In Concert Chamber Music Columbus Program by chambermusiccolumbus

A concert series for chamber music lovers presented on WOSU Classical 101 every Sunday @ 1pm in October, 2021 OUR PRESENTING PARTNER Boyce Lancaster Concert Host

In Concert Carpe Diem Sun. Oct. 3

Brentano String Quartet Sun. Oct. 24

Spencer Myer Sun. Oct. 10

Eighth Blackbird Oct. 31

Europa Galante Sun. Oct. 17 This concert series made possible by the generous patron support of Chamber Music Columbus.

Dear Chamber Music Enthusiasts, In this, our 74th season we welcome you back with not only our live concerts, but also a new series of quality recorded concerts from past seasons. Thanks to popular response, and in partnership with WOSU Classical 101, during the month of October 2021 you can once again tune in to Chamber Music Columbus in Concert. First launched in the fall of 2020, Chamber Music Columbus in Concert, was a chance for us chamber music enthusiasts to partner with WOSU and to broadcast recordings of some of our favorite Chamber Music Columbus concerts recorded live at the Southern Theatre in previous years. Thanks to popular demand, we are pleased to present Chamber Music Columbus in Concert again this year with wonderful new recordings from years past. Each Sunday during October we hope you and your friends will join us by tuning in to Classical 101 at 1:00 PM. You can also stream the concerts via a link on our website or at WOSU.org Last year we created an eProgram and we are continuing that for your enjoyment of this year’s series. It’s a perfect digital complement to the broadcasts. It contains the actual program content that appeared in the program booklet for each of the chamber groups being broadcast in the Chamber Music Columbus In Concert series. You can download it, read it online, on computer or smart phone, share it, or email it. I would be remiss without thanking the people on our team who contributed their time and talent to making Chamber Music Columbus in Concert a reality. They are Trustees, Cheryl Dring, Jay Weitz - for his eloquent program notes, Steve Helmick – Treasurer, and Mark Krausz - Marketing Chair. We also want to recognize Kris Harrison and Gina Cronley for their design work on the eProgram. The other stars, on the WOSU team, include Cheryl Dring – Program Director at Classical 101, Jaclyn Reith, Account Executive at WOSU Public Media, and Boyce Lancaster - Classical 101 host of the broadcast series. As always, thank you for your continuing support. Please be sure to tell your friends about Chamber Music Columbus in Concert, encourage them to visit us at Chamber Music Columbus.org for all the latest news about our live concerts at the Southern. Be well and stay happy and healthy. Sincerely,

Katherine Borst Jones President

COLUMBUS

In Concert

BROADCAST SCHEDULE 1. Carpe Diem Sunday Oct. 3........................................................................ 2 2. Spencer Myer Sunday Oct. 10...................................................................... 8 3. Europa Galante Sunday Oct. 17....................................................................... 16 4. Brentano String Quartet Sunday Oct. 24...................................................................... 24 5. Eighth Blackbird Sunday Oct. 31....................................................................... 30 Live Stream Aizuri Quartet - Nov 13, 2021

Can’t make it downtown to the theatre? Simultaneously live stream from the theatre into the comfort of your home. For live stream tickets go to ChamberMusicColumbus.org Family viewing $25, Individual viewing $20

Carpe Diem PROGRAM - January 19, 2019, 8 p.m. @ Southern Theatre Saturday, November 27, 2010, 8 p.m. Southern Theatre Carpe Diem String Quartet Charles Wetherbee, violin John Ewing, violin Korine Fujiwara, viola Kristin Ostling, cello With Guest Artist Jerry Kirkbride, clarinet The Third Annual Kenneth L. Coe and Jack Barrow Concert PROGRAM Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Quintet in A major, K. 581 (composed 1789) Allegro Larghetto Menuetto Allegretto con variazioni Korine Fujiwara Fiddle Suite: Montana (composed 2007-2009) Montana Stillwater Gorge Walkin’ in the Water Cherry Blossom Peasebottom INTERMISSION Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Quintet in B minor, op. 115 (composed 1891) Allegro Adagio; Più lento Andantino; Presto non assai, ma con sentimento Con moto

Carpe Diem About the Artists: Carpe Diem String Quartet Carpe Diem String Quartet, in residence at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, is an exciting group that has captured the imagination of audiences, the respect of critics, and is becoming one of the most versatile ensembles of their generation. Carpe Diem has earned critical acclaim with innovative programs, electrifying performances, and a passion for audience engagement. Carpe Diem continues its collaboration with Columbus Dance Theater; and their joint project “The String Machine” was aired by WOSU-PBS television through 2007-2008. Carpe Diem has created an exciting program with international accordion and bandoneon performer Peter Soave, “¡Viva Piazzolla!” This program was featured in June 2008 at the prestigious Fontana Music Festival. The quartet is committed to changing the concert experience of chamber music. Using innovative programming, thematic concerts, and popular music for younger generations; cameras, and video to assist in the visual presentation; as well as speaking from the stage to better engage the audience; Carpe Diem is bringing new audiences into the concert hall and revitalizing the chamber music recital. The quartet is dedicated to giving back to the community, and has created two new programs, MusiCare, and Music Goes To School, that will enable Carpe Diem to bring music to everyone in the Central Ohio area, regardless of their means or circumstances. Carpe Diem String Quartet is presented by special arrangement with Lisa Sapinkopf Artists, 9 Commodore Drive, Suite A-309, Emeryville, California 94608. Carpe Diem is represented throughout the Great Lakes Region by Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, 1100 North Main Street, Suite 207, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104.

About the Artist: Jerry Kirkbride Jerry Kirkbride, clarinet, studied at the University of Southern California with Mitchell Lurie. Awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Rome, he worked with Nadia Boulanger, Efrem Kurtz, and Franco Ferrara. Before joining the Dorian Wind Quintet in 1970, he was principal clarinet with the Metropolitan Opera National Touring Company and was a Creative Associate at the Center of Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, New York. He has many editions and arrangements published by International Music Editions. Mr. Kirkbride is also clarinetist with The Bruch Trio with Jesse Levine, viola, and Rex Woods, piano. He has been on the faculty of the University of Arizona since 1987 and has recorded for Summit, Columbia, and Deutsche Grammophon. Mr. Kirkbride has previously been presented by Chamber Music Columbus as the clarinetist of the Dorian Wind Quintet on January 30, 1982; May 3, 1986; March 20, 1999; and March 14, 2009. Special support for this concert has been provided by a generous grant from the Kenneth L. Coe and Jack Barrow Fund for Chamber Music Performance of the Columbus Foundation.

Carpe Diem Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Salzburg, January 27, 1756; died Vienna, December 5, 1791) Quintet in A major, K. 581 (composed 1789) Even as a child, Mozart loved the sound of the clarinet. Throughout his life he would highlight the instrument in operas, symphonies, and chamber works. In 1789, he got a special opportunity to contribute a piece to the annual Christmas concert to benefit the widows and children of members of the Vienna Society of Musicians. Because his friend and fellow Mason, the clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler, also happened to be involved in the charity event, Mozart decided on a quintet for clarinet and strings. The Quintet in A major, K. 581 was completed on September 29 and premiered (with Stadler on clarinet and Mozart on viola, no less) on December 22, 1789. The two repeated their performances the next April at the home of the Councilor to the Hungarian Exchequer, Count Johann Karl Hadik. It was then that Mozart referred to the work as “Stadler’s Quintet.” The composer may have been generous to the clarinetist, but there’s evidence that the clarinetist may have taken some advantage of that. At the time of Mozart’s death in 1791, Stadler owed him the equivalent of some $5000, money that could have come in handy to the impoverished composer and his family in his final years. But let’s give Stadler the benefit of the doubt and attribute it more to Mozart’s kindness than to Stadler’s insensitivity. After all, Mozart’s final complete instrumental work was his Clarinet Concerto, K. 622, written in October 1791 to be played by you-know-who. The quintet opens with a quiet theme in the strings followed by a spirited clarinet response. Later, a second theme sounds in the first violin, and a third shared by the clarinet and first violin. The development deals mostly with that early clarinet phrase, now traded among the strings. The strings are muted as the clarinet glides over them in the Larghetto. At its center is a clarinet and first violin duet. In the third movement, the passionate minuet section is played by all five instruments. The strings have the first trio, in A minor, to themselves. The second trio, in A major, features the clarinet in a folksy dance. The finale is a naïve theme, in the strings with clarinet punctuations, followed by six variations. The third variation highlights a sad viola , but the last one returns to joy and light.

Carpe Diem

Korine Fujiwara (born Billings, Montana) Fiddle Suite: Montana (composed 2007-2009) Founding violist of Columbus’s own Carpe Diem String Quartet, Korine Fujiwara has earned her Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University and her Master of Music from the Juilliard School. Before joining the Columbus Symphony Orchestra fulltime in 2001, she was a principal player and soloist with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. Fiddle Suite: Montana is a piece about family, about traditions, and about the state in which I was born and raised, Montana. It is a work in five movements, written in a jazzy/bluesy/fiddle style. Montana is the 4th largest state in the USA, after Alaska, Texas, and California. However, in the entire state, there are fewer than one million people, an average of around 6 persons per square mile. The first movement, Montana, is scored very transparently, starting with solo violin, to represent the great vastness of this state, adding a solo viola, with a “cowboy lullaby” in the middle, and then finishing again with the two solo instruments to close the movement. The second movement, Stillwater Gorge, interrupts the quiet peace of the first movement with a jig in the 2nd violin which, later in the movement, morphs into a reel in the first violin. The Stillwater Gorge is one of my favorite places in Montana, in the Woodbine Campground area of the Beartooth Mountains. The Stillwater River, known for its fly-fishing, is anything but “still” in this part of the country. Centuries of rushing water have carved a great canyon into the side of the mountain, so when walking around the gorge, to one 5

Carpe Diem side of the path the rocks appear ready to crash down upon the viewer, and the other side is met with a steep drop off, ending in churning whitewater rapids with a boiling energy. I tried to reflect this energy in the movement. The third movement is entitled Walkin’ in the Water, and is more of a personal nature. My parents love to share tales of an early “composition” by me as a toddler. They tell the story of taking me on a walk after a rainy day, and there were puddles of water everywhere. I apparently was marching around, singing a little song while stomping in the water that goes like this, “Walk, walk, walkin’ in the water, Don’t, Go, Walkin’ in the water” (mi; do; so so do do re re; mi; do; so so do do re re). I have used this little song as an ostinato, and built the third movement around it. The fourth movement, Cherry Blossom, honors the traditions from my father’s side of the family. My father is half Japanese. One tradition his family kept and he also shared with us was: in the spring, we would sing the Japanese folk song Sakura (which means “Cherry Blossom”) when the cherry trees would start to bloom in our yard, in our own family’s celebration of the Cherry Blossom festival. He taught us the words in both Japanese and in English. I have taken the melody of Sakura, and slightly manipulated it into a major key, and have used it as the basis of the movement and have woven it throughout the piece. To me, this movement represents the beauty of the “now” and the precious thing that we know of as life, and how important it is to hold on to the moment, because like the delicate cherry blossom, life is fragile, and the winds of change come unexpectedly and blow petals to the wind, scattering our plans and ideas. We must celebrate and respect today, for we can know nothing of tomorrow. The fifth movement, Peasebottom, honors the traditions from my mother’s side of the family. Music has always been an important part of family gatherings. I grew up surrounded by music, but this was not the music of Mozart or of Beethoven. It was fiddle music. At every reunion, wedding, birth, funeral, holiday, or similar occasion when people were likely to gather, my relatives would show up with guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and/or a bass in hand, and there was always a piano wherever we gathered. If someone didn’t play, they always sang. We would seat ourselves in a circle and make music, learn music, share music, create music, and commune with music. One place where this frequently happened was at my grandmother’s very modest cattle ranch, located in an area known by the locals as Pease Bottom, named after General Pease stationed at Fort Pease during the Indian Wars. Pease Bottom is in the Yellowstone River Valley, surrounded by rolling hills and sandstone cliffs, and will forever be a special place for me. The piece Peasebottom is a hoedown in which I tried to capture the joy and exuberance of these family gatherings. For those of you who have never been to Montana, I hope this musical soundscape helps to share a few of the reasons I love my birthplace. For those of you who have visited, I hope you enjoy this return journey with all of us! Ms. Fujiwara is an Instructor of Violin and Viola at Ohio Wesleyan University. She has received the Hjalmer and Emma Kivekas Award, the Raymond Cerf Memorial Scholarship in Violin, and Northwestern’s Wade Fetzer Prize as outstanding performer in her graduating class. Composed “during three separate creative periods between August 2007 and March 2009,” Fiddle Suite: Montana received its premiere performance as a complete five-movement work on May 2, 2009, by the Carpe Diem String Quartet. 6

Carpe Diem Johannes Brahms (born Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died Vienna, April 3, 1897) Quintet in B minor, op. 115 (composed 1891) On December 11, 1890, Johannes Brahms sent to his publisher Fritz Simrock some last minute changes to the finale of his Quintet in G major, op. 111, which had received its premiere performance exactly a month earlier in Vienna. “With this note,” he wrote, “you can take leave of my music because it is high time to stop.” Brahms fully expected this to be his final opus, abandoned plans for a fifth symphony, and destroyed several incomplete manuscripts. A few months later, he drew up his will and began to review his life’s work with an eye toward revising what he wanted to publish in definitive editions and discarding pieces he now considered inferior. In the process of looking back, however, Brahms began to re-inspire himself. Then in March 1891, he first heard the virtuoso clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld (1856-1907), who spurred Brahms to write the four clarinet-centered chamber works of the next few years: the Trio, op. 114; the Quintet, op. 115; and the two Sonatas, op. 120. All told, Brahms would end up composing roughly a dozen additional pieces following Opus 111, his intended swan song. Brahms had spent the summer of 1891 in the resort of Bad Ischl near Salzburg, as was his habit, and completed both the Trio and the Quintet by July. Joined by the Joachim Quartet, Mühlfeld gave the Quintet its first private performance in Meiningen on November 24, 1891, and then its public premiere in Berlin on December 12. Strings alone sound the tonally uncertain theme of the Allegro before the clarinet enters with an ascending arpeggio. A clarinet passage later on bears a close resemblance to a theme from the first movement of Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto no. 1, op. 73, one of the works Brahms had heard Mühlfeld play back in March 1891. No coincidence there. Muted strings accompany the clarinet in the Adagio. The Welsh Brahms scholar Robert Pascall has suggested that Brahms reached back to several short dance pieces for piano that he composed in the mid-1850s for this movement. The central Più lento section in the “Hungarian” style features a prominent clarinet over strings imitating a cimbalom. (a variety of dulcimer). Firmly in D major, the Andantino section of the third movement recalls the third movement of Brahms’ own Symphony no. 1. The Presto non assai, ma con sentimento section can be heard as a minor mode variation on the Andantino. The finale, Con moto, is a theme and variations that eventually brings back and incorporates the main subject of the Allegro, which fully emerges in the coda. -- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http:// www.columbusalive.com).

Spencer Myer PROGRAM -Saturday, October 6, 2012, 8 p.m. @ Southern Theatre Spencer Myer, piano Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Sonata no. 54 in G major, H. XVI:40 (composed 1783-1784) Allegretto innocente Presto Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Préludes, Book I (composed 1909-1910) Danseuses de Delphes: Lent et grave Voiles: Modéré Le vent dans la plaine: Animé “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir:” Modéré Les collines d’Anacapri: Très modéré Des pas sur la neige: Triste et lent Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest: Animé et tumultueux La fille aux cheveux de lin: Très calme et doucement expressif La sérénade interrompue: Modérément animé La cathédrale engloutie: Profondément calme La danse de Puck: Capricieux et léger Minstrels: Modéré INTERMISSION Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Three Sonetti del Petrarca, from Années de pèlerinage, 2e année, Italie (composed 1846-1858) Sonetto 47 del Petrarca (Benedetto sia ’l giorno) Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (Pace non trovo) Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (I’vidi in terra angelici costumi) Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) Iberia, Book IV (composed 1907-1908) Málaga: Allegro vivo Jérez: Andantino Eritaña: Allegretto grazioso Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) Caprice Espagnol, op. 37 (composed 1885)

Spencer Myer About the Artists: Spencer Myer Gold Medalist of the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition, Spencer Myer is garnering stellar audience and critical acclaim from around the globe, rapidly establishing himself as one of the most outstanding pianists of his generation. In 2004, Spencer Myer captured First Prize in the 10th UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as special prizes for the best performances of Bach, the commissioned work, the semifinal round recital, and both concerto prizes in the final round. He is also a laureate in the 2007 William Kapell, 2005 Cleveland, 2005 Busoni (where he was also awarded the Audience Prize), 2004 Montréal, and 2003 New Orleans International Piano Competitions. Winner of the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association, Mr. Myer also received both of the competition’s special prizes in Chamber Music and Lieder Accompanying. He is also the winner of the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and subsequently enjoys a growing reputation as a vocal collaborator. Mr. Myer was a member of Astral Artists performance roster from 2003-2009, a result of his having won that organization’s 2003 national auditions. Spencer Myer is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Julian Martin. Other teachers include Peter Takács, Joseph Schwartz, and Christina Dahl. He spent two summers at the Music Academy of the West, studying with Jerome Lowenthal and, later, Vocal Accompanying with Warren Jones and Marilyn Horne. During the course of his undergraduate studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he was the recipient of numerous awards from that institution, while, in 2000, he was named a recipient of a four-year Jacob K. Javits Memorial Fellowship from the United States Department of Education. His Doctor of Musical Arts degree was conferred by Stony Brook University in 2005. In January 2007, Mr. Myer performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the Inaugural Festivities of Ohio’s Governor Ted Strickland. For more information, see Spencer Myer’s Web site at http://spencermyer.com. Spencer Myer is a Steinway Artist. Recordings: harmonia mundi usa, NAXOS, Dimension Records. Spencer Myer appears by arrangement with Parker Artists, 382 Central Park West #9G, New York, New York 10025.

Spencer Myer Joseph Haydn (born Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; died Vienna, May 31, 1809) Sonata no. 54 in G major, H. XVI:40 (composed 1783-1784) Haydn was never the boy genius on the keyboard that Mozart was. Nor was he the legendary piano virtuoso that Beethoven was. Unlike his symphonies and string quartets, Haydn’s piano sonatas did not define the very shape and form of their genre. By rough count, Haydn wrote about as many solo piano sonatas as Mozart and Beethoven combined, although never specifically for his own performance. For whatever reason, Haydn’s sonatas have never received the attention, respect, or performances that Mozart’s or Beethoven’s did. Until around 1771, Haydn’s sonatas were conceived for harpsichord, and by the late 1780s, they were clearly piano works, taking greater advantage of the piano’s range and power. This Sonata no. 54 in G major, H. XVI:40 dates from the transitional period when Haydn was writing his keyboard works for either harpsichord or piano. Although Haydn had the amateur player in mind, these works have challenges and depths of their own. In 1783, the future Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II married Princess Marie Hermenegild. The next year, the German publisher Bossler brought out a set of three piano sonatas (H. XVI:40-42) that Haydn dedicated to the young princess. The set of two-movement works was almost certainly a belated wedding gift intended to ingratiate the composer with the prince who would be Haydn’s final patron among the Esterházy family. The Sonata in G major opens with a set of variations that wander between major and minor, growing more complex but never losing their title innocence. The concluding “Presto” brims with humorous touches, from its surprise key changes to its syncopated minor mode midsection.

Spencer Myer Claude Debussy (born St. Germain-en-Laye, August 22, 1862; died Paris, March 25, 1918) Préludes, Book I (composed 1909-1910) Sketches for several of the works in Claude Debussy’s Préludes, Book I may date from as far back as 1907, but most of them were written in a creative flood between December 1909 and February 1910. By mid-April, the set of twelve had been published and by early the next year, he had performed nearly all of them around Paris. Early in 1909, Debussy had received a diagnosis of cancer and by the time of the outbreak of World War I, he was noticeably unwell. He had been able to travel to the Netherlands, Rome, and London in 1914, but had to abandon any thought of touring the United States and elsewhere with violinist Arthur Hartmann. In December 1915, he had the first of two operations for colon cancer. The second surgery in late 1917 left him in terrible shape and he died on March 25, 1918, even as the German military was shelling Paris. In their initial publication, each of the Préludes in Book I was identified by its number and its tempo marking, with the descriptive title appearing parenthetically at the end of the piece, almost an afterthought. This downplaying of the titles reflects Debussy’s attitude toward the whole notion of “what imbeciles call impressionism, just about the least appropriate term possible,” as he wrote to his publisher Durand in 1908. So as not to succumb to imbecility in the composer’s eyes, it seems prudent to resist the strong temptation to debate whether “Voiles” evokes “veils” or “sails;” to mention Leconte de Lisle’s poem “La fille aux cheveux de lin” as the inspiration for the eighth prelude; or to refer to the Breton legend of the Cathedral of Ys rising from and sinking back into the sea in “La cathédrale engloutie.” Lest we do succumb, remember what Shakespeare’s Puck, depicted in the eleventh prelude, said about us: “What fools these mortals be.”

Spencer Myer Franz Liszt (born Raiding, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died Bayreuth, July 31, 1886) Three Sonetti del Petrarca, from Années de pèlerinage, 2e année, Italie Sonetto 47 del Petrarca (Benedetto sia ’l giorno) (composed 1846-1858) Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (Pace non trovo) (composed 1846-1858) Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (I’vidi in terra angelici costumi) (composed 1846-1858) As a child wonder on the piano, Franz Liszt was steeped in musical history. His father, Adam Liszt, was an amateur cellist and in the employ of the Esterházy family, the former patrons of Joseph Haydn. Adam had known Haydn as well as other Esterházy musicians, including Luigi Cherubini and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Franz himself would study with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri, and would meet and play for both Beethoven and Schubert. By the time he was twelve and moved to Paris, Liszt was famous. During the next dozen years, he became Europe’s foremost piano virtuoso, the nineteenth century equivalent of a rock star. In 1833, Liszt began his liaison with the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, estranged from her considerably older husband Charles. Together, Marie and Franz produced three children, the most notable of whom was their daughter Cosima, born in 1837 and the future wife of Hans von Bülow and then Richard Wagner. The years Marie and Franz spent together were among Liszt’s most productive, during which time he toured the continent and gathered material for the first two of his three collections entitled Années de pèlerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”). Depicting natural scenes in Switzerland was the theme of the first book of Années de pèlerinage, whereas the second was inspired by various works of Italian art and literature. At the center of Années de pèlerinage, 2e année, Italie, are the Tre sonetti di Petrarca. The medieval poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), among the first to write in vernacular Italian, wrote 366 sonnets to his female ideal, Laura. During his 1838-1839 sojourns in Italy, Liszt set three of those passionate sonnets for high tenor with piano accompaniment. In 1846, he published solo piano versions, revising them again for the 1858 publication of Années de pèlerinage, 2e année. Later still, he published simpler versions of the solo vocal works. Generally considered the least successful of the three, Sonetto 47 del Petrarca (“Benedetto sia ’l giorno” or “Blessed be the day”) exudes the warmth and sadness of young love, tracking the original song closely. In the piano version of Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, Liszt again follows both the meter and the alternating moods of the poem, “Pace non trovo, e non da far guerra” (“I find no peace, nor reason to make war”). Only in its final measures does it achieve a sense of repose. That calm carries over into the introduction of the Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (“I’vidi in terra angelici costume” or “I saw on earth angelic grace”). Here, Liszt grows less dependent on the original, instead ornamenting the tune with symbolic references to the text. Just as the Sonetto 104 del Petrarca embraced opposites, so did Liszt’s life itself. He had years-long affairs with married women and carried on with other women decades younger than he. And yet, after retiring from the concert hall, he received minor orders to become Abbé Liszt in April 1865 after years of religious study. In these later years especially, he composed numerous sacred works, including the massive oratorio Christus. Go figure.

Spencer Myer Isaac Albéniz (born Camprodón, Spain, May 29, 1860; died Cambô-les-Bains, Spain May 18, 1909) Iberia, Book IV (composed 1907-1908) Born near Spain’s border with France, Isaac Albéniz showed incredible talent at an unusually early age. By the time he was five, he’d performed publically on piano in Barcelona. In 1867, he impressed the jury with his entrance exam for the Paris Conservatoire, although they ended up rejecting him as too young and immature. (According to legend, he shattered a mirror, and his chances, while roughhousing with a ball.) During the next dozen years, he attended conservatories in Madrid, Leipzig, and Brussels between performing tours throughout Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South America, the United States, and elsewhere. Returning to Barcelona in 1883, he met and studied with the musicologist and composer Felipe Pedrell (18411922), a strong proponent of national musics built on the foundations of indigenous folk traditions. Pedrell’s teachings would serve as the inspiration for Albéniz’s lifelong pursuit of a truly Spanish musical idiom. Over the next decade, his reputation as a piano improviser and composer grew throughout Western Europe. At the same time, he grew increasingly disenchanted with the conservative politics and culture of his native country, moving to London in 1890 and then Paris in 1894. Although Albéniz regularly performed in Spain, Paris would be his home for most of the remainder of his life. Ironically, it was his close friendships with such French luminaries as Vincent d’Indy, Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson, and Paul Dukas that helped him evolve into a more mature composer. Albéniz began work in December 1905 on what is widely considered to be his masterpiece, “Iberia,” a series of twelve “new impressions” in four books. The French pianist Blanche Selva (1884-1942) premiered each of the four books as they were completed in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1909, respectively. But after hearing a performance by the Catalan pianist Joaquín Malats (1872-1912) of “Triana” from Book II, Albéniz tailored the music to his countryman’s exceptional prowess. “Iberia, Book IV,” dedicated to Édouard Lalo’s daughter-in-law, was premiered by Selva in Paris on February 9, 1909. “Málaga” (marked “Allegro vivo”) takes its name from the southwestern Spanish seaport and features the Andalusian dance, the malagueña. “Jérez” is the western Andalusian town known for sherry; this “Andantino” evokes both guitar and voice. “Eritaña” was a club in Seville known for flamenco; this joyous “Allegretto grazioso” prompted Debussy to write, “Never has music achieved such diversified, such colorful impressions; one’s eyes close, as though dazzled by beholding such a wealth of imagery.”

Spencer Myer Moritz Moszkowski (born Breslau, August 23, 1854; died Paris, March 4, 1925) Caprice Espagnol, op. 37 (composed 1885) Born into a well-off Jewish family of Polish descent, Moritz Moszkowski entered the conservatory in Dresden at the age of eleven. By the time he was seventeen, he was invited to join the faculty of Berlin’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, where he would teach for the next quarter century. Before he was twenty, he was touring Europe as one of the most celebrated pianists of his time. In 1875, he and Franz Liszt shared a stage in a two-piano version of Moszkowski “Piano Concerto in B minor, op. 3,” which was subsequently lost. During the 1880s, Moszkowski’s health began to suffer, cutting into his performing schedule but allowing him more time to compose and teach. His first wife left him for a poet in the early 1890s. His second wife left him for his closest friend in 1910. The fortune he had amassed as a performer and composer had been invested in Russian, Polish, and German securities that lost all their value when World War I broke out. In spite of the efforts of friends and former students, he spent the last decade of his life in relative poverty. The great Polish piano virtuoso Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) declared that “after Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano.” Written in 1885, “Caprice Espagnol, op. 37” brims with Spanish rhythms that made it a concert favorite of such great twentieth century pianists as Josef Hofmann (1876-1957) and Wilhelm Backhaus (1884-1969). -- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com).

About Chamber Music Columbus What is Chamber Music?

Chamber music once meant Western classical music performed by small ensembles without a conductor. Today, chamber music groups also perform many different types of music from all over the world featuring voices, electronic and acoustic instruments, and compositions by contemporary composers.

Our Mission

The mission of Chamber Music Columbus is to enrich the collective cultural life of central Ohio through the love and celebration of chamber music, and by engaging the community through educational programming that elevates chamber music as an art form. We also promote the awareness and appreciation of chamber music in central Ohio.

How We Are Different

Chamber Music Columbus is a non-profit organization. Since our founding in 1948, we have been a presenting organization. In other words, we do not have our own resident ensembles or orchestra. We fulfill our unique mission by inspiring the community through the presentation of renowned and promising chamber music ensembles from around the world. We usually present six different concerts a season at the historic and acoustically excellent Southern Theatre in downtown Columbus.

Our History

Chamber Music Columbus has evolved from an informal group of music lovers calling themselves Prestige Concerts in 1948 to today’s well organized and highly regarded organization. In 1983, Prestige Concerts renamed itself Columbus Chamber Music Society and took its present name, Chamber Music Columbus, in 2003. We are looking forward to the 2022-2023 season when we will celebrate our 75th anniversary as the oldest continuously operated professional music organization in Columbus.

NEW! Live Stream Aizuri Quartet - Nov 13, 2021

Europa Galante Saturday, January 30, 2010, 8 p.m. @ Southern Theatre Europa Galante Fabio Biondi, conductor and violin soloist Fabio Ravasi, Carla Marotta, first violins Andrea Rognoni, Alessandra Bottai, Elin Gabrielsson, second violins Stefano Marcocchi, viola Maurizio Naddeo, cello Patxi Montero, double bass Giangiacomo Pinardi, theorbo Paola Poncet, harpsichord Frank Theuns, flute soloist PROGRAM Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) Overture in F major, TWV 55:F14 (composed by 1720) Ouverture Passetemps; Vivement Sarabande Rigaudon I; Rigaudon II Rondeau Polonaise Chasse Menuet Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) Concerto in A major for flute, violin, violoncello, and string orchestra, TWV 53:A2 (composed by 1733) Largo Allegro Gratioso Allegro

INTERMISSION Giovanni Battista Sammartini (circa 1700-1775) Symphony in G major, J. 39 (composed probably between 1728 and 1739) Allegro Tempo di minuetto Grave Presto Pietro Nardini (1722-1793) Concerto for violin and string orchestra in A major, op. 1, no. 1 (composed around 1765) Allegro Adagio Allegro assai Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) Concerto Grosso in D major, op. 6, no. 4 (composed 1682-1713) Adagio; Allegro Adagio; Vivace Allegro; Allegro Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764) Concerto Grosso in D major, op. 1, no. 5 (composed 1721) Largo Allegro Largo Allegro

Europa Galante About the Artists In 1990, violinist Fabio Biondi founded Europa Galante to draw the international public’s attention to a new and definitive Italian presence in the interpretation of music from the baroque and classical eras on original instruments. Biondi gathered around him some of the best Italian musicians with whom he had already worked, and soon Europa Galante met with huge success. Their first record of Vivaldi concertos was awarded the “Premio Cini” of Venice and the “Choc dé la Musique.” In subsequent years Europa Galante received a number of further awards such as five Golden Diapasons; Golden Diapason of the Year in France; RTL Prize; “Record of the Year” nominations in Spain, Canada, Sweden, France, and Finland; and the “Prix du Disque.” Europa Galante often collaborates with the Fondazione Santa Cecilia in Rome to rediscover and restore eighteenth-century Italian operas. The ensemble has a varying structure and often performs chamber music such as the string sonatas of Italian composers of the seventeenth century. In 1998, after years of collaboration with the French record company Opus 111, Europa Galante signed an exclusive contract with Virgin Classics. The ensemble has been nominated twice for Grammy Awards: in 2004 for its disc of Vivaldi’s Concerti con molti strumenti and in 2006 for its recording of Vivaldi’s Bajazet. A 2008 Abbiati Prize from the Italian National Music Critics Association was awarded to Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante and Compagnia Carlo Colla e Figli for rediscovering and restoring Haydn’s opera Philemon and Baucis. In 2010 Europa Galante is on an extensive U.S tour. Europa Galante is resident orchestra of Fondazione Teatro Due in Parma. For more information on Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante, see their web site at EuropaGalante.com. Europa Galante appears through arrangement with New World Classics, 27 Snipsic Lake Road, Ellington, Connecticut 06029.

Europa Galante Georg Philipp Telemann (born Magdeburg, March 14, 1681; died Hamburg, June 25, 1767) Overture in F major, TWV 55:F14 (composed by 1720) Concerto in A major for flute, violin, violoncello, and string orchestra, TWV 53:A2 (composed by 1733) Despite a lack of formal musical education, Georg Philipp Telemann may be responsible for a larger collection of musical works than any other composer in history. Many of these works have been rediscovered only during recent decades as the monumental Telemann thematic index (Telemann-Werkverzeichnis, or TWV for short) progressed, organizing his 3000 cantatas and motets, 44 passions, 40 operas, and hundreds of chamber and orchestral pieces. Although we tend to think Bach when we think baroque, Telemann was by far the more influential composer during their contemporaneous lifetimes. Bach was the pinnacle of the baroque age and the guardian of its traditions, but he composed in isolation, was forgotten soon after his death, and remained neglected for many decades thereafter. Telemann, meanwhile, was the herald of the classical era, melding the German, French, and Italian modes into the first truly international style. He was enormously successful during his lifetime, popularizing what had formerly been relatively elitist musical genres. Bach and Telemann were, in fact, friends, and Telemann was godfather to Bach’s third son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. The Overture in F major, TWV 55:F14 is one of over 600 such overtures in the French style that Telemann wrote. Although this work most likely dates from before 1720, Telemann had popularized the French suite in Germany more than a dozen years earlier. The Overture TWV 55:F14 features oboe or violin, violin, viola, and continuo. Telemann’s Concerto in A major for flute, violin, violoncello, and string orchestra, TWV 53:A2, first appeared in his 1733 collection Musique de table, perhaps better known as Tafelmusik. It consisted of three “productions,” each one containing an orchestral suite, a quartet, a concerto, a trio sonata, a solo sonata, and a concluding movement. Tafelmusik was not just among Telemann’s most popular publications during his lifetime. A complete edition published in 1927 was also the first set of his works to become familiar to modern audiences. The Concerto TWV 53:A2 is the third work in Production I. The Largo opens with an ensemble passage, after which the flute sounds, shadowed by the violin, and finally the cello. At the center of the Allegro is an F-sharp minor section in which the flute and violin are backed by pizzicati. The Gratioso slow movement is followed by a second Allegro in which the lower strings give an almost percussive effect in their trilling accompaniment.

Europa Galante Giovanni Battista Sammartini (born probably in Milan, circa 1700; died Milan, January 15, 1775) Symphony in G major, J. 39 (composed probably between 1728 and 1739) We in the twenty-first century think of the Austrian Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) as the composer who brought the symphony to its early heights, but it was actually the Milanese composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini who could more correctly be called “father of the symphony.” Sammartini was writing his first symphonies, born from the traditions of the Baroque concerto and trio sonata rather than from the opera overture, right around the time of Haydn’s birth in 1732. Let it be noted, however, that Haydn was never amused by any suggestion that Sammartini might have influenced his own style, dismissing his predecessor as a “scribbler.” More objective observers have in fact found fairly strong evidence of a Sammartini influence, regardless of Haydn’s protestations. And Sammartini’s impact on such Haydn contemporaries as Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782), and Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), not to mention the early symphonies of Mozart, is well documented. Son of a French oboe player who emigrated from France to Milan, Giovanni Battista Sammartini was the younger brother of Giuseppe Sammartini (1695-1750), the composer and oboist who spent most of his later years in London. Records show that the Sammartini brothers were oboists in various Milanese orchestras, although Giovanni Battista later became renowned as an exceptional organist. He was also among the busiest musicians in Milan, conducting and composing for as many as eleven churches around the city. Roughly 142 symphonies have been attributed to Sammartini, although about half of them are of doubtful authenticity. Scholars have divided his output into three periods distinguished by their instrumentation, their style, and their complexity. Sammartini’s earliest symphonies are in three movements (fast-slow-fast), written for string orchestra, and predominantly homophonic. Not until later would he add horns or trumpets to the mix and vary the texture more, helping to lead musical history from the Baroque into the Classical era. Among all of Sammartini’s surviving symphonies, only the Symphony in G major, J. 39 consists of four movements. Scholars have been unable to date this work for certain. Some have even suggested that the minuet that makes it four movements might actually have been added by a copyist at some later time, borrowed from one of Sammartini’s trio sonatas. The opening of the Allegro calls our attention to the grumbling bass line and staccato violins. Between the possibly borrowed minuet and the Presto finale is a brief Grave that isn’t much more than a bridge.

Europa Galante Pietro Nardini (born Livorno, April 12, 1722; died Florence, May 7, 1793) Concerto for violin and string orchestra in A major, op. 1, no. 1 (composed around 1765) Pietro Nardini showed early promise on the violin while still a child in Livorno. When Nardini was twelve years old in 1734, the great violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) took him on as a student in Padua, where he stayed until 1740. At that time, he returned to Livorno with a budding reputation as a virtuoso performer and gifted teacher in his own right. For the next three decades, Nardini toured and performed but occasionally held more stable employment in various places. Between October 1762 and March 1765, he was concert master in the ducal court orchestra of Stuttgart under the direction of Nicolò Jommelli (1714-1774). It was there that a certain Leopold Mozart heard Nardini’s playing and paid him the following compliment with cutting chaser: “The beauty, purity, and evenness of his tone and his cantabile cannot be surpassed; but he does not execute any great difficulties.” Others who heard Nardini play, including the musical historian Charles Burney (1726-1814), the musician Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-1791), and the composer Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763-1850) were less backhanded in their praise of his skills. Nardini went briefly to Brunswick in 1765 but returned to Livorno in May 1766. Upon learning of Tartini’s serious illness in 1769, however, he rushed back to Padua, caring for his mentor until his death on February 26, 1770. Nardini then settled down in Florence, serving as the music director at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold I (1747-1792) for nearly the rest of his life. Consonant with the reports of Nardini’s own playing, his violin concertos tend to favor emotional lyricism over showy virtuosity. His set of six Violin Concertos, op. 1, were published in Amsterdam around 1765 and most likely date from right around that time. The Concerto in A major, op. 1, no. 1, follows the fast-slow-fast pattern of most of his concertos, departing from the slow-fast-fast sequence that Tartini usually preferred.

Europa Galante Arcangelo Corelli (born Fusignano, February 17, 1653; died Rome, January 8, 1713) Concerto Grosso in D major, op. 6, no. 4 (composed 1682-1713) Until Joseph Haydn came along, few composers were more influential than, or had as many reprints of his works in circulation as Arcangelo Corelli. Making his achievement even more remarkable is the fact that Corelli was among the few whose renown was based solely on instrumental music. Furthermore, his works were among the very first to achieve “classic” status, serving as ideal models of their genre and being studied long after they had gone out of style. Corelli did not invent the “concerto grosso” form, wherein a “little consort” or concertino is pitted against a “large consort” or concerto grosso, but he was one of its earliest proponents. The Concerto Grosso in D major, op. 6, no. 4 was one of a set of twelve that he composed and repeatedly revised between 1682 and his death in 1713. Unlike later concerti grossi, Corelli’s exhibit relatively little contrast between the concertino and tutti; in fact, on the original title page of the set, he notes that the orchestra is optional. Except for the prominence of the first violin part, which looks forward to the true solo concerto, Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, op. 6 look back toward both the trio-sonata and the “concerto da chiesa” (church concerto) traditions. This Concerto Grosso in D major begins with a brief Adagio that introduces a first Allegro, which highlights the solo violins. At the center is a second Adagio without repeats, where the concertino cello is doubled by the large consort’s violins. In the Vivace, the two solo violins share the spotlight with the solo cello. Of the two Allegro sections of the finale, the first features eighth-note triplets and the second, sixteenth notes.

Europa Galante Pietro Antonio Locatelli (born Bergamo, September 3, 1695; died Amsterdam, March 30, 1764) Concerto Grosso in D major, op. 1, no. 5 (composed 1721) As both violinist and composer, Pietro Antonio Locatelli strained against the traditions of his era. In the former role, he prefigured such violin virtuosos as Niccolò Paganini. In the latter role, he served as the grandfather of the monumental violin concertos of the nineteenth century. Although Locatelli was hardly the first composer to fully notate cadenzas in his concertos, he did so as a matter of course. Furthermore, some of those cadenzas, formally known as the XXIV capricci ad libitum from his L’arte del violino, op. 3, explored the extremes of the violin’s range and experimented with techniques that continue to challenge players to this day. By the time he was fourteen, Locatelli was a violinist in the ensemble of his native Bergamo’s most important church, Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Soon thereafter, he moved on to Rome, where he came under the protection of the papal advisor Monsignor Camillo Cybo, to whom Locatelli’s Concerti Grossi, op. 1 was dedicated in 1721. That set of twelve works was published in Amsterdam, then a center of music publishing. In 1729, Locatelli moved permanently to Amsterdam, where he taught, led an amateur ensemble, and befriended the publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène. Le Cène would eventually publish most of Locatelli’s orchestral works, including a second, revised edition of the Concerti Grossi, op. 1 upon his arrival in Amsterdam. For Locatelli, one of the great attractions of Amsterdam was that centrality to publishing, a fact of which he would take full advantage. In 1731, the government of Holland granted him the right to publish and sell his own compositions, a right renewed for a second fifteen year term in 1747. Beginning with his influential Flute Sonatas, op. 2 in 1732, he would self-publish most of his chamber music. Locatelli’s set of a dozen Concerti Grossi, op. 1 is patterned closely after the similar set of Concerti Grossi, op. 6 of Arcangelo Corelli, published posthumously in 1714 but familiar especially to Italian audiences long before then. In both sets, the first eight concerti are concerti da chiesa (church sonatas), the quick movements of which tend to be fugal. The eighth concerto of each set is a Christmas Concerto, (with a pastoral finale), and the last four are concerti da camera (chamber concertos), which are suites of dance movements. One major difference is that Locatelli adds one viola (and occasionally two) to the standard concertino ensemble of two violins, cello, and continuo, thereby adding to the fugal texture in the fast movements. The Concerto Grosso, op. 1, no. 5, is in D major and follows the usual slow-fast-slow-fast model. -- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com).

@ Southern Theatre

COLUMBUS

Our 74th Season Schedule

Sergei Babayan, Pianist | Oct 23, 2021

Imani Winds | Feb 19, 2022

Aizuri | Nov 13, 2021

Ying Quartet & Push Physical Theatre | Mar 26, 2022

Brentano String Quartet & Dawn Upshaw | Apr 30, 2022

Brooklyn Rider | May 21, 2022

TICKETS: CbusArts.com or call 614-469-0939 For more info visit us >

Brentano String Quartet Saturday, March 21, 2015, 8 p.m. @ Southern Theatre Brentano String Quartet Mark Steinberg, violin Serena Canin, violin Misha Amory, viola Nina Lee, cello PROGRAM Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Quartet in B-flat major, K. 458 (“The Hunt”) (composed 1784) Allegro vivace assai Menuetto: Moderato Adagio Allegro assai James MacMillan (born 1959) Quartet no. 3 (composed 2007) 1. 2. 3. Patiently and painfully slow INTERMISSION Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Quartet in B-flat major, op. 67 (composed 1876) Vivace Andante Agitato (Allegretto non troppo); Trio; Coda Poco allegretto con variazioni

Brentano String Quartet About the Artists: Brentano String Quartet Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.” As of July, 2014, the Brentano Quartet succeeds the Tokyo Quartet as Artists in Residence at Yale University, departing from their 14 year residency at Princeton University. The Quartet also currently serves as the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The Quartet has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. The Brentano Quartet is known for especially imaginative projects combining old and new music, such as “Fragments: Connecting Past and Present” and “Bach Perspectives.” Among the Quartet’s latest collaborations with contemporary composers is a new work by Steven Mackey, “One Red Rose,” commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Other recent commissions include a piano quintet by Vijay Iyer, a work by Eric Moe (with Christine Brandes, soprano), and a new viola quintet by Felipe Lara (performed with violist Hsin-Yun Huang). In 2012, the Quartet provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the criticallyacclaimed independent film A Late Quartet. The quartet has worked closely with other important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has also been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, pianist Richard Goode, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”, the intended recipient of his famous love confession. For more information on the Brentano Quartet, see http://www.brentanoquartet.com. The Brentano has previously been presented by Chamber Music Columbus on March 18, 2000; February 24, 2007; and March 12, 2011. The Brentano String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists, 24 Bessom Street, Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945, www.davidroweartists.com. The Brentano String Quartet record for AEON (distributed by Allegro Media Group) BrentanoQuartet.com.

Brentano String Quartet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Salzburg, January 27, 1756; died Vienna, December 5, 1791) Quartet in B-flat major, K. 458 (“The Hunt”) (composed 1784) The Haydn-Mozart nexus was decidedly a two-way street, in terms both of respect and of influence. The two had met in Vienna in 1781, but their cross-fertilization had already brought forth fruit a decade earlier when the young prodigy’s Symphony in D major, K. 133 evidenced clear signs of pollination from Haydn. By the time the two met face-to-face, Haydn had pretty much abandoned his operatic career in acknowledgement of Mozart’s superior abilities in that realm. Arising from Mozart’s own need to pay tribute to his mentor rather than from the usual commission, the six quartets dedicated to Haydn (1782-1785) were modeled on the dedicatee’s “Russian” Quartets, op. 33, from 1781. They were no mere imitations, however, as even Haydn recognized. Completed on November 9, 1784, this fourth of the “Haydn” Quartets is possibly the most spirited of the six. Its nickname, The Hunt, derives from the distinctive horn signal of the opening theme. Ironically, that particular motif is closer to a military fanfare than a conventional hunting call. The development treats a variant of the horn signal and a trilling idea from the exposition’s transitional passage. Foreshadowing Beethoven, the extended coda acts as a kind of second mini-development. Placing the dance movement in the second rather than its more common third position, Mozart contrasts an orthodox minuet with a trio distinguished by its staccato middle-voice accompaniment. The uncertain opening of the Adagio leads to a stirring dialogue between the first violin and cello with a chromatic accompaniment. Not for another fifty or sixty years would such an effect become a musical commonplace. The resolute rhythms and unexpected shift in harmony of the sonata-form finale combine with a contrapuntal exuberance that seems to have touched Haydn. At the February 1785 premiere of this quartet, he gushed to Wolfgang’s father Leopold: “Your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” To prove that he valued the tribute and returned the respect, some seven months later Mozart sent to Haydn the six quartet manuscripts, inscribed to their spiritual grandfather.

Brentano String Quartet James MacMillan (born Kilwinning, Scotland, July 16, 1959) Quartet no. 3 (composed 2007) Considered by many to be the preeminent Scottish composer of our time, James MacMillan blends his own heritage with influences as far-flung as Celtic folk music, Roman Catholic chant, Japanese Shinto traditions, and such Polish moderns as Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. He earned his Bachelor of Music in 1981 from the University of Edinburgh and his doctorate in 1987 from the University of Durham. After early flirtations with leftist politics, MacMillan later re-embraced his Catholic roots to such an extent that he has become an outspoken, even controversial defender of religion against “[t]he ignorance-fuelled hostility … widespread among secular liberal elites.” Counting a student piece entitled Etwas zurückhaltend, composed in 1982 and revised in 2009, MacMillan has written at least half a dozen works for string quartet. He has retroactively numbered his 1988 Visions of a November Spring (revised in 1991) as his Quartet no. 1, and his 1997 Why is this Night Different? as his Quartet no. 2. Composed in 2007, his Quartet no. 3 is the first to which he assigned a a number when he wrote it. London’s Southbank Centre commissioned the work for Hungary’s Takács Quartet, which premiered it at Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on May 21, 2008. Quartet no. 3 was dedicated to Emma Kerr, the Head of Promotion at MacMillan’s publisher Boosey & Hawkes. MacMillan’s Catholicism notwithstanding, the title-less first movement abounds with a Jewish lyricism before it launches into stratospheric realms. The second movement, also without title, is a sort of disjointed scherzo with occasional hints of dance and march rhythms. Marked “Patiently and painfully slow,” the finale follows the first violin back into a lyrical, though mournful, world.

Photo by Christian Steiner 27

Brentano String Quartet Johannes Brahms (born Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died Vienna, April 3, 1897) Quartet in B-flat major, op. 67 (composed 1876) Johannes Brahms reached the age of forty before he had gathered enough confidence to publish his first string quartets, the pair that appeared as Opus 51 in 1873. Not for another three years would he publish his First Symphony, op. 68, in 1876. Brahms’s third string quartet, the Quartet in B-flat major, op. 67, occasionally referred to as his “Pastoral Quartet,” contrasts sharply with the gravity of the two Opus 51 “Minor Quartets” and with that First Symphony. Writer and composer Daniel Gregory Mason even dubbed the Quartet, op. 67 “the quartet of humor.” Brahms composed Opus 67 while on summer holiday at Sassnitz on the Baltic Sea isle of Rügen in 1876. Earlier that year, he had undertaken a successful tour of Holland and had stayed in Utrecht with the physiologist and amateur cellist Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann and his pianist wife, Emma Brandes. In appreciation of their family’s hospitality, Brahms dedicated the Quartet, op. 67 to Englemann. Contrast is also the watchword within the Vivace opening movement with its clear tribute to the hunting fanfares of Mozart and Haydn. The 6/8 flourish, first heard in the second violin and viola, stands rhythmically and forcefully apart from the relatively slight 2/4 second theme. In fact, the two themes are virtually never heard simultaneously. In the Andante, the first violin comes to the fore with an extended Mendelssohnian air as the other instruments imitate and accompany. Turbulence leads to a fragmentary middle section that features a rare Brahms alteration from 4/4 to 5/4. With the other three voices muted, the viola dominates the Agitato, a waltz-like minor-mode scherzo and trio. Some commentators consider the eight variations on a folksy theme that constitute the finale to be Brahms’s crowning effort in that form, surpassing even the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, op. 56a of 1873. Three fairly routine B-flat major variations open; the fourth moves to B-flat minor; the fifth features cello triplets; the syncopated sixth highlights cello and viola pizzicato accompaniment. At this point marked “Doppio movimento,” 2/4 blossoms into 6/8 and that hunting motif from the first movement returns to be subjected to two final variations and a coda. -- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com).

About Chamber Music Columbus What is Chamber Music?

Chamber music once meant Western classical music performed by small ensembles without a conductor. Today, chamber music groups perform many different types of music from all over the world featuring voices, electronic and acoustic instruments, and compositions by contemporary composers.

Our Mission

How We Are Different

Our History

Eighth Blackbird Saturday, April 17, 2010, 8 p.m. @ Southern Theatre Eighth Blackbird Molly Alicia Barth, flutes Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets Matt Albert, violin Nicholas Photinos, cello Matthew L. Duvall, percussion Lisa Kaplan, piano PROGRAM: “MEANWHILE” Thomas Adès (born 1971) Catch (composed 1991) Pierre Boulez (born 1925) Dérive 1 (composed 1984) Stephen Hartke (born 1952) Meanwhile (composed 2007) Missy Mazzoli (born 1980) Still Life with Avalanche (composed 2008) Marc Mellits (born 1966) Spam (composed 1995) George Perle (1915-2009) Critical Moments 2 (composed 2001) Mark-Anthony Turnage (born 1960) Grazioso! (composed 2008) Note: Because of what Opus 3 Artists’ Leiwei L. Jiang has termed “the logistics of the percussion setup,” eighth blackbird was unable to provide Chamber Music Columbus with the program order by the time we had to go to press. The order and the placement of the intermission will be announced from the stage.

Eighth Blackbird About the Artists: Eighth Blackbirds Hailed as ambassadors of new music, Eighth Blackbird has a growing reputation for its astounding musical versatility as well as for its dedication to the works of today’s composers. Formed in 1996 at the Oberlin Conservatory, the sextet (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano) has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 2000 and the CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming in 1998, 2000, and 2002. In 1998, Eighth Blackbird was the first contemporary ensemble to win first prize at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition. The sextet is currently ensemble-in-residence at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. The name Eighth Blackbird refers to the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens, the eighth stanza of which reads: I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know More information may be found on the Eighth Blackbird Web site at EighthBlackbird.com. Molly Alicia Barth plays on a Lillian Burkart flute and piccolo. Eighth Blackbird is presented through arrangement with Opus 3 Artists, 470 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor North, New York, New York 10016.

Eighth Blackbird Thomas Adès (born London, March 1, 1971) Catch (composed 1991) Early on, Thomas Adès caught attention as a pianist, capturing second prize as BBC Young Musician of the Year in 1989. He studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and composition with Robert Saxton at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, going on to King’s College, Cambridge, to study with composers Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. Adès was composer in residence with the Hallé Orchestra from 1993 to 1995, and music director of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, 1998 to 2000. He served as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts from 1999 to 2008, and for the 2007/2008 season held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair at Carnegie Hall. The music of Thomas Adès has received numerous awards, including a Paris Rostrum for the best work by a composer under thirty, two Royal Philharmonic Society Prizes in 1997 and 2005 , a 1998 Elise L. Stoeger Prize, a 1999 Salzburg Easter Festival Prize, a 2001 Hindemith Prize. Adès was the 2000 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his orchestral work Asyla. Catch, op. 4 was composed in 1991. It premiered at St. George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol, on November 25, 1993, with Lynsey Marsh on clarinet, Anthony Marwood on violin, Louise Hopkins on cello, and the composer on piano. Adès has the seated string players and pianist resisting the advances of the wandering clarinetist trying to join them. Andrew Clements of The Guardian has described Catch as having “a sense of unbuttoned fun with sinister undertow.”

Eighth Blackbird Pierre Boulez (born Montbrison, Loire, France, March 26, 1925) Dérive 1 (composed 1984) In a 1958 essay, Pierre Boulez described his music as “organized delirium,” an appropriate oxymoron for the style of a composer who came to music by way of mathematics. His industrialist father had hoped Boulez would become an engineer. But even while studying higher mathematics in preparation for that career path, Boulez also studied piano and music theory. In 1942, he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire rather than the Ecole Polytechnique, much to his father’s dismay. At the Conservatoire, Boulez studied musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), was introduced to serialism by René Leibowitz (1913-1972), and took counterpoint privately with Andrée Vaurabourg (1894-1980), wife of the composer Arthur Honegger. Around this time, Boulez began composing. In 1946, at the suggestion of Honegger, Boulez became the musical director of the new theatre company founded by Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud. In 1954, the company supported Boulez in founding the Domaine Musical concert series, where he sharpened his conducting skills. In 1968, he became the principal conductor of both the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and in 1969, the principal guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. In the 1970s, Boulez became the prime mover behind Paris’s Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. Out of IRCAM in 1974 came the Ensemble Intercontemporain, dedicated to new music. In 1995, Boulez became principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Boulez was the 2001 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his chamber work Sur Incises. Like so many of Boulez’s compositions, Dérive 1 does literally derive from an earlier work of his. Scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano, Dérive 1 grows out of various versions of Répons from 1980-1984 (“mostly music I left out,” Boulez has said), which in turn borrowed material from Poésie pour pouvoir from 1958. Dérive 1 pays tribute to two people. It was written for the 1984 retirement of Sir William Glock (1908-2000), who brought Boulez into association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. At the musical core is a multilingual transliteration of the surname of Paul Sacher (1906-1999) into the six pitches of E-flat (“Es” in German), A, C, B-natural (“H” in German), E, and D (or “ré”). Sacher was a conductor and prominent Swiss musical patron. All six notes sound in the opening piano chord. Dérive 1 was first performed in London on January 31, 1985, by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen.

Eighth Blackbird Stephen Hartke (born Orange, New Jersey, July 6, 1952) Meanwhile (composed 2007) Born west of the Hudson in Orange, New Jersey, Stephen Hartke grew up in Manhattan, where he was immersed in his first musical influences including Medieval plainchant, Guillaume de Mauchaut, Guillaume Dufay, Thomas Tallis, and Thomas Weelkes. As a choirboy at New York’s Church of the Transfiguration (popularly known as “The Little Church Around the Corner”), he would sing with the New York Pro Musica, the New York Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Opera. He would go on to study at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania (where he was a student of George Rochberg), and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Since 1987, he has been on the composition faculty of the University of Southern California. From 1988 to 1992, he was Composer in Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Concerning Meanwhile, subtitled “Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays,” Stephen Hartke has written: It is one of several works of mine that has grown from a long-standing fascination I have had for various forms of Asian court and theater music, and from a fantasy in which I imagine myself the master of my own fictional non-Western musical tradition. In preparing to write this piece, I studied video clips of quite a number of puppet theater forms, ranging from the elegant and elaborate, nearlylife-sized puppets of Japanese Bunraku, to Vietnamese water puppets, both Indonesian and Turkish shadow puppets, and to classic Burmese court theater that mixes marionettes with dancers who look and act like marionettes. All of these theatrical forms have their own distinct musical styles and structures, and I confess to being especially fascinated by the stark vividness of their instrumental coloration and the often unexpected structural quirks that they have evolved as these traditions have taken shape over the centuries and become stylized. This piece, then, is a set of incidental pieces to no puppet plays in particular, but one in which the imaginary scenes have given rise to an idiosyncratic sequence in which the sound of the ensemble has been reinvented along lines that clearly have roots in these diverse Asian models. The piano, for instance, is prepared for much of the piece with large soft mutes used to transform the color of the middle register into something that rather resembles the Vietnamese hammer dulcimer. The viola is tuned a half-step lower in order both to change its timbre and to open the way for a new set of natural harmonics to interact sometimes even microtonally with those of the cello. The percussion array includes 18 wood sounds, from very high Japanese Kabuki blocks to lower range slit drums, plus 4 cowbells, 2 small cymbals, and a set of bongos. These are set up in keyboard fashion so that the player can play them all as a single instrument. Finally, there is a set of Flexatones, which are rather like small musical saws. Three of these are held together with a wooden clamp and are played by the pianist with a mallet, their pitch being altered by pressing down on their metal flanges. The tone is rather like that of small Javanese gongs, and so I have given this new instrument the name of Flexatone Gamelan. Meanwhile is played as a single movement, with 6 distinct sections: Procession, which features the Flexatone Gamelan; Fanfares, with the Piccolo and Bass Clarinet linked together much as a puppeteer and his marionette; Narrative, in which the Bass Clarinet recites the ‘story’ of the scene in 34

Eighth Blackbird an extravagant and flamboyant solo reminiscent of the reciter in Japanese Bunraku; Spikefiddlers, which requires a playing technique for the viola and later the cello that stems from Central Asian classical music; Cradle-songs, the outer parts of which feature natural harmonics in the viola and cello combined with bell-like 9th-partial harmonics from the piano; and Celebration, where, in the coda, the Flutist and Clarinetist take up Flexatones to play the closing melody. Meanwhile was commissioned by Brigham Young University’s Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for Eighth Blackbird and composed in 2007. In May 2009, Stephen Hartke was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Eighth Blackbird Missy Mazzoli (born Pennsylvania, 1980) Still Life with Avalanche (composed 2008) According to what is likely her own description, “Missy Mazzoli is a delinquent tap dancer turned insomniac composer, whose influences range from Beethoven to Balinese Gamelan.” She studied composition with John Harbison and Charles Fussell at Boston University, earning her Bachelor of Music in 2002. That year, she traveled to the Netherlands on a Fulbright Grant, studying with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. During 2004, she was a composer-in-residence at Amsterdam’s STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music). In 2006, she went on to receive her Masters of Music from Yale, where she has also taught composition. Mazzoli has been awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, grants from the American Music Center and the Jerome Foundation, and ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards in both 2007 and 2008. She serves as the Executive Director of New York’s MATA Festival of New Music, founded by Philip Glass. In 2005, she helped found the musical/political collective Free Speech Zone Productions. In 2007, Mazzoli founded the Brooklyn-based all-female quintet Victoire, devoted to playing her works. She also plays piano in the electro-acoustic band Hills Not Skyscrapers and in the Shy Girl New Music Ensemble. About Still Life with Avalanche, Mazzoli has written:

“Still Life With Avalanche is a pile of melodies collapsing in a chaotic free fall. The players layer bursts of sound over the static drones of harmonicas, sketching out a strange and evocative sonic landscape. I wrote this piece while in residence at Blue Mountain Center, a beautiful artist colony in upstate New York. Halfway through my stay there I received a phone call telling me my cousin had passed away very suddenly. There’s a moment in this piece when you can hear that phone call, when the piece changes direction, when the shock of real life works its way into the music’s joyful and exuberant exterior. This is a piece about finding beauty in chaos, and vice versa. It is dedicated to the memory (the joyful, the exuberant, and the shocking) of Andrew Rose.”

Commissioned by Eighth Blackbird, Still Life with Avalanche was composed in 2008 and received its premiere by that ensemble at the University of Richmond on March 24, 2009.

Eighth Blackbird Marc Mellits (born Baltimore, Maryland, 1966) Spam (composed 1995) Even before Mark Mellits began taking piano lessons at the age of six, he had already begun composing. His formal musical studies took place at Eastman, Yale, Cornell, and Tanglewood with such composition teachers as Samuel Adler, Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, Joseph Schwantner, Bernard Rands, and Christopher Rouse. In 2004, Mellits received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award. He is also one of the founding members of the Common Sense Composers Collective and plays keyboards in his own Mellits Consort Spam, a tribute to the canned meat product, not the electronic mail phenomenon, was composed in 1995 for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano. Mr. Mellits has supplied the following notes on the work:

“Everything happens twice in Spam. The music constantly brings itself back, repeating ideas twice but always changing it the second time. Shifting and self-reversing instrumentation continually sets the musical material off of itself, hiding and then bringing to forefront musical ideas. With a backdrop of contrasting and deceptive instrumentations, the music itself is ironically quite direct. I am attempting to speak musically at a personal level. The most important thing I want to achieve in Spam is to communicate directly with the listener, through the musicians. We are all a team: composer, performer, and audience.”

Mellits is fond of what he has called “wacky titles,” others of which include Paranoid Cheese, Desperate Miniature Humans, and The Misadventures of Soup. In a 2006 interview he is quoted as having said, “I try to choose titles that make the listener think about what it might mean. It forces one to pay close attention to the music, and it is fun for the audience to try to come up with the meaning behind the title. Sometimes there is no meaning whatsoever, sometimes there is a meaning, or more often, multiple meanings. It does not matter, because the point of these weird titles is to come up with something bizarre enough to make the listener not only laugh a little, but at the same time have fun searching for a meaning.” So, have fun.

Eighth Blackbird George Perle (born Bayonne, New Jersey, May 6, 1915; died New York, January 23, 2009) Critical Moments 2 (composed 2001) Widely honored as both a composer and a theorist, George Perle was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, May 6, 1915. He earned his B.A. at DePaul University in 1938 and his Ph.D. at New York University in 1956. Over the decades, he taught throughout the United States, from the University of Louisville (1949-1957) to UC Davis (1957-1961), from Yale (1965-1966) to UC Berkeley (1989). In 1986, he won both the Pulitzer Prize in music for his Wind Quintet no. 4 and a MacArthur Fellowship. His two-volume book The Operas of Alban Berg won the American Musicological Society’s Otto Kinkeldey Award and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Although Perle was among the earliest of American composers to find inspiration in the twelve-tone music of the Second Vienna School, his works reflect what he called “twelve-note tonality.” From 1939 onward, Perle refined his system to create what amounts to a hierarchical structure based on symmetrically related pairs among the twelve notes. As Perle conceived his system in a manner analogous to the concepts of “key” or “mode” in tonal systems, the result is a sound that avoids most of the overt difficulties many contemporary listeners associate with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Composed in 2001, Perle’s Critical Moments 2 is a set of nine brief pieces commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation for eighth blackbird, who premiered the work on March 5, 2002, in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. His first Critical Moments was composed in 1996. About Critical Moments 2, Perle has written: “The instrumentation of these nine short, self-contained, and strikingly individual movements for six players corresponds to that of Pierrot Lunaire, except for the substitution of a percussion part for the quasi-spoken (Sprechstimme) vocal part of Schoenberg’s work.” Perle died in Manhattan on January 23, 2009.

Eighth Blackbird Mark-Anthony Turnage (born Grays, Essex, England, June 10, 1960) Grazioso! (composed 2008) Mark-Anthony Turnage studied with the Scottish composer Oliver Knussen and English composer John Lambert at London’s Royal College of Music. Thanks to a Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1983, Turnage was able to study at Tanglewood with Hans Werner Henze and Gunther Schuller. Given Turnage’s relationship to Henze and Schuller, in particular, it should come as no surprise that jazz and even rock influence his musical vocabulary. Turnage has written major works for such jazz artists as drummer Peter Erskine, bassist Dave Holland, saxophonist Joe Lovano, and guitarist John Scofield. Turnage had an especially productive period between 1989 and 1993 when he was the Composer-in-Association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, under Sir Simon Rattle. He has since had similar residencies with the English National Opera, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has composed two full-length operas, Greek (based on Steven Berkoff’s modern adaptation of the Oedipus myth), and The Silver Tassie (based on the play by Sean O’Casey). He has also taken inspiration from the paintings of Heather Betts and Francis Bacon and the writings of William Golding. Concerning Grazioso!, Turnage has written the following:

“Grazioso! was commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for eighth blackbird, an ensemble I heard and admired during my visits to Chicago: I hope it captures their spirit. It is one of a group of my recent pieces (others are Out of Black Dust for the Berlin Philharmonic Brass Ensemble and Twisted Blues, Twisted Ballad for the Belcea Quartet) inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin. In this case the influence is mostly a general one, although there is a very slight allusion to the group’s 1971 Black Dog. The title refers to the first model of instrument played by Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page. Applied to this piece, it is ironic, as the music is not “grazioso” (graceful) at all. It is mostly aggressive and riff-based, using the extremes of register of the piccolo, bass clarinet, and piano, and with a percussion set-up including a pedal bass drum, tom-toms, and a large anvil.” (Courtesy of Boosey & Hawkes © 2009 Mark-Anthony Turnage)

Grazioso! received its world premiere performance by Eighth Blackbird at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on August 21, 2009. -- Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper Columbus Alive (http://www.columbusalive.com)

Porter Wright is proud to support Chamber Music Columbus’ dedication to presenting the finest chamber music artists and ensembles from around the world. Congratulations on another successful season!