DAVID AND KATO PERLMAN CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES
IN-PERSON & VIRTUAL WISCONSIN UNION THEATER PLAYERSCHAMBERMANHATTAN THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 | 7:30 PM SHANNON HALL AT MEMORIAL UNION
Douglas and Elisabeth B. Weaver Fund for Performing Arts
Mead Witter School of Music
WUD PAC is part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Leadership and Engagement Program and is central to the Wisconsin Union’s purpose of developing the leaders of tomorrow and creating community in a place where all belong.
Charles ChristineCohenBeatty
David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Fund
2
In addition to planning the Wisconsin Union Theater’s season, WUD PAC programs and produces student-centered events often in collaboration with other student groups. The committee also makes it a priority to connect students to guest artists through workshops and other educational activities.
Michael Hoon
Dr. Linda I. Garrity Living Legends Endowment Fund
PROGRAMMED BY THE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE
Fan Taylor Fund
Penny StephenSamHubbardCoeMortonTerryMoen
This performance is made possible by the David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Fund.
Bill and Char Johnson Classical Music Series Fund
Wisconsin Union Theater Endowment
The Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee (WUD PAC) is a student-run organization that brings world-class artists to campus by programming the Wisconsin Union Theater’s annual season of events. WUD PAC focuses on pushing range and diversity in its programming while connecting to students and the broader Madison community.
SUPPORT FOR THE 2022–2023 CONCERT SERIES PROVIDED IN PART BY:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
In modo d’una marcia: Un poco largamente Scherzo: Molto vivace
Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
La Libertad se levantó llorando (2017)
Allegro brillante
AllegroMenuettoLarghettoAllegrocon variazioni
Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 (1842)
Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 (1789)
3
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2022
Allegro ma non troppo
MANHATTAN CHAMBER PLAYERS
INTERMISSION
Andrea Casarrubios (b. 1988)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
About the Work
It was such an opportunity for paid work that led to the composition of the Clarinet Quintet in A in 1789. It was originally written for and performed at the Tonkünstler-Societät—a charitable organization in Vienna that mounted annual concert series to raise funds for widows and orphans of musicians—with Mozart’s close friend Anton Stadler playing the clarinet part. Stadler’s virtuosity on the clarinet and basset clarinet (an instrument with a slightly extended range) served as Mozart’s inspiration for the Clarinet Concerto as well as the solos in La clemenza di Tito. Over the previous eight years in Vienna, Mozart had honed his compositional ability into what is now considered its apogee, having reigned in his unbounded creativity by bringing his quicksilver use of textures and styles into greater alignment with formal structures, most notably, perhaps, in his five-part counterpoint conclusion to the “Jupiter” Symphony. The Clarinet Quintet in A represents the final example of this high Viennese style, after which his works became more markedly ironic and austere.
Performance Time: approximately 31 minutes
In the Allegro, Mozart shows his refined approach of the 1780s. The opening gesture features a lilting descending melody that the clarinet gently energizes with its upward arpeggios. Only as the movement continues does Mozart introduce clever harmonic modulations to the minor, similar to his moodier music of the 1770s. He signals the start of the development section by changing the texture of the opening phrase, with the clarinet joining the lilting descent for the first time while the violins play energetic arpeggios. The second movement is a slow aria, the clarinet floating effortlessly over the simple accompaniment of the strings. In the Menuetto, the clarinet rejoins the rest of the ensemble as an integrated member of the group, and even drops out entirely during the trio, as Mozart creates a textural and orchestral shift to highlight the form. In the final Allegretto con variazioni—a theme and variations—Mozart shows off his prodigious innovation in creating diverse styles and moods while never losing the essential character of the theme.
A Closer Listen
4
Beginning his career as a child prodigy touring Europe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart grew up to be one of the most versatile and prolific composers of his age. His music epitomized Viennese Classicism and served as a benchmark against which composers who followed were measured. His amazing technical virtuosity as a performer notwithstanding, as a composer, Mozart possessed an uncanny ability to synthesize the array of styles he heard and experienced on tour and in performance. From Italian opera of the time, he learned his melodic skill and rollicking pitter-patter rhythms. From the orchestras in Mannheim and Salzburg, he learned to deploy instrumental effects as meaningful expressions of structure. His main success as a composer came from his work in opera, the most important genre of the day; yet, he composed in virtually all major genres, ranging from public works like concertos and symphonies to sacred music and chamber music for small gatherings and social clubs. Despite his wide-ranging opportunities for freelance work, Mozart experienced cycles of boom and bust in his personal finances when his spending and sometimes his gambling left him with large debts, inevitably on the lookout for the next opportunity for paid work.
Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581
About the Composer
Spanish composer and cellist Andrea Casarrubios is an emerging voice in the world of contemporary music. Admired as a performer as much as a composer, Casarrubios represents the evolving path of “new music,” as composers seek to balance the innovation and experimentation of 20th-century Modernism with an ear toward communicating deeply and evocatively with audiences from many walks of life. Her recent music ranges from the serious—SEVEN paid homage to the nightly 7 PM ritual of New Yorkers applauding essential workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—to the humorous: The Airport Jog takes as its starting point the range of inquiries cellists receive when trying to board planes with their instruments. She draws on a range of artists from the Spanish-speaking world for inspiration, including Frida Kahlo and, in this evening’s work, Pablo Neruda. She often comes back to the theme of individuals finding their own voice in a world that may not always make space for them.
La Libertad se levantó llorando (Liberty Rose Weeping) takes its title and inspiration from an excerpt of the poem “Antitanquistas” (“Anti-Tankers”) by Pablo Neruda, which responds to fascism during the Spanish Civil War. In this section of the poem, a personified Liberty arises and walks down a road crying out to the beleaguered and suppressed Spanish people. Liberty’s voice inspires the dismembered “favorite sons of victory” to ultimately renew their “burning hearts and roots” after they have fallen many times and had their “hands erased,” “deepest bodily sinews torn apart,” and “mouths silenced.” Neruda, exemplifying what it means to be an artist of the people, used his writing to advance the causes of democracy and freedom for all. Neruda’s, however, is not the only voice of freedom that Casarrubios draws on in her duet for violin and cello with pre-recorded voice. Throughout the work, Casarrubios also makes references to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which has become an emblem of democratic freedom since it was famously conducted by Leonard Bernstein (who replaced the German word for “joy” with “freedom”) in two concerts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall in December 1989.
About the Work
A Closer Listen
Beethoven’s final symphony centers on an emergent, rising theme that famously culminates in the fourth movement’s ecstatic “Ode to Joy.” Long before that climactic moment, though, the first movement opens with harmonically and rhythmically ambiguous tremolos, creating an amorphous atmosphere from which springs the first theme with its assertive dotted rhythm and descending fifth motive. So, too, does La Libertad se levantó llorando open with ambiguous and atmospheric tremolos, at first quite static but soon moving around, giving a scintilla of melody. Casarrubios also uses a descending fifth motive with a similar dotted rhythm throughout the piece to herald new themes or a new section. She takes a different approach than Beethoven, however, to the emergent process. Deploying extended performance techniques and atmospheric effects, such as highpitched harmonics to activate unique resonances, Casarrubios creates environments of foreboding dissonance from which her always plaintive melodies appear to break free rather than emerge. Indeed, when Neruda’s poetry enters three quarters of the way through the piece, the words are spoken—rather than sung in harmony as in Beethoven’s Ninth—adding to their stark realism. If Beethoven’s vision of brotherly love and equality was always a little too idealistic, too simplistically triumphant, too utopian, Casarrubios recognizes that freedom does not emerge invincible and unscathed after the trauma of fascism. Freedom, after all, rose crying.
La Libertad se levantó llorando Andrea Casarrubios (b. 1988)
Performance Time: approximately 13 minutes 5
About the Composer
About the Composer
About the Work
A Closer Listen
One well-known feature of Schumann’s output was his tendency to focus on one genre at a time in the hopes, perhaps, of finding its perfect artistic expression. Thus, starting in 1840, he had a series of individual years dedicated to a single genre: the lieder year (1840); the symphonic year (1841); the chamber music year (1842), in which the Piano Quintet in E-Flat was composed; and finally, the oratorio year (1843). This systematic approach to composition had some pragmatic motivations as well: Lieder was one of the more commercially viable genres. But by and large, Schumann’s focus on genres mirrored his obsessive personality—he was a systematic diarist and list-maker—as well as his interest in imitating his historical role models, specifically Bach. His exploration of a single genre at a time also led him to develop unique artistic approaches to each; for example, he believed chamber music must not strive to imitate the symphony.
He applied these artistic ideas in his Piano Quintet, one of the standout examples of the genre. In his exploration of the symphony—which immediately preceded his chamber music year—Schumann attempted to mediate the improvisatory-sounding fantasies of his piano music with the large-scale formal organization inherent to the symphony, fully exploiting its orchestral effects. By contrast, for chamber music, he demanded that the composer avoid “symphonic furor” and instead compose in a conversational style that allows each player a voice. Yet, despite his claim to strictly differentiate symphony and chamber music, he did rely on many of the same formal conventions to organize his work, and in the last movement of his Piano Quintet, he provides a dramatic (and truly symphonic) recall of the main motive from the opening movement in counterpoint, providing large-scale cyclical closure to the work.
Right from the start, the Allegro brillante calls out a gripping and emotionally fraught melody of the Romantic idiom. Yet, despite the brilliance of its tempo marking, the entire movement resists flashy virtuosity at every turn in favor of evocative displays of raw emotion. The second movement, “in the style of a march,” begins with a funereal mood and plodding dotted rhythms, reminiscent of the funeral march in Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, before moving to a legato yet pregnant second theme. The Scherzo ascends the closest to truly virtuosic writing with driving ascending scales, but remains subsumed by the emotion—determination realized in sonic form—before collapsing into the trio with its floating, water-like texture. The final movement begins with a square and stomping melody that sounds like a rough-and-tumble peasant dance, which is contrasted with a slow second theme before ending in dramatic counterpoint with the opening theme of the first movement.
6
Performance Time: approximately 30 minutes
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44
As a prolific composer, performer, and music critic, Robert Schumann was a consummate champion of the new Romantic style in music and fundamentally believed that music aspired to the heights of poetry. Deeply informed by the history of music, he often looked to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach as an example, finding his immediate predecessors to have hit an artistic nadir because they had focused too much on mechanical dexterity and flashy virtuosity rather than deeper approaches to composition. Schumann and a group of like-minded compatriots called the Davidsbündler outlined these values in self-published and popular journals. In his own compositional output, he aspired to hold himself to the highest standards of Romanticism, ultimately making significant contributions to nearly all major genres of the era—orchestral, chamber, opera—and practically inventing the so-called character piece, a genre that embodies his music-meets-poetry ideal by featuring short, discrete movements, each conveying a different, newly invented personality.
—Eric Lubarsky
Members of MCP are current and former members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Ensemble Connect; the Aizuri, Attacca, Dover, Escher, Vega, and Ying quartets; the Aletheia, Appassionata, and Lysander piano trios; and Imani Winds. They are top prizewinners at the Banff, Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff, Melbourne, Naumburg, Osaka, Primrose, Queen Elisabeth, Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, Tertis, and Young Concert Artists competitions, and are some of the most sought-after solo and chamber performers of their generation. The Manhattan Chamber Players has been featured multiple times on NPR’s Performance Today. It is ensemblein-residence at both the Festival de Febrero in Mexico and the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans. In addition to its numerous concerts across the US, Canada, and Mexico, MCP regularly tours in Asia and the Middle East and has led chamber music residency programs at institutions throughout the US and abroad.
Manhattan Chamber Players is represented by Arts Management Group.
The Manhattan Chamber Players (MCP) are a chamber music collective of New York–based musicians who share the common aim of performing the greatest works in the chamber repertoire at the highest level. Formed in 2015 by artistic director and violist Luke Fleming, MCP is comprised of an impressive roster of musicians who all come from the tradition of great music making at such institutions as the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Music@Menlo, Yellow Barn, and Perlman Music Program, and who are former students of the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, Colburn School, and New England Conservatory.
7
MANHATTAN CHAMBER PLAYERS
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, MCP launched an ongoing online concert series, CO-VIDeo Concerts, which has raised more than $20,000 for performing artists recently rendered unemployed due to the devastating effects of the virus.
MCP was praised in Strings magazine for “a fascinating program concept” that “felt refreshingly like an auditory version of a vertical wine tasting,” going on to applaud MCP for “an intensely wrought and burnished performance … Overall, I wished I could put them on repeat.” At the core of MCP’s inspiration is its members’ joy in playing this richly varied repertoire with longtime friends and colleagues with whom they have been performing since they were students. Its roster allows for the programming of the entire core string, wind, and piano chamber music repertoire, from piano duos to clarinet quintets to string octets. While all its members have independent careers as soloists and chamber musicians, they strive at every opportunity to come together and share in this special collaboration, creating “a mellifluous blend of vigorous intensity and dramatic import performed with enthusiasm, technical facility and impressive balance, relishing distinctions … a winning performance” (Classical Source).
THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS FOR SUPPORTING THE WISCONSIN UNION THEATER
Carol J. May
Evjue Foundation Inc.
BetsyProfessionalsA.Wood & Thomas Coyne
Edward F. Kakas III & Andrea J. Lund-Kakas
Emily A. Ronning
Carol L. Schroeder & Dean H. Schroeder
Frank KathleenKatelynJustinJudithJoshuaJosephJonJohnJeffreyJeanneJasonJanellJamesJamesIsabelHildyHannahGreenGeraldineStaszakK.GurmanBayPackersFoundationY.JurowiczB.FeenK.FinnD.SteinbergH.Bigwood&JayChaM.WiseL.Stephens&AnaC.StephensA.MarshallMattox&HelenMattoxW.Schaffer&SarahL.SchafferE.FadnessP.DavisIII&WendyT.DavisH.WallachN.Sidran&BenH.SidranD.Hein&PaigeA.HeinR.ZutterA.Williams
André De Shields
Anita L. Mauro & Daniel Mauro
Christopher Murphy & Gloria Mojarro
Charles E. Simon
Ann K. Pehle
Elizabeth G. Douma
Brent T. BrittinghamHeltWisconsin Trust
Eric E. Nathan
Diane M. Kostecke & Nancy A. Ciezki
Donald A. Schutt Jr. & Sarah L. Schutt
Darren M. DeMatoff
Dane DanielArtsJ.Koehn & Mark R. Koehn
Ann M. Sticha
Christine W. Bohlman & Philip V. Bohlman
Eric W. Curtis
Christine Beatty
Elizabeth L. Preston & Burton R. Preston Elizabeth Snodgrass & Jonathan Stenger
8
Carolyn J. Kruse & Ellen M. Pryor
E. Neuhaus
Emil R. Sanchez & Eloisa R. Sanchez
Christian J. Krautkramer & Alli Grady
David R. Cross
Charles L. Cohen & Christine A. Schindler
Curtis J. Edmonds
Carol H. Falk & Alan F. Johnson
Arnold R. Isaacs & Kathleen T. Isaacs
Association of Performing Arts
Courtney A. Byelich & David M. Cober
Diane L. Steele
Faye K. Robinson
Charles R. Leadholm, MD & Jeanne M. ChristianParus
Elizabeth B. Schaffer & Steven C. Schaffer
Mark J. Reischel, MD & Angela Reischel
Lisa D. Winkler & Dirk A. Korth
Stephen Morton
Steven L. Behar & Donnette Behar
Mark C. Guthier & Amy Guthier
Michael Hoon
Mohamed F. Bacchus
Ruth Shneider Brown
Kristen E. Kadner & Brian J. Roddy Leonard H. Gicas
Shibani C. Munshi, MD Small Business Administration Sophia E. StephanieDrammM.Diaz de Leon
Robert T. Harty & Mona-Lee Harty
Kelly G. DeHaven & David T. Cooper
Tiffany A. Thom Kenney & Vincent J. VinodTracyKenneyL.BentonK.Sahney & J. Gail Meyst Sahney Wesley WisconsinWichnartHyattA.ImsangjanArtsBoard
9
National Endowment for the Arts
Polly PrashanthSnodgrassJayachandran & Neena M. Patil
Sarah Wood & David Anderson Shana R. Lewis & Robert D. Magasano Sharon S. Rouse
Michael T. Brody & Elizabeth K. Ester Michele Traband & Thomas O. Traband Miriam S. Boegel & Brian M. Boegel
Thomas R. Smith
Nicole R. Lucas
Leslie D. Dinauer & Stephen R. Dinauer
Robert M. Bell & Jeanne L. Bell
Lynn M. Stathas
Ralph F. Russo & Lauren G. Cnare
Patrick J. Callan
Lisa M. Cichy & Stephen J. Cichy Lucas L. Schneider
Ronald M. Wanek & Janet E. Wanek
Kato L. Perlman
Terry TheodoreMoenE.
Mary G. McKenzieKramerE.Zdrale & Zachary Zdrale
Penny M. Hubbard
Nancy A. Theisen
Robert J. Hanson & Kayla Hanson
Marcia J. Standiford & Kenneth P. Ferencek Margaret A. Shukur & Robert Ruxin
Crabb & Barbara B. Crabb
COMING UP IN FALL 2022 JOEL ROSS GOOD VIBES Sunday, October 16 7:30 PM Play Circle at Memorial Union SOWETOGOSPEL CHOIR Saturday, October 8 7:30ShannonPM Hall at Memorial Union CORY HENRY Thursday, November 3 7:30ShannonPM Hall at Memorial Union
Do you know a student who is interested in working at a dynamic performing arts theater in the heart of campus? We have exciting positions available in the box office, front of house, and stage crew starting at $15 per hour. Learn more about our available positions at union.wisc.edu/jobs.
• House managers supervise the front-of-house experience and the usher team for individual events.
11
• Stagehands work as part of the technical team to provide lighting, audio, video, backstage, live streaming, and stage management services in Shannon Hall and the Play Circle.
WE’RE HIRING!
We seek a diverse staff of people who are passionate about social justice and prioritize creating a welcoming performing arts center for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists and audiences.
Studentstartingjobsat per hour
$15
• Box office clerks assist customers with purchasing tickets and processing transactions, and handle patron questions and concerns with care.
• Front-of-House staff greet audience members, scan tickets, help patrons find their seat and provide directions, and ensure the lobby and house are clean and safe.
Brooke Messaye, Committee Management Associate Director
Kate Schwartz, Artist Services Manager
Allie Boekmann, Box Office Supervisor
Heather Macheel, Technical Director
Dawry Ruiz, Director
Henry Ptacek, General Programming Associate Director
Sean Danner, Box Office Manager
Lindsey Mathews, Marketing Associate Director
800 Langdon St., Madison, WI 53706
Elizabeth Snodgrass, Director
WISCONSIN UNION THEATER
Jos Comiskey, Box Office Supervisor
Abigail Perkins, General Programming Associate Director
Isabel Celata, Administrative Assistant
Box Office: uniontheater.wisc.edutheater@union.wisc.edu608-265-ARTS
/WisconsinUnionTheater @wiuniontheater@wisconsinuniontheater
Main Office: 608-262-2202
Jeff Macheel, Technical Director
Azura Mizani Tyabji, General Programming Associate Director
Wisconsin Union Theater
Kendra Ramthun, General Manager
WISCONSIN UNION DIRECTORATE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE
Epiphany Holmstock, Financial Assistant