THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
The Dohnányi Chamber Players
Ian Hobson, Artistic Director
Special Summer Chamber Concert: “Schumann for 3, 4, and 5”
featuring
Andrés Cárdenes, Violin
Jun Iwasaki, Violin
Csaba Erdélyi, Viola
Ko Iwasaki, Cello
Ian Hobson, Piano
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
Phantasiestücke, Op. 88
PROGRAM
“Schumann
for 3, 4, and 5”
Robert Schumann
1. Romanze (1810–1856)
2. Humoreske
3. Duett
4. Finale
Piano Quartet in E-Flat major, Op. 47
Jun Iwasaki, violin; Ko Iwasaki, cello Ian Hobson, piano
Sostenuto assai — Allegro ma non troppo
Scherzo. Molto vivace
Andante cantabile
Finale. Vivace
Andrés Cárdenes, violin; Csaba Erdélyi, viola Ko Iwasaki, cello; Ian Hobson, piano
INTERMISSION
Piano Quintet in E-Flat major, Op. 44
Allegro brillante
In Modo d’una Marcia. Un poco largamente.
Scherzo. Molto vivace
Allegro ma non troppo
Andrés Cárdenes, violin; Jun Iwasaki, violin
Csaba Erdélyi, viola; Ko Iwasaki, cello Ian Hobson, piano
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Grammy-nominated Andrés Cárdenes has parlayed his myriad talents into one of classical music’s most versatile careers. A personally charismatic artist, Cuban-born Cárdenes has garnered international acclaim from critics and audiences alike for his compelling solo violin, conducting, viola, chamber music, concertmaster and recorded performances.
Since capturing the Second Prize in the 1982 Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition in Moscow, Cárdenes has appeared as soloist with over one hundred orchestras on four continents, including those of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Moscow, Bavarian Radio, Dallas, Helsinki, Shanghai, Caracas and Barcelona. He has collaborated with many of the world’s greatest conductors, including Lorin Maazel, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Mariss Jansons, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir André Previn, Leonard Slatkin, Jaap van Zweden, David Zinman, and Manfred Honeck.
Cárdenes is in great demand as a conductor. His appearances with the Bavarian Radio, Detroit Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, Sinfónica Nacíonal de Bogota, San Diego Symphony, Sinfónica de Caracas, Orquesta Fundacíon Beethoven (Santiago, Chile), and the OFUNAM Orchestra of Mexico City have received rave reviews. Headlines proclaimed “Cárdenes conducts Pittsburgh Symphony with epic mastery” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) after stepping in for an ailing Robert Spano. Cárdenes served as Artistic Director and Leader of the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra from its inception in 1999 through 2009. He is currently Music Director of Orchestral Studies at Carnegie Mellon University.
A prolific recording artist, Cárdenes has interpreted concertos by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Barber, Balada, Chausson, Gutíerrez, and David Stock on the Artek, Naxos and Albany labels. He has recorded the complete works for violin by Leonardo Balada, and the complete violin and piano sonatas by Hindemith and Schubert. This year and next Cárdenes continues his project to record many standard and contemporary concerti. Cárdenes’ discography includes over three dozen recordings of concerti, sonatas, short works, orchestral and chamber music on the Ocean, Naxos, Sony, Arabesque, Albany, Delos, RCA, ProArte, Telarc, Artek, Melodya, and Enharmonic labels.
Cárdenes is the co-founder and Artistic and Music Director of the Josef Gingold Chamber Music Festival of Miami, a program geared towards educating young musicians in chamber music and solo repertoire, inspired by the teachings, legacy, humanity and ideology of the legendary violinist. He has been the violinist of the world-renowned Díaz Trio since 1995 and the Carnegie Mellon Trio since 1989.
A champion of contemporary composers, Cárdenes has premiered and/or recorded over 60 works by diverse composers such as Ricardo Lorenz, David Stock, Leonardo Balada, Elbert Lechtman, Beatrice Bilbao, Marilyn Taft Thomas, Erberk Eryilmaz, Ramiro Cortés, Roberto Sierra, and Gunther Schuller.
Cárdenes has served on the juries of the Tchaikovsky, Schoenfeld, Osaka, and Oliveira International Violin Competitions, and thrice served as President of the Jury of the Stradivarius International Violin Competition. He was honored to serve as President of the Jury for the Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition in 2023.
Cárdenes’ renowned teaching and pedagogical career, which began as an assistant to his teacher and mentor Josef Gingold at Indiana University, is now in its 47th year. Today, Cárdenes continues Professor Gingold’s legacy and discipline while holding the title of Distinguished Professor of Violin Studies and the Dorothy Richard Starling/ Alexander Speyer Jr. Endowed Chair at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music. In addition, Cárdenes gives master classes regularly at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Masterclass Al-Andalus, Sibelius Akademie, Manhattan School, Shanghai Conservatory, Moscow and St. Petersburg Conservatories, Cleveland Institute, Curtis Institute, and at virtually every major university and conservatory in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.
Among his many humanitarian awards are the Kollell Foundation Jewish Learning Award, the Kindness Award from Chabad, Mexican Red Cross and the UNICEF Cultural Ambassadorship.
Jun Iwasaki serves as Concertmaster of the Kansas City Symphony. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music’s prestigious Concertmaster Academy, he has been hailed for his combination of dazzling technique and lyrical musicianship. In a review of Iwasaki’s performance at the Mimir Chamber Music Festival, the Fort Worth Star Telegram called him “the magician of the evening. He could reach into his violin and pull out bouquets of sound, then reach behind your ear and touch your soul.”
Prior to joining the Kansas City Symphony, Iwasaki served as concertmaster of the Nashville Symphony from 20112022 and the Oregon Symphony from 2007-11. Throughout his career, he has appeared with numerous other orchestras, including the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Oregon, Symphony, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Blossom Festival Orchestra, Rome (Georgia) Philharmonic, New Bedford Symphony, Canton Symphony, Richardson Symphony, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Plano Symphony Orchestra and the Huntsville Symphony. In addition, he has served as guest concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra (Portugal), São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), Santa Barbara Symphony, National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa), and Canton (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra.
As chamber musician, Jun has been a part of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Chamber Music Northwest, Mainly Mozart, Chamber Music International, and Mimir Chamber Music Festival among others.
In addition to teaching at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, Iwasaki also served as the artistic director of Portland Summer Ensembles in Portland, Oregon, a workshop for young musicians focusing on chamber music.
Csaba Erdélyi, Principal Viola of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, was born in Budapest, Hungary. He made musical history in 1972, when he won the prestigious Carl Flesch Violin Competition with the viola – the first, and so far, only time. The Flesch Prize launched Erdélyi’s international career. In the same year, he was invited by Joseph Szigeti and Rudolph Serkin to the Marlboro Festival (USA) where he also worked with Pablo Casals.
A viola student of Pál Lukács, Yehudi Menuhin, and Bruno Giuranna, Erdélyi became Menuhin’s partner performing concertos and chamber music together in several countries. Menuhin wrote to Benjamin Britten: “Erdélyi is an invaluable link between the two great musical cultures of Eastern and Western Europe.”
As a soloist, Erdélyi has recorded for Concordance, Decca, Hungaroton, Lyrita, Nimbus, and Philips records. He was the viola soloist in the film score of AMADEUS, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martinin-the-Fields. He has played viola concertos with the leading British orchestras in the Royal Festival Hall and on the BBC Promenade Concerts, as well as in major international music festivals.
Erdélyi has performed in concerts and recordings with such world-renowned soloists as Rachel Barton, Joshua Bell, Maurice Gendron, Franco Gulli, Ian Hobson, Yo-Yo Ma, George Malcolm, Yehudi Menuhin, Jessye Norman, András Schiff, and Sándor Végh. Csaba Erdélyi was Principal Viola of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London from 1974 to 1978 under principal conductor, Riccardo Muti and chief guest conductor, Lorin Maazel. He was guest principal violist of the BBC Symphony, invited by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
Erdélyi was the viola player of the London-based Chilingirian Quartet, one of the world’s most celebrated and widely travelled ensembles (1980-1987). Their recordings can be found on EMI and CRD labels. Erdélyi has a reputation as an extremely dedicated and caring pedagogue who attracts fine students from all over the world. In the USA he
taught at Indiana University, Rice University, Butler University, Bowling Green State University as professor of viola and chamber music. A large number of Erdélyi’s former students can be found in prestigious positions in music performance and education all over the world.
For over 20 years, Erdélyi researched the original manuscript of the Bartók Viola Concerto, the composer’s last masterpiece left in its first draft. He corrected the mistakes of the first edition and with the help of world-renowned Bartók scholar, Elliott Antokoletz as well as composer, György Kurtág, he restored and orchestrated the work in the purest and most authentic manner. Former violist of the Kolisch-quartet, Eugene Lehner, friend of Bartók, praised Erdélyi’s score and recording as “an invaluable service to Bartók and all violists.” The full score and viola-piano reduction are published by Promethean Editions (www.prometheaneditions.com), and a CD was recorded in 2001 with Erdélyi and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with conductor Marc Taddei on Concordance label (www. concordance.co.nz) which continues to receive worldwide professional acclaim.
Csaba Erdélyi considers himself a world citizen and holds citizenships in his native Hungary, Great Britain and the United States. His favorite instrument is a magnificent viola made for him by master luthier Joseph Curtin in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
First-Prize winner of the Japan National Music Competition in 1960, Ko Iwasaki studied cello with Hideo Saito. After graduating from the Toho Music School in Japan, he continued his studies at the Juilliard School under Leonard Rose. In 1965 he made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series. Later, he studied with Harvey Shapiro and Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico. He has won top prizes in numerous international cello competitions such as the Vienna, Munich, Budapest, Cassado, and Tchaikovsky competitions.
In 1971, he received the Arts Minister Award for Young Artists and the Arts Festival Record Prize for his performance of contemporary Japanese cello music. In 1972, he made his European debut with the London Symphony Orchestra with Andre Previn.
Since 1974, he has been based in the United States where he has performed both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, as well as in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Japan. In addition, he has participated in numerous festivals, including Marlboro, Aspen, Santa Fe, Lockenhaus, and Kuhumo. He is also a founder of the Tokyo Chamber Soloists and was a director of the Okinawa Moon Beach Music Camp & Festival in Japan. Since 1995, he has performed the entire cycle of Beethoven String Quartets as a member of the Japan String Quartet.
He has taught at Illinois State University, University of Illinois, and the Southern Methodist University. He also has been highly praised for his master classes conducted at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the World Cello Congress, universities and summer music festivals. Since 1990, he has been invited to serve as a jury at many international competitions including the Cassado Cello Competition, the Munich International Competition, and the Tchaikovsky Competition. Residing in Dallas, Iwasaki continues to pursue an active concert career, while teaching at the Toho Conservatory Graduate School in Japan.
Pianist and conductor Ian Hobson—called “powerful and persuasive” by The New York Times—is internationally recognized for his command of an extraordinarily comprehensive repertoire, his consummate performances of the Romantic masters, his deft and idiomatic readings of neglected piano music old and new, and his assured conducting from both the piano and the podium.
As guest soloist, Hobson has appeared with many of the world’s major orchestras; in the United States these include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Florida,
Houston, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and the American Symphony Orchestra and Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico. Abroad, he has been heard with Great Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Hallé Orchestra, ORFVienna, Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Moscow Chopin Orchestra, Israeli Sinfonietta, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Most recently, Hobson appeared in solo recital at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, presented by Florida State University. The program, which featured works by Brahms and the contemporary American composer Robert Chumbley, also celebrated the composer Ernst von Dohnányi. Hobson has also recently released the final two volumes of his complete Frédéric Chopin edition on the Zephyr label.
An artist of prodigious energy and resource, Hobson has to date amassed a discography of some 60 releases, including the complete edition of the works of Frédéric Chopin, the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schumann, and a complete edition of Brahms’s variations for piano.
Since his debut in the double role of conductor and soloist with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1996, Hobson has been invited to lead the English Chamber Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia (including an appearance at Carnegie Hall), the Pomeranian Philharmonic (Poland), the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra (Bass Hall), and the Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel, among others.
Hobson is known for artfully programming recital series showcasing the complete piano works of noted composers, matching the subtleties of the composer’s works for each concert. He recently completed a six-concert series at New York’s downtown venue SubCulture entitled “Sound Impressions,” featuring the complete solo piano repertoire of Ravel and Debussy. Similar artistic endeavors include Hobson’s 2015 “Uptown/Downtown: Preludes, Etudes, and Variations” series—focusing on outstanding examples of each genre by Fauré, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Szymanowski, with world premieres by Yehudi Wyner (Preludes), Robert Chumbley (Etudes), and Stephen Taylor (Variations)—as well as his performance of the complete solo piano works and chamber music with piano of Johannes Brahms.
Hobson continues in the role of music director of the Sinfonia da Camera, a professional chamber orchestra affiliated with the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and College of Fine and Applied Arts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Hobson is the Swanlund Emeritus Professor of Music. He is also a Professor of Music at Florida State University.
In addition to being a celebrated performer, Hobson is a dedicated scholar and educator who has pioneered renewed interest in the music of such lesser known masters as Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Hummel. He has also been an effective advocate of works written expressly for him by a number of today’s noted composers, including Robert Chumbley, Benjamin Lees, John Gardner, David Liptak, Alan Ridout, and Yehudi Wyner.
Hobson is also a much sought-after judge for national and international competitions and has been invited to join numerous juries, among them the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (at the specific request of Cliburn), the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Poland, the Chopin Competition in Florida, the Leeds Piano Competition in the U.K., and the Schumann International Competition in Germany. In 2005 Hobson served as Chairman of the Jury for the Cleveland International Competition and the Kosciuszko Competition in New York; in 2008 he was Chairman of Jury of the New York Piano Competition; and in 2010 he again served in that capacity of the newly renamed New York International Piano Competition.
One of the youngest ever graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, Hobson began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, after having earned silver medals at both the
Arthur Rubinstein and Vienna-Beethoven competitions. Born in Wolverhampton, England, he studied at Cambridge University (England), and at Yale University, in addition to his earlier studies at the Royal Academy of Music.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Phantasiestücke, Op. 88
Schumann in his twenties wrote almost nothing but piano music. Then, as if to prove that a Romantic can be thoroughly, even bizarrely organized, he turned in successive years to successive genres: songs in 1840, symphonies in 1841, chamber music in 1842. In June-July of that year came his three string quartets, followed after his summer break by three works with piano: his quintet, his quartet, and this trio. By placing these works in order of size, tonight’s program takes us backwards in time through a remarkable blaze of creative activity.
Completing the period, the sketches Schumann was making for the trio had, he wrote to a friend, “a quite different, very delicate character,” and he did not work them up for publication until 1849, which accounts for the work’s late opus number. In the meantime, he composed two regular piano trios (a third was to follow), and, searching for an appropriate title for these unusual compositions, he came up with one he had used before for a piano set: “Fantasy Pieces.”
The first is a song in A minor, very much led by the piano—an old song, it might appear, remembered from long ago.
A scherzo follows, in F major, going through various contortions in neighboring keys, minor and major, harsh and humorous. Determined rhythms feature all through, towards a final return of the original music.
Then comes a duet in D minor for violin and cello as loving pair. A shadow comes over them close to the close.
For finale, Schumann provides a march that, like the second movement, goes through various diversions, sometimes in triplets, sometimes in heavy syncopation. Again the central key is A minor.
Piano Quartet in E flat, Op. 47
The energy in both the earlier works—the Piano Quintet, completed in three weeks in September-October, and this Piano Quartet from November—is similar. It is the energy of fulfillment, achieved on the personal plane in marriage (Clara Schumann was, of course, the pianist for whom both compositions were intended) and musically in a mastery of big form. And if the quartet is less outgoing than the quintet, and therefore less popular, it has wonderful qualities of its own—in, for example, the expressiveness of its slow movement, the bubbling exuberance of its finale and altogether the motivic unity it displays.
Its magical slow introduction, where the piano’s expectant octaves summon answers from the strings harmonized in four or five parts, is fully part of the opening movement, for not only is the first of these slow progressions sped up about threefold to become the first subject, in four smart chords, but almost the whole introduction is repeated after the exposition. Such a formal concept may well have come from late Beethoven. Providing further integration, the first subject’s four chords hover in the background of the second subject, which starts out from a rising scale and features imitative counterpoint. The development, concerned only with the first subject, leads into a varied recapitulation, which is followed, through a reminiscence of the introduction, by a coda.
What follows is a scherzo in G minor whose pattering delicacy easily suggests Mendelssohn, while its thorough cohesion with the first movement is Schumannesque. Scalewise movement is again to the fore, and the second of
the two trios – the first has beautiful interplay between piano and viola, principally – again has the first movement’s four-chord theme in its memory.
Three bars of transition turn the key to the relative major, B-flat, for a slow movement whose gorgeous melody is sung first by the cello, subsequently joined in dialogue by the violin. There is a middle section in G-flat, more in the nature of a hymn, and then the principal music returns, now giving the viola its turn.
Everything is wrapped up with élan in the finale, whose confident opening gesture of three chords compacts the first movement’s main idea to its essentials. Soon the viola is running off with an invitation to fugal pursuit, which the others accept, but not for long before the cello turns to melody. There is then a long development of the three-chord theme and its consequent, reaching a close to give way to a chromatic middle section, which surveys the material from a new viewpoint. The cello leads the way out from this with its melody, but after that the movement is occupied almost entirely by its principal idea, through another fugal passage to a grand culmination.
Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44
The Piano Quintet was an adventure—nobody had written one before—and it goes with an appropriate sense of confident embarkation. It is not a miniaturized concerto: piano and strings are fellow crew on the voyage, which begins with a boundingly optimistic signal, of two rising fifths, from which the entire work takes its basic motivic shape. Soon this idea is melting toward the melody that provides the second subject, first played by the cello, but it is the signal, not the melody, that is reconsidered in the development section and again in the coda. The lovely melody is something for quieter consideration among the instruments, in those pools it occupies in the exposition and then once more in the recapitulation.
Still remembering the signal, the piano leads the way into the slow movement, whose principal material is a funeral march in C minor. Repetitions of this are interleaved with other music in an ABACABA pattern, where the B sections feature further glorious melody, while the C centerpiece, in F minor, unleashes a turmoil, from which the march has some difficulty in bringing the music back to order.
The memory of disruption is perhaps never lost here—not until the gamboling scherzo restores E flat major and ebullience. There are two trio sections, the first gentle and wistful, the second a humorous rushing on the spot.
The finale is a sonata rondo whose main material, with a kind of cantering rhythm, not only frames but also underlies much that intervenes in the episodes. Just as the movement seems about to wrap itself up, there is a magical shift of scene so that the germinal signal from the first movement may return, in contrapuntal apotheosis. Then the work can end indeed.
When Schumann wrote the quintet, in September-October 1842, he had been away from the piano compositionally since May of the year before, when he had composed a fantasy for piano and orchestra that he later made the first movement of his Piano Concerto. He had been away, therefore, from the instrument that was his own, and that was, even more importantly, Clara’s. The music’s exhilaration is in some part the exhilaration of return: here was another work he could offer his young wife.
She took part in a runthrough at their home in November, but when the work was tried out more formally, at a patron’s house on December 6, Mendelssohn took over the piano part (and afterward suggested the addition of the second trio), apparently because Clara was feeling ill. For the public première, the following month, she was well again, unfolding this music in serene mid-pregnancy.
– Notes on the program by Paul Griffiths