2020 SU M M ER M US I C PROG R AM
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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
2020 SUMMER MUSIC PROGR AM July 10—August 29 Fishtail, Montana
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About Tippet Rise
2020 Summer Season
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Tippet Rise Art Center S
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
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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 brinkerhoffpoetry.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.
2020 Summer Season
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T
Welcome
o our friends, neighbors, and visitors, As you know, it saddens us immensely that due to the coronavirus we’ve had to cancel our 2020 summer season. Our musician friends, who are all in quarantine, have been amazingly still sending us very innovative musical videos, which we’re posting on our site under NEWS. Everyone, not just classical musicians, has been very creative on the web during this time as you know, and, in a time of great desolation, it’s been a strangely inspiring time for all of us to watch the world finding ingenious ways of celebrating life and art. So welcome to our virtual summer. We hope that our growing digital offerings will provide some sense that artists are taking this time to dig deeply into their hearts to find ways to share their gifts with us. To mention just a few : Tippet Rise Filmmaker Emily Rund’s gorgeous video Nocturne, which weaves Schubert’s gorgeous and iconic Notturno into the art center’s rolling landscape. The film Yevgeny Sudbin made of his friends and him playing Tchaikovsky at the Beartooth Portal, filmed by Yev with a drone. Yevgeny Sudbin made a surreal film of his family vacationing in a cabin in the artic wastes of Lapland, while overhead the Northern Lights flicker, and around them surges Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, played by Yevgeny with the Bergen Philharmonic in just the key which to Scriabin evoked the colors of the Aurora itself. Eight short videos with artist Mark di Suvero reading poems that have inspired and informed his monumental sculptures. His selections range from works by the 13th century poet and mystic Hadewijch to Rainer Maria Rilke.
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About Tippet Rise
Google Arts & Culture high-resolution videos from Tippet Rise. To tour our latest addition to the campus, you can explore Xylem, the new gathering pavilion designed by Francis Kéré, as well as sitespecific installations by Ensamble Studio, Alexander Calder, Stephen Talasnik, and Patrick Dougherty. The Tippet Rise podcast, which releases a new episode on the first Thursday of every month. The podcast shares nights from the art center, as well as music, poetry, glimpses of nature, and conversations with artists and musicians who are a part of the Tippet Rise family, such as pianist Julian Brocal and architect Francis Kéré. Our YouTube Channel, featuring performances recorded in the Olivier Music Barn and outdoors at the Domo, the acoustically resonant Stone Age structure created by Ensamble Studio. And, of course, Tippet Rise will continue to share online offerings from some of our longtime international partners, such as England’s National Theatre and Glyndebourne Festival and Belgium’s Jardin Musical, as well as the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, here in the United States. Thanks to OperaVision, Glyndebourne’s 2015 production of the wonderful Mozart opera, Abduction from the Seraglio will be available online until May 20th. After that, we’re excited to feature our video collaboration with the drone master, blastr, featuring The Compass Gyre swirling around Mark di Suvero’s sculpture Proverb. Right now, you can check out Julien Brocal’s gorgeous Schubert sonata, played in his vaulted studio in Brussels. In the weeks to come, we also look forward to making available more music from our 2019 season. It’s going to be a virtual summer. But it’s going to be innovative! We are sad that we will not be in the Olivier Music Barn or at the Domo this summer, we look forward to bringing classical music played by the world’s great musicians into our homes and yours, digitally. Our thoughts go out to all of our neighbors and friends, as well as the many people around the globe affected by this crisis. We thank you all for sharing the new offerings from so many artists on our web site during these unprecedented times and we very much hope to see you next summer under happier and healthier circumstances. With warmest wishes, Cathy and Peter Halstead 2020 Summer Season
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2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Week One July 10-11 18
Week Six August 21-22 96
The Philosophy of Tippet Rise 170
Week Two July 17-18 36
Week Seven August 28-29 109
The Ecosystem of Tippet Rise 176
Week Three July 24-25 52
Artist Profiles 132
Sustainability at Tippet Rise 178
Week Four August 7-8 66
The Story of Tippet Rise 166
Tippet Rise Is a Working Ranch 180
Week Five August 14-15 80
Looking for Paradise 168
The Canyons of Tippet Rise 184
CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ADVANCE TO THE CORRESPONDING PAGE NUMBER 10
The Music at Tippet Rise
TIPPET RISE ART CENTER The Sculptors of Tippet Rise 190
The Xylem Pavilion 212
Tippet Rise and the Community 258
The Sculptures of Tippet Rise 192
Artistic Integrity 228
Tippet Rise’s Partnerships 260
The Art of Tippet Rise 196
The Russian Pianist 236
The Team at Tippet Rise 264
The Tiara Story 202
The Pianos of Tippet Rise 242
The Romance of the Piano 270
The Olivier Story 204
Education at Tippet Rise 256
Staff and Credits 274
CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ADVANCE TO THE CORRESPONDING PAGE NUMBER 2020 Summer Season
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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, and beneath the Domo and the big Montana sky. Our fifth 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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The Music at Tippet Rise
2020 Summer Music Season
2020 Summer Season
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P
edja is a minutely detailed pianist who plays everything from C.P.E. Bach to Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Jonathan Berger. He is also the artistic advisor to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, and directs a residency at the Banff Centre in Canada called Concert in the 21st Century, while maintaining a concert career that encompasses Zagreb, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Lucerne, Melbourne, and Lincoln Center. His programs explore the synergies between painting, music, and poetry. For instance, this season Pedja will define the similarities and differences between Haydn and John Cage. Pedja is one of our esteemed musicians whose playing will be available this year in several formats: in 24/96 on Amazon, on Spotify, and in DXD stereo on our HighResolution Downloads site. (DXD is the most detailed way of presenting recorded music. We record in nine channels of DXD and are currently making it available in stereo.) This year, along with our two-month season, Pedja is emphasizing pop-up concerts (to be announced a week before), outdoor concerts, and community performances. He is encouraging more musicians to talk about the works they play. We know that our audiences will enjoy the wit, clarity, and energy with which Pedja infuses his concerts.
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The Music at Tippet Rise
PEDJA MUZIJEVIC
O U R A RTI S TI C A DV I S O R
2020 Summer Season
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2020 CONCERT
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Friday, July 10, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Saturday, July 11, 11:00 AM Olivier Music Barn Claire Chase, flute
Saturday, July 11, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Yulianna Avdeeva, piano
Friday, July 17, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Boris Giltburg, piano
Saturday, July 18, 11:00 AM The Domo Rolston String Quartet
Saturday, July 18, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Rolston String Quartet Roman Rabinovich, piano
Friday, July 24, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tessa Lark, violin Dimitri Murrath, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello Zoltán Fejérvári, piano
Saturday, July 25, 11:00 AM The Domo Tessa Lark, violin Dimitri Murrath, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello
Saturday, July 25, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Zoltán Fejérvári, piano
Friday, August 7, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Yevgeny Sudbin, piano
Saturday, August 8, 11:00 AM The Domo Inbal Segev, cello
Saturday, August 8, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Chad Hoopes, violin Edward Arron, cello Anne-Marie McDermott, piano
The Music at Tippet Rise
SCHEDULE Friday, August 14, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Richard Goode, piano
Saturday, August 15, 11:00 AM The Domo Tesla String Quartet
Saturday, August 15, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Valentina Lisitsa, piano
Friday, August 21, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Benjamin Beilman, violin Masumi Per Rostad, viola Gabriel Cabezas, cello Dasol Kim, piano
Saturday, August 22, 11:00 AM The Domo Benjamin Beilman, violin Masumi Per Rostad, viola Gabriel Cabezas, cello
Saturday, August 22, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Dasol Kim, piano
Friday, August 28, 2:00 PM Olivier Music Barn Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Friday, August 28, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tyler Duncan, baritone Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Saturday, August 29, 11:00 AM The Domo Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello
Saturday, August 29, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tyler Duncan, baritone Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano
*Artists and/or programs subject to change without notice.
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WEEK ONE
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The Music at Tippet Rise
FRIDAY, JULY 10, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Marc-André Hamelin, piano
ALEKSANDR SCRIABIN: Fantasy in B Minor, Op. 28 SERGE PROKOFIEV: Sarcasms, Op. 17 Tempestoso Allegro rubato Allegro precipitato Smanioso Precipitosissimo FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Polonaise-Pantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61 CHOPIN: Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54 INTERMISSION FRANZ SCHUBERT: Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 Molto moderato Andante sostenuto Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza – Trio – Scherzo Allegro ma non troppo – Presto
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
ALEKSANDR SCRIABIN (1872–1915) Fantasy in B Minor, Op. 28
Scriabin was synesthetic, and he closely associated certain colors with specific keys. Even more unconventionally, he understood music and all other forms of artistic creation as a sexual act. The Moscow native felt destined to create a great work—a massive multimedia score combining music, theater, painting, poetry, dance, and even perfume, to be performed in the foothills of the Himalayas—but it never came to pass. He died of sepsis in 1915, at age 43, after a pimple on his upper lip became infected. The pile of sketches and notes that he left for Mysterium, his proposed magnum opus, looked like gibberish to his survivors, but his fellow countryman Alexander Nemtin spent 28 years shaping the draft of the prelude into a three-hour, threepart work: “Preparation for the Final Mystery.” Scriabin wrote his Fantasy in B Minor in 1900, while he was still a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. (He would be forced to leave a few years later, after the married father of four seduced a 15-year-old pupil and initiated a long-term adulterous affair with the 20-year-old pianist and occultist Tatiana de Schloezer.) Cast as a single movement, in sonata-allegro form, the Fantasy was composed between his Third and Fourth Sonatas. If Scriabin ever performed this technically daunting, densely textured work in public, there is no evidence of it. According to one possibly apocryphal account, Scriabin heard the musicologist and critic Leonid Sabaneyev playing a passage from the Fantasy on the piano in the composer’s apartment. “Who wrote that?” Scriabin called out from another room, adding, “It sounds familiar.” Sabaneyev replied that it was Scriabin’s Fantasy, whereupon Scriabin asked, “What Fantasy?” The piece begins in B minor, but the harmonies are ambiguous. Like Chopin and Wagner, Scriabin often skirts the home key, creating suspense and uncertainty. After a dramatic and volatile opening, an alluring D-major theme 20
The Music at Tippet Rise
rises from the tumult, and the Fantasy takes on first a lyrical aspect, then a loftier one. The exultant coda, in B major, strongly resembles Liszt’s arrangement of Wagner’s “Liebestod,” from Tristan und Isolde.
SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Sarcasms, Op. 17
A gifted and precocious only child, Prokofiev was reared by affluent and doting parents. His father managed a country estate, and his mother was a proficient pianist. He enrolled in the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 13 and studied composition. By late adolescence, he was a certified virtuoso, both revered and reviled for his uncompromising avantgarde style. He was one of the first Russian pianists to tackle Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces and Bartók’s Burlesques. His own Etudes, “Suggestion diabolique,” and the first two piano concertos established him as Russia’s foremost enfant terrible. The Second Piano Concerto caused an uproar at its 1913 premiere, with one disgruntled onlooker jeering, “To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!” Composed between 1912 and 1914, Sarcasms ranks among Prokofiev’s most experimental early efforts. The bitingly bitonal set consists of five miniatures—all brief, but never slight. The composer debuted Sarcasms at the St. Petersburg Conservatory on November 27, 1916, and the pianist Heinrich Neuhaus later described its reception: “The impression [Prokofiev] made was absolutely extraordinary. Some of the audience, among whom more than a few socially respectable people were to be found, were delighted; others were, however, scandalized.” The first Sarcasm, marked Tempestuoso (stormy), is prankish and percussive, with a caustic humor that sometimes subsides in a fleeting tenderness. The second, Allegro
rubato, moves from pensive to whimsical as the tempo veers from one extreme to another. The third piece, Allegro precipitato (cheerful and hurried), pits agitated outer sections against a serene and lyrical center. The fourth, Smanioso (anxious), has a desultory, almost rhapsodic quality at the outset but gradually acquires a nervy vigor. In his 1941 autobiography, Prokofiev described the final Sarcasm, marked Precipitosissimo (extremely rushed): “Sometimes we laugh maliciously at someone or something, but when we look more closely, we see how pathetic and miserable is the object of our laughter. Then we become uneasy and the laughter rings in our ears, now laughing at us.”
with two phrases in A-flat minor, succeeded by an even softer pair in E-flat minor. A graceful polonaise theme, in triple time, imparts a gentle warmth. Because of its unusual form and harmonic complexity, the work wasn’t immediately embraced by performers and critics. In fact, Franz Liszt published a monograph in 1852 in which he somewhat ambivalently described the Polonaise-Fantaisie as “punctuated by startled movements, melancholic smiles, unexpected jolts, pauses full of tremors, like those felt by someone caught in an ambush, surrounded on all sides.” Chopin’s biographer Frederick Niecks was even less sympathetic, writing that it “stands, on account of its pathological contents, outside the sphere of art.” But once soloists such as Arthur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, and Vladimir Horowitz began including it in their programs, the rest of the world eventually caught on.
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61
Frenchified name notwithstanding, Chopin was born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, in Żelazowa Wola, Poland. His father was French, his mother Polish. A keyboard prodigy, Chopin made his concert debut at eight. At age 20 he performed a pair of farewell concerts in Warsaw, then left for Vienna. In 1831 he moved to Paris, where he died 18 years later, after a long struggle with tuberculosis. According to some accounts, he was buried with a silver urn filled with Polish dirt, which had accompanied him everywhere since his departure from Warsaw. He composed the Polonaise-Fantaisie in 1846, the same year it was published and just three years before his death. He produced several drafts and didn’t decide on the title until he was satisfied that his revisions were complete. “I’d like to finish something that I don’t yet know what to call,” he explained. Chopin marked the opening maestoso (majestic), one of his favorite tempo indications. It begins
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 4, in E Major, Op. 54
Everything Chopin ever wrote features the piano, either as a solo instrument or in combination with other instruments. Although his style often seems effortlessly lyrical, almost improvisational, he sweated over every measure. Whether he was composing nocturnes, mazurkas, sonatas, impromptus, or ballades (a genre he invented), Chopin sounded like no one else. In an age of florid virtuosos, dripping with Lisztian excess, he mastered a fleeting interiority. Sometimes his music seems to blur the boundaries between thought and action, as if it’s willing itself into existence before our very ears. Chopin began the Scherzo No. 4—the only one based on a major key, E major—in 1842, and finished it the following year. Calmer and decidedly more cheerful than his first 2020 Summer Season
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three scherzos, it was a favorite of Saint-Saëns’s. Structurally, the Fourth Scherzo is a loose rondo, with a sparkling, syncopated introduction and coda surrounding a dreamy central section in C-sharp minor.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 960
Wildly prolific, extravagantly gifted, and tragically shortlived, Schubert remains something of a cipher. Despite his astonishing legacy—approximately 1,000 works in just about 17 years, many of them staples of the repertoire—the man himself is an enigma. The biographies are stuffed with speculation about his sexuality, his temperament, and his politics, but they generate more questions than answers. Even the music, singular and immediate though it may be, is suffused with mystery. By the time of Schubert’s death, in 1828, a few of his pieces had been published, and he was beginning to attract notice as a promising composer, but most of his finest achievements were known only to friends and connoisseurs. He was buried in Vienna’s Währing cemetery, near the grave of his idol Beethoven, who had died less than two years earlier. Beethoven seems to have been on his mind in 1828, when Schubert composed three piano sonatas. He played all three at the home of Dr. Ignaz Menz on September 27, just six weeks before he fell into a delirium and died. The last of these, in B-flat major, was published posthumously, in 1839, with a dedication to Robert Schumann, who had tirelessly championed his predecessor’s work. Schubert’s last year was difficult but productive. Ravaged by late-stage syphilis and perilously poor, he worked at a feverish pace. No one knows if he was aware of his impending death when he wrote his final sonata, but it seems likely: he had been ill for almost six years, and his 22
The Music at Tippet Rise
condition was worsening. The music certainly seems to support this theory. An ominous trill punctures the spectral serenity of the first movement, marked Molto moderato. In the second (Andante sostenuto), a radiant passage in C-sharp major restores the earlier bliss after much minor-key melancholy. Returning to the tonic, the penultimate scherzo is lively but delicate—more of a wistful smile than a joke. The concluding Allegro ma non troppo, also set in the home key, is equal parts sunshine and shadow. The Austrian-American pianist Artur Schnabel put words to its opening theme: “Ich weiss nicht, ob ich lache, ich weiss nicht, ob ich weine” (I know not if I’m laughing, I know not if I’m crying).
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WEEK ONE
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The Music at Tippet Rise
SATURDAY, JULY 11, 11:00 AM Olivier Music Barn Claire Chase, flute
Music From Density 2036 FELIPE LARA: Meditation and Calligraphy SUZANNE FARRIN: The Stimulus of Loss PHYLLIS CHEN: Roots of Interior BORA YOON: The Haunted Orchard The 2020 Tippet Rise Commission and World Premiere, a Co-Commission for Flute with the Pnea Foundation.
MARCOS BALTER: “Echo” and “Soliloquy” from Pan
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER Claire Chase is not only a virtuosic flutist but also an influential advocate for experimental music and cultural activism. In addition to co-founding the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001, she has greatly expanded the flute repertoire. In 2013 she released the album Density, which soon evolved into Density 2036: a vehicle for commissioning and promoting new flute compositions. For the past seven years, Chase has added a new commission annually, and she intends to keep the project going until 2036, the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s Density 21.5 for solo flute. Chase is planning to perform a 24-hour marathon in 2036. Until then, she presents selections from this ever-evolving body of work in concerts all over the world. This is her Tippet Rise debut.
in part by the experimental novelist, poet, and calligrapher Mend-Ooyo, who lives in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and directs the Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry. Like Lara, Mend-Ooyo is committed to sustaining the natural world. Meditation and Calligraphy juxtaposes deep, almost bluesy melodies with percussive huffing sounds, plangent cries, and whispered intimations. At times, the eerie overtones evoke Mongolian throat-singing, an ancient practice whereby a single performer produces multiple pitches simultaneously. Traditionally, throat-singers travel deep into the countryside to find the ideal acoustic conditions—perhaps a mountain valley, or the mouth of a cave, or a riverbank. Rooted in pastoral animism, throat-singing allows people to communicate over great distances while honoring the sounds and spirits of the natural world.
FELIPE LARA (b. 1979) Meditation and Calligraphy
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Lara received his bachelor’s degree from Berklee College of Music, his master’s from Tufts, and his doctorate (in music composition) from New York University. His eclectic and colorful compositions have been commissioned and performed by many soloists, singers, ensembles, and orchestras; he has even collaborated with filmmakers, Brazilian-pop musicians, and electronic dance music producers. One of his passions is environmental conservation and biodiversity: for the past 11 years, he has been involved in interdisciplinary collaborations with local artists, nonprofit organizations, and public school students in and around the Serra da Mantiqueira Environmental Protection Area. In 2012 and 2014, members of ICE toured Brazil and featured Lara’s chamber music; Chase also gave the premiere of two of his works for flute, both commissioned for her Density 2036 project. Composed in 2014, Meditation and Calligraphy is scored for solo amplified bass flute. Lara wrote it after a meditation session, while he was in residence at Civitella Ranieri, in the Umbria region of central Italy. The piece was inspired 26
The Music at Tippet Rise
SUZANNE FARRIN (b. 1976) The Stimulus of Loss
Farrin’s cerebral and visceral music blurs the lines between electronic and acoustic sonorities, between ambient tones and intentional sounds. In addition to composing and teaching, she is a leading ondist: a performer on the ondes Martenot. This early electronic instrument—a cousin to the 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. Sometimes the instrument sounds remarkably like a human voice; sometimes it sounds spectral, otherworldly. The overall effect is both familiar and uncanny, intimate and alien. Composed in 2016, The Stimulus of Loss is scored for ondes Martenot and glissando headjoint, a flute modification that functions in much the same way as a slide on a trombone or a whammy bar on a guitar. The glissando headjoint gives the flute the same tonal flexibility as the ondes martinot or
the human voice. It allows the flutist to play microtones— the almost infinite number of pitches between the notes recognized in standard Western notation. The Stimulus of Loss, which Farrin wrote for Chase’s Density 2036 project, was inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem, included in a letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, the poet’s sister-in-law. The opening lines describe love as a transcendent force vanquishing not only distance but time: To miss you, Sue, is power The stimulus of Loss makes most Possession mean. To live lasts always, but to love is firmer than to live. No heart that broke but further went than Immortality. The flute and ondes Martenot converge and come apart, finishing each other’s sentences like two old friends— distinct but compatible. Farrin said that she wanted to explore “the magical sensibility that exists when two people love and respect each other: the disappearance of other and self, the creation that follows emptiness.” The composer recorded her part so that Chase could perform it alone, without the physical presence of an ondist. This adaptation only reinforces the paradox and poignancy of a connection that endures despite distance and time.
PHYLLIS CHEN (b. 1978) Roots of Interior
“Figuring out how something works or exploring how an inanimate object makes a beautiful sound requires the practice of tuning in and slowing down,” Chen explains. “My hope is that I find something that has a voice, an untold story, a sound that is overlooked or unheard in the everyday world.” The composer, keyboardist, and ICE co-founder began taking piano lessons at age five and discovered the toy
piano as an adult. Among her recent large-scale solo works is Lighting the Dark, which employs customized music boxes, toy pianos, an accordion, a clavichord, and vintage synthesizers to explore the dynamics of power and gender. Chen also worked with ICE, Christ Church of Philadelphia, and the experimental composer and percussionist Nathan Davis on In Plain Air, a site-specific composition celebrating the church’s new Fisk Opus 150 organ. The recording On The Nature of Thingness, on which ICE performed the chamber works of Chen and Davis, received the 2016 Independent Music Award for Best Contemporary Classical Music Album. Composed in 2019, Roots of Interior is scored for flute and amplified heartbeat. Chen was inspired by her pregnancy —more specifically, the sensation of hearing two hearts, her own and her daughter’s, beating inside a single body. In a Q&A published on the Concert Artists Guild website, Chase describes Chen’s unique artistry: One of my favorite collaborators is the extraordinary, magical, brilliant, luminous, hydra-headed pianist/toy pianist/ composer/multimedia artist Phyllis Chen. We’ve been working together for over 20 years now—she was a founding member of ICE back in 1999 when we were still students at Oberlin Conservatory—and every time we’ve worked together over that time span, it’s been completely different from the last. We are always finding new portals, new entry points, new guiding questions. Most recently, she wrote a piece for my Density 2036 project called Roots of Interior for flute and heartbeat....Samples of my own heart comprise the playback track, and toward the end of the piece a stethoscope is affixed to my chest for a live feed of my heartbeat. 2020 Summer Season
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BORA YOON (b. 1980) The Haunted Orchard
Born in Chicago, the Korean-American composer and performer Bora Yoon draws on a wealth of organic and digital sonorities to create a unique harmonic language. Her multimedia experiments marshal traditional instruments and cutting-edge technology to generate new immersive environments, with the goal of telling stories through sound. Her unconventional instrumental palette includes Tibetan singing bowls, water, cell-phone ringtones, glockenspiels, tin cans, wind tubes, bicycle bells, kitchen gadgets, metronomes, short-wave radios, walkie-talkies, and assorted field recordings. A classically trained soprano, she often uses her own voice in her compositions and performances. Scored for flute and electronics, The Haunted Orchard is a co-commission of Tippet Rise and the Pnea Foundation. Tippet Rise is honored to present its world premiere. Yoon writes: As a site-specific composer, my inspiration for the work is certainly inspired by the landscape of Tippet Rise—its barren, mystic beauty, and what the wind may be whispering. Oftentimes, we see the obvious, which is the mountains, but I want to invert that sense of focus, as the mountains and earth were shaped by the invisibles (air, erosion, water) and the mutable elements around it that are ephemeral, much like music is. Writing for Claire Chase is an incredible honor. She is a force of nature heself—and almost becomes an extension of her instrument, with a unique and remarkable kinetic signature when she performs. I’ve long admired her work—and finally connected with her this past summer at the Banff Center for Art and Creativity in Canada 28
The Music at Tippet Rise
during the last module of ICE’s Evolution. She evokes sound worlds when she performs, and I’m excited to bring both her sound and the landscape to life, in an amalgam of a type of site-specific soundscape with flute and electronics, set in the majestic beauty of Tippet Rise. A reference from my mood board for this creation is the Singing Ringing Tree (made by Panopticon, in the UK and also another, outside of Austin), a sound sculpture that “gives voice” to the whipping winds of the plains. Essentially, this sound sculpture can be seen as a pile of flutes, at industrial-scale, that amplifies and sonifies the flutelike qualities of the wind and landscape, through the harmonics activated by the wind. I was inspired by the environment of Tippet Rise as the premiere—its setting, aesthetic, vibe, expanse—and sought to expand this idea of the sonification of wind, at this scale of industrial pipes acting as flutes, to the nuanced lutherie of the various flutes that Claire plays, to create a type of spectrum of scale and sound. The electronics that I will be using include manipulated flute sounds, stretched and granulated, and manipulated to create the full frequency spectrum desired, as I often EQ to the body, and for physiological sensation. Bass should resonate in the solar plexus, high frequencies sparkling at the third eye. I think sound is a resonant medium that is a powerful tool to elevate and transport people to new worlds, and evoke a kind of theater of the mind.
MARCOS
BALTER (b. 1974) “Echo” and “Soliloquy” from Pan
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Balter began his training at the Conservatório Musical Heitor Villa-Lobos when he was five years old. At 11 he was admitted to the Conservatório Brasileiro de Música. In his late teens, he took private lessons with José Antônio Rezende de Almeida Prado, a composer who had studied with Messiaen and Ligeti. In 1996 Balter moved to the United States, where he earned degrees in music composition, first at Texas Christian University and later at Northwestern University. He currently teaches music theory and composition at Montclair State University, in New Jersey. His eclectic catalogue features orchestral and chamber music, as well as electroacoustic and solo offerings. He recently collaborated with indie-rock experimentalists Deerhoof. Four years ago, ICE released the album Æsopica, which documents the ensemble’s long-standing collaboration with Balter. The hour-long recording contains five world-premiere performances of his works, all commissioned and championed by ICE.
frenzied followers or doomed to repeat the words of others, unable to speak for herself. Balter began Pan in 2017 and completed the eight-movement, 90-minute conceptual work last year. It was conceived in partnership with the Chicago-based social justice organization Project&. In the full incarnation, which Balter calls an “opera for solo flute and mass participation,” Chase not only plays but also sings, speaks, dances, and acts. The original score includes live electronics and dozens of minimally trained volunteers, who hum and whistle or produce sounds using tuned wineglasses, bottles, ocarinas, chimes, triangles, and other small instruments. For this solo performance, Chase performs the fifth and eighth movements, respectively titled “Echo” and “Soliloquy.”
Citing Debussy, Chopin, Ravel, and Boulez among his influences, Balter emphasizes the importance of a physical response to music: “There is a huge dose of puritanism in today’s music that sees the sexy or beautiful as negative or superficial, which always puzzles me; it feels so repressed. If someone can say something utterly illuminating in a way that is both daring and sensuous, that makes me tingle from head to toe. That’s what Debussy’s music does to me.” Like Debussy, who depicted Pan in Syrinx and Afternoon of a Faun, Balter pays tribute to the goatish Greek god of shepherds, music, and various rustic rites. Pan is invariably linked to his pan flute, which he devised from hollow reeds, one of which was once his beloved wood-nymph Syrinx. In another Greek myth, Pan pursues the nymph Echo, who rejects him in some versions of the story and bears him two children in other accounts. Regardless, she always comes to a sorry end: either mutilated by Pan’s 2020 Summer Season
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SATURDAY, JULY 11, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Yulianna Avdeeva, piano
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. posth. CHOPIN: Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1 CHOPIN: Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47 CHOPIN: Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 45 CHOPIN: Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39 CHOPIN: Mazurkas, Op. 59 Mazurka in A Minor Mazurka in A-flat Major Mazurka in F-sharp Minor CHOPIN: Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, Op. 44 INTERMISSION LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Fantasia for Piano in G Minor, Op. 77 BEETHOVEN: Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, Op. 35, “Eroica Variations”
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
FRÉDERIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. posth.
For a talent so unique and innovative, Chopin had surprisingly conservative tastes. He didn’t think much of Beethoven, and he ranked Berlioz, Liszt, and Schumann even lower. In fact, the only composers he truly loved were J.S. Bach and Mozart, whose Requiem Chopin requested for his own funeral. He wrote two piano concertos, both staples of the repertoire, but he had little interest in orchestration, preferring more intimate forms of expression. Although in high demand as a soloist, he performed rarely, perhaps once or twice a year, and usually chose salons over concert halls. All told, he gave no more than 30 public performances. Chopin didn’t invent the nocturne, but he radically reimagined the genre. He imbued his meditative “night pieces” with poetic melancholy and harmonic ambiguity, while adding graceful embellishments reminiscent of Italian bel canto opera. He wrote the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor in 1830, the year he left his native Poland for Vienna, then Paris. His dedication reads, “To my sister Ludwika as an exercise before beginning the study of my second Concerto.” The piece was first published 26 years after his death and is sometimes referred to by its tempo marking, Lento con gran espressione (Slow, with great feeling), or the more fanciful “Reminiscence.” Prominently featured in Roman Polanski’s 2002 biopic The Pianist, the C-sharp minor Nocturne has another connection to the Holocaust. When the Polish concert pianist Natalia Karp played it for the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp where she was imprisoned, he was so touched that he spared not only her life but that of her sister.
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CHOPIN Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1
The Nocturne in F Major was the first of three published in December 1833 as Op. 15. Chopin dedicated the set to the German composer, conductor, and pianist Ferdinand Hiller. Structured in simple ternary form (A-B-A), the Nocturne in F opens in the home key, with a delicate, long-breathed melody marked cantabile, semplice e tranquillo (songlike, simple and tranquil). The tumultuous central section, con fuoco (with fire), makes a wrenching shift to the parallel minor. Unusually for Chopin, the opening section returns mostly unchanged, although the melody is now softer, more tender—crooned rather than sung.
CHOPIN Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47
Inspired by the poetry of his fellow countryman Adam Miskiewicz, Chopin was the first composer to use the word “ballade” to describe works in a free or rhapsodic form. He wrote four ballades for piano, inspiring later contributions to the genre by Liszt, Brahms, Franck, and Fauré. In medieval song and literature, the ballad was associated with heroic acts and noble sentiments, and Chopin’s ballades are consistent with that tradition. All four are relatively long, lasting between 7 and 12 minutes, and metrically similar, in triple time (6/4 or 6/8). The Third Ballade was written in the summer of 1841, eight years before he lost his long battle with tuberculosis. Since the late 1830s, he had been romantically involved with the cross-dressing Baroness Aurore Dudevant, better known as novelist George Sand. The couple and her two children spent the winter of 1838–39 on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, Spain, in a damp and chilly Carthusian monastery, where his health deteriorated but his productivity barely faltered.
Dedicated to the Princess Pauline de Noiailles, the Third Ballade begins with an extended preamble, marked dolce (sweet). The tone is bright and playful, with nimble, syncopated rhythms and unexpected modulations. A moody minor-key interlude provides dramatic contrast, but the Ballade closes in a mood of elegant exuberance.
CHOPIN Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 45
During his disastrous sojourn on Majorca, Chopin pored over a copy of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, which inspired his Op. 28: a set of 24 Preludes, one in each key, arranged according to the circle of fifths, with each major key followed by its relative minor. He may have intended the cycle to be performed sequentially, as soloists sometimes do today, but he never played more than four during any given concert. Liszt greatly admired these musical aphorisms, calling them “poetic preludes, analogous to those of a great contemporary poet, who cradles the soul in golden dreams.” Chopin wrote the Prelude in C-sharp Minor in 1841 (the same year as the Third Ballade), and published it under its own opus number, 45. Sometimes designated Prelude No. 25, the piece is brief but intensely expressive, with rippling arpeggios and luminous textures.
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39
Composed in 1839, in the drafty Majorcan monastery, Scherzo No. 3 begins with a dissonant—and ferociously tricky—introduction, which leads to a motif derived from running octave patterns. The rhythms are turbulent and unpredictable, the music chromatic and harmonically ambiguous. After a transitional passage, the key shifts to D-flat major, and a new theme emerges in the section marked Meno mosso (less quickly): a lyrical melody punctuated by emphatic chords and downward-fluttering arpeggios. The opening scherzo motif makes increasingly bold forays into new tonal terrain, before the scherzo concludes, rather unexpectedly, in C-sharp major. Chopin dedicated the Scherzo to one of his pupils, Adolf Gutmann, whose forceful style of playing suited its surging intensity. As one of Gutmann’s less-favored colleagues, Wilhelm von Lenz, somewhat resentfully observed, “no left hand can take the chord in the bass..., least of all Chopin’s hand, which arpeggio’d over the easy-running, narrow-keyed Pleyel [piano]. Only Gutmann could ‘knock a hole in a table’ with that chord!”
CHOPIN Mazurkas, Op. 59
The mazurka is a Polish dance in 3/4 time that originated in the Mazovia region near Warsaw, where Chopin spent his childhood. Although it shares certain metrical features with the waltz, the mazurka stresses different beats—sometimes the second but usually the last—which gives it a springing, syncopated feel. Chopin wasn’t the first composer to experiment with mazurka rhythms, but he elevated the rustic form, infusing it with modal harmonies and nuanced emotion. All told, he completed 58 mazurkas, the greatest number of works that he composed in any genre. 2020 Summer Season
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Written and published in 1845, Op. 59 consists of three mazurkas. The first, in A minor, begins tentatively and gradually grows bolder. The main theme undergoes a series of transformations, eventually generating a secondary idea in A major before the piece concludes with a mysterious, mercurial coda. The second mazurka, in A-flat major, is refined but intense, pitched somewhere between wistful and amorous. Chopin dedicated it to Cécile Mendelssohn, as a favor to her husband, Felix. Enclosed with the autographed manuscript was a note to his “dear friend”: “If the little sheet of music is not too dog-eared and does not arrive too late, please present it from me to Mrs. Mendelssohn.” The third mazurka, in F-sharp minor, resembles an oberek, a very fast Polish dance that calls for lots of spinning, lifting, and leaping. Here the right hand skips and frolics while the left hand flirts with dissonance.
CHOPIN Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, Op. 44
Sometimes referred to as the “Tragic” Polonaise, the Polonaise in F-sharp Minor is dedicated to Princess Ludmille de Beauveau, who, like Chopin, was a Polish expat living in Paris. Chopin completed the 11-minute work in the summer of 1841, while staying with George Sand at Nohant, her ancestral country estate. “The weather here has been exceedingly lovely for several days,” he wrote to a friend, “but as for my music, it is ugly.” Sand, for her part, fretted about her lover’s surliness and workaholic habits: “Chopin’s up to his usual tricks, fuming at his piano. When his mount fails to respond to his intentions, he deals it great blows with his fist, such that the poor piano simply groans.” Although Chopin described the piece to his Viennese publisher as “a kind of fantasia in the form of a polonaise,” he decided to call it a polonaise, rather than a hybrid form, as he would later designate the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat Major. The introduction is unsettling: a dignified main 34
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theme and counter-theme, then the hostile intrusion of a new motif, relentlessly hammered out more than 30 times. A nostalgic mazurka, in glowing A major, offers an unexpected respite from the turmoil, but before long the earlier material returns to shatter the serenity. Finally, in what Liszt called a “convulsive shudder,” the Polonaise rallies one last time with a vicious fortissimo outburst.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Fantasia for Piano in G Minor, Op. 77 Mozart died in late 1791, not quite a year before Beethoven arrived in Vienna to claim the title of greatest keyboard virtuoso alive. The wigless 21-year-old upstart from Bonn was pockmarked and uncouth, afflicted with what the fashionable doyennes considered a harsh provincial accent. Like an Enlightenment-era Jerry Lee Lewis, he casually annihilated anyone who dared challenge him in the “piano duels” of the day. He was especially envied for his improvisations—spectacular cadenzas, fugues, and fantasias that he seldom took the time to transcribe. Why bother when virtually no one else could play them? Completed in October 1809, the Fantasia in G Minor might have originated from something Beethoven improvised at a marathon concert the previous December, a program that also featured the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the “Choral” Fantasy. Although he was incensed by Napoleon’s invasion and occupation of Vienna, which kept him from traveling to the countryside for the peace and quiet he craved, he was remarkably productive. The Fantasia was commissioned by Muzio Clementi, whose London-based firm published the score in 1810. Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny described it as “variations in a mixed form, one idea following another as in a potpourri.”
BEETHOVEN Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, Op. 35, “Eroica”
In late 1800 Beethoven accepted a commission to compose the music for a ballet called Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus). The hour-long score was a commission from Salvatore Viganò, the ballet master of the Vienna court, who re-invented Prometheus for his own creative ends. Instead of the mythic demigod who endowed humanity with the fire he stole from Zeus, Viganò’s Enlightenment-era Prometheus was, in his words, “a sublime spirit, who came upon the men of his time in a state of ignorance, who refined them through science and art, and imparted to them morals.” An unqualified success, Prometheus was performed 23 times in 1801 and 1802. The project galvanized Beethoven, inspiring him to write an ambitious set of piano variations and, in 1803, his Third Symphony, “Eroica.”
ing year. At the time of its composition, Beethoven was acutely miserable, culminating in his so-called Heiligenstadt Testament, an unsent letter for his brothers in which he confessed to thoughts of suicide. “Only my art held me back,” he wrote. “It seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt was within me.” Despite excruciating physical pain, intense loneliness, and a maddening roar in his ears, he persisted. The real hero of the “Eroica” is himself. Unlike the standard theme-and-variations procedure, where the main theme appears first, Beethoven begins with the bass line. After spinning it out in three variations, with the right hand providing simple counterpoint, he finally releases the full theme, which generates still more variations. Then, in another break with tradition, he appends an elaborate fugue. Suddenly the fugue gives way to a transitional passage, and the main theme returns, trailing clouds of glory, for the dazzling finish.
The Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, also nicknamed “Eroica,” was completed in 1802 and published the follow-
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FRIDAY, JULY 17, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Boris Giltburg, piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 22 in F Major, Op. 54 In tempo d’un menuetto Allegretto – Più allegro BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata” Allegro assai Andante con moto Allegro ma non troppo – Presto INTERMISSION ROBERT SCHUMANN: Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17 Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen: Im Legenden-Ton Mäßig: Durchaus energisch Langsam getragen: Durchweg leise zu halten FRANZ LISZT: Rhapsodie espagnole, S. 254
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Sonata No. 22 in F Major, Op. 54
Beethoven wrote Piano Sonata No. 22 in 1804, while immersed in his opera Fidelio and beginning to sketch out his Fifth Symphony. The F Major Sonata isn’t performed nearly as often as the “Waldstein” Sonata, also completed in 1804, or the somewhat later “Appassionata” Sonata— both massive achievements with catchy nicknames—but that’s no reflection on its quality. Sonata No. 22 isn’t as radiant and virtuosic as the “Waldstein” or as brooding and tempestuous as the “Appassionata.” Instead, it’s a potent distillation of contrasting qualities: sometimes delicate and improvisatory, sometimes raucous and borderline goofy. As the musicologist Donald Tovey observed, “its material is childlike, or even dog-like, and those who best understand children and dogs have the best chance of enjoying an adequate reading of this music; following in strenuous earnest its indefatigable pursuit of its game whether that be its own tail or something more remote and elusive.” Among Beethoven’s most Haydenesque creations, Sonata No. 22 is cast in two concise movements. The first, In tempo d’un menuetto, pits a graceful minuet, in F major and in 3/4 time, against a savage trio in C major. The latter theme, in 2/4, consists of a flurry of triplets, played staccato and legato, in octaves or in sixths, punctuated occasionally by sforzando blurts. After a slightly altered repetition of the first idea, the trio section returns, now in the home key. Beethoven juggles the two motifs, which gradually get stranger and more dissonant. A short coda follows an elaborate array of ornaments. The second movement, a rondo marked Allegretto – Più allegro (Moderately fast – Most cheerful), sprints along with a zany energy, a quasitoccata powered by an incessant stream of 16th notes. The Allegretto modulates to far-flung keys before returning to F major in the breathless coda. 38
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BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata”
First things first: the “Appassionata” title, which means “impassioned” in Italian, wasn’t Beethoven’s idea. A Viennese publisher came up with it 11 years after the composer’s death, while preparing a four-hand arrangement, and the nickname stuck. The F-minor Sonata begins with an indelible motif spanning two octaves, an ominous rumble that warns us right away that this Allegro won’t be remotely cheerful. As it lunges from one emotional extreme to another, it wrenches us into sound worlds so distinct that they might as well occupy different solar systems. No evidence suggests that Beethoven ever performed the “Appassionata” in public, and his worsening deafness had all but ended his career as a keyboard virtuoso. After completing the work in 1805, he would not compose another piano sonata for four years. Beethoven dedicated Sonata No. 23 to Franz von Brunswick, the younger brother of a favorite pupil, Thérèse von Brunswick, who some scholars identify as the mysterious “Immortal Beloved” mentioned in a letter found after the composer’s death. Speculations aside, Beethoven did keep her portrait close at hand, and he also dedicated his next piano sonata, Op. 78, to her; it is sometimes called by its nickname, “à Thérèse.” Although at least one early critic considered the Sonata in F Minor “incomprehensibly abrupt and dark—much of it enormously difficult, [lacking] some exceptional beauty to compensate for it,” Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny maintained that the composer ranked it as his finest sonata to date. Beethoven’s frustration with the five-octave range of his instrument might be reflected in his choice of F minor as the home key. Just as the “Waldstein” Sonata emphasizes the highest notes available on the keyboards of the day, the “Appassionata” dwells on the lowest notes, especially in
the opening movement, where the low F is struck almost obsessively, as if he wanted to plumb its dark depths to reveal unheard caverns of sound. Lasting about 25 minutes, the “Appassionata” comprises three movements. The Allegro assai, in 12/8 meter, launches the main theme: a broken chord in dotted rhythm. This foreboding motif appears in various guises throughout the first and last movements. The central Andante con moto, in dulcet D-flat major, spawns four variations on a tranquil theme, including a fleet-footed double variation that requires the hands to switch parts. The finale, marked Allegro ma non troppo, resurrects the Sturm und Drang of the first movement, jolting us out of our blissful trance. In the climactic Presto coda, a new theme engenders a gloomy final cadence in F minor, a rare instance of a Beethoven sonata that ends tragically, much as it began.
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17
In early 1836, Schumann wrote Ruines, a piece for piano that laid bare his longing for the 16-year-old Clara Wieck, the celebrity-pianist daughter of his former teacher and landlord. Robert and Clara were desperately in love, but her controlling father used every possible legal means to prevent their marriage, which didn’t take place until September 12, 1840, one day before the bride’s 21st birthday. When he wrote Ruines, which would eventually become the first movement of the Fantasie in C Major, Schumann was living apart from her, trying to keep Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the music journal that he had founded two years prior, from going bankrupt. The journal, an outlet for his music criticism and his philosophical essays, barely stayed afloat, and he missed Clara. He told her in a letter that Ruines was a “deep lament” for her.
In the passage marked Adagio at the end, a two-bar phrase evokes the final song in Beethoven’s cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), a setting of the words “Nimm sie hin, denn, diese Lieder” (So take them, these songs [that I sang to you]). In May 1839, Clara wrote Robert, “Yesterday I received your wonderful Fantasy, today I am still half ill with rapture.” Despite her praise, she didn’t start playing it in concerts until after Robert’s death. Along with the allusions to Clara, another presence pervades the score. The Fantasie was intended as a musical monument to Beethoven, and the proceeds from publication were meant to help subsidize an actual monument to the late master, in Bonn, his birthplace. When Schumann learned about the project, spearheaded by Liszt, he added to Ruines two movements, Trophaen and Palmen, and considered publishing them as a set titled Grosse Sonate … für Beethovens Denkmal. He retitled the second and third movements Siegesbogen and Sternbild, and then considered and discarded at least three additional titles before settling on the generic “Fantasie.” The project’s proceeds fell far short of the estimate. Eventually, Liszt, renowned for his generosity, paid the balance in cash—more than 10,000 francs, by some estimates—and also wrote a new work commemorating the occasion, Festival Cantata for the Inauguration of the Beethoven Monument in Bonn. The statue was finally unveiled on August 12, 1845, in honor of the composer’s 75th birthday. When he published the Fantasie in 1838, Schumann prefaced the score with a quotation from Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schlegel: Through all the notes In earth’s many-colored dream There sounds one soft long-drawn note For the one who listens in secret. 2020 Summer Season
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In June 1839, he wrote Clara teasingly, “Are not you really the ‘note’ in the motto? I almost believe you are.” Even so, later that year he dedicated the revised Fantasie to Liszt, who repaid the honor 15 years later, with his Sonata in B Minor. Although he thanked Schumann effusively, the Hungarian virtuoso never played the Fantasie in C in public, considering it too intellectually rigorous for general consumption. Almost right away, the piece doles out oddball offerings, impossible textures, and strange syncopations. It often sounds like it’s riffing on traditions that hadn’t yet been invented: ragtime, post-bop, minimalism, free jazz. Sometimes Schumann’s hypnotic excursions anticipate Keith Jarrett’s improvisations, and certain ecstatic stretches of the slow movement sound like future works by Erik Satie. The coda—a songful reverie reminiscent of Beethoven’s final piano sonata, Op. 111—builds in intensity before slowing to Adagio and concluding with three hushed C chords.
FRANZ LISZT (1811–1886) Rhapsodie espagnole, S. 254
Liszt began his Rhapsodie espagnole in 1858, not long after he resigned as Kapellmeister of the Weimar Court Theater, a position he had held for a full decade. These were difficult years for the composer, who lost his son Daniel in late 1859 and his daughter Blandine in September 1862. Despite his grief, he continued to work on the composition in the early 1860s, while living in Rome, where he had once hoped to obtain permission from the Vatican to marry his longtime lover Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, the mother of his children. The Church declined to annul her first marriage, and Liszt eventually gave up and took holy orders.
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Inspired by a trip to Spain and Portugal in the winter of 1844–45, Rhapsodie espagnole conjures up traditional Spanish dances and ballads, as well as the classic 16thcentury Portuguese dance La Folia, built on a famous chord progression that was recycled and repurposed by countless Baroque-era composers, as well as many later ones. Published in 1867 and subtitled Folies d’Espagne et Jota aragonesa, Liszt’s composition opens with a terrifying cadenza. The left hand limns La Folia, which, in the style of a passacaglia, undergoes several spectacular transformations before the focus shifts to the Jota aragonesa. Making the most of the brilliant high register of the piano, this infectious dance is extensively developed before the work concludes with another snippet from La Folia. Besides paying tribute to these time-honored dance traditions, Liszt demonstrates his virtuosic command of the piano with many daunting technical challenges, from blindingly fast arpeggios and octaves to glittering cadenzas.
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SATURDAY, JULY 18, 11:00 AM The Domo Rolston String Quartet
JOSEPH HAYDN: String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “Rider” Allegro Largo assai Minuet: Allegretto Finale: Allegro con brio ERWIN SCHULHOFF: Five Pieces for String Quartet Viennese Waltz Serenade Czech Folk Music Tango Tarantella
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “Rider”
The string quartet hardly existed as a concept at the beginning of Haydn’s career. Earlier composers had certainly written for two violins, viola, and cello, but the idea of equality between the four voices without any keyboard accompaniment was new, and largely pioneered by Haydn in the 1750s. Within 40 years, it had grown into a genre of artistic ambition—one in which a composer might push aesthetic and expressive limits—with a growing canon of pieces by Haydn, Mozart, and others. Haydn’s String Quartet in G Minor, nicknamed “Rider” for the last movement’s rollicking theme, dates from 1793 and shows the facility and adventurousness of the 61-yearold composer. Having spent most of his career under the employment and patronage of the Esterházy family, he was released from his primary duties in 1790 upon the death of Prince Nicolaus, and moved to Vienna as an independent composer. Soon he was brought to London by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, and was received as a celebrity in England, where his published music had long been popular. Back in Vienna after two successful concert seasons abroad, he soon planned a return trip, and wrote the “Rider” Quartet in anticipation. It’s the last of six quartets he dedicated to the Count Anton Georg Apponyi, who paid him a fee for the privilege. The opening Allegro leads with a firm introduction in clipped notes, where the four instruments play together. Then a moment of silence, after which the instruments stagger and overlap in faster and slower textures, followed by an amiable tune in the first violin. The second half of the movement lets the first two ideas combine and collide, before the clipped notes disappear and the violin’s tune returns. 44
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The slow movement, Largo assai, finds itself in the distant key of E major and suggests a theme and variations—but there are only three variations rather than a whole set, and they grow longer and more elaborate as the movement goes on. The opening melody is carefully shaped to rise toward a surprise chord, while inventive textures mark the variations—a pianissimo shimmer in the third fuzzes into a lingering coda. The Minuet and accompanying trio section offer the traditional dance movements, while the tuneful finale reminds us that even for a composer working in the cosmopolitan centers of 18th-century Europe, the countryside was never far away—and the string quartet was a medium for both contemplative expression and visceral thrill.
ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1894–1942) Five Pieces for String Quartet
Erwin Schulhoff was born in Prague in 1894 to a German-speaking Jewish family. His relatively brief life spanned a period of incredible change in both music and world affairs, beginning under the tutelage of Dvořák in the late Romantic tradition, and ending in 1942 as a victim of the Holocaust. Something of a stylistic wanderer— having moved through several artistic movements including German Expressionism, the Second Viennese School, irreverent Dadaism, and Socialist Realism—Schulhoff has never found a firm place in the repertoire or in the history books, which favor composers with more constant voices or who marked aesthetic turning points. The injustice of his death also meant his artistic identity had no chance to coalesce in a later career, and his political leanings—toward communism and the Soviet Union, where he had hoped to immigrate—no doubt made his work less sympathetic for revival in the West after the War.
One recurring element in Schulhoff ’s music was an interest in popular dance and jazz, clearly represented in this suite of five pieces from 1923. The opening Viennese waltz is barred in two, rather than in the usual meter of three, which allows phrases to be stretched unpredictably, perhaps mocking the bourgeois dance. The Serenade stands on the border of French and German styles, with an added dose of musical Chinoiserie (a European idea of Asian music). Czech Folk Music evokes Schulhoff ’s native land and memories of Dvořák. The shadowy Tango ends with a
distorted chord, offsetting the rest of the movement with an Expressionistic touch, while the final Tarantella spins in measured fury. What you hear today was considered by the Nazis to be Entartete Musik: degenerate music. This label, combined with (and related to) Schulhoff ’s Jewish heritage and communist beliefs, led to unemployment and destitution in occupied Czechoslovakia, followed by arrest, and finally death from tuberculosis in a Bavarian prison camp.
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SATURDAY, JULY 18, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Rolston String Quartet Roman Rabinovich, piano
ROLF WALLIN: Cabinet of Curiosities Saltarello Barcarole 1 4x4x4 O Schmerz! Corrente Vesper Momentum À Propos Barcarole 2 ¡Arriba! Carillon FELIX MENDELSSOHN: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13 Adagio – Allegro vivace Adagio non lento Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto Presto – Adagio non lento INTERMISSION ROBERT SCHUMANN: Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 Allegro brillante In modo d’una marcia: Un poco largamente Scherzo: Molto vivace Finale: Allegro ma non troppo
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
ROLF WALLIN (b. 1957) Cabinet of Curiosities
The Norwegian composer, trumpeter, and performance artist Rolf Wallin has an eclectic musical background, ranging from early music to experimental jazz and rock. His compositions encompass nearly every form and genre, incorporating computer-generated algorithms, live electronics, 3D-video installations, and, in one instance, an amplified balloon. Many of Wallin’s works engage with social and political issues: Concerning King (2006) applies spectral-plotting procedures to an anti-war speech by Martin Luther King Jr., and Strange News (2007), scored for narrator and orchestra, includes real-life testimonials from rescued child soldiers in Africa. His science-fiction opera Elysium (2016) explores the concept of transhumanism, in which human beings use technology to transcend their physical and cognitive limitations. Born in Oslo, Wallin studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music with the composers Finn Mortensen and Olav Anton Thomessen. He received further training at the University of California, under Roger Reynolds and Vinko Globokar. In 1987 Wallin won the Norwegian Society of Composers Award for his song “though what made it has gone,” a setting of the poem “Whoever Finds a Horseshoe,” by the Jewish-Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. In 1998 Wallin’s Clarinet Concerto garnered the Nordic Council Music Prize. Composed in 2009, Cabinet of Curiosities contains 11 extremely brief compositions that resonate with one another in unexpected ways. Wallin writes: During at least half a millennium, kings, scientists, rich merchants, and others have reserved large or small rooms to contain remarkable natural and man48
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made objects: unicorns’ horns, wondrous corals and giant pearls, artificial nightingales, mermaids’ skeletons, breathtaking artifacts, deformed creatures in glass jars. And above it all: a stuffed crocodile appearing to walk upside down under the ceiling. These Cabinets of Curiosities were efforts to make a representation and mapping of the Universe, both its physical and mystical domains. Athanasius Kircher had this inscription painted on the ceiling of his museum: “Whosoever perceives the chain that binds the world below to the world above will know the mysteries of nature and achieve miracles.” I don’t expect this collection of musical miniatures to achieve miracles, but I hope it can serve as a small cabinet of musical curiosity for the curious listener. Curiosity Cabinet was commissioned by Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition 2009.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847) String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13
Aside from an early string quartet that he wrote at 14, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor is chronologically his first, though it was published second. If he hadn’t already composed so many other masterful pieces by this point, it would be almost impossible to imagine that an 18-year-old could write music this complex, assured, and harmonically daring. Even Mozart, to whom young
Felix was inevitably compared, didn’t hit his stride until his early 20s. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, seemed to catapult straight into creative maturity. In 1827 three significant events occurred: he fell in love for the first time, his idol Beethoven died, and Beethoven’s last five quartets were published. Unlike some of his older (and less discerning) colleagues, who dismissed Beethoven’s late quartets as incoherent, Mendelssohn pored over the scores and recognized their value. As for the object of his infatuation, no one knows her name, just as no one can say for sure whether he or a friend wrote the poem inspired by her, “Frage” (Question), to which Mendelssohn set a song, which in turn inspired his String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. The connection between the words of the song and Op. 13 is so strong that Mendelssohn appended the verses to the published score: Is it true that you always wait for me there in the leafy path by the grape arbor and ask the moonlight and the little stars about me? Is it true? What I feel can only be understood by someone who feels it with me, and who will stay forever true to me. As he explained in a letter to a friend, “The song that I sent with the quartet is its theme. You will hear it—with its own notes—in the first and last movements, and in all four movements you will hear its emotions expressed. If it doesn’t please you at first, which might happen, then play it again, and if you still find something ‘minuet-ish,’ think of your stiff and formal friend Felix with his tie and valet. I think I express the song well.”
kernel engenders most of the subsequent material. It’s also a Beethovenian gesture: the finale of Beethoven’s Op. 135 Quartet responds to a similar question, “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?). After the viola sends a trilled signal, all four instruments launch into an extensive exploration of the “Ist es wahr?” motif. Unusually, the secondary theme, first sung by the first violin, is in E minor instead of the expected E major. The exquisite counterpoint and intense dissonance of the second movement also reveal his debt to Beethoven. As in Große Fuge, the fugato passages of Mendelssohn’s Adagio non lento sound at once ancient and prescient, familiar and provocative. Set in F major, it follows an A-B-A pattern, with songlike sections bookending an intricately polyphonic center. Instead of the usual minuet or scherzo, Mendelssohn supplies an enchanting Intermezzo, which seems to inhabit the shimmering realm of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The third movement juxtaposes a mincing, pizzicato-flecked Allegretto with a quicksilver Allegro di molto. These contrasting themes converge in the gossamer coda. The Presto finale opens with tremolando (shivering) strings, which accompany a powerful recitative voiced by the first violin. Before long Mendelssohn resurrects several themes from the preceding movements, along with two abbreviated fugues. The Quartet circles back to where it began, with the chorale-like motif in A major from the first movement.
String Quartet No. 2 is structured in the standard four movements. The first, marked Adagio – Allegro vivace, begins with a slow, chorale-like introduction in A major that leads to a quotation from the opening phrase of “Frage”: “Ist es wahr?” (Is it true?) This long-short-long rhythmic 2020 Summer Season
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ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 Schumann wrote the Piano Quintet in E-flat Major in 1842, his so-called “year of chamber music.” Despite having composed very little chamber music up to that point, he also completed three string quartets, the Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, and the Fantasiestücke Piano Trio. Working at a feverish pace, he finished the Piano Quintet in less than six weeks and dedicated it to his wife, Clara, who was scheduled to play the piano part at the first private performance later than year. When Clara had to cancel suddenly because of illness, Felix Mendelssohn volunteered to perform it in her place. Even though he barely had time to review the score, much less rehearse it, his formidable sight-reading skills saved the day. Afterwards, he gave Robert some constructive criticism, which led to several changes in the second and third movements.
Clara played the revised Quintet at its public debut on January 8, 1843, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Calling it “splendid, full of vigor and freshness,” she immediately added it to her active repertoire. The Quintet quickly became popular with audiences and connoisseurs alike. Berlioz, who attended the Leipzig premiere, was among its many admirers. Within weeks, the score was published, inspiring later piano quintets from Brahms, Dvořák, Fauré, and many others. Schumann’s decision to augment the standard string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello) with a piano blurred the boundaries between chamber and orchestral music, allowing intimate interactions among the five instruments as well as quasi-symphonic, concerto-like effects, with either the combined string instruments or the piano standing in for the orchestra. Structured in four movements, the Quintet conforms to the typical fast-slow-scherzo-fast pattern. The opening Allegro brillante contrasts the vibrant main theme, based 50
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on bold, bounding intervals, with a tender duet sung by viola and cello. The subsequent slow movement is a modified rondo that juggles a mournful funeral march in C minor and a more lyrical episode in C major, which is dominated by first violin and cello. After returning to the C-minor march, Schumann introduces a third idea, marked Agitato (Agitated), which puts the piano in the foreground while the strings provide accompaniment. In the Scherzo, marked Molto vivace (Very lively), a series of ascending and descending chromatic scales precede a pair of contrasting trios—the first graceful and flowing, the second skittish and syncopated. The unusual Allegro non troppo finale withholds the home key until almost midway through the movement. The Quintet is crowned by a resplendent double-fugue coda that revives the main theme from the first movement.
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FRIDAY, JULY 24, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tessa Lark, violin Dimitri Murrath, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello Zoltán Fejérvári, piano
FRANZ SCHUBERT: String Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471 Allegro Andante sostenuto LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 1, No. 3 Allegro con brio Andante cantabile con 5 variazioni Minuet: Quasi allegro Finale: Prestissimo INTERMISSION GABRIEL FAURÉ: Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 15 Allegro molto moderato Scherzo: Allegro vivo Adagio Allegro molto
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) String Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471
Schubert is no doubt classical music’s leading composer of unfinished works: in addition to his famous “Unfinished” Symphony and Quartettsatz, he left many other pieces incomplete, including other symphonies, operas, piano sonatas, and chamber music. He composed prolifically in his 31 years (the briefest life of the major composers, coming in four years shorter than Mozart’s), and his haste and relative indifference toward publishing probably contributed to his tendency to begin and drop projects. Best known for songs and piano music during his life, the full scope of Schubert’s work was recognized only posthumously, as his brother Ferdinand and admiring friends shared manuscripts he had given them. The first attempt to publish his complete works began in the 1880s, and previously unknown pieces and fragments continued to surface into the 20th century. The String Trio in B-flat Major, D. 471, has only one complete movement; a fragment of a second-movement Adagio drops off in the middle of a measure and is not satisfyingly performable. Written in September 1816 when Schubert was 19, the trio shows the influence of Haydn as well as Beethoven, for whom youthful string trios had been a step on the way to writing string quartets. Similarly, Schubert’s trio might be thought of as part of a chamber music apprenticeship: a rather conventional Viennese opening develops into a more original and affecting second half, in which you can hear the poetic sensitivity of a young man who had already written hundreds of songs.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 1, No. 3
This is one of the three piano trios that announced to the world that a new, important composer had arrived: Beethoven chose to publish it as the capstone of his Op. 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 had moved to Vienna from Bonn, the sleepy city of his birth. He settled in the Austrian capital in 1792, the year after Mozart’s sudden death, and perhaps with some disappointment went to study with Haydn instead. As his patron Count Waldstein put it, “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 and through hand-copied manuscripts. Three years later, the release of his Op. 1 was a mark of arrival as much as a point of departure. The C-minor Piano Trio was the controversial piece in the set—Haydn criticized it after a performance at the house of Prince Lichnowsky, and Beethoven thought his teacher was jealous of it. Certainly it is the least Haydnesque of the early trios, leaning into the minor-key broodiness and bold contrasts that are most conspicuously Beethoven. Apart from Haydn’s opinion, the piece was a hit, and one imagines listeners recognized Beethoven as not just a young master of the moment, but as an artist who would change the future. The very first phrase is remarkably open-ended, followed by a response. The movement unfolds through intense musical inquiry, where even passages of sweetness and surety swing back around into doubt.
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The Andante is a set of five variations and coda, the theme marked cantabile (singing) and set warmly in the key of E-flat major. The variation form always fascinated Beethoven, and here he creates a succession of encapsulated worlds, all based on the same material. After the Minuet, a ponderous dance that fragments in its more lyrical trio section, comes the finale: its explosive opening offers a counterpoint to the first movement’s uncertainty, then rushes ahead with a tenacious theme that keeps resurfacing. But if you thought this was a straightforward progression from first-movement questions to last-movement answers, what to make of the whispered ending?
GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845–1924) Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15
For much of his life, Fauré enjoyed a workmanlike career as a church organist, choirmaster, and private music teacher, composing mostly on the side and during summer breaks. In 1871 he helped found the Société Nationale de Musique, which offered a forum for French composers to share their new works, often in a salon setting. Compared to his older Société colleagues such as Saint-Saëns and Franck, Fauré was seen as working at the cutting edge of modern music, and his work appealed mostly to a select circle of artists and aesthetes. In 1877 he was appointed choirmaster at Paris’s Madeleine Church, and became chief organist there in 1896. In 1905 he became director of the Paris Conservatoire—the very pinnacle of the French musical establishment—and his late compositions were widely performed and warmly esteemed. His expressively intuitive and decidedly non-academic voice influenced the next generation of French composers, including Debussy and Ravel, whom he encouraged from his perch at the Conservatoire.
Fauré’s first piano quartet, however, comes from the time before he was much of a public figure. It was written between 1876–79 and premiered the following year at the Société Nationale, with a new finale added in an 1883 revision (the original finale was lost or destroyed). Today’s audience might wonder what made this lyrical, dreamy music sound so different and new at the time. It might also be something of a breakup song, as the piece was written during Fauré’s engagement to—and then sudden un-engagement from—Marianne Viardot (the daughter of Pauline Viardot, a composer, mezzo-soprano, and salon host in Fauré’s circle). The mournful Adagio could be a reflection on their brief relationship. All four movements are inventively scored, with the strings often working together on top of a constant piano tapestry. The clever Scherzo begins with pizzicato strings, a technique that became something of a second-movement tradition in the chamber music of Debussy and Ravel. The restless finale, Allegro molto, amalgamates opposites: angles and curves, liquids and solids, dark and light.
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SATURDAY, JULY 25, 11:00 AM The Domo Tessa Lark, violin Dimitri Murrath, viola Arlen Hlusko, cello
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat Major, K. 563 Allegro Adagio Menuetto: Allegretto Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Allegro
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat Major, K. 563
The term divertimento, at least as Mozart understood it, is an entertainment, similar to, and sometimes even synonymous with, a serenade, nocturne, or cassation. Mozart certainly composed to entertain—himself, if no one else was listening. As W.H. Auden wryly quipped in a poem about Mozart’s divertimentos, “while bottles were uncorked, Milord chewed noisily, Milady talked.” Especially popular during the second half of the 18th century, the divertimento shares many characteristics of the Baroque suite. Typically it comprises five or more movements, the first relatively long and in sonata form, the last brisk and rollicking. Between these bookends are an assortment of dance-based forms and slow movements. Most divertimentos were intended as ephemeral party favors, performed once and quickly forgotten. Not Mozart’s, though. He not only mastered the form but elevated it, conferring the sophistication and structural coherence of a symphony without sacrificing the outdoorparty vibe. Although he wrote a great many divertimentos, serenades, and cassations during the 1770s and ‘80s, by September 1788, when he wrote his Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat Major, K. 563, he had all but abandoned the form. Mozart’s last three years of life were beset by difficulties, most of them beyond his control. Austria’s political conflicts with Turkey had caused an economic depression; his wife, Constanze, was sickly, and their baby daughter Theresia died; he had only two piano pupils left; and the new emperor, Leopold II, treated him with contempt. His fickle fans weren’t thrilled by his recent turn toward darker, deeper, more complicated music, and his gambling debts were piling up. When he wasn’t dashing off desper58
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ate letters to patrons and creditors, he was forced to crank out projects on commission. Despite these stressors, he managed to produce some of his most glorious achievements, including his last three symphonies in June, July, and August 1788. Both ambitious and pragmatic, the Divertimento for String Trio fulfills several of Mozart’s objectives. He dedicated it to his friend and fellow Freemason Johann Michael von Puchberg, the recipient of countless begging letters and a reliable source of emergency funds. Besides paying tribute to a loyal benefactor, the Divertimento gave the chronically cash-strapped composer something new to perform—something accessible enough for the public to enjoy, but challenging enough to satisfy his own artistic goals. Although its first private performance probably transpired in Puchberg’s home, the official premiere took place in Dresden on April 13, 1789, with Anton Teiber on violin, Mozart himself on viola, and Anton Kraft on cello. Mozart was touring Germany that spring, on the way to Berlin, where he would perform for the King of Prussia, Frederick William II, a gifted cellist and a devoted patron of music. Mozart’s decision to write the Divertimento for String Trio was somewhat unorthodox. Although Boccherini and the Haydn brothers had written works for string trio, this is the only completed example of the form in Mozart’s catalogue, aside from a piece he wrote more than a decade earlier, K. 266, which was scored for two violins and a double bass. The instrumentation Mozart chose for K. 563—violin, viola, and cello—is tricky from a technical standpoint. To achieve the proper balance of voices, the violist and cellist often must play at the upper limits of their instruments’ ranges, and the lone violinist doesn’t have as much support during virtuosic flights as a standard quartet complement would provide. Clocking in at roughly 45 minutes, the Divertimento is significantly longer than most examples of the genre.
The first two movements, both written in sonata form (with an exposition, development, and recapitulation), are especially ambitious. The opening Allegro, in the home key of E-flat major, starts softly with a simple descending triad, and then presents two themes. The first is a singing melody punctuated by exuberant rising and falling scales; the second, a rapturous tune sung by violin and cello. The ensuing Adagio, in A-flat major and triple time, is based on an ascending triad that assumes two distinct forms. The cello introduces the theme, imparting a melancholy grandeur to what is essentially a simple arpeggio, and the violin elaborates on the idea, swooping and soaring like a coloratura soprano.
waited several years for Constanze to repay him. After losing his entire fortune during the Napoleonic Wars, he died a pauper in 1822.
The third movement returns to the home key with a graceful and buoyant minuet and a contrasting trio. It’s followed by a long Andante in B-flat major, which subjects a folkish theme to seven variations. The sixth variation is a contrapuntal workout in the parallel minor; the seventh, led by the viola, is a jubilant return to B-flat major. A succinct coda brings the fourth movement to a close. The fifth movement, another minuet, opens in the home key with an ingenious imitation of paired hunting horns. This robust and bouncy rondo boasts two trios, the first in A-flat major and the second in B-flat major; like the first minuet, it’s in 3/4 meter. The Divertimento closes with another rondo, also in E-flat major but now in 6/8 time. The violin introduces the sprightly main theme while the viola supplies rippling accompaniment over the cello’s skeletal bass line. As the theme modulates to wilder harmonic terrain, Mozart adds a drumlike pattern that grows increasingly insistent as the Allegro sprints to its destination, a jubilant E-flat major chord. A postscript: Puchberg, the dedicatee of the Divertimento, became the guardian of Mozart’s two surviving children after the composer’s death three years later. Although Mozart owed him at least a thousand Gulden, Puchberg 2020 Summer Season
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SATURDAY, JULY 25, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Zoltán Fejérvári, piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1, Quasi una fantasia Andante – Allegro – Andante Allegro molto e vivace Adagio con espressione Allegro vivace BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90 Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen BÉLA BARTÓK: Piano Sonata, Sz. 80 Allegro moderato Sostenuto e pesante Allegro molto INTERMISSION JÖRG WIDMANN: Elf Humoresken Kinderlied Fast zu ernst Anfangs lebhaft Waldszene Choral Warum? Intermezzo Zerrinnendes Bild Glocken Lied im Traume Mit Humor und Feinsinn ROBERT SCHUMANN: Humoreske, Op. 20 2020 Summer Season
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1
Sometime in 1801, around the time that he wrote his Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Beethoven announced a change in direction. “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve composed up to now,” he told a colleague. “From now on I intend to embark on a new path.” The piano sonatas that he wrote during this period reflect his determination. Despite his chronic digestive ailments and his worsening deafness, the 30-year-old pianist and composer discovered new modes of expression, expanding Classical forms to accommodate his singular content. Like its Opus companion, the famous “Moonlight” Sonata, the Sonata in E-flat Major bears an explanatory title: “Quasi una fantasia” (In the manner of a fantasy). As Vienna’s leading virtuoso, Beethoven was famous for his improvisational skills, and many of his most startling harmonic innovations seem to have originated in this practice. Although Mozart and Haydn had both composed single-movement fantasias or included fantasia-inspired episodes within sonata movements, Sonata No. 13 applies this freewheeling approach to an entire multimovement structure. Instead of discrete sections separated by the conventional moment of silence, the four movements are played attaca, without pause, which makes the structure seem less like a sequence of predictable steps and more like a unified narrative—a precursor to Liszt’s symphonic poems. In addition to being played continuously, the four movements aren’t arranged in the typical sonata scheme (fastslow-scherzo-fast). The Andante, a five-part rondo, begins in the home key and gradually builds momentum before settling on C major. Next, a syncopated scherzo (marked Allegro molto e vivace) shifts from C minor to a trio section in A-flat major. The third movement, Adagio 62
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con espressione (Slow and expressive), is a three-part rondo, also in A-flat major. The extensive Allegro vivace finale returns to the home key, as expected, but otherwise it’s the boldest experiment yet. By transposing snippets of the Adagio to the home key, Beethoven disrupts the notion that each movement must function as an independent unit. This unexpected backward glance ratchets up the suspense before the coup de grâce: an ebullient Presto coda that slyly subverts the opening bars of the first movement.
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90
Beethoven wrote piano sonatas throughout his career—32, all told—but sometimes he took a break between installments. In August 1814, when he composed his Piano Sonata No. 27, he hadn’t attempted the genre for almost five years. He dedicated the E Minor Sonata to Prince Moritz von Lichnowsky and sent along a note assuring the piano-playing aristocrat that he had no ulterior motive: I had a delightful walk yesterday with a friend in the Brühl, and in the course of our friendly chat you were particularly mentioned, and lo! and behold! on my return I found your kind letter. I see you are resolved to continue to load me with benefits. As I am unwilling, you should suppose that a step I have already taken is prompted by your recent favors, or by any motive of the sort, I must tell you that a sonata of mine is about to appear, dedicated to you. I wished to give you a surprise, as this dedication has been long designed for you, but your letter of yesterday induces me to name the fact. I required no new motive thus publicly to testify my sense of your friendship and kindness.
Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s friend and first biographer, claimed that the Sonata’s two movements were originally accompanied by descriptive titles related to the prince’s romantic travails, but the origin story is apocryphal. (To support his fabrication, Schindler forged an entry in one of Beethoven’s conversation books.) But Beethoven did provide performance instructions in German, instead of the conventional Italian. Translated to English, they read: “With liveliness and with feeling and expression throughout” and “Not too swiftly and conveyed in a singing manner.” Hans von Bülow (1830–94), the first pianist to perform the complete cycle of Beethoven’s sonatas, described the two movements as a contrast between speech and song. The first, in the home key, is restless and melancholy, following a streamlined sonata form that eliminates the repeated exposition and leaves the secondary theme mostly undeveloped. The second movement, a rondo set in the parallel major, features a captivating melody that seems to anticipate Schubert’s lieder.
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945) Piano Sonata, Sz. 80
Bartók devoted years of his life to ethnomusicological fieldwork, scouring the hinterland like a Hungarian Alan Lomax. Between 1904 and 1918, he and Zoltán Kodály traveled all over the Eastern European countryside, documenting Hungarian, Slavonic, and Bulgarian folk tunes on phonograph cylinders. They recorded or transcribed more than 9,000 indigenous melodies. Although the project had a lasting impact on his developing style, Bartók assimilated his source material so thoroughly that he seldom resorted to direct quotation. “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,” he later wrote. “It became clear to me that the old modes, which had been forgotten in our music, had lost nothing of their
vigor. Their new employment made new rhythmic combinations possible.” Bartók trained as a pianist and performed internationally for much of his adult life. Starting in early adolescence, he composed a great deal of music for his primary instrument, including three piano concertos, the last of which he completed in 1945, the year he died of leukemia. Aside from a little-known effort that he produced in his midteens, he wrote only one Piano Sonata. He completed it in 1926, which is sometimes called his “piano year” because of all the new material that he generated for his upcoming concert tour. Despite being structured in three fast-slow-fast movements, the Sonata makes few concessions to Classical norms. It is resolutely dissonant, with no clear key signature, and metrically ambiguous, though strongly percussive. But behind this fusillade of repeated notes and wild, whooping glissandos are the stomping ghosts of peasant pipers and Romani fiddlers. Folk-flavored melodies and syncopated dance rhythms are especially prevalent in the closing Allegro molto, a shape-shifting rondo that turns an unassuming pentatonic ditty into a series of virtuosic variations.
JÖRG WIDMANN (b. 1973) Elf Humoresken
Born in Munich, Jörg Widmann studied clarinet and composition at the Hochschule für Musik and the Juilliard School. In addition to teaching at numerous conservatories and universities, he has successfully maintained a dual career as a composer and a clarinetist, equally proficient in chamber and orchestral settings. His many compositions include large-scale symphonic works, operas, string quartets, songs, and concertos, as well as multimedia pieces 2020 Summer Season
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that defy classification. In 2018, according to the website Bachtrack, Widmann’s music was performed more often than that of any other contemporary composer with the exception of Arvo Pärt and John Williams. Widmann has won major awards, including the Robert Schumann Prize for Literature and Music, a distinction he shares with his former teacher Wolfgang Rihm and his early mentor Pierre Boulez. Composed in 2007, Elf Humoresken (Eleven Humoresques) was commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation. It is dedicated to the pianist Yefim Bronfman, who gave the world premiere in New York City on May 4, 2008. Widmann’s title refers to Schumann’s Humoreske, and the section titles also allude to aspects of his life and works. In addition to musical quotations from Schumann’s Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood), Elf Humoresken evokes details from the composer’s biography, including his tinnitus, his auditory hallucinations, and his failed attempt to drown himself in the Rhine. “With Schumann, you always feel that there is infinite sorrow and equally infinite exuberance,” Widmann noted in a recent interview. Widmann writes of Elf Humoresken: “The different forms of humor (or even its absence) have their different counterparts in the great variety of the musical forms, from the miniature to the fully developed, complex piano piece. I hope the performer will discover the characteristic tone of each piece and express this with a touch of mockery here, a dry touch there, and a touch of melancholy, yet always with humor and subtlety.”
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Humoreske, Op. 20
In late 1838 Schumann moved to Vienna, where he hoped to find backers for the music journal that he had founded in Leipzig four years earlier. He was tormented by bureau64
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cratic obstacles and debilitating depression, but thoughts of his fiancée, Clara Wieck, consoled him. 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 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.” Depending on how you count them, Humoreske contains between five and fifteen sections, played attaca. Tonally, the music is confined to a single key register, B-flat major, and its relative minor, G minor. A single motif generates a stream of kaleidoscopic variations, which are ingeniously linked despite their radically different moods and textures. Humoreske begins with an elusive, songlike melody that starts 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 the musicologist Charles Rosen 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 major. This scherzo-like section is technically demanding, with rapid right-hand figuration in octaves. 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 section, which he labeled “Toward a
resolution”—another false ending. A spirited allegro coda erupts, and Humoreske ends with a volley of exultant chords.
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Yevgeny Sudbin, piano
DOMENICO SCARLATTI: Sonata in B Minor, K. 197 Sonata in D Minor K. 9 Sonata in G Major, K. 455 Sonata in F Minor, K. 466 Sonata in C Major K. 159 Sonata in B Minor, K. 27 FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 INTERMISSION ALEKSANDR SCRIABIN: Mazurka in G Minor, Op. 3, No. 3 Mazurka in B Minor, Op. 3, No. 1 Mazurka in E Major, Op. 3, No. 4 SERGE PROKOFIEV: Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 Allegro inquieto Andante caloroso Precipitato
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
DOMENICO SCARLATTI (1685–1757) Sonata in B Minor, K. 197 Sonata in D Minor K. 9 Sonata in G Major, K. 455 Sonata in F Minor, K. 466 Sonata in C Major K. 159 Sonata in B Minor, K. 27
The keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti comes down to us in hand-copied volumes made for his patron and student, Princess Maria Bárbara of Portugal, who later became queen of Spain. Upon her death, she left them to Farinelli, the star castrato, and they now rest in libraries in Venice and Parma. Some collections were published in Scarlatti’s lifetime—both in legitimate and pirated copies— and a small number of his pieces were known and appreciated by 19th-century pianists, including Clementi, Liszt, and Clara Schumann. But until his sonatas were collected and edited by 20th-century scholars, Scarlatti was better known by historical reputation than by performances of his work. Born in 1685 (the same year as Bach and Handel), Domenico was the sixth child of Alessandro Scarlatti, who was also a renowned composer. Domenico made his early career in his native Naples, as well as in other Italian cities. One story describes him meeting Handel in Venice, where they engaged in a friendly musical contest. The audience decided that Handel was the superior organist, while Scarlatti had a slight edge on harpsichord. Indeed, he went on to become one of the most influential composers for domestic keyboard instruments—his sonatas were intended for the harpsichord, and he would also have encountered the very earliest pianos made by Bartolomeo Cristofori. In 1719 Scarlatti moved to Lisbon, where he took up a royal appointment for João V of Portugal. He taught Princess Bárbara, a gifted student of music, and later followed her to Spain, where she married Ferdinand VI and became queen. 68
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Of the selections on this program, the sonatas in D minor and B minor (K. 9 and 27) come from a collection of 30 Essercizi (exercises) dedicated to João V in 1738, while the rest come from a later volume made for the princess. Scarlatti’s sonatas predate the idea of the genre as a largescale form; they unfold in single movements each with two sections, and unlike later sonata movements, the opening doesn’t return again to end. Within this regular structure, Scarlatti creates a variety of moods and embraces a wide range of influences, from pastoral pipes (K. 9 and 159), to the flowing warmth of violin music (K. 197), to rapid-fire keyboard virtuosity (K. 27 and 455), to opera aria (K. 466).
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52
This is music that tells a story—not any specific story, but one that emerges at the intersection of the imaginations of the composer, performer, and listener. While Chopin’s nocturnes and waltzes sing and dance, and his études and preludes work out somewhat more academic ideas of technique and harmony, his four ballades have a narrative, literary bent. Chopin was the first composer to name a piano piece “Ballade,” suggesting both the medieval tradition of sung storytelling and the Romantic genre of narrative poetry. In a conversation with his colleague Robert Schumann, Chopin mentioned that he had been particularly inspired by the work of the Polish poet and dramatist Adam Mickiewicz, though direct parallels between the music and particular poems have generally been discounted. From the very opening, there is something elusive about the melodic ideas themselves: the magic is in their development, and the drama is in their arrangement. Themes and accompaniment blur into each other; harmonies and sonorities take surprising twists. At the very climax, a
fortississimo cadence is followed by a gliding pianissimo fragment: then the pianist rips into a blistering conclusion. Chopin wrote the Fourth Ballade between 1842–43, working partly in Paris and partly at Nohant, the country home of his partner, the novelist George Sand.
ALEKSANDR SCRIABIN (1872–1915) Mazurka in G Minor, Op. 3, No. 3 Mazurka in B Minor, Op. 3, No. 1 Mazurka in E Major, Op. 3, No. 4
The mazurka is a Polish dance, named for the Mazovia region around Warsaw: in a triple meter, it moves the accent to the second or third beat, like a waltz with a little skip or hitch in the middle. This characteristic rhythm can be brought to nearly any tempo, resulting in a variety of mazurkas from the whirling oberek to the slinky kujawiak. These three mazurkas, from a set of 10, were written in Scriabin’s adolescence, just after he entered the Moscow Conservatory as a piano student in 1889. They show the influence of Chopin, whose own mazurkas no doubt had a central place in Scriabin’s studies, and give little hint of the grandiose and mystical works that later made Scriabin famous. And though the mazurka was a symbol of Polish national spirit in the face of the Russian Empire, there’s no indication Scriabin felt any misgivings or intended any irony as a Russian composer working in the genre.
SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata is the middle entry of his three so-called war sonatas. The earliest ideas for the sonata date to 1939, and Prokofiev completed the piece in 1942. It was written at the height of the Second World War, when its outcome was far from certain, but it was premiered in Moscow by Sviatoslav Richter on January 18, 1943, just as the Russian Army came within reach of victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. It is a ferocious piece: one of Prokofiev’s harshest and most dissonant, untempered by whimsy or subversive wit. It is also one of his most visceral and straightforward in meaning: the piece is exactly what it sounds like. Richter had just four days to learn and memorize the sonata, which he quickly did while staying in the Moscow flat of Heinrich Neuhaus, another pianist. Neuhaus’s wife was sick at home with a fever as Richter practiced. “The piano was in her bedroom,” he recalled. “The poor woman had to submit to the onslaughts of the final movement for three or more hours at an end.” Imagine the sounds of the raucous sonata shaking a Moscow apartment building in midwinter of 1943. The sonata was hailed as a triumph at its premiere in Moscow’s Hall of the House of Trade Unions, with Prokofiev in the audience. It won him his first of six Stalin Prizes. The piece unfolds in three movements. The first, Allegro inquieto (restless), starts with jagged lines, mostly in just two voices, punctuated by crunching, martial chords. Eventually a lyrical theme intercedes, but is subdued by the first idea. The lyrical theme returns once more, but is again subdued before the movement ends.
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The second, Andante caloroso (warmly), offers a reassuring alto melody, shadowed in the bass. The middle section grows with active lines and incessant, bell-like chords— punishing in volume, ominous in rhythm, even as the harmonies are sweet. The opening melody returns as an ending refrain. The finale, Precipitato (hurried), is brief, with jazzy syncopations popping out of frantic textures. The movement builds to cacophony, before a final run arrives at pure and decisive B-flat. Richter offered his own impression of the work: We are brutally plunged into the anxiously threatening atmosphere of a world that has lost its balance. Chaos and uncertainty reign. We see murderous forces ahead. But this does not mean that what we lived by before thereby ceases to exist. We continue to feel and love. Now the full range of human emotions bursts forth. Together with our fellow men and women, we raise a voice in protest and share the common grief. We sweep everything before us, borne along by the will of victory. In the tremendous struggle that this involves, we find the strength to affirm the irrepressible life-force.
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 11:00 AM
The Domo Inbal Segev, cello
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major, BWV 1007 Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Minuet I – Minuet II Gigue ANNA CLYNE: Rest These Hands BACH: Suite No. 5 for Solo Cello in C Minor, BWV 1011 Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gavotte I – Gavotte II Gigue
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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
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. 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. Bach wrote the cello suites sometime before 1720, likely during his time as Kapellmeister in Köthen, though they may have earlier origins. In Köthen he worked for Prince Leopold, a young aristocrat who, 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. 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 Köthen he had such players close: the musicians in Prince Leopold’s Kapelle were a tight-knit bunch who rehearsed in Bach’s apartment. Around 1721, Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, copied out the cello suites, leaving us with one of two important sources for them (the other was copied by Johann Peter 74
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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. 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. The Suite No. 1 in G Major is almost certainly the most famous piece in the cello 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. 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. The Sarabande is poised and solitary, a Spanish dance with roots in colonial South America that in time lost its once-erotic connotations. 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. The Gigue derived from the British Isles—literally, a jig—and drives itself out with energy to the end.
ANNA CLYNE (b. 1980) Rest These Hands
Born in London, Anna Clyne is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. In 2015 she was nominated for a Grammy Award for best contemporary classical composition, and she has served as composer in residence for the Chicago, Baltimore, and Berkeley symphonies. Last year her cello concerto DANCE was premiered by Inbal Segev at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Rest These Hands was adapted for solo cello from a movement of The Violin, a collection of seven pieces for multitracked violins. The title comes from a poem written by Clyne’s mother, Colleen, shortly before she passed away in 2008, and the piece was written the following year around the anniversary of her death. The composer was also inspired by a 19th-century violin she purchased from an Oxford charity shop, and by the Presto from Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001, which she quotes in the piece. The poem reads: I rest these hands World weary Misunderstood I rest these hands Toiled weary Long before they should These hands Palmed to palmed With wonder Surrendered —Colleen Clyne
BACH: Suite No. 5 for Solo Cello in C Minor, BWV 1011
Each of Bach’s last two cello suites has a difference in instrument: No. 5 asks the cellist to retune the top string from A down to G, while No. 6 was originally written for a fivestring cello with an additional high E string. Both remind us that in the 18th century the cello was not as standardized in setup as it is today. The Fifth Suite’s alternate tuning (called scordatura) allows the cellist to play chords that would be awkward or impossible in normal tuning, and it also subtly changes the color and resonance of the whole instrument. The top string is more slack, bringing out different sympathetic vibrations and overtones from the other strings. It’s a duskier color, suited to this suite’s C-minor mood. The Fifth Suite’s Prelude is unique among those in the cello suites for its two-part structure: first an introduction, and then a fugue. Normally a fugue is built from several overlapping voices in imitation—requiring a keyboard instrument or multiple musicians—but through musical sleight of hand, Bach tricks the ear into hearing it all from a solo cello. By delineating voices through different parts of the cello’s range, and giving just enough touches of harmony, the listener’s imagination fills out the rest. The Allemande picks up rhythmic gestures from the Prelude and then unfurls improvisatory lines over hints of a sonorous bass. The Courante constricts itself in tighter phrases, which brighten in the second section. The expressive weight of the suite rests in the Sarabande. Though this dance style is usually filled with rolled chords, here it is conspicuously bare—only single notes, an outline in contemplative dissonances, suggesting more than it says out loud. The Gavottes are dour dances, the second shifting dramatically into running triplets before the first is repeated. The Gigue offers a rhythmic link back to the Prelude and Allemande, while shaping broad arches in its phrases. Then the Suite lays to rest on the cello’s lowest note, the open C. 2020 Summer Season
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Chad Hoopes, violin Edward Arron, cello Anne-Marie McDermott, piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Sonata for Piano and Cello in G Minor, Op. 5, No. 2 Adagio sostenuto ed espressivo Allegro molto piĂš toto presto Rondo: Allegro MAURICE RAVEL: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in G Major Allegretto Blues: Moderato Perpetuum mobile: Allegro INTERMISSION FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49 Molto Allegro agitato Andante con molto tranquillo Scherzo: Leggiero e vivace Finale: Allegro assai appassionato
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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Sonata for Piano and Cello in G Minor, Op. 5, No. 2
This sonata has an unusual large-scale form: its first two movements are combined, beginning with an Adagio and then transitioning into a more typical first-movement Allegro. The opening is too extensive to simply be a slow introduction, but not quite enough to be a full movement on its own (besides, how unusual to start with a slow movement). Then immediately after these glommed-together movements, the sonata leaves behind its minor key and switches to bright G major for the toetapping finale. Only the other Op. 5 cello sonata, No. 1 in F Major, has a similar shape. These sonatas are brothers, two of a kind. It so happens that Beethoven was actually working with a pair of brothers at the time: the cellists Jean-Louis Duport and Jean-Pierre Duport, both of whom served Friedrich Wilhelm II, the king of Prussia, at his Berlin court. The king himself was a skilled amateur cellist—so when Beethoven visited Berlin on tour in spring 1796, he found himself surrounded by cellists. There was relatively little solo repertoire for the instrument at the time (Bach’s suites were mostly forgotten before later revival), so Beethoven set to work, inspired by the Duport brothers and their patron king. Jean-Louis, the younger brother, premiered the sonata in Berlin with Beethoven at the keys, and both Op. 5 sonatas were dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II. Beethoven apparently declined an offer to stay in Berlin in employment of the king, but was rewarded for the sonatas with a gold snuff box filled with gold coins—the 18thcentury version of slipping a performer their check after the concert. The sonata explores all the different sides of the cello, using it as a lyrical tenor voice, a reinforcing bass line, a 78
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punctuating mark against the piano, and as a textural element (those rapid broken chords in the finale). Beethoven also gave himself a prominent piano part—in fact putting the piano first in the title—reminding us that at this time in his life, at 25 years old, he was as much a touring performer as he was a composer.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in G Major
Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 was a long time in the making, with the first ideas put down as early as 1922 and the premiere in 1927—all for about 17 minutes of music. In the intervening years, the middle-aged composer struggled with depression and his musical output slowed to a trickle. Deadlines flew by. The sonata was intended for the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, and in April 1922 he was already delinquent, writing to inform her of the delay, saying, “You won’t kill me on this account?” The following year he began to make progress on the sonata, and the premiere was announced for January 1924 in London. Yet it was still not completed, and another piece replaced it on that program. Three years later, he finally finished the sonata in a creative bloom that also brought the opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges and the song cycle Chansons madécasses to completion. By then, however, Jourdan-Morhange had developed arthritis and retired from her violin career, so the premiere went to George Enescu (the Romanian composer), joined by Ravel on piano. The sonata’s centerpiece is “Blues,” which channels the music of America, a country Ravel had not yet visited. But jazz, which could be heard in Parisian cafés by the early
1920s, offered Ravel a way to express his own “blues,” perhaps helping him to overcome his creative block. The sonata’s outer movements include a rolling Allegretto on one side and a scurrying Perpetuum mobile on the other.
its first draft and Gewandhaus premiere—in reaction to a friend’s criticism and cajoling, Mendelssohn rewrote much of the piano part, updating it with inspiration from the latest sparkling piano textures of Chopin and Liszt.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847) Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49
Mendelssohn builds the first movement around two indelible melodies—the kind you imagine just struck him, more than he set out to write them—both introduced in the cello. The first is expressive and urgent, the second is warmer and whimsical, with that most undervalued of musical traits: catchiness.
Everything about Mendelssohn counters the Romantic trope that the life of a great artist must be one of struggle. From childhood, he enjoyed more advantages than perhaps any composer in history: he was born to a wealthy and educated family (grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and son of a prominent banker); had natural gifts for music, drawing, and languages; and had parents who nurtured his talents without excessively parading him around as a child prodigy. As a teenager, he had the opportunity to meet and be mentored by Goethe, and then attended the University of Berlin, becoming perhaps the first major composer to pursue a modern, well-rounded higher education. In the fall of 1835, at age 26, he was named director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. And in 1840 his friend Schumann declared him “the Mozart of the 19th century.”
The second movement is often called a “song without words,” a genre Mendelssohn developed in his solo piano pieces. Here its lyricism is heightened by the violin and cello, and its poignancy grows through the upwardreaching romance of its extended middle section. The third movement is an unmistakable Mendelssohn Scherzo: jittery and exuberant, mostly in the treble range, insectile. A long-short-short rhythm gives the Finale a folksy feel; at times it takes on a mischievous character, and eventually finds contrast with more lyrical lines. But the opening rhythm just won’t stop turning up in reaction to anything else that tries to happen, demanding to be shut down by a climatic coda and unanswerable cadence.
That review was in reaction to Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor. The piece is not so much reminiscent of Mozart’s style as it is of his sense of movement and progression (and of his central place in the music of the day). In contrast to composers like Beethoven who created drama through hard cuts and delineated transitions, Mendelssohn was more inclined to cross-fade and blur between ideas, creating a suspended, arching flow. This is as much the result of craftsmanship as it is of intuition: there’s often a sense of a worked-out structure in the background, like an artist’s sketch under the paint. The trio’s surface details were also carefully considered and revised between 2020 Summer Season
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Richard Goode, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Piano Sonata No. 15 in F Major, K. 533/494 Allegro Andante Rondo MOZART: Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 JOHANNES BRAHMS: Sechs Klavierstücke, Op. 118 Intermezzo in A Minor Intermezzo in A Major Ballade in G Minor Intermezzo in F Minor Romanze in F Major Intermezzo in E-flat Minor INTERMISSION CLAUDE DEBUSSY: Images, Book 2 Cloches à travers les feuilles (Bells through the leaves) Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (And the moon descends on the ruined temple) Poissons d’or (Goldfish) FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 55, No. 2 CHOPIN: Mazurka in C Minor, Op. 56, No. 3 Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 59, No. 1 Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59, No. 2 Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3 CHOPIN: Fantaisie in F Minor, Op. 49
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Piano Sonata No. 15 in F Major, K. 533/494
Mozart’s Fifteenth Piano Sonata begins like a child’s exercise: right hand, melody alone, in a perfectly balanced question-and-answer phrase. He slips a simple accompaniment into the left hand as the melody continues, and then tries the oldest composition trick in the book: the hands simply swap, with the bass repeating the melody and the treble now accompanying. This time the continuation is abbreviated, and pretty soon the two voices are imitating each other in a canon—a surprising move from naiveté to sudden contrapuntal rigor. But then a new theme cuts in, teasing at this serious turn, before the first theme re-entrenches in a more elaborate canon. The whole movement is built on this tension between play and strictness—imitation, after all, being fundamental to both. And though on the surface this movement is a paragon of Mozartian sparkle, you might find a thread of disillusionment running deep. The minor-key development section is surprisingly dark, and then when the opening returns, the left-hand response flickers back to minor, suggesting that the darkness isn’t really gone. There’s something faintly cynical about the whole movement: taking a childlike idea and twisting it into something quite adult. The Andante follows with a beautifully gloomy melody, built on a neglectful accompaniment that borders on emptiness. Mozart builds this into something more chromatic and gnarled, growing upward toward a climax, only to have the melody decay down an arpeggio into silence. Then the opening returns. Mozart wrote these two movements over the new year of 1788, entering them into his personal catalogue on January 3 as “an Allegro and Andante for piano solo.” This was in the months after the premiere of Don Giovanni and the death of Mozart’s father, Leopold, which some biogra82
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phers link to a relatively fallow span for the 31-year-old composer. To make a complete sonata, Mozart paired the movements with a standalone Rondo (K. 494) he’d written a year and a half earlier. Serving as the finale, it draws a connection back to the opening movement with another canon: this time as a grand culmination before a cadenza and coda.
MOZART Rondo in A Minor, K. 511
The rondo is a form built from departures and returns: a fixed melody keeps coming back, interspersed with forays into changing material. Most are lively pieces, building anticipation toward each inevitable reprise—at a quick tempo, they make good finales. But there are also slow rondos, where each return of the melody suggest an inescapable sadness. Mozart’s A-minor Rondo is of this kind. This is one of three Rondos Mozart wrote in 1786–87, years in which he was largely working on operas rather than piano music. But as much as its melody resembles that of a Mozart aria, its silky figurations and chromatic turns presage Chopin, who one imagines must have known and drawn inspiration from this piece half a century later.
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Sechs Klavierstücke, Op. 118
The rather dry title Sechs Klavierstücke (Six Piano Pieces) conceals the enormous amount of feeling held within. Brahms’s publisher sensed this, and wanted to call them “Monologues” or “Improvisations,” but somehow those names seemed even more inadequate. “I suppose there is no
other alternative than ‘Piano Pieces!’” Brahms replied. He recognized something ineffable in the music that forced a retreat to the most concrete of titles. Four of the pieces are called “Intermezzo,” and oddly enough the set begins and ends with these supposedly in-the-middle movements. Though the name had shed its literal meaning in the context of 19th-century piano music, the framing still suggests a kind of skepticism of absolute beginnings and endings. Most things, after all, are of a middle nature, and these pieces inhabit that intermediate expanse. The other two movements are a Ballade and a Romanze. The Ballade is not so much a lyrical song as it is a lively narrative, picking up on a form that had been pioneered by Chopin. The Romanze is hushed, yet almost symphonic in sonority, opening as a processional in lilting steps. Brahms wrote the collection in 1893, officially after retirement, while spending the summer in Bad Ischl. (Brahms’s holidays, as well as his retirement, were actually very productive periods.) He mailed the manuscripts one by one to Clara Schumann, who would play through them and respond, commenting on their “wealth of sentiment in the smallest of dimensions.” Eduard Hanslick reviewed the pieces by drawing a fanciful image of his friend Brahms composing them, “with and for himself on lonely evenings, in defiantly pessimistic rebellion, in brooding rumination, in romantic reminiscences, at times in dream-like wistfulness.”
CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) Images, Book 2
What each of these pieces conveys seems clear enough: bells through the leaves, the moon setting over an abandoned temple, and goldfish. Yet there are a few wrinkles: the title “Bells through the leaves” seems to conflate sight
and sound, and “Goldfish” was inspired not by a koi pond but by a Japanese lacquer panel depicting one. Though Debussy loved and found inspiration in the visual arts, he was ambivalent about any connection between his music and French Impressionism. He was not so interested in making musical versions of paintings, Pictures-at-anExhibition style, as he was in getting at the same kinds of ideas that art did, but by other means. In pieces like Images, he threw out the established conventions of harmony, finding new sonorities and new ways of relating chords by letting his ears guide his fingers on the keys. “There is no theory,” he said. “You only have to listen. Pleasure is the law.” Debussy wrote Images, Book 2, in 1908, following up on Book 1, which he completed in 1905. He also wrote a third set for orchestra—all part of an order from his publisher, Durand, who recognized the allure of such evocative pieces.
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849) Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 55, No. 2
This rapturous nocturne is the second of two Chopin published in 1844. It is a bit unusual in that it begins forte, loud for a night piece, only becoming more hushed on the second page. It is also unusual for its nearly continuous melody, without any contrasting sections. Delphine de Giradin, a writer and member of Chopin’s circle, called it “the dangerous one…the fatal nocturne.” Chopin dedicated the piece to Jane Stirling, a Scottish woman to whom he taught piano and who doted on him in Paris. Four years later, after his relationship with the novelist George Sand dissolved, friends speculated that 2020 Summer Season
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he and Mademoiselle Stirling might finally marry. But Chopin was uninterested and, aware of his failing health, commented, “she might as well marry death.”
CHOPIN Mazurka in C Minor, Op. 56, No. 3 Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 59, No. 1 Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59, No. 2 Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3 On November 1, 1830, the 20-year-old Chopin left Warsaw for a concert tour to Vienna and was stranded abroad as Polish cadets launched an uprising against the Russian Empire. Months later, Chopin traveled to Stuttgart, where he was shocked to learn that the Polish rebellion had failed. He then made his way to Paris, joining thousands of Polish refugees, including many writers, artists, and musicians, fleeing war.
Chopin wrote his mature mazurkas in exile, reinterpreting a Polish folk dance for Parisian salons. The Op. 56 and Op. 59 Mazurkas are relatively late works, written in 1844 and 1845, a decade and a half after he last stepped foot on Polish soil. The Op. 56, No. 3, Mazurka shows off the little rhythmic hitch that distinguishes the dance. The Op. 59, No. 1, Mazurka begins with a melody alone, then a halting accompaniment gradually insinuates itself. No. 2 begins with a firm pulse and a simple tune, but grows more fanciful as the music unfolds. Chopin gave the manuscript for this mazurka to Felix Mendelssohn, who gifted it to his wife, Cécile, who had declared her favorite composer to be Chopin. Finally, No. 3 in F-sharp Minor is an example of a fast mazurka, whirling in its outer sections, but slowing and hesitating in the middle.
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CHOPIN Fantaisie in F Minor, Op. 49
The F-minor Fantaisie begins with a march, which then runs off on capricious excursions and reflective wanderings. “Today I finished the Fantaisie,” Chopin wrote to a friend in October 1841. “The sky is beautiful, [but] there’s a sadness in my heart.” Many critics hear the Fantaisie as a reflection of Poland’s plight after the 1830 November Uprising, a grand anthem for a national victory that never was. Modern scholars have uncovered its allusions to insurrectionary songs popular among Polish exiles. But the early Chopin biographer Fredrick Niecks found it fascinating simply on its own terms: “there is an enthralling weirdness about this work, a weirdness made up of force of passion and an indescribable fantastic waywardness. Nothing more common than the name of Fantasia, here we have the [real] thing! The music falls on our ears like the insuppressible outpouring of a being stirred to its heart’s core, and full of immeasurable love and longing.”
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 11:00 AM The Domo Tesla Quartet
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK: from Cypresses, B. 152 I Know that My Love to Thee: Moderato Death Reigns in Many a Human Breast: Allegro ma non troppo When Thy Sweet Glances on Me Fall: Andante con moto The Old Letter in My Book: Andante I Wander Oft Past Yonder House: Andante con moto In Deepest Forest Glade I Stand: Lento Nature Lies Peaceful in Slumber and Dreaming: Allegro scherzando You Ask Why My Songs: Allegro animato LEOŠ JANÁČEK: String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters Andante – Con moto – Allegro Adagio – Vivace Moderato – Andante – Adagio Allegro – Andante – Adagio
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Selections from Cypresses, B. 152
The son of a butcher and innkeeper, Dvořák was brought up in a village near Prague. His father, who played the zither, recognized his talent and hired a local violinist to give him lessons. In his mid-teens, Dvořák enrolled in the Prague Organ School, where he studied for two years. He played viola in a dance band until 1862, when he was appointed principal violist of the newly founded Provisional Theater, the first Czech-language theater in Prague. He remained with that orchestra until 1871, performing in many concerts conducted by its director, Bedřich Smetana. Although Dvořák shared the older man’s dream of creating a national repertoire, he went about it differently, without taking on all the ideological baggage of the Bohemian Nationalist movement. His impressive catalogue—thirteen operas, nine symphonies, three concertos, and countless orchestral and chamber pieces—is steeped in native folk traditions but ultimately stateless. For Dvořák, love of country often manifests as love of countryside—an almost pagan reverence for the natural world. In July 1865, the 24-year-old composer fell in love with one of his piano students, Josefína Čermáková. In the space of about two-and-a-half weeks, he composed 18 songs for her, settings of floridly romantic poems from the collection Cypřiše (Cypresses), by the Czech poet Gustav Pfleger-Moravský. Dvořák scored these love songs for piano and male voices but chose not to publish them, at least in their original form. He returned to them often, however, quoting and recycling their melodies in major works throughout his career. Although he didn’t write the lyrics, they were deeply meaningful to him, an expression of his thwarted passion. In “You Ask Why My Songs,” the singer concludes that the impetus “provoking these wild songs, that powerful pain, is my homeland.”
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In 1882 he revised 12 of the songs and later published them in two batches, under the title Love Songs. Five years later, he arranged the revised songs for string quartet, retaining most of the original themes, harmonies, and rhythms. In most cases, the first violin stands in for the singer, with the other instruments providing complementary textures. He offered a brief explanation in the preface to the score: “These little compositions were originally songs (18).... I wrote them in 1865, and now, after 22 years, I have arranged them for quartet under the title The Echo of Songs.” The cycle was also sometimes called Evening Songs because of a note that Dvořák jotted down in a margin of the manuscript: “Composed by moonlight at 11:00 PM” Confusing matters further, the Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk edited the string quartet arrangement again in 1921 and changed the title to Cypresses, a nod to its literary origins. After Josefína rejected Dvořák, he courted her younger sister, Anna, whom he married in 1873. Although their union was long and happy, Dvořák remained fond of his sisterin-law. In 1894, when he found out that she was dying, he dedicated the slow movement of his cello concerto to her, using one of her favorite melodies as its main theme.
LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928) String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”
Janáček, who greatly admired Dvořák, was the son and grandson of musicians in Hukvaldy, a village in Moravia. At age 11 he was sent to a monastery in Brünn, where he sang in the choir. After graduating from the Czech Teachers’ Training Institute, he worked as a choral conductor and teacher. At 26, he married one of his stu-
dents, Zdenka Schulzová, and founded an organ school, which he would direct for the next 38 years. After a branch of the Provisional Czech Theater opened in Brünn in 1884, Janáček launched a music journal to promote and review its productions. A few years later he completed his first opera, Šárka, although it would not be staged for more than 30 years. In 1909 he became one of the first researchers to use an Edison phonograph to record material that he collected on Czech and Slavic folklore. Surely one of the greatest late bloomers in music history, Janáček remained largely unknown until 1916, when his 12-year-old opera Jenůfa, a harrowing account of infanticide, was revived to great acclaim. During his prolific final decade, he composed four remarkable operas, including The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), the strangely affecting tale of a free-spirited female fox, who escapes domestication and finds fulfillment in motherhood only to be killed and turned into a muff.
the whole as “beautiful, strange, unrestrained, inspired, a composition beyond all the usual conventions.” The viola, which seems to represent his beloved, sings a folk-inflected melody that unifies the entire work. (He had originally scored this part for the viola d’amore, a seven-stringed Baroque instrument, but substituted a modern viola after the first rehearsal.) He compared the opening Andante to memories of their first encounter: “There have already been so many of those dear adventures of ours, haven’t there? They’ll be little fires in my soul, and they’ll set it ablaze with the most beautiful melodies.” The Adagio, he promised, “will flare up in the Luhačovice heat,” whereas the third movement “will be very cheerful, and then dissolve into a vision of your image, transparent, as if in the mist.” Later that summer, he accompanied Stösslová and her son Otto on a vacation to Štramberk, where he contracted pneumonia. He died on August 12, in a sanitorium, just five weeks after his 74th birthday.
One important cause for Janáček’s creative renaissance was his unusual relationship with Kamila Stösslová, whom he met in 1917, in the Moravian spa town of Luhačovice. Long estranged from his wife, who kept separate living quarters in their family home, Janáček grew obsessed with Stösslová, who was 38 years his junior and also married. Over the next 11 years, he dashed off hundreds of ardent letters, often several on the same day, and kept a journal devoted to her. In his last year of life, he wrote his String Quartet No. 2, originally subtitled “Love Letters” but later changed to “Intimate Letters.” “You stand behind every note,” the 73-year-old composer confessed in one such missive, “you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses—no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately.” Although the Quartet’s four movements were published with only tempo markings, Janáček explained to Stösslová that each had deep emotional significance to him, reflecting a milestone in their relationship. He described 2020 Summer Season
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Valentina Lisitsa, piano
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF: Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 Prelude in G Major, Op. 32, No. 5 Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32, No. 12 Prelude in B Minor, Op. 32, No. 10 Prelude in G Minor, Op. 23, No. 5 Prelude in B-flat Major, Op. 23, No. 2 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53, “Waldstein” Allegro con brio Introduzione: Adagio molto Rondo: Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo INTERMISSION FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: Scherzo in B-flat Minor, Op. 31, No. 2 MAURICE RAVEL: Gaspard de la nuit Ondine Le Gibet Scarbo FRANZ LISZT: Rhapsodie espagnole, S. 254
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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 is nicknamed “Waldstein” after its dedicatee, Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein. An able musician and one of Beethoven’s earliest patrons and champions, the count arrived in Beethoven’s native Bonn in 1788 to serve in the court of the archbishop elector, Max Franz. Four years later, Waldstein predicted that, “with the help of unceasing diligence,” Beethoven would “receive the spirit of Mozart from Haydn’s hands.” The young composer followed Waldstein’s advice and moved to Vienna. By the time he completed the “Waldstein” Sonata, in 1804, the two men had lost touch, but Beethoven’s tribute to the prescient aristocrat lives on. Today Piano Sonata No. 21 ranks among the treasures of Beethoven’s middle period (roughly 1804–1812), typified by a new expressive urgency and a heroic experimentalism. He kept pushing the boundaries of form, forging new harmonic pathways, devising fresh technical challenges. At the time of its composition, he had just acquired a state-of-the-art French Érard piano, with a wider range (an extra half-octave) and a foot pedal (instead of the older style knee lever) to raise the dampers. Compared with his previous pianos, the Érard had a much bigger and more sonorous sound, along with a heavier action. Beethoven told one Viennese acquaintance that he was “so enchanted with it that he regards all the pianos made here as rubbish.” Accordingly, the “Waldstein” Sonata exceeds its predecessors in the scope of its ambitions and its technical demands. As a contemporary review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung noted, “the first and last movements belong among the most brilliant and original pieces for which we are grateful to this master, but they are also full of strange whims and very difficult to perform.” 92
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Among these strange whims is the fact that all three movements begin pianissimo. The first movement seems to bolt forward, without the courtesy of a preamble. Its relentless dynamic drive belies the frequent hushed passages. Much of its surging energy derives from the tension in tonalities. The home key is C major, but Beethoven ratchets up the intensity by withholding the resolving chord for long stretches. In the opening Allegro, for instance, C major pivots very quickly to G major, then wanders down to B-flat major before landing in F. Then the hymnlike second theme emerges in blissful E major, generating a cascade of triplet variations. Beethoven originally drafted a graceful Andante for the central movement, but after a friend persuaded him that its leisurely pace interrupted the momentum, he opted to publish it as a freestanding piece, Andante favori (Favorite Andante). For the “Waldstein” he substituted a short, transitional Adagio in F major. This abbreviated slow movement segues into the concluding Rondo, which starts quietly, like the others, but inexorably ascends to a series of ecstatic climaxes, adorned with glittering trills and pianissimo glissandos in octaves for both hands, in opposite directions.
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943) Piano Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 28
In November 1906, Rachmaninoff, his wife, and their young daughter moved from Moscow to Dresden, where the composer and piano virtuoso hoped to write his Second Symphony. Although he worked diligently and had mostly recovered from the nervous breakdown and depression triggered by the disastrous response to his First Symphony, Rachmaninoff struggled with self-doubt.
In May 1907 he lamented to a friend that his Piano Sonata No. 1 was too long, too incoherent: “It is three contrasting characters from a work of world literature. Of course, no program will be given to the public, although I am beginning to think that if I were to reveal the program, the Sonata would become much more comprehensible. No one will ever play this composition because of its difficulty and length, but also, and perhaps more important, because of its dubious musical merit. At some point I thought to rework the sonata into a symphony, but that proved to be impossible given the purely pianistic nature of writing.” Later, after overhauling the Sonata and incorporating advice from several colleagues, he still felt disappointed: “Two days ago I played the sonata for [Oscar von] Riesemann, and he didn’t seem to like it,” Rachmaninoff wrote in a letter. “I’ve begun to notice that no matter what I write lately—no one likes it. And I myself often wonder: maybe it is all nonsense.” Despite these glum assessments, he was productive. He pared down the Sonata by about 10 minutes and finally completed it in April 1908. The premiere took place about six months later, to mixed reviews. Critics were both impressed by its technical difficulty and bewildered by its complexity. Although Rachmaninoff was reluctant to discuss the programmatic elements of the First Piano Sonata—he didn’t even inform the pianist who gave the Moscow premiere until after the third performance—he was initially inspired by Goethe’s Faust, by way of Liszt’s Faust Symphony. The Sonata is structured in three movements, arranged in the standard Classical fast-slow-fast format, and takes about 35 minutes to perform. The opening Allegro moderato, which begins in D minor and ends in D major, presents the main theme: a quizzical phrase followed by an emphatic reply, then a somber cluster of chords. This motif seems to depict Faust’s angst and indecision. The central Lento starts off in D major but soon shifts to F major. This
movement, which is thought to represent Faust’s love interest, Gretchen, is relatively short but exceptionally difficult to execute. The Allegro molto finale is a harrowing hell-ride, as Mephistopheles and his furies send Faust plummeting to his fiery destination. Listen for Rachmaninoff’s signature Dies irae (Day of Wrath) theme, based on Gregorian chant.
MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Gaspard de la nuit
Written in 1908, Gaspard de la nuit is Ravel’s most ambitious work for piano. The pianist Albert Cortot called it “one of the most astonishing examples of instrumental ingenuity ever contrived.” Ravel himself described it as “three romantic poems of transcendental virtuosity.” The fiendishly difficult Impressionist triptych was inspired by a collection of prose poems by Aloysius Bertrand, posthumously published in 1842. Ricardo Viñes, the Spanish pianist who gave the premiere on January 9, 1909, introduced Ravel to Bertrand’s book. Literally translated, the title means “Gaspard of the Night,” but, as Bertrand makes clear, “Gaspard” is Satan’s pseudonym. Referring to his own work and its difficult gestation, Ravel quipped, “As for Gaspard, the devil has had a hand in it. No wonder, for the devil himself is indeed the author of the poems.” The composer even reprinted the relevant poems in the printed score. Ravel intended to compose “something more difficult than [Balakirev’s] Islamey,” a goal that he surpassed. For approximately 23 minutes, the pianist must focus on a terrifying onslaught of challenges, both technical and interpretive: elusive inner melodies, extreme dynamic shifts (from ƒƒƒ to ppp), frenetic staccato chords, tricky glissandos, and quicksilver arpeggios with the hands in contrary motion.
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“Ondine,” the first “poem,” is cast in C-sharp major, studded with sharps (seven, if you’re counting). The title refers to a legendary water sprite whose siren song lures men to her enchanted realm. Bertrand described the mischievous temptress as “skim[ming] over the drops of water that resonate on the diamond-shaped segments of your window illuminated by the dismal rays of the moon.” The theorist Charles Rosen called the second piece, “Le Gibet,” “an assault on the nerves of the listener, a creation of tension through insistence, like Chinese water torture.” Ravel depicts a carcass hanging from a gibbet (a gallows to display corpses after execution, ostensibly to deter future offenders) against a bloody sunset. Hypnotic octaves in B flat evoke an ominous tolling bell. The infernally virtuosic “Scarbo” portrays a malicious goblin who specializes in sleep deprivation and mental torture. One notorious stretch forces the pianist to play blindingly fast major and minor seconds with the thumbs. Throughout, Ravel conjures up a diverse array of timbres, mimicking countless instruments. “I wanted to write an orchestral transcription for the piano,” he explained. The pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who assisted Ravel with the piece, later recounted that the composer said, “I wanted to produce a caricature of romanticism. Maybe it got the better of me.”
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 94
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never performed in public during his lifetime. Maurice Ravel, whose orchestrated version 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 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 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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FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Benjamin Beilman, violin Masumi Per Rostad, viola Gabriel Cabezas, cello Dasol Kim, piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, “Archduke” Allegro moderato Scherzo Andante cantabile ma però con moto Allegro moderato INTERMISSION JOHANNES BRAHMS: Piano Quartet NO. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25 Allegro Intermezzo Andante con moto Rollo alla Zingarese
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, “Archduke”
For most of his life, Beethoven relied on noble patronage to make his living. From the time he moved to Vienna in 1792, he never had a full-time job in service of a court or church, as many composers did, but made his way as a freelancer with support from a collection of admiring princes. These relationships were often complicated, as Beethoven was deeply indignant at the very idea of noble birth. The son of a town musician, he resented those of higher class, at times even promoting the misconception that the “van” in his name—simply a mark of Flemish ancestry—was really the “von” of German aristocracy. At other times, he angrily claimed a kind of artistic nobility for himself, superior to that of princes. Still, he needed their support, and they recognized that his artistry warranted some leeway in his behavior. The most gracious aristocrat was the brother of the reigning Emperor Leopold II, the young Archduke Rudolf, to whom Beethoven taught piano and composition. Their relationship had many dimensions: teacher and student, artist and patron, and perhaps even friends. According to the early biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Beethoven “often caused great embarrassment in the household of the Archduke…finally one day…[he] flatly declared that while he had the greatest reverence for his person, he could not trouble himself to observe all the regulations which were daily forced upon him. The Archduke laughed goodnaturedly and commanded that Beethoven be permitted to go his own gait undisturbed—it was his nature and could not be altered.” Rudolph’s reward was the dedications of several major Beethoven works: the Fifth Piano Concerto, the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, and the Missa Solemnis. But 98
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only the Piano Trio in B-flat Major has absorbed the dedication into its title, probably in connection with the piece’s grandness and generous spirit. The cello predominates through the first movement, warm with melody. An extended pizzicato section in the second half brings a sneaky color change. The cheerful scherzo comes next, followed by a reverent slow movement with a theme and its four glowing variations. The theme returns in an echo, and then transitions with a jolt directly into the quick rondo finale. Beethoven finished the “Archduke” Trio in 1811, but its first performance was put off until 1814. By this time he had mostly given up performing on account of his hearing loss, but he tried to play the Trio at a pair of charity concerts. They were his last performances as a pianist. Louis Spohr, a violinist and composer who sometimes bragged of knowing Beethoven while dolefully ridiculing him, recounted: “of the formerly so admired excellence of the virtuoso, scarcely any thing was left, in consequence of his total deafness. In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys till the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of tones were omitted…I felt moved with the deepest sorrow at so hard a fate.”
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
Brahms debuted in Vienna in the fall of 1862. His reputation preceded him, having been hailed in the pages of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik nine years before, and he already had a gaggle of admirers in the musical capital. The young composer, still clean-shaven and long-haired, was emerging from something of an incubatory period, in which he had been studying older music, concertizing in smaller cities, and supporting Clara Schumann through the illness and death of her husband, and his mentor, Robert
Schumann. The First Piano Quartet came out of the tail end of this period, perhaps begun in the late 1850s and finished in 1861. Clara premiered it in Hamburg that fall, and then exactly a year later, on November 16, 1862, Brahms performed it himself at his first Viennese concert. It’s an ambitious piece with a dramatic shape across four movements. The first takes a rather simple theme and develops it across nearly 15 minutes—with a theatrical apotheosis of an ending, demanding a response in further movements. The Intermezzo sets a new scene, the violin changing its color with a mute, as inner voices power the action with little motor rhythms. After a contrasting trio
section, the Intermezzo returns and then evaporates in a coda. The slow movement also comes with a contrast, a miniature march that unexpectedly interjects. The extraordinary finale was inspired by the music of the Hungarian Romani people, known as tzigane or Gypsies, which Brahms heard during his provincial concert-touring days. The quartet becomes a folk band, and 12-bar phrases give their song a rollicking verve, with off beat accents heralding arrivals through an exhilarating dance. After the first rehearsal of the Piano Quartet in Vienna, the notoriously grumpy violinist Joseph Hellmesberger hugged Brahms and said, “this is Beethoven’s heir!”
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 11:00 AM The Domo Benjamin Beilman, violin Masumi Per Rostad, viola Gabriel Cabezas, cello
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Partita No. 1 for Solo Violin in B Minor, BWV 1002 Allemanda –Double Courante – Double (Presto) Sarabande – Double Tempo di Bourrée – Double LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3 Allegro con spirito Adagio con espressione Scherzo: Allegro molto e vivace Finale: Presto
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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Partita No. 1 for Solo Violin in B Minor, BWV 1002
Johann Sebastian Bach’s manuscript of the Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas dates from 1720, during his time as Kapellmeister in Köthen, though their inception probably goes back to 1703, during his time in Weimar. There he met the composer Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656–1705), whose 1696 Solo Violin Partitas are important precedents, and probably inspirations, for Bach’s more famous set. Westhoff was a leading violinist and composer in the generation before Bach, and was among the first to write polyphonic music for solo violin, devising ways for a lone violinist to play multiple independent lines at the same time. This required both an inspired compositional mind and a virtuoso’s understanding of the instrument. Bach, like Westhoff, was a violinist as well as a composer, and so was perfectly equipped to further develop what must have seemed an impossibly modern style. The title “partita” historically referred to a variation form, usually based on Lutheran chorale melodies. Bach and Westhoff were among the first to apply the title to dance suites. In Köthen Bach had time to focus on such secular forms: his employer, Prince Leopold, was a Calvinist and had no need for elaborate liturgical music. Bach, a Lutheran, spent most of his career specializing in exactly such music— but for his six years in Köthen, turned to mostly secular music, which he happily wrote for the skilled musicians of Leopold’s court. The arrangement led to some of Bach’s greatest instrumental pieces: the solo works for violin and cello, the French keyboard suites, the orchestral suites, and the Brandenburg Concertos.
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The Partita No. 1 in B Minor has a structure different from that of any other Partita in the set. Just as the enormous Chaconne in the Partita No. 2 sets that piece apart from the rest, the Partita No. 1 also has a unique movement structure: it is the only one where each dance is immediately followed by a double: a fast French style of variation that elaborates on the music just heard. The Allemanda was originally a French impression of a German dance, which Germans like Bach reclaimed when they wrote dance suites. The Courante was once a noble courtship dance, which typically involved two partners stepping toward each other and then away. The Sarabande came from the New World via Spain: what was once a fast, bawdy dance was transformed into a slow seductive one as it reached northern Europe. The Bourrée—which Bach uses in the First Partita in place of the more typical Gigue—was a rustic peasant dance. (By Bach’s day, none of these dances were intended to be danced: they were only for listening.) The doubles, meanwhile, are pointillistic, offering a second look at each of the movements, as if through a scattering lens.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3
In 1798 Beethoven thought the three trios he had just published as his Op. 9 were his best works to date. Since moving to Vienna in 1792, he had systematically tackled both string and piano music in various combinations, and these trios were something of a culmination. Written for strings alone, they would not be mistaken as simply a vehicle for him as a pianist (Beethoven also played viola, though not as flashily), and they abandoned the serenade structure of two earlier string trios in favor of a leaner, more serious, four-movement form. Soon he would move
on to writing his first string quartets, a riskier venture that demanded comparison to Haydn and Mozart. In the meantime, trios gave him a less scrutinized place to define what made him different. The String Trio in C Minor is set in a significant key for Beethoven, the same one he later used for his Fifth Symphony. Like that symphony, the Trio begins with a striking effect: in this case, a rapid dynamic scoop from soft to loud,
then snapping back to quietness for the opening theme. The opening movement is filled with quick contrasts and gestures that spike up in high relief. The slow movement turns to C major, but with a certain heaviness and ambiguity uncommon in the key. The Scherzo dashes darkly through unsettled rhythms, while the Finale Presto has an almost continuous flow, like a free stream of loosely associated thoughts.
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Dasol Kim, piano
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 Maestoso Arietta INTERMISSION FRANZ SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 Molto moderato Andante sostenuto Scherzo: Allegro vivace con delicatezza Allegro ma non troppo
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111
In February 1822 Beethoven mailed the Berlin-based publisher Adolf Schlesinger the last two of the three sonatas that he had commissioned, Nos. 31 and 32. Two months later, the 51-year-old composer sent Schlesinger a revised version of the second movement of Sonata No. 32. Beethoven would live another five years, but this would be his final effort in a genre that spanned every decade of his career. Even in a life marked by suffering, his final years were conspicuously wretched. Beethoven was profoundly deaf, financially precarious, and tormented by stomach and liver ailments. In 1822, when the international opera sensation Gioachino Rossini managed to arrange an introduction, he was dismayed by his idol’s squalid living quarters. Later that evening, while being feted by Prince Metternich and his circle, Rossini begged them to support “the greatest genius of the age.” The aristocrats were unmoved. Despite his hardships and humiliations, Beethoven was firing on all creative cylinders. He wrote Sonata No. 32 quickly, starting it even before its predecessor was finished. Its autograph score is dated January 13, 1822, less than three weeks after Sonata No. 31. For the key signature he chose C minor, a key that seemed to elicit many of his most intense and radical efforts. This would not only be his final piano sonata; it would be his last major statement in C minor. He also opted to condense the sonata form to two movements instead of the conventional three or four. Bewildered by a score that seemed to end with a long Adagio, Schlesinger asked whether the finale had been lost in transit. When Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s frenemy and first biographer, asked the composer why he’d neglected to finish the Sonata, he replied sardonically that he “had not had time to write a third movement.” 106
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Confused contemporaries notwithstanding, the latest of the late sonatas exerted a profound cultural influence. It not only transformed the piano sonata but also changed the course of orchestral music and even literature. Thomas Mann’s 1947 novel Doktor Faustus devotes an entire chapter to an impassioned conversation about the compressed brilliance of Sonata No. 32. “These flourishes and cadenzas!” the pianist-professor Kretzschmar exclaims to his teenage audience. “Do you hear the conventions that are left in? Here—the language—is no longer—purified of the flourishes—but the flourishes—of the appearance—of their subjective—domination—the appearance—of art is thrown off—at last!” The part of the Sonata that provoked Kretzschmar’s sputtering awe is the Arietta, the mind-blowing theme-and-variations workout that functions as both slow movement and finale, while ultimately being sui generis. The pianist and critic Donald Tovey rhapsodized over the Arietta’s “infinite variety of quivering ornament.” Stravinsky marveled at the startling syncopation in what he called the “boogie-woogie variation,” the third and wildest iteration of a theme initially marked Molto semplice et cantabile (Very simple and singing). Beethoven assigned a time signature of 12/32 (12 beats of 32nd notes per bar) to this riotous passage, causing an early critic to lament that “no sphinx ever imagined such a riddle as the 12/32 time presents.” But what mystifies the eye delights the ear. If the first movement whisks the listener along on an auditory journey from Baroque counterpoint to Romantic effusion, the Arietta leaps at least 100 years into the future, from the salons of Vienna to the juke joints of Mississippi.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960
“Who can do anything after Beethoven?” Schubert once groused in a letter to a friend. As with most of Beethoven’s contemporaries and successors, the anxiety of influence could be stifling. For Schubert, a short and dumpy former schoolteacher, the prospect of matching the older man’s genius, much less surpassing it, must have seemed remote. In the last years of his short life, Schubert was starting to expand his audience beyond the guests at the regular Schubertiades—parlor concerts organized by his longtime friend Josef von Spaun—but the vast majority of his compositions remained unpublished and unheralded. Yet somehow Schubert found a way, especially in his later works, to translate Beethoven’s legacy into a new and original language. Schubert’s unique musical syntax was transformative, kick-starting Romanticism by upending Classical expectations about key progressions. In transposing the long, rhapsodic lines of his lieder to string quartets, symphonies, masses, and sonatas, Schubert shook off the Beethovenian burden to become a source of inspiration for future composers, including Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, and Mahler.
1816. Elements of his String Quintet (1828) surface in the Andante sostenuto, where long cantabile phrases are pitted against short and insistent rhythmic textures. Many aspects of the last Sonata seem entirely alien, even extraterrestrial. Take the alarming trill that disrupts the tranquility of the first movement, a destabilizing intruder that rumbles darkly on a low F and then quivers between G-flat and A-flat. Suddenly a shadow falls over the earlier F-major chord, turning it murky, almost sinister. For most composers, the trill is ornamental. In Schubert’s sound world, it’s an omen. After a pregnant pause, the melody returns, but it sounds different now: less innocent, if no less beautiful. Schubert played his last sonata, along with its two immediate predecessors, at a party on September 27, 1828. He had finished the B-flat Major Sonata only one day earlier. Not quite two months later, he succumbed to late-stage syphilis and died.
In September 1828—18 months after Beethoven’s death and only seven weeks before his own—Schubert completed his last three piano sonatas. Echoes of the late master abound in the B-flat Major Sonata, from the evocation of the “Archduke” Trio in the opening theme to the shift from C minor to B-flat in the finale, a deliberate reference to Beethoven’s last work, the rondo from his B-flat String Quartet, Op. 133 (which replaced the original finale, now known as Große Fuge). But Schubert also cites himself. Early on, in the opening Molto moderato, the tension between B-flat and G-flat recalls a similar strategy in the song “Ihr Bild” from Schwanengesang, also composed in 1828. Later, in the development section, the theme suddenly reveals itself as an explicit quotation of his song “Der Wanderer,” from 2020 Summer Season
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2:00 PM Olivier Music Barn Pedja Muzijevic, piano
JOSEPH HAYDN: Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:51 Andante Finale JOHN CAGE: from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano Sonata II Sonata IV Sonata V HAYDN: Sonata in G Minor, Hob. XVI:44 Moderato Allegretto CAGE: from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano Third Interlude Sonata XII Sonata XIV and Sonata XV, Gemini —after the work of Richard Lippold HAYDN: Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52 Allegro moderato Adagio Finale: Presto
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM RENÉ SPENCER SALLER
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809) Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:51 Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52 Sonata in G Minor, Hob. XVI:44
Haydn, the son of a wheelwright and a cook, composed more than 50 keyboard sonatas, usually for patrons and favorite female pupils. Most of these pieces were intended for amateur musicians to perform in domestic settings. His early sonatas were conceived for the harpsichord, but by the mid-1770s he was mostly writing for fortepiano. He produced a vast body of work during his decades of serving as a musician in the Esterházy court: about 80 symphonies, 50 quartets, a dozen Italian operas, a handful of Singspiele for a marionette theater, and more than 100 trios for baryton, a viol-like instrument played by Prince Nicolaus. When the prince died in 1790, Haydn was 58 years old and eager to move to Vienna, where he hoped to reach new audiences and potential backers. Not long after arriving, the German-born impresario Johann Peter Salomon showed up at his door and announced, “I am Salomon of London and have come to fetch you. Tomorrow we will arrange an accord.” Despite never having traveled outside Austria and Hungary, Haydn quickly adapted to his growing international fame. He spent most of the 1791–92 concert season in the English capital, and the tour was so successful he returned to London in 1794 to preside over more premieres. The Sonata in G Minor, Hob. XVI:44 (performed third on this concert), is among the earliest of Haydn’s sonatas, likely written for the Esterházys in the early 1770s (but not published until 1788). It is cast in two movements, and is one of just seven keyboard sonatas he wrote in a minor key. Expressive and melancholy, it fluctuates between the home key and B-flat major, making many contrapuntal excursions and ornamental flourishes before the poignant coda in G major. 110
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Haydn completed the Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:51 (performed first on this concert), for his second London journey in 1794, intended for the talented London-based pianist Therese Jansen. The English pianos that she favored had a heavier action, longer keys, and more imposing sonorities than the lighter and more responsive instruments that were prevalent in Vienna. Intimate and deceptively modest, this sonata confines its ambitions to two highly condensed movements. The opening Andante unfurls a series of variations on an airy arpeggiated theme. The scherzo-like Finale is darker and more disruptive, peppered with syncopation and murky chromatic passages. The Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:52 (which concludes this concert), was also written for Jansen. It is the last of Haydn’s piano sonatas and by many estimations his finest, full of unconventional harmonies and thematic transformations. The propulsive and rhythmic Allegro moderato contrasts a noble melody with a distant chiming secondary theme, reminiscent of a music box or the action of a mechanical clock. For the lavishly ornamented, fantasia-like Adagio, Haydn chose the remote key of E major, with surprising excursions to C major and E minor. The Sonata closes with a witty and sparkling toccata-style finale.
JOHN CAGE (1912–1992) Selections from Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
Born in Los Angeles, Cage studied non-Western music with the iconoclastic American composer Henry Cowell at the New School for Social Research in New York, and also studied counterpoint with Arnold Schoenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1938 he began working as a composer and accompanist for a dance company in Seattle, where he met his life partner and creative collaborator, the choreographer Merce Cunningham.
When a troupe member requested a piece to accompany a “primitive, almost barbaric” dance, Cage initially considered a percussion ensemble but quickly realized that the stage couldn’t accommodate so many musicians. He remembered the experimental approach of Cowell, who often tinkered with the strings inside the piano to create different sounds. By putting metal pie plates, screws, and other objects on and between the strings, Cage discovered that he could transform the keyboard into an entire percussion orchestra. The resulting work, Bacchanale (1940), was a creative breakthrough. He later explained that his compositional method—using the “prepared piano”—involved “playing the piano, listening to differences, [and] making a choice.” Four years later, he moved to New York, where he lived and worked for the remaining half-century of his life. In early 1946, Cage met the Indian musician Gita Sarabhai and offered to give her free lessons in counterpoint and composition if she would teach him about Indian classical music and philosophy. Sarabhai introduced him to ideas that would inspire him for the rest of his life. He was especially struck by the theory of music as a means to quiet the mind so that it might receive the divine. He started reading works by the Indian art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who described the aesthetic of rasa (Sanskrit for “flavor,” “sap,” or “juice”) and the eight navarasas (emotions) that characterize it: humor, wonder, eroticism, heroism, anger, fear, disgust, and sorrow. The ninth navarasa, and the one to which all the other emotions aspire, is tranquility. Cage never specified which navarasa governed each of the 20 brief compositions that make up Sonatas and Interludes, but the concept guided his creative process. Cage began writing the cycle in February 1946. While preparing the piano, he decided to alter the sound of 45 notes by placing screws, nuts, bolts, pieces of rubber, and an eraser on the strings. Given the variations among piano models and available materials, he accepted that each performance would sound different from the next. “If you
enjoy playing Sonatas and Interludes,” he advised, “then do it so that it seems right to you.” Depending on the method of preparation, the sounds range from soft thumps to grating rattles and chiming gongs. The piano sometimes mimics an entire Indonesian gamelan ensemble, creating interlocking polyrhythms and trance-inducing textures. Cage intended the mini-sonatas as a blend of global traditions, explaining that “pieces with bell-like sounds suggest Europe, and others with a drumlike resonance suggest the East.” In his liner notes for the first recording of Sonatas and Interludes, he offered a humorous disclaimer: “Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I’m only being practical.” In February 1948, while still immersed in composing Sonatas and Interludes, Cage delivered a lecture at Vassar College titled “A Composer’s Confessions,” in which he said the pieces had been inspired by “a passing remark…to the effect that short pieces can have in them just as much as long pieces can.” He mentioned that he was writing them “in my new apartment on the East River in Lower Manhattan, which turns its back to the city and looks to the water and the sky.” Cage completed the work that March and premiered it a month later, in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He dedicated it to the Armenian-American pianist Maro Ajemian, who played selections on several occasions before performing the entire cycle at Carnegie Hall on January 12, 1949. The complete Sonatas and Interludes contain 16 sonatas and four interludes, in the following order: Sonatas I–IV, Interlude 1, Sonatas V–VIII, Interludes 2–3, Sonatas IX–XII, Interlude 4, Sonatas XIII–XVI. This performance includes seven of the 20 pieces. Sonata II, like most of the others, adopts the Baroque sonata form used by Domenico Scarlatti (A-A-B-B). A bit longer than two minutes in the average performance, it pits a whimsical tinkling tune against marimba-like percussion 2020 Summer Season
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sounds and odd syncopated accents. The effect is cheerful but a little hectic, with sudden dynamic shifts and frequently changing time signatures. Sonata IV is a bit longer and much slower and more meditative. Here Cage mingles bell-like tones with strategic silences and mysterious percussive patterns. The many rests and held notes create a tentative, halting effect, as if the performer is struggling to remember a half-forgotten melody. In the jaunty and jazzy Sonata V, hollow percussive sounds clatter amiably against resonant gong-like notes. Only about a minute-and-a-half long, this Sonata is soft and somewhat motoric, but punctuated by occasional silences and fortissimo outbursts. More free-form than the sonatas, the Third Interlude (which begins the second set on this concert) juxtaposes loud, aggressively rhythmic passages with elusive pianississimo phrases that seem to drift up and vanish like smoke. In an interview Cage explained that his emphasis on 10-bar phrases in the concluding sonatas represents tranquility, the ninth navarasa. Sonatas XIV and XV follow the A-A-B-B scheme but are paired and given the joint title Gemini—after the work of Richard Lippold. The title refers to the sculpture Gemini II, an intricate abstract construction in which metal tubes and other forms are threaded on and around dense webs of wire, forming complex patterns. These sonatas seem to mimic that structure: a hallucinatory concatenation of vaguely pentatonic, flickering figures interspersed with metallic scrapes and rumbling reverberations.
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tyler Duncan, baritone Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Sonata for Piano and Violin in G Major, K. 379/373a Adagio – Allegro Andantino cantabile – Allegretto MIECZYSŁAW WEINBERG: Prelude No. 13 from 24 Preludes for Solo Cello, Op. 100 PAUL DESENNE: Gavotte from Jaguar Songs for Solo Cello ROBERT SCHUMANN: Dichterliebe, Op. 48 Im wunderschönen Monat Mai Aus meinen Tränen sprießen Die Rose, Die Lilie Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ Ich will meine Seele tauchen Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome Ich golle nicht Und wüßten’s die Blumen Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet Allnächtlich im Traume Aus alten Märchen winkt es Die alten, bösen Lieder
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Sonata for Piano and Violin in G Major, K. 379/373a
There may be no other piece in the classical repertoire we can say with such precision when it was written: according to Mozart, he composed this Violin Sonata in G Major on Saturday, April 7, 1781, between 11 PM and midnight. Even for Mozart, writing a 25-minute sonata in a single hour is an incredible feat—and indeed, that first version was more of a sketch for the violinist, against which Mozart played by memory on the keyboard for a concert the following night. The version he finally wrote down in full gives no hint of a rush job, but it does carry a concentrated sense of flow and an inky, nocturnal spirit, suggesting the setting of its composition. Mozart wrote the Sonata in his last year working for the archbishop at the Salzburg court, and premiered it with Antonio Brunetti, the concertmaster of its orchestra. The first movement begins with a dusky theme in rolled chords for the piano alone (indeed, Mozart considered the violin—not the piano—to be the accompanying instrument, even as his sonatas of the 1780s established greater equality between the two instruments). The violin joins in a repetition of the phase, and they go on their way, elaborating on the introspective melody. The second half of the movement is an Allegro, set mostly in G minor, and of a bolder character. The final movement is a theme and variations, once again relatively slow, but capped by a return of the opening with a livelier coda.
MIECZYSŁAW WEINBERG (1919–1996) Prelude No. 13 from 24 Preludes for Solo Cello, Op. 100
Mieczysław Weinberg was a Soviet composer, born in Poland to a Jewish family. While living in Uzbekistan he met Shostakovich, whose music inspired him, and they became friends and trusted colleagues. In February 1953, Weinberg was imprisoned during an anti-Semitic campaign, partly in retaliation against a family member, and not helped by the fact that he often showed less deference to Soviet stylistic edicts than other composers did. Only Stalin’s death the following month, and a letter of defense from the rehabilitated Shostakovich, won his release and saved him from death in the gulag. In the later 1950s and ‘60s, Weinberg took advantage of the greater freedoms of the Khrushchev Thaw to stake out a more modernist aesthetic, and he collaborated with some of the leading Russian performers of the day. His 24 Preludes for Solo Cello were written in 1968 for Mstislav Rostropovich, who never performed them. The Thirteenth Prelude is set entirely in pizzicato: the opening contrasts a high wavering gesture with a scalar idea below, while the middle section introduces strums and slides, to cryptic effect.
PAUL DESENNE (b. 1959) Gavotte from Jaguar Songs for Solo Cello
Paul Desenne was born in Caracas to French and American parents, and he developed his musicianship as a cellist and founding member of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. He has been involved with El Sistema, the Venezuelan music education program, since its founding in 1975, 116
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working as a string instructor and composer in residence. Of his Jaguar Songs, composed in 2002, he says: The jaguar is an Amazonian symbol of death, of frightening surprise—an energy that keeps us running, keeps us from getting caught. Here, the cello escapes from the lyrical, weeping tradition and from the artifice of sound effects. Everything springs from a specific handling of the instrument derived from a true musical reference.... Gavotte is an ironic title, since this poppish binary tune, the initial frivolous character of which is denied by the sentiment expressed as it unfolds, is a cover for a deeper transformation of the cello into a close relative of the [Jimi] Hendrixian electric blues-rock guitar. This isn’t merely a cosmetic connection, for the cello can and will be possessed by the voices of this form-shattering, raucous expression. To spare the furniture in the delicate formal balance, things return to their apparent normal state for a few seconds before the final race.
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856) Dichterliebe, Op. 48 Text: Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)
1840 was Robert Schumann’s Liederjahr, his year of song. Working from May 24 to June 1, he wrote 20 songs in just nine days (aside from 148 others that year), setting poems from Heinrich Heine’s book of Lyrisches Intermezzo. Sixteen of these songs would make the cut to become the
interconnected cycle Dichterliebe (Poet’s Love), which he revised and finally published in 1844. During the work’s genesis, he was pursuing a legal case against his former piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, for the right to marry his daughter, Clara. The couple’s love has often been connected with that of Dichterliebe, though the details are very different: Robert and Clara were both passionate for one another (the only obstacle was her father), and they enjoyed a happy resolution, marrying in September 1840. Not so for Dichterliebe. “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai” (In the wondrously beautiful month of May) is a blissful love song, but the hazy piano introduction hints that this is a memory, and not the present. The first six songs continue in this frame, offering vignettes from the poet’s relationship with the unnamed girl, culminating in a grandiose comparison of her beauty to an image of Mary in the Cologne Cathedral. The seventh song yanks back to the present, and the poet acknowledges his loss. He insists “Ich grolle nicht” (I bear no grudge), even if the music suggests otherwise. From there, he grieves, revealing some details of what transpired in “Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen” (There is fluting and fiddling) and “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen” (A boy loves a girl). His love loved someone else, and then married a third man out of spite. The next several songs enter the world of dreams, beginning with the sparse “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet” (I wept in my dream) and ending in the fantastical “Aus alten Märchen winkt es” (From old fairytales it beckons). Finally the poet buries the past in “Die alien, bösen Lieder” (The old, angry songs), locking it away in a coffin. The piano offers a pensive coda, circling back to the atmosphere of the beginning. Heine knowingly drew from the tritest Romantic clichés in his poetry, writing with a wink just short of parody. It’s less clear if Schumann also intended some level of irony in 2020 Summer Season
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the music, or if his take is entirely earnest. Certainly the cycle is one-sided, and its central character comes across as callow and self-centered, putting the girl on the proverbial pedestal, and then congratulating himself for letting her keep it. But the music demands sympathy for his plight: just because his love and loss are overwrought doesn’t mean they feel less real.
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 11:00 AM The Domo Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello
PAUL WIANCKO: X Suite for Solo Violin Prelude Allemande Canon Courante Nocturne Bourée Orison JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major, BWV 1007 Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Minuet I – Minuet II Gigue THOMAS MORLEY: Fantasia “Il Lamento” Performed without pause PĒTERIS VASKS: Castillo interior for Violin and Cello
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
PAUL WIANCKO (b. 1983) X Suite for Solo Violin
Paul Wiancko is a California native and now a New York-based cellist and composer. He has collaborated with Midori, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Nico Muhly, the Kronos Quartet, and served as composer in residence at Spoleto Festival USA. X Suite for Solo Violin is modeled on the music of J.S. Bach and the form of the Baroque dance suite, with the addition of a few non-dance movements including a Canon, a Nocturne, and an Orison (a prayer). Wiancko composed the suite in 2019, and Alexi Kenney premiered it that July at London’s Wigmore Hall.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major, BWV 1007
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. 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. 122
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Bach wrote the cello suites sometime before 1720, likely during his time as Kapellmeister in Köthen, though they may have earlier origins. In Köthen he worked for Prince Leopold, a young aristocrat who, 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. 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 Köthen he had such players close: the musicians in Prince Leopold’s Kapelle were a tight-knit bunch who rehearsed in Bach’s apartment. Around 1721, Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, copied out the cello suites, leaving us with one of two important sources for them (the other was copied 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. 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. The Suite No. 1 in G Major is almost certainly the most famous piece in the cello 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. 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. The Sarabande is poised and solitary, a Spanish dance with roots in colonial South America that in time lost its once-erotic connotations. 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. The Gigue derived from the British Isles—literally, a jig— and drives itself out with energy to the end.
THOMAS MORLEY (1557/8–1602) Fantasia “Il Lamento”
Morley was an English composer and a contemporary of Shakespeare, living in Bishopsgate, London, at the same time as the Bard. They might have been neighbors, or even collaborators, as Morley wrote the only surviving musical setting of a Shakespearian poem dating from the playwright’s life. The son of a brewer, he served as a chorister as a child, and then studied with William Byrd, the leading English composer of the Renaissance. Morley became fascinated by the
Italian madrigal—a secular, a cappella style that married poetry and song—and adapted it for England, instigating an Elizabethan musical craze. Fantasia “Il Lamento” comes from Morley’s First Booke of Canzonets to Two Voices, published in 1595. It is one of nine fantasias without lyrics included in the collection (the rest are songs with text), and was intended to be either sung without words or played on any two instruments available. This was the popular, domestic music of the day: even a lament was meant to be fun to perform, emphasizing the sweetness of sadness, and bringing out clever interplay between the voices.
PĒTERIS VASKS (b. 1946) Castillo interior for Violin And Cello
Pēteris Vasks is a Latvian composer known for his contemplative music, often with spiritual, ethical, and environmentalist themes. He trained as a double bassist and worked as an orchestral musician as a young man, then served a year in the Soviet army, and finally graduated from the Latvian State Conservatory in Riga in 1978 with a degree in composition. Since the reestablishment of Latvian independence in 1991, his music has performed internationally, and particularly championed by violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Sol Gabetta. Castillo interior was inspired by Teresa of Ávila (1515– 1582), a Spanish Carmelite nun, scholar, and writer, who sought a union with god through internal prayer. Vasks writes: This composition for violin and cello was composed in 2013 following a suggestion of cellist Sol Gabetta. At the beginning of 2014, I spent some time at a meditation house in a remote location on the 2020 Summer Season
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Baltic Sea, where I found inspiration for the name of the string duo. In honor of Saint Teresa of Ă vila, the piece is entitled Castillo interior. This title refers to the book Moradas del Castillo interior (The Interior Castle), written in 1577, considered as the magnum opus of the great mystic.
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WEEK SEVEN
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 6:30 PM Olivier Music Barn Tyler Duncan, baritone Alexi Kenney, violin Oliver Herbert, cello Pedja Muzijevic, piano
CHARLES IVES: “Songs My Mother Taught Me” STEPHEN FOSTER: “Beautiful Dreamer” IVES: “Charlie Rutlage” FOSTER: “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” FOSTER: “Nelly Bly” IVES: “At the River” IVES: “The Circus Band” FRANZ SCHUBERT: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 100, D. 929 Allegro Andante con moto Scherzando: Allegro moderato Allegro moderato
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ABOUT THE PROGRAM BENJAMIN PESETSKY
STEPHEN FOSTER (1826–1864) “Beautiful Dreamer” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” “Nelly Bly”
Stephen Foster was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the Fourth of July, 1826, and by most accounts became the first American to make a living solely by writing music. His songs are part of the foundation of both American classical and popular music, and have influenced musicians ranging from Dvořák to Bob Dylan. In 1847, while Foster was working as a bookkeeper for his family’s steamship company, he entered a song, “Oh! Susanna,” into a contest at an ice-cream saloon. It was a hit, spread like wildfire, and became the theme of the California Gold Rush. Publishing contracts followed, and the early 1850s were Foster’s most successful and productive period, though he drank to excess and had frequent conflicts with his wife, Jane. In 1860 the couple separated, and he moved to New York City. He wrote Union anthems through the Civil War, but his standard of living declined as lax copyright enforcement made it increasingly difficult to earn money from music publication. In January 1864, he fell unconscious in the squalor of his boarding-house room, hit his head, and died at Bellevue Hospital. Foster’s music was based in minstrelsy, and many of his songs were first popularized by groups that performed in blackface. Some abolitionists, however, found a degree of social value in his work, especially in contrast with other songwriters who portrayed African Americans more demeaningly. Frederick Douglass thought Foster’s songs could “awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish,” and in the 1890s Harry Burleigh introduced Dvořák to Foster songs alongside African-American spirituals. Foster himself only once visited the South, and his frequent musical evocations of the region are almost entirely imagined. His ballads and 128
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parlor songs, meanwhile, often draw from Irish and German dance music, styles popular among European immigrants in the urban North. As his work was absorbed into the American vernacular, even mistaken for traditional folk song, its sources and original context were somewhat obscured. Today, Foster’s music is often interpreted as art song. Of the selections on this program, “Beautiful Dreamer” is a late work, likely written in 1862, then misplaced by a publisher and unreleased until after his death. The iconic “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” written in 1854 and dedicated to Foster’s estranged wife, has been memorably recorded by artists as different as Marilyn Horne and Sam Cooke. “Nelly Bly,” from 1850, is about domestic work and marriage; in the 1880s it inspired the pen name of Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochran), a pioneering female journalist and adventurer who went undercover in an insane asylum and traveled around the world in 72 days, besting Jules Verne.
CHARLES IVES (1874–1954) “Songs My Mother Taught Me” “Charlie Rutlage” “At the River” “The Circus Band”
When he wasn’t composing, Charles Ives worked as a New York insurance executive, his business colleagues having little idea what he was working on in his spare time. In fact, hardly anyone knew what he was composing, since he didn’t pursue performances—instead, he would occasionally hire musicians to try out his pieces in private, and they were often confused by his dissonant harmonies and collage-like use of popular tunes (including many by Stephen Foster). In the 1920s Ives finally began to
promote his completed pieces, and stopped writing new ones altogether (sometimes revising past work to appear more modern, claiming to have been ahead of Schoenberg and Stravinsky). In 1922 he self-published 114 Songs, a collection of nearly all the solo vocal music he had ever written. In the book’s afterword, he explained: The printing of this collection was undertaken primarily, in order to have a few clear copies that could be sent to friends who, from time to time, have been interested enough to ask for copies of some of the songs; but the job has grown into something different,—it contains plenty of songs which have not been and will not be asked for. It stands now, if it stands for anything, as a kind of “buffer state,”—an opportunity for evading a question, somewhat embarrassing to answer,—“Why do you write so much——, which no one ever sees?” There are several good reasons, none of which are worth recording. “Songs my Mother Taught Me” dates to 1895, while Ives was a student at Yale, and uses a Czech poem by Adolf Heyduk (translated by Natalie Macfarran), which had previously been set by Dvořák. “Charlie Rutlage” is a cowboy elegy, based on a text collected by John Lomax (father of Alan), with a middle that collapses into typically Ivesian cacophony. “At the River,” from 1916, is an arrangement of a hymn by the preacher Robert Lowry, which Ives had previously adapted for his Fourth Violin Sonata. “The Circus Band” is a funny song that riffs on the sounds and scenes of a parade.
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797–1828) Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 100, D. 929
In modern terms, you could describe Schubert as an underground musician. During his brief life, his music was mostly appreciated by a circle of friends in Vienna who gathered at unadvertised concerts called Schubertiades to hear his work. While Beethoven was a renowned musical figure living in the same city, Schubert kept a lower profile. Ironically, Beethoven’s eccentric and reclusive nature brought him a level of celebrity, while Schubert’s modesty and friendliness brought him recognition only among those who knew him well. If the two composers ever met (sources are divided), it was only in passing, but Schubert grieved deeply when Beethoven died on March 26, 1827. He served as a torchbearer for the funeral, which drew tens of thousands of mourners. Soon after, recognizing a void in the musical world, and likely hoping to fill it, Schubert began planning the only public concert he would ever give. Exactly a year after Beethoven’s death, on March 26, 1828, a crowd filled the hall of Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde to hear a program of Schubert’s music. The event was a critical, popular, and financial success—but soon Schubert was short on money and desperately sick with syphilis, and he died the following year at age 31. One of the centerpieces of the 1828 concert was his brand new Piano Trio in E-flat Major. Best known for songs, he was no doubt hoping to show his breadth as a composer of serious chamber music as well. The musicologist Christopher H. Gibbs has argued that the Trio is also a musical memorial to Beethoven, referencing the Eroica Symphony (also in E-flat major and dedicated in “memory of a great man”), and that its slow movement is a funeral march in Beethoven’s honor. It also became his first piece published outside of Vienna, landing with a Leipzig publisher, though it was only released the month of Schubert’s death and he likely never saw the edition. 2020 Summer Season
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The E-flat Trio is symphonic in scope, its first movement bold yet graceful—cycling through three different themes, and showing off some Schubertian trademarks: the beating-heart rhythms, the suspended held-note transitions, and fluttering decorations on melodic lines. The Andante is a funeral march (though not explicitly called one), draping an extended melody over a tight, clockwork pulse. A twonote, octave-drop motif is said to derive from a Swedish folk song, representing the word “farewell.”
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The Scherzo is a canon, where the strings echo and overlap with the piano, while its trio section is a heavier dance, suggesting military drums. There is an unusual and dramatic silence in the second half, after which the first movement’s rhythmic pulse is recalled. The finale, too, circles back to material heard earlier—after romping through new themes, the funeral march resurfaces like a bittersweet memory.
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2020 Artist Profiles
Edward Arron Yulianna Avdeeva Benjamin Beilman Gabriel Cabezas Claire Chase Jenny Chen Richard Goode Tyler Duncan Zoltán Fejérvári Boris Giltburg Marc-André Hamelin Oliver Herbert Arlen Hlusko Chad Hoopes Katie Hyun Alice Ivy-Pemberton Alexi Kenney Dasol Kim Tessa Lark Valentina Lisitsa Anne-Marie McDermott Dimitri Murrath Pedja Muzijevic Roman Rabinovich Rolston String Quartet Masumi Per Rostad Inbal Segev Yevgeny Sudbin Tesla String Quartet Bora Yoon 2020 Summer Season
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E DWAR D
AR RO N
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Edward Arron made his New York recital debut in
2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has since appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. The 2020–21 season marks his 12th season as the artistic director and host of the acclaimed Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. He is also the artistic director of the Festival Series in Beaufort, South Carolina, and is the co-artistic director with his wife, pianist Jeewon Park, of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Arron tours as a member of the renowned Ehnes Quartet and appears regularly at the Caramoor International Music Festival, where he has been a resident performer and curator of chamber music concerts for more than 25 years. Other festival appearances include Ravinia, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, Spoleto USA, Seattle Chamber Music, Kuhmo, PyeongChang, Evian, Seoul Spring, Lake Champlain Chamber Music, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, and Bard Music Festival. He has participated in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project as well as Isaac Stern’s International Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem. In 2016 Arron joined the faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst after serving on the faculty of New York University from 2009 to 2016.
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ulianna Avdeeva gained international recognition in 2010, when she won first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition. After her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May 2019, Avdeeva began a dynamic 2019–20 season, which included debuts with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as well as a return to Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Further highlights include new collaborations with SWR Symphonieorchester, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Dresden Philharmonic, and Sinfonie Orchester Basel. In her native Russia, Avdeeva debuts at Zaryadye Concert Hall, following another performance with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. Avdeeva’s Chopin interpretations have earned particular praise for bringing out both the strength and the refinement of his music. Her long association with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute has won her a huge following in Poland. She has forged strong relationships with the Warsaw Philharmonic and the National Polish Radio Symphony. Her third solo recording on the French label Mirare, featuring works by Bach, was released in 2017. She also recorded the Chopin concertos with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, led by Frans Brüggen, and a solo performance that was part of a collection featuring winners of the Chopin Competition on Deutsche Grammophon. A committed chamber musician, Avdeeva has worked with the Philharmonia Quartet and regularly tours Europe with violinists Julia Fischer and Gidon Kremer.
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B E N JAM I N
B E I LMAN
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B
orn in 1989, Benjamin Beilman is winning praise across the globe for his compelling and impassioned performances, his rich tone, and his searing lyricism. During the Beethoven celebrations in 2020, Beilman performs the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Wrocław Philharmonic, the Orchestre Métropolitain, and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Other highlights of the 2019–20 season include debuts with the Danish National Symphony Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Tonkunstler Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Utah Symphony, and Minnesota Orchestra, and his return to the London Chamber Orchestra to perform and direct. Beilman has performed with many major orchestras, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Sydney Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Houston Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra (both at home and at Carnegie Hall). As a recitalist and chamber musician, Beilman performs regularly at major venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, the Louvre in Paris, Philharmonie in Berlin, Concertgebouw in Amstedam, and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. He has performed at festivals including Verbier, Aix-en-Provence Easter, Dvořák Prague, Robeco Summer Concerts in Amsterdam, Music@Menlo, Marlboro Music Festival, and Seattle Chamber Music Society. In 2018 he premiered a new work dedicated to the political activist Angela Davis, written by Frederic Rzewski and commissioned by Music Accord, and performed it extensively across the United States
Gabriel Cabezas is a precise and passionate perform-
er who is fast becoming one of the most sought-after soloists and collaborators of his generation. He imbues the pillar scores of the cello repertoire with the vivacity of newly written work and performs world premieres with gravitas and command. His career spans solo appearances, chamber music, collaborations with bands and songwriters, and curation.
GAB R I E L C AB EZ A S
Cabezas has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has premiered dozens of new works by some of the most brilliant composers of his time. This season, Cabezas launches the Waypoints series with the Metropolis Ensemble, with whom he is a resident artist. Other season highlights include per- formances at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the Momentary in Arkansas, and a solo recital at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. Cabezas is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and a co-founder of Duende, a new music and contemporary dance collective. His first full-length album, a recording of Benjamin Britten’s Cello Suites, was released on PEOPLE, a collaborative streaming platform created by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner. He is currently working on an album of cello music by Gabriella Smith, to be released on the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community. In 2016, Gabriel 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. Gabriel studied at the Curtis Institute of Music under Carter Brey.
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Described by The New York Times as “the most
CL AI R E CHA S E
FLUTE
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important flutist of our time,” Claire Chase is a soloist, collaborative artist, curator, and advocate for new and experimental music. Over the past decade she has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works for the flute, and she has championed new music internationally by building organizations, forming alliances, pioneering commissioning initiatives, and supporting educational programs that reach new audiences. Chase founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She is in the midst of a 23-year initiative called Density 2036 to commission an entirely new body of repertoire for solo flute, leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s seminal 1936 flute solo Density 21.5. A deeply committed educator, Chase was coartistic director of the summer music programs at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity from 2017–19, where she and co-director Steven Schick founded Ensemble Evolution, an intensive program for emerging musicians seeking to reimagine the 21st-century new-music ensemble, and Evolution of the String Quartet (EQ), a program for young string quartets and composers that combines historically informed practice, traditional repertoire, and the newest of new music. Chase is currently professor of the practice of music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on ensemble building, cultural activism, and collaboration across disciplines. She lives in Brooklyn.
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Jenny Chen enrolled in the
Curtis Institute at age 10 and sped through a master’s degree at Yale at 18. At 20 she began a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music. She is currently active as a staff pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music. Chen has been on full scholarships throughout her education and has received several honors, including a Teaching Assistant Award at Eastman, the Suzanne Roberts Cultural Development Fund Annual Fellow, Taiwan Chi-Mei Artist scholarship, Stravinsky Awards Scholarship, and the Taiwan Dong-Sung Cultural Foundation scholarship. As a winner of the Lowry Award, Chen made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019. Among her mentors are Eleanor Sokoloff, Gary Graffman, Robert Blocker, Melvin Chen, Douglas Humpherys, Anne-Marie McDermott, and AndréMichel Schub. As a chamber musician, Chen made her debut with Taipei Symphony Orchestra at age nine and performed solo concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, New York Downtown Sinfonietta, Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She was invited to be an artist in residence for festivals such as Tippet Rise, Bravo! Vail, Mainly Mozart, Ocean Reef, and Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Encounters. Chen has also collaborated with other musician, including Arnold Steinhardt, Peter Wiley, Anne-Marie McDermott, Andrew Bain, Zach DePue, and Anton Nel. She has won top prizes at the New York International Piano Competition, Eastman Piano Competition, MTNA Competition, and International Franz Liszt Piano Competition.
JENNY CH E N
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Tyler Duncan has performed music ranging from the
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Baroque to the contemporary. His engagements include performances with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, and City Opera Vancouver, as well as at the Princeton Festival. He recently made his Japanese debut in Carmen, under Seiji Ozawa. He has worked with conductors including Masaaki Suzuki, Helmuth Rilling, Michael Tilson-Thomas, and Nicholas McGegan. Frequently accompanied by pianist Erika Switzer, Duncan has given acclaimed recitals in New York, Boston, Paris, and Montreal, as well as throughout Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, and South Africa.
Duncan’s recordings include the lead male role in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Portland Baroque, works by Purcell, Carissimi’s Jepthe with Les Voix Baroque, and Honegger and Ibert’s L’Aiglon with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony. In 2019 he sang the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s opera Leonardo at New York’s 92nd Street Y. His gift for art song has brought him prizes from the Wigmore Hall (London) and ARD Music Competition (Munich), Joy in Singing, Naumburg and New York Oratorio Society Competitions, Prix International Pro Musicis, and the Bernard Diamant Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. He holds music degrees from the University of British Columbia, Germany’s Hochschule für Musik (Augsburg), and Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Munich). He is a founding faculty member of the Vancouver International Song Institute.
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oltán Fejérvári has emerged as one of the most intriguing pianists among the newest generation of Hungarian musicians. Winner of the 2017 Concours Musical International de Montréal and recipient of the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2016, Fejérvári has given recitals at the most renowned venues in Europe and the Americas. He has performed as a soloist with Hungary’s top orchestras and has collaborated with many of the world’s leading conductors. Fejérvári’s solo recording debut, Janáček, released in January 2019, earned rave reviews as “the most sensitive and deeply probative recording” of that composer’s work (Gramophone).
ZO LTÁN FE J É RVÁR I
Continuing to perform chamber music, recital, and orchestral repertoire spanning five centuries, Fejérvári begins the 2019–20 season at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and makes his Washington Performing Arts recital debut in November. Additional recital debuts include the La Jolla Music Society; Howland Chamber Music Circle in Beacon, New York; Frederic Chopin Society of Minnesota; Sanford-Hill Piano Series at Western Washington University; and the Norfolk and Norwich Music Society in the United Kingdom. Fejérvári has collaborated with the San Antonio and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras, Czech Philharmonic, Concerto Budapest Symphonic Orchestra with András Keller, and Hungarian Symphony Orchestra Miskolc with Mátyás Antál. As a chamber musician, Fejérvári performs with the Elias Quartet presented by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and with violinist Diana Tishchenko at the Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence.
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Born in Moscow in 1984, the Israeli pianist Boris
BO R I S G I LTB U RG
Giltburg is an internationally acclaimed interpreter who has appeared with many leading orchestras, including Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, and Seattle Symphony. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2010 and his Australian debut in 2017, and he has toured South America and China several times. He has played recitals in leading venues, including the Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, London Southbank Centre, Radio France Auditorium, Toppan Hall (Tokyo), and Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre. To celebrate the Beethoven anniversary in 2020, Giltburg has embarked on a project to learn all the sonatas over the course of the year, filming and blogging about the process as he goes and appearing on BBC Television. He recorded the complete Beethoven piano concertos for Naxos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko, and he played all the concertos over three days at the Flagey Piano Festival with the Brussels Philharmonic.Â
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Other highlights of 2019–20 include performances of the Rachmaninoff preludes at Bozar Centre for Fine Arts and Wigmore Hall, and his debut in the Master Pianists series at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He is resident artist with the Valencia Symphony.
Richard Goode is internationally recognized as one
of the leading interpreters of Classical and Romantic music. In regular performances in the world’s music capitals and through his acclaimed Nonesuch recordings, he has won a large and devoted following. Gramophone magazine recently captured the essence of Goode’s artistry: “Every time we hear him, he impresses us as better than we remembered, surprising us, surpassing our expectations and communicating perceptions that stay in the mind.”
R I CHAR D G OO D E
One of today’s most revered recitalists, Goode performed this season in London, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Costa Mesa, Houston, Rockport, and Tallahassee, as well as at the Ravinia Festival and colleges and universities around the country. He played Mozart with Vladimir Jurowski and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and performed in recital in Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. His masterclasses are hailed as truly memorable events. In recent seasons, Goode appeared as soloist with Louis Langrée and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in a program filmed for a documentry celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the country’s most popular summer musical events. He also toured in the United States with his recording partners, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer. Their recording of the five Beethoven Piano Concertos has won worldwide acclaim; Goode performed Concertos Nos. 2 and 4 on tour. Goode has made more than two dozen recordings for Nonesuch over the years, ranging from solo and chamber works to lieder and concertos. He lives in New York City with his wife, the violinist Marcia Weinfeld.
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Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for blend-
ing consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the repertoire, as well as for exploring the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, both in concert and on recordings.
MARC-AN D R É HAM E LI N
Hamelin began the 2019–20 season performing the Brahms piano concertos with the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, at Le Festival de Lanaudière, and the world premiere of Ryan Wigglesworth’s piano concerto, at the BBC Proms, led by the composer. Other appearances include recitals at the Schubertiade, Helsingborg Piano Festival, Mänttä Music Festival, Domaine Forget, Orford Music Festival, the Newport Music Festival, and the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, with his friend and regular collaborator, Leif Ove Andsnes. Recital appearances this season include a return to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium for the Great Artists Series. He also performs at Wigmore Hall, the George Enescu Festival, Ascona (Switzerland), Alte Oper Frankfurt, Moscow State Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie for the Husum Rarities of Piano Music Festival, and the Heidelberg Festival, among other engagements.
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Hamelin is the inaugural guest curator for Portland Piano International, where he opened the season with two solo recitals. He returns to San Francisco Performances as a “perspectives artist” for their 40th-anniversary season; he also performed Winterreise with tenor Mark Padmore and played the world premiere of his own Piano Quintet, commissioned by SFP and performed by himself and the Alexander String Quartet. An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, Hamelin lives in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller.
Oliver Herbert has earned a reputation for his distinct voice and individual style. Performing a wide range of repertoire, he has recently appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Warsaw Philharmonic. Other engagements include performances in the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series, Union College Concert Series, and the San Francisco Symphony Soundbox, among others. Herbert has worked with many renowned conductors, including Michael Tilson Thomas, Juanjo Mena, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. As a chamber musician, he has performed with some of the leading musicians of our time, including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Franklin Cohen, Pamela Frank, Miriam Fried, Nobuko Imai, and Meng-Chieh Liu. Herbert frequently collaborates with pianist Xiaohui Yang, with whom he has played recital tours in both the United States and Greece.
O LIVE R H E R B E RT
Herbert regularly participates in music festivals, including the Caramoor Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Krzyżowa Music, Music in the Vineyards, Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove, the Ravinia Festival Steans Music Institute, and the Verbier Festival Academy. At the 2017 Verbier Festival, he was awarded the Prix Jean-Nicolas Firmenich. He has also appeared on NPR’s From the Top. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Herbert has won a top prize and a special prize in the XI Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition in 2018; first prize and the Pablo Casals prize in the 2015 Irving M. Klein International String Competition; and a top prize in the 2015 Stulberg International String Competition. He currently plays a 1769 Guadagnini cello that belonged to Antonio Janigro, on generous loan from the Janigro family.
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AR LE N H LU S KO
The Grammy Award-winning Canadian cellist Arlen
Hlusko is a dynamic, versatile young artist who has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. A laureate of numerous competitions and a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, she is currently a member of Ensemble Connect (the resident ensemble of Carnegie Hall) and regularly performs with several ensembles based on the East Coast, including the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Dolce Suono Ensemble. Highlights of the 2019–20 season include debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as several performances at Carnegie Hall, and appearances at the Library of Congress, Merkin Hall, and the Southbank Centre in London. Hlusko is a featured performer at several festivals this summer, including Spoleto USA and Music from Angel Fire. Committed to using her music to serve her community, she founded her own interactive chamber music concert series, Philadelphia Performances for Autism, and is involved with several communities in Philadelphia and New York City, including Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
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A
CHAD H OO PE S
Born in Florida, Hoopes began studying violin at age three in Minneapolis and continued his training at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is a 2017 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and won first prize at the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. He plays a Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin, which was made in Brooklyn in 1991 for Isaac Stern.
VIOLIN
cclaimed by critics worldwide for his “jaw-dropping virtuosity” and magnificent tone, Chad Hoopes remains one of the most consistent and versatile violinists of his generation. As part of the Beethoven 250-year celebrations in the 2019–20 season, Hoopes collaborates with Carnegie Hall in a performance and lecture at Columbia University. Other highlights of the current season include a tour of China featuring performances with the China Philharmonic and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, and he makes his Chinese recital debut in Chongqing at Philharmonic Hall. Other recent debuts include performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, and l’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. He has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestra, as well as Minnesota Orchestra, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra. Hoopes frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, both on their national and international tours and at Alice Tully Hall.
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K ATI E HYUN
A
winner of Astral Artists’ 2016 National Auditions, violinist Katie Hyun has been described as “a virtuoso by anyone’s measure” (The Berkshire Review). She has appeared in numerous festivals, including most recently the American Bach Soloists, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, the Outer Banks Chamber Music Series, and Mostly Mozart. Ms. Hyun is the founder and director of the Quodlibet Ensemble, a small chamber orchestra that bridges the gap between modern and Baroque styles of playing, and is set to make an appearance at the Five Boroughs Music Festival in October. Recent notable performances include Bernstein’s Serenade with NOVUS New York, and her debut recital with Astral Artists in Philadelphia where she featured a program that used both Baroque and modern violins. On modern violin, Ms. Hyun serves as concertmaster for NOVUS Trinity Wall Street and regularly performs both solo and chamber music in the New York and Philadelphia area. On Baroque violin, she appears frequently with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and Seraphic Fire. V I O L I N /A R T I S T I N R E S I D E N C E
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raised by The New York Times for her “sweettoned playing,” Alice Ivy-Pemberton studied with Nurit Pacht at the Kaufman Music Center in New York before continuing her studies at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho. Recent highlights include winning Juilliard’s Violin Concerto Competition, appearing on the Perlman Music Program’s Stires-Stark Alumni Recital Series, participating in Music@Menlo’s International Program and 2020 Winter Residency, invitations to the IMS Prussia Cove Masterclasses and Yellow Barn program, and performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The 2020-21 season will see her debut on Merkin Concert Hall’s Tuesday Matinée series. Ivy-Pemberton has sought to promote justice and equality through fundraising, community engagement, and creative collaborations throughout her career. Her most recent project, an internationally recognized audiovisual work entitled Drowning Monuments, brings together five newly commissioned pieces for solo violin by Juilliard composers, each reflecting a part of New York City that will be severely threatened by climate change before the end of the century. Ivy-Pemberton received her bachelor of music from the Juilliard School in May of 2019 as a recipient of both a Kovner Fellowship and a Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant, in recognition of “tremendous talent, promise, creativity, and potential to make a significant impact in the performing arts.”
ALI CE IV Y- PE M B E RTO N
V I O L I N /A RTI ST I N R E S I D E N C E
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ALE XI K E N N E Y
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lexi Kenney, the recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2020 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, has performed as soloist with the Detroit, Indianapolis, Oregon, Columbus, and California symphonies; the St. Paul and Lausanne chamber orchestras; and in recital at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the MeckleburgVorpommern Festival, and the Phillips Collection. He has been profiled by the New York Times and has written for The Strad. Kenney regularly performs as chamber musician at Marlboro, Bridgehampton, ChamberFest Cleveland, Caramoor, Ravinia, and Kronberg, and as a member of the Bowers Program at Lincoln Center (formerly CMS Two). He has also served as guest concertmaster of both the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Born in Palo Alto, California, Kenney studied at the New England Conservatory with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. He plays a violin made in 2009 by Stefan-Peter Greiner in London.
Among Dasol Kim’s adventurous musical endeavors
are all 24 Chopin Preludes on a single program and the complete cycle of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas in Switzerland and Korea over a four-year period. As concerto soloist, he has given standout performances with the New York Philharmonic in Seoul, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Berlin Chamber Orchestra, Belgium National Orchestra, and Korea’s KBS Symphony, with conductors including Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop, and David Zinman.
DA SO L KIM
Kim won the John Giordano Jury Chairman Discretionary Award at the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which led to a return for special performances at the 2019 Cliburn Festival. He won First Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, made his New York and Washington recital debuts in the Young Concert Artists Series, and performed in recital at New York’s Morgan Library. A native of South Korea, Kim moved to Germany to study at the age of 15. He is a graduate of the Hanover Music School, where he studied with Arie Vardi and Gerald Fauth. He served as the first artist-in-residence at Seoul’s Kumho Art Hall, a position launched with him in mind. His debut recording, Dasol Kim Plays Schumann, was issued by Deutsche Grammophon. PIANO
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TE SSA L AR K
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Tessa Lark has been consistently praised for her
astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. A 2020 Grammy nominee in the best classical instrumental solo category, silver medalist of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, recipient of a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition, she is also an acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky. Since her concerto debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at age 16 she has performed with numerous prominent orchestras, recital venues, and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Marlboro Music, and Lincoln Center, where in 2020 she was honored with one of the center’s prestigious Emerging Artist awards. Three recordings featuring her were released in 2019: her solo debut album Fantasy, comprising her own Appalachian Fantasy and a variety of classic works in fantasia form; the Grammy-nominated SKY, whose title selection is a violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke; and Invention, the debut album of her violin-bass duo Tessa Lark & Michael Thurber. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory and holds an artist diploma from the Juilliard School. Lark plays a c. 1600 G.P. Maggini violin on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. She is represented worldwide by Sciolino Artist Management.
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alentina Lisitsa is the first YouTube star of classical music and the first classical artist to convert her internet success into a global concert career in the principal venues of Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia. She posted her first video online in 2007, and the views increased staggeringly. Now thanks to an unwavering dedication toward her audience and a personal approach to videos, her YouTube channel has more than 500,000 subscribers and 147 million views with an average of 75,000 views per day.
VALE NTI NA LIS ITSA
This singular success has led Valentina to perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall before an audience of 8,000 in June 2012, which sealed her international breakthrough. The 2019–20 season saw her perform recitals in Istanbul, Moscow, Zurich, Geneva, Essen, and Tbilisi. She also made her debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Alpesh Chauhan performing Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2. She returns to Fort Wayne Philharmonic and tours New Zealand with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performing Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3. Born in Kiev, Lisitsa started learning the piano at age three and gave her first public recital a year later. She graduated from Kiev Conservatory, subsequently moving to the United States and giving her debut performance in New York in 1995. Now she shares her time between Moscow and Rome.
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Anne-Marie McDermott is a consummate artist AN N E- MAR I E M CD E R M OT T
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who balances a versatile career as a soloist and collaborator. With more than 50 concertos in her repertoire, McDermott has performed with many leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfรณnica Nacional de Mexico. She has collaborated with many esteemed conductors, including Jaap van Zweden, Gilbert Varga, Alan Gilbert, and Carlos Miguel Prieto. An artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, McDermott performs and tours extensively with them each season. Bridge Records has released volume one of Mozart concertos with the Odense Symphony and volumes two and three will be released in 2020. Other recordings include the Haydn and Wuorinen sonatas as well as the Poul Ruders Piano Concerto in 2019. In addition to her affiliation with the McKnight Chamber Music Festival, McDermott is the artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, and curator of the Mainly Mozart Spotlight Series. In addition to numerous concerts in the United States, she performs in Toulouse, Bogotรก, Mexico City, Brittany, Denmark, and Taipei this season, and recently completed the Beethoven concerto cycle with Santa Fe Pro Musica. She lives in New York with her husband and travels extensively with her Maltese, Lola.
Born in Brussels, the Belgian-American violist Dimitri Murrath has made his mark as a soloist on the international scene, performing regularly in venues such as the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Royal Festival Hall, Kioi Hall, and ThÊâtre de la Ville.
D I M ITR I M U R R ATH
A first-prize winner at the Primrose International Viola Competition, Murrath has won numerous awards, including second prize at the First Tokyo International Viola Competition. In 2012 he was named laureate of the Juventus Festival, an award recognizing young European soloists. He is a 2014 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, which allowed him to record and release his first solo album in 2017, featuring music by Vieuxtemps, Clarke, and Hindemith. Murrath began his musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, where he studied with Natalia Boyarsky. He went on to work in London with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Murrath graduated from the New England Conservatory as a student of Kim Kashkashian. After nine years on the viola and chamber music faculties at New England Conservatory, Murrath became Professor of Viola and Chair of Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Murrath participates in the Music for Food project, which raises awareness of the widespread problem of hunger. VIOLA
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PE DJA M UZIJ E VI C
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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 have included performances with the Atlanta Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Zagreb Philharmonic. Other recent engagements include recitals at 92nd Street Y in New York, the Honens Festival in Calgary, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s Bach Festival; returns to the Spoleto USA Festival, Verbier Festival Academy, and Tippet Rise; as well as Framing Time, a staged presentation of Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories with dancer Cesc Gelabert and lighting designer Burke Brown for Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival and in Leverkusen and Barcelona. He has toured with Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Dance Project throughout the United States, South America, Europe, and Asia; and with Simon Keenlyside in Trisha Brown’s staged version of Schubert’s Winterreise at Lincoln Center, the Barbican in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, and Opera National de Paris. Muzijevic has been the artistic administrator at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York since its opening in 2005 and is the artistic advisor to Tippet Rise. He also directs a residency at Canada’s Banff Centre called Concert in 21st Century. He lives in New York City.
Roman Rabinovich has been highly lauded by
"The New York Times", "BBC Music Magazine," "San Francisco Classical Voice," and others. He has performed throughout Europe and the United States in venues including Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center.
RO MAN
R AB I N OVI CH
In the 2019–20 season, Rabinovich appeared three times in New York City including Rockefeller University with the Escher Quartet and two all-Haydn concerts at the Tisch Center for the Performing Arts. In addition to recitals in several American cities, Rabinovich gave concerts with cellist Camille Thomas. Rabinovich made his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 10. He was a top prizewinner at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008, and in 2015 was selected by Sir András Schiff as one of three pianists for the inaugural Building Bridges series, created to highlight young pianists of unusual promise. Rabinovich graduated from 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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LU R I L E E , V I O L I N E M I LY K R U S P E , V I O L I N HEZEKIAH LEUNG, VIOL A J O N AT H A N LO , C E L LO
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anada’s Rolston String Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Chamber Music Residency. They take their name from Canadian violinist Thomas Rolston, founder and longtime director of the Music and Sound Programs at the Banff Centre. The quartet’s honors include the 2018 Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; the Astral Artists national auditions; prizes in the Banff, Bordeaux, and Chamber Music Yellow Springs competitions; the University of Michigan’s M-Prize; and inclusion in CBC Radio’s 2016 list of “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30.” Highlights of the quartet’s 2019–20 season include concerts at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, Texas Performing Arts in Austin, Chamber Music Northwest, and Calgary Pro Musica; the chamber music societies of Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Vancouver; the Louvre; and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, Belgium. The quartet’s debut album Souvenir, released in November 2019 on the Fuga Libera label, is an all-Tchaikovsky disc including Souvenir de Florence (in collaboration with Miguel da Silva, viola, and Gary Hoffman, cello), the String Quartet No. 1, and a string quartet arrangement of The Children’s Album.
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raised for his “burnished sound” by The New York Times and described as an “electrifying, poetic, and sensitive musician,” the Grammy Award-winning, Japanese-Norwegian violist Masumi Per Rostad hails from the gritty East Village of 1980s New York. He was raised in an artist loft converted from a garage with a 1957 Chevy Bel Air as the remnant centerpiece in their living room. Rostad regularly tours internationally and has performed at many of the most prominent festivals, including Marlboro, Spoleto USA, Music@Menlo, Caramoor, Music in the Vineyards, Bowdoin, and the Aspen Music Festival. His guest violist collaborations include programs with the St Lawrence, Ying, Pavel Haas, Miró, Verona, and Emerson String Quartets, as well as with the Horszowski Trio. As a member of the Pacifica Quartet from 2001–17, Rostad regularly performed in the world’s greatest halls including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Sydney’s City Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Munich’s Herkuleshaal, Paris’s Louvre and Cité de la Musique, and Berlin’s Konzerthaus among many others. In addition to maintaining an active performance schedule, he serves on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music. His Amati viola was crafted in Cremona in 1619.
MA S U M I PE R ROSTAD
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nown for her “complete dedication and high intelligence” (San Francisco Classical Voice), cellist Inbal Segev combines “rich tone, secure presence and complete technical mastery” (Jerusalem Post). She has appeared with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony, collaborating with conductors Marin Alsop, Lorin Maazel, and Zubin Mehta. Committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire, she has commissioned new works from Timo Andres, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, Gity Razaz and Dan Visconti. A co-curator of chamber music at the Baltimore Symphony’s New Music Festival, she co-founded the Amerigo Trio with former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus. Her discography includes acclaimed albums of Bach’s cello suites as well as Romantic cello works, while her popular YouTube masterclass series, Musings with Inbal Segev, has thousands of subscribers around the world and more than a million views to date. Segev’s many honors include prizes at the Pablo Casals, Paulo, and Washington International Competitions. A native of Israel, at 16 she was invited by Isaac Stern to continue her cello studies in the United states, where she earned degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School. Her cello was made by Francesco Ruggieri in 1673.
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evgeny Sudbin has been hailed by The Telegraph as “potentially one of the greatest pianists of the 21st century.” Highlights of his 2019–20 season include recitals at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the International Piano Series, Salle Gaveau as part of the Concerts de Monsieur Croche series, Berlin Piano Festival, Serate Musicali, and Lofoten Piano Festival. He also worked with various orchestras throughout the season, including a return visit to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for two concertos and debuts with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
Y E VG E N Y SUDBIN
As BIS Records’ only exclusive artist, all of Sudbin’s recordings have been met with critical acclaim and are regularly featured as CDs of the month by BBC Music Magazine and editor’s choices by Gramophone. His Scriabin recording was named CD of the year by The Telegraph and received the MIDEM Classical Award for best solo instrument recording at Cannes. It was described by Gramophone as “a disc in a million,” while the International Record Review stated that his Rachmaninoff recording “confirms him as one of the most important pianistic talents of our time.” His 10th anniversary disc of Scarlatti sonatas was received with equal rapture and not only hit number one on the Classical Music Charts, but was also nominated for the Gramophone Classical Music Award. He was also nominated as Gramophone Artist of the Year in 2016. PIANO
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Praised for their “superb capacity to find the inner
TE S L A Q UARTE T
ROSS SNYDER, VIOLIN MICHELLE LIE, VIOLIN S E R A F I M S M I G E L S K I Y C E L LO E DW I N K A P L A N , V I O L A
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heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style or technical demand” by The International Review of Music, the Tesla Quartet brings refinement and prowess to both new and established repertoire. The group has won top prizes in numerous international competitions, most recently taking second prize as well as the Haydn Prize and Canadian Commission Prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition. In 2018, the Tesla Quartet released its debut album of Haydn, Ravel, and Stravinsky quartets on the Orchid Classics label to critical acclaim. BBC Music Magazine awarded the disc a double five-star rating and featured it as the “chamber choice” for the month of December. Gramophone praised the quartet for its “tautness of focus and refinement of detail.” The group’s second disc on the Orchid Classics label, Joy & Desolation, a collaboration with clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, was released in October 2019. Now entering its second decade, the quartet performs regularly across North America and Europe, with recent highlights including their debut at Lincoln Center, a return to Wigmore Hall, and performances at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall as winners of the John Lad Prize. Other recent international engagements include tours of Brazil, China, and South Korea, and residencies at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. Having served as the Marjorie Young Bell String Quartet in Residence at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, from 2016–17, the Tesla Quartet also recently completed a four-year community residency in Hickory, North Carolina, that included performances and workshops at local colleges, universities, and in the public school system, as well as a dedicated chamber music series.
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orean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist Bora Yoon conjures immersive musical soundscapes using digital devices, voice, found objects, and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries—evoking memory and association, to formulate a sensory multimedia storytelling through music, gesture, sound, and place. She has presented her unique experimental soundwork internationally at Lincoln Center, Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea, Patravadi Theatre in Thailand, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Walker Art Center, Festival of World Cultures in Poland, the Singapore Arts Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival, performing the live score for the multimedia staged adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, directed by Stephen Earnhart. Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Wire magazine, and TED for her musical innovations, she has been commissioned by Samsung and Sayaka Chorale of Tokyo; published by Journal of Popular Noise, Boosey & Hawkes, and MIT Press; and received awards From New Music USA, the Asian American Arts Alliance, NJSCA, Sorel Music Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. New works include developing song cycles with Alarm Will Sound, gesture-control music performances w/ Mi.Mu gloves, and opera Sunken Cathedral, released in multimedia formats as a kinetic fine art object, a graphic album (on iPad), and as a staged opera (Prototype Festival, HERE Arts, and Beth Morrison Projects). www.borayoon.com
BO R A YOO N
COMPOSER
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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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The Story of Tippet Rise
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Looking for Paradise By Peter Halstead, Pete Hinmon, and Ben Wynthein
W
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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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. 2020 Summer Season
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The Philosophy of Tippet Rise W
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. 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.
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by Peter Halstead
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 geometry 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. At Tippet Rise, we’re trying to make those hidden synergies visible, for our grandchildren, for every172
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one’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 rear-
view 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 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. 2020 Summer Season
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Music requires multiple disciplines to define it, just as it requires multiple disciplines to define it,
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.
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:
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. 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
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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.
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, six 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. 176
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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
W
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. 2020 Summer Season
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Tippet Rise Is a Working Ranch by Ben Wynthein
R
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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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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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. 184
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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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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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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Patrick Dougherty
The Sculptors of Tippet Rise
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. 190
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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, © 2020 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.
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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.
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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… (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 2020 Summer Season
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Art at Tippet Rise
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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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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 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. 2020 Summer Season
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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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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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.
Tours by eight-passenger van Sculpture tours by van visit all of the art center’s sculptures and last approximately 2.5 hours. The van will stop at each sculpture. All sculptures are visible from the van; however, guests are welcome to walk to the sculptures to stretch their legs, snap photos, and take a closer look. Van tours are $10.00 per person and free for everyone 21 and under; all tours require reservations. tippetrise.org.
Satellite #5: Pioneer by Stephen Talasnik 2016 Yellow cedar and steel 50' x 25' x 35'
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. Hiking and bicycling tours are free of charge but require reservations, which are available on our website, tippetrise.org. The Beartooth Portal by Ensamble Studio 2015 Concrete 32’ 6 1/2” x 25’ 3 1/4” x 26’ 5 1/2”
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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” 1,000 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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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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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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, 13 miles of roads, and 10.5 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. 2020 Summer Season
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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. 206
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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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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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. 210
About Tippet Rise
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 F
rancis KĂŠrĂŠ named his pavilion Xylem because xylem is one of the fibers present in tree trunks which sucks moisture out of the ground and uses it to grow leaves on the tree canopy. Frances has designed similar trees for the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and for his 2017 Serpentine Pavilion in London. Trees in his native Burkina Faso
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provide a meeting place, a courting zone, and shelter against the sun. The tree is a place where people can get together in a safe area and grow their community. In the same way, it is a village in Africa reaching out to our small region in Montana, just wanting to make friends. As Francis is helping people in our area to get together, we are helping him build a high school in honor of his father in his
native village of Gando. Soon the children will begin gathering there to learn, and we will be able to share the photos and films of their progress, as they will see examples of what we’re doing in Montana. This is a small way we can celebrate the growing quality of life we want for everyone.
Every day last year another 325,000 people got electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. Every day some 650,000 people went online for the first time. In 1981, 42 percent of the world’s population lived on less than two dollars a day. Now only 10 percent live in that kind of poverty. We are approaching 90 percent adult literacy. Americans have given more money to charity this year than ever before. 2020 Summer Season
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People are reaching out more than ever to one another, towards a better life. Francis Kéré’s tree pavilion is a way of sharing the idea of community between two towns in distant nations, and a way of bringing us closer together in the simple ways that unite us.
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The seating is shaped like organisms seen through a microscope. Francis based these forms on acrylics which Cathy painted as part of a commission for the German airline Lufthansa in the 1980s, a happy coincidence, as Francis was educated in Berlin and later set up his architectural firm there. At his father’s urg-
ing, he had been the first person to leave his village. At the time, everyone asked, “But who will bring in the cows?� Now Francis has been able to bring the world back to his village, and 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. He went out into the world only to bring it back to his village. Getting to know the world is most worthwhile when we can bring it back home to our families.
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William James O’Brien
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ill’s Shed is named after my grandfather.
William James O’Brien apparently just moped around until his mid-20s, with no particular direction. He was born into a large Irish family, with five siblings. His father, Thomas O’Brien, was superintendent of roads in Westchester County, deep backcountry now two hours north of New York City. But then something clicked, and overnight Will O’Brien developed an enormous personality, becoming an irrepressible raconteur. He took a
by Peter Halstead
correspondence course in construction and joined his father’s company, which built many of the highways in the early days of Westchester County, then in the process of becoming a labyrinth of leafy European estates and riding complexes for wealthy New York publishers, industrialists, and writers. By the time I became aware of my grandfather, he was already around 67, younger than I am today. What I remember especially was his enormous kindness. I must have driven him crazy. He brought me to play an organ which the writer H. Allen Smith had just bought. I informed this tolerant man that it was an instrument wholly unsatisfactory for Bach. I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the tremolo, which no doubt you could. My grandfather never said a word or exchanged a look. I was a precocious know-it-all, whose life was, unbeknownst to me, formed by my grandfather’s unwavering support. I had signed up to go to the complete cycle of 32 Beethoven sonatas, played in Carnegie Hall by Claudio Arrau. On the night of the last concert there was a blizzard. I lived far from the city, and all the highways were closed. So my grandfather had his foreman, Joe, drive one of his motor graders down the highways, plowing them as we went, all the way to Carnegie Hall. It took almost three hours, with the heater blazing. We parked in front of the hall on 57th Street; the machine seemed almost as long as Carnegie Hall. At the end of the concert, I went back outside, climbed up the flimsy ladder, and away we went through the storm, transfixing a street full of patrons with their leather gloves and jewels and waiting limousines. 2020 Summer Season
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My grandfather raised funds for Northern Westchester Hospital, built it, and chaired it during its early years. He was a director of the Mount Kisco National Bank, as was his father; the bank was later absorbed by Chase. He built the town hall, the Boy’s Club, the Lion’s Club, the Elks, the Sisqua Council, the Rotarians, the Knights of Columbus, the library, the police station, the fire station, the town park, the swimming pool, along with many of the elegant estates in the lightning-bug–filled countryside around Bedford, North Castle, Greenwich, and Mount Kisco. When the owners couldn’t afford to pay him, as happened during various economic crises, he would move into their houses for a few years until he could sell them. His family had lived on the Hook Road until around 1905, across from the Rosen estate, which became the Caramoor Music Festival, a monastery and later a Venetian theater which my grandfather (along with others) helped assemble, block by block, from Spain. It took too long to ride over to Mount Kisco on horseback or by carriage for town meetings from the Hook Road, so his family moved to the Bedford village green, where his father built a Catholic church, a rectory, and a one-room schoolhouse, where his sisters were schooled. My grandfather in his turn built the St. Francis church and school in Mount Kisco, where I went to school through 8th grade. He was knighted by the Pope for building these churches. The priests of St. Francis felt obligated to hire me as an organist and were delighted when my grandfather got me an apprenticeship to the organist Charles M. Courboin at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and I left to impose my Protestant Bach on a more tolerant clergy, which must have been just as aghast at the now much-louder mistakes. 218
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My grandfather had built and chaired the local Baptist church, which at some point burned down, whereupon he raised money and rebuilt it. Only after he died did the minister reveal that no one had wanted to help, so my grandfather told each person who asked that everyone else had contributed (except them), when in fact he was the only donor. He was called Mr. Mount Kisco. It wasn’t that he had built many of the buildings in our small town, which he had; it was his spirit that infused everyone who lived there. It was an almost cinematically ideal community. I shook hands with our neighbors outside the church with him on Sunday, listened to his stories, and watched how he was liked by rich and poor alike. I would eat with him once a week as he got older. Sometimes W. Averell Harriman or Billy Rose would be there, or Bernard Baruch, when I was very young. Often it would be some of his construction crew, merry people who didn’t speak much English but sang Louis Prima and Perry Como songs. He treated them all alike. I remember our frequent visits to I. Howard Lehman, of the banking family, on his estate. My grandfather asked him if he knew any good books. Howard Lehman handed him a Bible, and winked at me. My grandfather would visit the school for delinquent boys funded by Mr. Lehman, and they would take me along, which always resulted in a fistfight between me and a few of the “Dead End Kids” gang. But they kept taking me. I learned a lot about helping people from these visits, as painful as they were. When he drove, my grandfather would let everyone go in front of him, oblivious to the frustrated (but unhonking) drivers piling up behind him. He was at the tipping point of an older, kinder village faced with the demands of a growing town.
Lady Gabriel, one of his clients, would show me the drawings she had done during her school days in Italy. She had imported her villa stone by stone, which my grandfather reassembled. For Vermont farmhouses he brought down to Westchester, he would put in girders for the transport and never remove them. When architects forgot to allow room for a chimney, he would fix it without mention or charge. He had become a charity for the rich. To have an O’Brien & Kinkel house was like having a park by Olmstead. He built houses with the classic architects William and Geoffrey Platt. The Platts, who had designed a building at Deerfield Academy, helped me enroll midyear after my mother died. I later learned that Will O’Brien had paid for my boarding school, my college, my trips around the world, my camera, my books. My grandfather built the house we lived in; it was meant for a financier who had lost his money and couldn’t pay for it. He gave it to my mother as a wedding present.
My grandfather was born and died on Christmas Day; my mother was born on Christmas Day. His hand was behind everything that made me who I am, although it took me decades to understand it. He gave me music (my Chickering piano had been his), an account at our local bookstore, bookshelves in my room, books. He gave me the building blocks of my life. He gave me the world. I had spent summers in more than 40 countries by the time I was in college. He never asked to see me; he never told me how he’d helped me. He would just be glad to be with me whenever I happened by. He was happy to share his world with me. It was a world of cranes, tractors, bulldozers, scrapers, and also ponds, stone walls, weeping willows, distant glades, the endless lawns of childhood which turned out to be just as magical when I saw them recently. It was a charmed world. But it was Will O’Brien’s selfless love, his constant generosity for everyone he knew, his even temper, and his unflaggingly optimistic spirit that gives Cathy and me hope for what all of us can become, if only someone takes an interest. 2020 Summer Season
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Heller Bench Cottages and the Heller Family by Peter Halstead
lorence Heller, Cathy’s great-grandmother, had two children: Dorothy and Herbert. Dorothy married Lew Rosenstiel, who founded Schenley Industries, which imported Dewar’s Scotch. Herbert had the Schenley Industries advertising account. He and his second wife raised Weimaraners on their seaside farm on Nantucket. They had a main house and a beach house. The latter was on railroad tracks, and they pushed it down to the beach in summer and pulled it back in winter.
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His wife believed a local broker when he said he would put the farm into conservation after Herbert died; of course the broker developed it, and it became Cisco Estates. Across the moors, Ralph Marble’s 400 acres became the Miacomet golf course, eventually bought by the Nantucket Land Bank. The federal government was planning to use the rest of the moors behind Bartlett’s Farm (which grew wonderful corn and tomatoes: you knew it was
summer when they ripened) as a military airport. We owned a 20-acre parcel in the middle of the moors which was leased by the Coast Guard for a comsat, or communications satellite, tower. We negotiated with them over closing a road on the property, until we realized that our drunken lawyer at Ropes & Gray, the Kennedys’ law firm in Boston, had been talking about the wrong road for years. Our friends Rafe and Cilla Lowell had designed a beautiful beach house for the land, but we gradually realized that a house would stick out egotistically on the wild moorscape. So we placed the land with the Nantucket Land Bank, formed by Bill Klein, nephew of Whitney Balliett, who wrote the jazz essays for The New Yorker.
The Land Bank was the first of its kind in the United States. It took percent of every land transfer on Nantucket for a kitty which was used to buy land for conservation. It was politically easy to form because Nantucket was both its own town and county, so no one could contradict the town fathers. At some point Morgan Stanley was hired to float a bond, the idea being that 10 years of income from real estate transfers could be spent at one time, to lock in land while it was still cheap. The bond could then be paid off gradually from future income. The bond guys, however, identified the parcels slated for conservation and bought them themselves for development. They were caught, fined, thrown off the island, and the land returned to conservation.
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When phoning people to help us save the moors by donating land, I was shocked at the time that a major donor of the Central Park Conservancy in New York was determined to develop his land on the moors. “I gave in Quidnet,” he told me. That was because they wanted to isolate their house there. But selling part of the moors would give them funds they could donate for more social impact in New York City. We hired scientists to find endangered species and plants on the moors, and sued the federal government, using the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Resources Defense Council, and Earth-
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justice. The government settled, and the Land Bank got the moors, so that the 1,000 acres between the Heller farm and the Marble golf course (today the Cisco and Miacomet communities) became protected moors, riven with sand roads leading to Ladies’ Beach, one of the most deserted stretches of dunes on the island. The moorland in Nantucket and the Heller Bench Cottages at Tippet Rise bring Cathy’s great-grandmother, Florence Heller, back to us. Heller is Cathy’s middle name.
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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 228
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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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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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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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. 2020 Summer Season
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The Russian Pianist T
here is a long line of great Russian artists who have become icons in the West: Volodos, Ashkenazy, Horowitz, Lhévinne, Rachmaninoff, to name a few pianists. Or Piatigorsky and Rostropovich on the cello, Oistrakh on the violin. Or, more recently, Abduraimov, Sudbin, Lisitsa, Avdeeva, Trifonov, Giltburg. What distinguishes these monumental artists? Weight, spontaneity, imagination, history. Russian music is the folk music of the steppes, from Glinka through Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich. It is the great melancholy of isolated and snowbound Russian literature, such as Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Turgenev’s First Love, Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, Gogol’s Dead Souls, Biely’s St. Petersburg, and Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. As Dickens created fogbound London, so Russian writers and composers created the forlorn tolling of bells, the endless impoverished landscapes of Siberia, the astrakhan coziness of snowy St. Petersburg, the virtuosic panoramas mixed with the depth of sleighs in blizzards, the straight dark roads under the olives and rowans.
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The ability of Russian pianists, cellists, and violinists to sink through their keybeds into the frozen rivers of language and ikons, to summon up the icy loneliness of elegant streets, the voluminous latticework of ice storms in the trees, the horror of stalags, of the siege of Leningrad, of the great ice blocks of films like Chukhray’s "Ballad of a Soldier," Pudovkin’s Earth, Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying—without Russian film, Russian painting, Russian architecture, the weight of art and history so vibrant in every chord played by Richter, by Volodos, by Lisitsa would lie unanchored. Behind the layers of sound evoked by Mussorgsky’s “Great Gates of Kiev,” by Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, by every plangent chant in the Rachmaninoff concertos lies the suffering of the pogroms, the torn steel of the Shostakovich war symphonies, the centuries of kazak and krestyanin starvation, the vast arid tundra of the far north, the borealis of Novaya Zemlya, Glenn Gould’s The Idea of North personified by an entire realm over thousands of years. It is the awareness of this suffering, this life-and-death evocation of the land, of the frozen air itself, that infuses the touch of the great Russian heavyweights with such desperation, with simultaneous loss and epiphany, beyond the reach of those of us whose grief is limited to ourselves.
Velocity doesn’t plane the hands to the top of the water, like a surfboard; it pushes them deeply into the phosphorescent depths of the Manila Trench, an unseen world where agility settles into timelessness. The felicity of Mendelssohn is lost to the gravity of Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky had to be drunk to play, because only in the vague mists of consciousness can frequencies call up half-seen monsters. Touch isn’t meant to be fleeting, glancing; it is mortal, like sin. It is as deep as hell. It is ponderous, like a thunder cloud. It is dark as death. Touch is not an escape from the barrier of the keybed; it is a dive through the window of the ivory into the lost kingdoms of the strings. Volodos’s album Volodos Plays Liszt is entirely improvised. It sounds like Liszt, but it’s Russia playing. It’s very strange that no one has mentioned that these are improvisations based on Liszt. But to Russians, scores are just outlines of larger beasts that exist beyond the sightlines, which must be evoked and discour-
aged from destroying us. Even when playing the notes precisely, Russians are improvising. To hear one note from a real Russian is to hear the history of Russia. Knowing the novels, films, and paintings helps trace it back to where it began. But that one note evokes everything that is dangerous, violent, wild, and monstrous in the Russian air. It comes from decades of ritual, study, bleeding fingers, technique, and aspiration. Pianists everywhere endure the same bath of stamina, terror, and musculature—but whatever happens in Russia, the notes all sound different, like the howls of wolves, the terrified jangle of harnesses on horses running from werewolves, a caged dragon uncaged. As with Horowitz, the boundaries and tempos are exceeded, the pianist pulled back from the cliff by a succession of miracles. And every note is like that. There are no calm notes. The quietest notes have the most tension. And so when you hear Giltburg, Avdeeva, Abduraimov, you are not listening to a person. You are hearing the history of a nation, behind a screen, screaming. Nothing is normal. Nothing is casual. You are in a race to the death with the enormous mythic beasts of the chasm. You have been ripped out of the soft place where you live into the void of glistening infinity.
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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 238
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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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Pianos In China
adame Mao called pianos “black boxes in which the notes rattled about like the bones of the bourgeoisie.” During the Cultural Revolution, everything Western was purged from China. Only half a century ago, pianos were axed and composers and pianists were executed, except those who wrote state-approved propaganda pieces. After Mao died in 1976, Beethoven’s Fifth sang out from radios and TVs across China. When the Central Conservatory of Music opened in Beijing in 1978, 18,000 people applied for 100 places. People had been practicing in secret, despite the penalty of death. During the Qing Dynasty, from 1644 to 1912, China was as obsessed with Western music as Europe was with chinoiserie in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (which culminated with Puccini’s Asian-inspired operas Madame Butterfly in 1904 and Turandot in 1920). Two fascinating books about classical music in China are Lang Lang’s 2008 autobiography, Journey of a Thousand Miles, and Beethoven in China (2015) by Jindong Cai and Sheila Melvin. When Lang Lang was given an apartment with a grand piano at the Curtis Institute of Music, he asked, “Where are the other 20 pianists?” When he learned that it was all for him, he cried. Piano lessons in China
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are intense. As in Japan and Korea, every classical CD produced sells out. As the pianist Inna Faliks recently recalled, “75 percent of my students at UCLA are Chinese or Chinese-American….Concert halls may remain empty in our nation’s cities,…but in China, it is very cool to be a classical musician.... Its audiences are young and eager; its performance halls are new, architecturally stunning, and full.” President Xi Jinping’s wife is a former China Conservatory student. The state-run Pearl River Pianos makes more pianos than any other company, a third of global production. Our friend Alex Rose from the Aspen Music Festival now heads Juilliard’s first overseas campus in Tianjin. An estimated 50 million children are now studying classical piano in China (there are another 10 million piano students divided over the rest of the world). That is, 80 percent of piano students are in China. Approximately 400,000 pianos are sold in China annually, whereas 30,000 are sold in the U.S. There are 82 orchestras in China, many of them new. So, in a way, Tippet Rise’s love of classical music is the tip of the iceberg. I am indebted to “The Middle-C Kingdom,” in The Economist of December 21, 2019, and “The Future of Classical Music Is Chinese” by Inna Faliks, in The Washington Post of March 22, 2019.
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THE HISTORY OF
PIANOS
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P
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 244
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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. 2020 Summer Season
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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 248
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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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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 252
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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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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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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, 2018, and again in 2019. During these 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 artistic advisor, Pedja Muzijevic; 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. 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 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 2016–19, 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 site-specific 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.
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, 2018, and 2019, and we look forward to more during the summer of 2020. • Absarokee School students worked with the internationally acclaimed artist Stephen Talasnik during his exhibition at the art center in October 2018. 256
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• Since 2016 Montana Shakespeare in the Parks has brought inspiring, creative programming to area schools and held workshops at Tippet Rise Art Center. Participants have included students from Absarokee, Columbus, Fishtail, Nye, Molt, and Red Lodge schools as well as community members from around the region. • For adults, summer nature workshops and plein air watercolor workshops took place at the art center in 2017, 2018, and 2019; both workshops will be offered in 2020. • 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 each year. • 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 artistic advisor, Pedja Muzijevic. They also attended concerts, toured the art center, and visited other parts of this great state we call home. • During his autumn 2019 residency at Tippet Rise Art Center, the celebrated French pianist Julien Brocal worked with students at schools in Luther and Absarokee, performing and engaging in lively conversation about music, art, and the musician’s life. • In May 2019, 21 music students from throughout the region gathered at Tippet Rise to perform before a full house in the Olivier Music Barn. The community concert, titled Songs of Spring, featured performers from age 7 to 18. For many, it was their first visit to the art center; for most, it was their first time playing a Steinway piano. For all, it was a joyful celebration of music making. We look forward to more “Songs of Spring” at Tippet Rise!
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 Cierra loves, and other artists to women in the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings. Today, 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. 2019 Summer Season
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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 2020, the Association’s distinguished faculty will lead tours of the art center’s geologic “hot spots.” 2019 Summer Season
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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 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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Rob LeBuhn
Rob was one of Tippet Rise’s great friends. Every-
thing he did was to grow it in some way that would have been beyond us. What Tippet Rise became came about because of Rob: Storm King, Stephen Talasnik, Mark Di Suvero, Wu Han and David Finckel, Tali Mahanor.
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Stephen Talasnik was exhibiting his Stream at Storm King, and it was then that we began a dialogue with Stephen which eventually resulted in 10 maquettes, exhibited in 2019 at Tippet Rise, and his Satellite No. 5: Pioneer, installed in one of the northeastern valleys on the ranch.
It has been one of the great pleasures of our life to have been Rob’s friends ourselves, to have learned so much from his vast experience in finance, art, and poetry. It was always an adventure.
And through John Stern and David Collens at Storm King we later met Mark Di Suvero, and began a long and fulfilling relationship which has included the installation of two of his seminal pieces, Beethoven’s Quartet and Proverb.
Rob’s friend Kim Elliman is President and CEO of the Open Space Institute, a land conservation organization that has conserved more than 2.3 million acres in the eastern U.S. and, in the process, has created more than 50 new parks and protected areas. Kim was also on the board of Storm King, and through him we began our warm friendship with so many wonderful people and artists at Storm King, where Cathy is now on the board.
Backstage at Harris Hall in Aspen, Rob introduced us to Wu Han, who, along with David Finckel, has been a great friend and mentor in the launch of Tippet Rise. Wu Han introduced us to Tali Mahanor, the technician extraordinaire for Lincoln Center Chamber Music, who in turn helped us acquire three of our legendary concert Steinways.
The Team at Tippet Rise
Rob became our first consultant for the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, and later joined our Investment Committee there. His financial advice in this turbulent decade has been literally invaluable. Rob’s work as Chairman of the Aspen Music Festival and Chairman of their Investment Committee and his work as Chairman of both the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation and their Investment Committee have advanced the causes of music and poetry in our era. We met Rob through our good friends Hal and Ann Logan, who themselves have championed multiple causes of art through their work with Reach Out and Read, the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Clyfford Still Museum, and Hal’s chairmanship of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, the largest foundation dedicated entirely to art in Colorado. Rob has served at the center of art and finance during his lifetime. He was managing director at Rothschild, Inc., and was a trustee of the Aspen
Music Festival and School and a board member of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. We remember every minute of our time with Rob, with his wonderful wife and our friend, Elaine, in so many places—Aspen, Vail, New York, Hawaii, at dinners and board meetings and concerts. He will always be with us and with Tippet Rise. We are so lucky that Rob understood what Tippet Rise could be. He continues to live in our minds and through the physical presence of Tippet Rise. We are comforted by Paul Muldoon’s simple but profound poem. Rob called him “that funny little Irishman,” and he is that, along with being the greatest living Irish poet: A Breather Think of this tombstone As a long, low chair, Strategically placed At a turn in the stair.
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The Tippet Rise Team
Lindsey Hinmon
Co-Director 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.
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
Melissa Moore
Co-Director 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.
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The Team at Tippet Rise
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.
Beth Korth
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
Editor and 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. 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 Administrative 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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James Joyce
Filmmaker At Tippet Rise, James Joyce edits concerts, records performances, and crafts short documentaries. An award-winning storyteller and film professor, James earned his master of fine arts from Northwestern University. With his personal, micro-short films, he endeavors to embrace the other James Joyce’s definition of beauty: wholeness, harmony, and radiance (even if, he says, he doesn’t incorporate enough stream of conscious dialogue to properly channel his namesake). James likes to say that he appreciates all filmmaking roles equally, but truthfully, he is just a little happier with a camera in hand, directing light onto the subject. In the summer James splashes around in his canoe; in the winter he slides on snow. James and his wife enjoy spoiling their scruffy puppy, Oreo, and photographing with various Polaroid cameras.
Zack Patten
Music Programs and Podcast 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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 2020 Summer Music Program Photography Iwan Baan James Florio Peter Halstead Brian Lambert Erik Petersen Emily Rund Yevgeny Sudbin Craig M. White
Cover Photo: Erik Petersen
Text
Peter Halstead and the Tippet Rise Team
Program Notes
Benjamin Pesetsky, and RenĂŠ Spencer Saller
Editors
Benjamin Pesetsky and RenĂŠ Spencer Saller Additional Editing by Amy Holmes and Joanne Schneider
Creative Consulting and Design
Craig M. White
Production
McKenzie Designs, LLC
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Tippet Rise Staff and Credits Founders
Cathy and Peter Halstead
Artistic Advisor
Pedja Muzijevic
Co-Director
Lindsey Hinmon
Co-Director
Pete Hinmon
Ranch Manager
Ben Wynthein
Communication and Administration Manager
Melissa Moore
Art Education Coordinator and Visitor Center Manager Editor and Publications Administrator Special Projects Advisor Filmmakers
Beth Korth
Alexis M. Adams
Jeanne Reid White
Emily Rund, James Joyce
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
The Team at Tippet Rise
Carl Mayer
Dan Luttschwager
Guest Experience and Administrative Assistant
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Jim Ruberto
Jenny Van Ooyen
Craig M. White
Music Programs and Podcast Coordinator Facilities Operator
Christopher Castillo
Food Services & Catering Head of Housekeeping Photography
Zack Patten
Nick Goldman and Wendi Reed / Wild Flower Kitchen
Chris Clark
Iwan Baan, AndrĂŠ Costantini, Alex Coyle, James Florio, Peter Halstead, Brian Lambert, 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
Alban Bassuet
Architecture
(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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© 2020 Tippet Rise, LLC Two Discs and Stainless Stealer photos, by permission, © 2020 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.
96 South Grove Creek Road, Fishtail, MT 59028 406-328-7820 • tippetrise.org 276
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