Photo by Shirley Singer
ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET
with Robert Greenberg
Brahms and the Schumanns: A Triangle for the Ages! SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15: “Schumann, Brahms and the Curse!” SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3: “Robert and Clara” SUNDAY, JANUARY 7: “The Triangle”
RO B ERT A N D M A RG RI T
MONDAVI CENTER
FO R T H E PERFO R M I N G A RTS PRES EN TS
ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET Brahms and the Schumanns: A Triangle for the Ages! Zakarias Grafilo, violin Frederick Lifsitz, violin Paul Yarbrough, viola Sandy Wilson, cello
2PM PERFORMANCES: Musicologist, author and composer Robert Greenberg provides commentary throughout the concert. 7PM PERFORMANCES: The quartet performs this program without intermission, then remains for a Q&A session with the audience.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2017 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017 Joyce Yang, piano SUNDAY, JANUARY 7, 2018 Vanderhoef Studio Theatre
Individual support provided by Thomas and Phyllis Farver
The Alexander String Quartet is represented by BesenArts LLC BesenArts.com The Alexander String Quartet records for FogHornClassics asq4.com
The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular devices. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden.
PROGRAM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2017 “Schumann, Brahms and the Curse!” • 2PM & 7PM String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, op. 41, no. 1 (1842) Introduzione: Andante espressivo—Allegro Scherzo: Presto Adagio Presto
P. 4
Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, op. 51, no. 1 (1873) Allegro Romanze: Poco adagio Allegro molto moderato e comodo Allegro
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2017 “Robert and Clara” • 2PM & 7PM
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
P. 5
Guest Artist: Joyce Yang, piano Trio for Piano, Violin & Cello in G Minor, op. 17 (1846) Allegro moderato Scherzo: Tempo di Menuetto Andante Allegretto
Clara Schumann (1819–1896)
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) Quintet for Piano & Strings in E-flat Major, op. 44 (1842) Allegro brillante In modo d’una Marcia Scherzo: Molto vivace Allegro, ma non troppo
SUNDAY, JANUARY 7, 2018 “The Triangle” • 2PM & 7PM String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, op. 41, no. 3 (1842) Andante espressivo—Allegro molto moderato Assai agitato—Un poco Adagio Adagio molto Finale: Allegro molto vivace
Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
P. 6 Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2 (1873) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Quasi menuetto, moderato—Allegro vivace Finale: Allegro non assai
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, October 15 “Schumann, Brahms and the Curse!” ROBERT SCHUMANN Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau Died July 29, 1856, Endenich String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, op. 41, no. 1 Rare is the composer who is not in some way haunted by the past. To a close friend, Beethoven confessed that he felt threatened by the example of Mozart’s piano concertos, and in turn his own symphonies would prove just as daunting to the young Brahms, who complained: “You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.” Nor was Schumann deaf to the sound of footsteps from the past. He made his early reputation with short piano pieces and then turned to songs. Both of these were “romantic” forms, but Schumann knew that—inevitably—he would have to try his hand at the forms perfected by the classical composers. In 1841 he was willing to take on the symphony, and the following year he turned to probably the most daunting of challenges, the string quartet. He spent that spring studying the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but even then he was still worried, and his language betrays his anxiety— so threatened was Schumann that he could almost not say the word “string quartet.” Instead, he said only that he was having “quartet-ish thoughts” and referred to the music he was composing as “quartet-essays.” Finally he overcame his fears and quickly composed three string quartets that summer, of which the Quartet in A Minor, begun on June 4, 1842, was the first. These three quartets are Schumann’s only chamber works that do not use piano, and perhaps it is not surprising that—forced away from his own instrument—Schumann responded by writing with great originality. In this music he was willing to take risks, experimenting with polyphonic writing, unusual key relationships, and basing entire movements on variants of the same theme (an idea he may have taken from the Haydn quartets). The first movement of the Quartet in A Minor opens with a slow introduction marked Andante espressivo; certain critics have claimed to hear the influence of Bach in the long contrapuntal lines of this introduction, but that is for the individual listener to decide. The real surprise comes at the Allegro, where the exposition bursts to life in the “wrong” key of F major; the violin’s opening theme here furnishes all the material for this sonata-form movement, which comes to a very effective close as the first violin holds a high F over quiet pizzicato strokes from the other voices. The exciting Scherzo, invariably described as “galloping,” flies along on its hammering 6/8 rhythm. Its middle section, which Schumann marks Intermezzo, brings a moment of calm before the return of the pounding opening material. The
Adagio is based on the violin’s radiant main theme, a melody whose shape is somewhat reminiscent of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Schumann presents a series of variations on this theme before the movement comes to a quiet close. The concluding Presto is vigorous, athletic and angular—and all of its material grows out of the powerful opening theme. The second theme-group is simply an inversion of this theme, and near the end Schumann presents a third variant of this same theme: over a quiet drone, this melody sings gently, briefly becomes a chorale, and suddenly gives way to the opening tempo, which rips this quartet to its exciting conclusion. —Eric Bromberger JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna String Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, op. 51, no. 1 Brahms had a profound sense of the past. As a self-taught scholar, he knew medieval and baroque music in detail at a time when that music remained unknown even to professional musicians. As a composer himself, however, Brahms found the past a troubling heritage. Haunted by the example of Beethoven’s symphonies, Brahms worked for over 20 years before he felt able to publish a symphony of his own, and the case was nearly as extreme with the string quartet. Brahms was acutely aware of what Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert had achieved with the quartet, and there is evidence that he may have destroyed as many as 20 quartets before he was satisfied with one. Brahms apparently began work on the Quartet in C Minor in the mid-1860s but did not complete it until the summer of 1873, which he spent at Tutzing on the Starnberger See, near Munich. He was 40 years old. The Quartet in C Minor is marked by extraordinary concentration. This is not music that sets out to charm the heart or please the ear. Rather, it impresses by its fierce logic and the economy of its means: the entire quartet is unified around a central musical idea—the rising, dotted figure heard in the first violin at the very beginning. The mood of this quartet is dark—Brahms sets it in C minor, the key Beethoven reserved for his most dramatic works, and drives the music forward with an unrelieved logic that might have left even that earlier master gasping for relief. The opening Allegro takes its character and much of its shape from the theme heard at the very opening. This climbing figure saturates this movement (and much of the quartet)—as theme, as accompaniment, as rhythm. Schoenberg admired the harmonic freedom of Brahms’ musical thinking in this movement, but more immediately striking is the nervous, almost unrelenting pound of the accompaniment—the steady pulse of eighth-notes is never absent for long here. A rigorous development and an extremely dramatic coda drive to a quiet close as the first theme collapses into silence. MondaviArts.org | 4
Brahms marks the second movement Romanze, which suggests music of a lyric or gentle nature, and this movement alternates two ideas that—in the aftermath of the first movement—do seem gentle; even these, however, are marked by emotional restraint. The dotted motif of the first movement becomes the slow accompaniment at the beginning here, and over it Brahms presents the first theme, marked espressivo. A second idea—marked dolce and built on halting triplets—is somewhat darker; Brahms alternates and varies these two theme-groups. The concentration that marks Brahms’ thinking in this music is clear at the beginning of the Allegretto, where he presents two themes simultaneously: the first violin’s chain of sixteenths (an inversion of the opening motif?) pulses steadily above the viola’s wistful tune. The trio section brings the quartet’s one moment of sunshine—Brahms switches to F major as the first violin sings a little waltz-tune. Beneath that, the second violin alternates A’s on open and closed strings; the shifting colors of the resulting “wow-wow-wow” make an effective accompaniment to the waltz. A da capo repeat concludes the movement. The finale brings back the furies—and concentration—of the first movement. This movement’s opening figure is derived almost literally from the quartet’s initial motif, and the more relaxed second subject is in fact a slow variant of that same shape. In sonata form, this movement is built on the contrast between these two themes, already so much alike. The very end brings no relief: Brahms returns firmly to C minor, and the final cadence re-invokes—one last time—the thematic motif that saturates the entire quartet. — Eric Bromberger
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, December 3 “Robert and Clara” Joyce Yang, piano CLARA SCHUMANN Born September 13, 1819, Leipzig Died May 20, 1896, Frankfurt am Main Trio for Piano, Violin & Cello in G Minor, op. 17 In a diary entry written at age 20, Clara Schumann made clear her mixed feelings about composing, and in the process she spelled out some of the difficulties facing any woman who wished to compose in the 19th century: “I once thought that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—not one has been able to do it, and why should I expect to? It would be arrogance, although, indeed, my father led me into it in earlier days.” Yet Clara continued to compose, and over the next 17 years she wrote a small number of works that include a Piano Concerto in A Minor, much piano music, and some graceful songs. But her list of opus numbers runs only to 23, and with the 5 | MondaviArts.org
death of her husband Robert in 1856 she stopped composing completely. Thereafter, the demands of being a single mother to seven small children and maintaining a career as concert pianist and teacher occupied her time fully. The Piano Trio in G Minor, written in 1846 when Clara was 27, is one of the handful of works that followed her marriage. In that same year the Schumanns made a concert tour of Russia during which Clara performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg; after their return Robert completed his Second Symphony. The Piano Trio is in four movements, and—as might be expected—the writing for piano is particularly idiomatic. The writing for strings shows the dominance of the violin typical of composers in this era: the violin states themes first, and the cello then repeats or embellishes those ideas. The impulse in this music is lyric rather than dramatic. The Allegro moderato opens with a long flowing melody exchanged by violin and piano, and this is followed by a chordal second subject; a vigorous development leads to a turbulent coda and a firm close in G minor. The second movement is marked Scherzo, but Clara stipulates that it must be played at a Tempo di Menuetto, so the pulse is not particularly fast. This music, though, is of particular interest because the opening theme is full of rhythmic “snap” (a dotted rhythm with the short note coming first). The trio section is extended, and the movement concludes with a brief recall of the opening material. The ternary-form Andante moves to G major. The piano’s quiet main theme seems to set the tone, but the middle section— marked più animato—leaps ahead on dotted rhythms and some powerful writing for strings. The concluding section gives the movement’s opening idea to the strings, which play their long duet over murmuring piano accompaniment. The last movement is marked Allegretto (rather than the expected fast finale), but its falling main idea—full of chromatic tension—is also full of possibilities, and Clara exploits them. Along the way there is a brief fugato on the opening idea, and the coda rushes the Piano Trio to its close on a ringing G from all three performers. —Eric Bromberger ROBERT SCHUMANN Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau Died July 29, 1850, Endenich Quintet for Piano & Strings in E-flat Major, op. 44 On September 12, 1840, Schumann married the young piano virtuosa Clara Wieck, a match that had been bitterly opposed by her father. With his father-in-law’s lawsuits and assaults on his character behind him, Schumann settled down to one of the happiest and most productive phases of his life, and his interests appeared to change by the year. From 1840 came a series of song-cycles, from 1841 a number of symphonic works, and in 1842 Schumann turned to chamber music. But this was not an easy transition for a composer who did not play a stringed instrument, and the three string quartets he wrote that summer gave him unusual difficulty. And so it must
have been with some relief that Schumann fused the string quartet and the piano in his next composition, a Piano Quintet that he began on September 23 and completed October 12. The first performance, a private one with Clara at the piano, took place in November. A second performance was scheduled in the Schumann home on December 8, but Clara was sick and so Mendelssohn replaced her and sightread the piano part; the members of the Gewandhaus Quartet (whose first violinist Ferdinand David would three years later give the first performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto) were the other performers. That would have been an evening to sit in on, not just for the distinction of the performers but also to watch two composers at work: at the end of the read-through, Mendelssohn suggested several revisions, including replacing one of the trio sections of the scherzo, and Schumann followed his advice.
E-flat major; while its second theme, for first violin, arrives in E major. At the climax of this sonata-form structure, Schumann brings matters to a grand pause, then re-introduces the opening subject of the first movement and develops it fugally, ingeniously using the first theme of the finale as a countersubject. It is brilliant writing, and it drives the Quintet to a triumphant close.
Schumann’s Piano Quintet is his most successful chamber work. The addition of the piano—Schumann’s own instrument—to the string quartet seems to have inspired him in a way the quartet form did not, and this is the first great piano quintet, to be followed over the next century by those of Brahms, Franck, Dvořák and Shostakovich (though in fairness it should be noted that Mozart may have beaten him to it, having specified that several of his piano concertos could be performed as piano quintets). Schumann’s piano quintet has a clear star: the piano is the dominant force in this music—there is hardly a measure when it is not playing—and Schumann uses it in different ways, sometimes setting it against the other four instruments, sometimes using all five in unison.
PROGRAM NOTES
The opening is a perfect example of the latter. This aptlynamed Allegro brillante bursts to life as all five instruments shout out the opening idea, whose angular outline will shape much of the movement. Piano alone has the singing second subject: Schumann marks this dolce as the piano presents it, then espressivo as viola and cello take it up in turn. This second theme may bring welcome relief, but it is the driving energy of the opening subject that propels the music, and— built up to nearly symphonic proportions—it powers the movement to a resounding close. The second movement—In modo d’una Marcia—is much in the manner of a funeral march, though Schumann did not himself call it that. The awkward tread of the march section— in C minor—is interrupted by two episodes: the first a wistful interlude for first violin, the second—Agitato—driven by pounding triplets in the piano. Schumann combines his various episodes in the final pages of this movement, which closes quietly in serene C major. The propulsive Scherzo molto vivace runs up and down the scale, and again Schumann provides two interludes: the first feels like an instrumental transcription of one of his songs, while the second powers its way along a steady rush of sixteenth-note perpetual motion. The last movement is the most complex, for it returns not just to the manner of the opening movement but also to its thematic material. This Allegro, ma non troppo begins in a “wrong” key (G minor) and only gradually makes its way to
Clara Schumann, perhaps not the most unbiased judge of her husband’s work, was nevertheless exactly right in her estimation of this music. In her diary she described it as “Magnificent—a work filled with energy and freshness.” —Eric Bromberger
Sunday, January 7 “The Triangle” ROBERT SCHUMANN Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau Died July 29, 1856, Endenich String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, op. 41, no. 3 Schumann’s marriage to the young Clara Wieck in 1840 set off a great burst of creativity, and curiously he seemed to change genres by year: 1840 produced an outpouring of song, 1841 symphonic works, and 1842 chamber music. During the winter of 1842, Schumann had begun to think about composing string quartets. Clara was gone on a monthlong concert tour to Copenhagen in April, and though he suffered an anxiety attack in her absence Schumann used that time to study the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Clara’s return to Leipzig restored the composer’s spirits, and he quickly composed the three string quartets of his Opus 41 in June and July of that year; later that summer he wrote his Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet. Writing string quartets presented special problems for the pianist-composer. The string quartets are his only chamber works without piano, and—cut off from the familiar resources of his own instrument—he struggled to write just for strings. Though he returned to writing chamber music later in his career, Schumann never again wrote a string quartet. The Quartet in A Major, composed quickly between July 8 and 22, is regarded as the finest of the set and shows many of those original touches that mark Schumann’s best music. The first movement opens with a very brief (seven-measure) slow introduction marked Andante espressivo. The first violin’s falling fifth at the very beginning will become the thematic “seed” for much of the movement: that same falling fifth opens the main theme at the Allegro molto moderato and also appears as part of the second subject, introduced by the cello over syncopated accompaniment. Schumann’s markings for these two themes suggest the character of the movement: sempre teneramente (“always tenderly”) and espressivo. Schumann’s MondaviArts.org | 6
procedures in this movement are a little unusual: the development treats only the first theme, and the second does not reappear until the recapitulation. The movement fades into silence on the cello’s pianissimo falling fifth. The second movement brings more originality. Marked Assai agitato (“Very agitated”), it is a theme-and-variation movement, but with a difference: it begins cryptically—with an off-the-beat main idea in 3/8 meter—and only after three variations does Schumann present the actual theme, now marked Un poco Adagio. A further variation and flowing coda bring the movement to a quiet close. The Adagio molto opens peacefully with the soaring main idea in the first violin. More insistent secondary material arrives over dotted rhythms, and the music grows harmonically complex before pulsing dotted rhythms draw the movement to a close. Out of the quiet, the rondo-finale bursts to life with a main idea so vigorous that it borders on the aggressive. This is an unusually long movement. Contrasting interludes (including a lovely, Bach-like gavotte) provide relief along the way, but the insistent dotted rhythms of the rondo tune always return to pound their way into a listener’s consciousness and finally to propel the quartet to its exuberant close. —Eric Bromberger JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, op. 51, no. 2 In one of the most famous remarks in the history of music, Brahms complained to a friend about the strain of having to compose within the shadow of Beethoven: “You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.” This comment is usually taken to refer to the overpowering example of Beethoven’s symphonies, for Brahms put off writing his first symphony until he was 43. But it applies just as accurately to Beethoven’s cycle of 16 string quartets, for Brahms waited nearly as long to publish string quartets: he did not publish his first quartets until he was 40. It was not a case of his being uninterested in writing them. On the contrary, Brahms had been trying to write quartets for years, but he was the most self-critical of composers: he said that he had written and destroyed at least 20 quartets before he wrote two he liked well enough to publish in 1873 as his Opus 51. One of his friends reported seeing sketches for these quartets as early as 1859, which means that Brahms had worked on them for 14 years before he felt they were finished. After his long delay in writing a symphony, Brahms wrote a first symphony in C minor that is stormy and impassioned, then quickly followed it with a second that is lyric and expansive. The situation is somewhat similar with the string quartets: after long delay, his first effort was the dark and
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driving Quartet in C Minor, while the second was the more lyric and genial Quartet in A Minor. It was as if Brahms’ opening work in the new form needed to be a clenched confrontation in which he could attack the form and make it his own; only then could he relax and write a sunnier work in the same form. That said, however, it must be noted that Quartet in A Minor is marked by the same fierce concentration of materials and motivic development that animated its predecessor, and much of this quartet grows directly out of the first violin’s opening theme. Brahms intended this quartet for his friend Joseph Joachim, and he incorporated Joachim’s personal motto “Frei aber einsam” (“Free but lonely”) in the notes F-A-E that shape the opening theme. In addition, the three rising eighthnotes that appear innocently in the fourth measure of this theme will return in various forms here and in subsequent movements. But the quartet is not an exercise in crabbed motivic manipulation, and Brahms supplies a second subject that simply glows: it is a long duet for the violins, and he marks it dolce (“sweet”), lusingando (“charming, coaxing”) and grazioso (“graceful”). From these contrasted materials, he builds an extended sonata-form movement that concludes on evocations of Joachim’s motto. The Andante moderato takes the shape of its main theme from that innocent figure from the very beginning. Most striking here is the duet of first violin and cello at the center: over buzzing tremolos from the middle voices they sing a “Hungarian duet” in close canon before the movement closes on a return of the opening material. In the third movement, Brahms bends traditional minuet form for his own purposes. He calls this movement a “quasiminuet” and rather than building it on the standard minuetand-trio form Brahms presents a lilting, ghostly minuet, then contrasts it with two sections—marked Allegretto vivace— where the music suddenly flashes ahead on a steady patter of sixteenth-notes, only to rein back to resume the more stately minuet tempo. Many have heard the influence of Hungarian music in the finale: the first violin’s vigorous, strongly-inflected dance at the very beginning seems to have its origins in gypsy fiddling. This movement is in sonata-rondo form: that “gypsy” theme, full of energy and snap, recurs throughout but subtly evolves on each return. Brahms speeds this wild dance to its close on a Più vivace coda. —Eric Bromberger
ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET Having celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2016, the Alexander String Quartet has performed in the major music capitals of five continents, securing its standing among the world’s premier ensembles. Widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich, the quartet’s recordings of the Beethoven cycle (twice), Bartók, and Shostakovich cycle have won international critical acclaim. The quartet has also established itself as an important advocate of new music through over 30 commissions from such composers as Jake Heggie, Cindy Cox, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Greenberg, Martin Bresnick, Cesar Cano and Pulitzer Prize-winner Wayne Peterson. A new work by Tarik O’Regan, commissioned for the Alexander by the Boise Chamber Music Series, had its premiere in October 2016, and a work for quintet from Samuel Carl Adams is planned for premiere in early 2019 with pianist Joyce Yang. The Alexander String Quartet is a major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as Ensemble-inResidence of San Francisco Performances and directors of San Francisco State University’s Morrison Chamber Music Center in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts. The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar of concerts includes engagements at major halls throughout North America and Europe. The quartet has appeared at Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Jordan Hall in Boston; the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington; and chamber music societies and universities across the North American continent. The quartet recently returned as faculty to the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, a nexus of their early career. Recent overseas tours have brought them to the U.K., the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, the Republic of Georgia, Argentina, Panama and the Philippines. Their recent return and tour of Poland for the Beethoven Easter Festival has been beautifully captured in the new (2017) documentary film, Con Moto.
had “Grammy nominee” written on its front cover, this is it.” –Audiophile Audition); the string quintets and sextets of Brahms with Toby Appel and David Requiro (“a uniquely detailed, transparent warmth” –Strings Magazine); and the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with Joyce Yang (“passionate, soulful readings of two pinnacles of the chamber repertory” –The New York Times). Their recording of music of Gershwin and Kern was released in the summer of 2012, following the spring 2012 recording of the clarinet quintet of Brahms and a new quintet from César Cano, in collaboration with Joan Enric Lluna, as well as a disc in collaboration with the San Francisco Choral Artists. An album of works by Cindy Cox was released in 2015. Their recordings of Mozart’s “Prussian” Quartets and Piano Quartets with Joyce Yang will be released in the fall of 2017. The Alexander’s 2009 ForghornClassics release of the complete Beethoven cycle was described by Music Web International as performances “uncompromising in power, intensity and spiritual depth,” while Strings Magazine described the set as “a landmark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles.” In fall 2017, Foghorn released a high resolution remastered version of their acclaimed recording of the complete Shostakovich quartets. The label released a three-CD set (Homage) of the Mozart quartets dedicated to Haydn in 2004. A recording of the complete quartets of Pulitzer prize-winning San Francisco composer, Wayne Peterson, was released in the spring of 2008. BMG Classics released the quartet’s first recording of Beethoven cycle on its Arte Nova label to tremendous critical acclaim in 1999. The Alexander String Quartet was formed in New York City in 1981 and captured international attention as the first American quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition in 1985. The quartet has received honorary degrees from Allegheny College and Saint Lawrence University, and Presidential medals from Baruch College (CUNY). The Alexander plays on a matched set of instruments made in San Francisco by Francis Kuttner (born in Washington, D.C., 1951). This year marks the 30th anniversary of these instruments, known as the Ellen M. Egger quartet.
Among the eminent musicians with whom the Alexander String Quartet has collaborated are pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, Anne-Marie McDermott, Menachem Pressler, MarcAndré Hamelin and Jeremy Menuhin; clarinetists Joan Enric Lluna, David Shifrin, Richard Stoltzman and Eli Eban; soprano Elly Ameling; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; violinist Midori; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sadao Harada and David Requiro; and jazz greats Branford Marsalis, David Sanchez and Andrew Speight. The quartet has worked with many composers including Aaron Copland, George Crumb and Elliott Carter, and has long enjoyed a close relationship with composer-lecturer Robert Greenberg, performing numerous lecture-concerts with him annually. The Alexander String Quartet added considerably to its distinguished and wide-ranging discography over the past decade, now recording exclusively for the FoghornClassics label. There were three major releases in the 2013–2014 season: The combined string quartet cycles of Bartók and Kodály, recorded on the renowned Ellen M. Egger matched quartet of instruments built by San Francisco luthier Francis Kuttner (“If ever an album
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Artist. JOYCE YANG, PIANO ROBERT GREENBERG Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978. Greenberg received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976. His principal teachers at Princeton were Edward Cone, Daniel Werts, and Carlton Gamer in composition, Claudio Spies and Paul Lansky in analysis, and Jerry Kuderna in piano. In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in composition and Richard Felciano in analysis. Greenberg has composed over 50 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and The Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. Greenberg has received numerous honors, including being designated an official Steinway Artist, three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes, and three Meet-The-Composer Grants. Notable commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances, and the XTET ensemble. Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of COMPOSERS, INC., a composers’ collective/production organization based in San Francisco. His music has been published by Fallen Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin, and recorded on the Innova label. Greenberg has performed, taught and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994. He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University East Bay and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the Department of Music History and Literature from 1989–2001 and served as the director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991–1996. Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where for 10 years he was host and lecturer for the symphony’s nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), the Chautauqua Institute (where he was the Everett Scholarin-Residence during the 2006 season), the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Villa Montalvo, Music@Menlo and the University of British Columbia (where he was the Dal Grauer Lecturer in September of 2006). Greenberg lives with his children Lillian and Daniel, wife Nanci, and a very cool Maine coon (cat) named Teddy in the hills of Oakland, California. Robert Greenberg is an official Steinway 9 | MondaviArts.org
As a Van Cliburn International Piano Competition silver medalist and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Joyce Yang showcases her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians. Yang came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: the Steven De Groote Memorial Award for Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet) and the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for Best Performance of a New Work. Since her spectacular debut, Yang has performed as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Sydney, and Toronto symphony orchestras, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the BBC Philharmonic (among many others). In recital, Yang has taken the stage at New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum; the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Chicago’s Symphony Hall; and Zurich’s Tonhalle. A sought-after interpreter of new music, Yang performed and recorded the world premiere of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, created expressly for her and commissioned by the Albany Symphony. In 2016, Avie Records released a recording with Yang and her frequent duo partner, violinist Augustin Hadelich, featuring repertoire by Schumann, Kurtág, Franck and Previn. In 2014, Yang “demonstrated impressive gifts” (The New York Times) with a trio of album releases: her second solo disc for Avie Records, Wild Dreams, on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff and arrangements by Earl Wild; a pairing of the Brahms and Schumann Piano Quintets with the Alexander Quartet; and a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra. Of her 2011 debut album for Avie Records, Collage, featuring works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier and Schumann. Born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson at the age of 4. She quickly took to the instrument, which she received as a birthday present, and over the next few years won several national piano competitions in her native country. By the age of 10, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts, and went on to make a number of concerto and recital appearances in Seoul and Daejeon. In 1997, Yang moved to the United States to begin studies at the pre-college division of the Juilliard School. She graduated from Juilliard with special honors as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won its 30th Annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award.