Takács Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson, piano, December 5, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

oneppo chamber music series

Takรกcs Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson

David Shifrin, Artistic Director Tuesday, December 5, 2017 โ ข 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

Takács Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson edward dusinberre, violin • károly schranz, violin geraldine walther, viola • andrás fejér, cello

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756–1791

String Quartet No. 21 in D major, K. 575 I. Allegretto II. Andante III. Menuetto and Trio. Allegretto IV. Allegretto

Dmitri Shostakovich 1906–1975

String Quartet No. 11, in F minor, Op. 122 I. Introduction. Andantino — II. Scherzo. Allegretto — III. Recitative. Adagio — IV. Etude. Allegro — V. Humoresque. Allegro — VI. Elegy. Adagio — VII. Finale. Moderato intermission

Johannes Brahms 1833–1897

Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante, un poco adagio III. Scherzo. Allegro — Trio IV. Finale. Poco sostenuto —

Allegro non troppo Garrick Ohlsson, piano

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

Takács Quartet The Takács Quartet, now entering its forty-third season, is renowned for the vitality of its interpretations. The New York Times recently lauded the ensemble for “revealing the familiar as unfamiliar, making the most traditional of works feel radical once more,” and the Financial Times described a recent concert at Wigmore Hall: “Even in the most fiendish repertoire these players show no fear, injecting the music with a heady sense of freedom. At the same time, though, there is an uncompromising attention to detail: neither a note nor a bow-hair is out of place.”

Society in London. Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the Takács Quartet performs ninety concerts a year worldwide.

During the 2016-2017 season, the ensemble performed complete six-concert Beethoven quartet cycles in London’s Wigmore Hall, at Princeton, the University of Michigan, and at University of California, Berkeley.

In preparation for these cycles Takács first violinist Edward Dusinberre’s book, Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet, was published in the UK by Faber and Faber and in North America by the University of Chicago Press. The book takes the reader inside the life of a string quartet, melding music history and memoir as it explores the circumstances surrounding the composition of Beethoven’s quartets.

In May 2014, the Takács became the first string quartet to win the Wigmore Hall Medal. The Medal, inaugurated in 2007, recognizes major international artists who have a strong association with the hall.

Recipients so far include Andras Schiff, The Takács Quartet performed Philip Thomas Quasthoff, Menachem Pressler, Roth’s Everyman program with Meryl and Dame Felicity Lott. Appointed in 2012 Streep at Princeton in 2014, and again as the first-ever associate artists at Wigmore, with her at the Royal Conservatory of the Takács Quartet presents six concerts Music in Toronto in 2015. The program every season there. European engagements was conceived in close collaboration with in 2016-17 included performances in Roth. The quartet is known for such Florence, Milan, Geneva, Amsterdam, and innovative programming. They first Paris. In September 2016 they appeared performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in in Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong, and 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They in August 2017 visited Australia and New have toured 14 cities with poet Robert Zealand. A recent tour to South America Pinsky, collaborate regularly with the included concerts in Chile and Brazil.

Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas, and in 2010 collaborated with the Colorado In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Shakespeare Festival and David Lawrence Takács was the only string quartet to be Morse on a theater project that explored the inducted into its first Hall of Fame, along composition of Beethoven’s last quartets. with such legendary artists as Jascha Heifetz, Leonard Bernstein, and Dame The Takács Quartet records for Hyperion Janet Baker. The ensemble also won the Records, and their releases for that label 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song include string quartets by Haydn, Schubert, presented by the Royal Philharmonic Janáček, Smetana, Debussy, and Britten, as

Artist Profiles

well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms (with Lawrence Power). Future releases for Hyperion will include a Dvořák disc with Lawrence Power (viola), the Dohnanyi Piano Quintets with Hamelin, and piano quintets by Elgar and Amy Beach with Garrick Ohlsson.

For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Takács Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.

Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the quartet’s website.

international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Violinist Edward Dusinberre joined the quartet in 1993 and violist Roger Tapping in 1995. Violist Geraldine Walther replaced Mr. Tapping in 2005. In 2001 the Takács Quartet was awarded the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross of the Republic of Hungary, and in March of 2011 each member of the quartet was awarded the Order of Merit Commander’s Cross by the president of the Republic of Hungary. » takacsquartet.com

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Faculty Fellows at the University of Colorado Boulder and play on instruments generously loaned to them by the Shwayder Foundation. The quartet has helped to develop a string program with a special emphasis on chamber music, where students work in a nurturing environment designed to help them develop their artistry. The quartet’s commitment to teaching is enhanced by summer residencies at the Aspen Festival and at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara. The Takács is a visiting quartet at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest

by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai, and András Fejér, while all four were students. It first received

Garrick Ohlsson, piano Pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire ranging over the entire piano literature and he has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century.

This season that vast repertoire can be sampled in concerti ranging from Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Barber,

artist profiles · notes on the program

to Busoni in cities including St. Louis, Washington D.C., Cincinnati, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Prague, Stockholm, Wroclaw, and Strasbourg. In recital he can be heard in New York’s Tully Hall, Seattle, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

He will appear twice during the season with the Indianapolis Symphony – first playing two Prokofiev concerti in a weekend in which all five will be programmed, and returning later in the season with Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, and Tokyo string quartets, and this fall is touring with the Takács Quartet.

Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Franciscobased FOG Trio. Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion, and Virgin Classics labels.

A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School, in New York City. He has been awarded first prizes at the Busoni and Montreal Piano competitions, the Gold Medal at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw (1970), the Avery Fisher Prize (1994), the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Mich. (1998), and the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music (2014). » garrickohlsson.com

wolfgang amadeus mozart String Quartet No. 21 in D major, K. 575 While visiting Berlin in the spring of 1789, Mozart performed for the King of Prussia, Frederick William II, and the accomplished cellist and prominent patron of music requested a set of six string quartets. Despite a commission that certainly would have paid well, Mozart returned to Vienna in June and found it very difficult to get to work. His letters during that time speak of the physical pain he was suffering from rheumatism, toothaches, headaches, and insomnia. Furthermore, his wife was struggling with a foot condition at the same time that she was pregnant for the fifth time. All of this was compounded by the fact that they were desperately short of money, after having already borrowed considerably from friends and acquaintances. Things were bad. In trying to promote a series of concerts to get back on his feet, Mozart managed to sell a grand total of one subscription. Considering all of this, it is certainly not surprising that he felt little enthusiasm for writing quartets.

Despite these exceedingly difficult circumstances, Mozart somehow managed to complete the D major Quartet (K. 575) within a month of his return from Berlin.

The first of what would ultimately be three “Prussian” Quartets, there is no better example of how Mozart was able to separate his troubled physical and emotional condition from the spiritual and musical side of himself. Listening to the optimistic and buoyant sounds of the work, one would never guess that it was crafted under such adversity. Because it was written at the urging of King Frederick of Prussia, an excellent cellist, the cello plays an important role throughout.

notes on the program

The principal theme of the first movement is essentially a rising arpeggio and a descending scale. It is stated by the first violin, repeated by the viola, and extended by the first violin and cello. The second theme, a rising arpeggio followed by a long held note, is introduced by the cello, but with all four players getting a crack at it.

The development and recapitulation are both conventional and continue the movement’s good spirits through to the end.

The second movement is in ternary, or A-B-A, form. The thickly textured melodic contour of the A section contrasts with a soaring phrase that passes from instrument to instrument over a repeated note accompaniment in the B section. In a short coda, the first violin has a quickly rising run that is answered in the second violin with a long note and a four-note turn. The cello and first violin then echo this exchange to conclude the movement.

The Menuetto starts with the same fournote turn that came at the end of the second movement. The music glitters with sharp contrasts between soft and loud, staccato (short notes) and legato (long notes).

The trio showcases the cello, which sings out cantabile melodies (again featuring the four-note turn) in some of the instrument’s highest ranges. The Menuetto is repeated after the trio.

The serenely happy last movement features the cello introducing the main theme, which starts with the same rising arpeggio as the first movement’s themes. The contrasting interludes of the movement’s rondo form all spring from similar ascending arpeggios, but Mozart mixes up different keys, settings, and instrumentation to make them sound like fresh new material.

The premiere of K. 575 was given at Mozart’s lodgings in Vienna on May 22, 1790, most likely with the composer playing viola.

–Jacob Adams dmitri shostakovich String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 122 The Beethoven Quartet, formed in 1923 by graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, premiered almost all of Shostakovich’s string quartets and served as his chamber music muse. The founding members performed together for nearly forty years until 1965 when the quartet’s second violinist, Vasily Shirinsky, died. Shostakovich wrote his Eleventh Quartet in memory of Shirinsky and the quartet performed it in Leningrad in 1966. Shostakovich appeared in the same concert on the piano and suffered a heart attack right after the performance, which started his slow decline in health.

To depict the sudden and sorrowful death of the beloved violinist, the music bears a heavy sense of loss. For long stretches of the piece, only one or two instruments play; even when all four instruments converse, one voice dominates the other three, as if to emphasize the trio left behind after Shirinsky’s death.

The non-traditional arrangement of the seven interlocking movements gives the effect of a montage, an effect common in Soviet cinema. Though the movements are short, they feel longer in performance, as if a vast amount of information has been distilled to fit into a confined space.

The main theme is introduced in the first violin, accompanied subtly by the other members. The second movement, more

Notes on the Program

sinister and restless, features different mechanical and repetitive dialogues between two voices adorned with glissandi.

The central movements, beginning with a solo viola line, pass in quick succession.

The elegy is dark and funereal and breaks through the grief and bitterness of the previous movements in favor of solemn contemplation. The finale affectionately recalls the various themes of previous movements. The quartet ends with the first violin holding a high C for nearly thirty seconds; it begins a scream of anguish and fades into the distance.

—Julia Clancy johannes brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 While Brahms’s piano quintet is now one of his most-performed chamber works, it had a somewhat troubled birth. Initially appearing in 1862 as a string quintet, it seemed, as Brahms’s violinist friend Joseph Joachim noted, to lack a certain “charm.”

The subsequent two-piano version was similarly unable to expose the music’s grand, symphonic character. Finally, in 1865, Brahms recast the piece into its current instrumentation, where the combination of pianistic and string timbres seem to grow so organically from the notes that it is hard to imagine the work was ever conceived in any other form.

The opening Allegro most clearly displays the opus’s ambitious nature. This movement is extensive and tortured, full of plaintive pianissimo melodies and weighty fortissimo declarations; it employs every available register of each of the instruments. Though

packed with diverse material, its clever transitions enable it to flow continuously.

The Andante immediately offers a respite, beginning with almost Schubertian simplicity. The waltz-like accompaniment here also reveals Brahms’s appreciation for Johann Strauss. It is the main line, though, that is most likely to seize the listener’s attention. At least this was the case for Clara Schumann, who called the movement as a whole “one long melody from start to finish.”

The Scherzo arises out of quiet depths and heralds the return of complexity and energy. While its dynamic level alternates between loud and soft, a fast pulse is perpetually audible, even in the more relaxed major-mode Trio. After a harsh, accented unison closes the movement, the Finale begins with a drastic reduction in tempo and in dynamics – but not with a reduction in tension, as chromatic lines in each instrument create an anxious atmosphere. This lengthy introductory section is almost like a separate movement in itself, and the same can be said about the wonderfully driving Presto that closes the work. Indeed, Brahms’s contemporaries reportedly found this final section too long, but could anything more understated appropriately close such a grand, ambitious work?

—Jacob Cooper

ONEPPO CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES 2018 CONCERTS jan 30

calidore string quartet

feb 27

chien-kim-watkins trio

apr 10

may 8

Performances of quartets by Mendelssohn, Janáček, and Shostakovich that pay homage to earlier works Pianist Gloria Chien, violinist Soovin Kim, and cellist Paul Watkins join forces in a new ensemble

brentano string quartet

Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet and works by Shostakovich and Beethoven

competition winners

A performance by the winners of the School of Music’s annual chamber music competition

BONUS EVENT ANNOUNCED An Evening with Peter Schickele Tuesday, March 27 • 7:30 pm

Morse Recital Hall Tickets from $10, Students from $5 FREE for current Oneppo Chamber Music Series subscribers Subscribers may pick up their tickets at the box office during intermission

We are thrilled to announce the addition of a special event that will welcome Peter Schickele back to Yale. Schickele, the famed composer, performer, and raconteur whose alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach, has entertained and enriched audiences for more than 50 years, will share stories of his uniquely compelling and multifaceted career, no doubt with inimitable humor. Don’t miss “An Evening with Peter Schickele,” a celebration of an extraordinary life in music.

Robert Blocker, Dean

JO I N US FO R T H E 20 1 7–20 18 SE AS ON More than 200 concerts every year, many of which are free and streamed live, online!

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ONEPPO CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES Inspired performances by the Brentano and Takács string quartets, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble, and a new trio featuring Soovin Kim, Paul Watkins, and Gloria Chien HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES Recitals by YSM’s faculty pianists and renowned guest artists Angela Hewitt and Marc-André Hamelin BREN

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Upcoming Events Guitar Chamber Music december 6 YSM Ensembles Students from Benjamin Verdery’s guitar studio perform music by YSM composer David Lang and YSM student-guitarist Gulli Björnsson, along with works by Assad, Paganini, Giacometti, and Farias Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm free admission New Music for Orchestra december 7 Yale Philharmonia Conducting fellow David Yi leads the Yale Philharmonia in a program of new orchestral works by the School’s graduate-student composers Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $7 • Yale Faculty/Staff $5 Students $3 • $3 surcharge for purchases at the door Preview Concert: Reflections from the Second Viennese School december 11 Yale in New York This year’s Yale in New York series features music from Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance.

The second concert in the series, Reflections from the Second Viennese School, features Webern’s arrangement of Schoenberg’s innovative Chamber Symphony No. 1 and Schoenberg’s arrangements of waltzes by Johann Strauss II, with faculty members Wendy Sharp, violin, and Melvin Chen, piano Morse Recital Hall | Monday | 4:30 pm free admission

Yale Brass Ensemble december 11 YSM Ensembles A program featuring students from YSM’s trumpet, horn, trombone, and tuba studios Morse Recital Hall | Monday | 7:30 pm free admission Hung-Kuan Chen, piano december 13 Horowitz Piano Series School of Music faculty pianist Hung-Kuan Chen performs Beethoven’s visionary “Hammerklavier” Sonata and works by Schubert and Messiaen Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $13 • Students $7 Preview Concert: Impressions on the French Tradition december 15 Yale in New York This year’s Yale in New York series features music from Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance. The final concert in the series, Impressions on the French Tradition, features Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Ravel’s String Quartet, with faculty mezzo-soprano Janna Baty and the Rolston String Quartet, YSM’s fellowship quartet-in-residence Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 4:30 pm free admission

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