Miami String Quartet, Apr 5

miami string quartet oneppo chamber music series David Shifrin, Artistic Director April 5, 2016 • Morse Recital Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

miami string quartet Tuesday, April 5, 2016 • 7:30 pm • Morse Recital Hall David Shifrin, Artistic Director benny kim, violin • cathy meng robinson, violin scott lee, viola • keith robinson, cello Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827

String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” I. Allegro con brio II. Allegretto ma non troppo III. Allegro assai vivace ma serioso IV. Larghetto espressivo – Allegretto agitato

– Allegro

Erwin Schulhoff 1894–1942

Five Pieces for String Quartet (1924) I. Alla Valse viennese. Allegro II. Alla Serenata. Allegretto con moto III. Alla Czeca. Molto allegro IV. Alla Tango Milonga. Andante V. Alla Tarantella. Prestissimo con fuoco intermission

Felix Mendelssohn 1809–1847

String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80, No. 6 I. Allegro vivace assai II. Allegro assai III. Adagio IV. Finale. Allegro molto

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Miami String Quartet

Praised in The New York Times as having “everything one wants in a quartet: a rich, precisely balanced sound, a broad coloristic palette, real unity of interpretive purpose and seemingly unflagging energy,” the Miami String Quartet has established its place among the most widely respected quartets in America. For over twenty years, their diversity in programming, poise in performance, keen sense of ensemble and impeccable musicality has made the Miami String Quartet one of the most sought after quartets in chamber music today.

Winners of the 2000 Cleveland Quartet Award presented by Chamber Music America, and Chamber Music Society Two ensemble of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1999-2001, the Miami String Quartet has been in residence at Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at Kent State University since 2004. They were Quartet in Residence at the Hartt School in Hartford, from 2003 to 2009. Other previous residencies include Florida International University and the New World School of the Arts in Miami, where the group was founded in 1988.

The Miami String Quartet has appeared extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Highlights of recent seasons include performances in New York at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as well as engagements in Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, and its own concert series in Palm Beach, Florida. International highlights include appearances in Bern, Cologne, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Istanbul, Lausanne, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Paris. The Quartet has recently toured with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and they perform frequently for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

The Miami String Quartet is in demand at many of the country’s great festivals.

For many years, the Quartet has served as resident ensemble at the Kent/ Blossom Music Festival in Ohio, and has appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, the Brevard Festival, Rutgers Summerfest, Music from Angel Fire, Virginia Arts Festival – where it has been the resident ensemble – and at the festivals of La Jolla, Santa Fe, and Pensacola.

The ensemble’s interest in new music has led to many commissions and premieres. In 2009 the Quartet and the Kalischstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio premiered Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Septet, a work co-commissioned by a dozen organizations including the 92nd St. Y, Kennedy Center, Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Kravis Center, Philharmonic Society of Orange County, Friends of Chamber Music (Portland), Chamber Arts Society of Durham,

Miami String Quartet

and Denver Friends of Chamber Music. In 2008, they and the Imani Winds premiered Roberto Sierra’s Concierto da Camera, commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, Stanford University, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Also in 2008, the ensemble performed the premiere of Joan Tower’s Angels (String Quartet No. 4), commissioned by Music from Angel Fire, and premiered Ricky Ian Gordon’s Green Sneakers for baritone and string quartet, commissioned by Bravo! Vail festival in Colorado. Other recent commissions include a new work by composer Annie Gosfield, commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; a joint commissioning by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Virginia Arts Festival of a piano quintet

by Bruce Adolphe; and a new work by composer Stephen Jaffe commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

In 2000, Miami String Quartet premiered Augusta Read Thomas’ Invocations.

In the 1997–1998 season, the Quartet presented the American premieres of Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 by Peteris Vasks, which met with enormous acclaim and were subsequently recorded; Vasks’ Quartet No. 3 has since become a signature piece for the ensemble. Among other new music highlights are a commissioning grant from Chamber Music America for a piano quintet from Maurice Gardner, world premiere performances of the quartet Whispers of Mortality by Bruce Adolphe, a quartet by Philip Maneval, Maurice Gardner’s Quartet No. 2 and Concertino as well as premieres of Robert Starer’s Quartet Nos. 2 and 3, and David Baker’s Summer Memories.

The Miami String Quartet’s first recording, the first two quartets of Alberto Ginastera, was released in 1994. Their second CD, Saint-Saëns Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 and Faure’s String Quartet, was released in the fall of 1997 on BMG Conifer. The aforementioned 1999 BMG recording of Peteris Vasks’ Quartet Nos. 1, 2 and 3 garnered unqualified praise on both sides of the Atlantic. Azica Records will released their recording, with the KalichsteinLaredo-Robinson Trio, in 2014. Their recording of Joan Tower’s quartets Angels and Incandescent is due out in 2015.

In 1992, the Miami String Quartet became the first string quartet in a decade to win First Prize of the Concert Artists Guild New York Competition. The Miami String Quartet has also won recognition in competitions throughout the world; as laureate of the 1993 Evian Competition, 1991 London String Quartet Competition, and as the 1989 Grand Prize Winner of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. » www.miamistringquartet.com

Notes on the Program

ludwig van beethoven String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” The oft-told historical backdrop of Opus 95 goes something like this: Beethoven’s friends had left him alone in Vienna. His presumed marriage proposal had been rejected. During the French army’s recent invasion, he’d had to borrow his brother’s pillows in order to protect his ears from the blasts. He could not concentrate on composing. Life was grim.

And one needs only to hear the opening measures of the “Serioso” quartet to see how its music helped popularize the biographical story: the brusque forte unison passage that runs up and down the F minor scale undoubtedly conjures up a tortured image of its creator. The immediately ensuing half-step modulation, though a ubiquitous tactic in contemporary pop music, has also been considered a sign of the composer wishing to break through compositional — and perhaps personal — barriers. The coda of the Allegro con brio further suggests fury through frustration, as the first five notes of the opening motive repeat obsessively. While Beethoven no doubt used this technique of saturation in previous works — most famously with the opening motive of Symphony No. 5 — the driving stepwise repetition here creates an as-yet-unparalleled aura of angst.

The tension subsides somewhat with the opening of the Allegretto: a solo cello line that sounds like accompaniment without melody or harmony. The texture is reminiscent of the beginning of a fugue, and though none develops at this point,

Beethoven does soon include two fugues characterized by anxious chromaticism.

The element of obsession returns in the following movement, this time in a rhythm: an eighth-note followed by a sixteenthrest, followed by a sixteenth-note. This rhythmic motive takes us through several remote keys, including G-flat, D, B, and C, before returning to the tonic F minor.

It is Beethoven’s designation “Serioso” (a non-existent word in Italian) above this movement that gives this quartet its nickname and gives us further evidence of the work’s gravity.

After the finale presents an introductory Larghetto and a rather standard rondo, the quartet closes with a decidedly un-serioso gesture: fast-paced, light music in F major that seems to end almost before it has begun.

One must wonder if Beethoven was poking fun at his own anguish here. Or perhaps he was taunting the future generations of musicologists and music-lovers who would so readily want to equate this composition with his personal fury.

— Jacob Cooper erwin schulhoff Five Pieces for String Quartet (1924) When composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff was excused from his military service in the defeated Austro-Hungarian army at the end of World War I, he recalled that musically and personally he “became a grotesque, a burlesque, a humoresque...

And now I stand on the threshold of the land of the future, wretched and defiant.”

Schulhoff was born in Prague to an affluent

Notes on the Program

German-Jewish family, and quickly showed prodigious talent. On the recommendation of Dvořák, he studied at the Prague Conservatory and later with such musical giants as Claude Debussy and Max Reger. His music before the war is a skilled and somewhat conservative consortium of folk, jazz, and impressionist influence, but after the war, he admits to becoming “radicalized,” becoming immersed in the avant-garde and dadaist movements in post-war Germany.

The Five Pieces for String Quartet was written in 1923, when Schulhoff returned from Germany to his home city, Prague.

Each movement borders on parody, offering a vicious and enthralling commentary on neoclassical and traditional forms. In the first movement, “Alla Valse Viennese,” bright pizzicati and a sharp rhythmic ostinato punctuate a militaristic and determined waltz. The second movement, “Alla Serenata,” is wrought with bursts of harsh dissonances that act like an insurmountable force of gravity, pulling an initially light melody into darker and heavier iterations.

The third movement shows his familiarity with the bombastic rhythmic and melodic language of his Slavic homeland, while the fourth movement is a sensuous dance. The final movement, “Alla Tarantella,” scurries frantically, with perpetual momentum towards the piece’s close. felix mendelssohn String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80, No. 6 Mendelssohn’s sixth String Quartet in F minor begins suddenly, with charged and brooding tremolos. His last major work, the string quartet is a window into the

anguish of the composer’s last few months of life. Mendelssohn’s final year was plagued with illness and loss: he suffered frequently from health problems, likely due to a lifestyle of stress and overwork. His sister Fanny’s death in May 1847, exacerbated his own physical weakness. He died just five months later, but not before completing the Sixth String Quartet, which he titled “Requiem for Fanny.”

Throughout the approximately thirtyminute piece, the music never feels absolved from the deep despair of its creator. The dark and foreboding first movement is punctuated by brief, yearning sighs. This material seems to recall Beethoven’s socalled “Serioso” quartet, which is also in the key of F minor. The scherzo offers no respite from the brooding first movement, relentlessly pressing forward in F minor with nightmarish intensity. In the spacious Adagio, a descending bass line invites a warm, sorrowful melodic response. The finale plunges back into the rumbling and driving sound world of the first two movements, with buzzing tremolos and trills recalling the piece’s opening. The movement ends in a flurried cascade, affirming Mendelssohn’s indignation against the misfortunes of his last year of life.

– Katherine Balch

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