Beethoven Winds, Apr 13, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

yale in new york

Beethoven Winds

David Shifrin, Artistic Director April 13, 2017 • Thursday at 7:30 pm Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

Yale School of Music

Beethoven Winds April 13, 2017 • Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827

Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, WoO 28 Stephen Taylor, oboe F Michelle Nguyen, oboe S Hsuan-Fong Chen, English horn A Sextet for Winds in E-flat major, Op. 71 I. Adagio — Allegro II. Adagio III. Menuetto. Quasi allegretto — Trio IV. Rondo. Allegro David Shifrin, clarinet F Paul Won Jin Cho, clarinet A William Purvis, horn F Lauren Hunt, horn A Frank Morelli, bassoon F Marissa Olegario, bassoon A intermission

Yale in New York

Beethoven

Rondino in E-flat major, WoO 25 Wind Octet in E-flat major, Op. 103 I. Allegro II. Andante III. Menuetto — Trio IV. Finale. Presto Stephen Taylor, oboe F Hsuan-Fong Chen, oboe A David Shifrin, clarinet F Paul Won Jin Cho, clarinet A William Purvis, horn F Lauren Hunt, horn A Frank Morelli, bassoon F Marissa Olegario, bassoon A

S

Yale School of Music student Yale School of Music alumni F Yale School of Music faculty A

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

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

Artist Profiles

Stephen Taylor, oboe Oboist Stephen Taylor holds the Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III solo oboe chair with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

He is also the solo oboist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble (where he is co-director of chamber music), the American Composers Orchestra, the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, the renowned contemporary music group Speculum Musicae, and plays as co-principal oboe with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

He appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician at such major festivals as Spoleto, Caramoor International Music Festival, Aldeburgh, Bravo! Colorado, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and Schleswig-Holstein.

Stereo Review named his recording on Deutsche Grammophon with Orpheus of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for winds as the “Best New Classical Recording.”

Included among his more than 200 other recordings are premiere recordings of the Wolpe Oboe Quartet, Elliott Carter’s Oboe Quartet – for which Mr. Taylor received a Grammy nomination – and works by André Previn. Trained at the Juilliard School with teachers Lois Wann and Robert Bloom, Mr. Taylor is a member of its faculty as well as those of SUNY Stony Brook and the Manhattan School of Music. The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University awarded him a performer’s grant in 1981.

Mr. Taylor joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music in the fall of 2005.

Hsuan-Fong Chen ’13MM, oboe and English horn Oboist Hsuan-Fong Chen generously shares her passion for creating meaningful musical experiences with her audiences. She is a frequent substitute with the New York Philharmonic, most recently on the orchestra’s California tour in May 2016. Additionally, she can be heard with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and with the hit Broadway show Wicked. In May 2015, she had the privilege of performing with eight-time Grammy award-winning artist Rihanna at the Met Gala.

A native of Taiwan, Hsuan-Fong came to the United States at age 16 and went on to receive her bachelor of music degree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Elaine Douvas and Nathan Hughes. She then received her master of music degree and artist diploma from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Stephen Taylor. Her studies concluded at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Liang Wang.

A passionate chamber musician, HsuanFong has given multiple world premieres of new world music at the Juilliard School, including the American premiere of Eliott Carter’s Wind Rose for wind ensemble.

While at Yale, she performed at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall with the Dancing Winds quintet. Her summer festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival, Pacific Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Atlantic Music Festival, Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the New York Symphonic Ensemble’s 2016 Japan tour.

Artist Profiles

Michelle Nguyen ’17MM, oboe Michelle Nguyen is currently pursuing a master of music degree at the Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Stephen Taylor. Previously, she received a bachelor of music degree in oboe performance from Southern Methodist University, where she was a student of Erin Hannigan, principal oboist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Originally from Houston, Texas, Michelle was the grand prize winner of the Virtuosi of Houston Immanuel and Helen B. Olshan Foundation Concerto Competition, as well as a finalist at the American Festival for the Arts Young Artist Competition. Michelle has spent summers at the Brevard Music Center, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Vermont Mozart Festival in Burlington. Michelle will return to Burlington this summer as a soloist with the VMF Orchestra.

David Shifrin, clarinet One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, clarinetist David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber music collaborator.

He has performed with numerous major orchestras including the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit, Denver, and Memphis symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras. Internationally, he has performed with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), with the Cleveland

Orchestra, the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the New York Chamber Symphony.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared in critically acclaimed recitals around the world, including at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and throughout Germany. His recordings (on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, Sony, and CRI) continue to garner praise as well as awards, and he has received three Grammy nominations. Sought after as a chamber musician, he appears frequently with such distinguished artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson string quartets, and with Wynton Marsalis.

Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by championing the works of twentieth and twenty-first century American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, Mr. Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. Along with his work at CMSLC, Mr. Shifrin is also the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. David Shifrin has been a professor at the Yale School of Music since 1987. He has also served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii. Mr. Shifrin has been artistic director of the Oneppo

Artist Profiles

Chamber Music Series at Yale and Yale in New York since 2008.

Paul Won Jin Cho ’09MM ’10AD, clarinet Paul Won Jin Cho, the principal clarinetist of the Binghampton Philharmonic Orchestra, has been described as a “stylish clarinetist” by The New York Times. Paul Won Jin Cho has performed throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States with the Cornell Chamber Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center, and Youth Orchestra of the Americas. He also enjoys his tenure as resident conductor with Albano Ballet, where he directs Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in December. In New York City, he is the most recent addition to the forty-year old woodwind quintet, Quintet of The Americas, and the New York City-based collective ensemble Decoda. Mr. Cho also appears in the orchestras of Broadway musicals and at weekly servies at the Redeemer Presbyterian Church. When he was a fellow of Ensemble Connect, Mr. Cho taught at PS 200 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and collaborated with Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Sir Simon Rattle, Jessica Rivera, and David Robertson, among others. Mr. Cho has studied with Dong-Jin Kim of Seoul, South Korea, Yehuda Gilad at the University of Southern California, and most recently, David Shifrin at the Yale School of Music.

Frank Morelli, bassoon Frank Morelli, the first bassoonist to receive a doctor of music degree from the Juilliard School, has been a soloist at Carnegie Hall on nine occasions and performed at the White House for the final state dinner of the Clinton presidency. The principal bassoonist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic, he was principal bassoonist of the New York City Opera for twenty-seven years. He teaches at Juilliard, Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, SUNY Stony Brook, and the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. His more than 160 recordings include MSR Classics solo CDs From the Heart, Romance and Caprice, Bassoon Brasileiro, and Baroque Fireworks. The magazine Gramophone proclaimed: “Morelli’s playing is a joy to behold.” The American Record Guide stated: “The bassoon playing on this recording is as good as it gets.” Of his DG recording of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto with Orpheus, Fanfare Magazine added that the recording “reset a reviewer’s standards at too high a level for comfort in a world more productive of ordinary music making.” The Orpheus CD Shadow Dances, which features Frank Morelli, won a 2001 Grammy Award.

A prolific chamber musician, he has appeared at the most prestigious national and international festivals. He is a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, the ensemble in residence at the Manhattan School of Music, and Festival Chamber Music. He compiled the landmark excerpt book Stravinsky: Difficult Passages for Bassoon for Boosey and Hawkes and has numerous transcriptions in print. His revision of the widely-used Weissenborn Bassoon Method

Artist Profiles

Book and Studies will soon be in print, commissioned by Carl Fischer Publishers.

Marissa Olegario ’15MM, bassoon Bassoonist Marissa Olegario is known for her compelling and personality-driven performances that foster a uniquely fun and intimate connection with her audience.

She has appeared in concerts at Avery Fisher Hall and the Kennedy Center and has performed under such conductors as John Adams, Peter Oundjian, and Rafael Payare.

She enjoys an eclectic chamber career, most recently performing at the Phoenix Chamber Society, and has collaborated with the Breaking Winds Bassoon Quartet.

Passionate about arts education, Marissa teaches across the United States. Her interests extend to assuming leadership roles in arts entrepreneurship to cultivate innovative ways in promoting and preserving classical music. In 2015, her role as the manager of Bringing Music to Life brought her to promote the music of J.S. Bach to audiences across Australia.

Marissa is currently pursuing her doctor of musical arts degree with Frank Morelli at Stony Brook University. She received her master of music degree from the Yale School of Music, where she was the recipient of the YSM Alumni Prize, and received her bachelor of music degree from Northwestern University under the tutelage of Christopher Millard and Lewis Kirk. In her free time, Marissa enjoys traveling solo, practicing yoga, being outdoors, and enjoying the company of loved ones.

William Purvis, horn William Purvis pursues a multifaceted career both in the United States and abroad as horn soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and educator. A passionate advocate of new music, he has participated in numerous premieres, including horn concerti by Peter Lieberson, Bayan Northcott, Krzysztof Penderecki (New York premiere), and Paul Lansky; horn trios by Poul Ruders and Paul Lansky; Sonate en Forme de Préludes

by Steven Stucky; and recent premieres by Elliott Carter, Retracing II for Solo Horn and Nine by Five, with the New York Woodwind Quintet. He is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Yale Brass Trio, and the Triton Horn Trio, and is an emeritus member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Mr. Purvis has been a frequent guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Boston Chamber Music Society, and has collaborated with many of the world’s most esteemed string quartets, including the Juilliard, Tokyo, Orion, Brentano, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Daedalus, and Fine Arts string quartets. He has recorded extensively on numerous labels including Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, Naxos, Koch, and Bridge. Mr. Purvis is currently Professor in the Practice of Horn and Chamber Music at the Yale School of Music, where he is also coordinator of winds and brasses and serves as director of the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

Lauren Hunt ’13MM, horn Horn player Lauren Hunt won the International Horn Competition of America in 2013. As a soloist, Dr. Hunt has appeared

Artist Profiles · Notes on the Program

with numerous orchestras, including the Army Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In recent years, she has appeared in orchestral contexts from coast to coast and internationally, including the Spoleto Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and the Music Academy of the West. A passionate chamber musician, Lauren spends summers at the Marlboro Festival, and previously attended the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Twice a quarterfinalist in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, Lauren also participated in the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program.

She currently performs with the Sonneries Wind Quintet.

Lauren has taught extensively around the globe. For many years, she volunteered with NEOJIBA, an “El Sistema”-style program in Brazil. She has given master classes and recitals in Colombia, Brazil, and in many cities throughout the United States. She currently teaches horn at Illinois State University. A graduate of the National Symphony’s Youth Fellowship Program, Lauren holds degrees from the New England Conservatory, Yale School of Music, and the University of Georgia.

Her major teachers include Edwin Thayer, Jean Martin-Williams, Richard Mackey, and William Purvis.

ludwig van beethoven Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, WoO 28 The variation form was a favorite of Beethoven’s, and he revisited it in works for a variety of instrumentations, from piano sonatas to symphonic movements.

Perhaps it aligned with his natural gifts as a brilliant improvisor. Variations are, by nature, unpredictable and wandering. We venture forth through a composer’s imagination, unsure where each step will lead, yet tethered securely to the theme like a safety rope of comfort and familiarity. The best variations feel as though they are imagined in the moment, while gradually revealing an underlying plan. This instantaneity of creation opposes another side of the composer’s personality: the exhaustive near-obsessive whose manuscripts were scribbled with layers of ink, and whose only opera, Fidelio, was continuously reincarnated. Mozart, in contrast, was known to compose swiftly and with ease. In a famous scene from Amadeus, dramatized for the theater, Salieri discovers his rival’s flawless manuscripts and understands that Mozart worked through entire compositions solely in his mind. Beethoven struggled with this intimidating brilliance as he came to occupy the Viennese vaccuum left after Mozart’s death and Haydn’s departure. How on earth does one follow that?

These variations on a beloved duet from Don Giovanni provide a fitting synthesis of Mozart’s melodic gifts and Beethoven’s inventiveness, for a seemingly bizarre but actually rather commonplace reed trio. In the context of Mozart’s opera, the harmonie has frightening implications: not long after seducing Zerlina with this aria, Giovanni assaults her in his home, as his own wind band plays at an onstage party.

Notes on the Program

Sextet for Winds in E-flat major, Op. 71 Beethoven came to Vienna from Bonn with the support of the Elector of Cologne: the representative linking the power of the Holy Roman Empire to that region from its seat, whose patronage yielded most of the composer’s early wind music.

His first few years there were devoted to education and establishment. While he composed numerous works, Beethoven was known primarily as a pianst, and very few of his compositions were published.

In these formitive years, he earned a living as a performer while absorbing the techniques of the great Viennese composers, and his works were, in some ways, experiments and training exercises. Only years later, after finding success in composition as a worthy successor to Mozart, Beethoven’s confidence (and probable financial need) permitted the publication of a handful of works, including this Sextet, submitted some thirteen years later. In an attached note sent to the publisher, he claimed that the sextet, “one of my earlier things ... was written in a single night.” Its author, he selfreferentially noted, “at least has produced a few better works; yet for many people, such works are the best.” With a touch of bitterness toward “light” popular tastes, Beethoven tells us what we still hear today: this music is simply pleasurable.

Rondino in E-flat major, WoO 25 The traditional, Classical-era wind section within an orchestra is our harmonie. Its name is telling: while Baroque ensembles relied on the harpsichord or organ to sustain chords beneath the melodic lines of strings and winds, the role of providing

“harmony” was handed over to pairs of winds. The section shaded the background as the string section carried the bulk of the melodic writing, though wind soloists often stepped to the foreground to add commentary. With such a balanced ensemble, it is easy to pass melodic passages around while still retaining enough sound mass to keep the chordal harmonies afloat.

These ensembles had a life of their own outside of the orchestra, and their significance is evident even in such head-scratchers as Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, the composer’s final completed work, so named for the prominence of the winds in the name-day Catholic Mass setting.

Beethoven’s Rondino was first intended to be the finale to the composer’s Octet, heard on this same program. He wrote both shortly before leaving Bonn for Vienna to pursue studies with Haydn. Beethoven’s indecisive and perfectionistic tendencies are evident in his choice to alter the octet’s finale, as this Rondo movement – though a pleasant stand-alone work – did not quite suit the larger form in his mind. Thirtyfive years later, he replaced his legendary Grosse fugue, the original finale to his Op. 130 string quartet, with another movement, publishing it independently at the behest of publishers who felt that the movement was too monumental (and controversial) to share a larger form (also, more money).

This movement-swapping episode is from a very different and far younger Beethoven, still finding his voice. Fortunately, that both the Rondino and the Octet survive allows us to observe how the composer’s decisions alter our perception of his music, and it is worthwhile to examine these bookends, tracing Beethoven’s evolution.

Notes on the Program

Wind Octet in E-flat major, Op. 103 The high opus number of this Octet for winds is deceptive: Beethoven wrote the work in his early twenties while still living in Bonn, a few years before moving to Vienna. It was not published until 1836, when its composer, years in the grave, could hardly protest. The enduring popularity and warm reception of Beethoven’s early published works, especially his Septet for winds and strings, frustrated him. These inviting works, from a self-acknowledged composer-in-training, distracted the public from his later, more “serious” compositions.

With a rich, resonant tone, and adequate carrying power, this harmoniemusik configuration of clarinets, oboes, bassoons, and horns, most often in pairs and frequently augmented by string bass or the occasional basset horn – were a nobleman’s ideal “house band.” A variety of functions, from evening meals to garden parties, could be serviced by such a group. Entire symphonies and operatic excerpts were adapted with ease for the ensemble, and original compositions were plentiful, including Mozart’s quintessential serenades and divertimenti. Though such works remained popular, composers of the Romantic generations – Beethoven included – increasingly turned to the string quartet as their expressive medium. As Europe was rapidly urbanizing into concentrated culture centers like Vienna, expansive banquet halls gave way to salons, and in such intimate settings an audience could listen more closely. As many spouses, children, and neighbors might attest, a bit of distance works wonders for a horn playing at full volume. Beethoven even adapted this very work for string quintet, perhaps alluding to such shifting tastes.

The octet was written for the Elector of Cologne, who enjoyed music at suppertime, the composer’s works for the Harmonie providing a soundtrack in the absence of Spotify. Though it was likely intended as pseudo-background music, this does not diminish its qualities. In fact, this context has some advantages: the young Beethoven was eager to please and yet free to take some risks. This music was meant for pleasure, and for the composer, that included the musicians. Virtuosic passages and expressive solos abound, throughout each instrument’s lines. Beethoven was a working musician himself, and understood that if you have to work while others are eating a delicious meal in front of you, then you at least deserve an enjoyable part to play.

— Patrick Jankowski

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The 2017-2018 Yale in New York season opens on Sunday, October 29, with a program of music from Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. The concert will feature the Society’s rarely-heard chamber arrangement of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 (arrranged by Hanns Eisler, Erwin Stein, and Karl Rankl).

The 2017-2018 season also includes a concert focusing on Viennese composers presented by the Society, and a program showcasing French composers performed by the Society.

Sunday, January 28, 2018 Sunday, March 4, 2018

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