TH
ANNIVERSARY
Curtis On Tour The Nina von Maltzahn Global Touring Initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music
DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet DOMINIC ARMSTRONG, tenor ZORÁ STRING QUARTET
Dechopol Kowintaweewat, violin Hsuan-Hao Hsu, violin Pablo Muñoz Salido, viola Zizai Ning, cello
JIACHENG XIONG, piano
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2018
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin composed some of America’s most iconic and beloved music. Each told a distinctly American story: the Tin Pan Alley songs of Gershwin, the open spaces of the frontier as expressed by Copland, or the bustling jazz-flavored urbanity of Bernstein. With this program, Curtis joins the worldwide centenary celebrations of Leonard Bernstein, a 1941 conducting graduate, who studied at the school in his early 20s just before launching his meteoric career. In addition to Curtis on Tour performances in Arizona, California, Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., the Curtis Opera Theatre presents Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, the American premiere of the chamber arrangement by Garth Edwin Sunderland, in New York and Philadelphia. And the Curtis archives open their collection to the public with photos, letters, programs, and more, available online.
Learn more at www.curtis.edu/Bernstein.
SU N DAY, FE B RUARY 25, 2018
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
Curtis On Tour The Nina von Maltzahn Global Touring Initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music
DAVID SHIFRIN, clarinet DOMINIC ARMSTRONG, tenor ZORÁ STRING QUARTET Dechopol Kowintaweewat, Violin Hsuan-Hao Hsu, Violin Pablo Muñoz Salido, Viola Zizai Ning, Cello
JIACHENG XIONG, piano
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2018 • 2PM Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis Pre-Performance Talk: 1PM, Jackson Hall David Shifrin in conversation with Don Roth, executive director, Mondavi Center, UC Davis
Individual support provided by James Bigelow Donors to the Artistic Ventures Fund
The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.
CURTIS ON TOUR
PROGRAM
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano Grazioso—Un poco più mosso Andantino—Vivace e leggiero
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)
David Shifrin, clarinet Jiacheng Xiong, piano
Selected Songs and Arias for Tenor and Piano Bernstein “Extinguish My Eyes” from Two Love Songs on Poems by Rilke “I’ve Been Afraid” from A Quiet Place So Pretty “When My Soul Touches Yours” from Two Love Songs on Poems by Rilke My Twelve-Tone Melody “Dream with Me” from Peter Pan
Dominic Armstrong, tenor Jiacheng Xiong, piano Zizai Ning, cello
Sextet for Piano, Clarinet and String Quartet Allegro vivace Lento Finale: precise and rhythmic David Shifrin, clarinet Zorá String Quartet Jiacheng Xiong, piano
Aaron Copland (1900–1990)
INTERMISSION
Lullaby for String Quartet
Zorá String Quartet
Songs and Dances from West Side Story “Something’s Coming” “Dance at the Gym” “Maria” “Ballet Sequence—‘Somewhere’”
George Gershwin (1898–1937) Bernstein arr. Hedges
Dominic Armstrong, tenor David Shifrin, clarinet Zorá String Quartet Jiacheng Xiong, piano
“Songs and Dances” is commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music for Curtis on Tour in celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s Centenary.
SU N DAY, FE B RUARY 25, 2018
PROGRAM NOTES SONATA FOR CLARINET AND PIANO (1941–1942) LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–90) Leonard Bernstein had already accumulated a formidable curriculum vitae by the time he wrote his Clarinet Sonata at the age of 23. Born in 1918 to a Russian Jewish family who had settled in Massachusetts, he attended the prestigious Boston Latin School as a youth and took piano lessons from Helen Coates and Heinrich Gebhard. In 1935, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard, where he studied with some of the country’s most distinguished music pedagogues: Tillman Merritt (theory), Walter Piston (counterpoint and fugue) and Edward Burlingame Hill (orchestration). After his graduation in 1939, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to polish his already impressive piano technique with Isabelle Vengerova, and further his skills in conducting (with Fritz Reiner) and composition (Randall Thompson). He spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 at Tanglewood, where he became a student and protégé of Sergei Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston Symphony, and eventually, his assistant. At the end of the 1941 Tanglewood season, Bernstein traveled to Key West, Florida, to seek some relief from persistent autumn attacks of hay fever, and there he began what became his first published piece, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. The Sonata was completed in February 1942 in Boston, where Bernstein had gone to teach and continue his studies with Koussevitzky; the score was published the following year. The Sonata was premiered by the composer and clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston on April 21, 1942. The work is in two concise movements. The first, lyrical rather than virtuosic, is much under the influence of the German composer Paul Hindemith, who was in residence at Tanglewood in 1941. The second movement, which juxtaposes several sections in alternating slow and fast tempos, begins with a reflective theme based on a tiny arch-shaped motive. The fast episode in bristling 5/8 meter that follows presages some of Bernstein’s dance music of later years. The reflective music returns in transformation, and passes through a Latininfluenced bridge passage that Bernstein said was a souvenir of his visits to Key West nightclubs. A final traversal of the nervous fast music closes this early product of Bernstein’s incomparable genius. SELECTED SONGS AND ARIAS FOR VOICE AND PIANO LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–90) Among Bernstein’s closest colleagues and dearest friends in the music business was the Russian-born American mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel. (Bernstein was only one generation removed from his ancestral roots in Russia.) He worked with Tourel for 30 years—Bernstein called their collaborations “a constant cause for rejoicing”—performing with her on every possible occasion,
inviting her to sing in the premieres of his Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah” (1944) and Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish” (1963), and composing for her the “Five Kid Songs” I Hate Music (1943), the “Four Recipes” La Bonne Cuisine (1948), Two Love Songs on Poems by Rilke (1949) and Silhouette (1951). Bernstein borrowed the texts for Two Love Songs—“Extinguish My Eyes” and “When My Soul Touches Yours”—from the 1918 English translation of Rilke’s poems by American poet and artist Jessie Lemont. A Quiet Place (1983) is the sequel to the 1952 Trouble in Tahiti, Bernstein’s one-act opera about a disintegrating marriage in a contemporary American suburb. In the earlier opera, Sam and Dinah have fallen out of love after 10 years of marriage. Just before A Quiet Place picks up their story three decades later, Dinah has been killed in a car crash. Their children, Junior and Dede, who have inherited their parents’ animosities, come home for the funeral. Amid the unease of this strained family reunion, François, Dede’s French-Canadian husband, tells her how much she means to him in the passionate aria “I’ve Been Afraid.” Bernstein was passionate and outspoken about his liberal political beliefs, and the Vietnam War was especially hateful to him. On January 21, 1968, he agreed to participate in an antiwar rally concert called “Broadway for Peace” at Philharmonic Hall in New York and wrote the song So Pretty for the occasion. The words were by his friends and collaborators (on Wonderful Town and On The Town) Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and the vocalist was Barbra Streisand, an instant Broadway legend after creating the role of vaudeville star Fanny Brice in Funny Girl four years before. My Twelve-Tone Melody was Bernstein’s contribution to the gala celebration held at Carnegie Hall on May 11, 1988, in honor of Irving Berlin’s 100th birthday. Bernstein wrote the text and the music, and introduced the song to the glittery audience as “my Carnegie Hall singing debut.” (He had first conducted there 45 years before.) My Twelve-Tone Melody parodies Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone (or serial) theory of composition, in which Bernstein occasionally dabbled at that time in his composing career, but it ends with a birthday tribute in the form of the quotation of a few musical phrases from Always, Berlin’s hit song of 1925, which he wrote as a wedding gift to his new bride, Ellin McKay. In 1950, directors John Burrell and Wendy Toye asked Bernstein to supply the songs, lyrics and incidental music for an adaptation of James M. Barrie’s 1904 play about “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up”—Peter Pan. (Disney’s animated version of the story was released in 1953, and the well-known musical starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard was first seen on Broadway and on television sets in homes across America the following year.) Bernstein composed seven songs and numerous instrumental cues for Peter Pan, and the show opened at the Imperial Theatre on April 24, 1950, and ran for 321 performances. The tender “Dream With Me,” originally sketched for On The Town and reworked for Peter Pan, is Wendy’s farewell to Peter before she leaves Neverland to return to her family. CURTIS ON TOUR
SEXTET FOR PIANO, CLARINET AND STRING QUARTET, (1931–1933, 1937) AARON COPLAND (1900–90) “I think of my Short Symphony as one of ‘my neglected children’ and am perhaps more fond of it because it receives so much less attention,” lamented Aaron Copland in the first volume of his autobiography (Copland. 1900 through 1942, St. Martin’s Press, 1984). Along with the Piano Variations and the Statements for Orchestra, the Short Symphony was a product of the early 1930s, before the years of the familiar folk-based scores, when Copland was synthesizing his individual musical style from a wide range of influences—French, Stravinsky, jazz, Jewish—and had just added to them the austere harmonic techniques of Schoenberg. These works, though among his most masterful creations (“I expended so much time and effort ... because I wished to write as perfect a piece as I possibly could,” wrote the composer of his Short Symphony), have never been popular with audiences. The Symphony has especially had a disheartening performance history. After its premiere in Mexico City (November 23, 1934) by an enthusiastic Carlos Chávez, it was scheduled by both Koussevitzky and Leopold Stokowski for performances, but they later gave it up as too complex rhythmically for their limited rehearsal time. Koussevitzky continued to ponder his decision for over a year, and finally Copland asked him if the score was too difficult. “Non, ce n’est pas trop difficile,” the conductor responded. “C’est impossible!” The Short Symphony was not performed in the United States until Stokowski broadcast it with the NBC Orchestra in 1944, and it was, incredibly, not heard at a public performance in this country until Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presented the work in 1957. Given the woeful tale of the (non)performance of this splendid piece, it is little wonder that Copland chose to arrange it as the Sextet for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano during a visit to Mexico in 1937. This chamber version was first heard at New York’s Town Hall in 1939, and it has since come to be admired as one of Copland’s consummate compositions. Other than some re-barring to make the rhythmic difficulties of the score more manageable, Copland made almost no musical changes when adapting the Sextet from the Short Symphony. The reduced scoring, however, clarifies the work’s lean textures and piquant harmonic language, lending the Sextet a steely brilliance. Copland wrote of this work, “It is in three movements—fast, slow, fast—to be played without pause. The first movement’s impetus is rhythmic, with a scherzo-like quality. Once, I toyed with the idea of naming the entire piece ‘The Bounding Line’ because of the nature of this first section. All of the movement’s melodic figures result from a nine-note sequence—a kind of row—given in the opening two bars. The second movement, tranquil in feeling, contrasts with the first movement. It is in three brief sections—the first rises to a dissonant climax, is sharply contrasted by a song-like middle part, and returns to the beginning. The finale is bright in color, rhythmically intricate, and free in form.”
SU N DAY, FE B RUARY 25, 2018
LULLABY FOR STRING QUARTET (1919–1920) GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898–1937) George Gershwin joined the Tin Pan Alley firm of Remick in 1914 (at the tender age of 16) as a “song plugger,” a pianist who played through the latest sheet music issues for any interested customer. He quickly became familiar with the most popular styles of the day and was soon composing his own music— the piano rag Rialto Ripples dates from 1917, and his first hit, Swanee, was written in mid-1918 and introduced in a revue at the opening of the Capitol Theatre on Broadway on October 24, 1919. Even from those earliest years, however, Gershwin hoped to become more than just another dispenser of pop tunes, and in August 1919, he began two years of formal study of harmony, counterpoint and form with the Hungarian-born composer Edward Kilenyi, Sr. In addition to his regular exercises for Kilenyi, in 1919 or 1920 he wrote a little string quartet piece in a gentle, slow blues style that the young composer called Lullaby. SONGS AND DANCES FROM WEST SIDE STORY SUITE FOR TENOR, CLARINET, STRING QUARTET AND PIANO (1957) LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–90) ARRANGED BY JOHN B. HEDGES (b. 1974) West Side Story was one of the first musicals to explore a serious subject with wide social implications. More than just the story of the tragic lives of ordinary people in a small, grubby section of New York, it was concerned with urban violence, juvenile delinquency, clan hatred and young love. The show was criticized as harshly realistic by some who advocated an entirely escapist function for the musical, depicting things that were not appropriately shown on the Broadway stage. Most, however, recognized that it expanded the scope of the musical through references both to classical literature (Romeo and Juliet) and to the pressing problems of modern society. Brooks Atkinson, the distinguished former critic of The New York Times, noted in his book Broadway that West Side Story was “a harsh ballad of the city, taut, nervous and flaring, the melodies choked apprehensively, the rhythms wild, swift and deadly.” West Side Story, like a very few other musicals—Show Boat, Oklahoma, Pal Joey, A Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park with George, Rent, Hamilton—provides more than just an evening’s pleasant diversion. It is a work that gave an entirely new vision and direction to the American musical theater. This arrangement of “Songs and Dances” from West Side Story by the award-winning Philadelphia-based composer, arranger, conductor and Curtis Institute of Music graduate John B. Hedges was commissioned in 2017 for Curtis on Tour in celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s Centenary.
©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
T E X T S A N D T R A N S L AT I O N S
“Extinguish My Eyes” from Two Love Songs on Poems by Rilke
So Pretty
Extinguish my eyes, I still can see you: Close my ears, I can hear your footsteps fall: And without feet, I still can follow you: Voiceless, I can still return your call.
We were learning in our school today All about a country far away Full of lovely temples painted gold, Modern cities, jungles ages old. And the people are so pretty there, Shining smiles and shiny eyes and hair.
Break off my arms, and I can embrace you: Enfold you with my heart as with a hand: Hold my heart, my brain will take fire of you, As flax takes fire from a brand! And flame will sweep in a flood: Through all the singing currents of my blood
“I’ve Been Afraid” from A Quiet Place
Text: Betty Comden and Adolph Green
Then I had to ask my teacher why War was making all those people die. They’re so pretty, so pretty. Then my teacher said and took my hand, ”They must die for peace you understand.”’ But they’re so pretty, so pretty. I don’t understand.
Text: Stephen Wadsworth
I’ve been afraid, and very much, it’s true. But now you are here and I know I’m not afraid. That I can need you, And I can have you too. Et ce désir, ce désir ne me laissera plus. [And that desire, that desire will not leave me.] Didi, I want you. Didi, I want you. Have I ever said that before? I guess I have. But now, today, it’s been all day, it’s been the needing of this day. Nous sommes absous; tout est pardonné, Didi, [We are absolved; all is forgiven, Didi,] and we are délivrés. Didi, I see you, and you are new to me. How can I say what you are to me? Car...j’ai tout compris. [Because...I understand.] Après le tout de l’aujourd’hui, [After everything today,] after the needing, comment ne pas t’aimer? [How could I not love you?] It’s how I feel. Et c’est cela, Didi. [And that’s it, Didi.] Ainsi...soit-il. [So...be it.]
“Where My Soul Touches Yours” from Two Love Songs on Poems by Rilke When my soul touches yours a great chord sings: How can I tune it then to other things? Oh, if some spot in darkness could be found That does not vibrate when your depths sound But everything that touches you and me Welds us as played strings sound one melody. Where, where is the instrument whence the sounds flow? And who’s the magic hand that holds the bow? Oh, sweet song, Oh!
CURTIS ON TOUR
T E X T S A N D T R A N S L AT I O N S
My Twelve-Tone Melody
“Dream With Me” from Peter Pan
Text: Leonard Bernstein
Text: Leonard Bernstein
Irving Berlin, I’m sorry. Irving Berlin, forgive me. Each night you’ll hear me Croon this twelve-tone lullaby, This dreadful little tune When baby starts to cry. (Irving Berlin, forgive me.) I only want to celebrate you, Without having to imitate you; And certainly not irritate you... (Spoken: You see, I did set that rhyme after all.) So please accept this dodecaphony, This nasty little waltz, This plaintive piece of schmaltz, My twelve-tone melody. (Irving Berlin, I’m sorry.) Not a simple scale; Not a simple third; Not a major third; NOT ANOTHER WORD, But ALWAYS.
Dream with me tonight. Tonight and ev’ry night, wherever you may chance to be. we’re together, if we dream the same sweet dream. And though we’re far apart, Keep me in your heart And dream with me.
SU N DAY, FE B RUARY 25, 2018
The kiss we never dared We’ll dare in dreaming The love we never shared Can still have meaning. If you only dream a magic dream With me tonight Tonight and ev’ry night Wherever you may chance to be Close your lovely eyes and dream with me. The kiss we never dared We’ll dare in dreaming The love we never shared Can still have meaning. If you only dream a magic dream With me tonight Tonight and ev’ry night Wherever you may chance to be Close your lovely eyes and dream with me.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS ABOUT CURTIS
DAVID SHIFRIN
“One of the world’s finest music academies” (BBC Culture), the Curtis Institute of Music pairs tradition and innovation, educating exceptionally gifted young musicians as artistcitizens who engage a local and global community through music-making of the highest caliber. Each year, 175 students come to Curtis, drawn by a tuition-free, performance–inspired learning culture. In this intimate environment, they are nurtured by a celebrated faculty and inspired by the school’s distinctive “learn by doing” approach, offering more than 200 concerts each year in Philadelphia as well as performances around the world through Curtis on Tour. Curtis reaches global audiences through Curtis Performs (Curtis.edu/CurtisPerforms), the school’s dedicated HD performance video website. Online music courses and Summerfest programs offer lifelong learners further ways to listen, explore and learn. And students hone 21st-century skills through social entrepreneurship programs that bring arts access and education to the community. The extraordinary young musicians of Curtis graduate to join 4,000 alumni who have long made music history, performing around the world. As musical leaders, they make a profound impact on music onstage and in their communities.
CLARINET
ABOUT CURTIS ON TOUR Curtis on Tour is the Nina von Maltzahn global touring initiative of the Curtis Institute of Music. An embodiment of the school’s “learn by doing” philosophy, it offers students real-world, professional touring experience alongside celebrated alumni and faculty. In addition to performances, musicians offer master classes, interactive programs, and community engagement activities while on tour. Curtis on Tour also facilitates solo performances of Curtis students and alumni with professional orchestras and recital series. Since the program was established in 2008, students, faculty and alumni have performed more than 200 concerts in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Phoenix symphonies among many others in the U.S., and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. Shifrin has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, as well as at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A much sought after chamber musician, he has collaborated frequently with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets, Wynton Marsalis, and pianists Emanuel Ax and André Watts. An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMSLC) since 1989, Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. with CMSLC and hosted and performed in several national television broadcasts on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center. He has been the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, since 1981 and is also the artistic director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival. Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007, he was awarded an honorary professorship at China’s Central Conservatory in Beijing. Shifrin’s recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations and his recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built elongated clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review. Both his recording of the Copland Clarinet Concerto and a 2008 recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott have been released on iTunes via Angel/EMI and Deutsche Grammophon. His latest recordings
CURTIS ON TOUR
are Shifrin Plays Schifrin (Aleph Records), a collection of clarinet works by composer and conductor Lalo Schifrin, and the Beethoven, Bruch and Brahms Clarinet Trios with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han on the ArtistLed label. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21stcentury American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng and Ellen Zwilich. In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize, Shifrin is the recipient of a Solo Recitalists’ Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Concert Artist Guild Virtuoso Award in 2016. He was given an honorary membership by the International Clarinet Society in 2014 in recognition of lifetime achievement and at the outset of his career, he won the top prize at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions. Shifrin performs on a MoBA cocobolo wood clarinet made by Morrie Backun in Vancouver, Canada, and makes his home in Connecticut.
DOMINIC ARMSTRONG TENOR
Dominic Armstrong has quickly established himself internationally as an artist of superb and distinguished musicality and characterization. He is a winner of the 2013 George London Foundation Vocal Competition. This season, Armstrong returns to Dayton Opera as Don José in Carmen and to the Lansing Symphony for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Last season, Armstrong traveled to Russia to perform Britten’s War Requeim with the Russian National Orchestra and subsequently performed in a series of concerts, collaborating with Craig Rutenberg. He also made his company debut with Opera Colorado as Arthur Dimmesdale in the anticipated world premiere of The Scarlet Letter, sang the Second Jew in Salome with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and performed in recital with the Brooklyn Art Song Society. During the summer of 2016, Armstrong performed the role of Alfredo in La traviata with Chautauqua Opera. Armstrong began the 2014–15 season debuting the roles of Haydn and the Bartender in the world premiere performances of The Classical Style at the Ojai Festival, Cal Performances and Carnegie Hall, and debuted with both On Site Opera and The Phoenecia International Festival of the Voice in a co-production of Frédéric Chaslin’s new opera Clarimonde. He also made his debut with Dayton Opera as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, returned to Opera Memphis as The Husband in Les mamelles de Tirésias, and joined Ash Lawn Opera as Freddy in its summer production of My Fair Lady. On the concert stage, he appeared with the Brooklyn Art Song Society in recital, sang Lawrence Siegel’s Kaddish with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and sang the Verdi Requiem with the Waterbury Symphony.
SU N DAY, FE B RUARY 25, 2018
During the 2013–14 season, Armstrong debuted with the New York Philharmonic, in acclaimed performances of Britten’s Spring Symphony, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert. The tenor essayed his first performance of Cavaradossi in Tosca with the Northwest Indiana Symphony, and sang the First Jew in Salome with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as well as the Third Jew in performances of the same opera with the Boston Symphony. Additionally, Amstrong appeared in holiday concerts with the Oregon Symphony; in recital with the Brooklyn Art Song Society; in Mozart’s Requiem with the Lansing Symphony; with both the Symphony in C and Princeton Symphony for Britten’s Serenade; and in recital with Christine Brewer and Craig Rutenberg, under the auspices of the George London Foundation. In the 2012–13 season, Armstrong returned to New York City Opera to sing Peter Quint in their production of The Turn of the Screw, followed by his debuts with Carnegie Hall and Lyric Opera of Chicago, as Steve in Andre Prévin’s A Streetcar Named Desire. He closed the season premiering two new operas: La Reina with American Lyric Theater and The Blind with American Opera Projects. Having been seen in Chicago Opera Theatre’s Moscow, Cheryomushki (Opera News called his performance of Sergei a “honeyed account”), Armstrong’s 2011–12 season also included his Memphis Opera debut as Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus and a return to Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival to cover Don José and perform the role of Le Remendado in Carmen. These assignments marked the artist’s fourth season with the festival, where he has also been seen as Macheath in Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera, Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw, Le Petit Vieillard in L’enfant et les sortilèges and Luigi in Il Tabarro. Previous seasons have found Armstrong performing with companies such as: Opera Company of Philadelphia as Flavio in Norma and Borsa in Rigoletto; NYCO as François/Jazz Trio in A Quiet Place; Chicago Opera Theatre in the title role in La Clemenza di Tito; Deutsche Oper Berlin as Parpignol in La Bohème; Opera Regio Torino as the Gran Sacerdote in Idomeneo; Reverend Adams in Peter Grimes; and Heinrich der Schreiber in Tannhaüser Wexford Festival Opera for Count Almaviva in Ghosts of Versailles; Wolf Trap Opera as Candide alongside Jason Alexander in Candide and as Ulisse in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria; and Musica Viva Hong Kong for Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore. An avid recitalist, Armstrong has maintained frequent performances of recital repertoire. Recent recitals have included the collected songs of Duparc with soprano Susanna Phillips, as well as performances of Brahms’ Die Schöne Magelone, and the Twickenham Festival, in a program featuring On Wenlock Edge and To Julia. He has also been a participant of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. Armstrong’s numerous prizes and awards include being one of the Grand Finalists in the 2008 National Council Auditions with the Metropolitan Opera, a 2013 George London Foundation Winner, the SAI Vocal Competition, Gold Medal Aria Competition (Truman State University), The Sullivan Awards, Lucrezia Bori Grant, Opera Index, Gerda Lissner Award, The William Boldyga and and Betty Myers Incentive Award from
Annapolis Opera, NATS State and Regional winner, and he was the 2009 winner of the Liederkranz Art Song Competition. He holds degrees from Truman State University, The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute.
ZORÁ STRING QUARTET
The Zorá String Quartet is in its second season as quartetin-residence at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2016– 17, the quartet debuted with Curtis on Tour, gave recitals in New York and Washington, D.C. on the Young Concert Artists Series, and performed throughout the U.S. In 2017–18, the ensemble tours the United States with clarinetist David Shifrin and tenor Dominic Armstrong as part of Curtis on Tour; debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; and performs with violist Roberto Díaz and cellist Peter Wiley on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series. The Zorá String Quartet won the grand prize and gold medal at the 2015 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; first prize and several concert prizes at the 2015 Young Concert Artists International Auditions; and the Coleman National Chamber Music Competition. In 2016, the quartet participated in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Encounters program, concluding with a performance at Alice Tully Hall, and appeared at Chamber Music Northwest and the Oregon Music Festival. The group has also participated in chamber music residencies at the Banff Centre (Canada); in the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut); and in the Advanced Quartet Studies program of the Aspen Music Festival, where they worked intensively with Earl Carlyss, the Takács Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet and the American String Quartet. The Zorá String Quartet previously served as graduate quartet-in-residence at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, working with the Pacifica Quartet and Atar Arad. In 2014, the ensemble was string quartet-in-residence at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany. The name “Zorá” means “sunrise” in Bulgarian. The quartet’s members are violinists Dechopol Kowintaweewat and Hsuan-Hao Hsu, violist Pablo Muñoz Salido and cellist Zizai Ning.
JIACHENG XIONG PIANO
Jiacheng Xiong, from Beijing, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2011 and studies piano with Robert McDonald. All students at Curtis receive merit-based, full-tuition scholarships, and Xiong is the Wike Family Fellow. During the 2014–15 season, Xiong performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Des Moines Symphony. He won first prize at the 2014 Korea International Competition for Young Pianists in Seoul, the American International Piano Competition in Asia Pacific Macau and the Xiamen National– Youth Piano Competition. Xiong has also won second prize and audience favorite in the Viseu International Piano Competition and second prize in the Cleveland International Piano Competition. Most recently he was awarded third prize at the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation’s New York International Piano competition. Xiong has attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, was featured on National Public Radio’s From the Top, and has performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and Cortot Hall in Paris. At age 12, he was invited to perform at the Luxembourg and Norway embassies. Xiong previously studied at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music.
About Don Roth, Executive Director, Mondavi Center
Don Roth joined the Mondavi Center in 2006, arriving from the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he served as president from 2001 to 2006. His tenure at the Mondavi Center has seen the initiation of new artistic and educational partnerships with the San Francisco Symphony and the Curtis Institute; and the development of residencies by worldrenowned companies such as Shakespeare’s Globe and the St. Louis Symphony. Previously Roth served as president of the St. Louis and Oregon Symphonies and as general manager of the San Francisco Symphony.
CURTIS ON TOUR