Emerson Quartet April 21, 2015
International Chamber Music Series April 21, 2015
Emerson Quartet Eugene Drucker, violin Philip Setzer, violin Lawrence Dutton, viola Paul Watkins, cello
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Nancy D. Alvord Warren and Anne Anderson
Purcell
© lisa-Marie Mazzucco
Chacony in G Minor
arr. Britten
Stephen and Sylvia Burges Vasiliki Dwyer
Shostakovich
Katharyn Alvord Gerlich
Allegretto Lento Allegro—Allegretto
Lynn and Brian Grant Family Dr. Martin L. Greene Matthew and Christina Krashan Cecilia Paul and Harry Reinert
String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 108
Liebermann
String Quartet No. 5, Op. 126
Mina B. Person
Intermission
Eric and Margaret Rothchild Donald and Toni Rupchock Dave and Marcie Stone Lee and Judy Talner Gregory Wallace and Craig Sheppard
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Beethoven
String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 Assai sostenuto—Allegro Allegro ma non tanto Heilinger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, In der lydischen Tonart: Molto adagio—Neue Kraft Fühlend: Andante— Molto adagio—Andante—Molto adagio: Mit innigster Empfindung Alla marcia, assai vivace—Più allegro—Presto Allegro appassionato—Presto
ABOUT THE PROGRAM Chacony in G Minor, Z. 730 Henry Purcell (1659–1695) During the 16th and 17th centuries, English music of the first magnitude flowed from such worthies as John Dowland, John Bull, Matthew Locke, Pelham Cooke and Henry Purcell. Coming at the end of this fertile era, Purcell summed up the music of his countrymen, revealing a mastery of both Renaissance polyphony and the newer Baroque sensibilities. After his premature death at 36 years, his music enjoyed currency for another twenty years or so until a passion for Italian opera swept Handel—trained in Italy— into pre-eminence, while Purcell and his “English” compatriots fell into rapid decline. A chacony or chaconne, to use the more familiar French term, is a variation scheme with roots in the early Baroque era. It is almost identical to a passacaglia (as in J.S. Bach’s celebrated set of variations for solo organ in C minor). A theme is presented in toto followed by variations superimposed over the basically unchanging series of chords (chaconne) or melody (passacaglia). By the late 17th century instrumental chaconnes were quite popular and remained so until around 1750. With popularity came standardization of phrase length, and Purcell’s Chacony shares with many of its brethren an eight-bar “ground bass” or ostinato theme.
Purcell was a superb master of variation technique, never more so than in this brief work. He adds harmonic interest by subtly altering subsequent repetitions of the “ground bass” tune, modulating to different keys and thereby deviating somewhat from the standard chaconne format. Rhythmic, melodic and textural changes throughout the variations further display his genius.
likened to “fate knocking at the door.” Signature trademarks of Shostakovich abound, including dark irony and his version of the kind of grotesquerie— especially in the pizzicato-laden second theme—that he absorbed from Mahler, whose music strongly influenced him throughout his chamber and symphonic works. The movement ends with a slower variant of the three-note rapping figure.
Benjamin Britten arranged the piece in 1948 (rev. 1963) for both string orchestra and string quartet, retaining Purcell’s harmonies but adding some dotted rhythms of his own devising.
If the opening movement’s irony suggests ambivalence there is no minimizing the inconsolable sadness of the ensuing Lento’s desolate commentary on loss. Here the second violin presents a falling four-note theme, spare and searching. It is soon partnered by the first violin, floating an octave above the second violin’s quiet anguish. Soon the first violin drops out and is supplanted by the deeper sonority of the viola in a restatement of the movement’s opening phrases. The Lento is remarkable for its concise expression of the myriad emotions associated with loss. It ends quietly but not peacefully, as if returning to consciousness after a bad night’s sleep.
String Quartet No. 7, Op. 108 Dmitri SHoStakovicH (1906–1975) In 1960, Shostakovich composed his String Quartet No. 7, Op. 108 as a belated memorial for his first wife Nina, who died in 1954. Among the shortest of his 15 quartets, the compact and emotionally intense work is performed attacca, i.e., without pauses between the three movements. It is also cast in the key of F-sharp minor, traditionally a tonal center associated with pain and loss. (Mozart, for example, cast the despairing Adagio from his well-known Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488 in that very key—the only time he did so in his enormous canon of instrumental music.) In this quartet Shostakovich employs a cyclic scheme in which themes from the opening movement reappear in the finale. The opening Allegretto starts with an anxious theme that metamorphoses into a three-note figure that could be
The concluding Allegro breaks the spell of inner grieving in a fierce and unrelenting bout of fearful manic energy. Note the rising shape of the main theme, clearly an inversion of the Allegretto’s downward spiraling opening passages. Soon a Bachinspired fugue intensifies the fiery obsessive quality implicit in the beginning notes of both the first and last movements, eventually heightened by a waltz in F-sharp encore artsseattle.com A-19
minor—a veritable “dance of death.” A series of plucked notes precedes the closing bowed chord in F-sharp Major. Is this a peaceful resignation or whistling in the dark? String Quartet No. 5, Op. 126 lowell liebermann (b. 1961) Born in New York City composer and pianist Lowell Liebermann has written music that embraces virtually all genres. Operas include The Picture of Dorian Grey and Miss Lonely Hearts, the latter commissioned by the Juilliard School for the occasion of its 100th anniversary. Two symphonies and numerous concertos grace his orchestral canon. He has also produced a number of piano works and a well-rounded body of chamber music. At Juilliard he studied with two notable teachers, David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti, earning his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from that august school. The composer has kindly provided the following information about his String Quartet No. 5, Op. 126, completed in 2014: “The 5th String Quartet, Op. 126 was commissioned by Music Accord for the Emerson String Quartet, to whom the work is dedicated. It is such an honor (and not an unintimidating one!) to write for an ensemble that has been, through their many recordings, such an iconic presence in my own musical development. “This Quartet, like much of my instrumental music, has no extraA-20 UW WORLD SERIES
musical program—it is as absolute and abstract as music can be—yet, at the same time, I have no doubt that my mindset while composing the piece and its resultant overriding elegiac tone was at least partly influenced by any number of depressing/terrifying events of the kind with which we are all bombarded daily, in what seems more and more like a world gone mad. “The work’s mysterious opening, marked “Limpido” (“still”) introduces a number of motives which are heard and developed throughout the quartet. Structurally, the Quartet is in one arc-like symmetrical movement consisting of two mostly slow sections flanking a fast section whose structure is, in and of itself, symmetrical. If we think of that central fast section as being akin to a scherzo and trio, then the reprise of the scherzo section is actually an intervallic inversion of its first statement, while the trio section divides at its midpoint, the second half being a mirror image of the first half.” String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 luDwig van beetHoven (1770–1827) By the time Beethoven composed his Quartet No. 15, Op. 132 in 1824 he had already closed the book on his symphonies, concertos, piano- and other sonatas, his sole opera Fidelio, and the Missa solemnis. His final years focused primarily on the five late string quartets, in many ways his most experimental and far-reaching compositions. Igor Stravinsky, in fact, characterized of the Grosse fuge (the original closing movement of the
Op. 130 quartet) as the first piece of modern music. Along with the Op. 127 and 130 quartets, the A-minor piece exists because of a commission from Prince Nikolai Galitzin, who wrote to the composer in 1822, “Being as passionate an amateur as an admirer of your talent, I am taking the liberty of writing to you to ask you if you would be willing to compose one, two or three new quartets. I shall be delighted to pay you for the trouble whatever amount you would deem adequate.” Beethoven accepted the offer for a stipend of 12 ducats. A somber and anxious rising theme from the cello opens the Assai sostenuto introduction to the first movement. This paragraph eventually morphs into an energetic Allegro that in no way diminishes the anxious mien and unsettling phrases that refuse to settle down. Even within the experimental atmosphere of the late quartets, the entire movement is filled with sudden shifts of mood and instrumental sonority, investing the music with a sense of fervent questioning without ready answers or emotional relief. The Allegro ma non tanto that follows lightens matters somewhat but never frees itself from anxiety. The players exchange phrases with each other, positing short-lived hints at lyricism before resuming the questioning dialogue among them. A midmovement drone effect hints at music of the countryside but remains emotionally at some distance from the surrounding textures and mood. A
threatening episode of unison playing led by the cello soon reverts to the drone figuration before reprising the movement’s opening phrases. The massive third movement, Heilinger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, In der lydischen Tonart: Molto adagio—Neue Kraft Fühlend: Andante—Molto adagio— Andante—Molto adagio: Mit innigster Empfindung (“Holy song of Thanksgiving from a convalescent to the Deity”) is clearly the emotional core of the A-minor Quartet. It is laid out as a set of highly individualized variations encompassing all manner of tempo fluctuations, divergent moods and dramatic key shifts. Like the Grosse fuge this hymn-like edifice is almost a stand-alone structure; indeed, many of this writer’s acquaintances report listening to it shorn of its surrounding movements. The length, complexity and ultimate optimism of the music bespeaks the composer’s gratitude to his Maker for restoring Beethoven’s health after serious threats to his wellbeing. As if to contrast illness from sanguinity the music spends much of its time alternating between the old Lydian church mode (like F major except including a B natural rather than B-flat) and the traditionally uplifting and triumphant D major (as in the “Hallelujah” chorus, finale to Beethoven’s own Ninth Symphony and even the Gloria from Bach’s Mass in B minor). Returning from the rarified heavenly sphere, the ensuing Alla marcia, assai vivace—Più allegro—Presto marks a bumptious return to earth, perhaps a
head-clearing gesture on Beethoven’s part to celebrate boisterous humanity. At least initially, that is. Soon enough the rusticity—as in the peasant band episode from the Ninth Symphony’s choral finale—yields to an ardent tremolo-ridden recitative-like section that moves directly into the finale. This concluding Allegro appassionato— Presto balances rapturous melody with lingering anxiety as if the composer still harbored worry about a recurrence of poor health. Energy abounds in the closing Presto section that hovers between great joy and not completely relieved mania. © 2015 Steven Lowe ABOUT THE EMERSON QUARTET The Emerson String Quartet has an unparalleled list of achievements over three decades: more than thirty acclaimed recordings, nine Grammys (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, Musical America’s "Ensemble of the Year" and collaborations with many of the greatest artists of our time. The arrival of Paul Watkins in 2013 has had a profound effect on the Emerson Quartet. Mr. Watkins, a distinguished soloist, award-winning conductor, and devoted chamber musician, joined the ensemble in its 37th season, and his dedication and enthusiasm have infused the Quartet with a warm, rich tone and a palpable joy in the collaborative process. As an exclusive artist for SONY
Classical, the Emerson recently released Journeys, its second CD on that label, featuring Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence and Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht. Future recordings are planned with Mr. Watkins. Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson was one of the first quartets formed with two violinists alternating in the first chair position. In 2002, the Quartet began to stand for most of its concerts, with the cellist seated on a riser. The Emerson Quartet took its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and is Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. In January of 2015, the Quartet receives the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field. Violinist Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, is also an active soloist. He has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Hartford, Richmond, Omaha, Jerusalem and the RhinelandPalatinate, as well as with the American Symphony Orchestra and Aspen Chamber Symphony. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Oscar Shumsky, Mr. Drucker was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, with which he appeared as soloist several times. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the encore artsseattle.com A-21
fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Mr. Drucker has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach, reissued by Parnassus Records, and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók for Biddulph Recordings. His novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and has appeared in a German translation called Wintersonate, published by Osburg Verlag in Berlin. Mr. Drucker's compositional debut, a setting of four sonnets by Shakespeare, was premiered by baritone Andrew Nolen and the Escher String Quartet at Stony Brook in 2008; the songs have appeared as part of a 2-CD release called "Stony Brook Soundings," issued by Bridge Recordings in the spring of 2010. Eugene Drucker lives in New York with his wife, cellist Roberta Cooper, and their son Julian. Violins: Antonius Stradivarius (Cremona, 1686), Samuel Zygmuntowicz (NY, NY 2002) Violinist Philip Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and later at the Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. In 1967, Mr. Setzer won second prize at the Marjorie Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, DC, and in 1976 received a Bronze A-22 UW WORLD SERIES
Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels. He has appeared with the National Symphony, Aspen Chamber Symphony (David Robertson, conductor), Memphis Symphony (Michael Stern), New Mexico and Puerto Rico Symphonies (Guillermo Figueroa), Omaha and Anchorage Symphonies (David Loebel) and on several occasions with the Cleveland Orchestra (Louis Lane). He has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival. Mr. Setzer has been a regular faculty member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. His article about those workshops appeared in The New York Times on the occasion of Isaac Stern's 80th birthday celebration. He also teaches as Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook and has given master classes at schools around the world, including The Curtis Institute, London's Royal Academy of Music, The San Francisco Conservatory, UCLA, The Cleveland Institute of Music and The Mannes School. The Noise of Time, a groundbreaking theater collaboration between the Emerson Quartet and Simon McBurney-about the life of Shostakovich--was based on an original idea of Mr. Setzer's. In April of 1989, Mr. Setzer premiered Paul Epstein's Matinee Concerto. This piece, dedicated to and written for Mr. Setzer, has since been performed by him in Hartford, New York, Cleveland, Boston and Aspen. Recently, Mr. Setzer has also been touring and recording the piano trios
of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Dvorak with David Finckel and Wu Han. Violin: Samuel Zygmuntowicz (NY, NY 2011) Lawrence Dutton, violist of the nine-time Grammy winning Emerson String Quartet, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Sir Paul McCartney, Renee Fleming, Sir James Galway, Andre Previn, Menahem Pressler, Walter Trampler, Rudolf Firkusny, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, and Elmar Oliveira, among others. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous chamber music ensembles such as the Juilliard and Guarneri Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. Since 2001, Mr. Dutton has been the Artistic Advisor of the Hoch Chamber Music Series, presenting three concerts at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY. He has been featured on three albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci on the Concord Jazz label and with the Beaux Arts Trio recorded the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57, and the Fauré G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 45, on the Philips label. His Aspen Music Festival recording with Jan DeGaetani for Bridge records was nominated for a Grammy award. Mr. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras including those of
Germany, Belgium, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, among others. He has also appeared as guest artist at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Ravinia, La Jolla, the Heifetz Institute, the Great Mountains Festival in Korea, Chamber Music Northwest, the Rome Chamber Music Festival and the Great Lakes Festival. With the late Isaac Stern he had collaborated in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University and at the Robert McDuffie School for Strings at Mercer University in Georgia, Mr. Dutton began violin studies with Margaret Pardee and on viola with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs and has received Honorary Doctorates from Middlebury College in Vermont, The College of Wooster in Ohio, Bard College in New York and The Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. Most recently, Mr. Dutton and the other members of the Emerson Quartet were presented the 2015 Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award from Chamber Music America and were recipients of the Avery Fisher Award in 2004. They were also inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2010 and were Musical America’s Ensemble of the year for 2000. Mr. Dutton resides in Bronxville, NY with his wife violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton and their three sons Luke, Jesse and Samuel.
Mr. Dutton exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings. Viola: Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, NY 2003). Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as cellist and conductor. Born in 1970, he studied with William Pleeth, Melissa Phelps and Johannes Goritzki, and was appointed principal cellist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1990 at the age of 20. He made his concerto debut at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Yakov Kreizberg. He now performs regularly with all the major British orchestras (including seven appearances at the BBC Proms) and many overseas orchestras including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin. A member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, Mr. Watkins joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. He is a regular participant at festivals and chamber music series, including New York’s Lincoln Center and Music@Menlo, and regularly performs with the world’s finest musicians, including Menahem Pressler, Jaime Laredo, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff and Vadim Repin. Highlights of recent seasons include solo recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and Queens Hall, Edinburgh, his debut at Carnegie Hall performing Brahms’s Double Concerto with Daniel Hope, as well as the premiere of a new concerto written especially for him by Mark-
Anthony Turnage. Recent releases under his exclusive Chandos Records contract include Britten’s Cello Symphony, the Delius, Elgar and Lutoslawski cello concertos, and discs of Martinu’s and Mendelssohn’s music for cello and piano, and an ongoing series of Britsh sonatas with his brother Huw Watkins. In 2009 he became the first ever Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra, and also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra from 2009 to 2012. Since winning the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition he has conducted all the major British orchestras, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Swedish and Vienna Chamber Orchestras, Prague Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras. Cello: Domenico Montagnana and Matteo Goffriller in Venice, c.1730.
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