Isidore String Quartet: Program by Wisconsin Union

ISIDORE STRING QUARTET FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023 | 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violins Devin Moore, viola Joshua McClendon, cello David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Series

PROGRAMMED BY THE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE 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. In addition to planning the Wisconsin Union Theater’s season, WUD PAC programs and produces student-centered events that take place in the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Play Circle. WUD PAC makes it a priority to connect students to performing artists through educational engagement activities and more. 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.

ISIDORE STRING QUARTET FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2023

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465, “Dissonance” (1785) Adagio—Allegro Andante cantabile Menuetto and Trio: Allegro Allegro

Billy Childs (b. 1957)

String Quartet No. 2, “Awakening” (2012) Wake-Up Call The White Room Song of Healing

IN T E RM IS S IO N Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2 (1873) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Quasi Minuetto, moderato— Allegretto vivace Finale: Allegro non assai

PROGRAM NOTES WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465, “Dissonance” (1785) “The quartets are, indeed, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor,” Mozart admits to Haydn in a letter dated September 1, 1785, in which he encloses six new quartets. And the many crossings-out, careful corrections, and fragments of quartet movements from this period of Mozart’s life bear this out. Nowhere else did he labor so painstakingly over his music. “Please, then, receive them kindly and be to them as a father, a guide, a friend,” Mozart (a generation younger than Haydn) continues. “I entreat you to be indulgent to those faults that may have escaped a father's partial eye, and, in spite of them, to continue your generous friendship towards one who so highly appreciates it.” The magnificent and disturbing C-major Quartet is the crowning point of Mozart’s six “Haydn” quartets. The work is evidence of Mozart’s triumph in emulating Haydn in his Op. 33 collection of quartets from 1782, and achieving a balance of structure, musical style, and emotion. Mozart began work on the six quartets not long after moving from Salzburg to Vienna. It was then that he began to hear music by Bach and Handel on a regular basis at weekly gatherings in the Vienna home of Baron van Swieten. The power of contrapuntal writing began to have a deep and increasing effect on Mozart’s own part-writing at the time. The effect is at its most acute in the unsettling dissonances of the opening 22 measures of the C-major Quartet. They give the work a nickname—“Dissonance”—and arise from a synthesis of free counterpoint and chromatic, “highly spiced” harmonies, to use a term that was often thrown at the mature Mozart. The dissonances are calculated to shock—so much so that people at first accused Mozart of releasing the printed music without having carefully proofed the parts! Even half a century later, Belgian music theorist FrançoisJoseph Fétis proposed a “fix” to Mozart’s strident harmonies by moving the first violin entry one beat earlier. Many applauded the idea; few went along with it. Today, were the opening to be played with this crass insensitivity to Mozart’s boldness, it’s certain that the stone statue of Don Giovanni’s Commendatore would appear to sort things out. The suspense and tension created by the dissonance is released in the ensuing Allegro. The profound, aching Andante cantabile is one of the most sublime movements Mozart wrote. Throughout 4

BILLY CHILDS (b. 1957) String Quartet No. 2, “Awakening” Los Angeles native Billy Childs began publicly performing on the piano at the age of six, and would eventually receive a bachelor’s degree in composition from the University of Southern California Community College of the Performance Arts. As a performer and composer, Childs was in demand early on, collaborating with pillars of the jazz industry, signing with Windham Hill Records in 1988, and receiving commissions from prestigious soloists and ensembles (Los Angeles Philharmonic, DSO, Kronos Quartet, Ying Quartet). A formative education, extensive experience, and an unwavering sense of self allowed the five-time Grammy Award winnerto develop a unique voice as a pianist and composer in both the classical and jazz spheres. Commissioned by the Ying Quartet and completed in 2012, String Quartet No. 2, “Awakening,” depicts the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey in dealing with the serious illness of a loved one; it is inspired by Childs’s real life experience with his wife. After she was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and taken into emergency care, Childs was notified of the situation and immediately rushed to be with her. This three-movement work outlines the complex emotional journey, providing insight into the composer’s vulnerability. The first movement, titled “Wake-Up Call,” opens with a tremolo/trill in the second violin and viola, set against snap pizzicato in the cello, and a 12-tone opening pronouncement in the first violin, expressing his initial shock at learning of his wife’s hospitalization. This cacophonous, anxiety-ridden sound-world is juxtaposed with a reflective middle section overcome with heartbreakingly lyrical cascades of melody that accumulate throughout the quartet, evoking a sense of uncontrollable anguish, fear, and lamentation. This brief look inside the composer’s psyche swiftly dissipates as the opening material engulfs the music 5

once again. “Wake-Up Call” gives us a glimpse into Childs’s external and internal experience in this uncertain time. “The White Room,” the second movement, conveys the powerlessness and urgency he experienced waiting at her bedside through the use of a plaintive melody set against heartrending bitonal harmonies. Utilizing various extended techniques (false harmonics, glissandos, Bartók pizzicatos), Childs manifests the feeling of a sterile, unwelcoming hospital room devoid of comfort with its blindingly white walls and eerily repetitive machinery noises. The mechanical landscape eventually avalanches into two cadenzas in the viola and first violin that seem to spew rage, anger, and torment. The doubled 16th-note figure that pervades the movement, resembling a heartbeat, rises and falls as the emotional arch takes shape, eventually settling into a state of numbness and fatigue. The final movement, “Song of Healing,” is an ode to recovery and rediscovery, with the viola's introductory melody expressing the slow process of healing and a new respect for the transient and delicate nature of life. The centerpiece of this movement is a conversation that occurs between the first violin and cello, signifying the reallife conversation between Childs and his wife as the two began to compartmentalize and understand the impact that this event had on their relationship. The love, trust, and unencumbered expression of emotion can be viscerally felt when the duo rejoins the quartet as the movement comes to a close. A sense of healing, or at least a willingness to heal, is felt as the final chord—a hopeful A Major— dissolves into silence. Childs, through a compositional style evocative of 21st-century multigeneric perspectives, acknowledges and expresses the familiarity of fear, anguish, and resolution regarding the fleeting nature of life, yielding a work that speaks directly to the human experience. —Devin Moore

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 51 (1873) Johannes Brahms was only 20 in 1853, when Robert Schumann declared him the “chosen one” of music, “like Minerva, springing fully formed from the head of Cronus.” For the next 20 years, the weight of such great expectations left Brahms mired in self-doubt. His performing career as a pianist and conductor more than lived up to Schumann’s gush; yet as a composer, he relegated himself mainly to the small-scale, private genres of chamber music, eschewing showy public works like concertos and symphonies (he premiered only three orchestral works before the 1870s). Most intimidating to Brahms were the genres that had cemented Beethoven’s reputation: symphonies and string quartets. Only when he was 40 did the Jonahlike composer step into the role he was prophesied to hold, writing his first two string quartets, Op. 51, followed soon after by his first symphony and embarking on a new style defined by motivic density and economy. Over the course of Brahms’s life, chamber music underwent a major (although covert) transformation from music truly made for and in domestic settings—those well-known 19th-century salons—to music performed in public concerts like this evening’s. Even as chamber music came out, it always retained its unique intimacy and interpersonal exchange, something Brahms embedded into his style. His music would—in some sense—bring the salon to the concert hall, and in many ways, String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor does just that. The Allegro non troppo bursts forth with an impassioned melody—one far too sincere and emotional for casual public discourse. The second theme brings players in close alignment with dancing dotted rhythms that start as a duet of the violins. The movement continues with endless emotional peaks and resolutions, following every emotion to its own end. Drawing on the previous movement, the lilting Andante moderato— which Schoenberg noted for its motivic unity—inverts melodies from Allegro non troppo’s first theme as well as the dancing, dotted-rhythm duet of the second, as it builds to a brief tremolo-laden climax before easing back into an extended denouement. 7

In the Quasi Minuetto, moderato, a triple meter “minuet” in A major— it resembles a ländler, an Austrian folk dance Brahms admired that traditionally features dotted rhythms on beat three, though Brahms uses triplets—contrasts the staccato duple-meter “trio”— which traditionally would be triple meter—in the relative minor of F-sharp (thus Brahms imitates a harmonic relationship pioneered by Beethoven and famously explored by Schubert and Schumann). The Finale, a sonata-rondo, foregrounds metric modulations with melodies oscillating between 3/4 and 6/8. It also merges rhythmic motives from the previous movements to build its thematic material— most audibly the dotted-dancing rhythms of the first movement and triplet figures of Quasi Minuetto—ultimately closing the work with music that, like conversations of close friends, feels obscurely familiar yet entirely new. —Eric Lubarsky

ARTIST BIO ISIDORE STRING QUARTET Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violins Devin Moore, viola Joshua McClendon, cello Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the New York City– based Isidore String Quartet (ISQ) was formed in 2019 with a vision to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the repertory. The quartet is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.” The members of the quartet are violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon. The four began as an ensemble at The Juilliard School, and following a break during the global pandemic reconvened at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in the summer of 2021 under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick. In addition to Mr. Krosnick, the ISQ has coached with Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, Laurie Smukler, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, Misha Amory, Timothy Eddy, Donald Weilerstein, Atar Arad, Robert McDonald, Christoph Richter, Miriam Fried, and Paul Biss. Their Banff triumph brings extensive tours of North America and Europe, a two-year appointment as the Peak Fellowship Ensemblein-Residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas beginning in 2023–24, plus a two-week residency at the Banff Centre, including a professionally produced recording, along with extensive ongoing coaching, career guidance, and mentorship. The Isidore Quartet has appeared on major series in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Durham, Washington (Kennedy Center), San Antonio, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, and has collaborated with a number of eminent performers including James Ehnes, Jeremy

Denk, Shai Wosner, and Jon Nakamatsu. Their 23–24 season will feature appearances in Berkeley (Cal Performances), Boston (Celebrity Series), Washington (Phillips Collection), New York (92nd Street Y), Chicago, Baltimore, Ann Arbor, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Tucson, Phoenix, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Aspen, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and at Dartmouth College and Spivey Hall in Georgia, among many others. European highlights include Edinburgh, Lucerne, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hanover, Frankfurt, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. Outside the concert hall, the quartet has worked with PROJECT: MUSIC HEALS US, providing encouragement, education, and healing to marginalized communities—including elderly, disabled, rehabilitating incarcerated and homeless populations—who otherwise have limited access to high-quality live music performance. They have also been resident ensemble for the Contemporary Alexander School / Alexander Alliance International. In conjunction with practitioners of the Alexander Technique, the ISQ explores the vast landscape of body awareness, mental preparation, and performance practice. The name Isidore recognizes the ensemble’s musical connection to the Juilliard Quartet—one of that group’s early members was legendary violinist Isidore Cohen. Additionally, it acknowledges a shared affection for a certain libation: legend has it a Greek monk named Isidore concocted the first genuine vodka recipe for the Grand Duchy of Moscow! The Isidore String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists: davidroweartists.com.

THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS Association of Performing Arts Professionals

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COMING UP IN THEATER BLUE NOTE RECORDS 85th Anniversary Tour Friday, January 26 | 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Jazz

SCHUMANN QUARTET Thursday, February 8 | 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Classical

RONALD K. BROWN / EVIDENCE Sunday, February 18 | 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Dance

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