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XV:27

When his main patron, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, died in 1790, Haydn—the son of a wheelwright and a cook—was 58 years old. He had been serving the Esterházy court for 28 years and was eager to move to Vienna, where he hoped to reach new audiences and meet prospective backers.

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unannounced and offered him a handsome sum to present six new symphonies in London. Haydn spent most of the 1791–92 concert season in the English capital, writing and overseeing performances of Symphonies 93 through 104—the first half of what would one day be known as the London Symphonies.

The first concert series was such a spectacular critical and commercial success that Haydn was immediately hired to write another six symphonies. He returned to London in 1794 to preside over their premieres. Until his first trip to England, he had never traveled outside Austria and Hungary, but he quickly adapted to his growing international fame and kept cranking out masterpieces, including most of his chamber music, which was intended not for the concert halls but for home performances, by amateurs of varying ability. With his trios especially, Haydn was more inclined to take risks, experimenting with unusual structures and sonorities.

Haydn seems to have composed his Piano Trio in C Major, Hob. XV:27, in 1796 or 1797, either during his second English sojourn or shortly after his return to Vienna. It was among his three final trios that were inspired by and dedicated to the brilliant pianist Therese Jansen Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn also composed his last set of piano sonatas.

In 1795 Haydn even served as witness at her wedding to Gaetano Bartolozzi, whom he’d met at Esterháza a decade earlier. A former student of Clementi’s, Therese Bartolozzi ranked among the greatest virtuosos of the day, but, as with Mozart’s sister Nannerl, she couldn’t pursue a professional career in music. Like other talented women of her social class—particularly married women with children—she played only at home, never in public.

Haydn’s sonatas and trios for Therese Bartolozzi reflect the composer’s great esteem for her talent. With their tricky octave playing and frequent hand crossing, they are technically more challenging than most of his earlier efforts and

certainly beyond the scope of most amateur pianists. They take full advantage of the developing instrument’s idiomatic range. In his influential survey The Classical Style, the late pianist and music writer Charles Rosen argued that Haydn’s late trios are “along with the Mozart concertos the most brilliant piano works before Beethoven.” Praising the composer’s “particularly luxuriant” imagination, Rosen described the last three trios, numbered as Hob. XV: 27–29, as “unconstrained by considerations of public effect...[and written] for the sheer pleasure of the solo instrumentalists.”

In this last batch of trios, Haydn also expands the roles of the strings. Although the trios were usually marketed as “sonatas for the fortepiano, with an accompaniment for the violin and violoncello,” the string instruments are, if not quite equal partners, far more than supporting players. The violin is particularly assertive, sometimes singing independently instead of merely doubling the pianist’s melodies. Although the cello tends to follow the keyboardist’s bass lines (a necessary practice because early pianos weren’t loud enough to ensure optimal balance, especially in the lower registers), its part is far from boring.

The dramatic opening Allegro puts a vigorous theme through its contrapuntal paces. Here Haydn modifies the conventional sonata form by changing up the recapitulation. Whereas the exposition teases the ear with deceptive cadences—concluding chord sequences that resolve to a harmony rather than the expected tonic—the recapitulation supplies more straightforward and harmonically satisfying resolutions. If the piano part dominates, with its complex figurations, frilly grace notes, and rapid octaves, the violin often vies for the spotlight. Rather than merely elaborate on the pianist’s ideas, the violin sometimes seems to guide them in unexpected directions: this music is a conversation, not a monologue.

The central Andante, in 6/8 time, is also rich in tonal and expressive contrasts. Structurally, it follows a ternary pattern, pitting its gently pastoral outer sections, in A major, against a tumultuous, Hungarian-inflected middle interlude set in

A minor. The playful coda features a brief but delectable piano cadenza.

In the delirious Presto finale, the performers get a real workout, leaping registers and breathlessly chasing the pellmell passagework. Light, witty, and surprisingly syncopated, it subjects a jaunty motive to a battery of inventive procedures before hurtling to its emphatic conclusion.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847) Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66 Felix Mendelssohn made the most of his brief charmed life.

His wealthy Jewish parents, who converted the family to Christianity, ensured that their four children had the finest possible education. They even turned their Berlin mansion into a concert hall twice a month, burnishing young Felix’s reputation as a musical prodigy. In 1821, when he was 12, Felix met the elderly Goethe, who rhapsodized about the boy’s genius: “What [Mendelssohn] already accomplishes bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child.” A year later, the poet and critic Heinrich Heine referred to him as “a musical miracle [who] could become a second Mozart.” Before Mendelssohn was out of his teens, he had completed approximately 100 compositions, including operas, quartets, concertos, and a magnificent octet for strings; at 20, he had already written his famous overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to great acclaim. The latter occasion marked the first public performance of the great oratorio in a century, and it led to a resurgence of interest in Bach’s music.

Mendelssohn composed his Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor in 1845, six years after his Piano Trio in D Minor 2019 Summer Season

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(numbered as his first, although he appears to have written one in 1820 that was either destroyed or lost). He was exhausted and burned out, and his grueling schedule was ruining his health. Since 1835, two years before his marriage, he had been conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which he quickly transformed into one of the finest ensembles in Germany. In 1843 he founded the Leipzig Conservatory, where he taught alongside Robert Schumann. The next year, Mendelssohn requested a leave of absence from King Frederick William IV, for whom he had served as Kapellmeister since 1841. The king compromised by reducing Mendelssohn’s duties while requiring him to compose certain important commissions. Mendelssohn also took a sabbatical from his conducting post in Leipzig. This left him somewhat more leisure time to spend in Frankfurt with his wife and five young children, although he continued to work on his own creative projects. (Recent evidence suggests that he also found time to write passionate love letters to the celebrated Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, whom he’d met in October 1844.)

Shortly after completing the Piano Trio No. 2, Mendelssohn expressed his reservations to Louis Spohr, the renowned composer, conductor, and violinist to whom the work was dedicated: “I would like to have saved the honor for a somewhat longer piece, but then I should have had to put it off, as I have so often of late. Nothing seemed good enough to me, and in fact neither does this trio.”

Impossibly high standards, or false modesty? Suffice it to say that Mendelssohn was his own harshest critic. Today his two surviving piano trios are, along with a pair by Schumann, the only such pieces from the 1830s and ‘40s to remain in the active chamber repertoire.

Cast in four movements, the Piano Trio in C Minor begins with a dusky pianissimo Allegro energico e con fuoco featuring a swirling arpeggiated motif that moves upward by fourths, from tonic to subdominant and leading tone.

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harmonic pattern imparts a sense of instability and mild foreboding. After about 20 bars of this turbulence, the violin comes in with the first real melody, bolstered by the cello: a gentler, songlike tune in the relative major (E flat) that contrasts with the anxious earlier material. In the contrapuntal coda, the strings play an elongated version of the main theme while the piano plays it straight.

As with the opening Allegro, the Andante espressivo starts with the piano alone, but now the mood is more relaxed and lyrical. It’s a classic example of a Mendelssohnian “song without words,” a practice that Schumann also embraced for his slow movements. After introducing the main idea, in E flat, the piano steps back while the strings develop the triple-time song in A flat major.

The virtuosic Scherzo unleashes a torrent of counterpoint: first, a bustling toccata, then a proto-Brahmsian, Hungarianinspired interlude with accented downbeats and volatile shifts between major and minor modes. Standout moments include a tender duet between cello and violin.

The passionate, rondo-like finale combines the breakneck speed of the earlier movements with songlike passages reminiscent of the Andante. Mendelssohn also incorporates a 16th-century Lutheran chorale, although its precise identity is subject to debate. Some commentators argue that it’s based on “Gelobet seist Du, Jesu Christ,” whereas others say it’s from “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” or “Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir.” Regardless of its provenance, Mendelssohn swiftly turns it into an entirely original creation. The trio ends triumphantly, in the relative major.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn JACK Quartet

Christopher Otto, violin

Austin Wulliman, violin

John Pickford Richards, viola

Jay Campbell, cello

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: The Wind In High Places (String Quartet No. 1)

Above Sunset Pass

Maclaren Summit

Looking Toward Hope ADAMS: Dream of the Canyon Wren INTERMISSION ADAMS: Lines Made By Walking (String Quartet No. 5) 2019 Tippet Rise Commission for String Quartet and World Premiere

Up the Mountain

Along the Ridges

Down the Mountain

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY John Luther Adams was born in Meridian, Mississippi, grew up around the South and in the suburbs of New York, and enrolled in the first class of the California Institute of the Arts (recently merged from the Chouinard Art Institute and Los Angeles Conservatory of Music), graduating with the first class in 1973. Five years later he made an unconventional decision: he moved to Alaska, where he had already become involved as an environmental activist, and joined the Northern Alaska Environmental Center as its executive director. He continued to compose, and by the mid ‘80s was also the principal percussionist and timpanist with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra. His dual career as a musician and an activist puts him in a small number of composers who have seriously pursued a second calling in addition to music. But in his case, these paths are not unrelated: Adams’s music is often evocative of landscapes and the natural world.

“John Luther Adams is more closely identified with his geographical location than perhaps any other current American composer,” wrote Kyle Gann, a fellow composer, musicologist, and longtime music critic of the Village Voice. “And he writes Alaskan music. At least, he’s the only Alaskan composer to gain enough national reputation that we surmise from his work what Alaskan music must sound like.”

That national reputation has especially risen since 2014, when Adams won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award for Become Ocean, commissioned and recorded by the Seattle Symphony. The piece even received a moment of attention in the pop culture news cycle when it inspired the singer Taylor Swift to make a donation to the Symphony.

Through it all, the adjective “Alaskan” has stuck to Adams—at least in part because of its sheer unusualness— but recently he has sought other landscapes, spending time in the cities of New York and Boston, in the Sonoran and Atacama deserts, and lately here at Tippet Rise.

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There has been another recent change for Adams, this one instrumental rather than geographic: he has written five pieces for string quartet since 2011, while the majority of his earlier output was for orchestra or for more eclectic small ensembles mixing winds, strings, percussion, and keyboard.

But even in his new quartets, there is an unusually varied range of timbres. From the clear whistle of harmonics in The Wind in High Places to the swooping calls of Dream of the Canyon Wren, the instruments are used in vivid, surprising, but still idiomatic ways. Of the three pieces on today’s program, Adams offers his own notes, which follow.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS The Wind in High Places (String Quartet No. 1) I’ve long been enamored with the ethereal tones of Aeolian harps—instruments that draw their music directly from the wind. The Wind in High Places treats the string quartet as a large, 16-stringed harp.

All the sounds in the piece are produced as natural harmonics or on open strings. Over the course of almost 20 minutes, the fingers of the musicians never touch the fingerboards of the instruments. If I could’ve found a way to make this music without them touching the instruments at all, I would have.

—John Luther Adams

ADAMS

Dream of the Canyon Wren For 40 years the song of the hermit thrush was for me the quintessential voice of my home in the boreal forest of Alaska. In recent years I’ve found a new home in the desert, where the song of the canyon wren evokes for me similar feelings of deep tranquility and longing.

—J.L.A.

ADAMS Lines Made by Walking (String Quartet No. 5) 2019 Tippet Rise Commission for String Quartet and World Premiere “If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man—then you are ready for a walk.”

—Henry David Thoreau

composing three harmonic fields—tempo canons with five, six, and seven independent layers. This is a technique I’ve used for years, in which a single melodic line is superimposed on itself at different speeds.

Once this musical terrain was composed, I began finding pathways across it. Because the tempo canons contain more melodic material than a string quartet can play, I had to truncate and interweave the long melodic lines. In the process, each voice in the ensemble acquired its own unique profile, transforming the simple imitative counterpoint of the tempo canons into something more intricate and variegated. So, ironically, through my solitary walking I seem finally to have discovered something approaching a true multi-voice polyphony.

Throughout my creative life, I’ve found insight and clarity by walking. Lines Made By Walking took this further. On my walks I followed the contours of the land—along animal trails and old roads, or striking out cross-country following watersheds and ridgelines. At my desk I searched for the most fluid and beautiful routes across the musical landscape.

Composing in the mornings and walking in the afternoons, I discovered this music not so much through my fingers on the piano keyboard, but rather through my feet crossing open ground.

—J.L.A.

I’ve always been a walker. For much of my life, I walked the mountains and tundra of Alaska. More recently, walking the desert in Mexico, the high plains, deep gorges and mountain ridges of Chile, and the hills and canyons of Montana, I’ve begun to imagine music that comes directly out of the contours of the land, from the experience of traveling on foot at three miles an hour.

My fifth string quartet, Lines Made By Walking, traces melodic pathways across sweeping musical landscapes. I began by 2019 Summer Season

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Paul Huang, violin Roman Rabinovich, piano Escher String Quartet

Adam Barnett-Hart, violin

Danbi Um, violin

Pierre Lapointe, viola

Brook Speltz, cello

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK: Sonatina for Violin and Piano, Op. 100

Allegro risoluto Larghetto

Scherzo: Molto vivace – Trio

Finale: Allegro CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, in D Minor, Op. 75

Allegro agitato – Adagio

Allegretto moderato – Allegro molto Paul Huang, violin Roman Rabinovich, piano INTERMISSION FRANZ SCHUBERT: String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887

Allegro molto moderato

Andante un poco moto

Scherzo: Allegro vivace – Trio: Allegretto

Allegro assai Escher String Quartet

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER themes. The motifs are varied, ranging from boldly rhythmic

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Sonatina for Violin and Piano, Op. 100

to plangent and lyrical. Its myriad modal, syncopated, and pentatonic elements suggest the composer’s idea of America: a melting pot of indigenous and immigrant voices.

Beginning in September 1892, at the invitation of the wealthy American philanthropist and music lover Jeannette Thurber, Antonín Dvořák lived and worked primarily in the United States. He felt that he couldn’t refuse Thurber’s salary offer, which was 25 times what he was earning back home in Prague, so he spent most of the next three years in New York, presiding over the National Conservatory of Music, until its generous founder ran out of money.

Dvořák was admiring the Minnehaha Falls, in Minneapolis, when inspiration for the Larghetto struck. Having no paper at hand, he scrawled some notes on his shirt sleeve so that he would remember the melancholy main theme once he got home. The slow movement is exceptionally hummable, which explains why the publisher, without obtaining permission, sold it as an independent work under the fanciful titles “Indian Lament” and “Indian Canzonetta.”

Dvořák wrote his Sonatina in G Major for Violin and Piano, the last chamber composition that he completed in the United States, over a two-week stretch in late November and early December 1893. He wanted the Sonatina (“little sonata”) to be a present for his six children, particularly his 15-year-old daughter, Ottilie, who played piano, and his 10-year-old son, Toník, who was studying violin. “It is meant for young people, but also for adults,” the composer explained to his publisher the following January, “they’ll have fun playing it as well.” Ottilie and Toník, who were also the dedicatees, performed the piece in a private premiere.

The playful, scherzo-like third movement sandwiches a contrasting trio between similar rhythmic outer sections. Its first theme is based on the opening motif of the earlier Allegro.

The sonatina contains four short movements and follows a relatively straightforward structure. Each section features themes inspired by American music—or, more precisely, by Dvořák’s idiosyncratic interpretation of American music.

Filtered through his distinctively Bohemian sensibilities were snippets of spirituals sung by his African-American student and assistant, Henry Burleigh; Stephen Foster’s sentimental parlor songs; and “Indian” melodies indebted more to Henry Longfellow’s wildly inaccurate Romantic poetry than to authentic Native American music, of which Dvořák knew very little.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921) Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 75

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The finale returns to the three-theme sonata form of the opening movement. The strongly rhythmic secondary theme is tinged with more “Indian” touches. The sonatina concludes with a serene and uplifting melody.

Camille Saint-Saëns was many things: a renowned composer and teacher; a brilliant pianist and organist; a poet, critic, travel writer, and playwright; and an authority on a wide array of subjects, including philosophy, science, painting, mathematics, and literature. A child prodigy, he demonstrated perfect pitch at age two and produced his first original composition for piano soon thereafter. At 10 he made his formal debut in Paris, performing works by Mozart, Bach, and Handel; for his encore, he astonished the audience by

volunteering to play any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory. He wrote his first two symphonies while still in his teens and continued to dazzle as an adult, seemingly immune to the self-doubt that cripples so many early bloomers at midlife. By the time he died, at 86, he had completed hundreds of musical works—operas, symphonies, concertos, and symphonic poems. In 1908 he became the first major composer to write a score specifically for the cinema. “I produce music the way an apple tree produces apples,” he declared, barely exaggerating.

He composed the First Sonata for Violin and Piano in 1885, the year he turned 50. Although he had written several others by that time, he chose to number this as his first because he considered it his best—and most ambitious—example of the genre yet. It contains four movements, two of which are played attaca, so that there is only one pause between each set of linked pairs. Consistent with the heroic Beethovenian model, the sonata follows a dramatic “per aspera ad astra” trajectory: through hardship to the stars.

At the time, chamber music was thought of as essentially Germanic, and Saint-Saëns, who loved Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner, was one of the few Frenchmen of the late 19th century who bothered with it. His impressive body of chamber work includes two sonatas for violin and piano, two string quartets, three piano trios, and a piano quintet. He dedicated the sonata to the Belgian violinist Martin Pierre Marsick, with whom the composer performed the premiere. “Its day of glory has come immediately,” Saint-Saëns crowed to his publisher soon after its successful debut. “All violinists will be fighting over it throughout the world.”

The opening Allegro agitato creates tension by pitting a choppy theme against a graceful, triple-time idea graced by rippling piano and celestial violin. Out of this calmer passage flows the second-movement Adagio, as the piano introduces the primary motif: a simple ascending melody. As with the first movement, Saint-Saëns tests the constraints of meter, pushing against his rhythms in a way that feels loose and

rhapsodic, as if the musicians are making up the music as they go along.

The second half of the sonata begins with an exuberant, slightly manic Scherzo rife with quick staccato notes and skittering syncopation. A brief chorale leads seamlessly to the finale, a dizzying Allegro molto that whips up a whirlwind of 16th notes, bravura double and quadruple stops, fiery tandem octaves, and a passable impression of ringing bells before concluding in jubilant D major. Referring to its many technical demands, Saint-Saëns joked that the sonata might as well be called the “hippogriffsonata,” because only a mythical monster could master it.

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887 Extravagantly gifted and tragically short-lived, Franz Schubert remains something of a cipher. Despite his astonishing legacy—approximately 1,500 works in 17 years—the man himself is an enigma. The biographies are rife with speculation about his sexuality, his temperament, and his politics, but they generate more questions than answers.

Even his music, singular and seductive though it may be, is suffused with mystery. He seems at once the last great Viennese Classicist and one of the first Romantics. According to one possibly apocryphal account, Beethoven—who died in 1827 and beside whom Schubert was buried the next year—supposedly exclaimed, “Truly, the spark of divine genius resides in this Schubert!” Schubert, for his part, had the honor of serving as torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral.

Known to a small circle of friends and connoisseurs during his lifetime, Schubert’s compositions found broad appreciation posthumously. The cause of his death, at age 31, was probably either typhoid fever or complications from 2019 Summer Season

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syphilis, which he seems to have contracted in his mid-20s.

Among his most ardent champions were Mendelssohn, Liszt, Berlioz, Schumann, Brahms, and Dvořák.

Schubert wrote the String Quartet No. 15, his last work in the genre, between June 20–30, 1826, around the time that Beethoven completed his own final quartet, Op. 135. It was a particularly difficult time for the young Austrian composer. Symptoms of his syphilis were flaring up again after a long remission; a potential Kapellmeister appointment fell through; and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t secure a publisher for his recent works, which were deemed too “ingenious,” “curious,” and “peculiar” for popular consumption. “I cannot possibly get to Gmunden or anywhere else, for I have no money, and altogether things go very badly for me,” he confided to a friend in a letter. “I do not fret about it, and I am cheerful!” Schubert, who was also a proficient pianist and violinist, performed the viola part at the private premiere, which likely took place at the home of his friend Franz Lachner on March 7, 1827. Although the first movement is believed to have been presented a year later, as part of an all-Schubert concert in Vienna, the full quartet wouldn’t debut publicly until December 8, 1850, more than 20 years after the composer’s death.

Cast in the home key of G major, in 3/4 time, the vast and ambitious opening Allegro molto moderato establishes a typically Schubertian pattern of alternating major and minor chords, enlivened by dotted rhythms, dynamic contrasts, dissonance, and tremolandi. Toward the end of the first movement, the four instruments collude in a frenzy of multiple-stopping, whereby 15 of the 16 strings are played simultaneously.

The Andante, in E minor, punctuates a wistful, lyrical motif sung by the cello with jagged, almost violent outbursts and anguished shrieks. In this willfully strange slow movement, Schubert combines marching rhythms, shuddering tremolo, and sudden leaps and falls for maximum drama.

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The mercurial Scherzo combines a cheerful Allegro in B minor with a Ländler-like Allegretto trio in G major.

The latter offers a sequence of three duets: cello and first violin, then first violin and viola, and finally cello and first violin again.

The playful and expansive finale, marked Allegro assai, is harmonically and structurally ambiguous. As with the opening movement, it’s not always clear whether the key is G major or G minor, and the form seems to be a hybrid of rondo and sonata-allegro. The fleet, sometimes frenetic 6/8 meter brings to mind a tarantella. Throughout the movement, Schubert juggles two rhythmic devices: a dotted eighth note followed by a 16th note and clusters of triplets.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 11:00 AM

The Domo Danbi Um, violin Paul Huang, violin Pierre Lapointe, viola Adam Barnett-Hart, viola Brook Speltz, cello

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Partita No. 3 for Solo Violin in E Major, BWV 1006

Preludio Loure

Gavotte en rondeau

Minuet I – Minuet II Bourrée Gigue Paul Huang, violin JOHANNES BRAHMS: Viola Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111

Allegro non troppo, ma con brio Adagio

Un poco allegretto

Vivace ma non troppo presto

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Partita No. 3 for Solo Violin in E Major, BWV 1006 Bach’s manuscript for the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin dates to 1720, when he was Kapellmeister in Cöthen.

However, some of the pieces—or elements of them—might date back as far as 1703, when he was first appointed as a court musician in Weimar, where he met Johann Paul von Westhoff, an older composer and violinist. Westhoff was one of the first composers to write polyphonic music for solo violin, finding ways to play multiple lines at the same time, in effect accompanying himself. He wrote a set of Partitas for Solo Violin in 1682, an important precedent, and probably model, for Bach’s more famous collection.

Though Bach, a Lutheran, spent most of his career specializing in liturgical music, he spent six years in Cöthen, where he turned to mostly secular instrumental composition. His employer, Prince Leopold, was a Calvinist whose beliefs proscribed elaborate music in church. Outside of church, however, it was a different story—Leopold “both loved and knew music,” Bach said, and though his principality was small, Leopold assembled one of the finest court orchestras in Europe. It was in this setting that Bach completed his greatest instrumental pieces: the French keyboard suites, the orchestral suites, the Brandenburg Concertos, and the solo works for violin and cello.

Unlike the cello suites, which all follow a similar six-movement plan, the violin works are remarkably varied. First, they are divided into sonatas and partitas (sonatas have “abstract” movements including a fugue; partitas have dance movements), and the partitas are each further differentiated by some unique aspect. In the Partita No. 1, every dance is immediately followed by a double: a fast, French style of variation that elaborates on the music just heard. The Partita 168

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No. 2 is dramatically asymmetrical, ending with the immense D-minor Chaconne. And the Partita No. 3, which we hear today, adds a Prelude (a fixture of the cello suites, but absent in the other violin works) and an extended Gavotte en rondeau.

The Third Partita might have the most recognizable opening of all the Sonatas and Partitas, a call to attention that naturally lends itself to ringtones and other popular uses. Even Bach rearranged it for orchestra to open Cantata 29, “Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir” (We thank you, God, we thank you), as the Prelude carries the same elated spirit he often used to portray devotional fervor. For Bach the materials of the sacred and secular are often indistinguishable.

The next movement is a Loure, a slow French dance of which Bach wrote just two (the other in the Fifth French Keyboard Suite). It takes the place of the Sarabande in the other violin partitas—a reflective, inward movement, lonesome even by the standards of solo writing.

The Gavotte en rondeau takes an unusual shape: while most dances are in a binary form (two sections, each repeated, A-A-B-B), this Gavotte is a rondo, a more elaborate plan in which the opening tune recurs several times between other ideas. First Bach gives you the main theme twice, and then goes off into contrasting episodes between four more returns (a full shape of A-A-B-A-C-A-D-A-E-A). It is a bit like an inverted verse-chorus form, with the emphasis on the chorus.

Next come two Minuets, stately and refined in triple time, the second Minuet beginning under a drone and ending with a lovely question and answer. The first minuet is repeated after the second.

The Bourée is another French dance, which was still practiced at court through Bach’s day, though his take on it—like all his dance movements—was “stylized” for listening rather than for actual dancing. It begins suddenly with an upbeat, as if caught off guard, and then bounces and rolls along.

Finally, the Gigue is literally a “jig,” bringing the piece (and the entire set) to a close with a fancified version of the violin’s primal style—a fiddle tune.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Viola Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 This piece is a marvel: a concise 30 minutes richly set with musical ideas where nothing is superfluous. Perhaps some things are even left unsaid, yet its meaning could not be less ambiguous.

And then there is its inventiveness, its sense of surprise.

This is built right into the setup, as the string quintet—in this case a string quartet with an additional viola—lends an imbalance, like a guest who takes on some household responsibilities, freeing family members from their usual roles, but also disrupting the normal routine.

But even the most obvious plot for this visitor is subverted.

It would make sense, for instance, for a viola quintet to start with the violas—establishing right off the presence of the added instrument. But no, the cello dives in instead with a wild solo across most of its range, springing across strings and punctuating with rolled chords, all while the other instruments gleam together above. The cello’s line is artfully subsumed into the accompaniment as the violins claim the phrase, then another chord leaves the upper strings hanging, as if over a cliff, before falling in sequence toward a second theme in the second violin. Only after do the violas emerge together in focus.

past the movement’s midpoint comes a series of slippery chords, bending toward a united climax that falls away, leaving a viola alone. The ornament returns in shadow, but is warmed as the final chords slip into the major key.

Beautiful and eerie, Un poco allegretto has a precarious, syncopated little refrain that thrillingly insinuates itself. A brighter trio section suggests the outdoors, still with a hint of unease. The interlude dissipates warily and the opening returns. Then the front door opens once again, and the sun shines in.

The final movement leads with an anxious, minor-key introduction that belies the Vivace’s true character: a raucous reel. These two qualities are at odds until a huge, unison scamper in the five instruments releases all the tension into a new section, marked Animato, which quickly finishes the Quintet in a rough, jubilant dance.

After drawing the final double barline, Brahms decided to retire. It was December 1890, and though he was only 57 years old, he sent the manuscript to his publisher with a note: “With this letter you can bid farewell to my music— because it is certainly time to leave off.” He was living comfortably and his music was widely celebrated. And he was a man with the instinct to step down from a height rather than to slip into decline. But rarely does a composer truly retire, and so it was for Brahms: after just a few months of rest, he was lured back to write several clarinet works (quintet, trio, and two sonatas), which he followed with some assorted smaller pieces, and then in 1896 Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs) as a gift for Clara Schumann as she was dying. Less than a year later, Brahms followed her, departing at 63, though he had long resembled a much older man behind a thick gray beard.

The slow movement, Adagio, is a darkly colored, melancholy episode set in the key of D minor, opening with the kind of double viola solo that the first movement rejected. They fixate on an ornament—a kind of elaborate exhale. Somewhere 2019 Summer Season

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Roman Rabinovich, piano Escher String Quartet

Adam Barnett-Hart, violin

Danbi Um, violin

Pierre Lapointe, viola

Brook Speltz, cello

GYÖRGY LIGETI: Musica ricercata

No. 1: Sostenuto – Misurato – Prestissimo

No. 3: Allegro con spirito

No. 7: Cantabile, molto legato

No. 10: Vivace: capriccioso FRANZ SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata No. 19 in C Minor, D. 958

Allegro Adagio

Menuetto – Trio Allegro INTERMISSION JOHANNES BRAHMS: Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34

Allegro non troppo

Andante, un poco Adagio

Scherzo. Allegro – Trio

Finale: Poco sostenuto – Allegro non troppo

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

GYÖRGY LIGETI (1923–2006) Musica ricercata György Ligeti was born in 1923 to a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family living in the city of Dicsőszentmárton in the region of Transylvania. Musica ricercata, written between 1951 and 1953, is one of his earliest works, but so much had already happened in his 20-something years. His hometown had shifted from Romania to Hungary and back again, he was drafted into the army—placed in a forced-labor battalion for Jews—and then Germany invaded the already Axis-aligned Hungary in 1944, after its government considered a secret truce with the Allies. Soon Russian forces advanced into the region, and in the ensuing chaos Ligeti escaped his work detail, evading capture by both Nazis and Soviets until he could blend back into the civilian population. He walked more than 300 miles home to find his family gone: he later learned his mother, father, and younger brother had been sent to Auschwitz and the two men murdered at subsequent camps. His mother survived the Holocaust, and they later reunited.

After the War, Ligeti enrolled at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, a city still in shambles, and where Ligeti— though he considered himself Hungarian—was an illegal resident, since the Romanian border had been redrawn with his hometown on the other side. He hoped to study with Béla Bartók—who word had it would soon return from America—but the eminent Hungarian composer died of leukemia in New York at age 66, never making it home.

Still, Bartók’s legacy lived strongly among younger Hungarian composers, in particular the high regard he held for folk music. But when the Soviets elevated folk music as an approved stylistic influence, and Ligeti saw his personal interest in this music turn into official doctrine, he began to look for other ways of writing.

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Musica ricercata was a first step, written for his “bottom drawer”—that is, Ligeti knew it could not be performed in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain (it premiered in Sweden in 1969). But for him alone, it was a new beginning, built from the most basic musical elements. The first movement uses a single pitch—A—until it arrives at D for the final note. Instead of tonal variety, the movement is crafted around rhythm, dynamics, timbre, and contour. The following numbers add more and more pitches back in, as if rebuilding a musical language from scratch. The title harkens back to the early Baroque, when a ricercar was a contrapuntal style, ricerca meaning “a search” in Italian.

Just after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Ligeti fled to Vienna, hiding with his wife, Vera, under bags of mail on a train. Making a home in West Germany, Ligeti mixed with the avant-gardists while rejecting their polemics and eschewing their “-isms.” In 1968 several of his eerie, atmospheric works were used without permission in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, bringing him a degree of popular fame. In 1999 (this time with permission), Kubrick used the second movement of Musica ricercata in his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, where it plays under Tom Cruise and completes a curious journey from a bottom drawer in Cold War Hungary to the turn-of-millennium movie screen.

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Piano Sonata No. 19 in C Minor, D. 958 The numbers on Schubert’s piano sonatas go up to 21, but much like his symphonies, the catalogue is a bit of a muddle.

Many of the sonatas are incomplete and did not even see performable editions until the 1970s, and only a handful are regularly found in pianists’ fingers.

Of these, the three late sonatas (“late,” for Schubert, meaning age 31) hold a special place. Schubert wrote them all in

September 1828, just after he moved to his last apartment on the outskirts of Vienna, and only a month before he died. But it is a Romantic notion that he anticipated death in these pieces—if anything, he was probably feeling better before a final syphilitic decline.

The more interesting story lies in the sonatas’ reception history in the following century. It is another Romantic notion that great pieces went unrecognized when first written, but in this case it holds truth. The last three sonatas made their way to the publisher Artaria, which released them a decade posthumously with a dedication to Robert Schumann (Schubert had intended to dedicate them to another composer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who had also died in the meanwhile).

Schumann, who generally held Schubert in high regard, criticized these last pieces for their “voluntary renunciation of shining novelty,” finding them too “musical and singable.”

And here comes a contradiction: for much of the 19th century, Schubert’s music was viewed as pretty, domestic, feminine—a kind of typecasting that led to mild denigration, but also criticism of pieces where these qualities were less evident.

And most listeners will not find the C-minor Sonata too “musical and singable,” in fact quite the opposite. Here Schubert consciously picks up a loose strand from Beethoven, who had died just the year before, and for whom Schubert had been a torchbearer at the funeral. But while the older composer’s last piano sonata—No. 32—looked over the horizon, sometimes sounding more like boogie or even bebop than Beethoven, Schubert returned to a more conservative Classical language. And so the idea arose that these late sonatas were Schubert “doing Beethoven,” just not quite as well or adventurously.

But in the mid-20th century, pianists took a fresh look.

While Rachmaninoff is said not to have even known that Schubert wrote any sonatas, Artur Schnabel and then Alfred Brendel performed, recorded, and advocated for them—

Brendel, in particular, arguing that the late sonatas make up a connected cycle, and tangling with the musicologist Walter Frisch in a 1989 issue of The New York Review of Books about the merits of following Schubert’s repeat signs: maybe the last debate of such classical-music technicalities in the mainstream press.

“Seekers after comforting musical beauty will be taken aback by the C-minor sonata,” Brendel described, a huge and conscious shift from Schumann’s first assessment.

“Predominantly somber, passionate, and icy, it may well be the most unsensual, uninviting, and, behind its classicist facade, neurotic sonata Schubert wrote…a thesis of menace and destructive energy.”

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 Brahms’s music often came to him in the abstract, not tied to specific instruments. While many composers might set out to write a piano quintet, for Brahms it was the conclusion to a search for the best ensemble in which to house a musical idea.

The Piano Quintet in F Minor was first composed as a string quintet (two violins, viola, and two cellos, 1862), then reworked into a sonata for two pianos (1863), and finally rescored for piano and strings (two violins, viola, and a single cello, written 1864 and published 1865). It is an expansive, novelistic work populated by numerous characters in a multitude of settings.

The first movement begins with the violin, cello, and piano doubling one another in a four-bar phrase, soon contrasted with firm chords over running piano. Then the four strings resume the opening melody, all together at the octave.

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(This reveals a strength of the piano quintet ensemble: with the keyboard to harmonize, the strings are free to unite in ways they rarely could alone.) Among the many ideas in this extended movement is a little triplet turn, a kind of comment, first introduced in the viola and cello, then rising with heightened expectations. The middle of the movement is more internal, lurking in the piano and then growing outward and upward. Even the movement’s end continues to introduce new colors and ideas: the strings, playing high without piano, pause before tumbling back toward the chords from the opening.

The Andante leads with a lilt, restful, before the music stirs and livens. Then again it stretches and comes back to rest.

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The Scherzo is grounded by drum beats, first low and distant in cello pizzicato, then sharp and near in string and piano staccato. The intervening Trio is more whimsical, but still built on a drum-like pulse.

An eerie fog covers the opening of the Finale. The cello, left-hand piano, violin, then viola drift in imitation of one another. Then comes an up-tempo tune in the cello, and the music rushes forward. Characters continue to emerge from the dissipating haze: finally a near-ending remains slightly askew and unresolved, allowing the most strident theme to return, only to be slightly sweetened and then occluded in a dash and full stop.

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 6:30 PM

Olivier Music Barn Behzod Abduraimov, piano

RICHARD WAGNER (trans. LISZT): Isolde’s Liebestod, S. 447 FRANZ LISZT: Piano Sonata in B Minor, S. 178 INTERMISSION MODEST MUSSORGSKY: Pictures at an Exhibition

Promenade I

Gnomus (The Gnome)

Promenade II

Il Vecchio Castello (The Old Castle)

Promenade III

Tuileries (Children Quarrelling after Play)

Bydlo (The Oxcart)

Promenade IV

Ballet of Unhatched Chicks

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle

Promenade V

Limoges (Women Arguing in the Market)

Catacombs (Roman Tomb) – Con mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language)

Baba-Yaga (The Hut on Chicken’s Legs)

The Great Gate of Kiev

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER Wagner and Liszt met in 1841, when Wagner was strug-

RICHARD WAGNER (1813–1883) trans. Franz Liszt Isolde’s Liebestod, S. 447 Wagner knew from the start that his Tristan und Isolde would revolutionize music. He referred to it not as an opera— too derivative, too Italianate—but as “eine Handlung,” a drama. During its composition, he confided to his married muse, Mathilde Wesendonck, “Child! This Tristan is turning into something fearsome...only mediocre performances can save me! Good performances will drive people mad!”

Grandiose as that sounds, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Tristan und Isolde electrified everyone who heard it. Brahms wrote of his “shuddering delight,” while Clara Schumann called it “the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life.” Even after renouncing Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche praised the opera: “Even now I am still in search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan—I have sought in vain, in every art.” Wagner’s score continues to reverberate more than 150 years later. Lars von Trier plundered it for the soundtrack of Melancholia, his 2011 apocalypse flick.

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Based on a medieval romance about a pair of doomed lovers who find fulfillment only in death, Tristan und Isolde reflects Wagner’s fascination with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who ranked music above all other arts.

Consistent with this ethos, Wagner gave the orchestra the primary role in advancing the narrative, with his libretto supporting the music instead of vice versa. He finished the opera in 1859, but six years elapsed before its first production. After more than 70 rehearsals, it was deemed unperformable, and he was forced to present orchestral excerpts.

Finally, in 1864, he landed a dream patron: the 18-year-old superfan King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who brought his “divine friend” to Munich, covered his debts, and paid for the premiere of Tristan und Isolde the next year.

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gling to make a name for himself and Liszt was a proto-rock star. In 1870 Wagner married Liszt’s illegitimate daughter Cosima, with whom he’d already had three children. Liszt was less than two years older than his 57-year-old son-inlaw. Despite the ensuing scandal—Cosima’s first husband was Liszt’s disciple Hans von Bülow, who conducted the first performances of Tristan in 1865, a year after Cosima left him for Wagner—Liszt remained an admirer. When Liszt died in July 1886, the last word he reportedly spoke was “Tristan.”

Among the hundreds of transcriptions that Liszt made of other composers’ music, 15 were drawn from Wagner’s operas, but only one was inspired by Tristan. Liszt chose to extract the music from the final scene, when the grieving Isolde sings her final death-drunk aria: “How softly and gently he smiles, how sweetly his eyes open...” Somewhat confusingly, Liszt renamed it the “Liebestod” (love-death), using the neologism that Wagner coined for his Prelude; Wagner originally referred to this scene as the “Verklärung” (transfiguration). Regardless of its title, the music resolves the harmonic ambiguity created by the Prelude, a tension that Wagner manages to sustain over four hours. “What Fate divided in life now springs into transfigured life in death: the gates of union are thrown open,” Wagner wrote.

“Over Tristan’s body the dying Isolde receives the blessed fulfillment of ardent longing, eternal union in measureless space, without barriers, without fetters, inseparable.”

Liszt completed his piano transcription in 1867, when he was still estranged from his daughter and her much-older lover. Aside from the addition of four measures at the beginning, which evoke the delicious dissonance of the Prelude, the transcription is fairly faithful to the original music. In place of Wagner’s shuddering strings, Liszt uses tremolo.

To re-create the opulence of the original orchestration, he substitutes ornate layers of figuration; the symphonic swells and surges become hammering chords.

FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886) Sonata in B Minor, S. 178 As the pianist Alfred Brendel once observed, “Anyone who does not know the allure of the fragmentary will remain a stranger to much of Liszt’s music, and perhaps to Romanticism in general.” Many of Liszt’s contemporaries were less enthusiastic, however. When he first heard Liszt play the Sonata in B Minor in 1853, Brahms supposedly fell asleep.

The influential critic Eduard Hanslick declared that “anyone who has heard it and finds it beautiful is beyond help.”

After reviewing the score, which Liszt had dedicated to her husband, Clara Schumann wrote in her diary: “This is nothing but sheer racket—not a single healthy idea, everything confused, no longer a clear harmonic sequence to be detected there! And now I still have to thank him—it’s really awful.”

Fourteen years earlier, Robert Schumann had dedicated his Fantasy in C Major to Liszt. But Liszt was too late to repay the honor: Schumann, already committed to an asylum, never saw the score.

Today the complex and vast single-movement composition is widely hailed as Liszt’s finest work for keyboard. An imaginative hybrid of symphonic and sonata form, it also plays against type. In the War of the Romantics, Liszt, who more or less invented the symphonic poem, was aligned with the “Progressives” of the so-called New German School, who favored program music. They stood in opposition to the “Conservatives,” who held that music should be non-representational—as Hanslick explained, “music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.”

Liszt had retired from concertizing in 1848, at the peak of his international stardom, to serve the Grand Duke of Weimar as Kapellmeister-in-Extraordinary. One benefit of this somewhat provincial post was that it left him plenty of time to write. He completed the B Minor Sonata in early February 1853, basing it on an earlier version that he’d composed about four years earlier. It was first played in public in 1857 by Liszt’s student, Hans von Bülow, who married the composer’s daughter Cosima later that year.

Although the exact beginnings and endings of the Sonata’s four movements are open to debate, the work largely corresponds to the conventions of sonata-allegro form, with an exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. The four main themes are introduced early on: a deep and somewhat ominous descending scale; a spikier contrasting theme in double octaves; a motif marked “marcato” derived from four repeated notes; and a noble “grandioso” motif built from mammoth blocked chords in the relative major, D. All four themes undergo myriad transformations throughout the piece, as Liszt alters their mood, rhythm, tempo, pitch, and harmony. A central Andante sostenuto, in F-sharp major, serves as the Sonata’s slow movement, whereas a mind-bending fugato section functions as its scherzo. The pianist must navigate numerous technical challenges, from tricky trills and fleet runs to treacherous passagework calling for crossed hands. Although Liszt marked his original conclusion triple forte, he ultimately chose to end the Sonata in triple piano instead. After a radiant recollection of the Andante sostenuto, the coda fades out with a softly repeated B-major chord.

Although some commentators have attempted to impose an extramusical program on the Sonata in B Minor, Liszt himself didn’t provide one. It’s one of the few examples of purely abstract, or absolute, music in his catalogue. Structurally, he may have been inspired by Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, which he had transcribed for piano and orchestra in 1851.

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MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839–1881) Pictures at an Exhibition An alcoholic who died at 42, Mussorgsky published very little during his lifetime: just a few songs and the vocal score to the opera Boris Godunov. If not for his former roommate Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, who “corrected” his unpublished manuscripts before their posthumous publication, Mussorgsky might have been forgotten altogether. His most famous work, Pictures at an Exhibition, was probably never performed in public during his lifetime. Maurice Ravel, whose orchestration is most frequently programmed today, worked from Rimsky’s heavily revised version and never saw the original score. Mussorgsky’s own version of the piano suite wasn’t even published until 1931.

Mussorgsky created Pictures at an Exhibition in June 1874 as a tribute to a friend, the painter Victor Hartmann, who had died unexpectedly from an aneurysm the previous year. Out of the hundreds of works displayed at a recent memorial exhibition, Mussorgsky focused on 10 canvases: fanciful watercolors, elaborate doodles, exotic vistas. He worked quickly and confidently, completing the suite in a mere three weeks. “Ideas, melodies come to me of their own accord,” he boasted in a letter. “ I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.”

To connect the movements inspired by each artwork, Mussorgsky used an introductory theme called “Promenade.” As he explained it, the theme finds the viewer “roving through the exhibition—now leisurely, now briskly—in order to come close to a picture that has attracted his attention.” Providing the melodic material for all the music that follows, the promenade theme evolves throughout the suite, signaling subtle shifts of mood.

The cycle is rich in contrast and color. “Gnomus,” the first movement, is a hodgepodge of erratic leaps and snarling harmonies. “The Old Castle,” based on two sketches of medieval French castles, features a melody reminiscent 180

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of Russian folk music. “Tuileries,” light-glazed and lively, celebrates the charming mayhem of children romping in a formal French garden. The powerfully percussive “Bydlo” lumbers forth in an oxen-driven cart. The clucking, skittery “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks” was inspired by Hartmann’s sketch of a young dancer in a canary costume clasping an eggshell shield. “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle” pits a deep, stern melody against a plaintive and fluttery higher one. “The Market at Limoges” depicts the chatter of Frenchwomen and the cheerful clamor of village life. In “Catacombs,” the promenade theme resurfaces, now shadowy and dissonant. “Baba Yaga” is a frenzied retelling of a famous Russian folk-tale about a witch and her monstrous mobile home, a wooden hut propelled by a chicken’s legs. Finally, in “The Great Gate at Kiev,” the promenade theme finds its gleaming apotheosis while resounding chords imitate church bells.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 11:00 AM

The Domo Rolston String Quartet

Luri Lee, violin

Emily Kruspe, violin

Hezekiah Leung, viola

Jonathan Lo, cello

JOSEPH HAYDN: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, Hob. III:78, “Sunrise”

Allegro con spirito Adagio

Minuet: Allegro – Trio

Finale: Allegro ma non troppo CLAUDE DEBUSSY: String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10

Animé et très décidé

Assez vif et bien rythmé

Andantino, doucement expressif

Très modéré

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, Hob. III:78, “Sunrise” The sunrise is in the first measures—the first violin peaks up from a gentle dissonance with a held B-flat major chord in the other three strings. And so the day begins: mostly sunny, with a chance of clouds in the slow movement.

The nickname, whether or not actually given by Haydn, is at least typical of Haydn’s wit and whimsy: some of his other quartets and symphonies carry such names as “the Razor,” “the Hen,” “Drumroll,” and of course, “the Surprise.” It is worth remembering that these often weighty genres—the quartet and the symphony—had a certain lightness when they were first brought into existence by their father, “Papa” Haydn. Which is not to say his music didn’t also have serious intent or the capacity for profound expression from the beginning.

The “Sunrise” Quartet is the fourth entry in Haydn’s Op. 76, his last completed set of quartets. The 65-year-old composer wrote them around 1797 for the Hungarian count Joseph Erdödy, who kept the exclusive rights for two years until Haydn was allowed to publish them. At the start of Haydn’s career, the string quartet had scarcely existed as a concept— the idea of chamber music in which the players were all equal, without a keyboard or basso continuo, was relatively novel. One tale has Haydn at 18 years old asked to write a piece for four humble amateurs, including a baron, his estate manager, and a country priest, resulting in his first quartet. And just 50 years later, by the turn of the 19th century, the string quartet was a sophisticated genre with nearly 100 works collectively by Haydn, Mozart, and the young Beethoven.

The “Sunrise” is a good example of this first height in string quartet writing. Its opening movement is in the common sonata-allegro form (with sections of exposition, develop184

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ment, and return; some of the other Op. 76 quartets break out of this established mold)—but its confident themes and facile construction represent an experienced composer. The slow movement is gray and deeply felt, with an opening chorale growing into increasingly elaborate violin cadenzas.

Pulsing harmonies in the inner voices and cello are reminiscent of Mozart, who had already been dead six years when Haydn wrote this quartet. Clouds part for the Minuet and Trio, both country dances, with drones to harmonize the latter. The Finale has a charming little hop or stumble in its theme, which recurs between varying episodes—and then the quartet winds up instead of winding down, with an accelerando up to a nearly double-time conclusion.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10 Debussy published his String Quartet in 1894 with the words “1er Quatuor” (First Quartet) on the cover, a false promise since he never wrote another. He also designated it Op. 10, also misleading, since he had not actually published nine previous compositions (and soon abandoned the practice of assigning opus numbers entirely). The number was probably chosen to make the fledgling 32-year-old composer seem more accomplished than he really was.

Today, of course, neither Debussy nor his quartet needs such bolstering—and its uniqueness in Debussy’s output adds to its aura. The Debussy Quartet. Unlike Haydn, who spent his career working over the genre in nearly 70 compositions, Debussy had his first and last word in one go. But still a sense of “working over” pervades the piece from start to finish—a process of trying out, developing, and modifying across four movements.

The first movement’s opening idea underpins the entire work: a sturdy, two-measure motive spun out into a taught, 12-bar phrase. From there, a second theme introduces a particularly Debussian effect: a long, quiet melody floated over a quick, busy texture. The movement is constructed as a procession of linked sections, all related to varying degrees to the opening material.

The second movement strums like a guitar with string pizzicato—often three players plucking against one alone playing with the bow. Though the color palette has changed, the first movement’s ideas are still present: the four opening plucked chords could be a simplification of the first movement opening, and the viola’s answering theme, with its triplet turn, is not far afield from what was before.

somewhat mixed, with the composer Ernest Chausson, its originally intended dedicatee, doubting its unconventional form (Debussy promised him a second, more agreeable quartet, never to be written). Other musicians were ambivalent about its difficulty. Ysaÿe, however, believed in it and took it on tour, and the publisher A. Durand & Fils offered a contract. Soon the quartet became a modest success, and when Debussy’s later works—particularly the opera Pelléas et Mélisande—drew wider attention, it was revisited by players and found a central place in the modern repertoire.

Another color shift marks the slow movement: the players put on mutes. The second violin begins with a hesitant fragment, answered by cello pizzicato (perhaps a carryover from the second movement). The viola repeats the fragment, and then first violin completes it as a hushed and tender lullaby.

The movement hinges on warmth and then withdrawal of warmth—harmonies disappear, and then echo again as atmospheric touches like a distant organ. A second melody, again with the triplet turn from the first and second movements, broadens and grows large and expressive. But again, it retracts and the lullaby returns.

Though played with a pause in between, the finale seems to drift right out of the slow movement. The cello twines around, then the three other players join and wobble together in queasy chromatics. They gain momentum and familiar themes reemerge—a transformation of the first movement opening, splashes of the second movement’s guitar, and an ending flourish.

The Ysaÿe Quartet (named for its leader, violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe) premiered Debussy’s Quartet on December 29, 1893, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris for the Société Nationale de Musique. The reaction at first was 2019 Summer Season

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 6:30 PM

Olivier Music Barn Jenny Chen, piano

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101

Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten: Allegretto ma non troppo

Lebhaft. Marschmäßig: Vivace alla marcia

Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll: Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto

Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit Entschlossenheit: Allegro FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 CHOPIN: Fantaisie-impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Op. 66 INTERMISSION CHOPIN: Polonaise in C-sharp Minor, Op. 26, No. 1 CHOPIN: Polonaise in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, No. 2 CHOPIN: Tarantella in A-flat Major, Op. 43 CHOPIN: Waltz in A-flat Op. 34, No. 1, “Valse brillante” CHOPIN: Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM PETER HALSTEAD

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101 This is the only sonata of his 32 which Beethoven heard performed in public. (Not that he could hear.)

I always ask myself why, when Beethoven has shown himself capable of Op. 106 (the “Hammerklavier”), of the music of the future, intense fugues which anticipate Schoenberg, does he want more than ever to write haunting, lyrical, un-Beethoven-like songs to the bright countryside which could come from Schubert or Mendelssohn? He couldn’t hear anything, so he wasn’t being influenced by his contemporaries. In fact, the inequity of his deafness should have been more likely to produce angry and atonal outbursts, and often did.

But there is also Op. 109, Piano Sonata No. 30, in E Major, which could be a Venetian boat song or a Brahms lullaby.

I attribute it to the same celestial gift which produced the “Ode to Joy” melody in the midst of the chaos of his Ninth Symphony. And of course, no one is as melodic as Beethoven when he wants to be: most of his symphonies have explosions of sheer folksong. Unlike Mozart, who copied genuine folksongs, Beethoven made up his own. Many critics revert to simple description of the changing harmonies. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas: books that tell us everything about the bee except Why. As Beethoven said of one of his string quartets, “Thank God, there is less lack of imagination than ever before.” He took the pressure off his desire to be musically monosyllabic, to be monolithic, apocalyptic, by reverting to some child in himself that liked to hum and play marbles, and forget about the burden of greatness, the trumpet call of posterity. Beethoven then is as lilting as Dvořák, as much fun as Rossini. He becomes not German but Italian.

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Again, I always think of his greatness as a well-tailored overlay of his genius. He tries too hard, he forces the structure to bend to his will, and you can hear it. But in his Italian music, you can meet his soul: not the ego that suffers, retaliates, is aware of itself—but the minstrel without attitude. This person is not the familiar curmudgeon, the rigorous grandmaster, the defiant and defensive genius, but the bar poet, Herr Singmeister of the village tavern. Not the Meistersinger, the Kapellmeister, but the carouser in chief.

The modest country boy who doesn’t have to prove himself, or worry about the quality of his work, but someone like Gordon MacRae in Oklahoma! —nature’s cheerful troubadour, someone out of Gilbert and Sullivan, as if Beethoven snuck out the back door and spent a week in disguise in a mariachi band.

This is not to denigrate the genius of his simplest and most heartfelt creations. But it is the root of the problem: Beethoven knew how good he was, and he knew that people would compare him to himself, and occasionally he wanted to slip those bonds, to be carefree, like the young Brahms, streaking though the Austrian countryside: Frei aber einsam.

Free but lonely. To have no rules but the ones that you invent each day. Again, not that you don’t retain the essence of yourself, the morality, the kindness, the sense of rightness— it’s just that those are not values the old Beethoven could be found humming merrily to himself in lederhosen in some Bavarian village.

And that is the great tariff on fame: you are imprisoned in your reputation, and it eliminates everything that made you famous in the first place. No one wants a Beethoven to run off screaming on a tramp steamer. We want him to toe the line, to live at the pinnacle of productivity. And yet, without puttering, without wasting time, the ego is too confined to relax into the unexpected, into mere happiness, into artless honesty. Richard Harris used to take the train to distant suburbs, find a family, and live their life until his wife would eventually find him and drag him home.

In any case, I think that is what is going on here, in this ingenuous, unaffected, trusting, and spontaneous liberation which rightly defines the core of Jenny Chen’s musical personality: sincerity wrung from immensity, charm sprung from pure candor. Genius without strings.

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 Wagner’s Tannhäuser had opened in Dresden. Schumann had written his Piano Concerto. Liszt erected a monument to Beethoven in Bonn. Poor harvests will lead to the uneasy conditions of 1848 throughout Europe. There are floods in the countryside, and bridges are washed away. Mendelssohn is working on the last of the Songs Without Words, including a few “Venetian Gondola Songs.” George Sand’s daughter, Solange, is flirting with Chopin. The atmosphere in Nohant is heavy with pollen and sensuality. He writes to his family: “I do not know how it happens, but I am incapable of doing anything useful, and yet I am not idling, I do not slope from corner to corner like with You, but sit for hours and evenings on end in my room.”

In the midst of this, he writes works of great genius, first improvising sketches, then linking them together. Chopin writes the Berceuse and the B-minor Sonata. He was working on the Polonaise-fantaisie. And of course the Barcarolle.

He played the last part of it pianissimo at his last concert in Paris. He will be dead in three years.

He invokes the past with this reminiscence of Venice (a city he never visited). Even Wagner’s Thuringia is set in the early 13th century, with landgraves, knights, and minnesingers.

Europe is looking back wistfully.

The lilt and lap of the Venetian canals incessantly underscore the main theme and its various detours (unwavering

and implacable repetition being the hallmark of tide). The passagework in the midsection serves to paint the angles of the light on the water, the reflections from the windows looking down on the stipples, prismatic with the dregs of a major city which flow between the Moorish palaces and the architectural details of the trade between Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, later to move on to Trieste and Vienna itself.

Chopin takes the glittering musical artifacts of the Orient and the Sahara and disguises them with his own motivic wanderings. Like Raymond Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique, Chopin has visited a kingdom without ever leaving his stateroom. Schumann’s Carnaval had been written a decade earlier, and Chopin has integrated his curiosity about the developing trade routes into his own souk, his bazaar of consistent themes which flirt with exoticism without ever leaving the room. Chopin is much too Parisian to let any mendicants into the salon.

He sums it all up by returning to his main theme, and providing a scale in which you might try to see all the notes he has visited during his Italian jaunt. The real Venice will have to wait for Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage: Second Year Italy, written around the same time, and Balakirev’s Islamey: Oriental Fantasy of 1869.

CHOPIN Fantaisie-impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Op. 66 This moto perpetuo wasn’t published for 20 years. Chopin left instructions to ignore all of his unpublished works.

Note that the left hand which begins the piece is playing groups of threes, while the right hand enters and begins 2019 Summer Season

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playing groups of four, meaning there is a leftover note in the right hand which has to be fit in between the other notes, giving the impression of a precipitous and undisciplined rush of notes—but in fact the hands have to be extremely disciplined to play four against three. Modern compositions by Leonard Bernstein and Elliot Carter use this technique to make a piece sound jazzy. This lends a surprising modernity to Chopin’s tour de force étude. Chopin called it neither a fantaisie nor an impromptu, but just “No. 4.” Although critics have pointed out simplistic similarities in other pieces, there is no acoustical resemblance to Chopin’s piece anywhere in music (except to itself, as we will see).

The midsection is essentially a rhythmic nocturne in D flat, echoing Chopin’s own Nocturne and Prelude in D flat. D flat is the same key as C sharp, so the yin and yang, the Janusian duality of the piece comes from the differences between the two keys.

C sharp is aggressive, militaristic, virtuosic. D flat is dreamy, bucolic. The notes are the same, but the personalities completely different. So in a way this is a study in schizophrenia, in how the demonic theme (which starts with a trill around a note) can be translated into a soothing theme, which also starts with a trill on that very same note, although now it is “flatted,” rather than “sharped.”

The middle section is in fact the same exact melody as the faster moto perpetuo which begins and closes the piece, except that Chopin has selected every other note. Another way of saying this is that he has hidden the very popular melody in the more frenetic first half. If that has a lesson, it’s to teach you not to judge a fantaisie by its cover. Something that seems too jarring, too fast, too difficult, can instead be a mask for a piece which is the ultimate tranquil, Buddhist solution to the frenzied world of the first half. As Eliot said, “in my beginning is my end.”

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CHOPIN Polonaise in C-sharp Minor, Op. 26, No. 1 Polonaise in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, No. 2 Some 7,000 Polish exiles settled in Paris after 1831, when Warsaw fell to the Russians in the November Uprising. This was the French part of the Great Emigration, the Polish diaspora. Poets, painters, musicians, statesmen, generals, and aristocrats flooded into Paris, including childhood friends of Chopin, such as Albert Grzymala, a wealthy banker under death threat by Russia. He co-founded the Polish Literary Society, which in fact was a network of spies. He later was forced to flee France. He was friends with George Sand and introduced her to Chopin.

In 1832 Prince Adam Czartoryski formed a Polish government in exile in Paris. He acquired the Hôtel Lambert, one of the most gorgeous palaces on the Île Saint-Louis in the center of the Seine, which his family later sold to the Baron de Redé. It was there that in 1969 Baron de Redé staged the Bal Oriental, where Jacqueline de Ribes, Guy de Rothschild, Salvador Dalí, and Brigitte Bardot dressed themselves in Thai, Russian, Indian, and Venetian costumes. Onassis came as himself.

The Hôtel was designed by Louis Le Vau, Louis XIV’s great architect, who designed Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles, the Château de Vincennes, Saint-Sulpice, the Louvre. Every inch of this exquisite palace is decorated with murals by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, the artist of Versailles.

De Redé later managed the assets of the Rolling Stones.

De Redé was inseparable from Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, and he talked her and her husband, Guy, into purchasing the Hôtel, where they all lived together. It was left by the Rothschilds to France, where it is now open only to guests of the state. Baudelaire had rented a room there for a year in 1843, around the same time Chopin was writing and performing his last Polonaises. We once heard Baudelaire’s poems read in that room, as dusk grew on the river. It is typically French that poems focusing on the seamy side of life were written in such opulent surroundings.

Through his pupil Marcelina Radziwill, Adam’s niece, Chopin became a member of the family, and often played his Polonaises in the Hôtel Lambert in support of Polish causes.

Because of this, he was followed by the French government.

Chopin would later play the Polonaises for George Sand’s Polish salons, so he had personal reasons to hide Polish themes in all of his pieces. Robert Schumann, a great lover of ciphers himself, was aware of the coded call to arms in Chopin’s music. He wrote, “If the autonomous, mighty monarch of the North knew what a dangerous foe was threatening him in these utterly simple mazurka melodies, he would doubtless ban this music. The works of Chopin are cannons concealed amongst flowers.” In the Polonaises, the flowers are merely window dressing.

The Polonaises were meant to inspire the Poles to rebellion.

They embodied native themes in an overtly militaristic mode.

Liszt was accurate when he said to his pupil Frederic Lamond about octaves in the Polonaises: “I don’t want to listen to how fast you can play octaves. What I wish to hear is the canter of the horses of the Polish cavalry before they gather force and destroy the enemy.”

The Polonaises are filled from the first C-sharp octave volley with the call to horse, the mounting, the gallop, the parade.

The E-flat minor Polonaise begins with a concealed group lying in wait, then bursting forth triumphantly on the enemy.

Both Polonaises have middle interludes which may be dreams of what childhood was like in the countryside before Poland was besieged with uprisings against their repressive Russian overlords. The dreams are short, and the battles come flooding back, with the strut and snorts of horses eager to lead the charge.

This was armchair revolution, and the midsection idylls were redolent of the drawing room. But Chopin was the most visible Polish expatriate, and he was aware of the effect his

pieces had on both the Poles and the Russians. What more could anyone do? Much later, the Polonaises were played on radio to inspire resistance against the Nazis, and the Nazis banned them.

Although Chopin was renowned for his glancing touch, his ephemeral scales, his filigree, his rain-wet webs of notes turning back on themselves, a cat’s cradle of stops, starts, dashes for safety, and delicate stabs at an idea, the Polonaises are their exact opposite, filled with brutal chords, sober octaves, ambitious arpeggios, and coup de grâce slashes: a pose, a swaggering bravado which does not exist in any of his other pieces.

CHOPIN Tarantella in A-flat Major, Op. 43 This is the same melody as Rossini’s perpetual-motion Neapolitan La Danza, sung so charmingly by Rolando Villazón. You can hear Pavarotti sing it on YouTube. Liszt transcribed it for piano. Of course a tarantella is the St. Vitus dance you do when bitten by a tarantula, to react to or to quell the pain. The tarantula was a spider found in Taranto, Italy. The slavic furlana of Venice is a similar dance done by gondoliers.

Chopin was obsessed with Rossini’s Danza, as much as he was with the coloraturas who ornamented Rossini’s operas and whose descants he used as melodies for his nocturnes.

He puts the melody in the accompaniment as a virtuosic trick, so the inner voices are where the melody lives. This is like one of Godowski’s versions of Chopin’s études, where he inverts the difficulties so they are borne by the left hand.

The right hand becomes a metronome, beating time and maintaining the rigor of the syncopation, while the thumb descends down the keyboard.

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I see this as an experiment, Chopin trying to figure out if he can use Rossini for something other than Rossini. But Rossini’s rhythms are really the opposite of Chopin’s, and quite resistant to collaboration.

CHOPIN Waltz in A-flat Op. 34, No. 1, “Valse brillante” In Vienna Chopin would wander over to the Prater and, like everyone else, rode the rides, visited galleries, and enjoyed the displays of spring flowers. He also discovered the beer halls, where hundreds of people would sit at tables drinking and eating, while Johann Strauss conducted his waltzes. This waltz was Chopin’s homage to Strauss. It is pure Vienna, from the introductory fanfare to the different themes brought in without any modulation between them.

The frisky Galop of the minor section introduces the janissary effect of gypsy cimbaloms, and mimics triangles and cymbals accompanying the dance.

The initial fanfare returns to build up to the virtuosic coda, and Chopin’s day in the park ends with fireworks. This was the first waltz he published.

Vienna was not the same carefree city state he had visited in 1829. The November Uprising had turned the Austrians against the Poles. Metternich had been preparing the country for another acquisition of Polish land. Chopin felt isolated and depressed.

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it. In the next piece, written out of the fire of youth, Chopin emerges, a peacock out of the fire.

Ravel wrote La valse to show how the illusion of a waltzing society in fact hid the boneyard of the European soul.

Chopin didn’t write the waltzes for that reason, but he conveyed the death of any excuse for the waltz nonetheless. We play his waltzes as piano students, unaware that the calming recidivist aura of these brilliant explorations of an outmoded form are in fact a smokescreen over the skeleton of a Vienna too jaded to dance. They hadn’t just rejected Chopin. They had rejected peace, reason, and the Enlightenment. They would replace it with World War I, with half a century of aridity and emptiness. That is, they would replace the greatest moment in Western Civilization—in art, in architecture, in music—with nothing at all.

CHOPIN Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20 After the decoy of the simple A-flat Waltz comes this explosion of virtuosity and anger, what Chopin’s biographer Frederick Niecks called “a shriek of despair,” his soul enveloped by a wall “through which it strives in vain to break.”

Alan Walker, in his Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, believes that this piece must have originated in 1830, during Chopin’s Christmas of desolation, which he spent alone in St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

The Trio’s mid-section is a simple rendition of the gorgeous Polish Christmas carol “Lulajże Jezuniu” (Sleep, Baby Jesus).

It is one of the great folk melodies. Chopin puts it in the middle of lilting octaves, so that you can sense the cradle itself. For Poles this song is Christmas incarnate. In the Polish Catholic Church, it is called a hymn. I used to conduct our choir in it when I was the organist in our parish

church in my early teens. Chopin puts the hymn in a picture frame, but he leaves its pure folk song unsullied.

Walker speculates that Chopin had heard the hymn when visiting the church of his girlfriend Konstancja Gładkowska the prior Christmas in Warsaw, and was homesick and lovelorn.

“Last year at this time I was in the Bernardines’ Church.

Today I am sitting all alone in my dressing gown, gnawing at my ring and writing.” This is certainly classic adolescent self-pity.

The ring was the one given him by Gładkowska.

But this was no mere adolescent. This was a genius who could put that loneliness into the first Scherzo, into its dynamite, its frenzied buzzing around the hive of its sforzando chord, figurations that no one had ever imagined, as far away from any Romantic music as Schoenberg was from Mozart.

This was entirely new territory.

Coming as it does immediately after the Lulajze lullaby, it erases Gładkowska and replaces her, not with self pity, but with ferocious anger, a pitiless vision of the world. And yet it is not atonal. It holds the center of the world in place, while storms swirl around it. It is like a Nordic gale wrapped in a tropical comforter. It carries the shiver of disease, of despair, but there is hope, because tonality remains. This is still the same planet as the waltz. It is just the planet after a tsunami.

It was the only answer to the anomie of Vienna. Outrage, bloodshed, abandoning the candied thoughts of teenage romance. It was about not just angst but anger. If Chopin were to take the world by storm, this was the perfect storm. This was the piece that could do it.

He was to write three more Scherzos between 1830 and 1842, an era during which Czar Nicholas focused all the might of the Russian war machine on eradicating the very spirit of the land which Chopin was determined to preserve.

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn James Austin Smith, oboe Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother in B-flat Major, BWV 992

Arioso: Adagio “Ist eine Schmeichelung der Freunde, um denselben von seiner Reise abzuhalten”

(A plea from his friends to discourage his journey)

[Andante] “Ist eine Vorstellung unterschiedlicher Casuum, die ihm in der Fremde könnten vorfallen”

(An image of various misfortunes that could befall him in foreign lands)

Adagiosissimo “Ist ein allgemeines Lamento der Freunde” (A general lament by his friends)

[Andante con moto] “All hier kommen die Freunde, weil sie doch sehen, dass es anders nicht sein

kann, und nehmen Abschied” (His friends come, since they see that it cannot be otherwise, and

bid farewell)

Aria di Postiglione: Allegro poco (Aria of the post horn)

Fuga all’imitazione della cornetta di postiglione (Fugue in imitation of the post horn) Pedja Muzijevic, piano LUCIANO BERIO: Sequenza VII for Solo Oboe James Austin Smith, oboe ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK: Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 87

Allegro con fuoco Lento

Allegro moderato, grazioso

Finale: Allegro ma non troppo Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother in B-flat Major, BWV 992 Though the heart of Bach’s music is sacred and sung—often conveying a Biblical story with the earthy drama of real life—and though he also wrote an entire catalogue of solo keyboard music, he almost never crossed his keyboard music with drama or narrative. In fact, the Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother may be his only instrumental work to tell a story so overtly.

It is also a very early piece, dating from around 1700–1704, when Bach was in his late teens, and has traditionally been tied to the departure of his older brother Johann Jacob, who was an oboist hired into the military band of the Swedish King Charles XII. Unlike Johann Sebastian, who never traveled outside Germany, Jacob ranged widely with the Swedish army, fighting at the Battle of Poltava in presentday Ukraine, and then joining the defeated Swedes in Turkish exile.

Though it makes a colorful story, this link between the Capriccio and Jacobs’s departure has been met with doubt by modern scholars. Christoph Wolff, Bach’s leading biographer, points out that the term “brother” (il fratro, not suo fratello in the original Italian title) could just as easily denote a close friend or classmate, and suggests the Capriccio was more likely written to commemorate Bach’s graduation from school in Lüneburg in 1703 and the parting of the friends he made there.

Whatever the source, the movements tell a clear, if rather generic, story. The Arioso, “A plea from his friends to discourage his journey,” is marked by a falling motive that quite literally pleads. The slow movement shivers, considering the traveler’s possible misfortunes in strange lands. The 196

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“General lament by his friends” is built on a descending passacaglia, the often-called “lament bass” of the Baroque.

Here the harmonies are marked only in figured bass— essentially the chord symbols of the time—encouraging the performer to improvise or elaborate. Finally, the friends see that their brother must leave, and they fortify him with a warm farewell.

There the story ends, but two more movements offer a thematically appropriate conclusion: first, an aria on the call of a post horn (which would signal the arrival or departure of the mail coach), and then Bach wrings a fugue out of the stark call. The original manuscript to the Capriccio is lost, but a few musical clues suggest it might have first been written in organ tablature—an alternative form of notation that Bach sometimes used in his youth.

LUCIANO BERIO (1925–2001) Sequenza VII for Solo Oboe Berio was born in 1925 in Oneglia, Ligurgia, on the northwest coast of Italy, under Fascist rule. The cultural horizons of Oneglia, he later described, “were, and still are, limited to two things: oil and pasta.” But the family’s radio constantly played opera broadcasts, and his father hosted chamber music parties. In 1943 Berio was conscripted into Mussolini’s army, but a gun exploded in his hand during training and he was hospitalized until he left the military. He entered the Milan Conservatory in 1945, but his injury made a solo piano career impossible. He began to focus on composing while supporting himself as a vocal accompanist.

In 1952 he traveled to the United States to study at the Tanglewood Music Center and happened to catch a concert at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which turned out to be the first-ever American concert of electronic music.

Returning to Italy, he threw himself into this new genre, creating a technologically equipped studio, the Studio di Fonologia, in Milan.

In the early ‘60s, Berio returned to the United States, teaching at Tanglewood, Mills College, and later at Harvard and Juilliard. He had begun the Sequenza series in 1958 with a work for flute, marking a return to human performers, but with a new perspective from his work with electronics. He continued the series, writing Sequenza VII for Solo Oboe in 1969, and completing a Sequenza for nearly every orchestral instrument—as well as one for the human voice—by the time of his death in 2001.

In writing these pieces, Berio was interested in the idea of human virtuosity. Working with electronics, he said, “it quickly became apparent how futile and inane was…the notion that loudspeakers had to be used principally to produce ‘new sounds’ in the concert hall.” What if it could be done instead by a live performer with a conventional instrument?

Sequenza VII was written for Heinz Holliger, a famed Swiss oboist with an affinity for experimental music. The score comes on a single large page on which 13 lines of music are intersected by 13 vertical dotted lines, creating a grid of measures, each intended to last a specified number of seconds.

The printed music resembles a circuit diagram or technical plan—an expression of Berio’s scientistic aspirations. The oboist plays against a held B natural, produced by a second instrument or electronic device offstage, which “should give the impression of lending a slight resonance to the solo oboe.” The oboe begins on its own B, a pitch on which the entire piece is focused, before introducing new pitches and increasingly elaborate effects.

In his own program note, Berio writes: My Sequenzas…call for a polyphonic listening, partly based on a fast transition between different characters and on their simultaneous

interaction. In Sequenza VII for oboe, I carry on the research of a latent polyphony putting into perspective the complex sound structures of the instrument with an ever-present “tonic”: a B natural that can be played pianissimo by any other instrument, behind the stage or in the audience. It is a harmonic perspective that contributes to a subtler analytic insight of the various stages of transformation of the solo part.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 87 Dvořák wrote his second Piano Quartet in 1889 after several years of urging from his publisher, Fritz Simrock of Berlin. Writing a piece for publication first, rather than for a specific performance, is a clear indication of Dvořák’s international stature at the time: there was public demand for his music, and his publisher saw money.

This was quite a change from 12 years earlier, when the influential Brahms introduced Dvořák to Simrock, writing, “I have enjoyed works sent in by Antonín Dvořák (pronounced Dvorschak) of Prague…. He is a very talented man.

Moreover, he is poor!” Simrock accepted a set of songs and soon commissioned more works. At first, Dvořák made his reputation on the Czech character of his music, which was fresh to German ears and praised, for example by Brahms, for its “piquancy.” But anti-Slavic sentiment grew among the Viennese public in the 1880s, as debates about language and ethnicity snarled the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Dvořák began to sense that his music was less welcome in the musical capital, and for a time tamped down his Bohemian style while also seeking friendlier audiences on tours to Berlin and London. The Piano Quartet in E-flat arrived 2019 Summer Season

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at the end of this period, showing the influence of Brahms and the cultivation of a more “neutral” Germanic style. Soon Dvořák would reintegrate his Czech voice, at first somewhat smoothed and abstracted, and then more strongly in a late set of symphonic poems and operas inspired by Czech poetry and folklore.

Perhaps because it foils preconceptions about what Dvořák’s music should sound like, the Piano Quartet No. 2 in E flat is often overlooked among his chamber music, overshadowed especially by the grand Piano Quintet in A Major (1887) and the “Dumky” Trio (1891). But the E-flat

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Quartet is masterfully written and full of surprises—and it reveals something of Dvořák’s essential essence through the things that remain the same despite the departure in style.

The opening Allegro begins with the three string instruments in pure octaves answered by a bright piano entrance that then begins to brood. The writing is often bass heavy with a foundation of low piano and cello, but then Dvořák seizes a big range with violin high above, like a painter using all the space on a tall canvas. In the middle section, propulsive dotted rhythms and an incessant falling motif confirm some Dvořákian constants. The coda is also striking, with a shimmering tremolo version of the opening theme.

The slow movement, Lento, is set dreamily in the uncommon key of G-flat major, which gives the strings a fuzzy, covered quality. The movement loosely connects a succession of different melodies, as if in free association, picking up dramatically with an impassioned climax and then segueing to a new lilting theme. The sequence repeats, and then vanishes in an effervescent finish.

A labyrinthine scheme of triple-time dances makes up the third movement. The first dance is a folksy waltz; the second is set in the harmonic minor scale, often associated with Middle Eastern music. The next theme is also modally in-

flected, giving a general sense of foreignness, and the falling motif from the first movement reappears. The next dance mimics a hammered dulcimer (one remaining centralEuropean touch), and a tremolo intrusion gives way to a trio section (Un pochettino piĂš mosso). Finally the dances repeat.

Like the opening, the Finale opens with a steely unison, which then finds an energetic clip. A warm viola solo comes around twice, and the end firmly plants its feet with a lowvoiced resolution.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 11:00 AM The Domo James Austin Smith, oboe Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Anthony Manzo, bass

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370/368b

Allegro Adagio

Rondo: Allegro James Austin Smith, oboe Jennifer Frautschi, violin Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI: Serenade in C Major, Op. 10

Marcia: Allegro

Romanza: Adagio non troppo

Scherzo: Vivace

Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto

Rondo: Allegro vivace Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello JOSEPH HAYDN: Divertimento in G Major, Hob II:2

Presto

Allegro moderato

Minuet I Adagio

Minuet II

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER Because of the oboe’s unusual prominence and virtuosity,

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370/368b In 1777, on his way to Paris with his mother as chaperone, Mozart stopped in Mannheim, where he met the 28-yearold Friedrich Ramm. By that point in his career, Ramm was a seasoned professional, having spent the past 14 years as principal oboist for the renowned Mannheim Orchestra.

Thanks to his extraordinary talent and stellar reputation, Ramm enjoyed unusual freedom for a court musician and was granted regular sabbaticals from his orchestral duties so that he could tour as a soloist in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris. Although Mozart was blown away by the power and panache of the entire ensemble, he was particularly impressed by Ramm’s “pleasingly pure tone.” The admiration was mutual: after he presented Ramm with his Oboe Concerto, originally intended for another musician, Mozart reported that Ramm was “quite crazy with delight” and immediately added it to his concert repertoire. Mozart also wrote a virtuosic oboe part for Ramm in the (now sadly lost) Sinfonia Concertante for Four Wind Instruments and Orchestra, as well as two arias with obbligato oboe roles.

During the winter of 1780–81, Mozart traveled to Munich to oversee rehearsals and first performances of his opera Idomeneo. He also reconnected with Ramm, who had moved there with the Mannheim Orchestra a couple of years earlier. It’s unclear whether Mozart composed his Oboe Quartet in F Major on commission or as a gift to the only soloist he considered capable of playing it. Regardless of its origins, its artistry is beyond dispute. The Quartet reflects the technological improvements that had recently been made to the oboe’s design, as well as Mozart’s faith in Ramm’s abilities. The oboe part spans nearly two-anda-half octaves, climbing all the way to a high F, above the staff—a novelty seldom attempted before the present work because earlier iterations of the instrument were confined to a two-octave range.

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the Quartet sometimes resembles a concerto, except that the soloist is supported by only three performers (on violin, viola, and cello) instead of a full orchestra. But Mozart doesn’t relegate the string instruments to a purely supportive role.

Despite the difficulty of balancing the different timbres, he provides ample opportunity for ensemble playing. Melody and countermelody are integrated in subtle, almost imperceptible ways, creating an intimate and organic effect.

The three movements are cast in the conventional fast-slowfast design. The opening Allegro basically follows sonata form, although it flaunts a charming fugato outburst in the development section. The plangent Adagio, in D minor, spreads out a sumptuous bed of strings to support the oboe’s soulful aria, which is capped off by a short but stunning cadenza. The virtuosic finale contains a notorious 13-bar passage where the oboe veers away from the prevailing 6/8 meter into 4/4 time while the strings stick to the original metrical plan. Bristling with breakneck passagework, fluttering semiquavers, and daring leaps, the Rondeau closes on a soft high F.

ERNST VON DOHNÁNYI (1877–1960) Serenade in C Major, Op. 10 Born in Pozsony (later known as Bratislava, which is now the capital of Slovakia), Ernst von Dohnányi was a major figure in Hungarian music. In 1896, the year he graduated from the Budapest Music Academy, he won the Hungarian Millennium Prize for his F Major Symphony. Three years later, his First Piano Concerto garnered a Bösendorfer Prize.

His formidable technique, combined with his expressive, intelligent interpretive gifts, made him a sought-after touring pianist. He also conducted, curated, performed, and recorded a substantial body of work, with a particular emphasis on chamber music. In 1915 he modified his hectic concert

schedule to put down stakes in Budapest, where he became an influential instructor at the Budapest Academy of Music, teaching piano and composition to the next generation of Hungarian musicians. He also conducted the Budapest Philharmonic and continued to compose. During World War II, one of his two sons was killed in combat, and his other son was hanged by the Nazis after being implicated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. (The latter son, Hans, was the father of the distinguished conductor Christoph von Dohnányi.) Amid all this turmoil and tragedy, Ernst von Dohnányi left Hungary in 1944. After a few years traveling and living in South America, he was appointed composer in residence at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

In addition to two accomplished symphonies and several concertos, Dohnányi composed an impressive array of chamber music. His two most famous examples in the genre are his Piano Quintet No. 1 in C Minor and the Serenade in C Major, Op. 10, a string trio for violin, viola, and cello.

Composed in 1902–03 and published the following year, the Serenade is among his earliest works to enter the repertoire.

Its five compact movements are graceful and varied, suffused with a Haydnesque wit. (Coincidentally, Dohnányi’s hometown was only about 20 miles from Haydn’s birthplace.)

Brahms—an important early mentor who died the year after Dohnányi graduated from conservatory—is another stylistic touchstone.

The Serenade opens with the energetic Marcia, which introduces a rustic, Hungarian folk–inflected theme. Somewhat unusually, the march theme isn’t repeated at the end of the movement. (Spoiler alert: it does come back). Next, in the slow and wistful Romanza, the viola sings a serene, longlined melody, while violin and cello supply pungent pizzicato and supple counterpoint. The playful, prankish Scherzo pits a motoric mini-fugue against a lyrical Brahmsian interlude, combining the disparate ideas in the reprise. The fourth movement, Tema con variazioni, begins with a brooding modal melody that spawns five variations, ingeniously augmented by rich harmonies and surprising textures. For the rollicking Rondo finale, Dohnányi resurrects the opening

march theme, transforms it, and renders it almost mute before concluding with an emphatic C-major chord.

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) Divertimento in G Major, Hob: II:2 In 1776, about midway through his long employment as court composer for the Esterházy family, the 44-year-old Joseph Haydn described his scrappy early years: I was born anno 1732 the last of March in the hamlet of Rohrau in Lower Austria, near Bruck on the Leytha River. My father was a wheelwright by profession...and had a natural love for music.

Without being able to read music, he played the harp, and when I was a boy of five I was able to repeat all of his short and simple songs. This caused my father to send me to Hainburg in the care of the school director, a relative, so that I might learn there the rudiments of music and other elementary general subjects. Almighty God gave me musical talent so that in my sixth year I was able to sing along with the choir during Mass and to play some on the violin and keyboard. When I was seven years old the Imperial Kapellmeister von Reutter came through Hainburg. He happened to hear my small but pleasing voice and accepted me at once for the Kappelhaus [in Vienna]. Besides being instructed in academic subjects, I learned from excellent teachers how to sing and had instruction in piano and violin. Until I reached the age of 18, I sang there, to much applause, soprano parts, both at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and at court. When my voice finally changed, I barely managed to stay alive by giving music lessons to children for about eight years. In this way many talented people are 2019 Summer Season

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ruined: they have to earn a miserable living and have no time to study. I had this experience myself, and I would never have reached this moderate degree of success if I had not continued to compose diligently during the nights as well. I wrote a great deal, but I lacked solid grounding until [about 1753, when] I had the good fortune to be taught the fundamentals of composition by the famous [Nicola] Porpora, who lived in Vienna during this time. [In 1757] I eventually was given a position as music director to Count [Ferdinand Maximilian von] Morzin, and following this as Kappellmeister to His Highness Prince Esterházy; there it is my desire to live and to die.

Haydn’s Divertimento in G Major is among his earliest surviving divertimentos and the only one of these early efforts that is scored without any wind instruments.

Although its precise date of composition is unknown, he probably wrote it in 1753 or 1754, not long after he’d begun working as an assistant to Porpora, accompanying his voice students and soaking up the Italian master’s considerable expertise.

The term divertimento is derived from the Italian verb divertire (to entertain). Consistent with these origins, it generally describes a multi-movement sequence of music based on dance forms. Popular in the late 18th century, the genre is closely connected to (indeed, often interchangeable with) the cassation, partita, nocturne, and serenade. Ideally, this music was made to be played outdoors, in the open air. Today we might describe the six-movement Divertimento in G Major as a string quintet, although it’s not entirely clear whether Haydn meant for the “basso” part to be played by a cello, a violone (an early double bass), or both instruments at once. Both sprightly and intense, it reveals the young composer’s gift for melodic invention, as well as his talent for contrasting moods and forms.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 3:00 PM Olivier Music Barn Benjamin Beilman, violin Jennifer Frautschi, violin Anthony Manzo, performer Nathan Schram, viola and performer Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN: Suite for Two Violins, “Gulliver’s Travels,” TWV 40:108

Intrada: Spirituoso

Lilliputsche Chaconne (Chaconne of the Lilliputians)

Brobdingnagische Gigue (Jig of the Brobdingnagians)

Reverie der Laputier, nebst ihren Augweckern (Daydreams of the Laputians and their attendant

flappers): Andante

Loure der gesitten Houyhnhnms (Loure of the well-mannered Houyhnhnms) – Furie der unartigen

Yahoos (Furie of the untamed Yahoos) Benjamin Beilman, violin Jennifer Frautschi, violin STEVE REICH: Clapping Music Anthony Manzo, performer Nathan Schram, performer FELIX MENDELSSOHN: String Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18

Allegro con moto

Intermezzo: Andante sostenuto

Scherzo: Allegro di molto

Allegro vivace Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Nathan Schram, viola Ayane Kozasa, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN (1681–1767) Suite for Two Violins, “Gulliver’s Travels,” TWV 40:108 Between 1728 and 1729, Telemann published a periodical he called Der getreue Music-Meister (The Faithful Music Master), filled with entertaining and instructive chamber music for use at home. Among the pieces was a set of violin duets inspired by a recent literary bestseller, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published in English in 1726 and translated into German in 1728. The novel intersects the genres of adventure, fantasy, philosophy, and satire—a riff on Robinson Crusoe that jabs at the attitudes of the Enlightenment. Telemann, however, focuses on its more children’s-book qualities, offering musical impressions of the surreal creatures Gulliver meets. Swift, no doubt, would have been contemptuous of the use of his novel if he knew of it: he did not love music, and only surfaces again in music history for nearly preventing the premiere of Messiah, by Telemann’s friend Handel, in Dublin in 1742. As dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Swift objected to the choir performing with “a club of Fidlers.”

Telemann’s Suite, “Gulliver’s Travels,” begins with an introductory movement followed by four more corresponding to the sections of the novel. Gulliver sets sail from his home in England each time, suffers some misfortune (shipwreck, stranding, pirates, mutiny), and ends up in a strange land.

The first is populated by Lilliputians: In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back.

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same kind (as I conjectured) following the first.

I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground.

On the next journey, Gulliver encounters Brobdingnagians, giants who are frighteningly large and physically disgusting because all their flaws (“spots, pimples, and freckles”) are magnified by their sheer size.

He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about 10 yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking-trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was thunder.

Telemann writes the Chaconne of the Lilliputians in the very small time signature of 3/32, a visual joke for the violinists, who have to read minuscule 64th and 128th notes.

The Brobdingnagians are written in the equally eccentric time signature of 24/1, putting their music into enormous whole notes.

Next, the Laputians are impractical intellectuals who live on a flying island up among the clouds. They love such useless things as music and math, but are so inattentive to the immediate world that they hire servants called “flappers” to hit them with stuffed bags to bring them back to reality.

It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able

to afford it always keep a flapper in their family, as one of their domestics…. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post.

Finally, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos share an island— the Houyhnhnms being rational horses, the Yahoos being wild, monkey-like humans. Of the Yahoos: Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs…. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus…. Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.

Of the Houyhnhnms: Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger in the way, resolved to divert themselves with him; or, perhaps, were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature, and complexion, from those who might probably live in so remote a climate.

Telemann gives the Houyhnhnms a Loure, a refined French dance, played by the first violinist, while at the same time the second violinist portrays the scampering Yahoos.

STEVE REICH (b. 1936) Clapping Music Steve Reich is known as a minimalist, and certainly Clapping Music is one of his most minimal pieces— requiring no instruments, just two people with a good sense of rhythm. Even the material is about as bare-bones as you can get—just a single bar with eight notes, repeated.

The first performer holds steady the entire time, while the second performer shifts a note back every 13th repetition, creating a new overlapping pattern. Eventually it cycles around and the piece ends in unison, back in sync.

The principle here is common in Reich’s work: musical elements are put through some process that produces more extended stretches of music, almost mechanically. Reich explained in his 1968 essay, Music as a Gradual Process: I do not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, literally, processes. The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the noteto-note details and the overall form simultaneously. (Think of a round or infinite canon.)

I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.

Reich was born in New York in 1936 and traveled as a child between New York and California where his divorced parents lived. He studied philosophy at Cornell University and then music at Juilliard and Mills College, where he grew interested in electronic music, especially involving prerecorded tapes. Ghanaian drumming was another major influence, revolutionizing his sense of rhythm and pulse. He wrote Clapping Music in 1972, he later recalled, after hearing women clapping in a performance of flamenco music in a Belgian bar. More recently, the piece has been adapted as an iOS app for anyone to try their hand at (Steve Reich’s Clapping Music: An Addictive Rhythm Game by Amphio Limited).

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As for the why of the piece, Reich shares his view: While performing and listening to gradual musical processes one can participate in a particular liberating and impersonal kind of ritual.

Focusing in on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outwards towards it.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847) String Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18 The roughly 40-year span from the early 1790s through the late 1820s saw the heights of Mozart and Haydn, the entirety of Beethoven’s career, and the brief flash of Schubert, who died at 31 with already hundreds of works behind him. In an unenviable place on the trailing edge of this pantheon came Mendelssohn, a young composer with remarkable facility, confronted with how much had already been done and what to do next.

But from another point of view, Mendelssohn had incredible advantages. In addition to sheer talent, his wealthy parents provided him with the best education possible in music, languages, arts, and sciences—and even hired whole orchestras to try out his childhood compositions. He also came of age in a moment when the foundations of music appeared solid: he could build directly on the accomplishments of his forerunners, not needing to dig a fresh foundation.

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Many of Mendelssohn’s greatest works come from his teens and early 20s. He wrote the String Quintet No. 1 in 1826 at 17 years old, revising it six years later with a new slow movement dedicated to the memory of Eduard Rietz, a violinist, conductor, and close friend who had died of tuberculosis. The Quintet was published as Mendelssohn’s Op. 18 in 1833.

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The Allegro con moto is a polite, organized movement that recalls the mid-career chamber music of Mozart. The exposition section is direct and expressive with some feisty interjections, while the development section builds toward tumult, but never quite gets past an orderly impression of chaos.

Dedicated to Rietz, the Intermezzo (replacing a Minuet in the original) is a warm remembrance rather than an elegy— set mostly in F major, it features the violin, which was Rietz’s instrument. It feels very personal, entirely avoiding the tropes of musical memorials.

The Scherzo is unmistakably Mendelssohn—a tight little caper similar to the scherzos from the great Octet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It begins with fugal entrances for each instrument, pointing to Mendelssohn’s interest in Baroque music and his study of counterpoint. But he puts it to use with inventive effects: touches of pizzicato and other ear-catching colors mark harmonic shifts, and eventually the upper and lower strings break into choirs in dialogue, contrasting loud and soft.

The finale is lively and has a clear sense of direction, its lines decorated with curlicues and bright textures. The first theme skips along, while the second is a tuneful melody extended by the violin. In the development section, Mendelssohn again uses a fugal technique with bold entrances in the five instruments. But the result is far from formal: in fact, the movement feels quite free, an embrace of all he had learned and already made his own.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Pedja Muzijevic, piano Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Anthony Manzo, bass

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Keyboard Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826

Sinfonia Allemande Courante Sarabande Rondeau Capriccio Pedja Muzijevic, piano BÉLA BARTÓK: from 44 Duos for Two Violins, Sz. 98

No. 35: Ruthenian Kolomejka

No. 16: Burleske

No. 22: Mosquito Dance

No. 26:Teasing Song

No. 42: Arabian Song

No. 43: Pizzicato

No. 44: Transylvanian Dance

No. 36: Bagpipes Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Piano Sextet in D Major, Op. 110

Allegro vivace Adagio

Menuetto: Agitato

Allegro vivace Benjamin Beilman, violin Ayane Kozasa, viola Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Anthony Manzo, bass Pedja Muzijevic, piano 2019 Summer Season

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER praeludium, preaeambulum, toccata, fantasia, and sinfonia

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Keyboard Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826 Music historians classify Bach’s three sets of keyboard suites as the French Suites, English Suites, and Partitas, but these designations are somewhat arbitrary: all of them are a complex cocktail of influences imbued with the composer’s singular genius. Although it’s difficult to assign dates to every composition, the consensus seems to be that he wrote them all around 1715–1730. The six partitas (BWV 825–830) were completed last, between 1725 and 1730, and are arguably the most technically demanding and stylistically experimental of the three sets. Completed in Leipzig, where Bach spent the last 27 years of his life, the six partitas were his first published works for keyboard instruments. He used the general title Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice), hoping to capitalize on the growing interest in music for the clavichord, spinet, and harpsichord, which were increasingly common additions to middle-class homes.

His predecessor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau, had published an influential collection of keyboard exercises that remained in circulation, and Bach almost certainly wanted to outshine him. He self-published the first partita in late 1726, with the following description on its title page: “Keyboard Practice, consisting of preludes, allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gigues, minuets, and other galanteries, composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits, by Johann Sebastian Bach, Actual Capellmeister to His Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen and Directore Chori Musici Lipsiensis.” The second and third partitas were published in 1726, with additional installments arriving every year until 1730. In 1731 he republished all six as a collection, designating it Op. 1.

In the 18th century, the conventional suite followed a general format: allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue. Bach chose to open each partita with a different movement type: 214

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(his choice for Partita No. 2). In Partita No. 2, he also opted to conclude the sequence with a rondeau followed by a capriccio rather than the standard gigue. Like Kuhnau, he used a different key for each partita, but where Kuhnau’s pattern was a straightforward ascending scale, first major and then minor, Bach’s sequence is more complex, a mixture of major and minor modes that starts at B flat, the point at which Kuhnau’s set ended.

Partita No. 2 is set in C minor, a key that Bach often chose for his most passionate and profound music. Unlike the other partitas, which each comprise seven movements, Partita No. 2 contains only six. It opens with the lengthy threepart Sinfonia, which begins slowly and gets progressively faster: first a dramatic Grave adagio ouverture; followed by a delicate and mysterious arioso, marked Andante; and then a blazingly virtuosic Allegro fugue, in which two voices magically turn into five. The second movement is a lyrical Allemande, a stately dance in duple meter with subtle counterpoint and a bittersweet bite. The graceful Courante, in triple meter, is light-dappled and lively, a refreshing contrast to the more melancholy movements surrounding it. The triple-time Sarabande is slow, shadowy, and sinuous, hinting at the erotic undercurrents of its source, a Spanish dance that was banned at court on the grounds of excessive sexiness. (Such matters are purely subjective, but I can’t be alone in believing that Bach always sneaks his most ravishing melodies into the sarabandes.) The Rondeau is frisky and skittish, with jumping staccato intervals. The suite closes with its most daunting challenge yet: an intensely contrapuntal Capriccio that calls for even wider staccato leaps in the left hand.

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945) from 44 Duos for Two Violins, Sz. 98 Accompanied by his countryman Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók traveled all over the Eastern European countryside to document indigenous folk tunes. Between 1904 and 1918, the pair recorded or transcribed more than 9,000 Hungarian, Slavonic, and Bulgarian melodies. “The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys,” Bartók later wrote.

“It became clear to me that the old modes, which had been forgotten in our music, had lost nothing of their vigor.”

Like Bach’s Clavier-Übung, Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins were, at least nominally, pedagogical. But as with many of his pieces for young musicians, the four-volume collection was meant to teach more than technique and theory.

Bartók also wanted to foster the students’ appreciation for folk music, which had played such a crucial role in his own creative development.

As brief and concentrated as haikus, the études draw from many geographical and ethnic sources: Hungary, Ukraine (Ruthenia), Serbia, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and even the Middle East. The set was commissioned in 1930 by the German violinist and teacher Erich Doflein, who requested permission to arrange several pieces from Bartók’s piano collection For Children, which Doflein hoped to use as exercises for his violin students. Instead, Bartók opted to create new works specifically for violin duo and worked closely with Doflein over the next year to craft progressively more challenging exercises.

Although the Duos are often harmonically and metrically sophisticated—bitingly bitonal, with plenty of chromatic, contrapuntal, and polyrhythmic complexity—they are appropriate for young musicians. The technical demands are relatively minimal: double stops are used sparingly, the bowing isn’t too tricky, and the pizzicato parts add textural interest

without discouraging the novice player. Even so, Bartók’s distinctive craftsmanship ensures that seasoned violinists find them appealing as well.

The original order of the Duos starts with the simplest pieces and increases in difficulty, but Bartók never expected performers to stick to this plan. For this evening’s concert, Jennifer Frautschi and Benjamin Beilman have selected a representative assortment.

“Ruthenian Kolomejká” (No. 35) is one of the few Bartók originals, although it’s based on a traditional ethnic dance from the eastern Galician town of Kolomyia, now part of Western Ukraine. In this rustic stomper, the violins create metrical tension by playing eighth-note double stops in an asymmetrical pattern, juggling three-beat and twobeat units with delirious abandon. “Burleske” (No. 16) is a cheerful canon with thematic inversions and intricate countermelodies. “Mosquito Dance” (No. 22) buzzes and whines, deploying erratic accents and tense stretti to depict the pesky insect’s sudden attacks. In the Stravinskian “Teasing Song” (No. 26), the violins switch parts at the midpoint so that each musician takes a turn playing melody and accompaniment; the mood is less mocking than playful and collaborative. “Arabian Song” (No. 42) takes a threenote ostinato figure and transposes it to different pitches, using varied accompaniment and other effects (pizzicato, tremolo, double stops) before arriving at the fortissimo conclusion. As befits its name, “Pizzicato” (No. 43) is the only fully plucked duo in the set. The energetic “Transylvanian Dance” (No. 44) was the first piece that Bartók submitted— and also the most difficult, which accounts for its placement as the last installment in the final volume. In this rhythmically complex duo, Bartók fattens the texture to four parts by adding open-string pitches. “Bagpipes” (No. 36) mimics the sound of the titular instrument by making one violin sing a simple tune while the other drones a repeated pattern over an open G string.

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FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847) Piano Sextet in D Major, Op. 110 Before Felix Mendelssohn was out of his teens, he had completed approximately 100 compositions, including operas, quartets, concertos, the Octet in E flat for Strings, and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His wealthy Jewish parents, who converted the family to Christianity, ensured that their four children had the finest possible education. Twice a month they turned their Berlin home into a concert hall, where Felix and his talented older sister Fanny, sometimes joined by select siblings, performed Sunday morning concerts that Felix curated and conducted.

The manuscript of the score for the Sextet in D Major contains very few corrections, which makes it difficult to discuss

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the composer’s creative process. His autograph is dated May 10, 1824, which means that he was barely 15 years old when he finished it. It wasn’t published until more than 20 years after his death, which accounts for its high opus number, and he never mentioned it in his surviving correspondence.

But it seems reasonable to assume that the Sextet was first performed at one of the Mendelssohn family concerts, possibly with Fanny on piano and the composer on viola, one of the instruments that he played superbly. He also might have assigned himself the piano part; like Fanny, he was fully capable of pulling off its elegant acrobatics.

The scoring, while unusual, wasn’t unique at the time. In addition to the piano, which often assumes a dominant role, the Sextet is scored for violin, two violas, cello, and bass. Although obviously indebted to chamber pieces by Haydn and

Mozart, the Sextet is far too sophisticated to be dismissed as juvenilia. By his mid-teens, Mendelssohn was already a published composer whose many admirers included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich Heine.

The Sextet contains four movements. The lengthy Allegro vivace, in D major, is in 4/4 time. Structured according to classical sonata form, it begins with a brief string introduction, which launches the first theme. The piano joins in and eventually delivers the second, more lyrical theme. The first movement ends with a long coda studded with brilliant piano arpeggios. The Adagio, a hymnlike waltz, is set in the remote key of F-sharp major. Here the piano engages in a tender call-and-response with muted strings. The muscular Menuetto, marked Agitato, is in D minor and a hectic 6/8 meter—unorthodox for a minuet, which typically functions

as a refined respite from the surrounding drama. Somewhat more conventionally, the Menuetto is joined to a Trio, which is set in F major, albeit with a generous dash of chromaticism. The finale starts with an Allegro vivace in D major, which borrows the rhythm of the galop, a brisk, skipping dance in 2/4 time that was beginning to be in vogue in European ballrooms. A short violin solo precedes the second theme. The movement progresses to an Allegro con fuoco passage in D minor, which resurrects the dark turbulence of the minuet. After another breathless run-through of the galop, the finale resolves in a long Picardy cadence (sometimes known as “the happy third�), which forcefully re-affirms the original D major key.

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 3:00 PM Olivier Music Barn James Austin Smith, oboe Jennifer Frautschi, violin Benjamin Beilman, violin Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Sarabande con partite in C Major, BWV 990 Pedja Muzijevic, piano GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN: Fantasia No. 1 for Solo Violin in B-flat Major, TWV 40:14 Jennifer Frautschi, violin SUZANNE FARRIN: l’onde della non vostra for Solo Oboe James Austin Smith, oboe GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN: Fantasia No. 12 for Solo Violin in A Minor, TWV 40:25 Benjamin Beilman, violin WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478 Allegro Andante Rondo Jennifer Frautschi, violin Nathan Schram, viola Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER suites. The original Sarabande is re-stated at the end of the

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Sarabande con Partite in C Major, BWV 990 During the Baroque era, musicians often borrowed, transcribed, and revised the works of other composers. Bach, despite his singular genius, was no exception. Because he was compelled to generate a huge amount of fresh material for his successive jobs as court musician, church organist, and Kapellmeister, he often recycled his own pieces or created variations and adaptations of preexisting works.

Establishing the authenticity, or even the authorship, of many compositions attributed to him and his contemporaries usually requires some degree of conjecture. Although many reliable sources attribute the Sarabande con partite in C Major to Bach, this attribution is disputed, sometimes strenuously, by others. The most compelling evidence that Bach wrote the Sarabande is that it is credited to him on a manuscript possessed by Leonhard Scholz, a Nuremberg organist and faithful Bach copyist who appears to have enjoyed access to many of the master’s more obscure works.

At any rate, if Bach did write this piece, it is likely among his earliest surviving works, possibly composed during his late adolescence, when he was employed as a “lackey” at the ducal court of Weimar, or during his early days as an organist in Arnstadt (ca.1703–1706). Whoever composed it may have loosely adapted it from the overture to Jean-Baptiste Lully’s opera Bellérophon, from 1679.

The Sarabande con Partite in C Major is based on a Sarabande, one of the common dance-based movements in 17th- and 18th-century suites. This slow and elegant form was originally derived from a courtly Spanish dance, which was then heavily stylized by the many French and German composers who incorporated it into their instrumental suites. The preliminary statement of the Sarabande is followed by 15 variations, including an allemanda, a courante, and a giguetta—all standard dances in Baroque keyboard 220

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sequence. Although the thematic transformations aren’t as ambitious as, say, the Goldberg Variations, the partite are charming and memorable. The bass line of the Sarabande, which drives the ensuing variations more than the melody, resembles a chaconne. Variations 6 and 10 are especially demanding, which strengthens the case that Bach, who was known for his keyboard virtuosity, is indeed the author.

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN (1681–1767) Fantasia No. 1 for Solo Violin in B-flat Major, TWV 40:14 Unlike Bach, his slightly younger contemporary, Telemann wasn’t descended from a long line of distinguished musicians. His father was a schoolmaster and clergyman, and his mother was a minister’s daughter. Although he received a thorough general education and even enrolled in law school, he learned music by teaching himself and observing more experienced musicians. In his 1740 autobiography, Telemann recounted the ways in which his four years serving as a court musician in Eisenach, in the company of the virtuoso Pantaleon Hebenstreit, honed his skills on the violin: “When we were required to play a concerto together, I used to shut myself away for several days beforehand, the violin in my hands, my left sleeve rolled up and my nerves rubbed with a fortifying balm, engaged in my own learning before being able to raise myself to his heights. And little wonder!

That contributed to my making significant improvements.”

By attending closely to his fellow musicians, Telemann also found inspiration as a composer. “One would scarcely believe what wonderful ideas the pipers or fiddlers have when they improvised while the dancers pause for breath,” he wrote. “An observer could gather enough ideas from them in eight days to last a lifetime.”

Idiomatic and appealing, the 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin reflect Telemann’s deep understanding of the instrument.

Although the pieces often call for advanced violin technique, they are unapologetically listenable, prioritizing melody over contrapuntal complexity. Telemann printed and published them himself in 1735, hoping to capitalize on the growing market for new music among middle-class amateur players and professional musicians alike. During the Baroque era, the term fantasia referred to a virtuosic miniature suite that seemed improvisational in character, although it generally followed a standard organizational outline, a likely precursor to Classical sonata-allegro form. Fantasia No. 1 is in four parts (most of the others in the set contain only three). Consistent with the convention of the sonata da chiesa (Italian for “church sonata”), its sections follow a slow-fast-slowfast pattern. The Fantasia typifies the galant, or “free,” style, which emphasized a more lyrical, theatrical approach, as opposed to the “learned,” or “strict,” style required for fugal procedures.

SUZANNE FARRIN (b. 1976) L’onde della non vostra for Solo Oboe When Suzanne Farrin was in her late teens, she set herself the ambitious goal of taking lessons in every orchestral instrument. These early efforts paid off, enriching her musical palette and expanding her compositional range. Her diverse and colorful music often blurs the lines between electronic and acoustic sonorities, between ambient tones and intentional sounds. In addition to being a versatile composer, Farrin is one of the world’s leading ondists, a performer on the ondes Martenot. This early electronic instrument, which sounds something like a theremin, was invented in 1928 by the French engineer Maurice Martenot. (Messiaen was among the first major composers to embrace the new technology, featuring it in his Turangalîla-Symphonie.) Farrin, who holds

a doctorate from Yale University, also teaches composition at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

L’onde della non vostra is an instrumental composition for solo oboe extracted from La Dolce Morte (The Sweet Death), her 2016 monodrama for countertenor and ensemble. The multimedia work, which resembles a secular oratorio, was inspired by the intensely sensuous love poems that Michelangelo wrote about the Roman nobleman Tommaso de Cavalieri, his close friend for three decades. In her program notes, Farrin describes the connection between the source texts and her music: “His speech cannot fully contain the overwhelming impetus of physical love, which at times becomes too much for the sonnets to bear. They stretch and are torn out of shape. They sing, shed their form, and fall silent. In composing Dolce, I hoped to create a sound world that inhabits the space between creation and being.”

The title “L’onde della non vostra” comes from the second line of Michelangelo’s Sonnet 38, which in English means “the waves of currents that are not yours.” By pushing the oboe to the outer limits of its range, from pleading whispers to plangent wails, Farrin captures the extremity of passion, in all of its sorrow, terror, and ecstasy.

In a recent interview for VAN Magazine, she further explained the role of the main instrumental timbres in the original monodrama: “There is the countertenor’s voice in itself, that phenomenon which is kind of male and female, a disembodied or embodied kind of voice....The oboe and the bassoon function as extensions of that character....The three of them form a cohort.”

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TELEMANN Fantasia No. 12 for Solo Violin in A Minor, TWV 40:25 On the title page of the printed score that he self-published, Telemann described his Fantasias for Solo Violin as “12 fantasias for the violin without bass, of which six are fugues and six are galanterien.” True fugues employ polyphony in a way that a single violin can’t match, no matter how deftly the player handles multiple stopping. Even so, the distinction between his fugues and his “galanterien” is helpful.

In some of these compositions, such as Fantasia No. 1, Telemann emphasizes melody: galanterien is the plural of “galanterie,” referring to the supplementary, or non-essential, movements in the standard Baroque suite. Derived from courtly dance forms, they add a bit of lighthearted fun to the mix. In the fugues Telemann explores the creative possibilities of an implied bass line, using descant countermelodies to add depth and weight to the thematic variations.

Categories aside, most of Telemann’s fantasias are a mixture of the two compositional approaches. Set in A minor, Fantasia No. 12 contains three distinct sections. The Moderato opener is dramatic and bittersweet, seasoned with tangy double-stops and pungent harmonies. In the playful Vivace, a skipping theme tests the performer’s dexterity with quicksilver passagework and bluesy bariolage. The raucous Presto finale sounds almost like an Appalachian-style fiddle tune, but Telemann probably styled it after the Polish folk music he enjoyed in Upper Silesia, where he served as Kapellmeister to the Count of Promnitz at Sorau from 1705–1708.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478 In 1785 Mozart received a commission for at least three (possibly six) piano quartets from Franz Anton Hoffmeister. The Viennese publisher was dismayed by the 222

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composer’s first effort in the genre. “Write more popularly, or else I can neither print nor pay for anything of yours!”

Hoffmeister warned Mozart, who had already spent his advance money.

Although Mozart wasn’t the first composer to score a piece for piano, violin, viola, and cello, his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor is the first such work to enter the chamber music repertoire. In the late 18th century, most chamber music featuring piano was intended for domestic settings.

Typically performed by amateurs, often the daughters of the rising bourgeois class, it was supposed to entertain people, not alarm and agitate them. Mozart’s G-minor Quartet demanded exceptional ability from performers and patient attentiveness from listeners—a combination that was in short supply.

The key brought out Mozart’s Sturm und Drang tendencies.

As the musicologist Alfred Einstein noted, G minor was Mozart’s “key of fate”: “The wild command that opens the first movement...remains threateningly in the background, and bringing the movement to its inexorable close, might be called the ‘fate’ motive with exactly as much justice as the four-note motive of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

Although the central Andante is set in the relative major key of B-flat, it falls something short of cheerful, thanks to an obsessive two-note weeping figures in the strings, a relic from the stormy Allegro. The Rondo is rich in melodies and set in sunny G major, but sighing appoggiaturas and regular forays into the minor mode will frustrate anyone hoping for an unqualified happy ending.

Despite his publisher’s admonitions, Mozart wasn’t interested in simplifying his ideas for the lucrative amateur market, and even professional musicians were discouraged by the difficulties of the G-minor Piano Quartet. In the end, Hoffmeister canceled the contract for the remaining assignments. By that point Mozart had already completed his second Piano Quartet, in E-flat Major. He sold that one to another publisher the following year, but like its predecessor, it didn’t turn a profit. He never wrote another.

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Ensemble Connect

Leo Sussman, flute

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Jennifer Liu, violin

Suliman Tekalli, violin

Meagan Turner, viola

Arlen Hlusko, cello

LUIGI BOCCHERINI: Flute Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 19, No. 5

Allegro moderato

Allegro assai Leo Sussman, flute Suliman Tekalli, violin Jennifer Liu, violin Meagan Turner, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello ZOLTÁN KODÁLY: Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 12

Allegramente – Sostenuto ma non troppo

Lento ma non troppo Vivo Suliman Tekalli, violin Jennifer Liu, violin Meagan Turner, viola INTERMISSION JOHANNES BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115

Allegro Adagio Andantino

Con moto Bixby Kennedy, clarinet Jennifer Liu, violin Suliman Tekalli, violin Meagan Turner, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello 2019 Summer Season

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER Between 1773 and 1774, Boccherini composed numerous

LUIGI BOCCHERINI (1743–1805) Flute Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 19, No. 5 Born in Lucca, Italy (the future birthplace of Puccini), Boccherini was the son of a professional double bassist, who began giving him cello lessons at age five. After continuing his apprenticeship with other cello teachers, young Luigi was sent to Rome, where he studied for a year with the music director of St. Peter’s Basilica. When he was 14, the Imperial Theater Orchestra recruited both him and his father, and they moved to Vienna. By age 17, the younger Boccherini began publishing his first compositions. He and his father moved to Milan in 1765, where he wrote his first string quartet. When his father died the following year, Boccherini teamed up with the violinist Filippo Manfredi, and they performed concerts all over Italy, sometimes as a duo and sometimes as a string quartet. They ended up in Paris, where Boccherini published more of his original music. In 1770 he moved to Madrid, where he entered the service of the Spanish infante Don Luis, the younger brother of Charles III. Boccherini married in 1771 and remained in Spain for the rest of his life.

One of his contemporaries, the English music historian Charles Burney, praised his “masterly and elegant” style, writing that he “has perhaps supplied performers on bowed instruments and lovers of Music with more excellent compositions than any other master of the present age, except Haydn.” Although Boccherini composed several symphonies and cello concertos, as well as a single opera, he is best known today for his chamber music. He completed 91 string quartets and 113 string quintets, a new genre that he helped establish and popularize. Most of his string quintets are scored for two violins, one viola, and two cellos, but he also wrote several guitar quintets, which reflect his appreciation for Spanish dance music.

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pieces for the flute. Because of the brilliance of the writing, it seems reasonable to assume that he might have been inspired by an especially gifted flautist, possibly one of his colleagues at the court of Don Luis. Along with a collection of divertimentos (Op. 16) scored for flute and other instruments, he wrote two sets of quintetti piccoli, or “small quintets,” which he published in 1776 as Op. 17 and Op. 19. By piccoli, Boccherini didn’t mean “small” in a pejorative sense. He meant only that these compositions were relatively short: in two movements, as opposed to three or four. In most cases, the flute quintets comprise an Allegro and an Andante, followed by a Minuet or a Rondo. Scored for flute, viola, cello, and two violins, they are lyrical, rhythmic, and exquisitely balanced.

Somewhat unusually, the Flute Quintet No. 5 in B-flat Major goes from fast to faster, but within each movement the music speeds up and slows down, lending suspense and variety. The Quintet begins with an Allegro moderato that juxtaposes a sprightly dance section with a relatively serene contrasting idea. The boisterous Presto assai scampers nimbly through its many dynamic changes before its surprisingly tranquil conclusion.

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY (1882–1967) Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 12 The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály grew up in the countryside of what is now Slovakia. His father, a stationmaster for the Hungarian state railways, played violin at home, and his mother sang and played piano. Young Zoltán soon became adept at violin, viola, cello, and piano. After receiving his diplomas in composition and teaching in 1904 and 1905, respectively, he pursued an academic career as an

ethnomusicologist, going on expeditions to collect Hungarian and Balkan folk songs and then analyzing them in a dissertation, for which he received a doctorate in 1906. Like his close friend and colleague Béla Bartók, Kodály believed that these folk songs were the lifeblood of his people and the source of all legitimate concert music.

After centuries of rule by the Habsburg emperors, Hungary declared its independence on November 16, 1918. Soon thereafter, when the Hungarian Republic was established, Kodály was named deputy director of the National Academy of Music in Budapest, under Ernst von Dohnányi. The pair swiftly instituted major reforms in the conservatory’s curriculum, emphasizing native folk traditions. But when the republic fell four months later, Kodály, a lifelong leftist, was denounced as a subversive by the new right-wing regime. He was fired from his administrative position and barred from teaching. All performances of his work were banned. He endured at least a dozen hearings before he was finally able to clear his name and resume his career in 1922. Owing to all this political and professional turmoil, he produced very little during this period, but he did manage to compose the Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, which he began in 1919 and completed in March 1920.

Although most of Kodály’s other chamber pieces include the cello, which he played especially well, the Serenade is scored for a trio consisting of two violins and a viola. This combination of instruments had been used by Dvořák in 1887 but was still considered rather strange in 1899, when Kodály, still a student, used it for his first-ever chamber work. He must have liked the way these three instruments sounded together because he chose them again 20 years later, for the Serenade.

In 1921 Bartók, who had traipsed all over Eastern Europe with Kodály collecting ethnic folk tunes, published a perceptive review of the Serenade: Like Kodály’s other works, this composition, in spite of its unusual chord combinations

and surprising originality, is firmly based on tonality, although this should not be strictly interpreted in terms of the major and minor system. The time will come when it will be realized that despite the atonal inclinations of modern music, the possibilities of building new structures on key systems have not been exhausted. The means used by this composer —the choice of instruments and the superb richness of the instrumental effects achieved despite the economy of the work—merit great attention in themselves....It reveals a personality with something entirely new to say and one who is capable of communicating this content in a masterly and concentrated fashion. The work is extraordinarily rich in melodies.

The outer movements, marked Allegramente and Vivo, are staunchly rhythmic, with a pronounced folk-dance flavor enlivened by strummed accents. The central nocturne (Lento, ma non troppo) is full of subtle but striking sonorities, including muted, quivering tremolo from the second violin. Bartók particularly admired the slow movement: “The strangely floating, passionate melodies of the viola alternate with spectral flashing motifs on the first violin. We find ourselves in a fairy world never dreamed of before.”

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 In December 1890, the 57-year-old Johannes Brahms decided to retire from composition. He finished his Viola Quintet No. 2 in G Major and sent it off to his publisher with a note, “With this letter you can bid farewell to my music—because it is certainly time to leave off.” But just months later, on a trip to Meiningen, he heard the clari2019 Summer Season

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netist Richard Mühlfeld play in a private recital and was dumbfounded by his artistry. Mühlfeld had originally joined the court of Saxe-Meiningen as a violinist in 1873, but practiced his secondary instrument, the clarinet, until he was accomplished enough to be named principal clarinetist of the court orchestra in 1879. The court conductor, Fritz Steinbach, took a special interest in his playing and arranged the audition for Brahms. Indeed, there must have been something exceptional about Mühlfeld: he inspired Brahms to write four clarinet pieces: the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, and two Sonatas in F Minor and E-flat Major.

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Brahms wrote the Clarinet Quintet in the summer of 1891, as he vacationed in Bad Ischl, a spa town near the Alps.

Mühlfeld premiered the piece with the Joachim Quartet in Berlin on December 12, 1891, and it was instantly recognized as a deeply moving work. The audience applauded until the musicians repeated the Adagio as an encore.

It may be a cliché to describe the piece as “autumnal,” as so many critics and commentators have, but it may also be the best word to describe how it feels. Of all the woodwinds, the clarinet blends most easily with strings: its wide range, liquid tone, and dynamic control allow it to conceal itself

inside the string quartet and then come in and out, at will, as a soloist. In Brahms’s hands, it is like chilly breeze that tempers the warmth of the other instruments, while carrying a vanishing recollection of something past.

The opening Allegro begins with a brief violin duet from which much of the piece grows. Wavering between major and minor, it builds to a staccato statement, driving the further revealing of a second theme. These two ideas, more poignant together than apart, form the heart of the opening movement. The Adagio begins with a dreamy melody in the clarinet, tended to by the strings, and then the melody

is taken by the violin, gently subverted by the clarinet. In the middle section, the clarinet cries out wildly, before the opening calmness returns. The Andantino is an easygoing pastorale that turns into an unrestrained Presto, quick and airy, evocative of the outdoors. A theme and five variations make up the finale, marked Con moto. In the fifth variation and coda, the opening of the first movement returns, first as a subtle presence, and then affirmatively—wistfully concluding the quintet with a memory of how it began.

—Benjamin Pesetsky

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WEEK SEVEN

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 11:00 AM The Domo Ensemble Connect

Leo Sussman, flute

Bixby Kennedy, clarinet

Jennifer Liu, violin

Suliman Tekalli, violin

Meagan Turner, viola

Arlen Hlusko, cello

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Flute Quartet No. 1 in D Major, K. 285

Allegro Adagio Rondo Leo Sussman, flute Jennifer Liu, violin Meagan Turner, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello PAUL WIANCKO: American Haiku Meagan Turner, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello ALEXANDRA GARDNER: The Way of Ideas Leo Sussman, flute Bixby Kennedy, clarinet Jennifer Liu, violin Arlen Hlusko, cello DAVID BRUCE: Gumboots, Part 2 Bixby Kennedy, clarinet Suliman Tekalli, violin Jennifer Liu, violin Meagan Turner, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello 2019 Summer Season

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Flute Quartet No. 1 in D Major, K. 285 In 1772, Mozart was named Konzertmeister to the Salzburg Court, a title he had held in an honorary capacity since 1769, when he was just 13 years old. But in 1777 he grew dissatisfied with the post and asked permission to leave. The archbishop reacted badly, unceremoniously firing both Wolfgang and his father, Leopold, who also worked as a court musician. Fortunately the situation was soon smoothed over: Leopold was reappointed, and Wolfgang was granted leave to seek employment elsewhere.

Acting on Leopold’s instructions, Mozart and his mother, Maria Anna, left Salzburg to search for a new position.

After a stop in Munich, they traveled on to Mannheim, where Mozart aspired to a job at its “famous court, whose rays like those of the sun illuminate the whole of Germany,” as Leopold floridly described it. In Mannheim, Mozart set to work writing two piano sonatas, a set of violin sonatas, and several woodwind works for the exceptionally skilled members of the court orchestra. Among these musicians was the virtuoso flutist Johann Baptist Wendling, who provided Mozart with a place to stay, a piano, and a recommendation to the elector. He also connected Mozart with a bundle of commissions for flute quartets and concertos— with the catch that the soloist and commissioner would not be him, but rather a wealthy amateur named Ferdinand Dejean, a surgeon of the Dutch East-India Company. Evidently Mozart was not especially motivated by these terms, writing three quartets and two concertos before ending up in a dispute over the number of pieces and commission fee.

He wrote home irritably to his father: Herr [Dejean]…paid me only 96 gulden since I don’t have more than two concertos and three quartets ready for him…The 232

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fact that I could not finish the assignment can easily be explained. I never have a quiet hour around here. I can’t compose, except at night; which means I also can’t get up early in the morning. And then, one isn’t always in the mood to write.

Of course, I could scribble all day, and scribble as fast as I can, but such a thing goes out into the world, so I want to make sure I won’t have to feel ashamed, especially when my name appears on the page.

Besides, my mind gets easily dulled, as you know, when I’m supposed to write a lot for an instrument I can’t stand.

This all sounds rather unappreciative considering the support the two flutists had given Mozart, and his distaste for the instrument was certainly not enduring, seeing as he would later write a sublime and heartfelt opera called The Magic Flute.

The Flute Quartet No. 1 shows no evidence of Mozart’s discontent. It’s a bright work with an Allegro that opens with a famous melody. The Adagio finds the flute singing a dusky song over pizzicato strings. The Rondo follows immediately after a measure of pause: a lively finale with playful exchanges between flute and violin.

Still without a job offer, Mozart left Mannheim in March 1778 and continued on to Paris with his mother. The trip, however, took a tragic turn as Maria Anna grew suddenly ill and died on July 3, far from home in the French capital.

Mozart left Paris alone and once again without a job, and returned to Salzburg where he resumed working for the court he had hoped to leave.

PAUL WIANCKO (b. 1983) American Haiku Paul Wiancko is a California native and now a New Yorkbased cellist and composer. He wrote American Haiku in 2014 for himself and the violist Ayane Kozasa to play, which led to them establishing a lasting viola and cello duo partnership. The piece premiered at the S&R Foundation in Washington, D.C. The roughly 10-minute work opens with muscular chords in the two instruments, suggesting a kind of open Americana, framing what the duo describes as an exploration of “Ayane’s background as a Japanese artist growing up in the United States as well as Paul’s Japanese-American heritage.” Sharp colors jump from a tapestry of sections, some folksy and rhythmic, others song- or hymn-like.

ALEXANDRA GARDNER (b. 1967) The Way of Ideas Alexandra Gardner was born in Washington, D.C., and now lives and works in Baltimore. Between 2017–2018 she was composer in residence with the Seattle Symphony, and she has been recognized by the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, and ASCAP, among other organizations. She studied at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins and Vassar College.

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

Gardner explains: For me this immediately leapt off the page as a refreshingly clear description of how thoughts become reality. The ideas we do not become overly attached to, or grasp at, are the ones that manifest in the world. I am fascinated by the notion that wishes, ideas and questions must be held lightly, that they cannot be forced in order for us to discover their answers.

In this composition I wanted to fold this concept into a musical landscape that evokes the everyday machinations of the human mind— an environment in which chattering thoughts suddenly fly away or are pulled slowly apart, return again, and change and develop into new forms which travel along different pathways.

Musical textures expand and contract, and the focus twists and turns to reveal threads of intertwined rhythms and gestures that encompass a continually transforming organism.

The Way of Ideas was written in 2007 for the Seattle Chamber Players with support from the American Music Center Composer Assistance Program and premiered in January 2008. It is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, and the title borrows from a passage in Philip Pullman’s novel The Golden Compass: 2019 Summer Season

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DAVID BRUCE (b. 1970) Gumboots, Part 2 David Bruce was born in Stamford, Connecticut, but grew up in England, where he studied at Nottingham University, the Royal College of Music, and King’s College. Between 2013–14 he was associate composer of the San Diego Symphony and has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Gumboots, Part 2, is the second half of a two-part work inspired by Gumboot dance, a South African dance style performed in rubber boots, involving stomping, clapping, and slapping of heels.

Bruce writes: There is a paradox in music, and indeed all art—the fact that life-enriching art has been produced, even inspired by conditions of tragedy, brutality and oppression…Gumboot dancing bears this trait—it was born out of the brutal labour conditions in South Africa under Apartheid, in which black miners were chained together and wore Gumboots (wellington boots) while they worked in the flooded gold mines, because it was cheaper for the owners to supply the boots than to drain the floodwater from the mine. Apparently slapping the boots and chains was used by the workers as a form of communication which was otherwise banned in the mine, and this later developed into a form of dance. If the examples of Gumboot Dancing available online are anything to go by, it is characterised by a huge vitality and zest for life. So this for me is a striking example of how something beautiful and life-enhancing can come out of something far more negative. Of course this paradox has a far simpler explanation—the resilience of the human spirit.

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My Gumboots is in two parts of roughly equal length…The second…consisting of five, ever-more-lively “gumboot dances,” often joyful and always vital.

However, although there are some African music influences in the music, I don’t see the piece as being specifically “about” the Gumboot dancers, if anything it could be seen as an abstract celebration of the rejuvenating power of dance, moving as it does from introspection through to celebration. I would like to think, however, that the emotional journey of the piece, and specifically the complete contrast between the two halves will force the listener to conjecture some kind of external “meaning” to the music—the tenderness of the first half should “haunt” us as we enjoy the bustle of the second; that bustle itself should force us to question or reevaluate the tranquility of the first half. But to impose a meaning beyond that would be stepping on dangerous ground—the fact is you will choose your own meaning, and hear your own story, whether I want you to or not.

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WEEK SEVEN

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Anderson & Roe

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (arr. ANDERSON & ROE): Grand Scherzo (Based on the Finale to Act I from Così fan tutte, K. 588)

Presto: Poison?

Allegro: The “Doctor”

Andante: Goddesses

Allegro: A Kiss!

IGOR STRAVINSKY: Part I: The Adoration of the Earth from The Rite Of Spring ANDERSON & ROE: Hallelujah Variations (Variations on a Theme by Leonard Cohen) PAUL SCHOENFIELD: “Boogie” from Five Days from the Life of a Manic-Depressive INTERMISSION ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (arr. ANDERSON & ROE):

Primavera Porteña Oblivion Libertango CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK (arr. ANDERSON & ROE): Ballet from Orfeo ed Euridice LEONARD BERNSTEIN (arr. ANDERSON & ROE): West Side Story Suite

Mambo Tonight Somewhere America

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) arr. ANDERSON & ROE Grand Scherzo (Based on the Finale to Act I from Così fan tutte, K. 588) Così fan tutte, Mozart’s third and final opera with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, debuted in Vienna on January 26, 1790.

Although the title can’t be perfectly rendered in English, it means something like “All women are like that.” A cynical update on the old opera buffa convention of paired lovers involved in intricate hijinks, the plot is somehow both frivolous and profound. The music, on the other hand, is as elegant and atmosopheric as any Mozartean offering.

In their program notes for the Grand Scherzo, Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe write: The scene is at once humorous, dramatic, romantic, and scandalous as two men, in disguise, venture to test their fiancées’ faithfulness. Guglielmo, the lover of Fiordiligi, attempts to seduce her sister Dorabella while Ferrando, the lover of Dorabella, pursues Fiordiligi—a fiancée swapping of sorts. The women reject their advances, and the finale begins when the men burst into the room and poison themselves. Soon thereafter, a bogus doctor arrives who, through use of a large magnet, is able to revive the scheming men.

Conscious but hallucinating, they demand a kiss of the “goddesses” who stand before them. Although the sisters are tempted, they furiously refuse the men’s strong (and hilarious) advances.

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score as if Mozart had conceived it as a playful exchange between two pianists. Performed on one piano, Liz plays the roles of Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Despina (the sisters’ maid and doctor-in-disguise), and Greg takes the roles of Guglielmo, Ferrando, and Don Alfonso (an old philosopher and friend of the men).

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Part I: The Adoration of the Earth from The Rite of Spring Sometime in 1910, Stravinsky was distracted by “a fleeting vision, which came to me as a complete surprise.” According to his own account, he imagined “a solemn pagan rite [wherein] sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.”

It wasn’t until late the next year that Stravinsky began writing the music for what eventually became The Rite of Spring (with the subtitle “Pictures from Pagan Russia”). “I’ve sketched the prelude, and I’ve gone on and also sketched the ‘Divination with Twigs’,” he wrote that September. “I’m terribly excited! The music is coming out fresh.”

He continued to work on it the following winter, in Switzerland, finishing the first act in late February. That March he played the first part of the piano reduction for Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes, and Vaslav Nijinsky, its choreographer. They’re “wild about it,” he boasted to his mother. A few months later, Stravinsky and the composer Claude Debussy played through the fourhand arrangement at a party. As a guest later reported, “We were dumbfounded, overwhelmed by this hurricane which had come from the depths of the ages and which had taken life by the roots.”

Although the dress rehearsal went well, the 1913 premiere was a different story. The opening bassoon solo—written entirely above middle C—upset a vocal contingent of the audience. Almost immediately, the patrons were shouting, blowing whistles, and shoving one another. Because the dancers couldn’t hear the orchestra over the fracas, they fell out of sync. Diaghilev screamed from the wings and Stravinsky panicked, but conductor Pierre Monteux soldiered on. He was, in Stravinsky’s approving words, as “impervious and nerveless as a crocodile.” “It is still almost incredible to me,” the composer later remarked, “that he actually brought the orchestra through to the end.”

ANDERSON & ROE Hallelujah Variations on a Theme by Leonard Cohen

an almost otherworldly transcendence amid human struggle. As a nod to the elliptical nature of the song, we created a set of variations that are structured in an unconventional manner; there are eight variations with no initial, straightforward statement of the theme (a common feature of most variation sets).

The eight variations are divided into four pairs: Variation 1 is chorale-like, followed by a variation in which the theme is most clearly presented, in the manner of a Schubert lied.

Variations 3 and 4 are bustling, at times straying from the harmonic progressions of the original. The third set of variations are characterized by serpentine configurations, calling to mind Schubert’s idiomatic four-hand piano writing. The concluding two variations are the most expansive, in structure and mood; it meanders, lost, then finally builds toward a climactic, rapturous conclusion.

Anderson & Roe write: A cult classic originally released in 1984, Leonard Cohen’s most well-known song— covered by numerous artists, including legends like Bob Dylan, Bono, and Jeff Buckley (whose sublime version may be our personal favorite)— is a meditation on the elusive nature of love and the search for atonement. The lyrics contain emotional multitudes in their complexity, and the meaning of “hallelujah” itself seems to shift throughout the song, alternating between despair, yearning, ecstasy, and praise; it emerges as a call that is not solely religious, but profoundly human….

In creating our set of variations, we were influenced by the late works of Beethoven and Schubert, who both were masters at unearthing

PAUL SCHOENFIELD (b. 1947) “Boogie” from Five Days from the Life of a Manic-Depressive Born in Detroit, the composer Paul Schoenfield has had a storied career. He started piano lessons at age six and began writing his own music the following year. Although he earned a doctorate in music arts from the University of Arizona, the former concert pianist is refreshingly modest about his creative aspirations. “I don’t consider myself an art-music composer at all,” he admitted. “The reason my works sometimes find their way into concert halls is [that] at this juncture, there aren’t many folk-music performers with enough technique, time, or desire to perform my music. They usually write their own.”

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Inspired by jazz, folk, vaudeville, and Jewish klezmer, as well as the Western classical tradition, Schoenfield has created an original style of American crossover music. In Anderson & Roe, he may have found his ideal interpreters. His 2006 composition Five Days from the Life of a Manic Depressive is energetic and virtuosic, a relentless romp through the composer’s eclectic imagination.

“Boogie,” the propulsive final movement from the fivepart suite, cycles through a range of emotions and influences. As Schoenfield aptly observed, this is “not the kind of music for relaxation, but the kind that makes people sweat; not only the performer, but the audience.”

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921–1992) Primavera Porteña Oblivion Libertango In Argentina, there’s a common saying: “Everything may change—except the tango.” Piazzolla ignored this warning. Although the visionary composer, arranger, and bandonéon virtuoso didn’t invent tango music, his name has become synonymous with it. Just as Ludwig van Beethoven re-invented classical music and Duke Ellington transformed jazz, Piazzolla turned the signature sound of his homeland into something radically new, which he dubbed nuevo tango. He infused the traditional dance form with the tangy harmonies of jazz, the metrical angularities of avant-garde European music, the contrapuntal complexities of the Baroque fugue. He didn’t simply re-invigorate the form; he took it from the dance floor to the concert hall.

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Anderson & Roe write: In transcribing Piazzolla’s irresistible melodies for four hands at one piano, we aimed to emulate the physical choreography of tango dancers, the sonic textures of a tango band, and, most importantly, the emotional spirit of the tango. Within all three of these tangos—the spicy and sassy Primavera, the smoky, sultry Oblivion, and the raw and risqué Libertango—we incorporate extended piano techniques as a metaphor for the tango’s forays into forbidden territory. Four-hand playing already hints at an intrinsic eroticism, but in these tangos, we dare to raise the heat and intensity to another level: we boldly invade one another’s personal space, while also exploring regions of the piano that typically remain unseen. The effect is at once sensual, visceral, and highly dramatic.

Certainly, the tango remains one of the most passionate and intimate forms of dance; it inspires a surrendering of the mundane to a world of heightened awareness and experience.

These three pieces will take you on a riveting ride; feel free to lose yourself to the music’s pounding aggression, then to a haze of unconsciousness, and finally to the precipice of desire.

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK (1714–1787) arr. Anderson & Roe Ballet from Orfeo ed Euridice Gluck’s three-act opera Orfeo ed Euridice received its premiere on October 5, 1762, in Vienna. In preparation for a French production of the opera in 1774, Gluck expanded

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the score and revised the orchestration, changing Orpheus from a castrato role to that of a high tenor. Both versions were highly successful, and audiences appreciated the “noble simplicity” of Gluck’s music, a response to what he perceived as the excessive ornateness of the dominant style of opera seria (“serious opera”).

from jazz, Latin dance, and the Great American Songbook, as well as the standard orchestral repertoire. Formally trained and musically omnivorous, he demolished the walls dividing “high” and “low,” “serious” and “popular.” For Bernstein, music was an irreducible drive uniting brain and body.

It leaps, saunters, skitters, and swoons.

Anderson & Roe explain:

Bernstein wrote the music for West Side Story in 1957.

The musical, an urbanized reboot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with feuding teenage gang members in place of Capulets and Montagues, was a hit from the outset. Four years later, Bernstein extracted nine sections of the score to create an orchestral suite, which he titled Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. With its poignant love themes (from “Maria” and “Somewhere”), hot Cuban rhythms, and cool, sexy syncopation, the suite conveys the story’s pathos and danger without using any words except “Mambo,” which Bernstein indicated should be shouted by the musicians at prescribed intervals.

The opera tells the poetically tragic story of Orpheus’ attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld after she dies on their wedding day. There is one condition, however: Orpheus must not to look back at Eurydice while guiding her from the underworld, or else he will lose her for eternity. As they are making their escape from the underworld, Orpheus cannot resist looking back at his beloved out of anxiety and yearning, and Eurydice slips away to die a second time.

In Gluck’s 1774 opera, this ballet (otherwise known as the ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’) was originally scored for the ethereal combination of flute solo and string accompaniment; it appears at the opening of Act II, which takes place in the Elysian Fields, the hauntingly beautiful resting place of souls in Greek mythology.

Anderson & Roe’s arrangement of Bernstein’s suite highlights its humor and tenderness, as well as the pianists’ artistry. Raucous percussive effects and choreographed seat-swapping amplify the sense of barely controlled chaos, demonstrating one of Anderson & Roe’s favorite maxims: “Relish the conflict, euphoria, frustration, and innumerable creative possibilities that arise with collaboration.”

LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–1990) arr. ANDERSON & ROE West Side Story Suite Between 1944 and 1961, Leonard Bernstein was at his creative peak, blurring the lines between popular and concert music like no American composer since Aaron Copland. He developed an energetic and expressive musical style that drew 2019 Summer Season

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CARILLON for Charlie

Like a cricket’s plangent trill

which our sudden words have primed, its din and clangor still resonant with age and time, whose desperate tongue now peals inside its hollow shell, pendulums, and sings out to our raucous hell, let the echo of its human tolls chime the hours of our souls, whose untuned clangings ring monstrous changes in everything: but never from its boisterous height will the incessant hum of bees restore our unsingable fragilities, or the carols of the summer write again such flowers on the understory, such trumpets as the seasons choir, such voices as the heavens glory, to which these anguished bells aspire.

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A s a child, I studied the organ with Charles Courboin

at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and played in the churches and on the carillons which my grandfather had built around Westchester County.

I was mainly a pianist, though, and was in love with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies at the time, and so I played them on the organ, throwing in the carillon bells during the friskas.

As everyone knows, you can’t play Hungarian Rhapsodies on the organ, so it was a trying time for the priests and the congregations. But I still hear carillons in the triangles of Liszt’s gallops through the pews.

Cathy filmed me in the Irish countryside, and as I read the first version of the poem, we sparked together the crickets, the birds, the cows, who in turn mobilized the animals and bugs in the nearby fields, until we had our own carillon echoing around us. So I had to rewrite the poem to include this cacophony. I thought of Charlie as the instigator of the sound, as the first cricket.

As the Indian summer had extended itself into winter that week in Ireland, the sounds of bees and cows stayed with us after summer ended. In the same way, the part of religion that survives the excesses of humanity is the sound its bells create in the fields, the way Charlie made so much music possible, and the way his sounds survive in the Indian summer of his time with us and into the cold of winter at Tippet Rise, when his echo warms us.

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Artist Profiles

Behzod Abduraimov John Luther Adams Anderson & Roe Benjamin Beilman Roman Borys Julien Brocal Gabriel Cabezas Jenny Chen Christopher Costanza Owen Dalby Ensemble Connect Escher String Quartet Jennifer Frautschi Brandon Patrick George Gryphon Trio Stephen Hough Paul Huang Katie Hyun JACK Quartet Ayane Kozasa Anthony Manzo Pedja Muzijevic Geoff Nuttall Annalee Patipatanakoon Roman Rabinovich Rolston String Quartet Nathan Schram Aristo Sham James Austin Smith St. Lawrence String Quartet Sæunn Thorsteinsdottír 2019 Summer Season

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Behzod Abduraimov’s performances combine an

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immense depth of musicality with phenomenal technique and breathtaking delicacy. He works with leading orchestras worldwide, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Münchner Philharmoniker, and conductors including Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Manfred Honeck, Lorenzo Viotti, Vasily Petrenko, James Gaffigan, Jakub Hrůša, and Vladimir Jurowski.

This concert season includes engagements with Orchestre de Paris, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, English Chamber Orchestra, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Other highlights include debut recitals at the Kölner Philharmonie and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and return visits to the Verbier and Rheingau Festivals. Behzod has recently worked with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony, hr-Sinfonieorchester, BBC Scottish Symphony, and Oslo Philharmonic. In May 2018, he was artist in residence at the Zaubersee Festival in Lucerne.

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An award-winning recording artist, Behzod released his first compact disc in 2014 on Decca Classics.

It features Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra under Juraj Valčuha. His debut at the BBC Proms with the Münchner Philharmoniker under Gergiev in July 2016 was released as a DVD in 2018.

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1990, Behzod began to play the piano at the age of five as a pupil of Tamara Popovich. He is an alumnus of Park University’s International Center for Music, where he studied with Stanislav Ioudenitch, the ICM’s artist in residence.

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The life and work of John Luther Adams are deeply rooted in the natural world.

He was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his symphonic work Become Ocean, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition that same year. Inuksuit, his outdoor work for up to 99 percussionists, is regularly performed all over the world.

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Columbia University honored Adams with the William Schuman Award “to recognize the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance.”

A recipient of the Heinz Award for his contributions to raising environmental awareness, Adams has also been honored with the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University “for melding the physical and musical worlds into a unique artistic vision that transcends stylistic boundaries.”

Born in 1953, Adams grew up in the South and in the suburbs of New York City. He studied composition with James Tenney at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was in the first graduating class in 1973. In the mid-1970s he became active in the campaign for the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and subsequently served as executive director of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.

Adams has taught at Harvard University, the Oberlin Conservatory, Bennington College, and the University of Alaska. He has served as composer in residence with the Anchorage Symphony, Anchorage Opera, Fairbanks Symphony, Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and the Alaska Public Radio Network.

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His music is recorded on Cantaloupe, Cold Blue, New World, Mode, and New Albion, and his books are published by Wesleyan University Press.

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Known for their adrenalized performances, original

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compositions, and notorious music videos, Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are revolutionizing the piano duo experience for the 21st century.

Described as “the most dynamic duo of this generation” by San Francisco Classical Voice, “rock stars of the classical music world” by The Miami Herald, and “the very model of complete 21st-century musicians”

by The Washington Post, Anderson & Roe aim to make classical music a relevant and powerful force around the world. Their albums on the Steinway label (When Words Fade, An Amadeus Affair, and The Art of Bach) were released to critical acclaim and spent dozens of weeks at the top of the Billboard classical charts, while their Emmy-nominated, self-produced music videos have been viewed by millions on YouTube and at international film festivals.

Since forming their musical partnership in 2002 as students at the Juilliard School, Anderson & Roe have toured extensively worldwide as recitalists and orchestral soloists; presented at numerous international leader symposiums; and appeared on MTV, PBS, NPR, and the BBC. A live performance

by Anderson & Roe was selected to appear on the Sounds of Juilliard CD in celebration of the school’s centenary. Highlights of the 2017–18 season included concerts throughout North America (including their Kennedy Center debut), Europe, Asia, and New Zealand; concerto appearances with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Rochester Philharmonic; the release of their latest album, Mother Muse; and webcast hosting for the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Benjamin Beilman has won praise for his passionate

performances and deep, rich tone, which The Washington Post called “mightily impressive” and The New York Times described as “muscular with a glint of violence.” The Boston Globe remarked that Beilman’s “playing already has its own sure balance of technical command, intensity, and interpretive finesse.”

Highlights of Beilman’s 2018–19 season include playdirecting and curating a program with the Vancouver Symphony; making his debut at the Kölner Philharmonie with Ensemble Resonanz and with the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Koblenz; performing The Four Seasons with the Cincinnati Symphony and Richard Egarr; returning to the City of Birmingham Symphony; and debuting with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Elim Chan.

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Recital highlights include Lincoln Center, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, and at the Kennedy Center, and appearing in performances of Mozart sonatas at Philadelphia’s Perelman Theater and at Carnegie Hall with pianist Jeremy Denk. European recital and chamber music engagements include the Moritzburg Festival in Dresden, the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Wigmore Hall for a BBC Radio 3 live broadcast.

In early 2018, Beilman premiered Demons, a new work composed by Frederic Rzewski and commissioned by Music Accord. Beilman has performed Demons across the United States, including in recitals presented by Boston Celebrity Series, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall, and the Gilmore Festival.

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In 2016, Beilman released Spectrum, his first compact disc on Warner Classics, which features works by Stravinsky, Janáček, and Schubert.

Beilman studied with Ida Kavafian and Pamela Frank at the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy.

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ver the course of two decades, cellist and producer Roman Borys has distinguished himself as one of Canada’s leading artistic voices. As a founding member of the two-time Juno Award–winning Gryphon Trio, he has released 17 acclaimed records on the Analekta and Naxos labels, toured internationally since 1993, and broken new artistic ground through cross-genre collaborations and multimedia performances. In 2013 the Gryphon Trio was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts’ Walter Carsen Award for excellence in the arts.

As the executive and artistic director of the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, Borys oversees all aspects of programming its summer Chamberfest, one of the largest festivals of its kind in the world, and its fall– winter concert series. Deeply committed to classical music outreach and audience development, Borys has conceived, developed, and produced the Gryphon Trio’s flagship educational program Listen Up! in communities across Canada since 2010.

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Borys, who lives and works in both Ottawa and Toronto, received an honorary doctorate from Carleton University.

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ulien Brocal began studying piano at age five and first performed on stage at the Salle Cortot in Paris at seven. He studied with Erik Berchot at the Conservatoire National de Région de Marseille and Rena Shereshevskaya at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot. He was supported by the Zaleski Foundation, Assophie Association, and the Safran Foundation during his training. In January 2013, during a course at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, he was spotted by Maria João Pires, who invited him to develop artistic projects at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and become one of the founding members of the Partitura Project.

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Since then, Pires and Brocal have performed together in numerous concerts, including at the Chopin Festival with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Opera di Firenze, the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford, and Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas, Spain.

Pires and Brocal have promoted the importance of classical music in society, particularly in India. The Partitura Project aspires to bring music and art to unusual places, run workshops in the community, and pioneer educational projects (including the Equinox Choir project) for children in difficulty. Recent highlights include recitals at the Festival Classique au Vert, Piano aux Jacobins, and the Philharmonie de Paris.

Released in 2017 by Rubicon Classics, Brocal’s debut album features Chopin’s 24 Preludes and Sonata No. 2. It was acclaimed by the international press, notably BBC Music Magazine, which called it “spellbinding,” gave it five stars, and featured it as “Instrumental Choice” of the month. Featuring works by Ravel and Mompou, Brocal’s next album, also on Rubicon Classics, was released in 2018.

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abriel Cabezas has appeared as soloist with America’s finest orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Nashville.

An enthusiastic chamber musician as well as soloist, Cabezas has performed and toured with artists ranging from bassist Edgar Meyer to songwriter Gabriel Kahane to the musicians of the Marlboro Festival. He is a member of the New York sextet yMusic, hailed by NPR’s Fred Child as “one of the groups that has really helped to shape the future of classical music.” Their virtuosic execution and unique configuration (string trio, flute, clarinet, and trumpet) have attracted the attention of high-profile collaborators—from Dirty Projectors to Paul Simon— and have inspired an expanding repertoire of original works by some of today’s foremost composers.

Cabezas is also a co-founder of the new music and contemporary dance collective Duende, which focuses on the interaction between performers and dancers in the live realization of new scores. His first full-length album, a recording of Britten’s cello suites, was recently released on People, a new collaborative online streaming platform by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner. In 2016 Cabezas received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, a career grant awarded to emerging classical artists of color, who, early in their professional career, demonstrate artistic excellence, outstanding work ethic, a spirit of determination, and ongoing commitment to leadership. In addition, he is a winner of Astral Artists’ 2014 national auditions and is a member of their roster of musicians.

Cabezas studied at the Curtis Institute of Music under Carter Brey.

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enny Chen debuted with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra at age nine and was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music the next year, studying with Gary Graffman and Eleanor Sokoloff. She also holds a master’s degree from Yale School of Music under the pedagogy of Robert Blocker and Melvin Chen and is a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant at Eastman School of Music, mentored by Douglas Humpherys.

Chen joined the staff pianist panel at Curtis Institute in September 2018 and made her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall in March 2019.

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At age 12, Chen debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and appeared as orchestral soloist with Taipei Symphony Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, New York Downtown Sinfonietta, Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Chen has collaborated with esteemed artists Anne-Marie McDermott, Arnold Steinhardt, and Peter Wiley.

Chen has been an artist in residence at festivals including Bravo! Vail, Mainly Mozart, Ocean Reef, Sejong International, Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Encounters, and Tippet Rise. She also won top prizes at the New York International Piano Competition, Eastman Piano Competition, Music Teachers National Association Competition, Young Concert Artist Award, and International Franz Liszt Piano Competition.

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For three decades, Christopher Costanza has CH R ISTO PH E R COSTANZ A

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enjoyed an exciting and varied career as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. A winner of the Young Concert Artists international auditions and the recipient of a solo recitalist grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Costanza has performed to enthusiastic critical acclaim throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, China, and South Korea. In 2003 Costanza joined the St. Lawrence String Quartet, ensemble in residence at Stanford University; he performs more than a hundred concerts annually with that ensemble worldwide. A strong proponent of contemporary music, he has worked extensively with dozens of leading composers, including John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov, as well as the late Olivier Messiaen, Gunther Schuller, and Pierre Boulez. Costanza’s discography includes chamber music and solo recordings on the EMI/Angel, Nonesuch, Naxos, and Albany labels, and his recordings of J.S. Bach’s six suites for solo cello can be found on his website.

Costanza received a bachelor’s degree in music and an artist diploma from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied cello with Bernard Greenhouse, Laurence Lesser, and David Wells, and chamber music with Eugene Lehner, Louis Krasner, and Leonard Shure. In addition to his varied musical interests, Costanza is an avid long-distance runner and hiker. A passenger train enthusiast, he enjoys riding and exploring passenger railways in countries far and wide.

Praised as “dazzling” by The New York Times,

“expert and versatile” by The New Yorker, and “a fearless and inquisitive violinist” by San Francisco Classical Voice, Owen Dalby leads a rich musical life as a chamber musician, soloist, new and early music expert, orchestral concertmaster, and educator. As a member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Dalby lives in San Francisco and is artist in residence at Stanford University. With the SLSQ, recent and upcoming projects include tours of the major chamber series in North America and Europe, as well as orchestral debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Dalby is a co-founder of Decoda, the affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall, and was also the founding concertmaster of Novus NY, the contemporary music orchestra of Trinity Wall Street. He made his Lincoln Center debut in 2010 with Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall. In 2010 he completed a three-year tenure in the Academy, a fellowship of Carnegie Hall and the Juilliard School that seeks to link a performer’s life with advanced training in education and community engagement.

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Ensemble Connect is a two-year fellowship program

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for the finest young professional classical musicians residing in the United States. It prepares them for careers combining musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. It offers top-quality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and partnerships throughout the fellowship with New York City public schools.

On the concert stage and in schools and communities, Ensemble Connect has earned accolades from critics and audiences alike for the quality of the concerts, the fresh and open-minded approach to programming, and the ability to actively engage any audience.

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Moving on to the next stage of their careers, Ensemble Connect’s 119 alumni are now working on the national and international musical landscape in a wide variety of artistic and educational arenas.

Continuing the strong bonds formed through the program, in 2011 alumni formed the chamber music collective Decoda, which has been named an affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall.

Exemplary performers, dedicated teachers, and passionate advocates of music, the forward-looking musicians of Ensemble Connect are redefining what it means to be a musician in the 21st century.

Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.

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The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its

profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its hometown of New York, the ensemble serves as season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where it recently performed quartet cycles of Beethoven and Zemlinsky.

During the 2018–19 season, the Escher Quartet toured the United States extensively, performing in New York’s Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, and Chicago’s Harris Hall. Internationally, the quartet returns for a season-long residency at Wigmore Hall, where it will present three self-curated programs highlighting American and American-influenced compositions.

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Months after forming in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be quartet in residence at each artist’s summer festival. The quartet has since collaborated with David Finckel, Leon Fleischer, Wu Han, Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Paul Watkins, and David Shifrin. In 2013 the quartet became one of the few chamber ensembles to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Known for their wide stylistic interests, the Escher Quartet has collaborated with jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, vocalist Kurt Elling, Latin-jazz artist Paquito D’Rivera, and guitarist Jason Vieaux.

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Currently string quartet in residence at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas, the quartet fervently supports the education of young musicians. It has given masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Music in London and Campos do Jordão Music Festival in Brazil, among other institutions.

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Two-time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher

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career grant recipient Jennifer Frautschi has garnered worldwide acclaim as an adventurous musician with a remarkably wide-ranging repertoire.

She appeared recently as soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, performed a reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Asheville Symphony, and gave two repeat performances of James Stephenson’s Violin Concerto, a work she premiered with Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, at the Cabrillo Festival and Elgin Symphony.

Frautschi also performed with the Brevard, Des Moines, Kalamazoo, Santa Barbara, and Wheeling Symphonies, as well as on Chanel’s Pygmalion Series in Tokyo and the St. Barth’s Music Festival. She has appeared as soloist with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, and at Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. As a chamber artist, she has appeared at the Boston and Lincoln Center chamber music societies; the Cape Cod, Charlottesville, Lake Champlain, La Musica (Sarasota), Moab, Newport, Ojai, Salt Bay, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Spoleto chamber music festivals; as well as Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla Summerfest, and Music@Menlo.

Born in Pasadena, California, Frautschi attended the Colburn School, Harvard University, New England Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz,” on generous loan from a private American foundation with support from Rare Violins In Consortium. She currently teaches in the graduate program at Stony Brook University.

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randon Patrick George is the flutist of the Grammy-nominated quintet Imani Winds. He has performed with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). He has appeared at Alice Tully Hall, Cité de la Musique, the Kennedy Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he is a frequent recital artist at Bargemusic in New York.

An avid chamber musician, George has collaborated with members of the New York Philharmonic and the Jasper String Quartet, and has performed live on New York’s WQXR with harpist Bridget Kibbey.

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With the Los Angeles Philharmonic, George has performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall and at the Hollywood Bowl, under conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Karina Canellakis, and Ludovic Morlot. He has toured the United States and Europe with ICE, appearing at Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Park Avenue Armory in New York, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in West Yorkshire, England. His live performances with ICE have aired worldwide on BBC Radio 3. George’s debut album featuring works by Aho, Bach, Boulez, and Prokofiev will be released by Haenssler Classics in 2019.

George is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He received his master of music degree from the Manhattan School of Music and was winner of the Concerto Competition. At the invitation of Sophie Cherrier, Brandon continued his studies at the Paris Conservatory.

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The Gryphon Trio has impressed international G RY PH O N TR IO

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audiences and press with highly refined, dynamic performances, firmly establishing itself as one of the world’s preeminent piano trios. With a repertoire that ranges from the traditional to the contemporary and from European classicism to modern-day multimedia, the Gryphons are committed to redefining chamber music for the 21st century.

The ensemble in residence at Music Toronto for nine years, the Gryphon Trio tours extensively throughout North America and Europe. Strongly dedicated to pushing the boundaries of chamber music, the Trio has commissioned and premiered more than 70 new works from established and emerging composers around the world and has collaborated on special projects with clarinetist James Campbell, actor Colin Fox, choreographer David Earle, and a host of jazz luminaries at Lula Lounge, Toronto’s leading venue for jazz and world music. The trio’s celebrated recordings on the Analekta label include works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Lalo, Shostakovich, and Piazzolla.

Gryphon cellist Roman Borys acts as artistic director of the Ottawa International Chamber Music Society (OICMS), where the Gryphon has been a mainstay since the Festival’s inception in 1994.

Annalee Patipatanakoon and Jamie Parker serve as the OICMS’s artistic advisors.

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tephen Hough is regarded as a Renaissance man of his time. Over the course of his career, he has distinguished himself as a true polymath, not only securing a reputation as an insightful pianist but also as a writer and composer. In 2001 he became the first classical performing artist to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and in 2013 he was named a Commander of the British Empire.

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Hough has appeared with major American and European orchestras and has given recitals all over the world. He has recorded more than 60 albums for Hyperion. Recent releases include the Dream Album, a collection of short pieces by more than a dozen composers, including Hough himself, and his first all-Debussy recording, in celebration of the composer’s centenary. As a writer, Hough has contributed to BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Times (London). For seven years, his blog for The Telegraph was one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion.

His first novel, The Final Retreat, was published by Sylph Editions earlier this year. Hough’s musical compositions are published by Josef Weinberger Ltd. Highlights of his 2018–19 season include the world premieres of his Fourth Sonata, Vida Breve, which he performs in Atlanta; and performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Vienna Symphony, among others. He also performs in recital in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and across the United Kingdom.

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Recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and

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the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang is praised for his distinctive sound and effortless virtuosity. After his recital debut at the Kennedy Center, The Washington Post proclaimed Huang “an artist with the goods for a significant career.” Recent engagements include his recital debut at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland as well as solo appearances with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev at St. Petersburg’s White Nights Festival, Berliner Symphoniker with Lior Shambadal, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Houston Symphony with Andres Orozco-Estrada, Orchestra of St. Luke’s with Carlos Miguel Prieto, Seoul Philharmonic with Markus Stenz, and Taipei Symphony with Gilbert. During the 2018–19 season, Huang debuted at the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and returned to the Palm Beach Chamber Music Society with the Emerson String Quartet and pianist Gilles Vonsattel for a performance of the Chausson Concerto for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet. Huang continued his association with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica, performing all three of Brahms’s violin sonatas.

Huang’s recent recital engagements include Lincoln Center’s “Great Performers” series and a return performance at the Kennedy Center, where he premiered Conrad Tao’s Threads of Contact during his recital evening with pianist Orion Weiss. Huang has recently performed at Wigmore Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and the Louvre.

He plays on the 1742 ex-Wieniawski Guarneri del Gesù, on loan through the generous efforts of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

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A winner of Astral Artists’ 2016 national auditions,

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Katie Hyun has been praised by Cleveland.com for her “sensitivity and top shelf artistry.” She has appeared in numerous festivals, including, most recently, the American Bach Soloists in California, Bravo! Vail in Colorado, the Outer Banks Chamber Music Series in North Carolina, and Mostly Mozart in New York. Hyun is the founder and director of Quodlibet Ensemble, a small chamber orchestra that bridges the gap between modern and Baroque styles of playing.

Recent concert highlights include Bernstein’s Serenade with NOVUS New York and recitals through Astral along the East Coast (with Baroque and modern violins, respectively). On modern violin, Hyun serves as concertmaster for NOVUS Trinity Wall Street and regularly performs both solo and chamber music in the New York and Philadelphia areas. On Baroque violin, Hyun appears frequently with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and New York Baroque Incorporated.

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Hailed by The New York Times as the “nation’s most JACK Q UARTE T

important quartet,” the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to its mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. Over the past season they have been selected as ensemble of the year (2018) by Musical America and named among WQXR’s “19 Artists to Watch.”

Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers it performs, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of these works. The quartet has worked with artists including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, and Simon SteenAndersen, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Clara Iannotta, John Luther Adams, Catherine Lamb, and John Zorn.

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Committed to education, the quartet teaches each summer at New Music on the Point and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. JACK has also done educational programs at the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, the Lucerne Festival Academy, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and more.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music.

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ailed by The Philadelpha Inquirer for her “magnetic, wide-ranging tone” and her “rock-solid technique,” Ayane Kozasa enjoys a career that spans a broad spectrum of musical personas. Her solo and chamber music career took off when she won the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition, where she also captured awards for best chamber music and commissioned work performances. An advocate for pushing the viola repertoire forward, she has commissioned several viola chamber music works, including Paul Wiancko’s American Haiku. Kozasa’s interest in chamber music has led her to appearances at numerous festivals, including the Marlboro Music Festival, the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, the Olympic Music Festival, and the Ravinia Festival.

She is a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, the 2017–18 quartet in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and grand prize winner of the 2018 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. The quartet has proved multifaceted, commissioning and touring works by rising-star composers and pushing the boundaries of unique and thoughtful programming. Their Grammy-nominated debut album, Blueprinting, featuring five young American composers, was recently released on New Amsterdam Records. Her passion for chamber music has also blossomed in the form of the viola and cello duo Ayane & Paul, a collaborative ensemble with Wiancko that reimagines the standard concert experience.

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Kozasa is deeply grateful for the mentorship she received from her past teachers, Nobuko Imai, Kirsten Docter, Roberto Diaz, Misha Amory, and Michael Tree.

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nthony Manzo is a sought-after chamber musician who is at home across the wide range of classical music, whether out front as a soloist or in back as the foundation of an orchestra, whether exploring on historic instruments or collaborating in his first love, chamber music.

Manzo serves as an artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, is solo bassist of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra, and is a regular guest with the Smithsonian Chamber Society and the National and Baltimore Symphonies when near his home in Washington, D.C. Formerly the solo bassist of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Germany, he has also been a guest principal with Camerata Salzburg in Austria, where collaborations included a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival, as well as two international tours as a soloist alongside bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, performing Mozart’s “Per questa bella mano.”

Manzo is also an active performer on period instruments, with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (where his playing has been lauded as “endowed with beautiful and unexpected plaintiveness” by Boston Musical Intelligencer) and Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco. He performs on an instrument made in Paris circa 1890 by Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy (the instrument now has a removable neck for travel) and is a member of the bass and chamber music faculty of the University of Maryland.

Pedja Muzijevic has defined his career with creative

programming, unusual combinations of new and old music, and lasting collaborations with artists and ensembles. His symphonic engagements include performances with the Atlanta Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica in Montevideo, Residentie Orkest in the Hague, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Shinsei Nihon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and Zagreb Philharmonic. He has played solo recitals at Alice Tully Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, 92nd Street Y, and the Frick Collection in New York; Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Terrace Theater at Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks, and National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Casals Hall and Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo; Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile; and many other venues. His Carnegie Hall concerto debut playing Mozart Concerto No. 25 with the Oberlin Symphony and Robert Spano was recorded live and released on the Oberlin Music label.

Highlights of the 2018–19 season include solo recitals in Montreal, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C., as well the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Bach Festival in New York; the world premiere of Framing Time, a collaboration with dancer, director, and choreographer Cesc Gelabert and lighting designer Burke Brown; and curating and performing a concert with the University of North Carolina Chamber Singers, as well as the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s chamber opera Leonardo with Tyler Duncan, Tara Helen O’Connor, James Austin Smith, Todd Palmer, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet at the 92nd Street Y.

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Muzijevic’s solo recordings include Haydn Dialogues and Sonatas and Other Interludes. His discography also includes two CDs on 18th- and 19th-century fortepianos featuring the music of Schumann, Mozart, and Beethoven.

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ailed by The New York Times as “intensely dynamic” with “stunning technique and volatility,” Geoff Nuttall began playing the violin at age eight after moving to London, Ontario, from College Station, Texas. He spent most of his musical studies under the tutelage of Lorand Fenyves at the Banff Centre, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto, where Nuttall received his bachelor of arts degree.

In 1989 Nuttall co-founded the St. Lawrence String Quartet. As first violinist of this world-renowned foursome, he has performed more than 1,500 concerts throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Currently under an exclusive contract with EMI Classics, the St. Lawrence String Quartet received two Grammy nominations for the recent Yiddishbbuk, a collection of works by the Argentine-American composer Osvaldo Golijov.

The quartet’s debut recording, featuring works

by Robert Schumann, won a Juno Award for best classical album, as well as the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

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Since winning the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Young Concert Artist auditions in the early ‘90s, the St. Lawrence String Quartet has performed regularly at some of North America’s most esteemed music festivals, including Mostly Mozart, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Bay Chamber Concerts, and Spoleto USA, where Nuttall and his colleagues are celebrating 10 years as quartet in residence. Their busy touring schedule has brought them to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Royal Concertgebouw Hall, Théâtre de Ville, Suntory Hall, and the White House, among other places.

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nnalee Patipatanakoon is one of Canada’s most respected performing artists. A laureate of the Queen Elizabeth Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium, as well as a first prize winner of the Canadian Music Competition and the Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition for Canadian Music, Patipatanakoon is a graduate of Indiana University and the Curtis Institute of Music, and is associate professor of violin and chamber music at the University of Toronto’s faculty of music.

AN NALE E PATI PATANAKOO N

As a founding member of the two-time Juno Award– winning Gryphon Trio, Patipatanakoon can be heard on the Trio’s 20 recordings on the Analekta and Naxos labels. She maintains a busy touring schedule across Canada and the United States each season.

She serves as artistic advisor to the Ottawa Chamber Music Society and is artist in residence at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music and Trinity College.

Gryphon Trio performances are regularly broadcast nationwide on CBC Radio Canada.

Equally in demand as a teacher of violin and chamber music, Patipatanakoon has taught and conducted masterclasses at Rice University, Stanford University, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Hochshule für Musik-Mainz, Domaine Forget, the Orford Academy, the Tuckamore Festival and School, Mount Royal University, and many more. With the Gryphon Trio, Patipatanakoon leads educational projects in music schools and communities across the country, including the group’s flagship Listen Up! outreach program with permanent hubs in Ottawa and Etobicoke.

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Praised by the New York Times for his “uncommon

RO MAN R AB I N OVI CH

sensitivity and feeling,” Roman Rabinovich is the winner of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. He has performed throughout Europe and the United States in venues including Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Cité de la Musique in Paris, and Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In summer 2016 Rabinovich took on the Haydn Project, featuring recitals of Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas at the Bath Festival in England and partial cycles at the Lammermuir Festival in Scotland and ChamberFest Cleveland. Highlights of Rabinovich’s 2018–19 season include Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto, Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3, and Bernstein The Age of Anxiety.

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In 2018, Rabinovich was the first of three young pianists to be selected by András Schiff for the international Building Bridges series. Last season’s highlights included Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1 with Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Roger Norrington, Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 with KBS Orchestra and Yoel Levi, Brahms Concerto No. 1 with Szczecin Philharmonic, and Bartók Concerto No. 2 with Dohnányi Symphony in Budapest. Rabinovich made his Israel Philharmonic debut under Zubin Mehta at age 10, about a year after immigrating to Israel from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Rabinovich’s parents are both piano teachers, and his earliest lessons were with them. He also studied with Arie Vardi in Israel. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Seymour Lipkin and earned his master’s degree at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert McDonald.

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he 2018 recipient of the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the first international ensemble chosen for this prize, the members of Rolston String Quartet are acclaimed for their musical excellence. In 2016, the Rolston won first prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition.

That same year, they won Astral Artists’ national auditions, the grand prize of the 31st Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and the inaugural M-Prize Competition, and were named among the “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30” by CBC Radio.

RO L STO N STR I N G Q UARTE T

During the 2017–18 season, the Rolston tipped the 100-concert milestone with performances in Canada, the United States, Germany, Brussels, Italy, and Israel.

Highlights of the 2018–19 season include concerts at Carnegie Hall, Freer Gallery, Wigmore Hall, and Chamber Music Houston, as well as major tours in Canada and Europe.

In fall 2017, Rolston String Quartet began a two-year term as the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet in residence. The quartet also serves as the graduate quartet in residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

Formed in 2013, the quartet takes its name from Canadian violinist Thomas Rolston, founder and longtime director of the Music and Sound Programs at the Banff Centre.

Luri Lee plays a Carlo Tononi violin, generously on loan from Shauna Rolston Shaw. Emily Kruspe plays a 1900 Stefano Scarampella violin, generously on loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank. The Rolston String Quartet is endorsed

by Jargar Strings of Denmark.

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ailed by The New York Times as an “elegant soloist” with a sound “devotional with its liquid intensity,” Nathan Schram is a composer, entrepreneur, and violist of the Attacca Quartet. He has collaborated with many of the great artists of today, including Björk, Itzhak Perlman, Sting, David Crosby, Becca Stevens, David Byrne, Trey Anastasio, Joshua Bell, and Sir Simon Rattle. He has premiered chamber music by Steve Reich, Nico Muhly, Timo Andres, Elliot Cole, Gabriel Kahane, and other prominent composers. Schram is also a violist in the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, Decoda, and an honorary ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea.

When not performing, Schram is the founder and executive director of Musicambia. Founded in 2013, Musicambia brings music learning and ensemble performance to prisons throughout the United States.

By working closely with incarcerated individuals on performance, music theory, ear training, and composition, Musicambia’s professional musicians build artistic communities that nurture the humanity of all involved. Musicambia currently runs a music conservatory at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, as well as related programs in Indiana and South Carolina. Musicambia has also collaborated in similar projects in Venezuela and Scotland.

Aristo Sham has dazzled audiences on five continents, including concerts in Singapore, Argentina, Slovenia, Morocco, China, Iceland, and elsewhere.

Sham’s recent and current engagements include the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. He has performed as soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart, English Chamber Orchestra, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Sham has given recitals for the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago and the Salle Cortot in Paris and has performed for Prince Charles, the Queen of Belgium, and former Chinese president Hu Jintao.

AR I STO S HAM

Sham won first prize at the 2018 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the following special prizes: the Hayden’s Ferry Chamber Music Prize, Vancouver Recital Society Prize, John Browning Memorial Prize, Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, Rhoda Walker Teagle New York Debut Prize, and Korean Concert Society Kennedy Center Debut Prize.

A native of Hong Kong, Sham began playing piano at age three, entered the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts at six, and then attended the Harrow School in London. He is currently in a joint program of Harvard University and the New England Conservatory, pursuing a bachelor of arts degree in economics and French and a master’s degree in piano performance.

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raised by The New York Times for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances and by The New Yorker for his “bold, keen sound,” oboist James Austin Smith performs new and old music across the United States and around the world. Smith is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Decoda, and the Poulenc Trio, as well as artistic director of Tertulia, a chamber music series that takes place in restaurants in New York and San Francisco. He is a member of the oboe and chamber music faculties of Stony Brook University and the Manhattan School of Music.

Smith’s festival appearances include Spoleto USA, Music@Menlo, Bowdoin, Bay Chamber Concerts, Norfolk, Marlboro, Lucerne, Orlando, Stift, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He has also performed with the St. Lawrence, Parker, Rolston, and Orion string quartets and recorded for the Nonesuch, Bridge, Mode, and Kairos labels.

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Smith holds a master of music from the Yale School of Music and bachelor degrees in music and political science from Northwestern University.

He spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Leipzig, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” and is an alumnus of Ensemble Connect, a collaboration of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, the Weill Music Institute, and the New York City Department of Education. His principal teachers included Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli, and Ray Still.

Modern,” “dramatic,” “superb,” “wickedly attentive,”

“

and “a hint of rock ‘n’ roll energy” are just a few ways that critics describe the St Lawrence String Quartet.

The SLSQ is renowned for the intensity of its performances, its breadth of repertoire, and its commitment to concert experiences that are at once intellectually exciting and emotionally alive. Highlights in 2018–19 include performances with pianist Inon Barnatan and the long-awaited release of their recording of the six Haydn “Sun” Quartets, Op. 20, in high-definition video for a free, universal release online.

ST. L AWR E N CE STR I N G Q UARTE T

Fiercely committed to collaboration with living composers, the SLSQ’s partnership with John Adams, Jonathan Berger, Osvaldo Golijov, and many others has yielded some of the finest additions to the quartet literature in recent years.

Established in Toronto in 1989, the SLSQ quickly earned acclaim at international chamber music competitions and was soon playing hundreds of concerts worldwide. They established an ongoing residency at Spoleto Festival USA, made prize-winning recordings of music by Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Golijov on EMI, and in 1999 were appointed ensemble in residence at Stanford University.

At Stanford, the SLSQ is at the forefront of intellectual life on campus, directing the chamber music program and frequently collaborating with other departments, including the schools of law, medicine, business, and education. The SLSQ performs regularly at Stanford Live, hosts an annual chamber music seminar, and runs the emerging string quartet program, where they mentor young quartets. As Alex Ross wrote in 2001, “The St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection.”

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Icelandic-American cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir SÆ U N N TH O RSTE I N S DOT TÍ R

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enjoys a varied career as a performer, collaborator, and educator. She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Iceland Symphony, among others, and her recital and chamber music performances have taken her across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Sæunn has performed in many of the world’s prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Barbican Center, and Disney Hall. The New York Times has described her as “charismatic” and “riveting,” and The Los Angeles Times has praised her performances for their “emotional intensity.” An avid chamber musician, Sæunn has collaborated in performance with Itzhak Perlman, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, St. Lawrence, and Cavani Quartets. She has performed in numerous chamber music festivals, including Santa Fe, Seattle, Stellenbosch, Orcas Island, Bay Chamber, Prussia Cove, and Marlboro, with which she has toured. She has garnered numerous prizes in international competitions, including the Naumburg Competition and the Antonio Janigro Competition in Zagreb. She received a bachelor of music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a master of music from the Juilliard School, and a doctorate of musical arts from SUNY Stony Brook. Her teachers and mentors include Richard Aaron, Tanya Carey, Colin Carr, and Joel Krosnick.

Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, Sæunn serves on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle, teaching cello and chamber music, and she is a cellist and founding member of Decoda, the affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall.

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ABOUT THE WRITER RENÉ SPENCER SALLER

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ené Spencer Saller is a writer and editor who lives in St. Louis. In addition to her work for Tippet Rise, she is the main program annotator for the Dallas Symphony. She has also written many program notes for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, as well as features, profiles, and interviews for Playbill. She holds a master’s degree in English literature from Washington University.

RENÉ SPENCER SALLER W R I T ER

Before shifting her focus to classical music, she wrote about pop music for more than a decade.

From 2001 to 2003, she served as the full-time music critic and editor at The Riverfront Times, St. Louis’s leading alternative-weekly newspaper.

In 2005 she won first place in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards for three record reviews published in Illinois Times, on Ike Turner, Eminem, and Wilco. Her byline has also appeared in Boogie Woogie Flu (a New York-based music website), The Boston Phoenix, St. Louis Magazine, eMusic.com, The Monterey County Weekly, The Knoxville Voice, The Sacramento News & Review, and many other publications.

Aside from listening to music, she enjoys reading novels, walking her dog, and volunteering as a tutor at a local public school. She lives with her husband, Christian, and their seven pets in a 115-year-old home in the Tower Grove East neighborhood.

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ABOUT THE WRITER BENJAMIN PESETSKY

Benjamin Pesetsky is a composer and writer. In

addition to Tippet Rise, he has written program notes for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle, and Bard Music Festival, covering music from the 17th century to the present day. His articles and criticism have appeared in Playbill, Early Music America, Boston.com, and Classical Voice North America.

He previously served on the staff of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston and has worked as an editor and consultant to the St. Louis Symphony, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Handel and Haydn Society, and Bard Music West.

As a composer, his music has been performed by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the American Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Winds, Tapestry Opera in Toronto, the Shakespeare Concerts in Boston, and for MUSA’s Art Inspiring Art in the San Francisco Bay Area. Current projects include a new song cycle for soprano Sara LeMesh and pianist Allegra Chapman.

BENJAMIN PESETSKY W R I TE R

He earned degrees in composition and philosophy from Bard College Conservatory and Bard College and has been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre and the Hambidge Center. A native of the Boston area, he lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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Education at Tippet Rise Art Center

MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY HONORS COLLEGE PROGRAM A Montana State University Honors College “Art Expedition” course brought approximately 20 Honors College students to Tippet Rise Art Center in August 2016, 2017, and again in 2018. During their visits, students attended concerts, explored the ranch and its sculptures, and attended lectures and discussions with Tippet Rise founders, Peter and Cathy Halstead; the center’s principal architect, Laura Viklund; the late Charles Hamlen, who was then the center’s Artistic Advisor; members of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors; and the celebrated pianist Jenny Chen. The visits give students the opportunity to immerse themselves not only in art, music, and nature, but also in architecture, environmental sciences, engineering, and land management, all in a way that links the human experience with the sights, sounds, and sensations of rural Montana. We look forward to expanding this program in 2019, when we will offer two Art Expedition weekends over the course of the summer season.

Dr. Ilse-Mari Lee, Professor of Music, Dean of the Honors College, and a professional cellist, leads the course each year. In the months leading up to the expedition, under Dean Lee’s guidance, students prepare for the visit, studying the artists, musicians, musical scores, composers, natural history, and artwork that they will experience at Tippet Rise.

The MSU Honors College aims to enrich the state of Montana by offering exceptional opportunities to Montana students so that they may study, conduct research, and exchange ideas in challenging and supportive environments. Honors College students routinely receive some of the most prestigious academic awards, including the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, the Truman Scholarship (Brown, Vanderbilt, Yale, and MSU all had two winners last year), and the Goldwater Scholarship (MSU ranks eighth in the nation, just ahead of Yale, for the total number of Goldwater Scholarships.)

BLACKFOOT PATHWAYS: SCULPTURE IN THE WILD In 2017 and 2018, the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation funded Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild International Sculpture Park, which celebrates the rich environmental, industrial, and cultural heritage of the Blackfoot Valley. Sculptors have been invited to create significant sitespecific works of art using the materials, natural and industrial, that are associated with the valley’s economic and cultural traditions. In 2017 the Tippet Rise Fund supported the installation of a sculpture

by Patrick Dougherty at Sculpture in the Wild and in 2018 supported outreach and educational programs. In 2019 the Tippet Rise Fund helped to support Alison Stigora’s site-specific installation at the sculpture park.

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WORKSHOPS AT TIPPET RISE (AND BEYOND) Throughout the year, Tippet Rise offers workshops and other cultural opportunities at the art center and at schools, museums, and other organizations throughout the region. These include: • Three summer camp workshops with the Boys & Girls Club of Carbon County at Tippet Rise in 2016, including one led by internationally renowned sculptor Mark di Suvero. Workshops continued in 2017 and 2018, and we look forward to more during the summer of 2019.

• Absarokee school students worked with the internationally acclaimed artist Stephen Talasnik during his exhibition at the art center in October 2018.

• Montana Shakespeare in the Parks worked with Red Lodge High School students at Tippet Rise in the fall of 2016. In the spring of 2017 and again in 2018, Montana Shakes held workshops with Fishtail and Nye Schools at Tippet Rise. In the spring of 2019, Montana Shakes worked with students from the Columbus, Fishtail, and Nye schools.

• For adults, a summer nature workshop and a watercolor plein air workshop took place at the art center in 2017 and 2018; both workshops will be offered in 2019.

• Group piano lessons for many of the region’s piano students have taken place at Tippet Rise.

• FAM at the YAM: In 2018 and 2019, Tippet Rise was featured as the guest “artist” for open-studio night at the Yellowstone Art Museum, an opportunity for families of all ages and sizes to visit the museum and make art together.

• Sunday summer concerts featuring musical instrument “petting zoos” and lively interaction with world-class performers entertain children and their families.

• Tippet Rise staff visit the region’s elementary and middle schools to give art workshops and instruction, helping students create projects related to the artwork and architecture at Tippet Rise. These often include bringing students to the art center for tours and exploration.

• The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation brought musicians from the Oakland Youth Symphony Group and the San Diego Youth Symphony to Tippet Rise, where they attended concerts and explored the art center’s rambling landscape and monumental sculptures. They also gave several impromptu performances for Tippet Rise guests before scheduled concerts. For quite a few of the participants in these two ensembles, it was their first time on an airplane, not to mention their first time in Montana!

• Film Studies students from Connecticut College visited Tippet Rise and created a short film with the art center’s new Artistic Advisor, Pedja Muzijevic. They also attended concerts, toured the art center, and visited other parts of this great state we call home.

ART IN MONTANA WOMEN’S PRISON When Cierra Coppock was 14, she sold her iPad to finance her school project: paying her art teacher to teach the work of Van Gogh, whom she loves, and other artists to women in the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings. Several years later, the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation continues Cierra’s initiative, and the only criticism the program has received is that it isn’t frequent enough.

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Tippet Rise and the Community THE CARBON COUNTY ARTS GUILD The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation is pleased to support the Carbon County Arts Guild’s work to keep art a vital part of the education of today’s youth. The Tippet Rise Fund helps to bring art into the classrooms at three local schools through a traveling art teacher program facilitated by the Arts Guild. Art teachers make regular visits to Nye, Fishtail, and Luther schools, where art classes may not have otherwise been an option. Through this partnership, students also come to Tippet Rise Art Center to meet artists during the installation of their sculptures, and to experience, hands on, art in nature. In 2015 the Fishtail and Nye Schools worked with renowned sculptor Stephen Talasnik during the installation of Satellite #5: Pioneer. Motivated by the visit, they returned to their classrooms to build their own sculptures using their interpretations of Satellite #5: Pioneer and the skills they learned from Talasnik. In 2016 Luther School students traveled to Tippet Rise with art teacher Willis Johnson, where they visited three site-specific sculptures created by Ensamble Studio. Back at the school, they cast their own Ensamble Studio– inspired pieces and reflected on their experience at the art center through watercolor, pencil, pen, and other media. The students’ artwork was on display for a month-long art show at Honey’s Café in Red Lodge in July 2016. The relationship between Tippet Rise and Luther School continues to grow: during the winters of 2017 and 2018, Tippet Rise sent its Art Education coordinator, Beth Huhtala, to Luther School to teach printmaking over the course of two days. The students created linocuts, gelatin prints,

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by Lindsey Hinmon

monoprints, and collagraphs. We are grateful to the Carbon County Arts Guild for its efforts to provide quality arts education to our region’s youth, and we are thrilled that collaborations such as these will continue to grow and multiply.

THE RED LODGE AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION In partnership with the Red Lodge Area Community Foundation and the Carbon County Arts Guild, the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation brought more than 20 local grade school students to Tippet Rise to participate in a unique workshop with artist Patrick Dougherty during the installation of Daydreams, in the summer of 2015. Students worked alongside Patrick, one of today’s most admired sculptors, learning and building their own sculptures using local willows. Students boarded the bus at the end of the day with arms full of willows for their own future creations. The Tippet Rise Fund also supports the Red Lodge Area Community Foundation’s activities in the town of Red Lodge, including The Roosevelt Center, a former school that is being transformed into a center for the arts and community.

THE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF CARBON COUNTY The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation provided support for the Club’s positive, dynamic, and affordable after-school programming for more than 300 school-age kids in a safe, nurturing environment. This summer, as they have every summer since the art center opened, children from the Boys & Girls Club will visit Tippet Rise to attend workshops that explore art, architecture, and nature; these workshops reach between 30 and 40 children each year.

THE RED LODGE MUSIC FESTIVAL The Red Lodge Music Festival has been a celebrated summer music camp for more than 50 years, inspiring a love of classical and jazz music in youth.

The Festival’s nine-day camp hosts professional faculty to teach more than 200 student musicians and prepare them to perform. Faculty and student recitals have been broadcast on Performance Today and other classical music programs. The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation supports scholarships for the Festival’s Honor Ensemble and other students.

THE NYE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION The Nye Community Foundation was founded in 1999 to build a permanent financial base to support and promote projects that will benefit the residents of Nye and the surrounding area. The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation provides funding for the Foundation’s scholarship fund, which supports the higher education dreams of local students. Since its founding in 1999, the Nye Community Foundation has gifted over $90,000 to community efforts, including scholarships.

THE NYE VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation is proud to support the Nye Volunteer Fire Company’s fire prevention and protection services.

With the Fund’s support, the company is now better equipped with a custom wildlands fire truck as well as a roadside sign for the town that indicates the current level of fire danger. The Tippet Rise Fund also purchased equipment and tooling for an offroad tanker truck for the company and helped to expand community outreach programs for fireprevention education, such as fuel mitigation around homes and subdivisions and maintenance of fire extinguishers. Tippet Rise Art Center appreciates the hard work and time that volunteer firefighers dedicate to ensure the safety and security of the

communities and land near the art center and throughout the region.

THE ABSAROKEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION The Absarokee Community Foundation takes pride in organizing and building a stronger community within Absarokee and its surrounding communities for today and for the future. Through the ACF’s efforts, the Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation supports local community initiatives for educational, environmental, and social services. Local nonprofit organizations supported by ACF, with the help of donors like the Tippet Rise Fund, include the Absarokee PTA, Husky Wilderness Adventures, Operation Second Chance, Emergency Medical Services, the Absarokee Senior Center, and the Stillwater Valley Watershed Council.

THE NYE, ABSAROKEE, AND RED LODGE PUBLIC SCHOOLS It is a joy to share a love for music with our region’s young people. The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation helps to support the Nye Elementary music program and also assisted in purchasing equipment for the Absarokee Public Schools’ music departments, including keyboards, MIDI controllers, and orchestral string instruments. The Tippet Rise Fund also donated toward the purchase of new risers for the Red Lodge Public Schools’ choirs.

THE YELLOWSTONE BIGHORN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION A program offered in partnership with the Yellowstone Bighorn Research Association invites guests to explore the geologic wonders of Tippet Rise.

Founded at the foot of the Beartooth Mountains by the Princeton Geological Association in 1936, YBRA is dedicated to research and teaching in the field.

Over selected Thursdays in the summer of 2019, the Association’s distinguished faculty will lead tours of the art center’s geologic “hot spots.”

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Tippet Rise’s Partnerships THE HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN We are very fortunate to partner with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the modern art branch of the august Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian is our nation’s museum, and also the world’s largest museum complex, founded in 1846, with 19 museums and nine research facilities. We are supporting ARTLAB+, their digital lab, which provides training for young people in technologies such as disc jockeying and virtual reality, offering certifications that students can then use for college admissions and later in the job market. Melissa Chiu, the director of the Hirshhorn, believes in extending the nation’s museum to everyone in the country, not just urban residents. Fishtail is one of the first beneficiaries of that expanded outreach. We thank her, the staff, the Hirshhorn board, and David Skorton, the 13th secretary of the Smithsonian, for the loan of Two Discs and Stainless Stealer, both by Alexander Calder. Two Discs was given to the Hirshhorn by its founder, Joseph Hirshhorn, in 1966. This is its first appearance outside Washington, D.C. Joseph Hirshhorn presented Stainless Stealer to the Hirshhorn in 1972.

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THE BRAVO! VAIL MUSIC FESTIVAL We celebrate as well our friendship with the Bravo!

Vail Music Festival, whose artistic director, AnneMarie McDermott, returns to Tippet Rise to guide a four-day Piano Intensive for the second year. This program was inspired by Bravo’s Piano Fellows residency, which takes place at the festival each summer. Hailed as one of the Top 10 “Can’t Miss” Classical Music Festivals in the U.S. by National Public Radio, Bravo! Vail is the only festival in North America to host four world-renowned orchestras in a single season: the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra ViennaBerlin, playing in the gorgeous outdoor Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater. The Festival also features some of the most renowned chamber music artists in concerts throughout the Vail Valley.

THE BILLINGS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The Billings Symphony Orchestra has contributed both the Red Lodge Chamber Players and the Magic City Strings to Tippet Rise over the past few years. The Tippet Rise Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation supports the Orchestra’s Explore Music education and outreach program.

THE NATIONAL THEATRE The UK’s National Theatre began broadcasting its series of recorded plays in the Olivier Music Barn in the spring of 2017 and has continued to do so since.

We look forward to screening more National Theatre films in 2019.

STORM KING ART CENTER Finally, we have been inspired for many years by our friendship with Storm King Art Center in New York’s Hudson Valley. They generously agreed to part with Mark di Suvero’s iconic Beethoven’s Quartet, which has been displayed at Storm King since 2003. (Di Suvero’s sculptures have been displayed there since 1968.) Widely celebrated as one of the world’s leading sculpture parks, Storm King has welcomed visitors from across the globe for 50 years. Its pristine 500-acre landscape of fields, hills, and woodlands provides the setting for a collection of more than 100 carefully sited sculptures created by some of the most acclaimed artists of our time. Storm King published the first definitive monograph of the works of Mark di Suvero, with 150 photographs.

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Lindsey Hinmon Managing Director, Programs Lindsey assists in leading Tippet Rise, alongside her husband, Pete. She keeps the art center’s logistics humming smoothly, oversees public relations, and is instrumental to our planning and development. Lindsey coordinates with artists, architects, and musicians, community members and educators, from kindergarten teachers to university deans, as well as leaders from regional and national cultural institutions, welcoming everyone into the Tippet Rise family. In short, Lindsey helps to bring the Tippet Rise vision of nature, music, and art intertwined to full, blooming life—an experience she hopes to share with her Montana friends and people from all over the world. She and Pete live in Red Lodge with their baby girl.

Ben Wynthein Ranch Manager Ben oversees ranching operations at Tippet Rise.

From May to mid-November, this work includes grazing oversight of 200 to 300 calf-cow pairs, 100 to 120 heifers and 2,000 to 2,600 head of sheep.

He works year-round to improve Tippet Rise’s rangeland health as well as its water use and conservation practices. Through these efforts, Ben endeavors to make Tippet Rise an increasingly healthy and viable ranchland, wildlife habitat and treasured piece of the Montana landscape. In the process, he hopes the art center’s guests can enjoy and experience Montana’s rich ranching heritage. For the past 10 years, Ben has lived with his family on or next to what is now Tippet Rise.

Pete Hinmon Managing Director, Operations A lifelong pursuit of adventure in the mountains led Pete to Tippet Rise, where he draws on his experiences to make the organization’s vision a reality. Intrigued by the exploration of art and nature, Pete’s role at Tippet Rise is an adventure in itself. Often working in tandem with his wife, Lindsey, Pete provides team leadership, oversees the art center’s operations, planning, and development, and coordinates the installation of its sculptures. When he isn’t orchestrating Tippet Rise’s many facets, Pete enjoys life with Lindsey and their baby girl, all the better if it’s outside beneath Montana’s big, beautiful sky.

Melissa Moore Communications and Administration Manager From the moment a guest first learns of Tippet Rise to the time they exit the art center’s gates, Melissa helps facilitate their experience from beginning to end. With a background in theater and hospitality, she oversees communication and administration at the art center. From managing the Tippet Rise website and social media accounts to orchestrating event planning and ticketing, her contributions are indispensable to day-to-day operations and to her colleagues at the art center. Melissa lives in Red Lodge with her husband and two young daughters.

The Team at Tippet Rise

Beth Huhtala Art Education Coordinator and Visitor Center Manager With a background in fine art and education, Beth has taught kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as at the college level, running art workshops, teaching classes, and giving tours. She earned a BFA from the University of Wyoming and an MFA from the University of Montana and is a professional artist herself. Beth began working at Tippet Rise as an intern during the inaugural season. Today, she manages the visitor center and oversees our art education programs, which focus on art, music, architecture, and conservation through hands-on workshops for all ages.

Alexis Adams Publications Administrator Born to a pianist mother and raised in the United States, England, and Greece, Lexy grew up surrounded by music: from the Haydn, Bach, and Chopin her mother practiced each morning to Greek Rebetiko, bossa nova, and the American folk songs of the 1960s and ‘70s. A longtime freelance writer, her work has been published by Oxford University Press, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, National Geographic Traveler, Scientific American, and other publications. At Tippet Rise, Lexy writes and edits content for the art center’s publications and website, and she assists with our public relations efforts. Although she often works alone and behind the scenes, Lexy’s favorite days are spent working alongside her colleagues at the art center, helping guests, and marveling at the extraordinary acoustics of the Olivier Music Barn.

Monte Nickles Audio and Technology Systems Manager Monte maintains the Olivier Music Barn’s state-ofthe-art audio-video systems and supervises all audio recordings of performances at Tippet Rise, which he masters in ultra-high­-fidelity formats and in 9.1 surround-sound. With a bachelor’s degree in audio production from Webster University in St. Louis, his background also includes recording the St. Louis Symphony’s performances for several years. But Monte not only records performances, he also performs: on the trumpet, which he has played since childhood.

Carl Mayer Maintenance, Events, and Special Projects Coordinator Carl has served as interpretive ranger at Tippet Rise since the inaugural season, patrolling the art center’s 12,000 acres by mountain bike and providing insight and guidance to our guests as they explore our trail system on foot and by bike. He also serves as events crew, assisting with the setup and breakdown of concerts. When not working as a ranger or on the events crew, Carl helps to complete a wide variety of projects, and assists with the coordination of new building endeavors. Originally from the great state of Maine, Carl has a degree in biology from Saint Lawrence University in upstate New York.

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Dan Luttschwager Maintenance and Operations Assistant Dan helps to maintain the buildings, mechanical systems, vehicles, and equipment at Tippet Rise. Always willing to help with whatever is needed, he is not only indispensable to the art center’s operations, he is a friendly face to guests, artists, and staff alike. A lifelong Montanan, Dan loves the outdoors, especially the mountains and the rivers and streams, which he explores by raft as often as possible. He and his wife Yvonne live near Absarokee, Montana. They have three children and four wonderful grandchildren. Dan is proud to be on the Tippet Rise staff, believing it to be ‘’one of the greatest places there is.”

Jenny Van Ooyen Guest Experience and Administration Assistant Jenny began her journey at Tippet Rise as an interpretive ranger and member of the events crew during the art center’s inaugural season. From setting up concerts at the Domo to taking guests on sculpture tours or helping those who are hiking and biking the art center’s trails, she utilizes her passion to try to create unforgettable guest experiences. Jenny’s position at Tippet Rise also requires her to assist in a variety of administrative duties. When she’s not giving tours, maintaining trails, or riding with cyclists out on the land, Jenny enjoys spending her time hiking and fishing in the Beartooth Mountains. With a degree in Environmental Studies from St. Lawrence University, she loves sharing the connections between art, music, and the beautiful Montana environment with the art center’s visitors.

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Emily Rund Filmmaker Emily works at our art center year-round to document events and the landscape. She edits and produces photographs as well as documentary, performance and concert films. She works with musicians, actors and artists, and assists visiting filmmakers by coordinating logistics and taking part in varying production roles.

Emily is passionate about the creative process and its avenue to experiment, advocate, and share stories.

Her personal work crosses between the arts and sciences, including documentary work on invisible illnesses, stop-motion animation, and encouraging environmental preservation. Emily graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts with degrees in photography and film, with a concentration in film, and kinetic Imaging.

Zack Patten Production Coordinator Music in unique sonic spaces, sculpture and architecture in stunning landscapes, storytelling, delivering intriguing programs, and being part of a forward-thinking team are passions of Zachary Patten. In his professional career, he has served as library manager, production manager, and manager of operations & performance for several outstanding arts organizations, most notably the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Music at Sacra, Aspen Music Festival, Mostly Modern Festival, and Boulder Bach Festival. At Tippet Rise, he is Production Coordinator and podcast creator. Zachary is also finishing his DMA in Composition from the University of Colorado in Boulder; his art focuses on designing and building instruments and working with individual performers to create music that is patient, immersive, new, and nostalgic.

Christopher Castillo Facilities Operator With a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Knox College, Chris brings a wonderfully apt blend of insights and skills to Tippet Rise, where he manages and maintains the art center’s grounds, buildings, and mechanical systems. His nimble orchestration of our state-of-the-art heating and cooling systems helps to keep the pianos of Tippet Rise, and the many instruments that accompany our visiting artists, in fine shape. Chris helped shepherd the art center through the process of receiving LEED certification for the Olivier Music Barn and is continually looking to improve the building’s operational and energy efficiency. Before moving to Montana, he spent 10 years with the National Park Service working in facility management and cultural resources.

Jim Ruberto Assistant Audio Engineer and Technical Systems Engineer Jim assists in all phases of audio production process at the art center and helps manage the cutting-edge technology systems behind the scenes. His mission is to support the Tippet Rise vision by capturing the powerful musical moments with an exceptional level of faithfulness, spatial realism, and clarity. With more than 25 years in the music industry as an engineer, producer, performer, and technical systems engineer, Jim brings leadership, creativity, and rigor to his work, and balances the highly technical tasks the A/V team faces daily with a sense of playfulness. Jim splits his time between the art center and his home in Colorado, where he’s a busy musician and audio engineer, and also enjoys the outdoors and writing music.

Jeanne Reid White Special Projects Advisor Jeanne draws on a background of management, strategic planning, marketing, finance, and institutional advancement for diverse organizations ranging from international sports events to classical orchestral, chamber music, and jazz concerts. She enjoys sharing the mission of the Tippet Rise Art Center and providing communities with live classical and contemporary music of the highest level while creating educational opportunities for audiences of all kinds. She finds it deeply fulfilling to work with artists from all genres, helping them to realize their creative visions and then sharing them with audiences in the Olivier Music Barn, on the land of Tippet Rise, and throughout the virtual world. Jeanne and her husband, Craig, enjoy skiing, hiking, traveling, and all kinds of live music performances.

Craig M. White Creative Consultant and Graphic Designer While Craig has had many management positions with national marketing and advertising firms, he has never wandered far from what he likes doing the most. Since his very first position at D’Arcy MacManus and Masius, the creative process—writing, designing, and working in radio and television production—was where he felt most comfortable and productive. From Budweiser to Bravo!

Vail, he has worked on a wide variety of accounts from coast to coast. Tippet Rise is the perfect fit for Craig.

Here his artistry and skills as a graphic designer have helped create beautiful advertising pieces, brochures, and the book you are holding in your hands. His participation doesn’t stop there either; he has contributed to our signage program, trail maps, even our ticketing programs. It’s difficult to find a project at Tippet Rise that Craig hasn’t had a hand in helping to create.

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Pedja Muzijevic Artistic Advisor Pianist Pedja Muzijevic has defined his career with creative programming, unusual combinations of new and old music, and lasting collaborations with artists and ensembles. His symphonic engagements include performances with the Atlanta Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica in Montevideo, Residentie Orkest in the Hague, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Shinsei Nihon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, and Zagreb Philharmonic. He has played solo recitals at Alice Tully Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, 92nd Street Y, and the Frick Collection in New York; Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Terrace Theater at Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks, and National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Casals Hall and Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo; Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile; and many other venues. His Carnegie Hall concerto debut playing Mozart Concerto 290

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No. 25 with the Oberlin Symphony and Robert Spano was recorded live and released on the Oberlin Music label. Highlights of the 2018–19 season include solo recitals in Montreal, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C., as well the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Bach Festival in New York; the world premiere of Framing Time, a collaboration with dancer, director, and choreographer Cesc Gelabert and lighting designer Burke Brown; and curating and performing a concert with the University of North Carolina Chamber Singers, as well as the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s chamber opera Leonardo with Tyler Duncan, Tara Helen O’Connor, James Austin Smith, Todd Palmer, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet at the 92nd Street Y.

Thank you to the many others on the Tippet Rise team who help to keep the art center flourishing Chris Clark

Along with the team she brings to assist her, Chris works behind the scenes to keep the Cottonwood Campus and other Tippet Rise structures clean, warm, and welcoming. With her infectious smile and longtime roots in this region, Chris makes Tippet Rise feel like home.

Nick Goldman and Wendi Reed

Chefs Nick and Wendi of Wild Flower Kitchen provide delicious sustenance to our guests, artists, and staff.

Nick was born in London, the child of a Brit and a Montanan. He trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, Oregon. Wendi, who is from Los Angeles, studied at Johnson & Wales University in Denver. The two met in Colorado and moved to Montana to live at Nick’s family’s cabin in Fishtail and run his family’s B & B in Absarokee. After selling the B & B in 2015, they started

Wild Flower Kitchen. Their mission—to use all-natural, organic, and local ingredients whenever possible— keeps us happy and well fed at Tippet Rise.

Laura Viklund Architect, Gunnstock Timber Frames

Growing up outside of Boston then moving to rural Wyoming, Laura has her foot in two different worlds.

Her introduction to timber framing nearly 15 years ago decidedly altered her life’s trajectory. Laura worked as a timber framer for several years before attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design to earn her master’s in architecture. She and her husband, Chris Gunn, founded Gunnstock Timber Frames in 2005. At Tippet Rise, Gunnstock’s contributions include Will’s Shed, the artists’ residences, the Tiara Acoustic Shell, and the extraordinary Olivier Music Barn.

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The Romance of the Piano Why the piano?

This is like asking mountaineers, “Why mountains?”

“Because they’re there” is the standard evasion, but Victorians climbed because the world was undiscovered, exotic, unnamed, and the darkest jungles, the highest peaks were a way of seeing strange lands through children’s eyes. (Only later would we begin seeing the world through the eyes of the people who had actually been there all along.)

We love mountains because the sidewalk outside our apartment doesn’t have seracs, arrêtes, couloirs, nunataks, Brocken specters. Houses don’t have hallucinations. The street where we live doesn’t have yetis. We crave places with no vocabularies. Where we have to make the names up. In a word, the Romantic. The Temple of Doom. The Mountains of the Moon. The Lost City of the Monkey God. A mountain isn’t just a stairway to heaven. Stairways in the form of rope bridges along the way lead to eroding trails cut into sheer cliffs: all the way to heaven is heaven. It’s the terror, the righteousness of self-deprivation, the complete freedom of adventure: no office, no calls, no family, no debts (no immediate debts, anyway). Man in his Element. (Usually women are sensibly distant.) Possibly bloodthirsty savages await. Possibly you are the bloodthirsty savage. Your country calls. Edmund Hillary summited Everest on the Queen’s Coronation. Germans climbed the Eiger for the Kaiser.

This romance with abnormal topography, with inaccessible geography, is why H. Rider Haggard’s She or King Solomon’s Mines have proved so

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enduring—as have C. S. Forester’s The African Queen or James Hilton’s Lost Horizon—anything with monkeys, temples, and questionable cults.

In the same way, pianos aren’t just accordions on legs. Or organs without bellows. They are the death dance of Liszt and Saint-Saëns. They are Faustian deals with the devil, with strings attached. They are coffeehouses in Berlin and Vienna, the twilight of a lazy European afternoon. Beethoven’s widening gyres in Bonn and then Vienna, where he heard the future as he became deaf to the present. They are Schumann’s overtures and Brahms’s regrets to the same amazing woman, Clara Wieck. They are Chopin’s anthems to the idea of Polish freedom, even though he left Poland because of its limitations. They are Glenn Gould’s idea of North. Even though he never went farther north than an hour from where he lived in Toronto. But he understood the idea.

Pianos are what Hoagy Carmichael played at Rick’s in Casablanca. Or how Bobby Short summoned up Cole Porter at the Carlyle. Pianos are the jazz that Cziffra played in Paris nightclubs before he became famous in his day as the world’s greatest unknown virtuoso.

Or the jazz that Aznavour played in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. Or the Chopin that saved Szpielman’s life in the true story behind the film The Pianist.

Or the salvation of the world in Anderson & Roe’s ominously entertaining The Rite of Spring.

I used to play Chopin preludes while my mother cooked, and I can still hear her calling out my mistakes from the kitchen. So pianos conjure up our

parents. If you’re lucky enough to have children who play, you can hear their minds expanding as they turn into people at the piano before your own eyes and ears. So pianos are our children, too.

When I was young, my friends had baseball. I had the Beethoven sonatas, and summer music camp. The pieces I used to play are like Proust’s madeleines: with them, my childhood comes flooding back, as baseball brings it back for my friends.

Pianos are the tips of centuries of accumulated romance. They are cross-country skiing in the moonlight, songs of passionate love, entire decades of fading amber light in European drawing rooms, the promise of new lives in America (Rhapsody in Blue).

It isn’t just the music. Music is the tip of the iceberg.

Pianos are mountains, symbols of lost dreams and horizons, tropic seas where the waves wash in between the palms, an escape where discipline gives you freedom. Pianos let you hear your own soul, growing like vines. They will give you, your children, your parents, and yourselves an extraordinary life, whether or not you ever make it to Carnegie Hall.

And so we hope we leave you with the sound of something ringing in your ears that will make you think of us through the seemingly eternal snows of winter (at least last winter seemed like that), and bring you back to us next summer: hopeful, energized, and encouraged.

—Cathy and Peter and the Team at Tippet Rise

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The 2019 Summer Music Program Photography Iwan Baan Andre Costantini Alex Coyle James Florio Peter Halstead Paul Johnson Kathy Kasic Kevin Kinzley Erik Petersen Emily Rund Yevgeny Sudbin Craig M. White

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Text

Peter Halstead and the Tippet Rise Team

Program Notes

Peter Halstead, Benjamin Pesetsky, and RenĂŠ Spencer Saller

Editors

Benjamin Pesetsky and RenĂŠ Spencer Saller Additional Editing by Amy Holmes

Creative Consulting and Design

Craig M. White

Production

McKenzie Designs, LLC

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Tipper Rise music videos and podcasts

VIDEO PERFORMANCES FROM THIS PROGRAM BOOK Page 38, Stainless Stealer Steals the Universe,

VIDEO PERFORMANCES FROM PAST SEASONS GEORGE ENESCU: Impressions from Childhood (cycle of a child) Op. 28 ROBERT SCHUMANN: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in D minor/Bewegt FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Nocturne Op. 48, No. 1/Étude Op. 10, No. 3 FRANZ LISZT: Transcendental Étude No. 10 in F minor, “Appassionata” FRANZ LISZT: Sonata in B minor, S. 178 JOHANNES BRAHMS: Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5/Scherzo: Allegro energico—Trio CARL PHILLIP EMMANUEL BACH: Sonata in G minor, Wq. 65/17/Allegro—Adagio—Allegro assai VITALY BUYANOVSKY: Espana: From Four Improvisations from Traveling Impressions MAURICE RAVEL: Ma mère l'Oye/Le jardin féerique JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: Red Arc/ Blue Veil NIKOLAI MEDTNER: Second Improvisation, Op. 47/Var. 14: Mermaid’s Song LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Variations and Fugue for Piano in E-flat Major, Op. 35, “Eroica”

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PODCAST LINKS FROM THE TIPPET RISE COLLECTION Peter at the Piano: Schumann's "Clara" Themes https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16104344

The Pianos of Tippet Rise https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16978664

Encores https://www.spreaker.com/episode/14850198

Pedja Muzijevic https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17232948

Love Songs https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15336093

Winter Rise https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17511888

Storytelling https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15655425

Paris in a Piano https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17817912

National Identities https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15870939

Aaron Jay Kernis https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16637081

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Tippet Rise Staff and Credits Founders

Cathy and Peter Halstead

Artistic Advisor

Pedja Muzijevic

Managing Director, Operations Managing Director, Programs Ranch Manager

Pete Hinmon

Lindsey Hinmon

Ben Wynthein

Communication and Administration Manager

Melissa Moore

Art Education Coordinator and Visitor Center Manager Publications Administrator Special Projects Advisor Filmmaker

Beth Huhtala

Alexis M. Adams Jeanne Reid White

Emily Rund

Audio and Technology Systems Manager

Monte Nickles

Assistant Audio Engineer and Technical Systems Engineer Piano Technicians

Mike Toia, Tali Mahanor, Drew Carter

Maintenance, Events and Special Projects Coordinator Maintenance and Operations Assistant

Creative Consultant and Graphic Design

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Carl Mayer

Dan Luttschwager

Guest Experience and Administration Assistant

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Jim Ruberto

Jenny Van Ooyen

Craig M. White

Production Coordinator Facilities Operator

Zack Patten

Christopher Castillo

Food Services & Catering Head of Housekeeping Photography

Nick Goldman and Wendi Reed / Wild Flower Kitchen

Chris Clark

Iwan Baan, AndrĂŠ Costantini, Alex Coyle, James Florio, Peter Halstead, Paul Johnson, Kevin Kinzley, Erik Petersen, Emily Rund, Yevgeny Sudbin, Craig M. White

Website Design

Crush & Lovely

Public Relations

Polskin Arts & Communications/A Division of Finn Partners, and Skinner/Benoit Public Relations

Lead Design and Planning Architecture

Alban Bassuet

(Olivier Barn, Residences, Tiara, Will’s Shed) Laura Viklund and Chris Gunn, Gunnstock Timber Frames

Architecture (Energy Building, Daydreams Schoolhouse, Solar Canopy) Acoustician

CTA Architects Engineers

Alban Bassuet

Landscape Architect Interior Design

Lisa Delplace and Liz Stetson from Oehme, van Sweden

Cynthia Waters

LEED Consulting

High Plains Architects

Design and Engineering

Arup

Local Civil Engineering

DOWL

Local Engineering

MKK Engineering

Construction Management

Engel Construction, Inc., and On Site Management, Inc.

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© 2019 Tippet Rise, LLC Two Discs and Stainless Stealer photos, by permission, © 2019 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic or mechanical (including photo copy, film or video recording, internet posting, or any other information storage and retrieval system), without the prior, written consent of the publisher.

Visit tippetrise.org for more information about the artists, tours, events, videos of performances, and interviews.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019901792 ISBN 978-1-7323390-4-0 Printed in Denver, Colorado Printed on 100% Post-Consumer Recycled Fiber, FSC, SFI, Cover printed on 10% Post-Consumer Recycled Fiber, FSC.

96 South Grove Creek Road, Fishtail, MT 59028 406-328-7820 • tippetrise.org

TI PPE TR IS E .O RG