Calidore String Quartet, Jan 30, 2018

Robert Blocker, Dean

oneppo chamber music series

Calidore String Quartet

David Shifrin, Artistic Director Tuesday, January 30, 2018 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

Calidore String Quartet jeffrey myers violin • ryan meehan violin jeremy berry viola • estelle choi cello

Felix Mendelssohn 1809–1847

String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 44, No. 1 I. Molto allegro vivace II. Menuetto. Un poco Allegretto III. Andante espressivo ma con moto IV. Presto con brio

Leoš Janáček 1854–1928

String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer” (1923) I. Adagio con moto II. Con moto III. Con moto — Vivace — Andante — Tempo I IV. Con moto intermission

Dimitri Shostakovich 1906–1975

String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117 I. Moderato con moto II. Adagio III. Allegretto IV. Adagio V. Allegro

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 Profile

Calidore String Quartet The Calidore String Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” (New York Times) and “balance of intellect and expression” (Los Angeles Times) has won them accolades across the globe and firmly established them as one of the finest chamber music ensembles performing today. The Calidore String Quartet – violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi (YSM '12MM) – made international headlines as the winner of the $100,000 Grand-Prize of the 2016 and inaugural M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest prize for chamber music in the world. Also in 2016, the quartet became the first North American ensemble to win the BorlettiBuitoni Trust Fellowship and was named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists — an honor that brings with it recordings, international radio broadcasts and appearances in Britain’s most prominent venues and festivals. Most recently in 2017 the Calidore was honored with the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. The 2017–18 season continues the Calidore’s three-year residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s (CMS) Two program.

The Calidore String Quartet regularly performs in the most prestigious venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Seoul’s Kumho Arts Hall and at many significant festivals, including Verbier, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, East Neuk, and Festspiele MecklenburgVorpommern. In addition to winning the M-Prize, the Calidore String Quartet won

grand prizes in virtually all the major U.S. chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions and captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD Munich International String Quartet Competition and Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition.

Highlights of the 2017–18 season include debuts at the Kennedy Center and in Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, Brussels, Cologne, and Barcelona. The quartet returns to Wigmore Hall and the Verbier Festival as well as major series across North America from Montreal to Seattle. In April 2018 the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presents the Calidore in their Alice Tully Hall recital debut. As protégés of the Emerson Quartet, the Calidore String Quartet will perform a joint program with the Emersons at the Ravinia Festival as well as major series in Portland, Ann Arbor, and Southern California. In addition to their Emerson collaboration, the Calidore will also perform with cellist David Finckel, pianists Wu Han and Allesio Bax, and violist Roberto Diaz.

In Summer 2017, the Calidore String Quartet debuted in France and Chamber Music Northwest (Portland, OR) and returned to the Ravinia, Great Lakes, and Hudson Valley Chamber Music festivals. Additionally, the Calidore serves as quartet-in-residence at both the the Bellingham Festival of Music and Center Stage Strings Institute.

The Calidore String Quartet has released three commercial recordings, the most recent of which is quartets by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn recorded live in concert

Artist Profile

at the 2016 Music@Menlo Festival. The French label Editions Hortus released the Calidore String Quartet’s second studio recording, Serenade: Music from the Great War, featuring music for String Quartet

by Hindemith, Milhaud, and Stravinsky, along with the world-premiere recording of Jacques de la Presle’s Suite en sol, and the second recording ever of Ernst Toch’s Serenade. February 2015 marked the release of the Calidore’s critically-acclaimed debut recording of quartets by Mendelssohn and Haydn for which Gramophone dubbed the Calidore String Quartet “the epitome of confidence and finesse”. The Calidore were featured as Young Artists-in-Residence on American Public Media’s Performance Today and their performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio, BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Korean Broadcasting Corporation, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Hamburg), and were featured on German national television as part of a documentary produced by ARD public broadcasting.

In the 2016–17 season the Calidore gave world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Hannah Lash, and Benjamin Dean Taylor. In addition, the Calidore premiered string quartets of Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Portland, Detroit, and Belfast. The Calidore has collaborated with many esteemed artists and ensembles, including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell, David Shifrin, Inon Barnatan, Paul Coletti, David Finckel, Paul Neubauer, Ronald Leonard, Paul Watkins, Raphael Merlin, and the Quatuor Ebéne, among others. Formed in 2010 at the Colburn School of Music,

the Calidore has studied closely with such luminaries as the Emerson Quartet, David Finckel, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Günther Pichler, Gerhard Schulz, Guillaume Sutre, Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Paul Coletti, Ronald Leonard, Clive Greensmith, Martin Beaver, and the Quatuor Ebène.

As a passionate supporter of music education, the Calidore String Quartet is committed to mentoring and educating young musicians, students and audiences.

Since 2016 the Calidore serve as Visiting Guest Artists at the University of Delaware.

From 2014–16 the Calidore served as Artistsin-Residence at Stony Brook University.

The Calidore has conducted master classes and residencies at Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Mercer University. Previously, the Calidore served on the faculty of the Ed and Mari Edelman Chamber Music Institute at the Colburn School.

Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its home of origin, Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”

The Calidore String Quartet aims to present performances that share the passion and joy of the string quartet chamber music repertoire.

notes on the program

felix mendelssohn String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 44, No. 1 The 28-year-old Felix Mendelssohn composed his three Opus 44 quartets over the course of about a year, from 1837 to 1838. This was a period of success and happiness for the young composer; he had been appointed conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra two years earlier in 1835, had had a great success with his oratorio “St. Paul” in 1836, and had gotten married in 1837. He was also emerging as a respected authority on music of the past: he was responsible in great part for reintroducing the masterpieces of Bach and Handel to European audiences, and in 1839 helped Schumann bring Schubert’s C major Symphony to light, eleven years after that composer’s death. Equally, he intersected with the great musicians of his time — Chopin, Berlioz, Schumann, the pianist Ignaz Moscheles, and the violinist Joseph Joachim — not to mention other luminaries such as Goethe and Hegel. With Mendelssohn we have a creative figure who was no secluded hermit; he was bent on forging the connections in the musical world of his time, be they from the music of the past, among his many contemporary fellow geniuses, or in the discovery of the next musical generation. Often one can hear this social quality in his music as well: a peculiar grace, light or joy that is calculated not to awe, but rather to welcome the listener, to extend an inspired hand in fellowship.

The D major quartet, Op. 44, No. 1, is decidedly filled with light and joy.

Although it was actually the last of the

three Opus 44 quartets to be composed, it seems that Mendelssohn was particularly proud of it, which may be the reason it was published as the first of the set. D major is a brilliant key for stringed instruments, and the composer plays to that quality.

The first movement is a rather epic creation, built on a grand scale. Full of energy, it seems in its biggest moments to have trombones and timpani straining to make themselves heard through the slender medium of the quartet. Although it is technically composed in a sonata-allegro form, the experience of hearing it evokes not so much a strict form as an odyssey, a journey to many different lands. There are two reasons for this. First, there are many different thematic ideas that turn up one after the other, like so many islands in an archipelago: the exuberant opening melody, with a rocketing figure in the first violin; a sweet chromatic figure in a softer dynamic; a momentary tender aside in the viola; a hushed, choral utterance in a minor key; and a merry caper to the end of the exposition. Second, there is a musical “ship”: an omnipresent rolling eighth-note texture that creates an inexorable motion, bearing us from one island to the next.

The second movement is a kind of homage to the minuet, insofar as it carries that title; but this music seems far removed from the dance floor. It is whispered, evanescent, gliding; if dancers are suggested, their feet do not touch the ground. The contrasting Trio section in the middle is even more surreal: here we are in a minor key, and the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream start to take form in an eddy of rising eighth notes. By and by the main section steals back in and rounds off the

notes on the program

movement, with a coda that recalls a fairy shadow or two.

Leoš Janáček String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer” (1923)

Next comes the extraordinary slow movement of the work. The first violin sings a melancholy “song without words,” a simple melody whose plucked accompaniment in the lower strings transforms the singer into a solitary troubadour. But it is the rolling 16th-note figure in the second violin that stamps the scene most memorably.

Handed from instrument to instrument, this 16th-note texture persists all the way through the movement almost without interruption, the vehicle that carries the listener through periods of sunlight and shadow. Ultimately the first violin reaches an anguished peroration, bringing a sense of true grief well beyond the tender sorrow that came before; after which nothing remains but to bring the movement to a resigned close.

Janáček’s first string quartet was inspired

by Leo Tolstoy’s tragic tale of a woman disappointed in marriage and betrayed by her lover. “I had in mind a miserable woman, suffering, beaten, wretched, like the great Russian author Tolstoy wrote about in his “Kreutzer Sonata.” So wrote the 69-year-old Janáček in a 1924 letter to Kamila Stolsslova, a young married woman 38 years his junior. She had become the muse that inspired many of his semiautobiographical later compositions. Indeed, his second quartet, “Intimate Letters,” was written explicitly as a “labor of love” and is literally influenced by events in their relationship. While the First Quartet is not directly concerned with Janáček’s personal life, the new relationship with the young Madame Stosslova may have been the catalyst that ignited the desire to respond so passionately to Tolstoy’s story. Having read the novel, Janáček was devastated by the unfaithful wife’s murder at the hands of her jealous husband, and he furiously completed his quartet over a nine-day period in 1923.

The work was commissioned by the Bohemian Quartet, and according to the second violinist (the composer Josef Suk), Janáček intended the work to represent a sort of musical protest, condemning any form of despotic male behavior towards women. As such, the quartet remains programmatic, but is more of a psychological response to Tolstoy’s novel than a bar by bar depiction of the plot. Nevertheless, the essential shape of the story can be readily discerned.

With the final movement we return to the celebratory atmosphere of the first movement. After a euphoric opening salvo, the music whirls away in a tarantella-like dance. An almost giddy joyfulness pervades this material; but it has a habit of suddenly getting stuck in a repeating rhythmic groove, quieting, and then recovering itself, spinning off in another harmonic direction. Contrasting with all this energy is another melody, more tender and personal but no less blissful, that intercedes from time to time to offer relief from the dance. A remarkable, Jovian coda rounds off the work, wherein the imagined brasses and drums of the first movement make their appearance one final time. © Misha Amory

Notes on the Program

The first movement establishes the dramatic foundation by painting a portrait of the heroine, focusing on “compassion for the miserable, prostrate female being.” The very opening “sigh” is a motive that not only signifies the pathos of our heroine, but also contains the pitch cell that generates material for the entire movement.

The outline of a sonata form can be traced throughout, but not in the syntax of the tonal tradition (i.e. specific key-relationships, balanced phrasing and goal-oriented harmonic progressions). Rather it is a mold for Janáček’s thematic narrative. The “recapitulation” is perhaps better described as an emotionally charged memento of the opening than an event of great formal significance. The second movement develops the drama by introducing the seducer, portrayed by a buoyantly foppish variant of the very opening motive from the first movement.

monologue, recalling the sighing motive from the first movement. This motive also provides the work’s climax. But rather than end the piece with the terrible deed, and deny the very existence of love as does Tolstoy in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” Janáček seeks to refute Tolstoy’s position and deviate from the great author’s ultimate message. Ironically, while Tolstoy’s novel blames music for encouraging adultery, and ascribes to it all manner of “the most immoral effects,” Janáček uses music instead as a source of catharsis and a symbol of hope for love and the spirit of humanity.

–Liam Viney dmitri shostakovich String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117

Though Shostakovich and his artistic comrades collectively sighed after Stalin’s Scurrying figuration and chilling sul death in 1953, Shostakovich’s negotiation ponticello passages hint of the impending of political correctness and musical extragedy, and the first admissions of love pression did not necessarily improve. By are heard. The third movement opens with 1964, when he began his second attempt a “light and timid” duet between violin at his ninth quartet (the first attempt and cello, but this movement ultimately ended up in the stove), his circumstances represents the crisis. The opening melody, were trying: he still proceeded with a especially in its second statement, is remi- degree of caution after being denounced niscent of the beautiful second theme by the Soviets for a second time in 1948; from the first movement of Beethoven’s he lost his wife Nina to stomach cancer “Kreutzer” Sonata (which had, of course, in 1954 and his mother a year later; he inspired Tolstoy in turn). Yet this very married and quickly divorced Margarita beauty serves to unleash the passions of Kainova in 1956; joined the Communist our protagonists, including the jealous Party in 1961 and was again criticized by husband. Frenzied interruptions of wild the party for his 13th Symphony in 1962 figuration accumulate until the heroine for its use of Yevtushenko’s poems on pleads for compassion and finally retreats themes of Nazi and Soviet antisemitism into an expanded vision of the love theme during World War II. This was the last from the opening. The fourth movement piece of concert music Shostakovich opens with the tormented heroine’s worked on before the Ninth Quartet,

notes on the program

which makes some references to klezmer music in its third movement.

And yet despite the turmoil, his ninth quartet is among his most optimistic.

The first movement is serene, albeit ominously, perhaps relating to his sound and loving relationship to his new wife, Irina, to whom the quartet is dedicated.

It sets out clearly in E-flat with a drone in the cello and undulating eighth notes in the second violin, but the tune in the first violin repeats an A-natural, a haunting nag on the otherwise controlled peace.

The second movement features slow, lyrical viola playing, tinged with piquant augmented thirds. The first violin takes over, wandering disconsolately above sustained notes in the lower instruments.

In the third movement, a sardonic polka pitters out into the fourth movement, a sullen adagio with violent pizzicato outbursts by the viola and second violin.

The final movement is a raucous waltzmacabre in heavy metal style. The first violin presents a strident, peasant-like melody in duple meter, and the second violin, a loyal crony, responds in kind.

Gradually evolving in increasingly celebratory exuberance, themes from prior movements reappear. The final 200 measures are essentially in crescendo, racing for a unison proclamation — perhaps the happiest of all his string quartet endings. —Julia Clancy

ONEPPO CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES 2018 Concerts feb 27

chien-kim-watkins trio

Pianist Gloria Chien, violinist Soovin Kim, and cellist Paul Watkins, each of whom enjoys a distinguished career in other contexts, come together in a new trio to perform music by visionary composers of the past and the present.

Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 70, No. 2 Pierre Jalbert: Piano Trio No. 2 (2014) Brahms: Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87

mar 27

an evening with peter schickele

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.

FREE for current OCMS subscribers

apr 10

brentano string quartet

The Brentano String Quartet, YSM’s ensemble-inresidence, performs Mozart’s captivating “Dissonance” Quartet and works by Beethoven and Shostakovich.

Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonance” Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat major, Op. 133 Beethoven: String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18

may 8

competition winners

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

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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 The Wayne Escoffery Quintet featuring Jeremy Pelt february 2 Ellington Jazz Series “Delightfulee Morgan,” a program that celebrates Lee Morgan’s 80th year and features the legendary trumpeter’s rarely heard and unrecorded compositions.

Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $20 • Students $10 Kate Soper, guest composer february 8 New Music New Haven A program featuring works by guest composer Kate Soper, whom The Boston Globe has described as “a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting power.”

Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission Marc-André Hamelin, piano february 14 Horowitz Piano Series Guest artist Marc-André Hamelin, of whom The New York Times has asked, rhetorically, “Is it possible for a pianist to be too good?” performs an eclectic program that includes Debussy’s Images, Book I, music by Liszt, and more.

Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $21 • Students $11

The Magic Flute february 16-18 Yale Opera The Yale Opera presents an innovative new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute that tells us to question truth, find love, and be human.

Yale School of Drama alumnus Dustin Wills directs the cast and Israel Gursky conducts the Yale Philharmonia in this timeless tale of a hero’s journey to enlightenment.

Shubert Theatre | Friday & Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 2 pm Tickets from $19, Students $10 Visit shubert.com or call (203) 562-5666 Philharmonia in Sprague february 23 Yale Philharmonia Conducting fellow David Yi leads the Yale Philharmonia in a program that includes Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, with Szymon Nehring ’19AD; Wieniawski’s Légende, Op. 17, and Ravel’s Tzigane, M. 76, with violinist Sirena Huang ’19AD; and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61.

Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10 • Yale Faculty/Staff $8 Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door

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