Rose Studio Concert - February 12, 2015

David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors

ROSE STUDIO CONCERT Thursday Evening, February 12, 2015 at 6:30 Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio 3,403rd Concert

ORION WEISS, piano NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT, violin PAUL NEUBAUER, viola MIHAI MARICA, cello

45th Anniversary Season

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 the Khalil Rizk Fund and The Winston Foundation.

The Chamber Music Society is deeply grateful to Board member Paul Gridley for his very generous gift of the Hamburg Steinway & Sons model "D" concert grand piano we are privileged to hear this evening.

ROSE STUDIO CONCERT Thursday Evening, February 12, 2015 at 6:30 ORION WEISS, piano NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT, violin PAUL NEUBAUER, viola MIHAI MARICA, cello

WOLFGANG Trio in G major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, AMADEUS MOZART K. 564 (1788)

(1756-1791) Allegro Tema con variazioni: Andante Allegretto WEISS, DAUTRICOURT, MARICA

RICHARD STRAUSS Quartet in C minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, (1864-1949) and Cello, Op. 13 (1883-84) Allegro Scherzo: Presto Andante Finale: Vivace WEISS, DAUTRICOURT, NEUBAUER, MARICA

Please turn off cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices.

Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited.

notes on the

PROGRAM

Trio in G major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, K. 564 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg.

Died December 5, 1791 in Vienna.

Composed in 1788.

First CMS performance on March 17, 1978.

Duration: 16 minutes The city of Prague fell in love with Mozart in January 1787. His Figaro met with a resounding success when he conducted it there on January 17th, and so great was the acclaim that was awarded his Symphony in D major (K. 504) when it was heard only two days later that it has since borne the name of the Bohemian capital. He returned to Vienna in early February with a signed contract to provide Prague with a new opera for its next season. The opera was Don Giovanni, and Mozart was back in Prague on October 1, 1787 to oversee its production. Again, he triumphed.

He was invited to take up residence in Prague, and he must have been tempted to abandon Vienna, where his career seemed stymied and the bill-collectors harassed him incessantly. Still, after six weeks away, he returned to the Imperial city for at least two pressing reasons. On the personal side, his wife, Constanze, was due to deliver their fourth child in December, and she wished to be close to her family for the birth. (A girl, Theresa, was born on December 27th.)

Professionally, the venerable Christoph Willibald Gluck was reported near death, and Mozart, who had been lobbying to obtain a position at the Habsburg court such as Gluck held, wanted to be at hand when the job, as seemed imminent, came open.

Mozart arrived back in Vienna on November 15, 1787, one day after Gluck died. Three weeks later, he was named Court Chamber Music Composer

by Emperor Joseph II, though he was disappointed with both the salary and the duties. He was to receive only 800 florins a year, less than half of the 2,000 florins that Gluck had earned, and, rather than requiring him to compose operas, a form in which he had proven his eminence and to which he longed to fully devote himself, the contract specified he would compose only dances for the Imperial balls. Still, the income from the court position, the generous amount he had been paid for Don Giovanni, and his fees for various freelance jobs should have been enough to adequately support his family. However, his desire to put up a good front in public with elegant clothes, expensive entertaining, and even loans to needy (or conniving) musicians, largely to prove to the world that he could handle his affairs after the death of his father the preceding year, drained his resources.

Mozart pinned his hopes for the amelioration of his financial debacle

on the introduction of Don Giovanni to Vienna. This production took place on May 7, 1788, but the piece was received coolly. “The opera is divine, finer perhaps than Figaro,” allowed the Emperor, “but it is not the meat for my Viennese.” Within a month began the pathetic series of dunning letters to his well-to-do fellow Mason Michael Puchberg requesting loans. To his credit, Puchberg responded generously, though he was certainly a shrewd enough businessman to realize that repayment was unlikely. Only two weeks after the first letter, Mozart was back asking for more money to settle his overdue rent.

“My landlord was so pressing that I was obliged to pay him on the spot (in order to avoid any unpleasantness), which caused me great embarrassment,” he confided to his benefactor. On June 17th, his bill settled, he moved out of his apartment in Vienna to cheaper lodgings in the suburb of Währing. “I have worked more during the ten days that I have lived here than in the two months in my former apartment,” he explained to Puchberg on June 27th. “If dismal thoughts did not so often intrude (which I strive forcibly to dismiss), I should be very well off here, for I live agreeably, comfortably, and, above all, cheaply.”

Despite the disappointments inflicted upon him by the fickle tastes of the Viennese, his precarious pecuniary position, and an alarming decline in his health and that of his wife, Mozart was still working miracles in his music.

Between June and August 1788, he composed the incomparable trilogy of symphonies that were to be his

last works in the form (E-flat major, K. 543; G minor, K. 550; and C major, the “Jupiter,” K. 551). A series of vocal canons (K. 553-562) and the remarkable E-flat major Divertimento for String Trio, written for Puchberg in appreciation of his many kindnesses, followed in September, and in October, Mozart composed the Trio in G major (K. 564) for the convivial combination of piano, violin, and cello, then one of the most popular home entertainment genres among the dilettantes of Vienna.

Mozart’s last work in the form, the G major Trio, completed on October 27, 1788, was apparently based on a piano sonata. As was characteristic of the trio genre in the late 18th century, the strings are used largely to support and accompany the piano rather than to participate in developmental dialogue with it. The trio is sunny and untroubled throughout, clear in form and beguiling in melodic content. The first movement is in a crystalline sonata structure, whose tidy main theme is presented at the outset by the piano. After an accumulation of rhythmic energy and a tiny pause, the violin is entrusted with the subsidiary motive. The central section is more figural than developmental, with only passing references to the earlier thematic material. The recapitulation proceeds as expected, except that the return of the second theme is assigned to the cello.

The second movement is a set of a half-dozen variations on the folkish theme announced by the piano. The trio closes with a perky rondo based on a graceful melody in the rhythm of the Italian siciliano. 

Quartet in C minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 13 Richard STRAUSS Born June 11, 1864 in Munich.

Died September 9, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Composed in 1883-84.

Premiered on December 8, 1885 in Weimar by the members of the Halir Quartet and the composer as pianist.

First CMS performance on February 23, 2001.

Duration: 37 minutes Franz Strauss, Richard’s father, one of the outstanding virtuosos of his day, was principal hornist of the Munich Court Orchestra for over 40 years.

Franz was also a musician of the most firmly held opinions, all of them reactionary, who believed, despite his glorious performances of many recent compositions, that little good music had been written after the death of Schumann. Mozart and Beethoven were the principal gods in his cramped musical pantheon, with Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and, perhaps, Brahms allowed tentative positions on the front stoop. Wagner, Liszt, and Bruckner were anathema. It is therefore hardly surprising that young Richard was trained in the most conservative musical idioms, becoming thoroughly (and exclusively) versed in the style, forms, and ethos of High Classicism.

Strauss, nurtured on the conservative styles espoused by his father, showed

a precocious talent for musical composition. His first published work, the Festival March, appeared in 1876, when he had ripened to the age of 12; he wrote an Overture in A in 1879 and a string quartet the following year. His Symphony in D minor was introduced in March 1881 by the Munich Court Orchestra conducted by the renowned Hermann Levi, who was to lead the premiere of Parsifal 16 months later.

The successful premiere of his Serenade for Winds, in Dresden on November 27, 1882, brought him to the attention of the noted pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow, who asked the young musician to write another work for winds (the Suite, Op. 4) for his Meiningen Orchestra, and then invited him to make his debut as a conductor in its premiere on November 18, 1884 in Munich. A year later Strauss was engaged as co-conductor with Bülow of the Meiningen Orchestra, and only a month later he became its sole music director. He was 21.

Strauss completed the C minor Piano Quartet shortly before his twentieth birthday (June 11, 1884), and submitted the score to a competition for such works sponsored by the Berlin Tonkünstlerverein; it won. The opening movement focuses on three principal ideas: a scalar phrase presented by unison strings at the outset; a tender, short-breathed melody in triplet rhythms initiated by the piano; and a bold striding motive, again stated by unison strings.

The development gives dramatically

heightened expression to the themes.

The recapitulation allows broad elaboration of the materials before an extensive coda in quick rhythms closes the movement. The gracefully tripping music of the Scherzo is contrasted by lyrical passages reminiscent of a Viennese waltz. The Andante, with its long, carefully sculpted melodies, rich

harmonizations, and wide structural arches, looks forward to the tone poems and operas of Strauss’ later years.

The bounding rhythms and leaping melodies of the Finale bespeak youthful exuberance, for which long melodic phrases and some rather calculated thematic working-out provide stylistic and expressive balance.  ©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

meet tonight’s

ARTISTS

Voted ADAMI Classical Discovery of the Year at the Midem in Cannes and awarded the Sacem Georges Enesco Prize, Nicolas Dautricourt is one of the most brilliant and engaging French violinists of his generation. He appears at major international venues, including the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Tchaikovsky Hall, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and appears at many festivals such as Lockenhaus, Music@Menlo, Radio-France/Montpellier, Ravinia, Sintra, and Davos. In January he made his US concerto debut with the Detroit Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. He also has performed as a soloist with the Orchestre National de France, Quebec Symphony, Sinfonia Varsovia, Mexico Philharmonic, NHK Tokyo Chamber Orchestra, the Kanazawa Orchestral Ensemble, Belgrade Radio Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Nice Philharmonic, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Novosibirsk Chamber Orchestra, and European Camerata, under conductors Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Michael Francis, Dennis Russell Davies, Michiyoshi Inoue, Kazuki Yamada, Yuri Bashmet, Fabien Gabel, Fayçal Karoui, and Mark Foster. He appears in such jazz festivals as Jazz à Vienne, Jazz in Marciac, Sud-Tyroler Jazz Festival, Jazz San Javier, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and the European Jazz Festival in Athens.

Finalist and prize-winner in numerous international violin contests, such as the Wieniawski, Lipizer, Belgrade, and Viotti competitions, he has studied with Philip Hirschhorn, Miriam Fried, and Jean-Jacques Kantorow, and became artistic director of Les Moments Musicaux de Gerberoy in 2007. He is a member of Chamber Music Society Two and his three-year residency is the first to be supported by the Khalil Rizk Fund. He currently plays a magnificent instrument by Antonio Stradivarius (Cremona 1713).

Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a First Prize winner of the “Dr. Luis Sigall” International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile and the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has appeared at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals among others where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer, and he is a member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. Mr. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music where he was awarded the Master of Music and Artist Diploma degrees. He is a member of Chamber Music Society Two and his three-year residency is supported by The Winston Foundation.

Violist Paul Neubauer's exceptional musicality and effortless playing distinguish him as one of his generation's quintessential artists. This past April, he gave the world premiere of a new viola concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra followed by performances with the Chautauqua Symphony and the Idyllwild Arts Orchestra. This consortium commission culminates this season with his Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra debut with conductor Jeffrey Kahane.

Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21, he has appeared as soloist with over 100 orchestras including the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki philharmonics; National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth symphonies; and Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle orchestras. A two-time Grammy nominee, he recorded pieces that were composed for him: Joan Tower’s Purple Rhapsody for viola and orchestra, and Wild Purple for solo viola; Viola Rhapsody, a concerto by Henri Lazarof; and Soul Garden for viola and chamber ensemble by Derek Bermel. Mr. Neubauer gave the world premiere of the revised Bartók Viola Concerto as well as concertos by Tower, Penderecki, Picker, Jacob, Lazarof, Suter, Müller-Siemens, Ott, and Friedman and is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Mannes College. He performs in a trio with soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, with a wide range of repertoire including salon style songs, and has performed with the Chamber Music Society since 1985.

One of the most sought-after soloists in his generation of young American musicians, the pianist Orion Weiss has performed with the major American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic. His deeply felt and exceptionally crafted performances go far beyond his technical mastery and have won him worldwide acclaim. The 2014-15 season features his third performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as a North American tour with the world-famous Salzburg Marionette theater in an enhanced piano recital of Debussy’s La Boîte à Joujoux. The 2013-14 season featured him with orchestras around North America, including the Milwaukee and Vancouver symphonies, and the 2012-13 season saw repeat engagements with the Baltimore Symphony and New World Symphony. In 2012 he released a recital album of Dvořák, Prokofiev, and Bartók, and also spearheaded a recording project of the complete Gershwin works for piano and orchestra with his longtime collaborators the Buffalo Philharmonic and JoAnn Falletta. Named the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year in September 2010, Mr. Weiss made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as a last-minute replacement for Leon Fleisher in the summer of 2011. In 2004, he graduated from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.

Winter-Spring 2015

WATCH LIVE Enjoy a front row seat from anywhere in the world. View chamber music events streamed live to your computer or mobile device, and available for streaming on demand for the following 24 hours. Relax, browse the program, and experience the Chamber Music Society like never before.

2/18/15 2/25/15 2/26/15 3/12/15 3/24/15 4/2/15 4/16/15 4/20/15 4/30/15 5/7/15 5/13/15

6:30 PM 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 11:00 AM 7:30 PM 9:00 PM 11:00 AM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 11:00 AM

Inside Chamber Music Inside Chamber Music Orion String Quartet Plays Haydn One Piano, Four Hands Master Class with Paul Watkins New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse Late Night Rose Master Class with Cho-Liang Lin Art of the Recital: Gilbert Kalish New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse Master Class with Jason Vieaux

All events are free to watch.

View full program details online. www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive

upcoming

EVENTS

INSIDE CHAMBER MUSIC

Wednesday, February 18, 2015, 6:30 PM • Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio • SOLD OUT Focus on Brahms’ Quintet in F minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 34.

This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive

THE DANISH STRING QUARTET

Friday, February 20, 2015, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall The Danish String Quartet, called "superb" by The New York Times, offers a lively interpretation of Haydn, Nielsen, and Brahms. Joined by pianist Jon Kimura Parker.

SCHUBERT’S WINTERREISE

Tuesday, February 24, 2015, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall Schubert’s vocal masterpiece, Winterreise, tells the poignant story of a young man’s cold and lonely winter journey.

Pre-concert lecture at 6:15 PM in the Rose Studio. $8 for ticket holders.

If the Chamber Music Society has played a part in your past‌ play a part in its future.

February is PLANNED GIVING MONTH at CMS The Chamber Music Society honors loyal patrons who have chosen to become guardians of this intimate art form with a unique membership in the Alice Tully Circle.

It is important that the Alice Tully Circle continues to grow.

We invite you to consider a planned gift to the Chamber Music Society. Members of the Alice Tully Circle receive invitations to special receptions and concerts throughout each season.

For more information about including the Chamber Music Society in your will and other deferred gifts, please call Sharon Griffin, Director of Development, at 212-875-5782.

With special thanks to these Alice Tully Circle members: Anonymous (3) Mrs. Marguerite S. Bedell Dr. Jerome Bruner Eliane Bukantz Anitra Christoffel-Pell Robert J. Cubitto and Ellen R. Nadler Ms. Carlotta Eisen Mr. Stuart M. Fischman Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Giron Ms. Dalia Carmel Goldstein Anthony C. Gooch Dr. Edith Schwartz Goodman Mrs. Mary Scott Guest

Warren Ilchman Frederick L. Jacobson Thomas Jambois Peter Kennard Hans and Donna Kilian Dr. and Mrs. Thomas C. King Mr. and Mrs. William Lembeck Helen Brown Levine Dr. and Mrs. Martin L. Nass Eva Popper Martin Riskin Mrs. Robert Schuur Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Stockwell, Jr. Sally Wardwell