Program Notes

About the Author

Keith Horner currently provides program notes for presenters throughout North America. After taking a music degree at the University of Cambridge, Keith started his writing career as a freelance music critic with The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and as a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (leading to an MA (Cantab.). His interest in communicating with audiences was honed over four decades as a music broadcaster and Executive Producer for BBC Radio 3 and CBC Radio 2, based in London, then Toronto. Keith remains active as an independent recording producer, with well over 100 CDs and LPs to his credit, several Juno awards, and the Special Prize at the Prix Italia for a documentary production with composer Christos Hatzis.

What Makes It Great?® with Rob Kapilow and the Gryphon Trio - April 13, 2025

Program

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1828)

Piano Trio in B flat, Op. 97 (‘Archduke’) (1810-11)

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: Allegro

Andante cantabile, ma però con moto –

Allegro moderato - Presto

Program Notes

A loyal supporter of the composer, Rudolph, Archduke of Austria (1788-1831), was Beethoven’s only composition pupil. In 1809, he helped provide Beethoven with an annuity of 4,000 florins to ensure the composer remained a citizen of Vienna. Beethoven dedicated more works to Rudoph than to anyone else, including the great trio that the Archduke himself nicknamed ‘Archduke’.

The ‘Archduke’ marks the peak of Beethoven's writing for piano trio. It is virtuoso music written for virtuoso musicians. Its four movements make for a monumental piece, some 40 minutes in length, which crowns Beethoven’s work in the medium. In it, the traditionally intimate piano trio bursts at the seams and strives for a concerto-like scale. From the beginning, Beethoven re-thinks the sonority of the medium. The piano writing is thicker, the chords more resonant. The cello carries more of the melodies. The overall sonority is richer.

The spacious opening is marked dolce (sweetly); the movement expresses emotions that can only come through maturity and through having undergone deep personal experiences. The Scherzo is full of dry wit and its shimmering piano writing and darkly mysterious moments also include the loveliest of Viennese waltzes. The ethereal slow movement is one of Beethoven's most majestic statements: a noble theme with five variations, forming the emotional heart of the piece. Its profundities are brusquely interrupted by the rustic tones of the finale. This is a driving movement whose jovial music, broad and expansive like the rest of the work, bring a decisive conclusion.

Earlier this season

Quartetto di Cremona - October 24, 2024

Program

GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO (1882-1973)

String Quartet No. 2, Stornelli e ballate (1923)

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

String Quartet in F (1902-3)

Allegro moderato - très doux

Assez vif - très rythmé

Très lent

Vif et agité

INTERMISSION

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 (1842)

Introduzione - Andante espressivo - Allegro

Scherzo - Presto - Intermezzo

Adagio

Presto - Moderato

Program Notes

GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO

Born in Venice, Italy, March 18, 1882; died in Treviso, August 1, 1973

String Quartet No. 2, Stornelli e ballate (1923)

Born to an Italian family of musicians, of aristocratic, if dysfunctional, ancestry, Gian Francesco Malipiero belongs to a largely forgotten generation of composers from early 20th century Italy. Malipiero, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Alfredo Casella, and Ottorino Respighi were all born within four years of one another, around the early 1880s, but only Respighi’s music has continued to find a niche in the repertoire of today’s musicians. Malipiero outlived them all and continued composing – profusely, in all the established musical forms – until the age of 91. His biographer, John C. G. Waterhouse, regards the post-World War One years, from 1917 to 1929, as Malipiero’s most creative period – and his Second String Quartet of 1923 falls exactly at the midpoint.

Malipiero withdrew most of his pre-World War I music (though it did come to light after his death) and this does includes an early string quartet. Beyond this, he wrote eight published quartets, between 1920 and 64, spanning most of his creative life. During the post-WW1 years, Malipiero was still absorbing the impact of Stravinsky (whose birth year he shares) and Debussy too, and this can be heard in his best-known orchestral piece (Pause del silenzio I(1917) and in his chamber composition (String Quartet No. 1, subtitled Rispetti e strambotti, (1920). Here, the composer works with what Waterhouse refers to as ‘panels’ of sound, rather than any remnants of the Austro-German traditional exposition of contrasting themes, their development and, after a thorough examination, their eventual recapitulation for all to enjoy.

The first three quartets are related, each taking as a springboard an allusion to the early sung poetry popular in Renaissance Italy. The roundelays of String Quartet 1 make way for Refrains and Ballads found in the subtitle given to No. 2, while the Third Quartet (1931) is subtitled Cantàri alla madrigalesca.

There are recurring ideas and patterns in tonight’s quartet, but the whole appears more like a sequence of sound, music that is idiomatically written for string quartet, somewhat like a soundtrack to an unseen short film (15 mins or so). Melodies are generously shared among each instrument and, perhaps, if viewed as a mosaic, a feeling of overall coherence may begin to emerge. Although Malipiero indicates 14 ‘panels’ of sound (a term coined by Waterhouse), I find, when listening, that knowing that there is an overall structure of three movements (untitled and unmarked) more helpful. Two of them have somewhat decisive endings. The third – I’m not specifying which – comes as a surprise . . .

MAURICE RAVEL

Born in Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, December 28, 1937

String Quartet in F (1902-3)

When French composer Vincent d'Indy first heard Ravel’s new quartet at its première in Paris on March 5, 1904, he enthusiastically said: "It is a piece worthy of any composer's work at the end of a long career.” Ravel, however, was just 28 when he wrote the masterpiece that was to become a cornerstone of the string quartet repertoire and one of the most popular of all quartets. He wrote it immediately before his exotic, sometimes voluptuous song cycle Shéhérazade. Ravel dedicated the quartet to Gabriel Fauré, whom he considered his true mentor, even though academic officialdom had expelled him from Fauré’s composition class at the Paris Conservatoire for failing to write a fugue. Its roots, though, are intertwined with those of the D major quartet of César Franck, composed two decades earlier. And in between these landmark works – the Franck and the Ravel – equally intertwined with both, lies a third masterpiece, the only quartet of Claude Debussy.

Ravel, the youngest of the three composers, was enthusiastically absorbing the music of Debussy, 12 years his senior, when he began work on his string quartet. He went to all 14 performances of the first run of Debussy’s revolutionary opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and had the sound of Debussy's earlier quartet so much in his head that some of its lifeblood carried over into his own piece. He borrowed the use of Eastern exoticism and the modality of the harmony from Debussy. He also borrowed the richly scored textures and the idea of a pizzicato second movement.

Both Ravel and Debussy, at ten-year intervals, followed Franck’s lead in using a single theme, transformed both melodically and harmonically throughout all four movements. Although generally freer in his use of the cyclical principle, with each appearance of the theme, Ravel makes subtle changes, using the thematic unity to bring about a constantly shifting sound world. Following the première March 5, 1904, critics were quick to comment on the similarity of the two quartets. They divided themselves and the followers of the composers, into two polarised camps. From this point on, the relationship of these two revolutionary French composers was to grow uneasy. Nevertheless, when Fauré criticized Ravel’s finale as a failure, Debussy was magnanimous in the way he reassured Ravel shortly before the première: “In the name of the gods of music and in my name too, do not alter a thing in your quartet." His advice was backed up the following month by Jean Marnold, critic for the bi-weekly journal Le Mercure de France, who wrote: “A healthy and sensitive temperament of a pure musician is developing here . . . We should remember the name of Maurice Ravel. He is one of the masters of tomorrow.”

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1 (1842)

Schumann wrote all three quartets of his Op. 41, his only string quartets, during an intense seven-week period in the summer of 1842. His characteristically short and often feverish bursts of composition are generally explained as the result of a manic-depressive illness, a bipolar disorder that troubled him throughout his life. First came a flood of piano music. A ‘year of song’ followed, then an outpouring of orchestral music. In June and July 1842, he turned to the string quartet. “The thought of the string quartet gives me pleasure,” he had written several years earlier. “The piano is getting too narrow for me. When composing now, I often hear a lot of things that I can barely suggest.” He began to analyse established classical quartets by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, often playing them through in four-hand versions with his young wife, acclaimed pianist Clara Wieck. Then, he arranged private ‘quartet mornings’ in his lodgings for string players from the Gewandhaus Orchestra, including concert-master Ferdinand David, when they would read through the latest quartets of the day. Schumann also wrote about the quartets for his music periodical. He set the bar high, viewing the medium as a “by turns beautiful and, even, abstrusely woven conversation between four people.”

The A minor quartet is the first of the three completed quartets from 1842. Its austere, contrapuntal opening reflects Schumann’s on-going interest in the music of Bach, and his study of the Well-tempered Clavier in particular. Once the first movement proper gets underway, its two themes are closely related, recalling a favoured technique of Haydn. Through its taut musical forms and close musical arguments Schumann reveals his awareness of the legacy of the classical quartet. “I love Mozart dearly,” he wrote in an entry in his diary around the time he was composing the quartet, “but Beethoven I worship like a god.” The galloping Scherzo is cut from the same cloth as the mercurial scherzos of Mendelssohn. Schumann revered Mendelssohn and he dedicated all three quartets to him when they were published in 1843. The radiant slow movement has the nobility of a slow movement by Beethoven. The finale opens with a vigorous, scurrying theme, with something of the exuberance of Schumann’s own Spring Symphony, and this single, driving theme propels the quartet to a fiery conclusion.

Miró Quartet- November 14, 2024

Program

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

String Quartet in G, Op. 77 No.1 (Hob. III:81) (1799)

Allegro moderato

Adagio

Menuet: Presto

Finale: Presto

CAROLINE SHAW (b. 1982)

Microfictions [Vol. 1] (c.2021)

I …………. Road signs melted, pointing to cadences

II ………… But the tune was still visible

III ……….. Beneath an oak's dappled counterpoint

III &½ …. Between the third and fourth movements

IV ………. A chord that fell from grace

V …………To the tempo of an undiscovered Mendelssohn song

VI ………. Heard in heavy fragments, obliquely

INTERMISSION

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, L. 85 (1893)

Animé et très décidé

Assez vif et bien rhythmé

Andantino, doucement expressif

Très modéré

Program Notes

JOSEPH HAYDN

Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809

String Quartet in G, Op. 77 No.1 (Hob. III:81) (1799)

The music-hungry Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz (1772-1816) was the most generous of Viennese patrons, so much so that his extravagance eventually drove him and his household into bankruptcy. In 1799, he received the music from two substantial commissions. From Beethoven, at the threshold of his greatness, came the six quartets of Op. 18, which mark the beginning of a journey that no one, not even Beethoven himself, could have forseen. From Haydn, now in the twilight of a composing career, he received just two completed quartets (and the middle movements of a third). These, however, stand as the crowning jewels of one of the 18th century’s most significant bodies of artistic work. The two ‘Lobkowitz’ quartets show Haydn at his most vigorous and assured.

The opening movement of the first quartet, in G major, begins with a march-like theme whose lilt and buoyancy reflect Haydn’s lifelong pursuit of balance, order, and proportion. Though rooted in classical ideals, Haydn speaks here with an unmistakably individual voice. Humour is never very far from the surface of his music, and this movement’s unity of purpose, symmetrical form, and taut musical language reveals a lifetime’s expertise in the quartet medium. The music plunges dramatically into a new key in the development section of this single-theme, single-minded movement, reinforcing its sense of forward drive.

Solemn and dignified, the slow movement is the longest of the four. It carries an element of melancholy, or perhaps resignation. The Minuet, by contrast, is a burst of energy – arguably the most vigorous of all classical minuets, rushing forward at almost one beat to the bar. It is a scherzo in all but name and its music blends virtuoso violin writing with equal importance given to the other strings. The finale is one of Haydn’s exuberant movements in Romani style, built on a fully worked-out sonata structure with a single theme, derived entirely from its first four measures. Said to echo a Croatian round dance Haydn knew from his youth, this finale, like the first movement, also incorporates traces of Eastern European folk music. The march theme of the first movement has been linked to an old Hungarian recruiting song. How fitting, then, that in this splendid late quartet, memories of Haydn’s youth mingle with the compositional mastery of his old age.

CAROLINE SHAW

Born in Greenville, NC, August 1, 1982

Microfictions [Vol. 1] (c.2021)

The multifaceted New York-based composer Caroline Shaw has, over the past decade, created more than one hundred works for prominent soloists, orchestras, and chamber groups, along with compositions for stage and screen. As a member of Roomful of Teeth, the collaborative Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, her Partita for 8 Voices (2009-12) emerged from an exploration of diverse vocal techniques, including Tuvan throat singing, yodelling, Gregorian chant, and Inuit throat singing, among others. The piece’s success led to the then 30-year-old composer becoming the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, later also receiving multiple Grammys and an honorary doctorate from Yale.

In Microfictions [Vol. 1], Shaw presents “a set of six short musical stories, in the tradition of imagist poetry and surrealist painting, inspired in part by the work of Joan Miró and the short science fiction of T. R. Darling.” Darling, a former radio journalist, crafted microfiction within Twitter’s original 140-character limit, aiming to ignite listeners' imaginations. Shaw similarly encourages "curious listening" and creative participation, stating, “There is no one right way to connect the sounds and images or ideas.” The first piece, Road signs melted, pointing to cadences . . .opens with shimmering harmonics that descend to a warm, grounded harmony, blending timeless intervals with Shaw’s characteristic modal touches. The music dissolves into a deep cello glissando, with pizzicato hints of the opening fading away.

Each of Shaw’s bagatelle-like ‘musical stories’ connects to a short text by the composer, revealing micro-narratives, as follows:

“I. Under the hot sun, the road signs melted until they were the colour of an unrhymed couplet, pointing to cadences left or north.

II. The photographs smeared into focus one by one, like organ pipes being tuned. Some of the edges and corners were torn, but the tune was still visible.

III. The summer storm laughed and lilted and shouted until it found a shady spot, beneath an oak’s dappled counterpoint.

III ½. Between the third and fourth movements, the second violinist stood up and said hello to the audience. Everyone was grateful to know which movement they were on.

IV. The complete taxonomy of verse forms is buried in a cardboard box beneath a chord that fell from grace.

V. Waking up on the early side that Tuesday, Miró noticed a bird repeating its solitary caption. The clouds nodded to the tempo of an undiscovered Mendelssohn song.

VI. The mountains folded in among themselves, as the day grew on. Their songs could only be heard in heavy fragments, obliquely, from years and miles below.”

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Born in St Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862; died in Paris, March 25, 1918

String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, L. 85 (1893)

Debussy titled this string quartet Premier Quatuor en sol mineur, Op. 10. However, it remains his only string quartet and the only composition to which he ever assigned an opus number. It is also the only piece in which he specifies a key – an ironic gesture from a non-conformist young composer, confident in his own musical voice. He promised a second quartet “in a more dignified form,” to Ernest Chausson, a friend and mentor, but nothing ever came of it.

The year 1893, when the G minor Quartet was written, was a pivotal one for Debussy. At 30, he had just achieved his first significant public performance with the cantata La demoiselle élue. He had also been captivated by Maeterlinck's symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande and had begun work on an opera based on it. Around the same time, Debussy was making headway on his revolutionary orchestral tone poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, whose 1894 première would launch his fame.

The String Quartet comes from the beginning of Debussy’s maturity and its influences are wide-ranging. In each movement, he explores the cyclical form championed by César Franck, much like an impressionist painter capturing multiple facets and shifting hues of the same subject on one canvas. In each movement, transformations of a single theme appear and reappear with subtle changes to the melody or harmony. By the finale, recurring motifs reinforce the quartet’s cyclical nature, creating a sense of cohesion.

The exotic sounds of the second movement owe much to the Javanese gamelan Debussy encountered at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Pizzicato strings and shifting rhythms lend a playful quality to this scherzo, introducing new tonal colours to the motto theme. Structurally, the quartet may appear to adhere to traditional forms up to this point, and the third movement continues this with a simple A-B-A layout. Its muted, sensuous melodies evoke the influence of Borodin – especially the Notturno from his D major Quartet – and Mussorgsky, whose music Debussy became familiar with while working in Russia for Tchaikovsky’s patron.

Around this time that he was composing the quartet, Debussy wrote of hearing a mass by Palestrina with “the shape, the outline and the intertwining arabesques which combine to produce unique melodic harmonies.” The modal influence and ‘intertwining arabesques’ permeate Debussy’s quartet. The polished lyricism of Massenet also makes its mark, and in the finale, echoes of Grieg's String Quartet can be heard. Despite these influences, Debussy’s unmistakable voice shines through with passion and clarity – qualities that define French chamber music. His String Quartet boldly challenges traditional conventions and introduces modernity into a musical form that was, perhaps, the least likely vehicle to accommodate its revolutionary impact.

What Makes It Great?® with Rob Kapilow and the Cheng² Duo- November 10, 2024

Program

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Cello Sonata No. 3, in A, Op. 69 (1807-8)

Allegro ma non tanto

Scherzo: Allegro molto

Adagio cantabile - Allegro vivace

Program Notes

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827

Cello Sonata No. 3, in A, Op. 69 (1807-8)

Beethoven’s five cello sonatas are cornerstones of the repertory, with the A major Sonata sitting in the middle of the collection and coming from the middle period of the composer’s creative life. From the opening, the cello sings a radiant melody, setting the tone for a piece full of intricate interplay between the two instruments. Throughout, each instrument takes the spotlight in turn, their themes dovetailing intricately, with the piano supporting the cello as it soars to a high, eloquent phrase, or with the cello underlining a piano melody. Written around the same time as the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the vibrant Scherzo shares some of the rhythmic obsessiveness of the Fifth and brings contrast to the sonata’s overall sunny, pastoral mood. The beautiful, tantalisingly brief introduction to the finale, designed to display the cello's singing tenor voice, is soon overtaken by an exuberant, joyful finale.

Marc-André Hamelin- November 19, 2024

Program

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

Piano Sonata No. 50, in D, Hob. XV1:37 (1779)

Allegro con brio

Largo e sostenuto –

Finale: Presto ma non troppo

FRANK ZAPPA (1940-93)

Ruth Is Sleeping (1982-3)

STEFAN WOLPE (1902-72)

Passacaglia (from Four Studies on Basic Rows), 1936 rev. 1971

JOHN OSWALD (b. 1953)

Tip (2020-21)

NIKOLAI MEDTNER (1880-1951)

Improvisation in B-flat Minor (in variation form) Op. 31, No. 1 (1914)

Danza festiva (Forgotten Melodies, Vol. 1) Op. 38, No. 3 (c1918-20)

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)

Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 39 No. 5 (1917)

Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 36 (1913 rev. 1931)

Allegro agitato - meno mosso –

Non allegro - Lento - più mosso –

Allegro molto - poco meno mosso - Presto

Program Notes

JOSEPH HAYDN

Born in Rohrau, Lower Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, May 31, 1809

Piano Sonata No. 50, in D, Hob. XV1:37 (1779)

Haydn once described his compositional routine: “I get up early, and as soon as I have dressed, I kneel down and pray to God and the Holy Virgin that things may go well today. After some breakfast, I sit at the Klavier and I begin to improvise.” Several accounts confirm that Haydn used the keyboard in his compositional process across all genres. Although proficient on the harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano, he tended to downplay his performance skills, often remarking that he was ‘no wizard’ on any instrument.

This cheerful D major Sonata is part of a set of six that Haydn dedicated to the Auenbrugger sisters and was published in 1780 by Artaria, marking the start of his long association with the Viennese publisher. The collection was designed for both amateur players (Liebhaber) and connoisseurs (Kenner), adaptable for either harpsichord or the emerging fortepiano. Artaria’s title page reflects this, stating “Per il clavi cembalo, o Forte Piano.” Maria Katherina and Franziska Auenbrugger were gifted pianists admired by both Haydn and Leopold Mozart. Haydn himself praised them: “They possess genuine insight into music equal to that of the greatest masters.”

The D major sonata is the most demanding of the set and remains one of Haydn’s better-known keyboard works. Its crisp, good humoured opening movement requires the ‘insight’ that Haydn mentions, as well as nimble fingers. Its slow movement evokes the grandeur of Baroque music and lies somewhere between a Sarabande and a French overture. It leads directly into a lively rondo finale, marked innocentemente.

FRANK ZAPPA

Born in Baltimore, MD, December 21, 1940; died in Los Angeles, CA, December 4, 1993

Ruth Is Sleeping (1982-3)

In 1982, genre bending American composer and guitarist Frank Zappa, the fiercely demanding bandleader of The Mothers of Invention, who was no less demanding on himself when creating his music, purchased a Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer. This allowed him to precisely notate music through keystrokes on a digital module. Zappa’s first Synclavier composition was Ruth Is Sleeping, a piece for keyboard. Initially, he had to dictate every detail to technician Steve DeFuria, a process Zappa described as “the most gruelling, horrible thing,” until DeFuria finally taught him how to operate the Synclavier himself.

The title of the five-minute work comes from Ruth Underwood, Zappa’s mallet player through much of the Seventies, who was known to nap under her marimba during rehearsals. Zappa later revised Ruth Is Sleeping when MIDI technology allowed the Roland Digital Piano to connect to the Synclavier. He produced a score for a “very, very, very difficult” solo piano version, as he later told pianist Jeffrey Burns, contrasting it with a four-hand or duo piano arrangement of the same music – “which is less difficult, but still hard.” Burns premièred the solo version in Berlin on September 21, 1992, noting the technical challenge posed by Zappa’s simultaneous use of different piano registers to create multiple combinations of major sevenths. Burns also appreciated the absence of dynamics or tempo markings, which encouraged interpretive freedom, evoking “dreamy, sometimes tempestuous moments of Ruth’s sleep.”

STEFAN WOLPE

Born in Berlin, Germany, August 25, 1902; died in New York City, April 4, 1972

Passacaglia (from Four Studies on Basic Rows), 1936 rev. 1971

"A headache is better than his music," quipped a Palestinian critic soon after Stefan Wolpe arrived in Jerusalem to teach at the Palestine Conservatory. The politically engaged, Dadaist, and Bauhaus-influenced composer had already fled Berlin for Vienna, where he studied with Webern to "rid his style of unnecessary stuffing." Wolpe stayed in the middle East for just four years, composing songs for the kibbutzim as well as complex concert pieces like tonight's Passacaglia. He later moved to the United States, where he taught Morton Feldman, Ralph Shapey, David Tudor, Charles Wuorinen, jazz musicians and others. At his death in 1972, Elliott Carter praised Wolpe's "artistic personality, motivated by deep conviction" and an "innately original way of doing things."

The Passacaglia is a key work from Four Studies on Basic Rows (1935–36, rev. 1971), formidably subtitled "Study on an all-interval row in conjunction with 11 basic rows." Beneath its advanced serialism lies Wolpe’s lifelong desire to engage listeners, supported by his technique as an accomplished pianist. The piece opens with a 22-note row in the right hand, ascending in widening intervals. This row unfolds in multiple permutations throughout the work, interwoven with counter-sets derived from the original intervals. The music intensifies to a fortississimo climax about a third into the 15-minute piece. The following section sustains this intensity before building to an Impetuoso passage of cascading, brittle chords and fierce momentum, culminating in bell-like fortississimo chords. The coda features leaner, more transparent textures as the material fragments.

In 1951, Wolpe described his music as "thoroughly organized, proud, erect, hymnic, profoundly contained, but human." These words aptly characterize the Passacaglia.

JOHN OSWALD

Born in Kitchener, ON, May 30, 1953

Tip (2020-21)

Tip was commissioned by Marc André Hamelin. John Oswald writes:

Why Tip? A short title for a brief piece. But that little word packs a myriad of associations. Some tip-ical phrases are:

Tip of the iceberg…In the ocean of music this iceberg is composed of my condensation of the most familiar music in the pianistic repertoire. What you hear in Tip is the 10% that rises above the surface of that ocean. The 90% below the surface contains the many other possible quotations not chosen from the nearly 400 scores and performance transcriptions investigated. Perhaps while listening to Tip you will sense some aspects of what lies below the surface – the unheard but easily recalled continuations of phrases unfinished; the layers of possibility in polyphonies of superimposition; a great submerged consciousness of musical memory.

On the Tip of the tongue…The reader will notice that we are not citing sources here; therein lies the fun. At times the quotes come so fast and furious your ears might tingle on the verge of recognition. Other times up to four quotations occur simultaneously (a momentary quodlibet). A familiar pop tune weaves into the key and melody of an equally familiar classical fragment. Diverse quotes can pivot on a common note or chord. A medley on steroids?

Are there any tips for listening to Tip? Marc André Hamelin writes: “I’ve always been fascinated by how completely unrelated but familiar snippets of music can influence each other when juxtaposed – and here John Oswald puts pedal to metal, going as far as superimposing material, so that the final result is a delightful challenge for the listener in untangling this multitude of strands of musical thought! And it’s no less of a challenge for the pianist!”

NIKOLAI MEDTNER

Born in Moscow, December 24, 1879/January 5, 1880; died in London, November 13, 1951

Improvisation in B-flat Minor (in variation form) Op. 31, No. 1 (1914)
Danza festiva (Forgotten Melodies, Vol. 1) Op. 38, No. 3 (c1918-20)

Moscow-born Medtner clung to the tradition of the Romantic virtuoso composer-pianist long after it had faded in the 20th century. Though a gold medallist at the Moscow Conservatory and a prize-winner at the 1900 Rubinstein Competition, he chose to focus primarily on composition. His 14 piano sonatas form the core of a catalogue that includes three concertos, chamber music, and songs – all featuring the piano. Trained by the legendary Vasily Safonov, Medtner’s pianistic brilliance remained a vivid memory in Russia even after he went into exile following the Revolution.

In the West, Medtner’s reluctance to perform anything but his own works and his conservative musical aesthetics in a time of change led to financial struggles. In 1935, with help from Rachmaninoff, he published his treatise Muza i moda (The Muse and the Fashion) and settled in London. Sponsored by Rachmaninoff and the Maharajah of Mysore, Medtner was able to record many of his key works on '78s,' which later became collectors’ items.

Medtner’s Three Pieces, Op. 31, were written in 1914–15 in memory of composer and pianist Alexei Stanchinsky who died tragically young. The first, Improvisation in B-flat minor, consists of five variations on a wistful, Russian-sounding theme. Medtner explores the theme’s capricious potential, blending spontaneity with the polish of a master pianist.

The luminousDanza festiva, fromForgotten MelodiesOp. 38 (1918–20), was one of Medtner’s last works before leaving Moscow for Germany. He recorded it on both piano roll and '78' records.

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Born in Semyonovo, Russia, March 20 / April 1, 1873; died in Beverly Hills, California, March 28, 1943

Étude-tableau in E-flat minor, Op. 39 No. 5 (1917). Piano Sonata No. 2, in B-flat minor, Op. 36 (1913 rev. 1931)

Rachmaninoff's Op. 39 is the second of two sets of virtuoso piano pieces, marking the close of the 19th-century tradition of études. He called them Études-tableaux (Study-Pictures), coining the term to describe short, technically challenging works that evoke moods or narratives. The E-flat minor Étude (No. 5) is the dramatic high point of the collection, featuring powerful, chordal writing that conveys anguish, tragedy, passion, and despair

Rachmaninoff composed his Second Piano Sonata as a showpiece for his recital tours, completing it just before the Russian Revolution. He began work in Rome in 1913, while staying in the Piazza di Spagna apartment where Tchaikovsky had also lived. He finished the piece at Ivanovka, his family estate, where he found solitude . . . and bred racehorses. Monumental in scale and opulently Romantic, the sonata demands great technical prowess. Rachmaninoff revised it in 1931, cutting 120 bars and clarifying the musical texture.

Like much of Rachmaninoff's work – and that of other Russian composers including Stravinsky – the sonata is haunted by the sound of church bells. During its composition, Rachmaninoff also wrote his choral symphony The Bells. The sonata opens with a dramatic, drooping chromatic motif that recurs in many guises throughout its three movements, which are played without pause. The second movement delves into a deep melancholy, a hallmark of his music, while the finale erupts with an exuberant fortissimo four and a half-octave plunge and ends in shimmering cascades of chords.

Invocations- December 5, 2024

Program

VIVIAN FUNG (b. 1975)

Prayer (2020/2024) (arr. violin and piano) (World première)

AMY BEACH (1867-1944)

Invocation, for violin and piano, Op. 55 (1904)

AARON COPLAND (1900–90)

Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme, for piano trio (1928-9)

AVNER DORMAN (b. 1975)

Nigunim, for solo violin and piano quintet (2011/22)

Adagio religioso

Scherzo

Adagio

Presto

INTERMISSION

JAMES ROLFE (b. 1961)

Mitzarim (Narrows) (2024) (world première)

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-56)

Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44 (1842)

Allegro brillante

In modo d'una marcia: un poco largamente – Agitato

Scherzo. Molto vivace

Allegro, ma non troppo

Program Notes

VIVIAN FUNG

Born in Edmonton, AB, February 6, 1975

Prayer (2020/2024) (arr. violin and piano) (World première)

Vivian Fung's Prayer was premièred in July 2020 by the ‘CBC Virtual Orchestra’, a collaboration between CBC Music and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Prayer was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 36 musicians from 28 Canadian orchestras. Later, Nézet-Séguin led the Philadelphia Orchestra in performances in September 2020 and May 2021, honouring frontline.

Written during pandemic isolation, Prayer is a stirring, slowly moving work, meditative at first, gradually coming into focus. Chant-like textures evoke inner strength and resolve. Tonight's performance introduces a new version for violin and piano.

Fung describes the short piece as a highly subjective, emotional outpouring, reflecting both personal and the broader challenges she faced. Inspired by a chant from her 12th century ‘composer heroine’ Hildegard von Bingen, the piece embodies faith—in humanity, love, and perseverance.

AMY BEACH

Born in Henniker, NH, September 5, 1867; died in New York City, December 27, 1944

Invocation, for violin and piano, Op. 55 (1904)

"A woman must be a woman first, then a musician," wrote Amy Beach, encapsulating a view widely held in Boston’s educated society during her time. Although society encouraged Amy Cheney’s musical talents, it was only under the identity of ‘Mrs. H. H. A. Beach,’ conforming to the expectations of her role as a wife. Largely self-taught as a composer, Beach maintained rigorous standards in her craft. Despite being one of the finest American pianists of her era, she gave up a promising career at the request of her husband, a prominent Boston surgeon, who was not only a generation older than her but older than her father. After his death, Beach resumed her career, embarking on her first trip to Europe at the age of 43. There, she performed her piano concerto, heard her symphony played, and sought to establish herself in the musical world on her own terms. Ultimately, she had significant success; only three of her 300 compositions were not printed during her lifetime. Composed while she was married, Invocation, Op. 55 (1904) is a gentle, four-minute piece, a lyrical work of generous Romanticism, showcasing the soaring lines of the violin.

AARON COPLAND

Born in Brooklyn, NY, November 14, 1900; died in Peekskill, NY, December 2, 1990

Vitebsk: Study on a Jewish Theme, for piano trio (1928-9)

American composer Aaron Copland once remarked, “it was not necessary to have an experience to compose about it. I preferred to imagine. . . ” His Vitebsk (1928), one of his few compositions to incorporate Jewish folk music, emerged from a haunting folk song (Mipnei Mah) he heard during a New York production of Semyon Ansky’s The Dybbuk. Copland named the piece after Vitebsk, the village where Ansky first heard the song, and aimed “to reflect the harshness and drama of Jewish life in White Russia.”

The trio, structured as a single movement (slow-fast-slow), opens with declamatory major/minor piano chords and quarter tones from the strings, evoking the dissonance of Jewish hardship. These unsettling sounds set the stage for the mournful folk tune, played by the cello. The central section, which Copland describes as “a Chagall-like grotesquerie,” bursts from fragments of the song, reaching a wild climax before halting abruptly. [Artist Marc Chagall was also, coincidentally, born in Vitebsk]. The piece closes with an echo of the opening, offering a solemn, fragmented farewell to the folk melody.

AVNER DORMAN

Born in Tel-Aviv, Israel on April 14, 1975

Nigunim, for solo violin and piano quintet (2011/22)

Avner Dorman's Nigunim, originally composed in 2011 as his Violin Sonata No. 3, for violinist Gil Shaham and pianist Orli Shaham’s ‘Jewish Melodies’ program, has since evolved significantly. The Gettysburg, PA-based Israeli composer later orchestrated the sonata as the Second of his three Violin Concertos, winning the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music. The version performed tonight, a third arrangement, was created in 2022.

Here, Dorman describes the nigun, a foundational concept in traditional Jewish music: “According to Habbad literature, the nigun serves as a universal language. It ascends beyond words and conveys a deeper spiritual message. A nigun sung in Yiddish will reach and affect someone who only speaks Arabic, and vice versa. Though short, since it begins and ends on the same pitch nigunim (plural) may be repeated over and over. In this sense, the nigun has no beginning and no end and is eternal. Nigunim may be secular or religious, fast or slow, and may be sung and played in a variety of social events and circumstances.”

Dorman discovered common musical elements across diverse Jewish traditions, including North African cantillations, Central Asian wedding songs, Klezmer music, and Ashkenazy prayers. These commonalities, rather than specific Jewish melodies, form the core of Nigunim's modes and melodic gestures. The work’s first movement, Adagio religioso, is reflective, evoking traditional cantorial singing, particularly as recalled from a specific Libyan-Jewish synagogue. The Scherzo contrasts this with secular exuberance, recalling Georgian folk music and dancing at a wedding he attended. The slow, shifting Adagio features a melismatic solo, alternately shared between ensemble and violin, with punctuating intervals of sevenths and ninths. Macedonian rhythms drive the vigorous finale to a virtuoso conclusion.

JAMES ROLFE

Born in Ottawa, July 20, 1961

Mitzarim (Narrows) (2024) (world première) ** for Gryphon Trio and Aviva Chernick

James Rolfe writes: “Lawrence Cherney of Soundstreams approached me in 2019 to compose a piece on the theme of nigunim, the wordless melodies sung by Ashkenazi Jews. My thoughts wandered to a text by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, loosely translated as: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is not to freak yourself out.” I never imagined how apt those words would prove: a pandemic delayed the work's première for five years, and a tragic conflict in the Middle East shattered countless lives, setting Jews at odds with their neighbours and with each other.

When I learned that I would be collaborating with Aviva Chernick, a wonderfully soulful singer and cherished colleague, I looked to the Psalms. There, I found lyrics which take us to heights of joy and depths of sorrow, beseeching the divine to spare us from hatred and oppression, lamenting the ephemerality of our lives. Mitzarim(which translates as ‘Narrows’) traces a journey from a place of constriction and darkness into light and joy.

Mitzarim (Narrows) was commissioned by Soundstreams, with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. Many thanks to Aviva Chernick for helping to shape and tune up this piece, to Aviva and the Gryphon Trio for bringing it to life, and to Lawrence Cherney, who commissioned it, for giving my musical voice a platform over so many years, forging a wonderful creative partnership and journey.”

Mitzarim (Narrows): Lyrics

Chaneinu, Adonai, chaneinu!

Ki-rav savanu vuz

rabat savah-la nafsheinu ha'la'ag hasha'ananim

habuz ligei yonim.

Show us kindness, Adonai, show us kindness!

We have had more than enough of hatred.

Long enough have we endured the scorn of the complacent,

the contempt of the high and mighty. [Psalm 123:3-4]

Hodiyeini Adonai kitziy umidat

yamai mah-hi

eidah me-chadeil ani

hinei t'fachot natatah yamai

v'cheldi ch'ayin negdecha

ach kol-hevel kol-adam nitzav. Selah.

Tell me, Adonai, when is my end,

what is the measure of my days;

I want to know how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life the width of my hand;

its span is nothing in Your eyes;

no one endures any longer than a breath. Selah.

Shim'ah t'filati Adonai

v'shavati ha'azinah el-dimati

al-techerash ki geir anochi imach

toshav k'chol-avotai

hasha mimeni v'avligah

b'terem eileich v'einenei.

Hear my prayer, Adonai;

hear my cry;

see my tears;

for I am a stranger with You,

a sojourner, an alien like my ancestors.

Spare me, that I may know joy again,

before I pass away and am gone. [Psalm 39:5-6, 13-14]

Yis'm'chu hashamayim v'tageil ha'aretz

yiram hayam umlo

ya'a'loz sadai v'chol-asher-bo

az y'ran'nu kol-atzei-ya'ar.

Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult;

let the sea roar, and all that fills it,

the fields and everything in them rejoice;

then shall all the trees of the forest shout for joy. [Psalm 96:11-13]

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, nr Bonn, July 29, 1856

Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op.44 (1842)

Robert Schumann was the first to combine the string quartet – a medium he had just begun to explore – with the piano, an instrument that was seldom absent from his compositions. He wrote his Piano Quintet in 1842, a year when he concentrated on chamber music. After composing three string quartets in just five weeks during the spring, his health collapsed, and he spent the summer with his wife, the renowned pianist Clara Wieck, touring Bohemian spas in search of a cure. Rejuvenated, he sketched the Piano Quintet in just five days, tailoring the piano writing to his wife’s keyboard strengths. [Clara would go on to give hundreds of performances of the work in both public and private settings, establishing it in the repertoire, where it remains to this day]. Two weeks later, in mid-October, Schumann completed the full score. Many revisions followed, including dropping the idea of a fifth movement. With the clarity of form reached in the final version, Schumann achieved a success with the public that so often eluded him.

The Piano Quintet is highly unified, with themes reappearing and transforming throughout. The assertive opening theme evolves into a more lyrical variant as soon as it is introduced, returning in moods both turbulent and dreamy. The second movement, a funeral march theme in C minor, anchors a rondo structure, with two episodes, the first ethereal and intensely romantic, the second, a variant on the march theme, more agitated and dramatic. In the Scherzo, Schumann deftly manipulates scales, teasing out a theme in the first trio from an inverted version of the main theme from the opening movement. In the coda, the second trio’s theme is cunningly combined with the Scherzo material. Schumann’s contrapuntal skill reaches its peak in the finale, where, in an extended coda, the main theme is developed as a fugue and then combined with the quintet’s opening theme as an ingenious double fugue, spanning some 50 radiant, virtuoso measures. Throughout, Schumann’s piano writing strikes a perfect balance between the intimacy of chamber music and the virtuosity of a piano concerto. The Piano Quintet remains his most frequently performed chamber work.

JACK Quartet - January 30, 2025

Program

TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)

Organum, from Drifts (2016/17)

NICOLÀ VICENTINO (1511-1575/6)

Madonna, il poco dolce

Musica prisca caput

AMY WILLIAMS (b. 1969)

Tangled Madrigal (2024)

TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)

Ars Nova, from Drifts (2016/17)

CHRISTOPHER OTTO (b. 1983) after RODERICUS (fl. late 14th c)

Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) (c 1390s)

INTERMISSION

RUTH CRAWFORD (SEEGER) (1901-53)

String Quartet (1931)

Rubato assai –

Leggiero –

Andante –

Allegro possibile

TAYLOR BROOK (b. 1985)

Phrygia, from Drifts (2016/17)

PHILIP GLASS (b. 1937)

String Quartet No. 5 (1991)

I –

II –

III –

IV –

V –

Program Notes

TAYLOR BROOK

Born October 5, 1985 in Edmonton, AB

Organum, from Drifts (2016/17)
Phrygia, from Drifts (2016/17)
Ars Nova, from Drifts (2016/17)

As a high-school student at Etobicoke School for the Arts, Taylor Brook’s interests turned to composition after hearing the St Lawrence Quartet perform Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet. After studies at McGill, then in Kolkata, Brussels, and as a doctoral student at Columbia University, Brook’s composition grew increasingly concerned with finely tuned microtonal sonorities. Organum which opens tonight’s concert Phrygia and Ars Nova, which are played later in the program, are parts of a larger work entitled Drifts – a set of five short pieces for string quartet, written for the JACK quartet in the winter of 2016/17.

“These pieces,” Brook explains, “explore the idea of ‘tonal drift,’ which is the result of modulation in a just intonation context. In 12-tone equal temperament, a series of modulations by a just major third will cycle back to the initial key after three modulations. However, the same number of modulations by the just major third will result in landing roughly a quarter-tone below the initial tonal centre, having drifted away from an equal temperament tonic.

“Drifts takes several approaches to tonal drift, with each piece focusing in on a different type of cadential movement to create the sense of modulation. Organum draws upon early polyphony, focusing on parallel fourths and creating a sense of cadence through movement to the octave in first species counterpoint. Phrygia reinterprets the basic idea of a Phrygian cadence, with various small just intervals heard in place of the usual semitone movement of the flat second to the tonic. The fifth and final movement, Ars Nova, reworks cadences from the Ars Nova period.”

NICOLÀ VICENTINO

Born 1511 in Vicenza, Republic of Venice; died c1575-6 in Milan

Madonna, il poco dolce
Musica prisca caput

Nicola Vicentino worked at the court in Ferrara, in Rome, Siena, and in 1565 in Milan where, a decade later, he died during the plague of 1576-6. In 1546 one of his two books of madrigals and motets was published in Venice. In his music, Vicentino develops a 31-note-to-the-octave system of what we would now refer to as microtonal tuning. Indeed, as a progressive musical theorist, he took part in a famous 1551 debate in Rome against the more traditional Portuguese composer and theorist Vicente Lusitano, losing the debate but leaving a legacy of vocally beautiful part songs and the creation of the archicembalo, a keyboard containing 31 keys to the octave.

Dolce mio ben is taken from a madrigal using this tuning system. (Its text: “My sweet delight, these are the sweet eyes that so sweetly consume me…”). In another madrigal, Musica prisca caput, Vicentino again draws inspiration from ancient Greek music, illustrating this microtonal scale of 1/5th tones. (Its text: “Ancient music has recently raised her head out of the darkness, so that, with antique and sweet numbers to compete with ancient deeds...”)

AMY WILLIAMS

Born 1969 in Buffalo, NY

Tangled Madrigal (2024)

Amy Williams teaches composition at the University of Pittsburgh and performs as a pianist of contemporary music. She was featured with JACK in a Miller Theatre of Columbia University portrait concert in February 2024, which included the world première of her 16-minute Tangled Madrigal.

“The title is taken from the last line of a Robert Morgan poem entitled ‘History’s Madrigal’, writes Amy Willams. ”This poem references ‘fiddle makers’ and their need to use ‘antique’ wood to make ‘truer and deeper music.’ The poem ends with the line: ‘the memory and wisdom of wood delighting air as century speaks to century and history dissolves history across the long and tangled madrigal of time.’

“My string quartet interfaces quite continuously and in varied ways with an historical artifact: Nicola Vicentino’s 16thcentury madrigal Musica prisca caput. This short vocal piece is a radically forward-thinking study in tuning systems—diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic (microtonal). The piece utilizes these three tuning systems. It also occasionally and in limited ways references the prelude from the first Bach cello suite.”

CHRISTOPHER OTTO after RODERICUS (fl. late 14th c)

Born November 11, 1983 in Champaign, IL

Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) (c 1390s)

The mediaeval music manuscript known as the Chantilly Codex is to be found today in the museum at the Château de Chantilly in Chantilly, Oise, about 35 km north of Paris. It contains 112 secular polyphonic pieces, mostly by French composers, comprising popular courtly dance styles of the time, including ballades, virelais, and rondeaus. Angelorum psalat tripudium (Antiphon of the Angels) is one of two Latin ballades in the collection and is the only surviving piece attributed to ‘Rodericus’, under the reversed form of his name S Uciredor. Like most of the collection, this two-part ballade is written in a complex notation which encompasses voice, pitch and rhythm in some 20 different note shapes, some aspects of which cannot be reproduced in today’s notation, which it predates.

The JACK’s first violin player Christopher Otto was drawn to the intricacy of the 700-year-old Antiphon of the Angelswhich allows for several realisations. “For my arrangement,” he writes, “I have relied on the transcription of Nors. S. Josephson, in whose interpretation the note shapes signify a radical expansion of rhythmic possibility, specifying a much richer variety of speeds and durations than most Western music before the twentieth century. I have given the first violin and viola the original two parts and added the second violin and cello parts to clarify the underlying grid of these complex rhythms.”

RUTH CRAWFORD (SEEGER)

Born July 3, 1901 in East Liverpool, OH; died November 18, 1953, in Chevy Chase, MD

String Quartet 1931

In her biography Ruth Crawford Seeger : A Composer's Search for American Music, Judith Tick quotes Seeger’s daughter Peggy reflecting on her mother’s early, progressive new music: "I don't understand how the woman that I knew as a mother created something like the 1931 string quartet. It is like someone crying; it is like someone beating on the walls... and I don't want to think about this as regarding my mother because my mother always seemed to me to have it all together, to have gotten a life that pleased her.”

Ruth Crawford’s search for a distinctly American music began in Chicago in her early twenties, where she studied piano and gained the attention of Henry Cowell. Recognising her as a “completely natural dissonant composer,” Cowell encouraged her to study with his own teacher, Charles Seeger, in New York. There, Crawford’s modernist interests in dissonant harmony and linear structure aligned with Seeger’s work on dissonant counterpoint, sparking a creative and intellectual partnership that would last years. By the late 1920s, Crawford’s music was being published in Cowell’s New Music Quarterly and performed by prominent new music organisations. She became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to study in Berlin and Paris in 1931-32.

While in Europe, Crawford composed her String Quartet 1931, a work that became the centrepiece of her career. Its compact structure (11–12 minutes) unfolds in four movements played attacca. The first juxtaposes a lyrical violin theme with a brusque, angular cello line, exploring their tension in evolving counterpoint. The second is a brief, rhythmically precise chase of scalar fragments, woven into a contrapuntal web.

The third movement, Andante, is Crawford’s most innovative. Described by the composer as “a sort of counterpoint of crescendi and diminuendi,” it features instruments sustaining single pitches in a pulsing mosaic of dynamics. The intensity builds to a breaking point before receding to its hushed opening. The finale presents a rigorous additive-subtractive structure, with violin phrases gradually expanding while the other instruments respond with diminishing phrases, eventually reversing the process to close the quartet.

Henry Cowell praised the Andante as “perhaps the best thing for quartet ever written in this country.” Compact yet rich with complexity, the quartet’s originality inspired future composers like Elliott Carter and remains a landmark of American modernism.

PHILIP GLASS

Born in Baltimore, MD, January 31, 1937

String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
I –
II –
III –
IV –
V –

American composer Philip Glass is mindful of tradition when composing string quartets. “It’s almost as if we say we’re going to write a string quartet, we take a deep breath and we wade in to write the most serious, significant piece we can,” he said around the time of the fifth of his nine numbered string quartets. Glass discarded three early attempts before No. 1 (1966). Nearly two decades later, he composed No. 2 (Company) (1984), a set of four concise reflections for a stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novella. After No. 5 (1991), a further two decades passed before No. 6 (2013). His quartet cycle concludes with No. 9 (King Lear) in 2022, 55 years after the first. Several of these quartets influenced his wider oeuvre, including scores for concert, theatre, film, and dance.

Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, his long-time collaborators, No. 5 represents a journey of transformation, blending the rhythmic energy of earlier minimalism with a new emphasis on melodic lyricism and emotional depth. Its prefatory opening movement unfolds slowly, presenting ideas and fragments that recur throughout the work’s five interconnected movements. The second movement introduces a brighter, oscillating texture, expanding and contracting around a short chordal motif. The central third movement is longer, and develops two contrasting ideas with vigorous momentum, ultimately unwinding into the longer-spun melodic writing of the fourth. The fifth movement builds on Glass’s signature interwoven scales, driving to a climax before returning to the questioning chords of the opening. This culmination integrates earlier themes into lush, sonorous chordal writing resolving with an introspective farewell.

Reflecting on the work, Glass said: “I was thinking that I had really gone beyond the need to write a serious string quartet and that I could write a quartet that is about musicality, which in a certain way is the most serious subject.”

Rachel Fenlon - February 11, 2025

Program

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Winterreise (Winter Journey), D. 911 (1827)

1. Gute Nacht (Good Night)

2. Die Wetterfahne (The Weathervane)

3. Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears)

4. Erstarrung (Numbness)

5. Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree)

6. Wasserflut (Flood)

7. Auf dem Flusse (On the River)

8. Rückblick (Backward Glance)

9. Irrlicht (Will-o’-the-wisp)

10. Rast (Rest)

11. Frühlingstraum (Dream of Spring)

12. Einsamkeit (Loneliness)

13. Die Post (The Post-horn)

14. Der greise Kopf (The Grey Head)

15. Die Krähe (The Crow)

16. Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope)

17. Im Dorfe (In the Village)

18. Der stürmische Morgen (The Stormy Morning)

19. Täuschung (Illusion)

20. Der Wegweiser (The Signpost)

21. Das Wirtshaus (The Inn)

22. Mut! (Courage!)

23. Die Nebensonnen (The Mock Suns)

24. Der Leiermann (The Hurdy-Gurdy Man)

Program Notes

FRANZ SCHUBERT

Born in Vienna, Austria, January 31, 1797; died in Vienna, November 19, 1828

Winterreise (Winter Journey), D. 911 (1827)

A key work in the Western canon, Schubert’s Winterreise was never performed publicly during the composer’s lifetime. When the composer first sang the songs at a private gathering, his friends reacted coolly. Sensing their hesitation, Schubert remarked: “I like these songs more than all the others, and you will get to like them too.” His mood during the cycle’s composition had been notably sombre. Josef von Spaun, Schubert’s childhood friend and a reliable commentator, recalled years later: “Schubert had been in a gloomy mood for some time and seemed unwell. When I asked what was wrong, he would only say: ‘You will soon hear and understand.’ One day he said to me: ‘Come to Schober’s place today. I will sing a cycle of spine-chilling songs to you. I am curious to see what you will make of it. They have affected me more than has been the case with other songs.’ He then sang us the whole Winterreise with great emotion. We were shocked at the dark mood of these songs, and Schober said he had only liked one of them, Der Lindenbaum.”

The ‘Winter Journey’ of the title is a harrowing psychological tale of rejection, isolation, and despair. Its protagonist, a jilted lover, journeys through snow and ice, haunted by memories of past happiness evoked by vivid imagery: a weathervane, a linden tree carved with the beloved’s name, a stream, a post-horn, a signpost, and a graveyard. The poems, more psychological narrative than literal travelogue, chart his descent into loneliness, madness, and fixation on death.

When Schubert first completed the cycle in February 1827, it comprised 12 songs, ending with Einsamkeit in the same D minor key as the opening song. He drew the texts from Die Winterreise by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827), a 12-poem cycle published in 1823. Schubert likely found the collection in a literary annual in Franz von Schober’s library. Müller’s work, titled Wanderlieder von Wilhelm Müller – Die Winterreise. In 12 Liedern, was intended as a complete cycle. Schubert even wrote Finis at the end of his score, believing it finished.

This original cycle was already being prepared for publication by the time Schubert discovered Müller’s revised, 24-poem version in an 1824 anthology titled 77 Poems from the Posthumous Papers of a Travelling Horn Player. This later edition included 12 additional poems labelled “Continuation of The Winter Journey.” Schubert’s reaction to the expanded cycle is unknown, but he began setting the additional texts in October 1827, eight months after completing the original cycle. Tragically, Müller died of a stroke on October 1, 1827, aged just 33. “My poems lead but half a life,” he had prophetically written, “a paper life, of black and white … until music breathes life into them.”

Müller’s revised sequence posed a challenge for Schubert. The newly inserted Die Post appeared early in the cycle, at a point when the traveller might still hope for a letter from his beloved. However, Schubert retained his original sequence for publication, moving Die Post to No. 13. This decision reflected his focus on the dramatic arc of the cycle rather than literal narrative. He made one notable alteration: placing Die Nebensonnen before the final song, Der Leiermann, heightening the bleakness of the conclusion. Pianist and Schubert scholar Graham Johnson calls this “one of the greatest examples of necessity being the mother of sublime invention.”

Winterreise, a journey to the frontiers of the human mind, was among Schubert’s final works. He died in November 1828, aged 31, before correcting the proofs.

The cycle opens with a sense of anxiety and world-weariness (Gute Nacht). The repeated, introspective tramp of the piano’s opening chords, in the minor key, establishes the journey’s tone and recurs in various permutations throughout. Promises of love and marriage are left behind as the young woman’s door closes. Snow, deer tracks, howling dogs, and endless wandering lie ahead. Even so, Schubert finds space in his traveller’s heart for compassion, adding an effect absent from Müller’s poem. Schubert’s gentle shift to the major key as he leaves his beloved sleeping undisturbed (in verse four), is profoundly poignant. As the music returns to the minor key, Müller’s modest comment about his poetry needing music to bring it to life feels especially true.

A weathervane becomes a symbol of inconstancy as the journey begins. The terse Die Wetterfahne opens violently, sweeping away any lingering tenderness under a mask of irony. The traveller reflects bitterly on the young woman’s choice of wealth over love. In Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears), emotions are more contained, yet the stark, staccato accompaniment conveys that, while tears freeze in the cold, inside they remain scalding. In Erstarrung, desperate tears melt the ice in search of love’s memory, the piano’s running triplets and the near-constant minor key intensifying the numbness. A brief moment in the major key opens Der Lindenbaum, with triplets evoking wind rustling through the tree’s leaves. The Linden tree, a powerful symbol of love and healing in German mythology, becomes threatening as the chill wind blows, and the major key gives way to the minor.

In Wasserflut, water imagery and poetic license defy the laws of physics to create a flood of tears, warmed by their passage past the beloved’s house. Schubert stretches the vocal line poignantly on “das heisse Weh” (“my burning grief”). Word painting becomes ever more subtle in Auf dem Fluss, where an unexpected downward harmonic step portrays the frozen river, creating a magical and eerie effect later echoed in the piano. In Rückblick, momentum increases as the traveller’s agitation grows. Past and present merge as he casts a glance back at the town and journeys deeper into his lonely inner world. The restlessness of Irrlicht turns inward, becoming self-pitying. Seeking rest (Rast) in a cottage, the traveller’s despair intensifies. In Frühlingstraum, the simple, pastoral opening evokes a dream state abruptly shattered by cocks crowing and ravens cawing. The striking juxtaposition of dream and reality makes this one of the cycle’s finest songs. By Einsamkeit (Loneliness), the traveller is broken, oblivious to the signs of life around him.

The wintry landscape briefly recedes in Die Post, where post-horn calls bring the possibility of news from the beloved. This marks the beginning of Winterreise’s second, increasingly inward part and the last reference to the young woman. In Der greise Kopf, grey hair and death are imagined. In Die Krähe, the ever-present crow circling above threatens the weakened traveller. Schubert’s spare music mirrors the crow’s circling with a slowly repetitive piano motif and a vocal line shadowing the left hand. In Letzte Hoffnung, staccato, fluttering piano and vocal lines depict falling leaves on which the traveller pins his hopes – only for them to fall away. In Im Dorfe, rattling chains contain the village dogs. There is no hospitality here, unlike the welcome he received earlier in the charcoal-burner’s cottage. The traveller’s dismissal of the villagers’ dreams of better times can sound bitter in performance.

Morning breaks violently in Der stürmische Morgen, depicting the storm in the traveller’s mind. In Täuschung, he sees a distant, dreamlike vision, only to recognise it as an illusion. In Der Wegweiser, he treads paths no one has walked before, heading towards an unknown fate. Reaching a graveyard in Das Wirtshaus, he mistakes it for an inn but finds no refuge. The hymn-like dignity of Schubert’s music elevates this bleak scene. Mut! (Courage!) follows as a brisk, defiant attempt to confront adversity, preparing the way for the final two songs. In Die Nebensonnen, the traveller imagines three suns, two of which (perhaps representing the beloved’s eyes) have set forever. He longs for the third – his life – to set as well. As the cycle concludes with Der Leiermann, the bleak drone of the beggar’s hurdy-gurdy tolls like a bell as his numb fingers play a fragment of a tune. The traveller’s journey ends, destined to confront his grief in eternal madness.

Illia Ovcharenko - March 4, 2025

Program

DOMENICO SCARLATTI (1685-1757)

Sonata in B minor, K. 87/L. 33/P. 43

FRANZ LISZT (1811-86)

Sonata in B minor, S. 178 (1852-3)

DOMENICO SCARLATTI (1685-1757)

Sonata in B minor, K. 27/L. 449/P. 83

INTERMISSION

VALENTIN SILVESTROV (b. 1937)

Bagatelle: Allegretto, Op. 1 No. 1 (Allegretto) (publ. 2005)

LEVKO REVUTSKY (1899–1977)

Prelude in D-flat, Op. 4 No. 1 (Lento) (1913-14)

Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 4 No. 3 (Presto) (1913-14)

VALENTIN SILVESTROV (b. 1937)

Bagatelle: Op. 1 No. 2 (Moderato) (publ. 2005)

LEVKO REVUTSKY (1899–1977)

Prelude in F-sharp minor, Op. 4 No. 2 (Andantino) (1913-14)

Prelude in B-flat minor, Op. 7 No. 2 (Vivace) (1921)

Prelude in E-flat, Op. 7 No. 1 (Andante) (1918)

VALENTIN SILVESTROV (b. 1937)

Bagatelle: Op. 1 No. 3 (Moderato) (publ. 2005)

LEVKO REVUTSKY (1899–1977)

Sonata in B minor, Op. 1 (1912 rev. 1948-9)

Allegro – meno mosso (quasi andante) – Allegro – meno mosso -- Agitato

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53 (‘Heroic’) (1842-3)

Program Notes

DOMENICO SCARLATTI

Born in Naples, Italy, October 26, 1685; died in Madrid, Spain, July 23, 1757

Sonata in B minor, K. 87/L. 33/P. 43

FRANZ LISZT

Born in Raiding / Doborján, Hungary (today Austria), October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, Germany, July 31, 1886

Sonata in B minor, S. 178 (1852-3)

DOMENICO SCARLATTI

Born in Naples, Italy, October 26, 1685; died in Madrid, Spain, July 23, 1757

Sonata in B minor, K. 27/L. 449/P. 83

Domenico Scarlatti was born into a large Neapolitan musical family, the sixth of ten children of renowned composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Franz Liszt, by contrast, was born an only child in the Hungarian village of Raiding, his father an intendant of the sheep flocks on an Esterházy estate.

Both composers were prodigies, separated by a century and a quarter. Scarlatti had two operas produced in Naples before turning 20. Liszt’s extraordinary talent was noted early by Viennese piano pedagogue Carl Czerny who catalogued every nuance of piano technique in countless studies and exercises. Czerny instilled discipline in his industrious student, giving daily lessons for 14 months without fee, while Court Kapellmeister Salieri taught him composition, also without charge. After a farewell concert in Vienna on April 13, 1823, Liszt was prepared for a life of travel. The death of his father delayed his plans, but hearing Paganini in 1832 accelerated his transformation into the era’s defining virtuoso. He toured relentlessly, criss-crossing Europe by carriage by day and night, before retiring from concert life at 35 with a final series of performances in Ukraine in September 1847. By then, he was the most famous pianist in the world, having established the framework for the virtuoso recital which exists to this day.

Scarlatti, by contrast, spent much of his life in relative obscurity. After early positions, including at the Vatican, he left Italy for Lisbon in 1719 to serve as music tutor to the Infanta Maria Barbara. He remained in her service for 37 years, following her to the Spanish court in Madrid after her marriage to King Ferdinand VI. There, free from the intrigues of Italian opera and his father’s dominance, he was also free to explore his inner musical world. Though he composed operas, cantatas, and choral works, his greatest legacy lies in his 555 keyboard sonatas, many polished into their final form late in life. Their musical language is often brilliant, succinct, technically demanding and utterly captivating. “Do not expect profundity in these compositions, but rather the sophisticated playfulness of art,” Scarlatti wrote when introducing a printed selection of his sonatas.

Of the seven sonatas in B minor, K. 87 is highly expressive, at times sombre and reflective, while K. 27 is bright and optimistic, its signature hand-crossing creating multi-textured effects, perhaps with a touch of humour. These works serve as prelude and coda to the Liszt Sonata in B minor.

Few composers expressed the many facets of their personalities more vividly than Liszt and nowhere is this clearer than in his Sonata in B minor, completed in 1853, well after his years of travel. Alternately heroic and self-questioning, impetuous and disciplined, passionate and otherworldly, it is a cornerstone of 19th-century Romanticism. Had Liszt written nothing else, this work alone would confirm his genius.

Its starting point is Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, which Liszt had recently arranged for piano and orchestra. From Schubert, he took the idea of a single large-scale structure with a unifying theme that undergoes transformation. But Liszt went further. The Sonata can be heard as four movements enclosed by a prologue and epilogue, yet it also functions as a single, nearly 30-minute structure, in traditional sonata-form.

The first section, Allegro energico, is the exposition, itself in sonata form. The second, Andante sostenuto, introduces the development in an ABA form. This is followed by more development – a Fugato, in scherzo ABA form, before the finale—the recapitulation, again in sonata form. There are other ways of analysing the sonata. But its unity and the expert way in which Liszt binds the varying moods of a large-scale sonata within a single framework are immediately apparent when listening.

INTERMISSION

VALENTIN SILVESTROV

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 30, 1937

Bagatelle: Op. 1 No. 1 (Allegretto) (publ. 2005)

Bagatelle: Op. 1 No. 2 (Moderato) (publ. 2005)

Bagatelle: Op. 1 No. 3 (Moderato) (publ. 2005)

Exiled since March 2022, after 84 years living in Kyiv, to Berlin, “a refugee from bombs and missiles,“

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov continues to fight for his country with blunt words and “quiet, cautious music.“ “Cherish this quiet, cherish this peace,” he says. His Majdan cycle of hymns, elegies and prayers dates back to the initially peaceful 2013-14 Kyiv street protests which led to the Revolution of Dignity and the ousting of President Yanukovich. Recently, he has written more Elegies. Now in his late eighties and a winner of the Shevchenko National Prize, his country’s highest award for an artist, Silvestrov has distilled a creative dialogue with composers from the Western musical past as diverse as Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Wagner, and Glinka. “I do not write new music,” Silvestrov says, “my music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.”

The Bagatelle distils his thoughts to their most aphoristic and has become a favourite vehicle for Silvestrov since the early years of the present century. The Bagatelles written between 2003 and 2017 are grouped into cycles of between two to ten pieces, structured with other cycles into super-cycles of over 30 hours of music. As yet, just a handful are published. In them every nuance is painstakingly notated with the utmost precision. “I would even go so far and call the Bagatelles ‘symphonies for piano’, in the literal sense of the word ‘symphony’ = consonance,” he wrote recently. “These pieces are ‘symphonies of moments’, and ‘melodies of silence’, consisting not only of music, but also of pauses, which are music as well.” “Bagatelles are valuable because, above all, they are not ideologically weighted, and the creative act always passes by in a flash. . .”

LEVKO REVUTSKY

Born in Irzhavets, Poltava province [now Chernihiv region], February 20, 1889; died in Kiev, March 30, 1977

Three Preludes, Op. 4 (1913-14)

Two Preludes, Op. 7 (1918/21)

Sonata in B minor, Op. 1 (1912 rev. 1948-9)

Unlike Silvestrov, Levko (Lev) Revutsky came from a musical family and started with piano lessons from his mother at an early age. At 14 he was studying in Kyiv with Mykola Lysenko, a seminal figure, often viewed as the ‘father’ of Ukrainian music. Certainly, Lysenko’s advocacy of Ukrainian folksong and language in music was passed on to Revutsky, who was to compose many folksong settings, notably three anthologies (1925-8). Folksong also underscores Revutsky’s Second Symphony (1926-7, later twice revised). This is a landmark in Ukrainian symphonic writing, a late flowering of the grand Romantic style, in the tradition of his composition teacher in Kyiv, Reinhold Glière. Seven years later, Revutsky’s Second Piano Concerto probes deeper and denser into late Romanticism, only to incur the wrath of musical officialdom (though decidedly not that of an enthusiastic standing audience in Kyiv’s Constitution Square in June 2021). The criticism, however, essentially stifled Revutsky’s creative voice, and he devoted more time to teaching at the Kiev Conservatory – where Silvestrov was among his pupils – and performing many prominent administrative and educational roles as a well-respected, leading member of the musical community.

Revutsky’s trio of early Preludes, Op. 4, written when he was 25, are well crafted, contrasted miniatures. The first is reflective, nocturnal perhaps, not hiding its roots in the preludes of the previous century. The second attempts more as it ventures beyond the door that the quoted Beethoven ‘fate motif’ portends. The third is an uneasy étude which darts restlessly over the keyboard. The first of the two Preludes, Op. 7 (1918) builds from a relatively simple melody and accompaniment opening, with right-hand filigree paying homage to Chopin, to a grand, sonorous climax over three staves, which then escapes into a dashing coda. The second (1921) again marries prelude and étude, here within a pianistically brilliant stream of triplets.

Revutsky revised most of his earlier published large and small scale works later in life, including his first publication, the single-movement Sonata in B minor, Op. 1. Its 12-to-14-minute structure falls

into several sections, with two main, closely related themes. The first (Allegro moderato) introduces a two-measure, falling, modal theme which is worked through many variations over running sixteenths, building restlessly as the hands grow ever wider apart, coming to rest over a low, tolling octave B. A second theme (meno mosso - quasi andante) is calmer and quieter, though closely related to the earlier, falling theme. Together, these themes provide the building blocks for tumultuous, bravura piano writing, culminating in a radiant statement of the meno mosso theme and a concluding revisiting of the main theme, now marked agitato.

FRYDERYK CHOPIN

Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, October 17, 1849

Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53 (‘Heroic’) (1842-3)

Chopin wrote his first polonaise at the age of seven and continued to write them throughout his life. He brought a distinctly nationalist colouring to this aristocratic dance, heightening its dramatic contrasts, building on its martial rhythmic motif, and expanding its structure into a compact tone poem. The dance was popular in the salons of Paris, Chopin’s city for the greater part of his maturity, and Paris supported the Poles following the failed 1830 November Uprising against the Russian Empire. The powerful Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53, which acquired the appropriate nickname ‘Heroic’ somewhere along the way, explodes from the piano keyboard with its defiant, assertive, militaristic main theme and cannon-fire left-hand octaves. Its association with Polish nationalism was made tangible when it was adopted by the great Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski as he tirelessly advocated for Polish independence during the First World War.

Janina Fialkowska - March 18, 2025

Program

CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786-1826)

Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65 (J. 260) (1819)

EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)

Three Lyric Pieces:

Der var engang (Once upon a Time), Op. 71 No. 1 (1901)

For dine Födder (At your Feet), Op. 68 No. 3 (1898)

Sommerfugl (Butterfly), Op. 43 No. 1 (1886)

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 (1837)

Des Abends (Evening)

Aufschwung (Soaring)

Warum? (Why?)

Grillen (Whims)

In der Nacht (In the Night)

Fabel (Fable)

Traumes-Wirren (Dream Confusion)

Ende vom Lied (End of the Song)

INTERMISSION

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)

Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), M. 61

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Berceuse in D-flat, Op. 57 (1844)

FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Scherzo No. 1, in B minor, Op. 20 (c1835)

Program Notes

CARL MARIA VON WEBER

Born in Eutin, Germany, c November 19, 1786; died in London, June 5, 1826

Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65 (J. 260) (1819)

German composer Carl Maria von Weber’s piano music and his reputation as a pianist remained high throughout much of the 19th century. Major composers of the following generation – Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt in particular – admired the achievement of the composer, conductor, concert pianist, and music critic who moved beyond the prevailing Viennese classical style. Today, however, while Weber’s opera Der Freischütz has held the stage since its triumphant première a little over two centuries ago, his two piano concertos, the Konzertstück, four piano sonatas, and variations are rarely heard in concert halls. The exception is a rondeau brillant for piano from the summer of 1819 titled Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance).

This work endures through the piano original and countless arrangements. Berlioz popularised it in his splendid orchestration (1841), while Tausig and Godowsky stretched and clothed it in piano filigree and contrapuntal bravura respectively (the latter even adding an optional third piano to his two-piano amplification). Yet the freshness, elegance and vitality of Weber’s original piano version remain unmatched. In this miniature drama, Weber vividly portrays a formal social interaction: the partners meet and greet with decorum typical of an era when dancing together carried a hint of scandal. He invites (primarily in the lower register of the piano), she declines (the upper register), he persists, and she eventually accepts. They converse, then move to the dance (the main body of the piece). Finally, he thanks her, she replies, and they part with grace.

EDVARD GRIEG

Born in Bergen, Norway, June 15, 1843; died in Bergen, September 4, 1907

Three Lyric Pieces:

Der var engang (Once upon a Time), Op. 71 No. 1 (1901)

For dine Födder (At your Feet), Op. 68 No. 3 (1898)

Sommerfugl (Butterfly), Op. 43 No. 1 (1886)

Edvard Grieg composed his 66 Lyric Pieces with the amateur pianist in mind, creating music for the home during an era when pianos were a parlour staple. Poetic in conception and often sentimental, these ten volumes became immensely popular, forming the cornerstone of Grieg’s commercial success. His German publisher eagerly anticipated each new volume, celebrating their arrival with a flag-raising, as Grieg wryly noted. Thousands of copies were sold, making the Lyric Pieces a fixture in households across Europe.

First published in 1867 as Little Lyric Pieces for the Pianoforte, Op. 12, the series spanned Grieg’s career, with collections released every few years until shortly before his death. Though they account for less than half his piano output, they encompass the full range of his style. Grieg performed them regularly but had mixed feelings about their success. He called them semmeln (“freshly-baked breads”) to his publisher but likened them to “lice and fleas” in a letter to a friend after a period of writing nothing else. Debussy memorably described them as “pink bonbons filled with snow,” referencing the original Peters edition covers.

From the final volume comes Once upon a Time, blending a Swedish folksong with a Norwegian springar dance. The penultimate collection features At your Feet, a sentimental, yearning love song with a rippling accompaniment. Sommerfugl (Butterfly) comes from the third volume of Lyric Pieces, a collection Grieg described as “spring songs” in a letter to a musicologist. Grieg himself recorded the piece in 1906 and plays with great spontaneity and freedom.

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, nr Bonn, July 29, 1856

Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 (1837)

“Your ‘Fantasy Pieces’ have captured my interest in an extraordinary way,” wrote Franz Liszt to Robert Schumann. “I play them truly with delight.” Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, became an immediate success, selling up to 300 copies within a year of publication. With a growing catalogue of piano works and impending marriage to Clara Wieck, Schumann sought to appeal to public taste, moving beyond pieces that, as Liszt observed, were “too difficult for the public to digest.”

The title of the eight Fantasy Pieces, Op. 12 draws on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier, a collection of essays and tales that inspired Schumann’s imagination. Their spirit of fantasy permeates the two books of Schumann’s cycle, beginning with the serene Des Abends (Evening), marked innig (intimate), contrasting sharply with the second piece, Aufschwung (Soaring), marked rasch (impetuous). Schumann’s performance directions reflect the names he used to represent the passive and active sides of his own personality –the introspective Eusebius and the fiery Florestan.

Each piece offers vivid contrasts: the questioning Warum? (Why?), the assertive Grillen (Whims), and the ballad-like In der Nacht (In the Night), linked to a Greek love story. Schumann’s fiancée inspired Ende vom Lied (End of the Song), where joy, sorrow, and wedding bells coexist. “As I thought about you,” he wrote to Clara, “one hears both the wedding bells and death knell.”

MAURICE RAVEL

Born in Ciboure, France, March 7, 1875; died in Paris, France, December 28, 1937

Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), M. 61

Critic and pianist Louis Aubert premiered Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales on May 11, 1911, at the Paris-based Société Musicale Indépendante, which Ravel co-founded. This forward-looking chamber music society experimented with concealing composers’ identities for 11 new works, inviting the audience to guess who had written each piece. Six days later in Le Courrier Musical, the composers' names were revealed: over half the audience had correctly identified Ravel, while others suggested Satie and Kodály. The title may have added to the intrigue, as Valses nobles et sentimentales suggested an association with Viennese waltzes, though Ravel's approach was far from conventional.

By 1911, the waltz title evoked an established legacy from Franz Schubert, who decades earlier had written 34 Valses sentimentales, Op. 50 (D. 779), and 12 Valses nobles, Op. 77 (D. 969). Ravel, however, made clear his intent from the start: “The title Valses nobles et sentimentales sufficiently indicates my intention of writing a cycle of waltzes in emulation of Schubert,” he wrote. In 1911, Ravel’s harmonies sounded strikingly modern and astringent, shifting subtly and blending polyphonic lines and chords. The music alternates between wry detachment and tenderness, with lively ‘noble’ waltzes interwoven with evocative ‘sentimental’ ones. He dryly inscribed the score: “The delicious and ever-fresh pleasures of a useless occupation.” Ravel’s suite of seven waltzes and an epilogue runs continuously, with the epilogue revisiting motifs from earlier movements. Valses nobles et sentimentales honours Schubert while boldly reimagining the spirit of the waltz.

FRYDERYK CHOPIN

Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, France, Oct 17, 1849

Berceuse in D-flat, Op. 57 (1844)

Composed in 1844, the same turbulent year as the B minor Sonata, Op. 58, when Chopin was shaken by the death of his father, the gentle, calming Berceuse in D-flat, Op. 57, offers a serene counterpoint to his personal anguish. Originally titled Variantes, this delicate lullaby resists over-analysis. It unfolds over 54 repetitions of a simple tonic-dominant rocking figure in the bass, framed by a brief introduction and an extended cadence.

What makes the Berceuse extraordinary is not its harmonic complexity but the way Chopin transforms a simple framework into a mesmerising sequence of 16 variations. “He embroiders the sequence with such finesse that the listener is blissfully unaware of the lack of harmonic interest,” wrote Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley over 75 years ago. Hedley then concludes his reflection with a provocative question: “Who will cut open the nightingale’s throat to discover where the song comes from?”

FRYDERYK CHOPIN

Born in Żelazowa Wola, nr Warsaw, Poland, March 1, 1810; died in Paris, France, Oct 17, 1849

Scherzo No. 1, in B minor, Op. 20 (c1835)

Chopin ventures into new territory with his single virtuoso Scherzo movements, written outside the traditional framework of the piano sonata or symphony. Lacking the structural contrasts provided by multiple movements, he creates dramatic contrasts within the Scherzo itself.

The Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20, composed four years after Chopin moved to Paris, begins with heroic opening chords and dynamic, scampering passagework that seem to throw a challenge to his Parisian piano rivals. Amidst the work’s turbulence, a contrasting central episode offers respite: a tender melody drawn from the Polish Christmas carol Lulajże Jezuniu (Sleep, Little Jesus), evoking the composer’s homeland.

Reviewing the piece, Robert Schumann remarked: “How will gravity array itself, if wit is already cloaked so darkly?”

Isidore String Quartet - March 27, 2025

Program

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-91)

String Quartet in C, K. 465 (‘Dissonance’) (1785)

Adagio – Allegro

Andante cantabile

Menuetto : Allegro

Allegro

BILLY CHILDS (b. 1957)

String Quartet No. 3, Unrequited (2015)

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127 (1824-5)

Maestoso – Allegro

Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile

Scherzando vivace – Presto

Finale: Allegro con moto

Program Notes

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December 5, 1791

String Quartet in C, K. 465 (‘Dissonance’) (1785)

"The quartets are, indeed, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavour," Mozart admits to Haydn in a letter dated September 1, 1785, in which he encloses six new quartets. And the many crossings-out, careful corrections and fragments of quartet movements from this period of Mozart’s life bear this out. Nowhere else did he labour so painstakingly over his music. "Please, then, receive them kindly and be to them as a father, a guide, a friend," Mozart (a generation younger than Haydn) continues. "I entreat you to be indulgent to those faults that may have escaped a father's partial eye, and, in spite of them, to continue your generous friendship towards one who so highly appreciates it."

The magnificent and disturbing C major Quartet is the crowning point of Mozart’s six ‘Haydn’ quartets. The work is true evidence of Mozart’s triumph in emulating the celebrated composer’s Op. 33 collection of quartets from 1782, and achieving a balance of structure, musical style and emotion. Mozart began work on the quartets not long after moving from Salzburg to Vienna. It was then that he began to hear music by Bach and Handel on a regular basis at weekly gatherings in the Vienna home of Baron van Swieten. The power of contrapuntal writing had a deep and increasing effect on his own part-writing at the time. The effect is at its most acute in the unsettling dissonances of the opening 22 measures of the C major Quartet. They give the work a nickname (‘Dissonance’) and arise from a synthesis of free counterpoint and chromatic, ‘highly spiced’ harmonies – to use a description that was often thrown at the mature Mozart. The dissonances are calculated to shock – so much so that people at first accused Mozart of releasing the printed music without having carefully proofed the parts! Even half a century later, Belgian music theorist François-Joseph Fétis proposed a ‘fix’ to soften Mozart’s strident harmonies by moving the first violin entry one beat earlier. Many applauded the idea; few went along with it. Today, were the opening to be played with this insensitivity to Mozart’s boldness, it is more than likely that the fearsome stone statue of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni would appear on stage and quickly sort things out!

The suspense and tension created by the dissonance is released in the ensuing Allegro, rich in motivic development and dialogue between the instruments. The profound, aching Andante cantabile ranks among Mozart’s most sublime slow movements. Throughout the chromatic minuet and serene finale, the musical invention and disciplined working-out of short motifs are exemplary.

BILLY CHILDS

Born in Los Angeles, CA, March 8, 1957

String Quartet No. 3, Unrequited (2015)

“I was discovering my musical voice, I'd say, around the age of 14 — around the early '70s,” Los Angeles born and bred composer Billy Childs said a few years ago. “What was happening during that time was this kind of unprecedented inter-genre respect and tolerance between classical, or Western European music, and jazz. Between rock and jazz. And even film music had all these different elements blended in. I grew up not seeing any difference between a beautifully stated work of art in jazz and in classical. To me, it's all the same thing.”

Two albums by Childs of jazz/chamber music, an amalgam of jazz and classical music, were together nominated for five GRAMMY awards, winning twice. Childs now has a total of 17 GRAMMY nominations and six awards over a long career which has seen the American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor work with leading artists across many genres. He has received commissions from the Ying and Kronos Quartets, Dorian Wind Quintet, American Brass Quintet, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among other ensembles.

His String Quartet No. 3, Unrequited, is a single movement structure lasting 12 minutes. It was one of a quartet of quartets by American composers commissioned by the Lyris Quartet as commentaries on one of the most extraordinary love affairs to be sought by a composer. Czech composer Leoš Janáček was 63 when he met Kamila Stösslová, a young, married woman of 26 in 1917, on holiday at a spa in Moravia. For the next 12 years until his death, Janáček poured out his love for the young woman in some 700 love letters and some of the greatest, most passionate music of the 20th century.

Billy Childs writes:

“I thought that it was a remarkable idea. The first thing — the only thing, really — that popped into my mind was the tragedy of unrequited love. When I first heard Janáček’s Intimate Letters performed live, the emotion of the piece jumped out at me: the wild shifts of tempo, the beautiful and plaintive melodies, the stark dynamic contrasts. I wanted to illustrate my perspective on this strange relationship between Janáček and Kamila Stösslová, by telling the story of a man who goes through different phases of emotion, before finally coming to terms with the fact that his love for her is one-sided — it will never be returned the way he would like. I sought to compose Unrequited so that it moves, like the five stages of grief, through a variety of emotions — from romantic, pure love, through paranoid, obsessive, neurotic possessiveness, arriving finally at despondent acceptance.”

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Born in Bonn, Germany, baptised December 17, 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, March 26, 1827

String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127 (1824-5)

After the acclaim of the monumental Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis, Beethoven began sketches for a Tenth Symphony and considered plans for a second opera. Yet his creative focus truly crystallised in his preferred medium: the string quartet. This decision had been long in the making—he had twice worked on sketches for a quartet before finalising the Ninth Symphony. Then, in February 1825, the E-flat quartet, Op. 127, became the first of Beethoven’s late great quartets. It was followed by Op. 132 in July 1825 and Op. 130 in November. Op. 127 marks the start of a deeply personal journey. Money was not the issue as quartet writing offered little potential for income. This was, essentially, music written from inner need.

The sonorous opening chords that send the music on its spacious journey sound three times throughout the first movement. Their initial appearance serves as a fanfare and gives a sense of purpose to the music that follows. The chords are played forte and in the home key of E-flat. After a journey to the relative minor (G minor), the chords next appear in the key of G major, still forte, even more sonorously scored, since they now take advantage of the open strings of all four instruments. Then the music travels through more keys as the traditional development gets underway. The maestoso (‘majestic’) chords are forced into yet another key, C major, for their third and final appearance, now marked fortissimo and ever more sonorous. The third appearance of these pillars is even shorter than it was in the opening six measures, as the main theme of the movement now takes over their serene solemnity to end in a mood of ecstasy.

The second movement continues this serenity through free variations on an unusually long, 18-measure theme. Robert Schumann described the movement’s meditative quality: “One seems to have lingered not 15 short minutes, but an eternity.” The four pizzicato chords introducing the third movement mirror the first movement’s Maestoso. These lead into an exuberant Scherzando vivace, driven by a hopping figure introduced by the cello. A whirlwind middle section precedes the reprise, whose assertive final chords are picked up as the finale begins.

The finale then propels the music forward with an unshakable sense of purpose, showcasing Beethoven at his peak as a composer. His assurance is unwavering, even when early listeners struggled to comprehend the work. To them, Beethoven simply said: “They must hear it more often.” Time – even within his lifetime – proved Beethoven correct.

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