David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, November 7, 2013 at 7:30 Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse 3,248th Concert
GILLES VONSATTEL, piano DANISH STRING QUARTET FREDERIK ØLAND, violin RUNE TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, violin ASBJØRN NØRGAARD, viola FREDRIK SJÖLIN, cello ROMIE DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, clarinet MICHAEL LAWRENCE, host
www.ChamberMusicSociety.org
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 10th Floor New York, NY 10023 212-875-5788 www.chambermusicsociety.org
Many donors support the artists of the Chamber Music Society Two program. This evening, we gratefully acknowledge the generosity of William and Inger G. Ginsberg and Joseph Kahn and Shannon Wu.
NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE Thursday Evening, November 7, 2013 at 7:30 GILLES VONSATTEL, piano DANISH STRING QUARTET FREDERIK ØLAND, violin RUNE TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, violin ASBJØRN NØRGAARD, viola FREDRIK SJÖLIN, cello ROMIE DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, clarinet MICHAEL LAWRENCE, host
PETER LIEBERSON (1946-2011)
Quintet for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello (2001) Celebratory and Joyful Interlude—L’istesso tempo—Fugue VONSATTEL, ØLAND, TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, NØRGAARD, SJÖLIN
HANS ABRAHAMSEN (b. 1952)
Ten Preludes for String Quartet (1973, rev. 1976) TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, ØLAND, NØRGAARD, SJÖLIN
—INTERMISSION— OSVALDO GOLIJOV (b. 1960)
The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for Clarinet and String Quartet (1994) Prelude: Calmo, Sospeso I. Agitato—Con fuoco—Maestoso—Senza misura, Oscillante II. Graceful, Densely Slow—Raucous III. K’vakarat: Sospeso—Andante, Comodo Postlude: Lento, Liberamente DE GUISE-LANGLOIS, TONSGAARD SØRENSEN, ØLAND, NØRGAARD, SJÖLIN
Join us after the concert for a discussion with the artists and Michael Lawrence. Please turn off cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices. This evening’s performance is being streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive, and is being recorded for future broadcast. Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited.
notes on the
PROGRAM
Quintet for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello Peter LIEBERSON Born October 25, 1946 in New York City. Died April 23, 2011 in Tel Aviv. Composed in 2001. Premiered on September 23, 2003 at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall by pianist Peter Serkin and the Orion String Quartet. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 16 minutes
Peter Lieberson came to prominence in the mid-1980s with his Piano Concerto and Drala for Orchestra, two major commissions from the Boston Symphony, with which he enjoyed a fruitful collaboration. Of profound influence on his music was his practice of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. Many of his works were inspired by Buddhist themes such as King Gesar (1991) and the opera Ashoka’s Dream (1997), both from a series of works based on the lives of enlightened rulers. Lyricism and vocal writing dominated the works of his last decade, reflecting the rich collaborations with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, for whom he composed Neruda Songs (winner of the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition). In addition to his associations with major orchestras such as Boston, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Lieberson enjoyed long-standing artistic collaborations with Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and
Oliver Knussen. Between 2007 and his death in 2011, he wrote numerous pieces including Remembering JFK: An American Elegy for the National Symphony Orchestra; The World in Flower for the New York Philharmonic; Remembering Schumann for Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax; The Coming of Light, a song cycle for baritone, oboe, and string quartet; the orchestral Suite from Ashoka’s Dream; and Songs of Love and Sorrow for Gerald Finley and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Lieberson’s practice of Buddhism led him first to Boulder, Colorado, then to Boston, and later to Nova Scotia when he accepted a position as International Director of Shambhala Training, a meditation program, in Halifax in 1988. There he was introduced to Cape Breton fiddling, which immigrants from the Scottish Highlands brought to the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Piano Quintet, Lieberson integrates high-energy fiddling into a concentrated, modernist language, particularly in the second movement. The first movement is based on a four-note motive performed in unison at the beginning. As it develops, its characteristic rhythm returns through the metrically shifting and virtuosic texture. The second movement, the longer of the two, begins with a dream-like Interlude before building in intensity to the main portion of the movement—a whirling set of developing fugal episodes inspired by Cape Breton fiddling.
Ten Preludes for String Quartet Hans ABRAHAMSEN Born December 23, 1952 in Copenhagen. Composed in 1973, rev. 1976. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 20 minutes Hans Abrahamsen has taken a leading role in Danish contemporary music as a performer, composer, and teacher. His earlier music often had a political purpose, while following the principles of the Neue Einfachheit, the ‘new simplicity’ of the 1960s, a reaction against Central European complexity. He later turned to a more subjective idiom that exhibits lyricism and spirituality. His output of mainly short, concentrated, instrumental compositions includes earlier works such as Stratifications for Orchestra (1973-75), Winternacht for Chamber Ensemble (1976-78), Nacht und Trompeten for Orchestra (1981), and Märchenbilder for Chamber Ensemble (1984). He composed very little during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s and subsequently his Piano Concerto of 2000 touched off a compositional renaissance that increased in momentum for eight years. His highly original work Schnee for Chamber Ensemble of 2008 began his current prolific period with works including the Third String Quartet (2008), Wald for Fifteen Players
(2009), and the Double Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Strings (2011). He received the Carl Nielsen Prize in 1989 and the Wilhelm Hansen Composer Prize in 1998 and he was a featured composer at the Witten Days for New Chamber Music in Germany in spring 2012. He studied the horn at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen and was a composition pupil of Niels Viggo Bentzon, later studying with Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Per Nørgård, and György Ligeti. Abrahamsen has taught composition and orchestration at the Royal Danish Academy of Music since 1995. Abrahamsen writes: “In all their briefness these ten ‘short-stories’ for string quartet contain almost all that can be desired of musical expressions within the relatively short period of 20 minutes. Violence expressed as joy, simplicity as necessity, contrasts as form. The eruptive side of the music is not sharply segregated from the simple, harmoniously melodious side. Each of the ‘short stories’ point forward to the next and at the same time back to its predecessor and thus makes for a composed overall-structure. That the last of the preludes is a straight Baroque-pastiche could be interpreted as an almost Holbergian moral where things are sorted out and loose ends tied. Like in the fairy-tales one could say, ‘...There, this was a true story.’”
The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for Clarinet and String Quartet Osvaldo GOLIJOV Born December 5, 1960 in La Plata, Argentina. Composed in 1994. Premiered on August 10, 1994 at the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival by clarinetist Giora Feidman and the Cleveland Quartet. First CMS performance on March 17, 1995. Duration: 33 minutes Osvaldo Golijov is known for his hybrid musical style, which combines the traditions of classical chamber, Jewish liturgical, and klezmer music with hints of the tango of Astor Piazzolla in his compositions. He is a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant Fellowship and the Vilcek Prize as well as two Grammy Awards in 2006: Best Opera Recording and Best Contemporary Composition for Ainadamar, released on Deutsche Grammophon. Recent works include Azul, a cello concerto for Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony; Rose of the Winds, premiered by the Silk Road Ensemble and the Chicago Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya; and She Was Here, a work based on Schubert lieder premiered by Dawn Upshaw and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His future works include a new opera, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Last season, Golijov held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. In 2006, Lincoln Center presented a sold out festival entitled The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov featuring multiple performances of his
works over the course of two months. He has composed soundtracks for numerous films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth and the recently released Tetro. He is the Loyola Professor of Music at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he has taught since 1991. Golijov writes: “Eight centuries ago Isaac The Blind, the great kabbalist rabbi of Provence, dictated a manuscript in which he asserted that all things and events in the universe are a product of combinations of the Hebrew alphabet’s letters: ‘Their root is in a name, for the letters are like branches, which appear in the manner of flickering flames, mobile, and nevertheless linked to the coal.’ His conviction still resonates today: don’t we have scientists who believe that the clue to our life and fate is hidden in other codes? “Isaac’s lifelong devotion to his art is as striking as that of string quartets and klezmer musicians. In their search for something that arises from tangible elements but transcends them, they are all reaching a state of communion. Gershom Scholem, the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, says that ‘Isaac and his disciples do not speak of ecstasy, of a unique act of stepping outside oneself in which human consciousness abolishes itself. Debhequth (communion) is a constant state, nurtured and renewed through meditation.’ If communion is not the reason, how else would one explain the strange life that Isaac led, or the decades during which groups of four souls dissolve their individuality into
single, higher organisms, called string quartets? How would one explain the chain of klezmer generations that, while blessing births, weddings, and burials, were trying to discover the melody that could be set free from itself and become only air, spirit, ruakh? “The movements of this work sound to me as if written in three of the different languages spoken by the Jewish people throughout our history. This somehow reflects the composition’s epic nature. I hear the prelude and the first movement, the most ancient, in Arameic; the second movement is in Yiddish, the rich and fragile language of a long exile; the third movement and postlude are in sacred Hebrew. “The prelude and the first movement simultaneously explore two prayers in different ways: The quartet plays the first part of the central prayer of the High Holidays, ‘We will observe the mighty holiness of this day...,’ while the clarinet dreams the motifs from ‘Our Father, Our King.’ The second movement is based on ‘The Old Klezmer Band,’ a traditional dance tune, which is surrounded here by contrasting manifestations of its own halo. The third movement was written
before all the others. It is an instrumental version of K’vakarat, a work that I wrote a few years ago for Kronos and Cantor Misha Alexandrovich....This movement, together with the postlude, bring to conclusion the prayer left open in the first movement: ‘...Thou pass and record, count and visit, every living soul, appointing the measure of every creature’s life and decreeing its destiny.’ “But blindness is as important in this work as dreaming and praying. I had always the intuition that, in order to achieve the highest possible intensity in a performance, musicians should play, metaphorically speaking, ‘blind.’ That is why, I think, all legendary bards in cultures around the world, starting with Homer, are said to be blind. ‘Blindness’ is probably the secret of great string quartets, those who don’t need their eyes to communicate among them, with the music, or the audience. My homage to all of them and Isaac of Provence is this work for blind musicians, so they can play it by heart. Blindness, then, reminded me of how to compose music as it was in the beginning: An art that springs from and relies on our ability to sing and hear, with the power to build castles of sound in our memories.”
meet tonight’s
ARTISTS
Embodying the quintessential elements of a chamber music ensemble, the Danish String Quartet has established a reputation for possessing an integrated sound, impeccable intonation, and judicious balance. Since making its debut in 2002 at the Copenhagen Festival, the group of musical friends has demonstrated a passion for Scandinavian composers, who they frequently incorporate into adventurous contemporary programs, while also proving skilled and profound performers of the classical masters. Last season, The New York Times selected their concert as a highlight of the year: “One of the most powerful renditions of Beethoven’s Opus 132 String Quartet that I’ve heard live or on a recording.” Since winning the Danish Radio P2 Chamber Music Competition in 2004, the quartet has been in great demand throughout Denmark and in October 2013 it presented the seventh annual DSQ-Musifest, a three-day festival held in Copenhagen that brings together musical friends the quartet has met on its travels. Outside of its homeland the quartet will perform in the UK, Spain, Germany, Northern Ireland, Australia, Norway, Poland, and the US during the 2013-14 season. In 2009 the Danish String Quartet won First Prize in the 11th London International String Quartet Competition, as well as four additional prizes from the same jury. This competition is now called the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition and the Danish String Quartet has performed at the famed hall on several occasions. It will return to Wigmore Hall in April 2014 to perform
a program of Beethoven and Haydn. The quartet is a member of Chamber Music Society Two and a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. In 2006, the Danish String Quartet was Danish Radio’s Artist-in-Residence, giving it the opportunity to record all of Carl Nielsen’s string quartets in the Danish Radio Concert Hall, subsequently released to critical acclaim on the Dacapo label in 2007 and 2008. In 2012 the Danish String Quartet released an equally-acclaimed recording of Haydn and Brahms quartets on the German AVI-music label. It recently recorded works by Brahms and Fuchs with awardwinning clarinetist Sebastian Manz at the Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich to be released by AVI-music in early 2014. The quartet’s love of Scandinavian music has been captured in a recording of folk music that it will release on its own label in spring 2014. Violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and violist Asbjørn Nørgaard met as children at a music summer camp where they played both soccer and music together, eventually making the transition into a serious string quartet in their teens and studying at Copenhagen’s Royal Academy of Music. In 2008 the three Danes were joined by Norwegian cellist Fredrik Sjölin. The Danish String Quartet was primarily taught and mentored by Professor Tim Frederiksen. Praised as “extraordinary” and “a formidable clarinetist” by The New York Times, Romie de Guise-Langlois has appeared as a soloist with the
Houston Symphony and the Burlington Chamber Orchestra, and at Music@ Menlo and Banff Center for the Arts. She is a winner of the 2011 Astral Artists’ National Audition and was awarded first prize in the 2009 Houston Symphony Ima Hogg competition; she was additionally a first prize winner of Woolsey Hall Competition at Yale University, the McGill University Classical Concerto Competition, and the Canadian Music Competition. An avid chamber musician, she has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia and Boston chamber music societies, the 92nd Street Y, the Kennedy Center, and Chamber Music Northwest. She has performed as principal clarinetist for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the New Haven and Stamford symphony orchestras, and The Knights Chamber Orchestra. A native of Montreal, Ms. de Guise-Langlois earned degrees from McGill University and the Yale School of Music, where she studied under David Shifrin, and she is an alumna of The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute. She is currently adjunct professor of clarinet at Kean and Montclair universities and is a member of Chamber Music Society Two. Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of uncommon breadth with repertoire that ranges from J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue to the complete works of Xenakis. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, he recently made his Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, and
San Francisco Symphony debuts, while performing recitals and chamber music at the Tonhalle Zürich, Ravinia, Wigmore Hall, the Gilmore festival, the Lucerne festival, and the Munich Gasteig. Deeply committed to the performance of contemporary works, he has premiered numerous works both in the United States and Europe and worked closely with notable composers such as Ned Rorem, Jörg Widmann, Nico Muhly, Heinz Holliger, and George Benjamin. A former member of Chamber Music Society Two, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the 2013-14 season. His 2011 recording for the Honens/Naxos label of music by Debussy, Honegger, Holliger, and Ravel was named one of Time Out New York’s classical albums of the year. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Jerome Lowenthal. Mr. Vonsattel is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Michael Lawrence serves as The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Director of Artistic Planning and Initiatives, working alongside Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han on all CMS programming, recordings, residency activities, touring projects, and radio broadcasts. In addition, he often hosts pre and postconcert discussions with composers and artists, emcees CMS events, and gives lectures. Since his arrival at CMS in 2007, he has helped institute a number of new ventures, including teaching and performing projects in Taiwan and Korea; annual residencies in Chicago,
IL, Grand Rapids, MI, and Athens, GA; and a recently announced summer home for CMS at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In Europe, he has developed ongoing relationships with London’s Wigmore Hall and multiple European festivals. Previously he served as Director of Artistic Programs at the League of American Orchestras, where he directed conductor and composer programs, including the American Conducting Fellows Program, the National Conducting Institute in partnership with the National Symphony Orchestra, the composer-in-residence
program Music Alive!, and the national commissioning project, Ford Made in America. He has appeared as a guest speaker at conferences and has designed and led several seminars. As Manager of Artists and Programs for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, he programmed classical, pops, parks, and festival concerts, and regularly hosted the symphony’s pre-concert Classical Conversations. In 1999, he was selected to participate in the League of American Orchestras’ prestigious Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, with placements at the Aspen Music Festival, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Virginia Symphony.
upcoming
EVENTS
MASTER CLASS WITH ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT
Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 11:00 AM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio
ROSE STUDIO CONCERT
Thursday, November 14, 2013, 6:30 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio Works by Beethoven and Hindemith
LATE NIGHT ROSE
Thursday, November 14, 2013, 9:00 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio Watch this performance online at www.chambermusicsociety.org/watchlive
MEET THE MUSIC! A TRILLING EVENT
Sunday, November 17, 2013, 2:00 PM • Alice Tully Hall Concerts for kids ages 6 & up and their families
THE VIRTUOSO CLARINETIST David Shifrin and Friends Tuesday, November 19, 2013, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall Pre-concert composer chat at 6:30 PM in the Rose Studio