2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Book

2019

CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

J U N E 2 0 – A U G U S T 4 , 2 019

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elcome to the 32nd season of Bravo! Vail! There is so much beautiful music to share, and we are delighted that every day brings something new.

Chamber music is at the heart of this Festival, and this year’s programs are truly phenomenal. The Chamber Music Series at Donovan Pavilion brings amazing musicianship to life with members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Takács Quartet, the St Lawrence String Quartet, and the very first Chamber Music Series solo recital in the history of Bravo! Vail: an all-Beethoven program with superstar pianist Yefim Bronfman. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you can enjoy superb free concerts at the Vail Chapel, and the ever-popular Anne-Marie McDermott Classically Uncorked presented by Meiomi Wine series features ARTISTIC DIRECTOR the Bravo! Vail premiere of a commissioned work by Philip Glass. Even the youngest chamber music fans can enjoy Little Listeners @ the Library, with fun and interactive Instrument Petting Zoos. (See Season at a Glance on page 8 or visit bravovail.org for details on these and other free, family-friendly programs happening all summer long throughout the Vail Valley.)

There is no greater privilege for a chamber musician than to share our joy of playing together, and to share the thought-provoking and touching magnificence of this music. Thank you for joining us. Listen, and enjoy!

CONTENTS CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES.................................................................................................... 2 FREE CONCERT SERIES......................................................................................................... 4 CLASSICALLY UNCORKED SERIES PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE............... 6 SEASON AT A GLANCE........................................................................................................... 8 CONCERT LISTINGS............................................................................................................... 10 MEET THE ARTISTS................................................................................................................ 44 PROGRAM NOTES © 2019 DR. RICHARD E. RODDA PROGRAM NOTES FOR CLASSICALLY UNCORKED © THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

P H O T O S BY Z AC H M A H O N E .CO M UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

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CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

JULY 2–22, 2019

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DALLAS STRINGS & MCDERMOTT (page 10) 2

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

TAKÁCS STRING QUARTET (page 16)

ST LAWRENCE STRING QUARTET (page 24)

FROM LEFT: ©AMANDA TIPTON; ©MARCO BORGGREVE

RAVO! VAIL’S CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES offers something for music lovers of all persuasions. Audiences will enjoy well-loved masterworks and new discoveries of the chamber music repertoire, performed by members of the resident orchestras alongside world-renowned guest artists and ensembles.

The spectacular setting is the Donovan Pavilion, a stunning venue with expansive mountain valley views. Experience chamber music as it was meant to be heard: in a beautiful, intimate environment, with acclaimed artists, and among friends.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUL

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09 JUL

16 JUL

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Dallas Strings & McDermott................................... 10 Takรกcs String Quartet................................................16 St Lawrence String Quartet............................................... 24 Bronfman Plays Beethoven..................................... 28

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FREE CONCERT SERIES

JULY 8–27, 2019

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NHANCE YOUR DAY with a free, hourlong chamber music concert performed by the Festival’s renowned musicians including the 2019 Chamber Musicians in Residence and the 2019 Piano Fellows. These programs offer a wide variety of repertoire, and are held in beautiful and unique community venues throughout the Vail Valley.

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUL

08 JUL

09 JUL

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Edwards Interfaith Chapel, 6:00PM................ 12

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Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM.......................................... 14

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Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM.......................................... 18

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2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Brush Creek Pavilion, 6:00PM........................................ 20

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Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM......................................... 22

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Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM......................................... 26

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Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM......................................... 30

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Golden Eagle Senior Center, 11:00AM............. 33 Vail Interfaith Chapel, 1:00PM......................................... 34 Edwards Interfaith Chapel, 6:00PM............... 36

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CLASSICALLY UNCORKED PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

JULY 30–AUGUST 1, 2019

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HIS INNOVATIVE SERIES pulls out all the stops in an exceptional chamber music experience unlike any other.

With handcrafted wines, delicate desserts, and intimate seating in an exquisite mountain setting, Classically Uncorked presented by Meiomi Wine explores the remarkable depth and scope of music by today’s most innovative composers. Cocurated by the Grammy-winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion, this year’s programs are spectacular sonic adventures featuring thrilling multimedia, transcendent artistry, and a Philip Glass premiere.

LEFT: MEIOMI WINE (1)

SERIES PRESENTED BY

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2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE JUL

30 JUL

31 AUG

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Reflections on Water: Paddle to the Sea.................. 38 Third Coast, Reich, & Harrison.....................................40 A Philip Glass Premiere.......................................... 42

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SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

2019 SEASON AT A GLANCE

COLOR KEY Orchestra Concerts Chamber Music Concerts Classically Uncorked presented by Meiomi Wine Free Concerts Education & Engagement Events Linda & Mitch Hart Soirée Series Bravo! Vail After Dark

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Chamber Orchestra Vienna – Berlin 6:00PM | GRFA

Opera Explored Soirée with Vail Symposium 6:00PM | Gogel Residence 6:00PM | VIC Free Family Concert 6:00PM | LAG

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1 JULY

2

Dallas Symphony Orchestra Special time, 7:30PM | GRFA

Little Listeners 2:00PM | APL Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Little Listeners 2:00PM | VPL Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

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Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | SB

Little Listeners 2:00PM | APL Free Concert 6:00PM | EIC Soirée 6:00PM | Micati Residence

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | VPL Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | DP Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

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Free Concert 6:00PM | BCP Soirée 6:00PM | Amanda Precourt Residence

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Chamber Music 6:00PM | DP

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LOCATION KEY APL: Avon Public Library BCP: Brush Creek Pavilion, Eagle DP: Donovan Pavilion, Vail EIC: Edwards Interfaith Chapel EPL: Eagle Public Library GESC: Golden Eagle Senior Center, Eagle

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Bravo! Vail After Dark Chamber Music 8:30PM | SB 6:00PM | DP

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

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GPL: Gypsum Public Library GRFA: Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, Vail LAG: Lundgren Amphitheater, Gypsum SB: Shakedown Bar, Vail VIC: Vail Interfaith Chapel VPL: Vail Public Library WMSC: Walking Mountain Science Center, Avon

Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | SB

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Bravo! Vail After Dark 8:30PM | SB

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Classically Uncorked 7:30PM | DP

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY 20 JUNE

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Chamber Orchestra Vienna – Berlin 6:00PM | GRFA 2019 Virtual Gala Auction Bidding Opens

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SATURDAY

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Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Chamber Orchestra Vienna – Berlin 6:00PM | GRFA

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Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA Dallas Symphony Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

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Dallas Symphony Orchestra Special time, 2:00PM | GRFA

The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Free Family Concert 6:00PM | GRFA

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FRIDAY

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Inside the Music 1:00PM | VIC

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA The Philadelphia Orchestra, Tosca 6:00PM | GRFA

Opera Explored with Vail Symposium 12:00PM | VIC The Philadelphia Orchestra 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA The Philadelphia Orchestra, Tosca 6:00PM | GRFA

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Inside the Music 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | GPL New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | EPL New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Pre-Concert Talk 5:00PM | GRFA New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

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Inside the Music 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | GPL New York Philharmonic 6:00PM | GRFA

Free Concert 11:00AM | GESC Free Concert 1:00PM | VIC Little Listeners 2:00PM | EPL Science Behind Sound 6:30PM | WMSC 2019 Virtual Gala Auction Bidding Closes

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1 AUGUST

Inside the Music 1:00PM | VIC Classically Uncorked 7:30PM | DP

Pre-Concert Talk 6:30PM | DP Classically Uncorked 7:30PM | DP

27 Soirée 6:00PM | Smith Residence Free Concert 6:00PM | EIC

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CHAMBER MUSIC

DALLAS STRINGS & MCDERMOTT Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet (Chamber Concerto No. 1), Op. 28 (1989) LOWELL LIEBERMANN (B. 1961)

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owell Liebermann, born in New York City on February 22, 1961, showed a remarkable gift for music as a youngster — the Piano Sonata he premiered at Carnegie Hall when he was sixteen received prizes from both the Music Teachers National Association and the Yamaha Music Foundation.

He went on to study composition with David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti, piano with Jacob Lateiner, and conducting with Laszlo Halasz at Juilliard, where he received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

Liebermann has since forged a career as one of America’s busiest and most frequently performed and recorded composers: his music appears on over eighty compact discs and his Flute Sonata and Gargoyles for Piano has each been recorded a dozen times and the Flute Concerto four. In 2012 Liebermann joined the faculty of Mannes College in New York City, where he teaches composition and directs the Mannes American Composers Ensemble. Among his honors are a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and awards from ASCAP, BMI and the Van Cliburn Competition.

Liebermann’s Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet (Chamber Concerto No. 1) takes its instrumentation and concept of paired soloists competing/cooperating with an accompanying ensemble from Chausson’s eponymous work of 1891, though the compositions occupy different expressive and stylistic worlds.

Liebermann’s Concerto is in three continuous sections. The first, itself divided into three parts, opens with diaphanous piano figurations as background to the violin’s lyrical main theme and the quartet’s subtle comments. The music grows in intensity as these ideas are worked out with considerable instrumental interaction 10

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

before returning to the halcyon strains of the opening. The central episode is a passacaglia, a Baroque technique in which a slow, repeating theme, usually in the bass, is draped with varying lines by the other instruments. The cello here presents the motto. This section, too, builds in intensity and includes short cadenzas for both soloists. The finale begins with a brief bravura passage before returning to the serene mood of the opening for the Concerto’s close.

Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C major, Op. 74 (1887) ANTONÍN DVOŘ ÁK (1841-1904)

Living at the same address in Prague as Dvořák during the winter of 1887 was a chemistry student and amateur violinist named Josef Kruis. Composer and chemist struck up a friendship, and in the space of one week (January 7-14), Dvořák composed a Terzetto (trio) for Kruis and the young man’s teacher, Jan Pelikán, a violinist with the Prague National Theater Orchestra, and himself as violist. (Dvořák had played viola in the National Orchestra many years before.) The Terzetto opens with a lyrical movement of quiet melancholy Dvořák labeled “Introduction” that leads through a series of harmonic peregrinations directly to the Larghetto, a warmly emotional instrumental song that becomes more rhythmically animated in its middle regions. The Scherzo proper makes use of the vivacious Bohemian dance mannerisms Dvořák favored in many of the works of his maturity, while the movement’s central trio is in the style of the waltz-like Ländler. The finale is a set of variations on a harmonically mischievous theme that courses through sections in both slow and fast tempos before ending with a lively dash.

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02 Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet in D major, Op. 21 (1889-1891) ERNEST CHAUSSON (1855-1899)

The Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, composed at various stops during Chausson’s travels between 1889 and 1891, occupies an unusual niche in the instrumental repertory — part vest-pocket double concerto for piano and violin, part chamber music.

The title seemingly derives from the French Baroque practice of Couperin and Rameau, who called certain of their large chamber pieces “concerts,” in the sense of accord among the instruments. (English, Italian and French all use the word “concerto” for works for soloist and orchestra.) In his study of Chausson, Ralph Scott Grover noted, “If one thinks of the Concert as a chamber work of unusual design, a sextet perhaps, in which the solo violin and piano often function in the manner of a violin and piano sonata against the quartet, with the latter taking a very active part in the proceedings, the work falls into proper perspective.”

The Concert opens with the piano’s stern three-note summons, a motive that is worked into the movement’s main theme by the solo violin. The second theme, given by solo violin and cello, comprises mostly small, halfstep intervals. An expressive melody with a poignant downward fall is the third theme.

All three themes are elaborated in order in the development before they return, after a brief violin cadenza, in the recapitulation. The Sicilienne, based on a wistful melody given at the outset by the full ensemble led by the violin, was described by the composer and pedagogue Vincent d’Indy, who assisted in preparations for the Concert’s premiere, as like “the charming fanciful gardens of Gabriel Fauré.” Of the Grave, which follows a large three-part structure (A–B–A: the return of the opening music occurs at the height of a turbulent climax), Ralph Grover wrote, “This is a tremendous outpouring of despair and pessimism, one of the really remarkable slow movements in all chamber music.” The finale, a hybrid form combining rondo and variations, is music of driving energy and high spirits.

TUESDAY JULY 2, 6:00PM CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

MEMBERS OF DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Alexander Kerr, violin Nathan Olson, violin Eunice Keem, violin Ann Marie Brink, viola Christopher Adkins, cello

LIEBERMANN Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet (Chamber Concerto No. 1), Op. 28 (18 minutes)

DVOŘÁK Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola in C major, Op. 74 (20 minutes) Introduzione: Allegro ma non troppo — Larghetto Scherzo: Vivace Tema con Variazioni: Poco adagio — Molto allegro

— INTERMISSION — CHAUSSON Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet in D major, Op. 21 (41 minutes) Décidé — Calme — Animé Sicilienne: Pas vite Grave Très animé

Concessions provided by:

FREE CONCERT

SCHUBERT, BARTÓK, & ROGERSON Quartet in E-flat major, Deutsch 87 (1813) FR ANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

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n 1813, during his last term at the School of the Court Chapel in Vienna, the sixteen-year-old Schubert had to face a decision about his future. He had been tendered a scholarship to continue as a senior chorister at the School after his voice broke, but his schoolmaster-father coerced him into matriculating at the St. Anna Normal School to undertake training as a teacher, not least because teachers were exempt from military conscription. Among Schubert’s projects during the brief hiatus in his education that fall was the composition of the String Quartet in E-flat major in November for one of the informal amateur musical soirées in which he participated to maintain his school friendships after leaving the Royal Chapel.

The first movement follows a crystalline sonata form indebted to the musical structures of Mozart. The main theme is initiated by quiet chordal harmonies, and acquires only a modest animation as it unfolds. The subsidiary theme is a flowing melody entrusted to the first violin. The development is perfunctory and leads quickly to the recapitulation. The middle movements comprise a teasing Scherzo and a lyrical Adagio in three-part form (A–B–A). The sonata-form finale is vibrant and ceaselessly moving.

Quartet No. 1 (2009) CHRIS ROGERSON (B. 1988)

Chris Rogerson was born in 1988 in Amherst, New York and started playing piano at two and cello at eight. He received a baccalaureate from the Curtis Institute, a master’s from Yale, and a doctorate from Princeton. In 2016, he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute. Rogerson’s honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 12

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Theodore Presser Career Grant, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, two BMI Student Composer Awards, and Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Award.

Of the Quartet No. 1, 2010 winner of the New York Art Ensemble Composition and Society for New Music Prize, Rogerson wrote, “Composing a string quartet is daunting, given the number of great works written by immortal composers. For my String Quartet No. 1, I decided to write a short piece in three movements with very different characters. The first movement (Duel) is frantic and forceful.

The Hymn is serene and static, but some of the unrest from the opening movement remains.

The finale (Dance), rhythmic and driving, uses a three-note motive in different moods.”

Quartet No. 3, Szőllősy 85 (1927) BÉL A BARTÓK (1881-1945)

Bartók’s Third Quartet, one of the great masterworks of 20th-century music, is founded on two traditional but seemingly opposed musical streams — the folk music of Eastern Europe, a subject on which Bartók was a scholar of the highest accomplishment, and the elaborate contrapuntal constructions of Sebastian Bach and other Baroque composers.

By 1927, the time of the Third Quartet, Bartók had so thoroughly absorbed the quirky intervals, tightly circling motivic phrases, snapping rhythms, and ornate decorations of indigenous Hungarian music into his original work that his themes constitute a virtual apotheosis of native folksong. For the working-out of his folk-derived thematic materials (Bartók never quoted existing melodies unless specifically noting that they were arrangements), he turned to the highly organized models of canon and fugue postulated by Bach and his 18th-century contemporaries. The Third Quartet therefore represents a marvelous pan-European synthesis — the structural integrity and emotional range

JUL of Bach wedded to the melodic and rhythmic exoticisms of Slavic folksong.

The Third Quartet, one of Bartók’s most tightly constructed works, is disposed as a large single span divided into four sections. Part I opens with a mysterious harmonic curtain that serves as an introduction to the work’s germinal theme — a tiny fragment comprising a rising fourth and a falling minor third initiated by the violin in measure six, at the point where the lower strings remove their mutes. The first section is largely based on the extensive permutations of this pregnant thematic kernel through imitation, inversion, augmentation, diminution, and other processes that Bartók learned from Bach. Part II, which follows without pause, is a free, continuously unfolding variation of an arch-shaped folk-dance melody presented in pizzicato multiple stops by the cello. A passage of dizzying slides and almost brutal dissonance bridges to Part III, which is a thoroughly reworked version of Part I (Bartók marked this section “Ricapitulazione della prima parte,” but also noted, “I do not like to repeat a musical idea without change”), a distillation of the essence of the Quartet’s earlier material.

The concluding Coda starts as a vague, bowtip buzzing, but soon develops into a furious altered restatement of the folk dance of Part II. The Quartet culminates in a powerful, viscerally compelling cadence.

Du bist die Ruh (“You Are the Peace”) (1823) FRANZ SCHUBERT

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) was Professor of Oriental Literature at Erlangen and Privy Counselor to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV at Berlin. He was known as both a productive scholar, with many translations of texts from Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Sanskrit, and a prolific writer of poems, many of which were influenced by the forms, images, and content of Oriental verses. His poems, which appeared in many periodicals, anthologies and collections during his lifetime, were popular and highly regarded, and they inspired musical settings from such 19th-century composers as Robert and Clara Schumann, Marschner, Loewe, Strauss, and Mahler. Schubert set some half-dozen of Rückert’s poems, including the rapturous Du bist die Ruh, in 1823.

08 MONDAY JULY 8, 6:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

EDWARDS INTERFAITH CHAPEL, EDWARDS

OMER STRING QUARTET (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Mason Yu, violin Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola Alex Cox, cello

SCHUBERT Quartet in E-flat major, Deutsch 87 (20 minutes) Allegro moderato Scherzo: Prestissimo Adagio Allegro

ROGERSON Quartet No. 1 (14 minutes) Duel Hymn Dance

BARTÓK Quartet No. 3, Szőllősy 85 (15 minutes) Prima parte (Moderato) — Seconda parte (Allegro) — Ricapitulazione della prima parte (Moderato) — Coda (Allegro molto) Played without pause

SCHUBERT Du bist die Ruh, D. 776 (4 minutes)

OMER STRING QUARTET

FREE CONCERT

DVOŘÁK & GOLIJOV Bagatelles for Two Violins, Cello and Harmonium, Op. 47 (1878) ANTONÍN DVOŘ ÁK (1841-1904)

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vořák wrote the delightful Bagatelles in 1878 for two violins, cello and harmonium, a small reed organ whose wind supply was supplied by foot pedals operated by the player. The unusual instrumentation resulted from the work’s having been written for a group of chamber musicians who met regularly at the home of Josef Srb-Debrnov, a music journalist, friend of Dvořák, and devotee of the harmonium.

The first and third of the Bagatelles are based on a Czech melody, The Bagpipes Are Playing in Pobuda. The second movement is a Minuet incorporating a dotted-rhythm figure reminiscent of a peasant dance called the sousedska. Melancholy haunts the fourth movement, a canon, with the voices in exact imitation. The finale is a genial polka.

Yiddishbbuk for String Quartet (1992) OSVALDO GOLIJOV (B. 1960)

Osvaldo Golijov was born in 1960 in La Playa, Argentina, and studied composition at the local conservatory before moving in 1983 to Jerusalem, where he entered the Rubin Academy and immersed himself in the colliding musical traditions of that city. Golijov came to the United States in 1986 to do his doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, and spent summers at Tanglewood studying with Lukas Foss and Oliver Knussen. Golijov has been on the faculty of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts since 1991; he has also taught at the Boston Conservatory and Tanglewood Music Center. Golijov’s works, with their syntheses of European, American and Latin secular cultures and their deep spirituality drawn from both Judaism and Christianity, have brought him international notoriety, 14

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, and a coveted MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.”

He was named Musical America’s “2005 Composer of the Year,” and in 2006 Lincoln Center in New York presented a festival called “The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov.”

Golijov wrote, “‘A broken song played on a shattered cymbalon.’ Thus, according to Kafka, began Yiddishbbuk, a collection of apocryphal psalms he said he read while living in Prague’s Street of the Alchemists. The only remnants of the collection are a few verses interspersed among the entries in his notebooks and Yiddishbbuk’s last lines, which he quoted in a letter to Milena [Jesenská, his regular correspondent near the end of his life]: ‘No one sings as purely as those who are in the deepest hell. Theirs is the song which we confused with that of the angels.’ Written in Hebrew characters and surrounded with musical notation, marks similar to those of the genuine texts, the psalms’ only other reference to their music is ‘in the mode of the Babylonic Lamentations.’

“Based on these vestiges, these inscriptions for string quartet are an attempt to reconstruct that music. The movements of the piece bear the initials of the five people commemorated in the work. The first movement remembers three children interned by the Nazis at the Terezín concentration camp: Doris Weiserová (1932-1944), Frantisek Bass (1930-1944) and Tomás Kauders (1934-1943). Their poems and drawings appear in the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The second movement bears the initials of the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) and the last movement the initials of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990).”

Selected Sonatas for Accordion DOMENICO SCARL AT TI (1685-1757)

Domenico Scarlatti, born in Naples in the same year as Handel and Bach, was the son

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09 of the celebrated Italian opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti. A pupil of his father, Domenico held important positions in Naples and Rome, including that of maestro di cappella at the Vatican. In addition to his sacred music, he was also known for his operas and the quality of his harpsichord playing. Around 1719, Scarlatti was engaged as music master by the Princess Maria Barbara of Portugal and moved to Lisbon. When Maria Barbara married the heir to the Spanish throne in 1729, Scarlatti accompanied her to Madrid, where he spent the rest of his life, helping to found the Spanish school of instrumental composition. His works in Madrid were confined almost exclusively to instrumental music, notably some 600 sonatas for harpsichord (or Exercises, as they were called upon their publication in 1738) composed for Maria Barbara.

Taang and eX for Accordion and String Quartet (2001, 2000) GUNNAR VALKARE (B. 1943)

Swedish composer, conductor, teacher, organist and ethnomusicologist Gunnar Valkare was born in Norrköping in 1943, studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, debuted as a composer in 1965, and four years later made an extensive study of the indigenous music and instruments of East Africa, which has had a lasting influence on his creative work, performance and research; his doctorate is in music anthropology and ethnomusicology.

Valkare had long tenures on the faculties of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and Academy of Music in Piteå, and is now Professor Emeritus at both institutions. His distinctions include First Prize in the 1989 Scandinavian Music Fair in Gothenburg and the 2006 Atterberg Prize.

Valkare wrote, “The sister compositions Taang (2001) and eX (2000) can be performed together or separately at the beginning and end of a concert. Taang has tango associations; eX is ‘exit’ music. They are partly based on African cross-rhythms in which two or more rhythmic patterns without a common pulse together create a new groove.”

TUESDAY JULY 9, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL Hanzhi Wang, accordion (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musician in Residence)

OMER STRING QUARTET (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Mason Yu, violin Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola Alex Cox, cello

DVOŘÁK Bagatelles for Two Violins, Cello and Harmonium, Op. 47 (18 minutes) Allegretto scherzando Tempo di Minuetto: Grazioso Allegretto scherzando Canon: Andante con moto Poco Allegro

GOLIJOV Yiddishbbuk for String Quartet (14 minutes) I. Ia. D.W. (1932-1944) Ib. F.B. (1930-1944) Ic. T.K. (1934-1943) II. I.B.S. (1904-1991) III. L.B. (1918-1990)

D. SCARLATTI Selected Sonatas for Accordion Announced from the Stage

VALKARE Taang and eX for Accordion and String Quartet (11 minutes)

OMER STRING QUARTET

CHAMBER MUSIC PRE-CONCERT TALK, 5:00PM DONOVAN PAVILION

Steven Bruns (University of Colorado, Boulder), speaker

TAKÁCS STRING QUARTET String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonant” (“Haydn No. 6”) (1785)

dance subtly inflected with suave melodic chromaticism. The sonata-form finale returns the ebullient mood of the opening movement.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART(1756-1791)

String Quartet No. 4 (1928)

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ozart first mentioned his acquaintance with Haydn in a letter to his father on April 24, 1784, but he probably had met the older composer soon after moving to Vienna three years earlier. Though his duties kept him in Hungary at Esterháza Palace for most of the year, Haydn usually spent the winters in Vienna, and it is likely that he and Mozart attended or even played together at some of the “string quartet parties” held during the cold months. Friendship and mutual admiration developed between them, despite the 24 years difference in their ages, and they took delight in learning from and praising each other’s music. Mozart’s greatest testament to his respect for Haydn is the set of six superb string quartets composed between 1782 and 1785, and dedicated to his colleague upon their publication in September 1785.

The C major Quartet quickly gained the sobriquet “Dissonant” for the adventurous harmonic excursions of its slow introduction.

Actually, the introduction’s heightened expression, a quality increasingly evident in the works of Mozart’s later years, is the perfect emotional foil for setting off the sunny nature of much of the music that follows. The main body of the opening Allegro is in sonata form, invested with the thorough motivic workingout and instrumental interweavings Mozart learned from Haydn. The following Andante, in sonatina form (sonata without development section), is among Mozart’s most ecstatic inspirations. The Menuetto is an elegant 16

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

BÉL A BARTÓK (1881-1945)

Bartók’s Fourth Quartet, according to the composer’s biographer Halsey Stevens, “comes close to being, if it does not actually represent, Bartók’s greatest and most profound achievement.” This work, written in summer 1928, soon after Bartók’s first tour of America as composer and pianist, is at once challenging and yet most satisfying.

Guided by the spirits of Bach and Beethoven, Bartók was obsessed throughout his life with achieving formal integration in his music. He thoroughly assimilated the traditional Classic forms into his style and added to them a formal technique new with 20th-century music — the so-called “arch” form. Such pieces were held in balance by an overall symmetry in which phrases, sections and complete movements were paired, mirror-like, around a central point. The Fourth Quartet is Bartók’s most rigorous application of this principle.

The five movements of the Fourth Quartet are arranged around the slow central movement, which is itself organized symmetrically in three parts (A–B–A) around the twittering “night music” of its central section. The first and fifth movements are paired in mood, tempo and thematic material, an association further enhanced by sharing the same music in their closing pages. The second and fourth movements, both scherzos, are related in their themes, head-long rhythmic propulsion, and use of novel effects from the strings: the second movement is played throughout with mutes, while the fourth movement requires a

JUL continuous pizzicato, including a percussive snapping of the string against the fingerboard.

String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13, “Ist Es Wahr?” (1827) FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

In spring 1827, Mendelssohn indulged in a short holiday at Sakrow, the Magnus family estate near Potsdam, and there he fell in love, at least a little. The circumstances, even the maiden’s name, are unknown, but he was sufficiently moved by the experience to set to music a poem of his friend Johann Gustav Droyson that began, “Is it true [Ist es wahr?] that you are always waiting for me in the arbored walk?” The piece, published two years later under the title Frage (“Question”) as the first number of his Op. 9 set of songs, was woven as thematic material into the new A minor Quartet. The score was published in 1829 as Mendelssohn’s Op. 13.

The Quartet opens with a slow introduction that serves as an emotional foil for the tempestuous main body of the movement.

Two arching phrases — the second soaring high in the first violin’s compass — preface the quotation of the searching motto phrase from Ist Es Wahr?, recognizable by its long–short– long rhythm. The viola initiates the principal theme, based on the motto rhythm; the cello posits a lyrical melody as the complementary subject. The scurrying phrases return to mark the onset of the development, which is remarkable for the intensity of its counterpoint and its nearly febrile mood. The recapitulation serves both to return and enhance the earlier themes. The deeply felt Adagio offers another paraphrase of the motto theme at beginning and end as the frame for the somber, densely packed fugal episode that occupies the middle of the movement. The Intermezzo uses a folkish tune in its outer sections to surround an ethereal passage at the center. A dramatic cadenza-recitative for the violin launches the finale. A clutch of highly charged motives is presented and worked out with great intensity as the music unfolds. The work closes not with a wail of tragedy or a sunburst of redemption, but with a recall of the Quartet’s most introspective moments — first the theme of the Adagio and then the introduction from the opening movement, bringing with it a final reflection upon the music and thought of Ist Es Wahr?

09 TUESDAY JULY 9, 6:00PM CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL

TAKÁCS STRING QUARTET

Edward Dusinberre, violin Harumi Rhodes, violin Geraldine Walther, viola András Fejér, cello

MOZART String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonant” (“Haydn No. 6”) (28 minutes) Adagio — Allegro Andante cantabile Menuetto: Allegro Allegro

BARTÓK String Quartet No. 4 (23 minutes) Allegro Prestissimo con sordino Non troppo lento Allegretto pizzicato Allegro molto

— INTERMISSION — MENDELSSOHN String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13, “Ist Es Wahr?” (28 minutes) Adagio — Allegro vivace Adagio non lento — Poco più animato — Tempo I Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto — Allegro di molto — Tempo I Presto — Adagio non lento — Adagio

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BACH, DEBUSSY & NELSON Movement I (Allegro) from the Clavier Concerto No. 1 for Accordion and String Quartet, BWV 1052 (ca. 1730) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

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t is said that when the Viennese were finally able to drive the Turks from their walls in 1683, the fleeing legions left behind an unforeseen legacy — coffee.

The rage for the stimulating new beverage swept through Austria and into Germany, where coffee houses became important centers of society and amusement. In order to give public concerts of instrumental music at one of the local coffee houses in Leipzig, in 1704 Georg Philipp Telemann organized some of his fellow students at the city’s university into a performing group known as the “Collegium Musicum,” a “Musical College (or Society).” So popular did their programs prove to be that they were continued after the close of the school term. Those Friday afternoon concerts became a fixture of life in Leipzig, and were still popular when Bach arrived in 1723 to assume the position of cantor and organist at the Thomas Church, and in 1729, he took over leadership of the Collegium Musicum. In addition to his work at the Thomas Church and with the Collegium during those years, Bach also derived delight from making music at home with his family. It was for use at both his home entertainments and at the Collegium concerts that Bach produced his concertos for keyboard.

Parts-apart JESPER KOCH (B.1965)

Danish composer Jesper Koch was drawn to music early in life (“I spent my entire childhood at the piano,” he recalled) and studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and Royal Danish Academy in Aarhus, 18

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where he gave his formal debut concert in 1997; additional private studies were in Norway with Olav Anton Thommesen and in England with Colin Matthews. Koch has composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists across Scandinavia, held a three-year residency with the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, and been honored with a grant from the Danish National Arts Foundation, Carl Nielsen Award, and a First Prize from the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.

String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (1893) CL AUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

By 1893, when he turned thirty, Claude Debussy had acquired a modest reputation in Paris as the composer of songs, piano pieces, and miscellaneous vocal and orchestral works, as winner of a Prix de Rome, and as a bohemian musician much under the sway of the Symbolist poets Mallarmé and Régnier.

His distinctive creative personality had already been demonstrated to the city’s circle of progressive music lovers by the Petite Suite, Arabesques, and Suite Bergamasque, but the wider recognition of his genius began when the cantata La Damoiselle élue (“The Blessed Damzel”) was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale on April 8, 1893. By that time, he had already begun sketching out an opera based on Maeterlinck’s newly published drama Pelléas et Mélisande, a project that would take him a decade to complete, and written much of a ballet score inspired by Mallarmé’s voluptuous poem L’Après-midi d’un faune (“The Afternoon of a Faun”). The other major endeavor of 1893 was a String Quartet, a curious undertaking, perhaps, for a composer of Debussy’s decidedly Impressionistic proclivities, but one he apparently felt necessary to show that he could handle the Classical forms which had occupied much of his long study at the Conservatoire and as a Prix de Rome recipient.

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11 The Quartet opens with a distinctive, modally inflected motive (marked by a quick, three-note ornamental cell) that serves both as the melodic germ from which the first movement grows and as the motto theme that returns in later movements to unify the work’s overall structure.

The second movement is a free adaptation of the form and manner of a scherzo. The Andantino, sensual, lyrical, permeated with the sweet sensations of early spring, evokes a similar expressive and stylistic world to the one that Debussy conjured in the contemporaneous Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun.” The two-part introduction to the finale comprises a slow-tempo transformation of the motto and a quicker, mock-fugal passage derived from the scherzo theme. The viola initiates the main part of the movement with a rapid motive that is tightly restricted in range. This phrase and further transformations of the motto theme occupy the remainder of the movement, which ends with a sun-bright flourish.

My Inner Disco for Accordion and String Quartet (2002) DANIEL NELSON (B. 1965)

Daniel Nelson was born in Bethesda, Maryland in 1965, grew up in Sweden, returned to America in 1980 to study at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the University of Chicago, and then settled permanently in Sweden. He has composed works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, dance companies and soloists, as well as operas based on Pride and Prejudice and The Little Prince. Among Nelson’s honors is the Carin Malmlöf-Forssling Prize in Composition from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Nelson wrote of My Inner Disco, “I think everybody has at some time or other fleetingly heard a snippet of a song on the radio that has completely captivated them. You know the feeling? Suddenly you are transfixed by music you have never heard before. Somehow, the music has the rhythm, tempo, harmony and timing that exactly correspond to your own inner groove. My Inner Disco is a compilation of such musical components that make my own inner clock tick.”

THURSDAY JULY 11, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL Hanzhi Wang, accordion (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musician in Residence)

OMER STRING QUARTET (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Mason Yu, violin Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola Alex Cox, cello

BACH Movement I (Allegro) from the Clavier Concerto No. 1 for Accordion and String Quartet, BWV 1052 (7 minutes)

KOCH Parts-apart (10 minutes)

DEBUSSY String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 (27 minutes) Animé et très décidé Assez vif et bien rythmé Andantino, doucement expressif Très modéré — Très mouvemente et avec passion

NELSON My Inner Disco for Accordion and String Quartet (9 minutes)

OMER STRING QUARTET

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2019 PIANO FELLOWS 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, WoO 80 (1806) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

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he 32 Variations in C minor seems to have been written to fulfill a publisher’s demand for such works — the score was issued by the Viennese firm of Kunst und Industrie-Comptoir in March 1807, a few months after it was completed.

Otto Klauwell observed that Beethoven’s variations were “so rich in relations and so meaningfully interconnected in their various parts that despite the absence of changes in modulation, key and time signature, the hearer’s interest is captured undiminished, even increased, down to the very end. We see from this work how Beethoven always kept approaching the problem of the variations form from a new side and how his primary aim, in contrast to the stereotypes of an earlier period, was to give his sets of variations individuality and raise them to the level of his other works.”

L’Isle Joyeuse (“The Joyous Island”) (1904) CL AUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

L’Isle Joyeuse was composed in 1904, during the turbulent months when Paris was expressing its delicious outrage over Debussy having left his first wife, Lilly, and taken up with Emma Bardac, an amateur singer and the wife of a wealthy banker.

The composition shows no evidence of the worries that disturbed his personal life at the time, however — it is among the sunniest and most extroverted of his piano works. The piece was inspired by the famous painting of the French artist Jean Antoine Watteau (16841721) titled The Pilgrimage to Cythera, which the noted art historian H.W. Janson described: “These young couples [in voluptuously elegant 18th-century dress] have come to Cythera, 20

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the island of love [in Greek mythology], to pay homage to Venus, whose garlanded image appears in the painting. As the enchanted day draws to a close, they are about to board the boat, accompanied by swarms of cupids, to be transported back to the everyday world.”

Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse, with its rippling textures, luminous harmonies and pellucid sonorities, is the perfect musical counterpart to Watteau’s canvas. “The enchantment of the ‘land of love’ pervades the music,” according to E. Robert Schmitz in his study of Debussy’s piano works, “culminating in triumphant dance rhythms, a glorious fanfare in honor of the goddess.”

Humoreske, Op. 20 (1839) ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

By the middle of 1838, Robert Schumann’s parallel passions for music, writing and Clara Wieck had brought the 28-year-old composer to a crucial point in his life. Denied by the adamant intervention of Clara’s father from having her hand in marriage, resigned to never becoming the piano virtuoso he had dreamed since childhood, and seeking a more vibrant musical milieu than Leipzig as the base for the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“New Journal for Music”), which he had edited since its inception in 1833, Schumann decided that a move to Vienna might improve his fortunes. By Christmas, it had become clear to Schumann that his Viennese venture would fail — he could find no significant way in which to advance his career, there was no promising situation for the Zeitschrift and he missed Clara terribly, all the more since the Viennese adored her playing and continually interrogated him to learn more about her. He lingered in the imperial city until March 30, 1839 and then returned to Leipzig, where, after six more months of waiting to outlast Wieck’s intransigence and legal obstacles, he finally married his beloved Clara on September 12th, the eve of her 21st birthday.

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15 Though Schumann did not realize his most immediate goals during his Viennese incursion, he did write a number of significant works, including the Humoreske. As with his other cycles, the Humoreske embraces a wide variety of strongly contrasted moods whose extremes Schumann himself personified as the fictional characters Florestan (“impetuous and mercurial”) and Eusebius (“dreamy and romantic”). Though the individual episodes do not have any immediately discernible formal tissue linking them, their foundation in the pervasive tonality of B-flat and their natural growth from one section to the next suggest not so much an amorphous series of independent movements as a set of free variations in search of a theme. The Humoreske, like the other piano masterworks Schumann created from the seething cauldron of his emotions during the years of his early maturity, is music of rich and intense expression, inventive formal design, and a superb sense of the keyboard’s most sumptuous sonorities.

Petite Suite for Piano, Four Hands (1889) CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Each of the four movements of the Petite Suite bears a title reflecting its general character. En Bateau (“In a Boat”) is a lullabybarcarolle that uses misty, whole-tone scales in its central section. Cortège displays none of the funereal solemnity usually associated with pieces of that name, but rather calls to mind a pleasant stroll along the sun-dappled bank of a bubbling stream. Since Debussy associated the paintings of Watteau with Rameau’s music, this Cortège may have been meant to summon the elegant sensuality of such a canvas as The Embarkation to Cythera.

The following Menuet is a wistful evocation of the most durable of all Baroque dances. The lively Ballet that closes the Petite Suite is not music for choreography, but rather recalls the Italian balletti of the 16th century, the dancelike vocal pieces for home entertainment that were imported into England as balletts (the “tt” is pronounced) and distinguished by their characteristic “fa-la-la” refrains.

MONDAY JULY 15, 6:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

BRUSH CREEK PAVILION, EAGLE Aristo Sham, piano (2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow) Angie Zhang, piano (2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

BEETHOVEN 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, WoO 80 (10 minutes) Ms. Zhang

DEBUSSY L’Isle Joyeuse (6 minutes) Ms. Zhang

SCHUMANN Humoreske, Op. 20 (20 Minutes) Einfach — Sehr rasch und leicht — Hastig — Einfach und zart — Innig — Sehr lebhaft — Mit einigem Pomp — Zum Beschluss Mr. Sham

DEBUSSY Petite Suite for Piano, Four Hands (13 minutes) En Bateau Cortège Menuet Ballet Mr. Sham, Ms. Zhang

ANGIE ZHANG

ARISTO SHAM

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BACH, BEETHOVEN, & LISZT Prelude and Fugue No. 4 in C-sharp minor from Book I of The WellTempered Clavier, BWV 849 (ca. 1720) JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

“F

or the Use and Profit of the Musical Youth Desirous for Learning, as well as for the Pleasure of those Already Skilled in this Study” was the heading on the manuscript of the 24 preludes and fugues Bach composed during his tenure as Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen from 1717 to 1723.

The pieces were originally intended as study material for his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and he made a copy of the volume for each of them (Friedemann was thirteen in 1723; Emanuel was nine), but he also used The Well-Tempered Clavier as teaching material for his students when he joined the faculty of the Thomasschule in Leipzig after leaving Cöthen. Each of the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier comprises 24 paired preludes and fugues, one in each of the major and minor keys, arranged in ascending order (C major, C minor, C-sharp major, C-sharp minor, etc.). The Prelude No. 4 in C-sharp minor from Book I (BWV 849), with its subtle embellishments and its pace and temper reminiscent of a court dance, pays homage to the French school of clavecinists. The accompanying five-voice Fugue, one of the longest and most thoroughly developed in the WTC, is music of noble gravity.

Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22 (1800) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Among the nobles who served as Beethoven’s patrons after his arrival in Vienna from his native Bonn in 1791, was one Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus. He was a 22

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descendent of an old Irish family who was at that time fulfilling some ill-defined function in the Habsburg Imperial city on behalf of the Empress Catherine II of Russia. Little is known of Browne. His tutor, Johannes Büel, later an acquaintance of Beethoven, described him as “full of excellent talents and beautiful qualities of heart and spirit on the one hand, and on the other full of weakness and depravity.” He is said to have squandered his fortune and ended his days in a public institution. In the mid-1790s, Beethoven received enough generous support from Browne, however, that he dedicated several of his works to him and his wife, Anne Margarete, including the Op. 22 Piano Sonata.

In appreciation of these dedications, Browne presented Beethoven with a horse, which the preoccupied composer promptly forgot, thereby allowing his servant to rent out the beast and pocket the profits. The Sonata in B-flat, composed in 1800 and first published in Leipzig two years later, is one of Beethoven’s most genteel examples of the genre, “one of the few Beethoven sonatas,” wrote German musicologist Karl Schumann, “in which intellectual composition takes second place to joy in sound and open-hearted playfulness.”

“Un Sospiro” (“A Sigh”) from Études de Concert, S. 144, No. 3 (1848) FR ANZ LISZT (1811-1886)

In 1848, Franz Liszt, inspired by the models provided by Chopin more than a decade before, wrote a series of three etudes intended less for the pedagogical studio than for the concert platform. Liszt’s examples of the Étude de Concert (S. 144) were larger in scale than those of Chopin and admitted a greater variety of internal musical contrast, but share with them a virtuosic approach to the keyboard and a wide range of emotional expression.

Upon their publication (they were dedicated to Chopin), Liszt’s Études were titled Il Lamento, La Leggierezza and Un Sospiro to indicate the general expressive character of each. Un

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16 TUESDAY JULY 16, 1:00PM FREE CONCERT SERIES

Sospiro (“A Sigh”), a remarkable exercise in the technique of crossing hands, is filled with a poetic Romanticism whose nocturnal mood is indebted to the touching nostalgic effusions of Chopin. A greater impetuosity stirs the Étude in its central section before the music returns to the wistful strains of the opening.

“Los Requiebros” (“Flatteries”) from Goyescas (1909-1911) ENRIQUE GR ANADOS (1867-1916)

Granados’ piano cycle Goyescas was inspired by the paintings and tapestry cartoons of Goya. He premiered the work in Barcelona on March 9, 1911, and created enormous enthusiasm when he performed it at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on April 4, 1914. He was awarded the Légion d’honneur and given a contract by the Paris Opéra to create an operatic version of the keyboard suite for the coming season.

The outbreak of World War I in August stymied the promised production in Paris however so the Metropolitan Opera in New York premiered the work in January 1916. On the voyage home from America, Granados’ boat was torpedoed by a German submarine on March 24, 1916, and he and his wife were drowned at sea. His death at the age of 48 robbed Spain of one of its greatest and most promising artists.

Goyescas comprises six piano pieces that evoke both Goya’s world and the subtilized idioms of Spain’s indigenous music. “ In Goyescas, I intended to give a personal note,” Granados noted, “a mixture of bitterness and grace ... rhythm, color and life that are typically Spanish; a sentiment suddenly amorous and passionate, dramatic and tragic, such as is seen in the works of Goya.” Los Requiebros (“Flatteries”) is in the style of a jota, the lively dance that originated in the northeastern region of Aragon.

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL Angie Zhang, piano (2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

J.S. BACH Prelude and Fugue No. 4 in C-sharp minor from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 849 (6 minutes)

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22 (19 minutes) Allegro con brio Adagio con molto espressione Menuetto Rondo: Allegretto

LISZT “Un Sospiro” from Études de Concert, S. 144, No. 3 (5 minutes)

GRANADOS “Los Requiebros” from Goyescas (9 minutes)

ANGIE ZHANG

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ST LAWRENCE STRING QUARTET String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4 (1772) FR ANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

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he six works of Op. 20, composed in 1772, were known to Haydn’s contemporaries as the “Sun” Quartets because the cover of their first published edition (1774) was emblazoned with a drawing of the rising sun. The sobriquet was just as appropriate for musical reasons, since these were really the earliest quartets in which Haydn’s full genius in the form dawned. The Op. 20 Quartets are remarkable for the manner in which all four of the instrumental voices participate fully in the musical conversation.

The opening movement of the Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4, is moody and unsettled.

The second movement is a set of variations on a melancholy theme. The Menuet exhibits the fiery cross-rhythms Haydn would have known from the folk musicians in the area of Esterházy Palace; the central trio is deliberately bland for contrast. A darting melody provides the main subject for the sonata-form finale; the second theme is a stream of sixteenth notes divided between the violins.

Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67 (1907) AMY BEACH (1867-1944)

Amy Beach was the most prominent American female composer of her day; one of the leading keyboard artists during the years around World War I; the first native woman composer to earn recognition abroad; the first well-known female musician to receive her entire professional training in this country; and the first to write a symphony. Born Amy Cheney in Henniker, New Hampshire in 1867 to a family of colonial descent, she received her earliest instruction on piano from her mother, began composing melodies at four, and gave 24

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her debut recital a year later, at which she played some waltzes of her own invention. In 1875, when she was eight, the family moved to Boston, where Amy pursued her studies of piano and theory. On October 23, 1883, she made her public debut with orchestra in Boston, and pursued a successful career as a soloist for the following two years. In December 1885, Amy Cheney married the prominent Boston surgeon Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, and thereafter referred to herself exclusively in the Victorian fashion as “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach” (initials only). Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony in 1896, was the first such work by an American woman. Following the death of her husband in 1910, Amy Beach resumed an active concert career. She died from a heart attack in 1944 at age 77.

A meditative introduction prefaces the first movement of Beach’s Quintet for Piano and Strings (1907). The main theme is a smooth, somber melody presented by the violin; the second theme, in a brighter tonality, is given in the piano’s tenor register. Ethereal, sustained string unisons recalled from the introduction bridge to the development, which treats both of the movement’s themes. The strings, again in unison, begin the recapitulation. The Adagio is in a three-part form (A–B–A) that uses a tender melody for its outer sections and more impassioned music for its central episode. The finale, in altered sonata form, takes as its principal subject a short-phrased violin strain and as its subsidiary theme an expansive theme presented by the viola.

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 (1873) JOHANNES BR AHMS (1833-1897)

As with the First Symphony, colleagues pestered Brahms for years to let them have a quartet from his pen. In 1865, the violinist and faithful champion of his music Joseph Joachim asked, “Is your String Quartet in C

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minor finished yet; if so, can you let us have it for a concert on December 18th?” Brahms did not reply. (There is no way to tell if that C minor quartet became Op. 51, No. 1.) Four years later, Clara Schumann reported that Brahms showed her two quartet movements, which may (or may not) have ended up in Op. 51. Later in 1869, the composer’s publisher, Fritz Simrock, also pressed him to supply a quartet. Brahms replied, “I am sorry, but I must ask you to be patient.” Though the C minor and A minor Quartets that eventually comprised Op. 51 were well enough formed that Brahms allowed the Florentine Quartet to read through them in the summer of 1869, he continued to hold them back. It was not until a summer holiday in 1873 at Tutzing, south of Munich, that he put these works into their final shape.

The lyrical, sweetly melancholy nature of the A minor Quartet apparently grew from the composer’s long friendship and admiring professional association with the violinist Joseph Joachim. Brahms admits as much in the Quartet’s opening gesture, in which the second, third and fourth notes in the violin sound the pitches F–A–E, standing for Frei, aber einsam (“Free, but lonely”), which Joachim had adopted as his musical motto many years before. The Andante suspends a warmly lyrical violin melody upon a steady, winding obbligato in the cello and viola. A stormy central section heightens the sense of serenity when the mood and music of the opening return. The third movement juxtaposes two starkly contrasting kinds of music: one is a revival of the old Minuet; the other is a dashing moto perpetuo passage that twice intrudes upon the halcyon Minuet. The finale is a hybrid of rondo and sonata forms.

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

ST LAWRENCE STRING QUARTET

Geoff Nuttall, violin Owen Dalby, violin Lesley Robertson, viola Christopher Costanza, cello

HAYDN String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4 (24 minutes) Allegro di molto Un poco adagio e affettuoso Menuet alla Zingarese: Allegretto Presto e scherzando

BEACH Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67 (27 minutes) Adagio — Allegro moderato Adagio espressivo Allegro agitato — Adagio come prima — Presto

— INTERMISSION — BRAHMS String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 (30 minutes) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Quasi Minuetto, moderato — Allegretto vivace — Tempo di Minuetto — Allegretto vivace — Tempo di Minuetto Finale: Allegro non assai

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DEBUSSY & BRAHMS Études (1915) CL AUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

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he twelve Études, Debussy’s last works for piano, are divided into two books of six numbers each: the first set broaches traditional problems of technique; the second, matters of musical figurations. Though grown from the dusty but indispensable realm of piano pedagogy, these movements soar far beyond pieces merely for the practice of keyboard mechanics in their expressive and compositional content.

Paul Jacobs, one of the finest exponents of Debussy’s piano music, called them the composer’s “most finished, perfect and yet adventurous [piano] pieces.” The first Étude (For Five Fingers), marked sagement (“wellbehaved”), is inscribed to Monsieur Carl Czerny (1791-1857), whose School of Finger Dexterity (Op. 740!) is known to every serious student of the piano. The movement begins sedately, but it is quickly and permanently deflected from its drudging diatonicism by a quirky dissonance brazenly escaped from the original key. The next movement (For Thirds) presents sonorous ribbons of consonant intervals that are abruptly halted by a surprisingly passionate closing statement. For Fourths, with its streams of parallel open intervals, exudes an aura of antiquity tinged with mysticism. Concerning For Sixths, Debussy wrote to his publisher, “For a very long time, the continuous use of sixths gave me the feeling of pretentious demoisselles seated in a salon sulkily embroidering, envying the scandalous laughter of mad ninths ... yet I am writing this study where the attention to the sixth organizes the harmonies only with aggregates of these intervals, and it’s not ugly!

(Mea culpa ...).” Oscar Thompson called For Octaves a “valse caprice.” For Eight Fingers, written throughout in patterns of four notes, is meant to be played without the thumb. “It is up to the conscience of performers whether they will actually do so,” chided Jacobs.

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Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 (1853) JOHANNES BR AHMS (1833-1897)

The F minor Sonata is remarkable for the way in which the twenty-year-old Brahms harnessed the surging Romantic language of his youthful style into the logical constructions of Classical form. It is this masterly balance of ardent emotional expression and intellectual formal necessity — of heart and head — that imparts such power to this music. Also evident here is Brahms’ ability to blend rigorous counterpoint with singing lyricism, a technique that generates the thematic material of the sonata-form opening movement: a dramatic, leaping motive as principal subject; and a chordal strain (to which the leaping motive in the bass acts as accompaniment) as complementary theme. These two expressive states — drama and lyricism — contend in the development section before the recapitulation of the themes, somewhat abbreviated, closes the movement.

The tenderly eloquent Andante is headed with lines by the German poet Sternau: The evening falls, the moonlight shines, Two hearts, joined in love, Embrace each other blissfully.

This poignant nocturne (which may have been sketched as early as 1852 in Hamburg) extends across a sonata form modified so that the second theme of the exposition, a quiet melody in sweet sixths divided equally between the two hands, is replaced in the recapitulation by a hauntingly beautiful strain of folkish simplicity in full chords. The Scherzo is Brahms’ tribute to the impetuous character pieces of Robert Schumann, his friend, mentor and inspiration. Ominous, sometimes demonic, it is one of the most vehemently expressive pieces Brahms ever wrote, and his sense of Classical formal propriety required him to balance it with a sedate central trio that glides smoothly along in an almost hymnal manner.

Instead of proceeding directly to the finale,

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Brahms next inserted a movement titled Intermezzo, which “looks back” (Rückblick) to the Andante by transmuting its theme into a tragic threnody accompanied by the cadence of distant funeral drums. Though he did not ascribe a literary reference to this sullen music, it may perhaps be related to an entry in a notebook wherein he collected poems that struck him as suitable for songs, in which the earlier lines from Sternau were followed by the next stanza of the poem: If ye knew how soon, How soon the trees are withered, And the wood is bare, How soon comes the dreary day When the heart’s beat is dumb. The finale, blended from elements of rondo and sonata forms, is built upon the contrast between the tensely rhythmic opening theme and two lyrical melodies revealed in later episodes of the movement. The Sonata ends with a brilliant, major-key coda whose flamboyant virtuosity documents the technical panache that marked Brahms’ pianism as a young man.

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL Aristo Sham, piano (2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

DEBUSSY Études, Book I (22 minutes) Pour les “cinq doigts,” d’après Monsieur Czerny Pour les tierces Pour les quartes Pour les sixtes Pour les octaves Pour les huit doigts

BRAHMS Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 (41 minutes) Allegro maestoso Andante espressivo Scherzo: Allegro energico Intermezzo (Rückblick): Andante molto Finale: Allegro moderato ma rubato

ARISTO SHAM

CHAMBER MUSIC

BRONFMAN PLAYS BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1 (all published 1798) Sonata No. 6 in F major, Op. 10, No. 2 Sonata No. 7 in D major, Op. 10, No. 3 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

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mong the nobles who served as Beethoven’s patrons after his arrival in Vienna in 1792 was one Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus, a descendent of an old Irish family who was at that time fulfilling some ill-defined function in the Habsburg Imperial city on behalf of the Empress Catherine II of Russia. In the mid1790s, Beethoven received enough generous support from Browne that he dedicated several works to him and his wife, Anne Margarete, including the three Op. 10 Piano Sonatas.

The Sonatas of Op. 10 were begun during the summer of 1796 and completed by July 1798, when the Viennese publisher Joseph Eder issued them as a set. The first Sonata of Op. 10, in the tragic-heroic key of C minor, opens with a craggy motive immediately countered by a smooth, soothing idea of closely packed chords.

The tension inherent between these sharply contrasted thematic cells is little exploited, however: most of the movement deals with the smooth shape and steady rhythms of the second motive, with the craggy opening phrase reiterated only to mark the arrivals at the development and the recapitulation. The Adagio is a slow rondo, with the two returns of the tender main theme separated by highly decorated episodes. The finale is a compact sonata form built around an agitated main subject and a perky, scale-step second theme.

The Sonata in F major, Op. 10, No. 2 is one of Beethoven’s most compact such works and one of his sunniest. The scampering 28

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melodic fragments tossed off at the outset not only provide thematic material for the ensuing movement but also establish its playful mood. Though the second movement is titled Allegretto, it is really a scherzo, more reserved than Beethoven’s later examples of the form but nevertheless sharing their rhythmic energy and romantic nature. If the reports are true that Beethoven loved rough practical jokes, then that aspect of his personality finds its musical analogue in the finale. A little ditty of opera buffa jocularity is proposed as the subject for learned fugal treatment, but proves that it can support nothing more than some flying scales and clangorously repeated chords. The ditty, having shown itself impervious to fugue in the exposition, gets toured through a variety of keys in the development section before the pretense of erudition is abandoned in the recapitulation in favor of a simple, boisterous romp to the end.

The largest in scale and most prophetic in expression of Op. 10 is the D major Sonata No. 3. The sonata-form first movement opens with a unison gesture forged from equal parts mystery, promise and forceful energy, whose dynamic eruptions are balanced by a quiet, pathetic melody in a minor key. A dainty second theme is proposed for formal contrast, but the complex emotional state of the opening resumes before the end of the exposition. The development section expounds upon the mutability of the main theme’s materials before a full recapitulation rounds out the movement. The lamenting second movement, Largo e mesto (“sad”), is one of Beethoven’s most profound statements from his early years, “his first essay in tragedy” according to Sir Donald Tovey. The Menuetto provides a sunny foil to the preceding movement. The jolly rondofinale is based on a humorous theme of off-beat motives and bemused silences.

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Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata” (1804-1806) Beethoven spent the summer of 1804 in Döbling, an elegant suburb of Vienna nestled in the foothills of the Wienerwald north of the central city. He wrote to his brother Johann, a prosperous apothecary in Vienna, “Not on my life would I have believed that I could be so lazy as I am here. If it is followed by an outburst of industry, something worthwhile may be accomplished.” The country air and fizzy Heurigen wine of Döbling must have been inspiration to Beethoven, because during the following three years he had a remarkable burst of creativity that included the “Appassionata” Sonata (Op. 57). Its sobriquet was applied not by the composer but by the Hamburg publisher Cranz when he issued a two-piano version of the work in 1838.

The F minor Sonata is in three movements: two massive sonata-form essays anchor it at beginning and end, and surround a short, rapt set of variations in which Beethoven tried to make time itself stand still. When Glenn Gould’s recording of the “Appassionata” was issued in 1974, he provided for it a surprisingly curmudgeonly set of liner notes that, nevertheless, penetrate straight to the essence of Beethoven’s creative procedure in the outer movements of this composition: “The ‘Appassionata,’ in common with most of the works Beethoven wrote in the first decade of the 19th century, is a study in thematic tenacity. His conceit at this period was to create mammoth structures from material that, in lesser hands, would scarcely have afforded a good sixteen-bar introduction. The themes, as such, are usually of minimal interest but are often of such primal urgency that one wonders why it took a Beethoven to think them up.”

The “Appassionata” Sonata stands upon the highest plateau of Beethoven’s achievement.

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL Yefim Bronfman, piano

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1 (18 minutes) Allegro molto con brio Adagio molto Finale: Prestissimo

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 6 in F major, Op. 10, No. 2 (15 minutes) Allegro Allegretto Presto

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 7 in D major, Op. 10, No. 3 (23 minutes) Presto Largo e mesto Menuetto: Allegro Rondo: Allegro

— INTERMISSION — BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata” (24 minutes) Allegro assai Andante con moto — Allegro ma non troppo

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JANÁČEK & SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters” (1928) LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854-1928)

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n the summer of 1917, when he was 63, Leoš Janáček fell in love with Kamila Stösslová, the 25-year-old wife of a Jewish antiques dealer from Písek. They first met in a town in central Moravia during World War I, but, as he lived in Brno with Zdenka, his wife of 37 years, and she lived with her husband in Písek, they saw each other only infrequently thereafter and remained in touch mostly by letter. The true passion seems to have been entirely on his side (“It is fortunate that only I am infatuated,” he wrote to her), but Kamila did not reject his company, apparently feeling admiration rather than love for the man who, with the successful staging of his Jenůfa in Prague in 1915 eleven years after its premiere in Brno, was acquiring an international reputation as a master composer. Whatever the details of their relationship, Kamila’s role as an inspiring muse during the last decade of Janáček’s life was indisputable and beneficent — under the sway of his feelings for her he wrote his greatest music, including the operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Affair, the song cycle The Diary of the Young Man Who Disappeared, the two String Quartets (the second of which he titled “Intimate Letters”), the Glagolitic Mass and the Sinfonietta for Orchestra.

It seems fitting, perhaps inevitable, that Janáček’s last work — the Second String Quartet — was the one most closely bound to his love for Kamila. Janáček explained to Kamila that the work’s opening movement depicted “my impression when I saw you for the first time.” The Adagio, he said, concerns “the summer events at Luhačovice Spa in Moravia,” where Janáček saw Kamila for the first time in over a year in July 1921. He intended, he continued, to make the third movement “particularly joyful and then dissolve it into a 30

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vision that resembles your image…. The finale won’t finish with fear for my pretty little vixen, but with great longing and its fulfillment.”

Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in G minor, Op. 57 (1940) DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Shostakovich’s mother, Sofia Vasilievna, was a skilled pianist who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and taught the instrument professionally. She passed her talent to her offspring — her oldest child, Maria, followed in her footsteps, and Sofia began Dmitri’s lessons when he was nine. (Her third and last child, Zoya, became a veterinarian.)

Dmitri displayed a quick affinity for the piano, and he was placed in Glyaser’s Music School after only a year of study at home. Three years later, in 1919 (and just two years after the Revolution, which his family supported wholeheartedly), Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory as a piano student of Leonid Nikolayev. He graduated in 1924 as a highly accomplished performer.

Shostakovich always retained his love of the piano, and played throughout his life whenever he could, but the lack of practice time prevented him from performing much music other than his own. The composer’s student Samari Savshinsky described him as “an outstanding artist and performer. The crystalline clarity and precision of thought, the almost ascetic absence of embellishment, the precise rhythm, technical perfection, and very personal timbre he produced at the piano made all Shostakovich’s piano playing individual in the highest degree.... Those who remember his performance of Beethoven’s mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, followed by a number of Chopin pieces, can only regret that his talent as a pianist was never fully developed or applied.” After years of prompting, the Beethoven String Quartet, the ensemble that

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premiered all of Shostakovich’s fifteen quartets except No. 1, finally convinced the composerpianist to write a Quintet for Piano and Strings that would allow them to perform together.

Shostakovich duly composed the work during the summer of 1940, and gave its premiere with the Beethoven Quartet in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on November 23rd during a Festival of Soviet Music. The Quintet was greeted with universal acclaim, which was officially recognized when its composer was presented with the Stalin Prize, the highest award then granted in the Soviet Union for artistic work.

The Quintet opens with a dramatic statement by the piano (keyboard and strings are held in opposition throughout) which is soon taken over by the strings. The center section is occupied by a lighter strain, a sort of melancholy shadow waltz brought to a climax to lead to the return of the dramatic opening music by the full ensemble to close the movement. The second movement is a tightly woven fugue of somber countenance that traces the form of an arch, beginning and ending softly and reaching a peak of intensity in its middle regions. The Scherzo that follows is, according to Andrew Huth, “cheerfully poised between spiky wit and downright bad manners.” The Intermezzo contains the expressive heart of the Quintet. Its expansive, deeply felt melodic lines are borne along by the heart-beat tread of its incessant bass line, and, like the fugue, it reaches its emotional highpoint near its center. The finale is a large sonata form built upon an airy, widely spaced main theme and a rather coarse contrasting strain. The development section includes a reminiscence of the dramatic theme from the Prelude, but optimism returns with the recapitulation, and the Quintet closes in a genial if somewhat subdued mood.

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL Aristo Sham, piano (2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow)

VERONA QUARTET (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Jonathan Ong, violin Dorothy Ro, violin Abigail Rojansky, viola Jonathan Dormand, cello

JANÁČEK String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters” (28 Minutes) Andante Adagio Moderato Allegro

SHOSTAKOVICH Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in G minor, Op. 57 (35 minutes) Prelude: Lento — Fugue: Adagio Scherzo: Allegretto Intermezzo: Lento — Finale: Allegretto

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INSIDE THE MUSIC Gain astounding insight and unique perspective from music professionals during these free, informative talks and one Master Class.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24

A CONDUCTOR’S GUIDE TO TOSCA

MASTER CLASS

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL | 1:00PM

Aristo Sham, piano Anne-Marie McDermott, coach

Robert Marx (Metropolitan Opera Quiz panelist and opera expert), speaker Joseph Illick (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Fort Worth Opera), speaker Learn what to look and listen for in Bravo!

Vail’s production of Tosca from two leading experts on opera.

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QUINTET READING VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL | 1:00PM

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL | 1:00PM

Artistic Director Anne-Marie McDermott coaches Piano Fellow Aristo Sham through solo piano repertoire in front of a live audience.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31

MUSIC TALK VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL | 1:00PM Jack Sheinbaum, speaker Dive into Western culture’s meaning of “good music.”

Aristo Sham, piano Angie Zhang, piano St Lawrence String Quartet Readings of the opening movements from two great works for piano and string quartet.

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Learn more at bravovail.org

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THE BRASS PROJECT (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Brian Olson, trumpet Theo Van Dyck, trumpet Cort Roberts, horn Oliver Barrett, trombone Daniel Schwalbach, trombone Jake Fewx, tuba

SELECTIONS TO BE ANNOUNCED FROM THE STAGE

© BRANDON ILAW

he Brass Project, a sextet founded at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2016, seeks to expand the repertoire for chamber brass, to record and distribute new works, and to engage with a wide community through outreach and educational programs. The Brass Project has collaborated with composers from around the world on 35 new works, including several heard at the ensemble’s Bravo! Vail appearances this summer. As part of The Brass Project’s initiative to bring music to diverse communities, they have worked with young students in over eighty educational concerts across northern New Mexico and held multiple residencies in Philadelphia area schools through the Curtis Institute of Music’s Community Artists Program.

The Brass Project’s debut album, Cityscaping, was released in fall 2018.

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GILBERTSON & RAVEL String Quartet (2016-2017) MICHAEL GILBERTSON (B. 1987)

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ichael Gilbertson, born in Dubuque, Iowa in 1987, holds degrees from Juilliard and Yale; his teachers include John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, Samuel Adler, Christopher Theofanidis and Jeanine Tesori. Gilbertson is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and has also taught at the Walden School in Pasadena, Educational Center for the Arts at Yale, and Northeast Iowa School of Music. He is Resident Composer with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and founder of ChamberFest Dubuque, which brings young classical artists to his hometown for concerts and educational outreach. He has composed for orchestra, chamber groups, film, dance and chorus; his opera, Breaking, was commissioned by the Washington National Opera and premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2013. Michael Gilbertson has been recognized with five Morton Gould Awards from ASCAP, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a BMI Student Composer Award, selection as Musical America’s New Musician of the Month for March 2016, and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Gilbertson’s String Quartet was premiered by the Verona Quartet in New York’s Carnegie Hall on February 2, 2017 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Of it, he wrote, “In the fall of 2016, I was commissioned to compose a string quartet for the Verona Quartet. They’re a really great, ambitious group, so I wanted to write them an ambitious piece. When the election ‘hit’ in November 2016, I had sketches for the piece, but felt like I needed to start over.

I felt the need to write something consoling and comforting. The opening movement [Mother Chords] was kind of inspired by Sibelius’ Second Symphony. I used string

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harmonics in it. They are delicate sounds and meant to acknowledge all the talk about the glass ceiling, something that’s so fragile and turned out to be very fragile that year.” In his review of the premiere, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini described the second movement, Simple Sugars, as “full of frenetic blips, with the instruments often playing insync riffs and screeching sonorities.”

String Quartet in F major (1902-1903) MAURICE R AVEL (1875-1937)

Ravel was admitted as a student to the Paris Conservatoire in 1889, the year in which the World Exposition introduced the Javanese gamelan orchestra and Russian music to Paris (and left the Eiffel Tower as an imposing souvenir), but his academic career proved to be somewhat less than meteoric. While gaining a reputation for such pieces as the Pavane for a Dead Princess and Jeux d’Eau during the next sixteen years, he slipped in and out of the Conservatoire, auditing classes with Gabriel Fauré and other teachers, and competing, never successfully, for the Prix de Rome.

Despite his tenuous official association with the Conservatoire, Ravel retained an almost awed respect for Fauré, whom he regarded as his principal teacher and an important influence and inspiration for his music. At the end of 1902, after his second attempt to win the Prix de Rome had proven unsuccessful, Ravel felt it necessary, as had Claude Debussy a decade before, to subject the modernity of his musical speech to the rigorous discipline of one of the most demanding of all Classical genres, the string quartet. “My Quartet represents a conception of musical construction, imperfectly realized no doubt, but set out much more precisely than in my earlier compositions,” Ravel said. He completed the first movement of the work in time to submit it to a competition at the Conservatoire

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in January 1903, but the reactionary judges, having become well entrenched in the attitude that caused them to frustrate Ravel’s every attempt to win the Prix de Rome, found this glowing specimen of musical color and light “laborious” and “lacking simplicity.” Ravel left the Conservatoire for the last time and never again set foot in one of its classrooms. More angry than discouraged, Ravel continued work on the Quartet and completed the score in April 1903.

The Quartet opens with a sonata-form Allegro whose precise Classical structure is made to accommodate effortlessly the piquant modality of its themes. The principal subject is a lovely violin melody that rises and falls through a long arc with elegance and ease.

Passages of greater animation lead to the complementary theme, a melancholy strain.

The development section is as concerned with the rustling figurations as with the thematic materials. As in the Mozartian model, the recapitulation returns the earlier themes to balance and complete the movement. The second movement (marked “rather fast and very rhythmic”) is a modern scherzo, with snapping pizzicati and superimposed meters.

The center of the movement is occupied by a wistful melody in slow tempo initiated by the cello. The third movement serves as a sort of structural foil to the carefully defined forms of the earlier movements. With its quickly changing sonorities, frequent juxtapositions of mood and tempo, and continually evolving themes, it is much in the character of an improvisation for quartet, a free rhapsody for four instruments joined by some magical centripetalism into an extraordinarily satisfying whole. The powerful, metrically irregular motive that launches the finale is brought back as the movement proceeds, much in the manner of the old rondo form, to separate the contrasting episodes that recall musical events from the earlier movements.

VAIL INTERFAITH CHAPEL, VAIL

VERONA QUARTET (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Jonathan Ong, violin Dorothy Ro, violin Abigail Rojansky, viola Jonathan Dormand, cello

GILBERTSON String Quartet (15 minutes) Mother Chords Simple Sugars

RAVEL String Quartet in F major (26 minutes) Allegro moderato Assez vif, très rythmé — Lent — Tempo I Très lent Vif et agité

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THE BRASS PROJECT Tuttarana REENA ESMAIL (B. 1983)

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smail writes, “The title of this piece is a conglomeration of two words: the Italian word ‘tutti,’ which means ‘all’ or ‘everyone,’ and the term ‘tarana,’ which designates a specific Hindustani (North Indian) musical form, whose closest Western counterpart is the ‘scat’ in jazz. Made up of rhythmic syllables, a tarana is the singer’s chance to display agility and dexterity. While a Hindustani tarana is a solo form, I wanted to bring the tarana into an ensemble setting.”

Tuttarana was commissioned by the Mount Holyoke College Glee Club for their 2014-2015 season, and arranged for brass by Reena Esmail.

Contrapunctus I, XII and IX, BWV 1080 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

These fugues are from The Art Of Fugue, written by Bach in the final decade of his life.

The Art of Fugue consists of 14 fugues and 4 canons, all based on three notes of a D minor chord and a scale. The Art of Fugue was written for an unspecified instrumentation, and we hope that the vibrant timbre of brass will highlight its textures and sonorities.

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English Consort Music, edited by Raymond Mase Fancy à 6 JOHN WARD (1571-1638)

Al Folgarante Squardo Fancy à 6 GIOVANNI COPERARIO (1575-1626)

By 1620, consort music for groups of instruments was an essential part of English music. The repertoire of these instrumental consorts included the well-known English fantasias (commonly referred to as fancies), as well as dance music and adaptations of madrigals. Considered one of the best and most serious of the English madrigalists, John Ward pursued dual careers as composer and attorney. John Cooper, also known as Giovanni Coprario or Coperario, was an English composer, viol player and lutenist who changed his name in the early 17th century.

It is often said he did that after a visit to Italy, though there is no evidence he had been to the country.

Nocturne STEVEN FRANKLIN (B. 1995)

Steven Franklin is a trumpet player and composer and currently a fellow at the New World Symphony in Florida. As a composer, he was commissioned by the American Brass Quintet, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, and members of the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Symphony. Franklin was one of the founding members of The Brass Project, and his trumpet playing as well as Nocturne can be heard on the ensemble’s debut album, City Scaping.

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Autumns MICHAEL LAURELLO (B. 1981)

Michael Laurello is an American composer, recording/mixing engineer and pianist whose music reflects his fascination with temporal dissonance and emotional immediacy. Laurello studied composition at Yale and also holds degrees from Tufts University and the Berklee College of Music. Autumns was commissioned as part of the Brass Projects inaugural season commissioning project.

Holy Moly PAUL LANSKY (B. 1944)

Paul Lansky studied at the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, Queens College and Princeton University; he has been on the Princeton faculty since 1969. Until the mid1990s, the bulk of Lansky’s work was computer music, but he then turned towards instrumental music. His music relies heavily on tonality and harmony that references musical traditions from Machaut to Stravinsky. Holy Moly was commissioned as part of the Brass Projects commissioning project.

Three Romances

© BRANDON ILAW

STEVEN FRANKLIN

Steven Franklin writes: “Three Romances is a three-movement tone poem written in a compositional style that looks backwards in time to the tonal and melodic sensibilities of the Romantic era. Robert Schumann is an obvious influence; the counterpoint of Wagner and the lush harmonies in Strauss were also influential. However, my goal with Three Romances was not to imitate works from the 19th century, but to continue exploring warmth, richness and lyricism in my writing.”

EDWARDS INTERFAITH CHAPEL, EDWARDS

THE BRASS PROJECT (2019 Bravo! Vail Chamber Musicians in Residence) Brian Olson, trumpet Theo Van Dyck, trumpet Cort Roberts, french horn Oliver Barrett, trombone Daniel Schwalbach, trombone Jake Fewx, tuba

ESMAIL

Tuttarana (3 minutes)

J.S. BACH

Three Contrapunctus from The Art of Fugue (9 minutes) No. I No. XII No. IX

WARD/COPERARIO

English Consort Music (Edited by Raymond Mase) (5 minutes)

FRANKLIN

Nocturne (4 minutes)

LAURELLO

Autumns (4 minutes)

LANSKY

Holy Moly (4 minutes)

FRANKLIN

Three Romances (17 minutes) Elegy Intermezzo Finale

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REFLECTIONS ON WATER: PADDLE TO THE SEA Multimedia Journey to the Open Sea Film by Bill Mason Music by Glass, Druckman, trad.

Shona “Please Put Me Back in the Water”

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he protagonist of Holling C. Holling’s 1941 children’s book Paddle-tothe-Sea is a small wooden figure in a canoe, lovingly carved by a Native Canadian boy. From the Nipigon Country north of Lake Superior, the figure travels for years through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway out to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, encountering a variety of people, creatures and environments along the way. Indeed, these encounters make the long journey possible — rather than keeping “Paddle” for themselves, those who find the figurine choose to send him further along the waterways, perhaps with a fresh coat of paint or a new rudder.

In building a performance project around this story, the members of Third Coast Percussion composed music together as a team to perform live with the 1966 film adaptation of Paddle-to-the-Sea — music inspired by, and interspersed with, other music that bears thematic connections to water. This other music represents different aspects of our own musical journeys and places us in the role of musical stewards, adding what we can to each work and sending it out again into the world for others to experience.

Reflections on the Nature of Water for solo marimba JACOB DRUCKMAN (1928 - 1996)

Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize in music, Jacob Druckman was Composer-in-Residence for the New York Philharmonic from 1982 to 1985, and held teaching positions at Juilliard, Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood,

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Brooklyn College, and Yale University. His 1986 Reflections on the Nature of Water is one of the few works to have maintained a place over many decades in the relatively young canon of marimba solo music. Each movement explores a different character that water can embody, intricately and evocatively mapping those characters on the marimba. The movements are concise but unhurried, gentle but uncompromising. Four of the work’s six movements appear on tonight’s program.

Aguas da Amazonia PHILIP GLASS, UAKTI, THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

Glass’ 12 Pieces for Ballet, originally composed for piano, was arranged by Brazilian musical group Uakti for their own gamut of instruments, many of which were custom-made and built by the performers. This new version of the piece was renamed after the Amazon river and its tributaries. Drawing on both the Uakti arrangement and the original piano music, the members of Third Coast Percussion arranged a handful of these pieces, exploiting our vast instrument arsenal and experimenting with color blends across the spectrum from “non-pitched” to “pitched” percussion. Arranging Glass’ music pushed us to reimagine familiar material with a different sound palette.

Chigwaya TRADITIONAL, MUSEKIWA CHINGODZA, THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

In recent years, the four of us have been fortunate to be able to expand our artistic practice and musical knowledge with a study of Shona music from Zimbabwe, and the mbira, a thumb piano that plays a leading role in the music. In preparation for this project, our mentor Musekiwa Chingodza taught us Chigwaya, a song used to call water spirits

JUL in the Shona religion. Chigwaya — “the bream fish” — is a symbol for the water or mermaid spirits who can impart wealth or healing powers but can also be dangerous or demanding. As in many traditional Shona songs, each musician develops their own version of Chigwaya.

We encourage listeners to explore Musekiwa Chingodza’s own discography and learn more about this great artist through Kutsinhira Cultural Arts Center, the Oregon-based nonprofit that hosts his biennial visits to the United States.

30 TUESDAY JULY 30, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

Sean Connors Robert Dillon Peter Martin David Skidmore

Chinotamba mudziva macho

It dances in its pool of water

Mudziva macho Chigwaya In

its pool, the bream

Mudziva macho mvura yauya

In its pool, the water spirit has come

“Crystalline”

Hiya honde

(vocable – no meaning)

Paddle to the Sea, Act 1

Dzoka dzoka dzoka

Come back, come back, come back

GLASS/ARR. TCP

GLASS/ARR. THIRD COAST PERCUSSION “Madeira River”

DRUCKMAN THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

“Amazon River”

DRUCKMAN

Paddle to the Sea THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

As we set out to score the film Paddle to the Sea, we drew inspiration from the musical material and atmosphere of each of the waterrelated works on this program. In connecting their disparate aesthetics while creating something new, we found an opportunity to express this moment in our ensemble’s own musical journey. The score corresponds to many of the main themes in the film: the “boy” theme puts a simple melody on pitched desk bells over skittering wood blocks and ceramic tiles; the “journey” is soaring, Philip Glass-inspired music from almglocken (tuned cowbells), drum set and keyboards; our “placid” theme is a simple heartbeat in the low register of the marimba; and the sections we dubbed “turmoil” are marked by driving drum figures in rhythms borrowed from Druckman.

We developed and combined these themes to form a musical narrative that parallels the exuberance, danger, loneliness, and infinite possibility of Paddle’s voyage.

Third Coast Percussion’s album Paddle to the Sea was released on Cedille Records in February 2018.

“Relentless”

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Paddle to the Sea, Act 2

DRUCKMAN “Profound”

GLASS/ARR. TCP “Xingu River”

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Paddle to the Sea, Act 3

DRUCKMAN “Fleet”

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Paddle to the Sea, Coda

TRADITIONAL/ARR. MUSEKIWA CHINGODZA & TCP Chigwaya BOLDED TEXT from Glass: Aguas da Amazonia UNDERLINED TEXT from Druckman: Reflections on the Nature of Water for solo marimba Paddle to the Sea ©1966 National Film Board of Canada Music Performed by Third Coast Percussion Stage Direction by Leslie Buxbaum Danzig Lighting and Video Design by Joseph Burke This project is supported by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, and is made possible through a collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada.

This evening’s desserts provided by:

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED

PRESENTED BY

THIRD COAST, REICH, & HARRISON Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) STEVE REICH (B. 1936)

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merican composer Steve Reich is widely viewed as one of the most influential composers of the last hundred years. His music is known for steady pulse, repetition, and a fascination with canons, and embraces harmonies and rhythmic concepts from non-Western and American vernacular music (especially jazz). Music for Pieces of Wood is a study in economy of means, both in terms of physical and musical materials. Reich specifies an exact pitch for each of the pieces of wood that are the only instruments in this work, and each of the three sections of the piece comprises a single rhythm, with each player building up his own version of the pattern before blending into the texture. To celebrate Reich’s 80th birthday, in 2016, Third Coast Percussion released a Grammy-winning album of his works on Cedille Records.

Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (1961) LOU HARRISON (1917-2003)

Lou Harrison holds a special place in the heart of percussionists. Along with his friend and collaborator John Cage, Harrison was one of the first generation of classical composers to begin writing percussion ensemble music, with works dating back to the 1930s. While Cage developed his own vocabulary for percussion music that eschewed any attempts at melody or harmony in favor of timbral variety and rhythmic tension, Harrison’s style creates surprisingly lyrical lines even from “non-pitched” percussion instruments. Flower pots, brake drums, and cowbells truly sing in Harrison’s work, allowing him to create and develop recognizable motives, and blend percussion seamlessly with other instruments.

Harrison was also fascinated with the aesthetics of non-Western musical traditions, 40

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and was particularly passionate about Javanese gamelan. The pipes, bell plates, and Thai gongs in the Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra create moments of gamelan-like fanfare amongst the fluid asymmetrical dances that mark the concerto’s outer movements. The more plaintive middle movement is a violin soliloquy accompanied with sparse percussive punctuations.

TCP celebrated Lou Harrison’s Centenary in 2017 with performances and an HD video recording of the Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra with violinist Todd Reynolds, available online.

BEND (2016) PETER MARTIN (B. 1980)

Renowned as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator, Third Coast Percussion’s Peter Martin has composed music for many of the group’s educational and concert projects in recent years. His quartet BEND draws inspiration from the player piano compositions of Bruce Goff, a wonderfully unconventional architect and amateur composer. Many of Goff’s piano rolls were highly stylized geometric designs perforated into the scrolls, resulting in music that created very clear sonic “shapes.” Whereas these shapes would create the pitch and rhythm in a player piano performance, BEND translates these shapes into volume, tone, and gesture. The composer’s experience with the piano rolls — through a blurry, decades-old video — inspired an unconventional sound palette created with alternative techniques on two marimbas.

Ordering-instincts (2014) ROBERT DILLON (B. 1980)

Third Coast Percussion member Robert Dillon has enjoyed a career as an orchestral, solo and chamber musician, as well as an educator for all ages. Since college he has also pursued music composition. Ordering-instincts draws

a big sound from a very compact setup of instruments. The four percussionists share eight wooden planks, an octave of loose crotales, and two tom-toms, from which they create a variety of different sonic colors in tightly interwoven rhythms. All musical content arises from the composite of all the players together; no one player’s part forms a complete voice by itself.

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31 WEDNESDAY JULY 31, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

Death Wish (2017)

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL

GEMMA PEACOCKE (B. 1984)

Gemma Peacocke is a composer from New Zealand who currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Her music works in both acoustic and electronic sound worlds, and she is interested in how music can amplify the voices of underheard groups of people. Peacocke says, “I wrote Death Wish after watching a short film featuring New Zealand survivors of sexual assault. One of the survivors, Hinewirangi Kohu-Morgan, spoke about the out-of-control spiraling of her life for many years and how she developed what she called a ‘death wish.’ In the piece, I thought about the spooling and unspooling of energy and how we are all bound and driven by forces both within and beyond ourselves.”

Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities (2016) DAVID SKIDMORE (B. 1982)

The compositions of Third Coast Percussion member David Skidmore are performed regularly in concert halls and universities across the country. In 2011, his multi-movement work Common Patterns in Uncommon Time was commissioned to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Taliesin, home of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture; in 2007, his Unknown Kind was premiered at Carnegie Hall. He has also received commissions from the Rush Hour Concert Series in Chicago and several leading percussion soloists and pedagogues. Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities is a cycle of works exploring a common idea: that the same piece of music can move at several different speeds at the same time. An electronic audio track expands and reinforces the live percussion in many of these works, and video artist Xuan was commissioned to create accompanying video. Many of the individual pieces take their cryptic names from memorable Third Coast Percussion touring experiences or inside jokes.

Yvonne Lam, violin John Corkill, percussion

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

Sean Connors Robert Dillon Peter Martin David Skidmore

REICH Music for Pieces of Wood (8 minutes)

HARRISON Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (20 minutes) Allegro Maestoso – Allegro Vivace Largo, Cantabile Allegro, Vigoroso, Poco Presto

— INTERMISSION — MARTIN BEND (8 minutes)

DILLON Ordering-instincts (8 minutes)

PEACOCKE Death Wish (10 minutes)

SKIDMORE Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities (15 minutes) Don’t Eat Your Young Take Anything You Want Torched and Wrecked

This evening’s desserts provided by:

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED PRESENTED BY

PRE-CONCERT TALK, 6:30PM DONOVAN PAVILION

Leah Weinberg (University of Denver), speaker

A PHILIP GLASS PREMIERE Perpetulum (2018) PHILIP GLASS (B. 1937)

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hrough his operas, symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble, and wide-ranging collaborations with artists from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg and Woody Allen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact on the musical and intellectual life of his times.

Although percussion instruments have played an important role in much of Glass’ music, and a number of his works have been arranged for percussion by other musicians, he had never composed a work for percussion ensemble until Third Coast Percussion commissioned Perpetulum. Glass is now 81 years old, but when composing this work, he harkened back to childhood memories of his first experience with percussion instruments.

Though his primary musical instrument was the flute, he had the opportunity to participate in a percussion class while a student at the Preparatory Division of the Peabody Conservatory in his hometown of Baltimore.

Perpetulum blends an almost child-like exploration of the sounds of percussion with Glass’ signature musical voice. The work is in three sections, with a cadenza between the second and third sections.

Glass proposed some general concepts and instruments for the cadenza, but left it to the performers to compose this segment of the music themselves.

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Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) for Two Pianos and Percussion (1974) GEORGE CRUMB (B. 1929)

George Crumb, born in Charleston, West Virginia, has enjoyed a long career as one of America’s most distinctive and respected musical voices. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, a Grammy in 2001, and dozens of other awards in between. Crumb’s works have the deeply spiritual air of man considering nature and his universe — his meticulously detailed and unconventional scores give a visual impression akin to an ancient religious text.

He cites Debussy, Bartók and Ives as his major influences, but for percussionists, it’s hard not to hear John Cage in Crumb’s spacious scores and love of unique percussion timbres.

Crumb wrote the following in the 1980 essay Music: Does It Have a Future?: “Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature. Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche. I am certain that every composer, from his formative years as a child, has acquired a ‘natural acoustic’ that remains in his ear for life. The fact that I was born and grew up in an Appalachian river valley meant that my ear was attuned to a peculiar echoing acoustic; I feel that this acoustic was ‘structured into’ my hearing, so to speak, and thus became the basic acoustic of my music. I should imagine that the ocean shore or endless plains would produce an altogether different ‘inherited’ acoustic. In a broader sense, the rhythms of

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01 nature, large and small — the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects — must inevitably find their analogues in music.”

Music for a Summer Evening is the third installment of Crumb’s Makrokosmos series, the rest of which are for piano alone (2 hands and 4). The name “Makrokosmos” is a reference to Mikrokosmos, Béla Bartók’s six-volume series of progressive piano studies. Crumb also borrowed the instrumentation of this work (2 pianos and 2 percussionists) from Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937).

In contrast to Bartók’s selection of standard orchestral instruments, Crumb’s percussion arsenal includes everything from temple bowls and kalimba (thumb piano, also known as a mbira) to slide whistles, stones, and a jug. In the spacious, often dreamlike atmosphere of the work, Crumb is constantly playing off the audience’s previous associations, whether it be with the sounds of nature or existing musical works; the 5th movement features a quotation of the D-sharp minor Fugue in Book II of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.

The complete arc of the piece can be seen in the following poetic quotations Crumb included in the printed score, which he says were very much in his thoughts as he sketched the work: Movement I: Nocturnal Sounds “Odo risonanze effimere, oblío di piena note nell’acqua stellate.” (“I hear ephemeral echoes, oblivion of full night in the starred water”) — Salvatore Quasimodo Movement III: The Advent “Le silence éternel des espaces infinis méffraie” (“The eternal silence of infinite space terrifies me”) — Pascal Movement V: Music of the Starry Night “Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere Erde aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkeit.

Wir alle fallen. Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.” (“And in the nights the heavy earth is falling from all the stars down into loneliness. We are all falling. And yet there is One who holds this falling endlessly gently in His hands.”) — Rilke

THURSDAY AUGUST 1, 7:30PM C L A S S I C A L LY U N CO R K E D PRESENTED BY MEIOMI WINE

DONOVAN PAVILION, VAIL

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano Amy Yang, piano

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION

Sean Connors Robert Dillon Peter Martin David Skidmore

PHILIP GLASS Perpetulum (22 minutes)

— INTERMISSION — GEORGE CRUMB Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) for Two Pianos and Percussion (40 minutes) Nocturnal Sounds (The Awakening) Wanderer Fantasy The Advent Myth Music of the Starry Night

A PHILIP GLASS PREMIERE Perpetulum by Philip Glass was commissioned for Third Coast Percussion with lead support from the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation. The work was co-commissioned

by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting for Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, San Francisco Performances, Town Hall Seattle, Performance Santa Fe, University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, and Third Coast Percussion New Works Fund, with additional support from Friedrich Burian, Bruce Oltman, MiTO Settembre Musica, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series, and the Percussive Arts Society.

Tonight's Pre-Concert Talk presented by Wall Street Insurance in partnership with Cincinnati Insurance.

This evening’s desserts provided by:

Christopher Adkins (cello) joined the Dallas Symphony in 1987 and currently holds the Fannie & Stephen S. Kahn Principle Cello Chair. He previously served with the Milwaukee, New Haven and Denver symphonies. A native of Denton, Texas, he holds degrees from the University of North Texas and Yale University, and studied with former Dallas Symphony Principal Cellist Lev Aronson. He is a member of the Dallas String Quartet and has performed with the ensemble throughout the United States and Europe. He also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Music at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. He is married to Dallas Symphony violinist Alexandra Adkins.

The Brass Project (sextet), founded at the Curtis © BRANDON ILAW

Institute of Music in 2016, has collaborated with composers worldwide on thirty-five new works. In 2016 and 2017 it was Ensemble-in-Residence at Music from Angel Fire, and last year was the Fellowship Brass Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival, where it was mentored by the American Brass Quintet. The Sextet has worked with young students in more than eighty educational concerts across Northern New Mexico; has held multiple residencies in Philadelphia schools; and has been engaged for three years with the Curtis Institute of Music’s Community Artists Program.

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Ann Marie Brink (viola) has been Associate Principal Viola of the Dallas Symphony since 1999. She began playing in public school at age ten, and joined the Pensacola Symphony while a freshman in high school. She holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Juilliard, where she was awarded the William Schuman Prize. As a chamber musician, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, and Cleveland’s Severance Hall. She is Adjunct Associate Professor of Viola at Southern Methodist University and Adjunct Professor of Instrumental Studies at the University of North Texas.

Yefim Bronfman (piano) emigrated to Israel from the ©DARIO ACOSTA

Soviet Union in 1973. At 14 he studied with Arie Vardi, later attending Juilliard, Marlboro School of Music, and Curtis Institute. He has given recitals around the world, including his acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall in 1989, and in 1991 gave joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia. He toured last season with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená. Since his Bravo! Vail debut in 2012, the Grammy-Award winner has served as the New York Philharmonic’s Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence, led his own Perspective Series at Carnegie Hall, and premiered concertos by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jörg Widmann.

John Corkill (percussion) is currently serving as the Instructor of Percussion Studies at the Merit School of Music and Loyola University Chicago. He is a founding member of the Wanmu Percussion Trio, which has performed across the country with a wide variety of theatrical percussion repertoire from Carnegie Hall in New York City to the Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. John received his Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and Master of Music Degree from the Yale University School of Music. His teachers include Robert van Sice, Michael Burritt, and James Ross.

Eunice Keem (violin) attended Carnegie Mellon University. After joining the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2011, she became Associate Concertmaster in the 2014-15 ©CARLIN MA

season. As a chamber musician, she was a member of the Fine Arts Trio and later, the Orion Piano Trio, both of which took top honors at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She was a founding member of Carnegie Mellon’s Starling Quartet.

In addition to American music festivals, she has participated in the Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves in Bordeaux, and the International Music Academy in Pilsen, Czech Republic, where she was a faculty member.

Alexander Kerr (violin), raised in Alexandria, Virginia, began his studies at age seven with members of the National Symphony Orchestra. He went on to study at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 1996 was named Concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In 2006 he began teaching at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. He is Concertmaster (Michael L. Rosenberg Chair) of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, Kerr has recorded the Dvořák Piano Quintet with Sarah Chang and Leif Ove Andsnes.

©STEPHANIE BASSOS

Yvonne Lam (violin) is Co-Artistic Director of Eighth Blackbird, with whom she performs some fifty concerts a year and has recorded three albums including a Grammy winner. In 2017, she co-founded the Blackbird Creative Lab, an intensive tuition-free training program for performers and composers in Ojai, California. She served three seasons as Assistant Concertmaster of the Washington National Opera Orchestra and as Associate Concertmaster of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, she toured the East Coast with Musicians From Marlboro. She has an ongoing collaboration with jazz composer Matt Ulery.

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Anne-Marie McDermott (piano), Artistic Director of Bravo! Vail since 2011, enjoys performing, planning and recording an awe-inspiring variety of music. Her repertoire includes more than 50 concertos. She recently performed her first complete Beethoven Concerto cycle with Sante Fe Pro Musica, and released her second all-Haydn Sonata CD for Bridge Records. Long an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she served as Artistic Director of the inaugural McKnight Center Chamber Music Festival at Oklahoma State University in 2018. With the Dover Quartet, she will give the world premiere of a piano quintet by Chris Rogerson, a Bravo! Vail commission, in 2020.

Nathan Olson (violin), holds the position of CoConcertmaster (Fanchon & Howard Hallam Chair) with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared as Guest Concertmaster with the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh and Toronto, and as Principal Second Violin with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. An enthusiastic chamber musician, he is a member of the Baumer String Quartet, and won the Silver Medal at the Fischoff Competition. While completing his music degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he earned minors in both mathematics and music theory.

The Omer Quartet (string quartet), comprising violinists Mason Yu and Erica Tursi, violist Jinsun Hong, ŠMATT DINE

and cellist Alex Cox, was the 2018 First Prize winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions. The quartet was also a top prizewinner in the Bordeaux International Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

Having recently completed a graduate residency at the New England Conservatory, the group is currently the Doctoral Fellowship String Quartet in Residence at the University of Maryland. The foursome make their Bravo! Vail debut this summer as Chamber Musicians in Residence.

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Aristo Sham (piano) was featured in the documentary The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies. He joined the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts at age six. In 2018 he won First Prize and all three special prizes in the inaugural Charles Wadsworth Piano Competition, and First Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions.

He has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra among others. He is pursuing degrees in Economics, French, and Piano Performance through a joint program at Harvard and the New England Conservatory. He is a 2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow.

©MARCO BORGGREVE

St Lawrence String Quartet, established in Toronto in 1989, has performed in John Adams’s Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony. It also performed the European premiere of Adams’s Second String Quartet. After earning two Grammy nominations, in 1998 the quartet was appointed Ensemblein-Residence at Stanford University, where it directs the music department’s chamber music program and collaborates with the Schools of Law, Medicine, Business and Education. The Quartet recorded Haydn’s six Op. 20 quartets in high-definition video for free online release in 2018.

©AMANDA TIPTON

Takács Quartet, formed in 1975 in Budapest, is based at the University of Colorado and performs some eighty concerts a year worldwide. In 2012 it was the only string quartet inducted into Gramophone’s first Hall of Fame. It was the first string quartet to win London’s Wigmore Hall Medal, and continues to serve as Associate Artists there. The quartet performed Philip Roth’s Everyman program with Meryl Streep at Princeton in 2014, having initially performed it with Philip Seymour Hoffman at Carnegie Hall in 2007. A new CD by the Grammy winners teams them with pianist Marc-André Hamelin in music of Dohnányi.

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Third Coast Percussion (quartet) is Ensemble-inResidence at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. It has collaborated with University engineers; architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; dancers at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; and musicians from traditions ranging from the mbira music of Zimbabwe’s Shona people, to indie rockers, to concert musicians. Its recording of Steve Reich’s works for percussion won a 2017 Grammy. It makes its Bravo! Vail debut with the premiere of a Philip Glass work co-commissioned by the Festival that is also the genesis of 2019’s Classically Uncorked Series co-curated by the quartet and Bravo! Vail.

©KAUPO KIKKAS

Verona Quartet won the 2015 Concert Artists Guild competition. Projects have included a performance art installation with Ana Prvački; artistic exchange with poets in the United Arab Emirates; and collaboration with Brooklyn’s Dance Heginbotham. It has been Quartet-in-Residence of the Indiana University Summer String Academy since 2016, and has the same honor at the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet training program. With Concert Artists Guild, it commissioned Michael Gilbertson’s Quartet, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music, which it performs at Vail Interfaith Chapel in its Bravo! Vail debut as 2019 Chamber Musicians in Residence.

Hanzhi Wang (accordion) returns to Bravo! Vail as Chamber Musician in Residence after her debut last season, when she was the first accordionist ever to be presented here. She was also the first accordionist ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in that organization’s 57-year history. She earned her degrees at the China Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. YCA presented her debut concerts in New York City and Washington D.C. last season. She is featured on Naxos’s firstever solo accordion CD in works by Danish composers.

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Amy Yang (piano) has been praised by the Washington ©BALÁZS BÖRÖCZ

Post as a “jaw-dropping pianist who steals the show… with effortless finesse,” pianist Amy Yang has collaborated with Anne-Marie McDermott, Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Richard Goode, Ida Kavafian; members of Guarneri String Quartet and Mahler Chamber Orchestra; and the Dover, Jasper, and Aizuri string quartets. She has appeared as a soloist with the Houston, Newport and Tuscaloosa symphony orchestras, and Orquesta Juvenil Universitaria Eduardo Mata de la UNAM; premiered music by Caroline Shaw, Avner Dorman, Michael Hersch, Ezra Laderman; and appeared in such prestigious venues as the Marlboro, Ravinia, Aldeburgh, and Ojai music festivals.

Angie Zhang (piano), recipient of the Kovner Fellowship at Juilliard, made her debut playing under Grammynominated conductor Niel DePonte at age ten. She won the 2016 Juilliard Concerto Competition and earned top prizes in both the PianoArts and New York International Piano Competition. A Princeton, New Jersey native, she recently made debuts with the Juilliard Orchestra under Fabio Luisi, Milwaukee Symphony under Andrews Sill, and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra under Matthew Kraemer.

She also performed with the Olympia Symphony Orchestra, marking her fifth collaboration with Huw Edwards. She is a 2019 Bravo! Vail Piano Fellow.

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THANK YOU EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS Bravo! Vail is proud to offer dozens of free and low-cost concerts and events to the community each summer and throughout the year. We thank all those whose generous support makes these events possible.

PREMIER BENEFACTOR ($50,000 and above) The Paiko Foundation* PLATINUM ($30,000 and above) Bravo! Vail Guild IMPRESARIO ($25,000 and above) Virginia J. Browning* Kathy and David Ferguson Donna and Patrick Martin* VIRTUOSO ($20,000 and above) Linda and Mitch Hart OVATION ($15,000 and above) Dierdre and Ronnie Baker** Sandi and Leo Dunn*** Cookie and Jim Flaum*** Town of Gypsum*** ALLEGRO ($10,000 and above) Alpine Bank*** Diane and Lou Loosbrock Anne-Marie McDermott and Michael Lubin Marcy and Gerry Spector** BENEFACTOR ($5,000 and above) Kelly and Sam Bronfman, II** Gallegos Corp.

Sue and Dan Godec** Judy and Alan Kosloff**** Barbie and Tony Mayer***** Ferrell and Chi McClean** Each * denotes five years of consecutive donations.

Amy and James Regan***** June and Paul Rossetti* Elaine and Steven Schwartzreich Carol and Kevin Sharer Slifer Smith & Frampton Foundation*** U.S. Bank Foundation* Martin Waldbaum*** Sandra and Greg Walton* PATRON ($3,000 and above) Doe Browning** Carol and Harry Cebron Kathy and Brian Doyle* Valerie and Noel Harris Holy Cross Energy Wall Street Insurance* CONTRIBUTOR ($1,200 and above) Letitia and Christopher Aitken** Mia and Bill Benjes Barbara and Barry Beracha** Citywide Banks John Dayton*** Marijke and Lodewijk de Vink*** Eagle Ranch Association** Ann Fish Sue and Dr. Brian Gordon Terri and Tom Grojean***** Kathy and Al Hubbard Cathy Jones-Coburn and Russell Coburn Alexia and Jerry Jurschak* Henny Kaufmann* Kathleen and Michael Moore Caitlin and Dan Murray Renee Okubo* Diane Pitt and Mitchell Karlin* Drs. Julie and Robert Rifkin Sally and Byron Rose** Lisa and Ken Schanzer* Carole and Peter Segal** Karen and Martin Sosland Dhuanne and Doug Tansill**** Monica and Dan White BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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FRIEND ($600 and above) Mercedes and Alfonso Alvarez* Sara and Michael Charles Cincinnati Insurance Costco Barb and Rob DeLuca Peggy and Gary Edwards** Susan and Harry Frampton***** Jane and Stephen Friedman Anne and Hank Gutman* Patrick Hibler Mr. and Mrs. Loyal Huddleston* Jackie and Norm Waite* Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kelton, Jr.***** Linda and Christopher Mayer Shirley and William S. McIntyre, IV*** Sarah and Peter Millett Kay and Bill Morton***** Jean and Ray Oglethorpe Tom and Ann Rader Patsy Randolph Beth and Rod Slifer* Brooke and Hap Stein**** United Way of Eagle River Valley Carole A. Watters** Gunnel and Hal Weiser Alida Zwaan and George Gregory DONOR ($300 and above) Bonnie Barrett Patti Cogswell Fara and Jason Denhart Michael Evans and William Kohut Andrea and Mike Glass Jennifer and Brad Greenblum Jim Grunditsch Pamela and Gibson Harris Karen and Jim Johnson** Sue and Rich Jones Tiffany and David Oestreicher* Carolyn and Steve Pope*** Michele and Jeffrey Resnick** Sue Rosenblatt Adrienne and Chris Rowberry Susan and Steven Suggs** Debbie and Fred Tresca* Ken Wilson MEMBER ($150 and above) Elinor and Howard Bernstein* Dana Bronfman 52

2019 CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAMS

Janie and Bill Burns* Edwina P. Carrington*** Kathleen and Jack Eck*** Karon and David Hammond William Hecht Dr. Susan Rae Jensen and Tom Adams Trainer Vicki and David Judd Martha and Kent Petrie*** Sydney and Mark Pittman Betsy and Pedro Printz Town of Eagle* John O. Westcott PRELUDE ($50 and above) Anonymous Karen Baird Michele and Richard Bolduc* Kris Brownlee Alison and Nick Budor Darlene Daugherty Kabe ErkenBrack James Goerke Michele Howe Anna Janes and Sig Langegger Sandy and Todd LaBaugh Therese and Douglas Landin Lynn and Webb Martin Melissa Meyers Jullie and Gary Peterson Lindsay Schanzer Carol Schimmer Nancy and Jerry Stevens Joe Tonahill, Jr.* Anne and Robert Trumpower Elli Varas Samantha Verdonck Carly and Jared West Heidi and Bret Young

CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES Special thanks to the donors and partners who make the Bravo! Vail Chamber Music Series possible. The Festival is grateful for their generosity, which brings this beautiful set of concerts to life.

The Francis Family The Sidney E. Frank Foundation The Judy and Alan Kosloff Artistic Director Chair The Paiko Foundation Town of Vail

CLASSICALLY UNCORKED Presented by Meiomi Wine Bravo! Vail gratefully acknowledges the support of the many donors whose generous support brings this unforgettable series and experience to audiences.

Amy and Charlie Allen Big Delicious Catering The Francis Family The Sidney E. Frank Foundation The Judy and Alan Kosloff Artistic Director Chair Meiomi Wine The New Works Fund The Paiko Foundation Town of Vail Yamaha

NEW WORKS FUND The New Works Fund serves two purposes: to underwrite future premieres of new music and to present music that may be unfamiliar to Vail audiences. Special thanks to the donors who support this important fund.

The Paiko Foundation Town of Vail Each * denotes five years of consecutive donations.

LUIS D. JUAREZ HONORARY MUSIC AWARD The Luis D. Juarez Honorary Music Award supports and extends opportunities for students to pursue musical studies. Bravo! Vail thanks the donors whose support provides financial assistance to students for the costs of instruments, lessons, software, and other essential materials.

Marilyn Augur Dierdre and Ronnie Baker Jayne and Paul Becker Sarah Benjes and Aaron Ciszek Doe Browning Edwina P. Carrington John Dayton Peggy and Gary Edwards Margaret and Tom Edwards Irene Emma Sallie and Robert Fawcett Cookie and Jim Flaum Tracy and Mark Gordon Anne and Hank Gutman Julie and Steven Johannes Judy and Alan Kosloff Shirley and William S. McIntyre, IV Kay and Bill Morton Laurie and Tom Mullen Caitlin and Dan Murray Jullie and Gary Peterson Patti and Drew Rader Martha Rehm and Cherryl Hobart Vicki Rippeto Sally and Byron Rose June and Paul Rossetti Adrienne and Chris Rowberry Carole and Peter Segal Slifer Smith & Frampton Foundation Rachel and David Smiley Cathy and Howard Stone Joanne and Frank Strauss Debbie and Fred Tresca BRAVOVAIL.ORG

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