Camera Lucida: Martinu and Schmidt

A nthony Burr has enjoyed a distinguished career as an exponent of contemporary music. He has performed in this repertoire with many leading groups, including Elision, Either/Or, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Sospeso, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As a soloist, Anthony has worked with many leading composers in presenting their music, including Alvin Lucier, Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Liza Lim and Brian Ferneyhough. He has played extensively outside of classical music with major figures including Jim O’Rourke, John Zorn and Laurie Anderson. His ongoing projects include a duo with Icelandic bassist and composer Skli Sverrisson, the Clarinets (a trio with Chris Speed and Oscar Noriega), a series of recordings with cellist Charles Curtis and a series of live film and music performances with experimental filmmaker Jennifer Reeves. Anthony also maintains an active career as a recording engineer and producer. At UC San Diego, he has taught graduate seminars on musical aesthetics, undergraduate classes in music theory and popular music, and regularly performs classical repertoire with the Camera Lucida series.

Praised by the Seattle Times for “Simply marvelous” and Taiwan’s Liberty Times for “astonishingly capturing the spirit of the music”, violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Wu has collaborated in concert with renewed artists such as Teddy Abrams, Gary Graffman, Kim Kashkashian, Ida Kavafian, Midori, Thomas Quasthoff, Yuja Wang, and members of the Alban Berg, Brentano, Cleveland, Guarneri, Miró, and Tokyo string quartets at prominent venues such as the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and festivals such as the La Jolla Summerfest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Mainly Mozart, and the Marlboro Music Festival. She has also collaborated as a guest violist with the Dover Quartet, Formosa Quartet, Orion Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet. Among Ms. Wu’s many awards are the Milka Violin Artist Prize from the Curtis Institute of Music, and third prize at the International Violin Competition of David Oistrakh. She taught violin, chamber music, and string pedagogy at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California from 2010 to 2015, and has coached chamber music at the Encore School for Strings and Hotchkiss Summer Portals. She is currently the Artist in Residence of the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles. Wu plays on a 1734 Domenico Montagnana violin, and a 2015 Stanley Kiernoziak viola.

Taiwanese-American violist Che-Yen Chen has established himself as an active performer. He is a founding member of the Formosa Quartet, recipient of the First-Prize and Amadeus Prize winner of the 10th London International String Quartet Competition. Since winning First-Prize in the 2003 Primrose Competition and “President Prize” in the Lionel Tertis Competition, Chen has been described by San Diego Union Tribune as an artist whose “most impressive aspect of his playing was his ability to find not just the subtle emotion, but the humanity hidden in the music.” Having served as the principal violist of the San Diego Symphony for eight seasons, he is the principal violist of the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and has appeared as guest principal violist with Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. A former member of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two and participant of the Marlboro Music Festival, he is also a member of Camera Lucida, and The Myriad Trio. Chen is currently on faculty at USC Thornton School of Music, and has given master-classes in major conservatories and universities across North America and Asia. In August 2013, the Formosa Quartet inaugurated their annual Formosa Chamber Music Festival in Hualien, Taiwan. Modeled after American summer festivals such as Ravinia, Taos, Marlboro, and Kneisel Hall, FCMF is the product of longheld aspirations and years of planning. It represents one of the quartet’s more important missions: to bring high-level chamber music training to talented young

musicians; to champion Taiwanese and Chinese music; and to bring first-rate chamber music to Taiwanese audiences.

Cellist Charles Curtis has been Professor of Music at UCSD since Fall 2000. Previously he was Principal Cello of the Symphony Orchestra of the North German Radio in Hamburg, a faculty member at Princeton, the cellist of the Ridge String Quartet, and a sought-after chamber musician and soloist in the classical repertoire. A student of Harvey Shapiro and Leonard Rose at Juilliard, on graduation Curtis received the Piatigorsky Prize of the New York Cello Society. He has appeared as soloist with the San Francisco, National and Baltimore Symphonies, the Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, the NDR Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Janacek Philharmonic, as well as orchestras in Italy, Brazil and Chile. He is internationally recognized as a leading performer of unique solo works created expressly for him by composers such as La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Éliane Radigue, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Alison Knowles and Tashi Wada. Time Out New York called his recent New York performances “the stuff of contemporary music legend,” and the New York Times noted that Curtis’ “playing unfailingly combined lucidity and poise... lyricism and intensity.” Recent seasons have included solo concerts at New York’s Issue Project Room and Roulette, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Sub Tropics Festival in Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Angelica Festival in Bologna as well as solo performances in Brussels, Metz, Paris, Mexico City, and Athens. Last summer Curtis led four performances of the music of La Monte Young at the Dia Art Foundation’s Dia:Chelsea space in New York.

camera lucida Sam B. Ersan, Founding Sponsor

Chamber Music Concerts at UC San Diego December 4, 2017 – 7:30 p.m.

Conrad Prebys Concert Hall

Musique de Chambre Nr. 1 (1959)

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)

Allegro moderato Andante moderato Poco allegro

Quintet in A major for Clarinet, Piano and Strings (1938)

Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)

Allegro moderato Intermezzo

Scherzo: Molto Vivace Adagio

Variations: Allegretto grazioso

Camera Lucida takes great pleasure in thanking all our supporters for their generous support, in particular pH Projects, Carol, Lanna, Eloise, Mary and Michael, David, Julia, Evelyn, Marion, Pauline, Harry, Georgiana, Irene, Amnon, Geoff, Donald, Laurette, Stephan and Civia, Bob and Ginny, and Caroline.

Upcoming Camera Lucida performances: January 29, 2018 April 2, 2018 April 30, 2018

Reiko Uchida, piano Julie Smith Phillips, harp Anthony Burr, clarinet Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin Che-Yen Chen, viola Charles Curtis, cello

Tonight’s program will be played without intermission.

To Martinů belongs the odd and picturesque distinction of having been born in the bell tower of a village church in Bohemia. His father was the official village bell ringer, as well as a cobbler; and the family lived for the first twelve years of Martinů’s life high up in the tower itself. Here his father could exercise the third of his civic duties, watching for fires. It is said that his father rang the bells right through Martinů’s birth - an auspicious, if clangorous, nativity scene for the future composer.

Late in life, Martinů remarked on the experience of a boyhood in the tower.

The sense of looking out at an unimpeded openness, he felt, informed his feeling for musical space. But living apart, in isolation from the village, must also have left its mark on his person. From his biography he emerges elusive, restless, non-commital, plagued by poor health. Moving often, he lived in Prague, Paris, New York and finally Switzerland; the time line of his life is crowded with even more localities than these, as he cast about for a hospitable place of his own. There is a photograph from the late 1940’s in which he and his wife Charlotte look out from the window of their apartment on West 58th Street in New York; dwarfed by the size of the window and the surrounding buildings, he appears tentative, uncomfortable. He is certainly not seeing open space around him, yet we easily imagine him longing for it.

Musique de Chambre Nr. 1 was evidently meant to carry the title Fêtes Nocturnes, and indeed there are hints here and there of a Bartok-like “night music” atmosphere. It is one of Martinů’s last completed works, and there is no Nr. 2. While one could easily raise the general objection that Martinů composed almost too much music, the piece at hand is a model of concision, economy and concentration. Essentially a kind of Concerto Grosso for a combination of instruments possibly never imagined by another composer, the intertwining of piano and harp provides an intriguing continuo texture against which the four sustaining instruments operate. The outer movements revel in rustic sparrings and jousting rhythms; the beginning and ending of the middle Andante exemplify a perfect calm as simple white-note clusters lean against each other in gentle syncopations - openness, space, a clear view to the horizon.

Franz Schmidt played in the cello section of the Vienna Philharmonic during its glory days under Gustav Mahler; he was equally accomplished at the piano (having studied with Leschetitzky). Late in life he became Professor, Director and finally Rector of the Vienna Conservatory, presiding over this august institution during the extraordinary cultural foment of the postWorld War I years. His four symphonies and two operas, and his oratorio “The Book With Seven Seals” won him considerable acclaim during his lifetime; he enjoyed the respect of Schoenberg, Berg, Krenek and Schreker, and the adulation of his students. But viewed from today’s vantage point, he has somehow gone almost completely missing from the annals of earlytwentieth-century music .

This may be because of the conservatism of his style. A holdover from the nineteenth century, Schmidt’s late works prolong the bittersweet, chromatically-tinged richness of the fin de siècle years. Like Richard Strauss at the end of the 1940’s, Schmidt seems to seek resolution or even redemption through a music of repose and retrospection, looking back ruefully at his own past as well as at a culture that was, by 1938, for all intents and purposes long gone. Schmidt’s personal life was marked by a series of tragedies; his first wife was committed to the Viennese mental institution Am Steinhof (immortalized by Thomas Bernhard in Wittgenstein’s Nephew) as early as 1919, his daughter died not yet 30; in ailing health, he was claimed against his will by the Nazis after the Anschluss as the greatest living Austrian composer.

Another protagonist of the nearly-mythical Viennese society in which Schmidt operated was the pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Brother of the philosopher Ludwig and heir to one of the wealthiest families in Vienna, Wittgenstein lost his right arm in the early years of the First World War. The extraordinary repertoire of music for piano left hand, which includes works

by Prokofiev, Ravel, Britten, Korngold, Moriz Rosenthal and Richard Strauss, was almost entirely generated through Wittgenstein’s commissions.

Among these is tonight’s Quintet, one of two by Schmidt for this unusual combination of instruments. Schmidt’s piano student Friedrich Wührer provided the adaptation for two hands that is most often played today.

The Quintet is nearly an hour in length. The Finale spins out variations on a theme by Josef Labor, Wittgenstein’s piano teacher in his youth, from Labor’s own youthful Clarinet Quintet, opus 11. Labor had been the first to compose a left-hand work for Wittgenstein, a concerto which Wittgenstein requested of him while still a prisoner-of-war in Siberia in 1915. Labor, composer, pianist and organist, was blind from the age of three. It is hard not to see a poignant homage from Schmidt, in his penultimate work, to two extraordinary musicians, linked in a musical past, at a point which must have seemed, for him, the end of history.

Artistic Director – Charles Curtis Recording Engineer – Andrew Munsey Program Notes – Charles Cross Program Associate – Rachel Allen Promotions Design – Kayla Wilson Production Manager – Jessica Flores

Pianist Reiko Uchida enjoys an active career as a soloist and chamber musician.

She performs regularly throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe, in venues including Suntory Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center, and the White House. First prize winner of the Joanna Hodges Piano Competition and Zinetti International Competition, she has appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Santa Fe Symphony, Greenwich Symphony, and the Princeton Symphony, among others. She made her New York solo debut in 2001 at Weill Hall under the auspices of the Abby Whiteside Foundation. As a chamber musician she has performed at the Marlboro, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, and Spoleto Music Festivals; as guest artist with Camera Lucida, American Chamber Players, and the Borromeo, Talich, Daedalus, St. Lawrence, and Tokyo String Quartets; and in recital with Jennifer Koh, Thomas Meglioranza, Anne Akiko Meyers, Sharon Robinson, and Jaime Laredo. Her recording with Jennifer Koh, “String Poetic” was nominated for a Grammy Award. She is a past member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two. As a youngster, she performed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Ms. Uchida holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, a Master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music, and an Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School. She studied with Claude Frank, Leon Fleisher, Edward Aldwell, Margo Garrett, and Sophia Rosoff. She has taught at the Brevard Music Center, and is currently an associate faculty member at Columbia University.

Julie Smith P hillips, appointed Principal Harpist of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra in 2007, is one of the most prominent young American harpists today, performing as both an orchestral musician and concert artist. Gaining international recognition for her performing style and diverse repertoire, Ms. Phillips was the Silver Medalist in the 2004 USA International Harp Competition and Bronze Medalist in 2001. She made her National Symphony Orchestra debut in 2003 and has been honored in numerous competitions throughout the country. A recitalist and soloist with orchestra, Ms. Phillips’ appearances include performances with the San Diego Symphony, the New World Symphony Orchestra, the South Dakota Symphony, the West Los Angeles Symphony, the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. She has been a featured soloist for the USA International Harp Competition, the Lyon & Healy 150th Birthday Celebration, the American Harp Society National Conferences, the International Harp Festival, Harp Oklahoma Workshop, and has served as Guest Artist at the Young Artist Harp Seminar in Rabun Gap, Georgia. Equally experienced as a chamber and orchestral musician, Ms. Phillips collaborates with renowned musicians across the country. A founding member of The Myriad Trio, she regularly appears in chamber concerts across the U.S. and in Italy, Japan, China and Taiwan. Her chamber and orchestral festival credits include the Piedmont & Kingston Chamber Music Festivals, Bay Chamber, La Jolla SummerFest, Mainly Mozart, Mozaic Festival, Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, Spoleto USA Festival and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. Prior to her post in San Diego, she served as Acting Principal Harpist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Principal Harpist for the New World Symphony Orchestra.

Numerous pieces have been written for and premiered by Ms. Phillips, including Tree Suite for Harp by Hannah Lash, Cactus, a double concerto for harp and violin by Michael Torke (premiered by the San Diego Symphony), The Eye of Night by David Bruce, Variations on a Simple Theme by Avner Dorman, Petal

by Petal by Lei Liang and Sonata by Jeremy Cavaterra (trios premiered by The Myriad Trio).