Photo by Shirley Singer
Alexander String Quartet with Robert Greenberg
with Joyce Yang, piano
The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets
SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2018 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2018 SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2019
Jackson Hall
Vanderhoef Studio Theatre
R O B E R T A N D M A R G R I T M O N DAV I C E N T E R F O R T H E P E R F O R M I N G A R T S P R E S E N T S
Alexander String Quartet with Robert Greenberg 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.
The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2018 • 2PM & 7PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2018 • 2PM & 7PM SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM
Vanderhoef Studio Theatre Individual support provided by Thomas and Phyllis Farver Anne Gray
Alexander String Quartet and Joyce Yang, piano SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019 • 2PM
Jackson Hall Alexander String Quartet Discography: FoghornClassics Management: BesenArts LLC, 7 Delaney Place, Tenafly, New Jersey 07670 www.asq4.com
Joyce Yang Discography: Avie Management: Arts Management Group, Inc., 130 W. 57th St., New York, New York 10019 pianistjoyceyang.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.
Alexander String Quartet The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets PROGRAM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2018 • 2PM & 7PM String Quartet No. 1 in C Major, Op. 49 (1938) Moderato Moderato Allegro molto Allegro
P. 6 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 (1944) Overture: Moderato con moto Recitative and Romance: Adagio Valse: Allegro Theme and Variations: Adagio
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2018 • 2PM & 7PM String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 (1946) Allegretto Moderato con moto Allegro non troppo Adagio Moderato
Shostakovich
P. 7 Shostakovich
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) String Quartet No. 4 in D Major, Op. 83 (1949) Allegretto Andantino Allegretto—Allegretto
SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 92 (1952) Allegro non troppo Andante Moderato
Shostakovich
P. 8 Shostakovich
INTERMISSION (2 PM only) String Quartet No. 6 in G Major, Op. 101 (1956) Allegretto Moderato con moto Lento Lento
Shostakovich
Alexander String Quartet Special Event with Joyce Yang, piano
PROGRAM
SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2019 • 2PM
P. 10
Joyce Yang, piano String Quartet No. 21 in D Major, K. 575 (1789) Allegretto Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Allegretto New Work (2018)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Samuel Adams (b. 1985)
Commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, the Mondavi Center, San Francisco Performances and Soka University of America for the Alexander String Quartet and Joyce Yang.
INTERMISSION Quintet for Piano & Strings in F Minor, Op. 34 (1864) Allegro non troppo Andante, un poco Adagio Scherzo: Allegro Finale: Poco sostenuto—Allegro non troppo
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, September 30, 2018 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 1 in C Major, Op. 491 Shostakovich wrote his first string quartet during a defining interlude in his career. He had achieved international fame at age 20 with his first symphony, and his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District—with its explicit sexual content and sordid events—had reinforced that reputation during performances as far away as Cleveland, London, Zurich, Stockholm and Buenos Aires. The young composer was hailed at home as a product of the communist system (the opera “could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best traditions of Soviet culture”), but that giddy success came to a sudden, shuddering halt when the prudish Stalin went to see the opera in January 1936. Within days, Shostakovich found himself the object of a withering attack in Pravda, an assault so severe that the composer believed he was about to be sent to a labor camp. Not until the successful premiere of his fifth symphony in November 1937 was Shostakovich back, however tentatively, in official favor, and it was in the quiet aftermath of that success that—almost by accident—he composed his String Quartet No. 1. Curiously, the new quartet shows none of the raciness of the opera that got him into trouble and none of the heroism of the symphony that got him out of it. Composed between May 30 and July 17, 1938, the First Quartet is surprisingly neutral music, and it had a haphazard genesis, described in some detail by the composer himself: “The whole year after completing Symphony No. 5, I did nothing. I merely wrote the Quartet, consisting of four small sections. No special idea or emotions had stimulated me to write it, and I thought the effort would fail. I wrote the first page as a kind of exercise in the quartet form, and I never thought I would complete it. Yet later on, the work absorbed me to the extent that I completed the quartet extraordinarily rapidly. It would be foolish to seek anything profound in it. I should call it the ‘Spring Quartet.’” The First Quartet is gracefully-crafted music, pleasing but also curiously detached, and Shostakovich was quite right to warn listeners against searching for “anything profound in it.” Certain words recur continually in critics’ descriptions of this music—“divertimento-like,” “Haydnesque,” “pellucid”—and while all of those are accurate, they also point to the neutral content of the music. It is as if Shostakovich—who had just come through an excoriating couple of years—took refuge in technique, form and emotional detachment as he composed his first quartet. Shostakovich was also right in describing the work as being in “four small sections,” for these miniature movements combine to form a string quartet that lasts only about 13
minutes. In his first essay in quartet form, Shostakovich sticks close to classical procedures. The opening movement, significantly marked Moderato rather than Allegro, is in sonata form with a pleasant first theme and the violin’s singing second subject over cello glissandos. This material is in 3/4 on its first presentation, but Shostakovich re-bars it in 4/4 for the development and continues to shift meters as this nondramatic movement makes its way to a quiet, even delicate, close. The second movement, also marked Moderato, is a set of continuous variations on a song-like melody first presented by unaccompanied viola. This theme is harmonized and colored differently on each reappearance as this movement, too, glides to a quiet close, here on a subdued A-minor pizzicato chord. By contrast, the Allegro molto is in constant, busy motion. Muted throughout, it whips past in less than two minutes in some performances. Shostakovich makes a nod toward classical tradition with a gently-swaying trio section, and he combines both his principal themes in the brief final section. The finale also gets past quickly, full of Shostakovich trademarks: high energy, bright spirits, shifting meters and occasionally tart harmonies. Is this a “Spring Quartet?” Listeners may decide that one for themselves. String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 The works Shostakovich composed during World War II—or, as the Russians call it, the Great Patriotic War—form a distinct chapter in his output. These include the wartime music one might expect—marches, choruses and even settings of songs of Russia’s allies (including, in 1943, an arrangement of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)—but Shostakovich made his major wartime statements in classical forms. The wide expressive range of these works is best outlined by the path from the “Leningrad” Symphony of 1941—a popular, heroic, and somewhat bombastic work—to the Eighth Symphony of 1943, searing, painful music that is a more direct response to the war. Shostakovich also wrote two chamber works during the war, both composed at the retreat the Soviet Union maintained for its composers in the forest of Ivanovo, north of Moscow. The Piano Trio No. 2 and the String Quartet No. 2 were composed during the summer of 1944 and premiered at the same concert in Leningrad on November 12 of that year. These two works come from the darker side of Shostakovich’s wartime experience. The Trio is one of his finest and most frequently performed works. It was composed at just the point advancing Soviet soldiers had begun to discover the atrocities that had been committed against Russian Jews by the Nazis, and some of that makes its way into the trio’s harrowing final movement, which is based on what Shostakovich himself called a “Jewish theme.” The character of the Second String Quartet is more elusive, and it has remained one of the leastknown of the cycle of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets. This quartet makes no direct reference to the war. There are no music quotations, no subtitle, no connections by Shostakovich MondaviArts.org | 6
himself to the events swirling about him as he composed it. Yet this is big music (nearly 35 minutes long), dark, powerful, at times dissonant, and it is hard not to feel some of the same spirit in this quartet that runs through the Eighth Symphony and Second Piano Trio. The quartet is in the expected four movements, and at first glance these seem fairly conventional: a sonata-form first movement, a slow movement, a dance movement, and a theme-and-variation finale. But none of these movements is quite what one expects, and the impact of this music is unsettling rather than reassuring. Each of the movements has a title. The opening Overture, in sonata form, employs thematic material that can turn aggressive and dissonant, and it drives to a conclusion that relaxes none of its tensions. The Recitative and Romance opens with a long fantasia by the first violin over unbarred chordal accompaniment; its central episode, reflective at first, gradually turns strident before the return of the opening recitative. The Valse is muted throughout. Second violin and viola pulse a ghostly suggestion of the waltz rhythm, and the cello quickly sings the sinuous waltz tune. This waltz offers several episodes in different characters and keys, some of them quite busy, before the return of the opening material and a quiet close. The variation-finale opens with a slow, rising-and-falling theme-shape. This shape then crystalizes into the viola’s lengthy solo statement (quite “Russian”-sounding), and four extended variations follow at different speeds. The writing can be virtuosic here, and at moments some of the aggressive character of the opening movement reappears. At the end, the slow theme-shape from the movement’s opening returns, and the quartet closes on a full-throated restatement of the variation theme and a firm A-minor chord. —Eric Bromberger
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, December 2, 2018 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 The Third String Quartet was Shostakovich’s only composition during the year 1946. He dedicated it to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who gave the first performance in Moscow on their namesake’s 176th birthday, December 16, 1946. The mention of Beethoven is apt, for many observers have felt that this quartet, particularly in its heartfelt fourth movement, consciously evokes the spirit of the older master. Yet the Third String Quartet is no imitation. In fact, this is a wildly original composition.
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One of the best things about Shostakovich was his utter unpredictability. He had greeted the end of World War II the previous year not with the victory symphony expected by Soviet officials but with a Ninth Symphony full of high spirits and a sort of in-your-face cheekiness. Now, in the first full year of peace, he turned to the form that would increasingly attract him over the remainder of his life, the string quartet, and composed a work that manages to combine playfulness with the most profound seriousness. That is a strange mix, and here it is a convincing one. The structure of this quartet is unusual (five movements, with themes from earlier movements recalled in the finale), and the writing is quite demanding. Much of it is in the instruments’ higher registers, and there are moments of soloistic brilliance that seem at odds with the ensemble-playing expected in quartets. In addition, the harmonic language can be gritty— each movement has a key signature and a home key, but a clear sense of tonality is obscured by the continuously chromatic writing. All this makes the Third Quartet sound forbidding, which it is not. But this is quite varied music, and listeners should come to it ready for the broad range of expression that marks Shostakovich’s best music. The very beginning of the opening Allegretto is frankly playful. The first violin’s skittering main idea dances gracefully, but Shostakovich stresses to all four players that he wants this beginning dolce. By contrast, the second theme is somber, pulsing darkly on its twonote cadence, and from the collision of these two ideas Shostakovich builds this sonata-form movement. A pounding 3/4 pulse continues virtually throughout the Moderato con moto. There are moments when this 3/4 meter verges on a ghostly, frozen waltz, only to be strait-jacketed back into rigidity; the movement fades into silence with all the instruments muted. By contrast, the Allegro non troppo explodes to life with what sound like gunshots. Built on alternating measures of 2/3 and 3/4, this scherzo—reminiscent of the “battle” movement of Shostakovich’s wartime Eighth Symphony—rushes to a sudden close. The expressive Adagio has reminded many of Beethoven’s late quartets. It opens with a powerful five-measure phrase that will function (somewhat) like the ground bass of a passacaglia, providing the foundation over which Shostakovich will spin out long spans of intense and moving melody. This proceeds without pause into the finale, which might have been a lighthearted conclusion, were the main idea not so spooky: the cello’s dark, sinuous main theme is accompanied by the viola’s pizzicato harmonics. As this movement dances along, Shostakovich gradually brings back themes from the earlier movements, and the quartet fades enigmatically into silence on a final chord marked morendo.
String Quartet No. 4 in D Major, Op. 83 The Soviet crackdown on composers in February 1948 remains, over half a century later, one of the most devastating examples of government interference and censorship in history. Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky and others were excoriated for their “formalistic distortions and antidemocratic tendencies” and for writing “confused, neuropathological combinations which transform music into cacophony.” These composers apologized and—in those frosty early days of the Cold War—promised to write more “progressive” music, in tune with the ideals of the Revolution. Shostakovich, who had met with government disfavor in 1936 during the period of Stalin’s “Great Terror,” began to write two kinds of music. The “public” Shostakovich wrote what would now be described as politically-correct scores, intended to satisfy Soviet officials with their ideological purity: the oratorio Song of the Forests, the cantata The Sun Shines over Our Motherland, the film score The Fall of Berlin, and a choral cycle with the numbing title Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets. The “private” Shostakovich, however, wrote the music he wanted to, but held it back, waiting for a more receptive climate. The death of Stalin in March 1953 brought a political and artistic thaw, and Shostakovich could bring out these scores: the First Violin Concerto, composed in 1947, but not premiered until 1955; the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, written in 1948 and first performed in 1955; and the Fourth and Fifth String Quartets, written respectively in 1949 and 1952, but not played until 1953. Shostakovich’s Fourth String Quartet is almost as interesting for what it is not as for what it actually is. This music is remarkable for its restraint. All four movements are at a moderate tempo (three Allegrettos and one Andantino), and the work is marked by an emotional reserve as well. There are no dramatic extremes here—this music is spare, understated, lean, at times almost bleak. Harmonically, it varies moments of simple diatonic melodies (even unisons) with episodes of grinding dissonance. And at the end it fades into silence on the same note of emotional restraint that has marked the entire quartet. The opening Allegretto is quite brief (only three minutes), just long enough to lay out two themes but not long enough to develop them in a significant way. The music moves from the quiet beginning, built on constantly-changing meters, to a fullthroated restatement; more lyric secondary material leads to a quiet close on a unison D three octaves deep. The Andantino at first feels somewhat more settled. Its wistful opening, which belongs largely to the first violin, is in straightforward F minor, but again the music grows more turbulent as the movement proceeds; it closes with a quiet reprise of the opening material, now played muted. The third movement (which remains muted throughout) is scherzo-like in its fusion of quick-paced themes, from the cello’s propulsive opening to a more animated second subject; in the course of the movement, each of the four instruments
takes a turn with this second melody. Unmuted solo viola leads the way into the finale over pizzicato accompaniment from the other voices. The first violin’s main theme here has a pronounced “Jewish” character—it is a lamenting tune, built on tight intervals, sharp accents and fleeting dissonances. This movement, longest in the quartet, rises to an almost orchestral climax full of tremolos, unisons, and huge chords, then fades away on a haunting coda as the two violins in fourths restate the main theme. Over a sustained cello harmonic the upper voices lapse into silence on quiet pizzicatos. Small wonder that Shostakovich kept this music hidden during the Stalin years. It is far from the “progressive” and popular music the Soviet government wanted, and while this quartet has been admired for its lucidity, it is nevertheless troubling music, remarkable for its leanness, its restraint—and for its bleakness. —Eric Bromberger
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, May 19, 2019 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 92 Shostakovich wrote his Fifth String Quartet in the fall of 1952, but it remained in manuscript, unperformed, for over a year—and for very good reasons. Not only were these some of the darkest years of the Cold War, they were also the paranoid final years of Stalin’s repressive regime. Four years earlier, at the 1948 Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers, Stalin’s thought-control police had unleashed a killing attack on leading Soviet composers that left artistic expression in Russia moribund. Accused of writing music that “dwells too much on the dark and fearful aspects of reality,” Shostakovich had been forced to read a humiliating apology and to promise to amend his ways. On the surface, he seemed to do that, composing a series of patriotic cantatas and film scores crafted specifically to please Soviet officialdom. The “real” Shostakovich went underground: over the next few years he continued to write the music he wanted to, but he kept it in his desk, waiting for more favorable times. Those times seemed to come with the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953, and it was in this slightlyliberalized atmosphere that Shostakovich chose to bring out his suppressed works. The Fifth String Quartet was premiered in Moscow on November 13, 1953, by the Beethoven Quartet. The Fifth Quartet is one of Shostakovich’s darkest. It is a big work (its three interconnected movements last a half hour) and a dramatic one. An unusual level of violence runs through this quartet: the development sections of the outer movements are long and abrasive, the music speaks a surprisingly MondaviArts.org | 8
dissonant language, and it finally reaches an ambivalent conclusion that resolves none of its tensions. Shostakovich was probably wise to hold this music back. It is not simply a direct violation of the canons of Socialist Realism—it is a somber work even by the standard of his own music. At the very beginning of the Allegro non troppo, Shostakovich offers the three-note cell that will saturate this quartet: the violins’ three rising notes will recur in a variety of forms and perform a number of musical functions here, just as they do in such contemporary scores as the Tenth Symphony and Sixth Quartet. This opening material proceeds through a very aggressive extension (both violins are in fingered octaves at points), so that the second subject arrives as balm: it is an almost innocent waltz-tune, marked espressivo and first heard in the second violin. Shostakovich even offers a third theme, with the first violin’s duplet pulse cutting across the viola’s steady accompaniment. Though the development begins quietly, it quickly turns violent, with thick textures, meters that shift by the measure, and a great deal of dissonance. The rising three-note cell from the beginning appears in many forms here (including retrograde presentation) before the drama finally plays itself out and the movement comes to a surprising close: beneath the first violin’s high F (which goes on for 26 measures), the music stumbles to the close on fragments of its themes. That high F takes us without pause into the impressive central movement, initially marked Andante. The viola leads the way here, its first three notes outlining this quartet’s melodic cell. One of the most striking aspects of this movement is its sound. All four instruments are muted throughout, and after the turbulence of the opening movement, this brings an icy poise, particularly in its wide, spare textures. Some of this wintry sound comes from the unison writing: at points Shostakovich sets the three upper voices in octaves, playing this pure, clear texture against the deep sound of the cello. An Andantino in 2/4 moves ahead a little more fluidly, with the first violin singing its somber song above the cello’s syncopated pulses; Shostakovich alternates these sections as the movement makes its way to a subdued close. Mutes comes off at the beginning of the last movement, which follows without pause. Second violin launches the Moderato introduction with another theme derived from the three-note cell, and the viola takes the lead at the Allegretto. The generally light spirit of this section, one of those wonderfully tart little Shostakovich waltzes, evaporates in the development, which invokes the furies of the opening movement. The ending is a complete surprise. Shostakovich brings back themes from the earlier movements, gradually the Andante section of the middle movement reasserts itself, and it is on the spare textures and muted sound of that somber music that Shostakovich’s Fifth Quartet glides into icy silence.
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String Quartet No. 6 in G Major, Op. 101 Shostakovich’s sudden re-marriage in the summer of 1956 caught even his closest friends by surprise. His first wife, the physicist Nina Varzar, had died suddenly in December 1954, and 18 months later the shy composer impulsively proposed to a pretty young party official, Margarita Kainova. She just as impulsively accepted, and they were married in July 1956. Such a marriage seems fated to fail, and in fact this one did (they were divorced three years later), but the beginning was happy, and Shostakovich took his bride on a honeymoon to Komarovo. It was there, during the first month of his new marriage, that he wrote his String Quartet No. 6, completing it on August 31. The first performance was given in St. Petersburg by the Beethoven Quartet on October 7, 1956, two weeks after Shostakovich turned 50. Along with the First, the Sixth is the most light-hearted of the cycle of Shostakovich quartets. Despite some moments of stridency in the development sections of its outer movements, this quartet has an almost divertimento-like character. It is melodic and relaxed, and while based on rigorous forms— sonata-form outer movements, scherzo and passacaglia—the music does not depend on conflict and resolution. Beneath its genial surfaces, however, the Sixth is constructed with a remarkable degree of unity, resting on a cyclic construction rare in Shostakovich’s quartets. Over the viola’s steady pulse, violins in thirds sing the Allegretto’s long opening melody. Note particularly the first three notes of that duet: the figure of two eighth-notes as a pick-up to downbeat will run throughout the quartet’s thematic material. First violin has the relaxed second idea, and while the movement slips into a very active development in E-flat minor, matters calm down quickly and the music winds its way to a quiet close. The five-note cadence, which Shostakovich marks poco espressivo, will return to close out the other three movements as well. The Andante con moto begins as a genial scherzo in E-flat major, with the first violin once again leading the way. That instrument also dominates the slithery, chromatic trio section; Shostakovich combines both themes in the reprise, and the movement comes to a very quiet close. The third movement is a passacaglia based on the cello’s opening 10-measure bass line. Gradually the upper voices enter, and the counterpoint grows complex before textures thin out over the final two repetitions of the ground. The subdued ending, again marked poco espressivo, leads without pause into the finale, which begins slowly but soon presses ahead. The three-note figure that dominated the first movement is much in evidence here, both in the violin’s opening idea and the cello’s chugging second subject. As the quartet nears its conclusion, Shostakovich brings back the ground bass of the passacaglia in the viola and cello, and then—as tensions subside—he mutes all four instruments, and the Sixth Quartet draws to its conclusion on a silky Andante. The music dies away on one final re-statement of the five-note cadence figure.
PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, June 2, 2019 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Quartet for Piano & Strings in E-flat Major, K. 493 Mozart wrote only two piano quartets (violin, viola, cello and piano), but he is generally credited with inventing the form (it is true, however, that other composers, including a young teenager named Beethoven, had already experimented with the form). In his piano trios, Mozart sometimes wrote what are essentially piano sonatas with string accompaniment—the piano has the musical interest, while the strings play distinctly subordinate roles—but in the piano quartets he faced squarely the problems (and the possibilities) of the new form and solved them by liberating the string voices and making them genuine partners in the musical enterprise. Mozart completed his first piano quartet, in G minor, in October 1785 just as he was beginning work on The Marriage of Figaro. The opera occupied him throughout the winter, and after Figaro began a successful run in Vienna on May 1, 1786, Mozart returned to chamber music: that year saw three piano trios, a string quintet, and the Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, completed on June 3, only a month after the premiere of Figaro. Coming from a particularly happy period in Mozart’s brief life, this quartet is marked by a genial and utterly open spirit. The firm beginning of the Allegro—the opening statement concludes with little fanfares—establishes the bright mood that pervades this quartet. While Mozart reserved the key of G minor for some of his most serious statements, he preferred E-flat major as the key for nobility, warmth and breadth. That contrast is beautifully illustrated by the two piano quartets: the stormy first, in G minor, is followed by the more relaxed E-flat major quartet. Of particular interest in the first movement is the way Mozart sets the three string instruments in opposition to the piano: the strings often play together, presenting ideas as a group or responding to the piano. This extended movement includes a third theme, and Mozart even calls for a repeat of the entire development before the brief coda. The opposition of piano and strings is most evident in the quiet Larghetto, a nocturne-like movement of unusual harmonic interest. The piano announces the graceful main theme, and the strings respond as a group—the music moves easily between piano and strings. The concluding Allegretto, however, makes the piano the star. The piano’s music here is full of brilliant runs and virtuoso writing, while the strings retreat to the shade, merely answering or accompanying it. But it is easy to forgive the concerto-like qualities of this movement when the piano’s part is so exciting, easy to be swept along on the triplet runs that eventually dash this movement to its close.
JOHANNES BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg Died April 3, 1897, Vienna Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34 As he grew older, Brahms became a more confident composer. He remained supremely self-critical throughout his life, but in his maturity he escaped the uncertainty that had led him to spend 20 years composing—and recomposing—his First Symphony. “It is wonderfully difficult to know which notes to allow to slip under the table,” Brahms is reported to have said, and there is evidence that he allowed 20 string quartets and a similar number of violin sonatas to “slip under the table” before he was satisfied enough to publish works in either form. This self-criticism figured importantly in the composition of the Piano Quintet. Brahms began work on it in the summer of 1862, when he was 29 and still living in Hamburg, but when it was completed that fall, it was for string quintet: string quartet plus an extra cello. (Brahms may have had in mind the model of the great String Quintet in C Major of Schubert, a composer he very much admired.) This music, though, proved unsuccessful with the friends to whom the composer turned for advice, and in 1864 he recast it as a sonata for two pianos. Once again the work was unsuccessful. Clara Schumann’s letter to Brahms about the two-piano version offers unusual insight: “Its skillful combinations are interesting throughout, it is masterly from every point of view—it is not a sonata, but a work whose ideas you might—and must—scatter, as from a horn of plenty, over an entire orchestra. ... Please, dear Johannes, for this once take my advice and recast it.” Recast it Brahms did, but not for orchestra. Instead he arranged it for piano and string quartet, preserving the dramatic impact of the piano from the two-piano version and combining that with the string sonority of the original quintet. In this form it has come down to us today, one of the masterpieces of Brahms’ early years, and it remains a source of wonder that music that sounds so right in the present version could have been conceived for other combinations of instruments. (Brahms published the two-piano version, and it is occasionally heard today, but he destroyed all the parts of the string quintet version.) The Quintet is remarkable for the young composer’s skillful treatment of his themes—several of the movements derive much of their material from simple figures that are then developed ingeniously. The very beginning of the first movement makes clear the scope and strength of this music. In unison, first violin, cello and piano present the opening theme, which ranges dramatically across four measures and comes to a brief pause. Then the music seems to explode with vitality above an agitated piano figure. But the piano’s rushing sixteenth notes are simply a restatement of the opening theme at a much faster tempo, and this compression of material marks the entire movement—the opening theme, for example, is presented in many different guises. A dramatic development MondaviArts.org | 10
leads to a quiet coda, marked poco sostenuto; the tempo quickens, and the movement powers its way to the turbulent close. By contrast, the Andante, un poco Adagio—in A-B-A form— sings quietly. The piano’s gently rocking opening theme, lightly echoed by the strings, gives way to a more animated middle section before the opening material reappears, now subtly varied. The C-minor Scherzo returns to the mood of the first movement. The cello’s ominous pizzicato C hammers with quiet insistence throughout, and once again Brahms wrings maximum use from his material: a nervous, stuttering sixteenth note figure is transformed within seconds into a heroic chorale for massed strings, and later Brahms generates a brief fugal section from this same theme. With the concise trio comes a moment of relief before Brahms makes a da capo repeat of the scherzo. The finale opens with strings alone, reaching upward in chromatic uncertainty before the Allegro non troppo main theme bursts out in the cello. The movement is a rondo, but this is a rondo with some unusual features: it offers a second theme and sets the rondo theme in unexpected keys. At the close, a haunting passage for quiet strings marked tranquillo leads to the vigorous coda. —Eric Bromberger
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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, Shostakovich and Brahms, the quartet’s recordings of the Beethoven cycle (twice), Bartók, and Shostakovich cycles 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, Tarik O’Regan, Samuel Carl Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Greenberg, Martin Bresnick, Richard Festinger, Cesar Cano and Pulitzer Prize–winner Wayne Peterson. The Alexander String Quartet is a major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as ensemble-in-residence of San Francisco Performances and Directors of The Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University. Among the fine musicians with whom the Alexander String Quartet has collaborated are pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, Anne-Marie McDermott, Menachem Pressler, Marc-André 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 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 String Quartet is the subject of the recent award-winning documentary film, Con Moto—The Alexander String Quartet.
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 three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-TheComposer 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 historianin-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 to 2001 and served as the director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991 to 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 Scholar-inResidence 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). Dr. Greenberg’s book, How to Listen to Great Music, was published by Plume, a division of Penguin Books, in April 2011. Robert Greenberg is an official Steinway Artist. MondaviArts.org | 12
Joyce Yang, piano Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (The Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Grammynominated pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism and interpretive sensitivity. She first 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-yearsold, she took home two additional awards: Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet), and Best Performance of a New Work. In 2006 Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut alongside Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall along with the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea. Yang’s subsequent appearances with the New York Philharmonic have included opening night of the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Festival—an appearance made at the request of Maazel in his final season as music director. Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber. She received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy nomination for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn and Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich. She has become a staple of the summer festival circuit with frequent appearances on the programs of the Aspen Summer Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest and the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Other notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin, the BBC Philharmonic, as well as the Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, and New Zealand symphony orchestras. She was also featured in a five-year Rachmaninoff concerto cycle with Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony, to which she brought “an enormous palette of colors, and tremendous emotional depth” (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal). In solo recital, Yang has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Symphony Hall, and Zurich’s Tonhalle. As an avid chamber musician, Yang has collaborated with the Takács Quartet for Dvořák—part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series—and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with members of the Emerson String Quartet at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. Yang has fostered an enduring partnership with the Alexander String Quartet. Following their debut disc of Brahms and Schumann Quintets, their recording of Mozart’s Piano Quartets was released in July 2018 (FoghornClassics). 13 | MondaviArts.org
Yang’s wide-ranging discography includes the world premiere recording of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, created expressly for Yang and commissioned by the Albany Symphony. Yang has also “demonstrated impressive gifts” (The New York Times) with the release of Wild Dreams (Avie Records), on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff and arrangements by Earl Wild. She recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra that International Record Review called “hugely enjoyable, beautifully shaped ... a performance that marks her out as an enormous talent.” Of her 2011 debut album for Avie Records, Collage, featuring works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier and Schumann, Gramophone praised her “imaginative programming” and “beautifully atmospheric playing.” Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.
SAMUEL ADAMS Samuel Adams is an American composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. His work has been hailed as “mesmerizing” and “music of a composer with a personal voice and keen imagination” by The New York Times, “canny and assured” by the Chicago Tribune and “wondrously alluring” by The San Francisco Chronicle.
Adams grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he attended Berkeley’s Crowden School. He went on to study at Stanford University, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree with honors in composition and electroacoustic music while also working as a bassist in the San Francisco improvised music community. He received a Master’s degree in composition from The Yale School of Music.
In May 2018, Adams’s new Chamber Concerto was premiered by violinist Karen Gomyo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and Esa-Pekka Salonen to mark the 20th anniversary of the CSO’s contemporary series MusicNOW. The piece was hailed as “hypnotic, endlessly varied and natural” by Classical Voice America and music of “allusive subtlety and ingenuity” by the Chicago Tribune. Highlights of the 2018–19 season include a new work for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which will be toured in both Australia and the United States, the completion of a new string quartet for Chicago-based Spektral Quartet, and the premiere of a new work for string quartet and piano for the Alexander String Quartet and Joyce Yang. Last season, Adams’ many words of love was toured by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and had performances at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The piece had an additional performance with the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida the following March. Adams’ recent Sonatas, written for pianist David Fung, were performed at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg and at the Kennedy Center. Adams served as the curator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series from 2015 to 2018, a period that saw the commissioning of nine new works, including Amy Beth Kirsten’s SAVIOR and a new work by Manual Cinema, as well as the development of an audiovisual collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago. He has also curated for the San Francisco Symphony as part of their experimental SoundBox series. A committed educator, Adams frequently engages in projects with young musicians. In 2015, he worked with the Negaunee Institue of Music to establish the Civic Orchestra New Music Workshop, a program for emerging composers. In 2014, he was in residence with The National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, for which he composed a work that was premiered under the baton of David Robertson. Adams also regularly works with the students of The Crowden Music Center (Berkeley, California) and maintains a private teaching studio.
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