Robert Blocker, Dean
oneppo chamber music series
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble
David Shifrin, Artistic Director October 3, 2017 • Tuesday at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
Oneppo Chamber Music Series
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble tomo keller, violin • harvey de souza, violin jennifer godson, violin • martin burgess, violin robert smissen, viola • fiona bonds, viola stephen orton, cello • will schofield, cello
Antonin Dvořák 1841–1904
String Sextet in A major, Op. 48 I. Allegro — Moderato II. Dumka. Poco allegretto III. Furiant. Presto IV. Finale (Tema con variazioni). Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino intermission
George Enescu 1881–1955
Octet in C major, Op. 7 Très modéré – Très fougueux – Lentement – Moins vite, animé, movement de valse bien rythmée
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.
Artist Profiles
The Academy Chamber Ensemble was formed in 1967, drawing its membership from the world-renowned chamber orchestra the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which was itself founded by Sir Neville Marriner in 1958 and is currently led by Music Director Joshua Bell. The purpose behind the formation of the Chamber Ensemble was to perform the larger-scale chamber music repertoire with players who customarily worked together, instead of the usual string quartet with additional guests. Drawn from the principal players of the orchestra and play-directed by Academy Director/Leader Tomo Keller, the Chamber Ensemble now performs in multiple configurations from wind trios to string octets. Its touring commitments are extensive and include regular tours of Europe and North America, while recording contracts with Philips Classics, Hyperion, and Chandos have led to the release of more than thirty CDs. The Academy Chamber Ensemble’s October 2017 tour of the United States is supported by Maria Cardamone and Paul Matthews, together with the American Friends of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The American Friends was founded in 1998 to support the work of the Academy around the world, particularly in the United States. Find out more at www.asmf.org. You can also find the Academy on: Facebook: /asmforchestra Twitter: @asmforchestra YouTube: /TheASMF SoundCloud: /asmf Instagram: @asmf_orchestra
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists and records for Chandos, Philips, and Hyperion. Tomo Keller, violin Tomo Keller was born in Stuttgart in 1974 to German-Japanese parents, both of whom were professional pianists. He started playing the violin at the age of six and at ten years old he gave his first performances as a soloist with an orchestra. Tomo studied at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts and New York’s Juilliard School. Numerous prizes and awards followed, including first prize at the Austrian National Music Competition, third prize at the Fritz Kreisler Competition, first prize at the Johannes Brahms Competition, and the Grand Prize at the German Music Competition Berlin. He was also the first instrumentalist to receive the Aalto Stage Prize for young musicians. He has since performed at major concert halls all around the world, including the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Beethovenhalle in Bonn, Kirov Theatre in St. Petersburg, Salle Pleyel in Paris and the Barbican in London. He has been invited to such music festivals as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Festival de Musica Manuel de Falla, and Oberösterreichische Stiftskonzerte. He has also been a frequent guest on radio and television broadcasts (ARD, BBC, NHK, ORF).
Artist Profiles
As a soloist, Tomo Keller has performed with the Beethovenhalle Orchestra Bonn, St. Petersburg Camerata, London Symphony Orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Concert tours have led him all across Europe, as well as Russia, Asia, America and the Middle East. Tomo Keller is a much sought-after orchestral leader, having led the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra (1999–2007), the London Symphony Orchestra (Assistant Leader 2009–2015), and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (2014–present). He has appeared with more than twenty orchestras as guest leader including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, DSO Berlin, SWR Stuttgart, WDR Cologne, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Tomo was appointed Leader of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in December 2015.
Harvey de Souza, violin Harvey de Souza has been a member of the Academy since 1993 and has led the orchestra on tours with Sir Neville Marriner and soloists including Joshua Bell and Julia Fischer. As a member of the Chamber Ensemble he has performed extensively throughout South America, Europe, and the United States. Harvey has been a member of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and a member of the Vellinger String Quartet, who were winners of the 1994 London International String Quartet Competition. He has been principal guest director of the Lancashire Sinfonietta and is co-artistic director of the Sangat Chamber Music Festival, now in its seventeenth year in Mumbai. Harvey plays on a Carlo Bergonzi, kindly lent to him by the Beare’s International Violin Society. Jennifer Godson, violin
Tomo’s recordings include solo works by Bach, Bartók, and Ysaÿe, and orchestral re cordings including Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète with Sir John Eliot Gardiner/ LSO, and Avant Gershwin with Patti Austin and the WDR Big Band, for which was awarded a Grammy in 2008. He has given master classes and orchestral classes at the Guildhall School and the Royal Academy of Music in London, as well as in South Korea and the United States. Tomo Keller plays a violin by Andrea Guarneri, Cremona 1667, made available to him by the Swedish Järnåker Foundation.
Jennifer Godson has been a member of the Academy since 1985. She was for many years a member of the Fairfield String Quartet, with whom she toured extensively in Britain and abroad. She now leads a busy chamber and orchestral career and has a special interest in period performance. She is sub-leader of John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with whom she has appeared as a guest leader.
Artist Profiles
Martin Burgess, violin Martin Burgess began playing with the Academy in 1992, taking up the position of principal second violin in 1998. Having studied with Emanuel Hurwitz and the Amadeus Quartet, he brought with him the love of chamber music. He leads the Grammy nominated Emperor Quartet (winners of the prestigious Evian International String Quartet Competition). The quartet has released critically acclaimed CDs of music by Britten, Walton, Martinů, and James MacMillan. They have also performed on several film soundtracks, notably There Will Be Blood and Norwegian Wood (both written by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead). Martin enjoys a wide variety of playing away from both these ensembles, most recently recording and then touring the world with Peter Gabriel. Robert Smissen, viola Robert Smissen won a scholarship to the Chethams School of Music at the age of 14, and went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with David Takeno. While there he won prizes for chamber music and solo playing. After college he was appointed principal violist of the Northern Sinfonia, a post he held until 1986. He currently plays with the Academy, as well as other London chamber orchestras. Fiona Bonds, viola Fiona Bonds is the associate-principal violist of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and enjoys a busy and diverse
career outside the orchestra. She has recently been appointed principal violist of the City of London Sinfonia and is a founder member of the Grammy-nominated Emperor String Quartet, who have recently released a critically acclaimed disc of Benjamin Britten’s quartets. Stephen Orton, cello Stephen Orton was born in Ripon, Yorkshire, and studied with William Pleeth at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He has been principal cellist with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and the City of London Sinfonia and was also a member of the Delmé Quartet for 10 years. He has acted as guest principal cello with the London Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia. Stephen has wide experience with chamber music and has often played the Schubert Quintet with the Chilingirian Quartet. In 1985 Stephen became the principal cellist with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and has played concertos with the orchestra. He is also a member of the Academy Chamber Ensemble, touring internationally and making numerous recordings. He joined the Chilingirian Quartet in 2013. Will Schofield, cello Will Schofield was born in London to Australian and Italian parents. He read music at Edinburgh University and went on to study with Radu Aldulescu in Rome and at the Menuhin Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland.
Artist Profiles • Notes on the Program
Will has been cellist with the Grammy nominated Emperor String Quartet since the group was formed in 1992. He started playing with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields the following year, and membership in these two groups has been the primary focus of his playing career ever since. With the quartet he has played throughout Europe, North and South America, and in Africa, appearing at all of the major festivals in the UK and at numerous festivals abroad including the Prague Spring Festival, Mostly Mozart in New York, Flanders, Monte Carlo, Montpelier/Radio France, and Kuhmo in Finland. The quartet records for BIS, the latest project being a complete cycle of Britten. He has also played as a guest with the Allegri and Maggini quartets and with the Schubert Ensemble of London. With the Academy Will has had the opportunity to play the key repertoire for chamber orchestra at the highest level, working and recording with such musicians as Murray Perahia, Joshua Bell, Janine Jansen, Julia Fischer and, of course, Sir Neville Marriner. As a freelance cellist Will has served as guest principal cellist with many of the country’s top orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra, and with orchestras in Ireland and Spain. He has played on numerous film soundtracks, and with the Emperor Quartet has collaborated with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on several projects, most notably the soundtrack to the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood.
antonin dvořák String Sextet in A major, Op. 48 When Dvořák composed this Sextet in the spring of 1878, he was on the brink of international success. Although well into his thirties, three stipends from the Austrian government for talented, impoverished artists had allowed the struggling violist and organist the breathing room to focus entirely on composition. With the news of his third allowance in December 1877, the Bohemian composer also received encouraging words from the influential Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick and Brahms. Both had been on the jury that awarded the stipend and both sensed that Dvořák’s music had legs, with the potential to cross national borders. “Dvořák has written every possible thing – operas (Bohemian), symphonies, quartets and pianoforte pieces,” Brahms wrote to his own publisher, Simrock. “He is a very talented man.” Soon, Simrock was pleased with sales of Dvořák’s “Moravian” Duets. When the first volume of Slavonic Dances promised to make its way around the world, Simrock immediately snapped up other music by Dvořák, including a new String Sextet he had written in just two weeks, in May 1878. The Sextet uses the combination of instruments that Brahms had championed in his two sextets, more than a decade earlier. In it, Dvořák marries the traditions of classical chamber music with his own love of Bohemian folk music, most notably in the middle two movements. Above all, there’s a great clarity of form and fluency to the writing. The opening movement is clearly laid out, generally restrained in mood and, with its warmth and spaciousness, a
Notes on the Program
clear homage to Brahms. For the slow but charming talent for doing cimbalom movement, Dvořák introduces the idea of imitations.” Dismissed as a folklorist a dumka in chamber music for the first time. composer by some, Enescu confused others Related to the Czech word, dumat (to reflect unable to comprehend his cultural and aesor contemplate) and to a Slavonic poetic thetic mix of East and West, romanticism, form combining the lyrical and the epic, impressionism, and modernism – characDvořák was to make the dumka, with its teristics that, these days, would be viewed contrasting mood swings, a distinctive as assets to a composer. To add to the part of his musical language. As in the confusion, Enescu divided his time between Slavonic Dances, he pairs the movement his adopted city of Paris (where he also with a furiant, a folk dance with sharp, adapted the spelling of his name to Georges off-beat rhythms. Five variations on a Enesco) and his native Romania simple folk-like theme follow, concluding (Bessarabia), where he founded many with an extended sixth variation which important institutions and enjoyed royal builds and builds to near-symphonic patronage. grandeur. Brahms enjoyed his protégé’s new Sextet. “It is infinitely beautiful... “Polyphony,” — many layers in music as with a glorious ingenuity, freshness and opposed to just one — Enescu declared beauty of sound,” he wrote. late in life, “is the essential principle of my — Program notes © 2017 Keith Horner. musical language. I’m not a person for Comments welcome: khnotes@sympatico.ca pretty successions of chords... A piece deserves to be called a musical composition only if it has a line, a melody, or, even better, george enescu several melodies superimposed on top of Octet in C major, Op. 7 one another.” Nowhere is this truer than in the Octet that Enescu wrote in 1900, Composer, conductor, skilled pianist, at the age of 19. Rich in sonorous chords, brilliant violinist and teacher, Enescu tra- multi-layered textures and sufficient veled the world as a celebrated musician. transparency to give it momentum, the Casals, his musical partner, called him work declares a grand scale from the outset. “the greatest musical phenomenon since (It lasts just under forty minutes). The Mozart.” Menuhin, his student, referred opening themes are dark and brooding. to him as “the greatest musician I have They have a Brahms-like feeling. “My ever known.” His ubiquitous Romanian early works were written in an almost Rhapsodies, written when he was just 20, slavish imitation of the immortal Johannes,” dogged his international career. Enescu, Enescu admitted. The themes are also a highly cultured man who could fluently closely related: the tenderly melancholy speak five languages, soon declared himself second theme, first heard on viola, grows “fed up” with them. They contributed to out of the opening melody. This carefully him being pigeon-holed as (in the words crafted opening movement dissolves into of his English biographer, Noel Malcolm) peace and tranquility in its closing pages. “a sort of Balkan country bumpkin among composers, a provincial fellow with a small
Notes on the Program
The resonant, impassioned second movement (Très fougueux – very fiery and ardent) further develops the chromatic first theme of the previous movement. In fact, Enescu’s plan for the overall structure of his youthful Octet is extraordinarily ambitious. He designs all four movements as a single sonata form structure, with the second movement functioning as both the development of the opening movement and as an independent scherzo. Similarly, the third movement, a poetic nocturne, provides further development of the opening movement’s melancholy second (viola) theme. It evolves, without break, into the finale. This is a free revisiting of the various interrelated themes we have heard before, all fused into a kind of exuberant and purposeful waltz, massively sonorous at its conclusion. “No engineer putting his first suspension bridge across a river can have agonized more than I did, as I gradually filled my manuscript paper with notes,” Enescu reflected. — Program notes © 2017 Keith Horner. Comments welcome: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Robert Blocker, Dean
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